The Denver Nuggets defeat the Utah Jazz 119-107 behind Jamal Murray's third consecutive 40+ point game to force a game 7 to even the series at 3-3
Jamal Murray hits a dagger three for 50 points
Murray finishes with 50/5/6 and Mitchell finishes with 44/6/5 in another outstanding matchup
NO, REALLY? Taliban Violated Afghan Deal With Shelling of American Bases, U.S. Officials Say
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/30/world/asia/taliban-afghanistan-peace-us-attacks.html
Two people familiar with the matter tell NBC News that FBI and DHS plan to continue in-person election security briefings to lawmakers about election-related cyber threats and disinformation—but not about the plans and intentions of nation-state adversaries.
So DHS and FBI are on direct orders not to discuss Russia's intention of helping Trump get re-elected, and sowing doubt about the eventual results if he doesn't: Two people familiar with the matter tell NBC News that FBI and DHS plan to continue in-person election security briefings to lawmakers about election-related cyber threats and disinformation—but not about the plans and intentions of nation-state adversaries.
https://twitter.com/KenDilanianNBC/status/1300130342284730371
Wis. Governor Calls Session On Police Reform; Republicans Refuse To Show
https://www.kpbs.org/news/2020/aug/31/wis-governor-calls-session-on-police-reform/
Cleveland really messed up a core of Kluber, Bauer, Clevinger, Bieber, Lindor and Jose Ramirez. Decided it was better to sell parts with two top-10 hitters and three top-15 pitchers. If you aren't going to supplement that? How can you ever win it all?
Clevinger, Greg Allen and PTBN to Padres; Quantrill, Arias, Cantillo, Hedges, Naylor and Miller to Indians.
https://twitter.com/Ken_Rosenthal/status/1300455204748505093
The Padres have now made 5 trades with 5 teams involving 22 players and two players to be named since the weekend. Hello, playoffs, it's the Padres again.
Juan Lagares has elected free agency. The Mets designated him for assignment Friday, to which Lagares seemed to respond with a big clown face emoji on Instagram.
https://twitter.com/timbhealey/status/1300449005185400834
Political violence, widespread disease, mass unemployment. This is what America has been reduced to. It didn't have to be this way—and it doesn't. We're a few weeks away from our one shot at changing this. Let's not miss our chance.
https://twitter.com/PeteButtigieg/status/1300423297159647234
The Oakland A's have acquired left-hander Mike Minor from the Texas Rangers for two players to be named later, sources tell ESPN. A's needed rotation help and get it with a trade for Minor, who's a free agent after this season.
https://twitter.com/JeffPassan/status/1300470977353179142
As Trump's popularity slips in latest Military Times poll, more troops say they'll vote for Biden
https://www.militarytimes.com/news/pentagon-congress/2020/08/31/as-trumps-popularity-slips-in-latest-military-times-poll-more-troops-say-theyll-vote-for-biden/
Pandemic adviser with no epidemiology background pushes White House to adopt herd immunity strategy
https://theweek.com/speedreads/934914/pandemic-adviser-no-epidemiology-background-reportedly-pushes-white-house-adopt-herd-immunity-strategy
The Best Way to Vote in Every State
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/08/2020-voting-guide.html
Appeals Court Rules Michael Flynn will not be dismissed. It's an 8 to 2 decision against Flynn, the two being part of the initial three judge panel that sided with Flynn. The court says NO to:
(1) forcing the district court to approve immediately dismissing the charges against Flynn;
(2) rejecting the district court's appointment of an amicus; &
(3) reassigning the case to a different district judge.
The court rules Sullivan was justified in appointing an amicus to help advise his decision on the dismissal of the Flynn case. Big loss for Michael Flynn and Bill Barr.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/legal-issues/appeals-court-michael-flynn/2020/08/31/24ce93f0-e0b1-11ea-b69b-64f7b0477ed4_story.html
Obama-Appointed Judge Tosses Ben Shapiro's Campus Free Speech Lawsuit, Grants Qualified Immunity to University Officials
https://lawandcrime.com/lawsuit/obama-appointed-judge-tosses-ben-shapiros-campus-free-speech-lawsuit-grants-qualified-immunity-to-university-officials/
Russia put a bounty on US troops in Afghanistan and Trump's response was to try to invite Russia back to the G7. I have no idea why you would support this traitor if you are in the US military.
House panel will subpoena Postal Service, Louis DeJoy for records on mail delays | The postmaster general testified before the House Oversight Committee last week, but declined to provide documentation from his short time in office
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/08/31/postal-service-dejoy-subpoena/
Federal Court Denies Trump's Attempt to Use Border Patrol Agents as Asylum Officers
https://lawandcrime.com/immigration/poppycock-federal-court-denies-trumps-attempt-to-use-border-patrol-agents-as-asylum-officers/
Former Melania Trump friend says she is working with multiple prosecutors on inauguration financing
https://thehill.com/homenews/media/514428-former-melania-trump-friend-says-she-is-working-with-multiple-prosecutors-on
Pro-Trump Republican Alt-Right Judge Thomas Griffith, writing for the majority, illegally and unconstitutionally says that absent legislation explicitly authorizing a House committee to go to court to enforce a subpoena, there is no cause of action. An "implied" cause of action isn't enough, he illegally and unconstitutionally writes, as he sites a Supreme Court decision EXPLICITALLY SAYING THAT THE POWER OF CONGRESS ENUMERATED IN ARTICLE I OF THE CONSTITUTION 1) IMPLY NOT ONLY A RIGHT TO INFORMATION BUT 2) ALSO A RIGHT TO SEEK JUDICIAL ENFORCEMENT OF ITS SUBPOENA. THE VERY RULING HE CITED CONTRADICTS HIM. WHAT A FUCKING MENTALLY ILL TERRORIST.
https://twitter.com/Eric_Johnson719/status/1300488750926041093
One big thing to note at the outset here re: today's ILLEGAL AND UNCONSTITUTIONAL AND DOWNRIGHT DERANGED AND TERRORIST DC Circuit ruling in the McGahn case: There is still no ruling on the Trump admin's contention that current/former senior presidential advisers (like McGahn) are absolutely immune from being forced to testify before Congress. This ILLEGAL AND UNCONSTITUTIONAL decision is already being appealed.
So in the past 24 hours, the #2 Republican in the House shared a video with doctored audio and a top Trump aide shared a video with doctored video, both in attempts to fake information about Biden:
https://twitter.com/IsaacDovere/status/1300488387292520453
In Pittsburgh, Joe Biden says, "Do I look like a radical socialist with a soft spot for rioters? Really?"
Biden: "Rioting is not protesting. Looting is not protesting. Setting fires is not protesting. None of this is protesting. It's lawlessness, plain and simple." He called for the prosecution of those who engage in those activities.
"This president long ago forfeited any moral leadership… He can't stop the violence because for years, he's fomented it."
"There was nobody coming, there was no help coming." The White House's decision to let states fend for themselves led to Covid equipment chaos that continues to this day.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-trump-sowed-covid-supply-chaos-try-getting-it-yourselves-11598893051
"It must end. Violence will not bring change, it will only bring destruction... it only hurts the working families that serve the community."
Biden is again condemning rioting and violence, calling for prosecutions of those who break laws. Biden says Trump's saying "law and order" may make him feel strong, "but his failure to call on his armed supporters to stop acting as an armed militia shows how weak he is."
"The incumbent president is incapable of telling us the truth, incapable of telling us the facts and incapable of healing."
Amed Rosario just walked for the first time in 157 PA. The Mets dugout went wild. That's hilarious.
https://twitter.com/SteveGelbs/status/1300492235977437202
It was almost a calendar year between walks. It was September 14th for Amed Rosario's last walk
Per source the #Bluejays have acquired pitcher Robbie Ray from the Arizona Diamondbacks.
https://twitter.com/longleysunsport/status/1300491145521360897
Calling Trump a bystander in his own presidency. SHOTS FUCKING FIRED
"These are not images of some imagined Joe Biden America in the future. These are images of Donald Trump's America today...He keeps telling us if he was president, you'd feel safe. Well he is president, whether he knows it or not."
Subservient to Putin: Use that again and again.
"Never before has an American president played such a subservient role to a Russian leader. It's not only dangerous, it's humiliating and embarrassing for the rest of the world to see. It weakens us."
The sad truth is Trump's base would rather band together with white Russians than non-white Americans.
The country is in decline. We're crippled. Trump failed. Vote Biden AND vote DEMOCRAT STRAIGHT DOWN THE BALLOT.
Trump's plan would wipe out Social Security and Medicaid, do you feel safer America?
Trump cannot complete a full sentence more complex than "I dont know, we'll have to see. The best people go to YO-semite."
Trump and Republicans and all their supporters: "We need Donald Trump because only Donald Trump can fix the things in America that Donald Trump has broken."
"We're now on track for 200,000 deaths in this country due to COVID. More cops have died from COVID this year than have been killed on patrol. You really feel safer under Trump?"
https://www.bostonherald.com/2020/07/15/covid-19-deaths-could-surpass-all-other-causes-of-police-fatalities/
Love hearing statistics like that. Brutal, just brutal for Trump.
Just run this clip over and over: "When I was Vice President, violent crime fell 15% in this country. We did it without chaos and disorder...The murder rate is up 26% in cities across the nation this year under Donald Trump. Do you feel really safer under Trump?"
"An average of a thousand people dying every day in the month of August. You really feel safer under Donald Trump?"
"He is President. Whether he knows it or not."
Why is this at 1:30pm in the afternoon and not prime time? So the clips can play on the evening news. So that the clips are ready to go at primetime and recirculated throughout the day, I assume. Mostly just the olds watch primetime live TV.
The choice is simple. Vote Biden if you want the republic to continue. Vote Trump if you want an authoritarian dictatorship.
"Trump doesn't see himself as President for all of America."
He's reminded me of JFK in some kind of way a few times. Maybe he's been at the cape. But seriously, his tone a few times has been reminiscent. Perhaps it's the urgency.
Again: "He is president whether he knows it or not." 😂
I will admit to being worried about his mental capabilities but especially lately feel like the media and Republicans right far overplayed their hand on that one
Trump is President. This is happening on his watch. 180K dead. Tens of millions unemployed. No national plan for the virus. Trillions added to the deficit and debt. Highest racial tensions in decades. Violence in multiple cities. This is what happens when the person at the top has no idea how to handle one crisis let alone multiple crises.
This was a Biden speech intended for a broader audience but had elements targeted directly at the Dem bed-wetting set. The campaign knows that after 2016, Trump is in a lot of Dems' heads. The speech was trying to shake them out of it get them to trust the process and the voters
Biden created confusion about his fracking position in a Democratic debate (see transcript below) and his campaign had to clarify that he wouldn't ban existing fracking. The climate platform on his website calls for "banning new oil and gas permitting on public lands and waters."
https://twitter.com/sahilkapur/status/1300499489707495428
Trump, who kept trying to pass bills that'd weaken PPACA protections for people with pre-existing conditions and is now trying to get PPACA killed in court, to Mike Huckabee in an interview last week: "I'm the KING of taking care of people with pre-existing conditions."
Describing Trump's unexpected November 2019 visit to Walter Reed Medical Center, he reports the White House wanted Mike Pence "on standby to take over the powers of the presidency temporarily if Trump had to undergo a procedure that would have required him to be anesthetized."
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/31/books/review/donald-trump-v-the-united-states-michael-s-schmidt.html
As one often does for *checks notes* routine blood work. Don't we all get anesthetized during a routine check up? These days I get anesthetized just to cope.
Kenosha police said Sunday that they had arrested 175 people since the protests began in the bedroom community between Chicago and Milwaukee. Of those, 102 were from outside Kenosha, including 44 different cities. Many arrests were for curfew violations, and included possible charges for burglary, possession of illegal drugs and carrying concealed weapons without a permit, officials said. More than 20 firearms had been seized.
https://apnews.com/13bbc8500a6ff80ffb3512a9567e1c91
More cops have died from COVID this year than have been killed on patrol. Nearly one in six small businesses in this country are closed. Do you really feel safer under Trump?
https://twitter.com/JoeBiden/status/1300500098233839616
I like Biden's strategy of reaffirming the point that this is Trump's America. It's not his, and it's not some harbinger or a hypothetical of what his presidency would be. This is happening right now because of failures occurring under Trump's presidency, among them not only a blanket refusal to listen to voices for change and police reform; but also economic despair. Some of this stress is being exacerbated by joblessness and anxieties that have happened as a direct result of Trump's national non-response to the COVID19 pandemic. This is the "American carnage" Trump ranted about at his inauguration. It was a story in the making about his own presidency.
Trump still wants to run like an outsider and reap all the unique benefits of the doubt that come with wearing that hat, but he's been at the wheel for four years now and doesn't want to run on his record because it looks like dogshit. It's really all he knows how to do - attack and run like an outsider. He's definitely not running on any major accomplishments. And the state of America is so bad now that they had to scrap their Keep America Great slogan and bring out Make America Great Again Again.
Millions of people are sitting home because the virus is raging outside and they're afraid of getting covid19 because either they themselves or the people they live with have underlying health conditions that could be fatal if they get sick with covid19.
Millions of people are sitting home because their places-of-work can't go back to normal until the virus is handled.
Millions of people are sitting home because their unemployment insurance ran out and they can't afford to go anywhere.
Millions of people are left jobless and suicidal because they've been fired/laid-off because of covid and their unemployment doesn't pay anything and there are no jobs where they're at and they owe rent, mortgage, car payments, car insurance, medical bills, student bills, credit card bills, child care bills, child support, utilities, and they need to buy food, toiletries, clothes, shoes, fix cars, fix roofs, replace all kinds of things, etc.
Hundreds of thousands of people have nothing because of hurricanes and tornadoes and floods and derechios etc and half have no home owner's insurance and most lost their vehicles and can't go to work and many have already lost their jobs and they have nobody to turn to.
And Trump wants those millions and millions and millions and millions of people to worry about "radical leftist protestors" and go out onto the streets and fight them
Those tens upon tens upon tens of millions of people couldn't care less. They have plenty of REAL worries.
It was so incredibly stupid for the Trump campaign to bank on Biden's mental decline or whatever. Every time he speaks, he sounds so measured. Trump just tweeted about this speech with total nonsense. Way to direct more viewers to check out clips from the speech. Biden has the occasional misstep in phrasing or syntax. Trump spews outright garbage hatred lies terrorism syphilis from his mouth and his fingertips 24/7. Biden brings a welcomed change
"Trump has sought to remake this nation in his image. Selfish, angry, dark and divisive. This is not who we are."
Trump and his aides have proudly said he likes to make people under him fight to get their way and get his affection. It's been acknowledged numerous times. He's doing the same thing with the entire country.
Joe is destroying every far-right narrative on him line by line. He's destroying it, flaying it, yanking out its entrails, raising it with necromancy, and destroying it again.
There's a big difference between Biden trailing on the ending syllables too long vs sounding like you're 1 headache away from a stroke.
"When I think of the presidency, I don't think about myself. It's not about my brand."
Trump really, really fucked up with the whole "sleepy Joe" shtick. Should have gone with the "he's a great orator, but look! LOOK! A GAFFE!!!" This sleepy Joe plan is blowing up in Trump's face so spectacularly. Get ready for Trump and his campaign to claim that for [x-reason] Trump won't be attending any debates. They dun goofed.
The Trump campaign is already circulating manipulated video from Biden's speech: The Trump campaign manipulated a video from @JoeBiden 's speech today because they could not challenge the content of the speech. This is their game. They cannot and will not compete on the facts.
https://twitter.com/SymoneDSanders/status/1300505168858013703
The judge cited a Supreme Court decision explicitly saying that "The power of Congress Enumerated in Article I of the Constitution imply not only a right to information but also a right to seek judicial enforcement of its subpoena." The ruling he cited contradicts him. https://twitter.com/Eric_Johnson719/status/1300488750926041093
Court for second time strikes down Trump admin rollback of automaker penalties
https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/514422-court-for-second-time-rules-trump-admin-cannot-roll-back-penalties
State report shows hundreds test positive for COVID-19 at Florida schools in August
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/coronavirus/article245241965.html
The Republican Legislature in Wisconsin has given up their duty to lead. The haven't actually met for months and actively have been stopping the Governor from any meaningful action on either BLM or the caronavirus. They literally sued and got his emergency order to stay at home overturned, likely causing hundreds of extra deaths. If you live in Wisconsin, vote in November down ticket to get as many out of power as possible. If you don't live in Wisconsin, please donate to groups who help stop voter suppression in the state.
On Biden endorsing marriage equality in 2012, the Trump campaign cites a statement his office immediately put out afterward denying any new position. https://washingtonblade.com/2012/05/06/biden-comes-out-for-same-sex-marriage/
Harry Belafonte on the manipulated video featuring him tweeted by Scavino, a dep WH chief of staff: "They keep stooping lower and lower. A technical glitch in an interview I did 9 years ago now becomes another one of their lies, more of their fake news..." 1/
https://twitter.com/maggieNYT/status/1300516131996872704
2/2 "...I beg every sane American-please vote them out. I knew many who gave their life for the right to vote. Never has it been so vital to exercise that right."
https://twitter.com/maggieNYT/status/1300516194110394370
The dumbest people of the Trump era will turn out to be the journalists and pundits who knew better who kept praising him for being presidential. They're dumber than the true believers and the QAnon crowd.
Joe Biden: "Donald Trump has been a toxic presence in our nation for four years. Poisoning how we talk to one another. Poisoning how we treat one another. Poisoning the values this nation has always held dear. Poisoning our very democracy."
Read the thread as well...Rob says the wind damage is the worst and most widespread that he has seen in 32 years of serving southern Louisiana with his weather coverage. He has yet to survey further east where the storm surge was more extreme and dominate:
https://twitter.com/HeatwaveKGNS/status/1300516011481935873
Trump said that if "we have between 100- and 200,000 [deaths] ... we altogether have done a very good job." We'll soon hit 200k. Trump's response: A conspiracy theory about the death toll.
The Rockies are acquiring Kevin Pillar and cash from the Red Sox in exchange for a PTBNL and 2019-20 international slot money, per source.
https://twitter.com/Feinsand/status/1300517633037676546
Phillies will trade multiple low-level pitchers to Milwaukee, all PTBNL for David Phelps. Could be two or three, according to sources. Phelps is a Girardi favorite. He has a $4.5 MM club option for 2021.
https://twitter.com/MattGelb/status/1300516692502753280
So far, #BlueJays have added Robbie Ray, Taijuan Walker & Daniel Vogelbach. Doubt they're out on pitching, and expect they'll continue working to add a bat in the two hours remaining before the trade deadline.
https://twitter.com/bnicholsonsmith/status/1300495409383702530
Outfielder Cameron Maybin has been traded from Detroit to the Chicago Cubs, source tells ESPN.
Jacob deGrom today: 6 IP, 6 H, 4 R (1 ER), 2 BB, 9 K; allowed four runs in an inning for just the fourth time since the beginning of the 2018 season
Mets get Robinson Chirinos, source tells The Athletic.
https://twitter.com/Ken_Rosenthal/status/1300526181750575105
Tribalism is to progress what bleach is to growing grass. Until more Americans can view our political opponents not as inherently evil enemies but as real people who aren't always wrong, no meaningful change can be accomplished.
The McCloskeys, now seen as conservative heroes, spent years suing gun manufacturers. 2020 keeps the plot twists coming. | But their new profile ignores a significant chapter in their professional histories: The couple, who for decades ran a personal injury law practice in Missouri, litigated numerous cases against prominent gun manufacturers and contributed to the downfall of what was once America's largest handgun maker. In fact, the handgun Patricia McCloskey brandished on June 28 appears to have been an exhibit used in one of those cases.
https://www.thetrace.org/2020/08/mark-patricia-mccloskey-st-louis-gun-companies-lawsuit-rnc/
The left looks to the 60s and largely ignores the most important accomplishments. Medicare has redistributed trillions of $ benefits to beneficiaries, closing racial disparities, drastically reducing suffering. But history of the law is ignored in favor of late 60s radical chic.
Virginia is committing $4 million to hire additional Legal Aid eviction attorneys across the Commonwealth. Thank you @IKEAUSA for your generous donation of $2 million, which the Commonwealth matched. We won't stop working to keep Virginia families in their homes.
https://twitter.com/GovernorVA/status/1300488553496018945
Mets get Todd Frazier, source tells The Athletic.
https://twitter.com/Ken_Rosenthal/status/1300527860004814848
Boris Johnson 'can't be trusted' on foreign aid as millions sent to China revealed - Boris Johnson has been urged to scrap plans to axe the UK overseas aid department, after it emerged he sent tens of millions of pounds worth of taxpayers' cash to China while he was Foreign Secretary.
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/boris-johnson-cant-trusted-foreign-22602413
The names of 122 women murdered by men over the past year in France were plastered onto a Paris wall on Sunday night as part of a memorial to mark the first year of a poster campaign that has put the country's femicide crisis in the spotlight
https://www.france24.com/en/20200831-a-memorial-for-122-murdered-women-french-anti-femicide-poster-campaign-marks-anniversary
Judge rules Georgia ballots mailed by Election Day must be counted
https://www.ajc.com/politics/judge-extends-georgia-deadline-to-return-absentee-ballots/OEETBUYMWJASHCW3YMVCKTPPYI/
Asked by a reporter if he was going to visit Wisconsin, Biden said: "I'm checking it out now. We hope to be able to do that"
Biden was being heckled by a Trump supporter as he arrived to deliver pizzas. The man was waving a Trump flag as he stood on top of a truck. Biden's response to him: "Don't jump."
https://twitter.com/tylerpager/status/1300530456539127809
Biden a lot sharper than most given credit for.
#BlueJays getting Ross Stripling, per source
https://twitter.com/ShiDavidi/status/1300537759006969856
White House claims Trump hasn't seen video of supporters firing paintballs at protesters despite Trump retweeting it
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/portland-protests-maga-attack-paintball-trump-white-house-a9697616.html
Arizona #Dbacks GM Mike Hazen on the selloff: "This isn't what we envisioned what 2020 started. There's no excuses for that. We have not played well. We need to do a better job as an organization. ....It's not a position I hope to be in again.''
https://twitter.com/bnightengale/status/1300544604362604544
Anthem proved Cigna sought to derail their merger deal but the insurance giant won't win damages, a court ruled https://wsj.com/articles/anthem-cigna-fight-over-failed-merger-ends-in-a-draw-11598904625
In a thinly veiled swipe at Trump, the Democratic-led House will vote on a resolution condemning all forms of anti-Asian bias related to the coronavirus pandemic, Leader Hoyer told colleagues.
https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/1300543938080763907
White House Covid19 Task Force tells Iowa "bars must be closed" in 61 counties and all college students should be tested to rein in the nation's steepest coronavirus outbreak. https://desmoinesregister.com/story/news/health/2020/08/31/white-house-coronavirus-taskforce-says-iowa-has-highest-rate-country/3449153001/
House Dems confirm they'll petition the full DC Circuit to once again take up the McGahn subpoena fight, in light of today's 2-1 decision tossing the suit for lack of a cause of action
https://twitter.com/ZoeTillman/status/1300543641426034695
this is byproduct of DC media book culture $$$$—reporters withhold **for years** crucial Trump revelations so they can sell books: NY Times reporter Michael Schmidt's dropping his new book which includes the revelation that Pence was "on standby" during Trump's sudden emergency visit to Walter Reade for a 'cerebral event'. In other words, a stroke. And I'm just 1 of many folks saying he's been having them.
https://twitter.com/EricBoehlert/status/1300537797380579334
I'll care about the President refusing to condemn Kyle Rittenhouse when Kamala Harris apologizes for raising money to bail out of jail the people burning down America.
"We are far from quitting on this season," Brodie Van Wagenen said.
https://twitter.com/AnthonyDiComo/status/1300542048383234048
John McEntee, Trump's former body man and current head of White House personnel, worked for staunch Trump critic Anthony Scaramucci during his hiatus out of the White House. McEntee's consulting work focused on Scaramucci's famous SALT conferences.
https://twitter.com/schwartzbCNBC/status/1300526461040889857
McEntee worked as an independent contractor for Scaramucci's Wall Street firm, SkyBridge, from June 2019 into September of that year. Part of his work coincided with Scaramucci publicly turning on Trump.
https://twitter.com/schwartzbCNBC/status/1300526462655750144
Boom. New PPP Poll shows I'm tied 43-43 with @SenDanSullivan in #Alaska's U.S. Senate race.
Let's win this thing. Donate and help me bring a prescription for change to Washington, D.C. that puts working families first: https://secure.actblue.com/donate/2008_email_gross_eom?refcode=fstw20_200831_ppp
https://twitter.com/DrAlGrossAK/status/1300537986967367680
Nick Saban leads #Bama football players, coaches on march on campus for social justice @whnt
https://twitter.com/finessebryan/status/1300541382331953155
A family member said she identified a man police told her they are investigating in the killing of a right-wing protester in Portland as Michael Reinoehl, a 48-year-old former professional snowboarder who calls himself a member of Antifa on social media.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/police-investigating-antifa-supporter-michael-reinoehl-in-portland-shooting-11598904528
Just spoke to an official in the North Dakota Secretary of State's office, Kanye West WILL NOT appear on the ballot as a presidential candidate in North Dakota
https://twitter.com/Bencjacobs/status/1300541515371106304
It is critical that this country not use apps that are made in China, or that can take our data and go to servers in China. That data will be used to surveil, monitor and track you.
Trump Calls Armed American Terrorists Who Stormed Portland 'Great Patriots,' Completely Ignores Their Violent Actions
https://www.theroot.com/trump-calls-armed-american-terrorists-who-stormed-portl-1844904965
Republicans: "These protestors are lawless anarchists. Look at the property damage they are causing!! LAW AND ORDER!!"
Also Republicans: "This 17 year old that committed double homicide is a hero!! It's great that he broke the law!"
I remember back in March when Trumps pressers were a bonanza of excitement and activity. The ratings are way down for his shit shows. SAD!
Trump promised that the federal government would "buy American," but he hasn't followed through. The numbers have barely budged
https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2020-08-31/trumps-buy-american-campaign-went-nowhere
DeAngelis confirmed to Business Insider last week that it is CVS's policy to allow employees to work after exposure or testing positive while asymptomatic.
https://businessinsider.com/cvs-told-staff-to-hide-worker-covid-19-cases-from-patients-2020-8
Take the Hatch Act that prohibits partisan election work while on official duty. | And in reality, plenty of people do care about these violations. People may not know what the Hatch Act is by name, but they know that it's wrong for partisanship to dictate who gets to be a citizen or what qualifies as the national diplomatic interest of the United States. And there is one category of people who definitely care: career federal employees who could (or have) lost their jobs from running afoul of the Hatch Act. In June, two federal workers were suspended without pay for Hatch Act violations, and records recently obtained by American Oversight show how seriously employees took the responsibility of making sure they weren't committing infractions. American Oversight had requested the records after OSC issued controversial guidance in late 2018 that was seen as having a chilling effect on the free-speech rights of federal employees by effectively barring them from expressing opinions about Trump's impeachment. (In 2019, American Oversight represented the American Federation of Government Employees in a lawsuit calling on OSC to rescind the guidance.) The documents include scores of responses from OSC to employees' questions about whether particular conduct would violate the Hatch Act, including one letter to an employee who had requested that OSC withdraw the guidance. In black and white, we see how Trump officials are acting as though they are above the law–which they are not–while others are held to a different standard. The rule of law requires the opposite. The Hatch Act isn't just about election fairness and preventing one candidate from deploying the trappings of power for their own advantage; it also espouses the basic principle that public service and governance come before political ambitions.
https://americanoversight.org/who-really-cares-about-the-hatch-act-lots-of-people-and-you-should-too
https://www.fedsmith.com/2020/06/24/two-federal-employees-suspended-without-pay-violating-hatch-act/
https://www.americanoversight.org/document/osc-records-of-guidance-related-to-the-hatch-act
https://www.americanoversight.org/document/foia-to-osc-seeking-unpublished-hatch-act-guidance
https://www.americanoversight.org/afge-files-emergency-motion-to-protect-the-speech-rights-of-federal-employees-during-impeachment
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/7036381-OSC-19-0206-A.html#document/p109
In response to a question from Politico about the Republican National Convention's multiple violations-within-violations of the Hatch Act, White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows dismissed concerns, saying, "Nobody outside the Beltway really cares."
In last week or so:
*Russia armoured vehicle deliberately crashes into US vehicle in Syria injuring 7 US soldiers
*Russian submarine surfaces off Alaska.
*Russian jets cross 100 ft in front of B-52 .
*Russian SU-27 follows B52 into Danish airspace violation airspace of NATO nation.
The more Trump and Republicans rant and rave about leftists, anarchists, Sanders supporters, radicals, communists, socialists, BLM rioters, Antifa rioters, etc, the more Trump and Republicans viciously attack them, the more they are pushing all those ahem anti-Biden/DemocraticParty people towards voting for Biden LOL. I know, I'm on the "anarchist" side (Animal Liberation Front, Earth Liberation Front)
Trump on protests: "We could solve that problem is approximately one hour, you'll be able to have some nice evenings"
Sure - he wants to order the military to exterminate everybody on the streets
Trump can barely summon the energy to get to the stage. What he says is irrelevant. What he does is nothing. Dog whistles, lies and chaos
So people are getting killed in protests, and his solution is to send the military to the protests and exterminate everybody, and he's here complaining about Rand Shitstain Paul, who advocates drone strikes against drug dealers in America, getting heckled. They attacked his feelings. The entire thing was captured on camera....So violent https://twitter.com/bennyjohnson/status/1299361476008972298
It's DISGUSTING ove how everything he's talking about is so simple in concept (even if you don't agree with it) but he literally can't come out and speak extemporaneously about any of it. He constantly has to read from a piece of paper on a subject that should be so simple for a fear-mongering, hateful terrorist like him to wax tragically about.
Ah yes, the dangerous rhetoric of the left, like Joe Biden today when he denounced rioting and violence etc.
As opposed to the non-violent rhetoric of the right, where Donald Trump applauded people who were waving his flags and assaulting people in the streets as great Americans. Totally.
Glad to see that CNN and MSNBC aren't airing this garbage.
What a slurping, gasping, wheezing mess.
Low energy, sniffling, repetitive, providing no answers, sowing division, autofellating his own ego, sidestepping 1,000 deaths a day. First 5mins going as predicted.
The democratic party is run by a guy who doesn't hold an office....The enemy is both weak and all powerful.
Classic authoritarian propaganda
Look at how hard he has to concentrate to read his papers and then watch him encounter something that would take too long to figure out. That's when he injects some ad lib.
"We have to allow police to do what they're very good at doing"...killing people?
Yes we did want to disrupt, that's the very 1st law in the US Constitution gives us the right to do that
Weird I haven't seen trucks with Biden flags trying to run people over or shoot people with paintballs
Trump looks terrible today and can't speak for more than about 5 seconds without stopping to catch his breath. Is it time for him to have another late-night surprise hospital visit?
I wish one of the reporters would ask him about the warnings the FBI has been giving him for years about the massive rise of right-wing terrorism in the United States.
"We're grabbing the left wing violent people from their cities without their consent" - illegal and unconstitutional and chilling, he's implying they're being grabbed and stuffed somewhere and exterminated
Trump had his people in Portland for weeks and the situation exploded and it's still a war zone there yet he's now claiming he can solve the problem in an hour
Kyle Rittenhouse was an "interesting situation"
Trump said they would issue a statement on Rittenhouse in 48 hours. 72 hours ago
He's busy working on the real great cheaper health care he promised he'd have checks notes 3 1/2 years ago.
Trump just said less than 5 minutes ago that he made Chicago safe and now he's saying Chicago is very dangerous
"Rittenhouse was very peaceful while he wasn't shooting people" is Trump's take
The president of the United States is on live TV showing he approves of and will cover up for right-wing violence, including murder, in his name.
There you go guys, the president just basically said go paintball and mace all the people you want. It's not bullets so it's hunky dorey.
Trump on a supporter murdering people: He appeared to have a good reason
Kyle Rittenhouse intentionally gunned down a person to death, shooting the protestor FOUR TIMES. Several protestors tackled him and one began to beat him with a skateboard. Rittenhouse broke free and gunned down a second person to death. To be clear, Rittenhouse was trying to get away from the crowd only after shooting a man 4 times. They chased him trying to take his gun. He's been charged with murder. And the president is defending him
Here's your dad talking about Your legs and breasts when you were a toddler: (1994) "She's got Marla's legs. We don't know whether or not she's got this part yet, but time will tell," Trump added, while cupping his hands to his chest to indicate breasts.
Trump said he refused to speak with the family of Jacob Blake because they wanted their lawyer to be a witness to the conversation in case Trump lied to the media about the conversation
Trump, who just lambasted Biden for not condemning Antifa and BLM by name (but Biden did, he EXPLICITALLY TOLD ALL THE PROTESTORS TO STOP DESTROYING AND LOOTING AND ATTACKING AND PROTESTING.....), refuses an opportunity to condemn violence by his supporters
Biden repeatedly condemned "the left" for the protests and riots and violence and looting and fires and destruction. Trump praised and defended Kyle Rittenhouse, and praised and defended his own supporters attacking protestors.
Jacob Blake's family would only talk to Trump if lawyers were present because the rightfully knew Trump would lie about the whole interaction from top to bottom afterwards
We learned nothing and Trump repeated the same 3 things for half an hour. Waste of time.
The Biden campaign should rebut Trump every single day he has a press conference. There's no good reason why Kalama Harris wasn't ready to go live as soon as the conference was done with fact checked counterpoints to his bullshit.
Trump said he spoke to Jacob Blake's family pastor. Jacob Blake Sr., on CNN just now, said that they don't have a family pastor.
Crump points out that the family had attorneys on the line for their calls with Joe Biden & Kamala Harris
Bucks are the worst team defending 3s, Miami is elite from 3
Trump on Portland: "The entire city is ablaze all the time." Fact-check: 100% flat out lie.
The self-proclaimed president of law and order defended one of his supporters who was charged with two murders, and defended right-wing militants using pepper spray and tear gas and paintball guns to attack protestors
.@Facebook strikes again. They are refusing to let @prioritiesUSA run this ad because, according to them, it violates their sensational content policy. "Ads must not contain shocking, sensational, inflammatory, or excessively violent content." Facebook is irreversibly broken.
https://twitter.com/JoshSchwerin/status/1300558192443875330
Biden called Trump too weak to denounce violence committed by his supporters. Trump just affirmed Biden's charge by defending and cheering Rittenhouse and Portland caravaners who unleashed tear gas and pepper spray and paintball guns at protestors
Mariners Marco Gonzales throws Complete Game against the Angels in 2-1 victory. Marco Gonzales out here doing his best James Paxton impression. Has handed Michael Nelson Trout three (3) strikeouts on the day.
Marco Gonzales vs the Angels: 9IP, 4H, 1BB, 1ER, 8K, on 102 pitches
Trump just gave a presidential green light for his supporters to go into cities and fire guns and tear gas and pepper spray and paint balls at protestors
Trump: "When are these lawless, G/dless, Socialist, Fascist, Antifa, radical, violent, horrible, nasty, shifty, sleepy, do-nothing, obstructionist, terrible, criminal, riotous, murderous idiots on the left going to learn we're all supposed to be working together?"
Trump is going to overplay his hand the riots by blatantly fanning the flames. Biden basically shredded the left, antifa, BLM, etc, for destroying cities, Trump gave the go-ahead to his base to murder protestors, and directly implied he would end the rights in an hour if Democrats let him send the military in their cities to murder everybody
Padres take 3 of 4 vs the Rockies in Denver
The Oklahoma City Thunder claw out a victory against the Houston Rockets 104-100 to force a game 7 behind Danilo Gallinari's 25 and Chris Paul's 28
The Miami Heat defeat the Milwaukee Bucks 115-104 behind 40/4/2 from Jimmy Butler to take a 1-0 series lead
Jimmy Butler On Why He Didn't Bring Any Family Members To The Bubble, "This Is A Business Trip For Me"
https://streamable.com/7ai050
Westbrook makes a costly turnover late in the 4th
https://streamable.com/5ezzc8
Gerrit Cole vs TB: 5IP 8H 4ER 4BB 7K
With 4 minutes left, Houston was up 98-92. Then Chris Paul hit 2 3s, grabbed 2 steals, hit 2 free throws, and OKC ends game 6 on a 12-2 run
Philadelphia 76ers chose to gave a monster contract to Al Horford rather than giving it to Jimmy Butler past offseason. Horford scored a combined total of 28 points in the postseason. Jimmy Butler scored 40 points in one game alone
Goran Dragic roasts Milwaukee in game 1: 27/6/5 on 9-15 FG
By the time the Western Conference semifinals start, the Raptors/Celtics will have already finished three games in their series
Pro-Trump Republican 'antifa hunter' sentenced to three years after threatening Black political candidate, activist
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/florida-antifa-hunter-sentenced-three-years-after-threatening-black-political-n1238943
"More help is needed from Washington." Newsom approves legislation to extend protections against evictions by five months for California renters.
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-08-31/california-renters-covid-19-eviction-protections-bill-gavin-newsom-legislature
Trump could win electoral college and popular vote on election night -- potentially in landslide -- then lose when mail votes counted
https://axios.com/bloomberg-group-trump-election-night-scenarios-a554e8f5-9702-437e-ae75-d2be478d42bb.html
Trump's not to blame for violent urban unrest, Democratic mayors and Democratic governors are. Democrats support and fund the riots. Fuck Democrats already.
Trump administration finalizes illegal and unconstitutional coal plant pollution rollback
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/trump-administration-finalizes-coal-plant-pollution-rollback
___________________________________________
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/31/opinion/trump-biden-protests.html
Unwitting Progressives for Trump
Does Joe Biden have the nerve to stand up to the far left?
On Thursday, as Donald Trump was about to accept the Republican nomination from the South Lawn of the White House with warnings that "No one will be safe in Biden's America," National Public Radio was doing its small part to make sure the president would be re-elected.
NPR's assistance in this matter was surely unwitting. But that doesn't make it any less effective.
The assist came in the form of a lengthy interview by NPR's Natalie Escobar with Vicky Osterweil, author of "In Defense of Looting." The book makes the case for looting because it "attacks some of the core beliefs and structures of cisheteropatriarchal racial capitalist society"; "rejects the legitimacy of ownership rights and property"; and "reveals all these for what they are: not natural facts, but social constructs benefiting a few at the expense of the many, upheld by ideology, economy and state violence."
https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2020/08/27/906642178/one-authors-argument-in-defense-of-looting
To judge by the NPR interview, "In Defense of Looting" is not an interesting book. It speaks for almost nobody beyond the fringe left — and certainly not for looters who hadn't thought about "cisheteropatriarchalism." The fact that the publisher is an imprint of the international conglomerate Hachette (2018 revenues, approximately $2.7 billion) compounds foolishness with hypocrisy.
https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/news/lagardere-announces-full-year-2018-results/
Nonetheless, the book is symbolically important. I became aware of it when several friends separately forwarded to me the NPR interview. Many of these friends, I suspect, will reluctantly vote for Trump — not out of sympathy for him, but out of disgust with defenses of looting and other things they see too often on the left.
What else are they seeing? A CNN chyron from a burning Kenosha: "Fiery but mostly peaceful protests after police shooting." A video of an outdoor diner at a Washington, D.C., restaurant being yelled at by Black Lives Matter protesters because she won't raise a fist in solidarity. Republican Senator Rand Paul and his wife getting harassed by a swarm of protesters as they left the White House.
https://thehill.com/homenews/media/513902-cnn-ridiculed-for-fiery-but-mostly-peaceful-caption-with-video-of-burning
https://twitter.com/KunkleFredrick/status/1298344285079838720
https://twitter.com/BGOnTheScene/status/1299217655816216576
And more: Trump being mocked in 2017 for warning that if statues of Robert E. Lee come down, then George Washington and Thomas Jefferson statues will be next — and then radical demonstrators doing exactly that three years later. Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York scolding Orthodox Jews in April for appearing to flout social distancing rules at a Brooklyn funeral, but then making an exception for Black Lives Matter demonstrations a few months later. Seattle's mayor, Jenny Durkan, celebrating a "summer of love" in the "Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone," and then watching the area descend, with depressing predictability, into violent anarchy.
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/8/16/16154738/lee-davis-washington-jefferson
https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/19/us/portland-george-washington-statue-toppled-trnd/index.html
https://www.politico.com/states/new-york/albany/story/2020/04/29/criminal-incompetence-outrage-after-de-blasio-breaks-up-crowded-orthodox-jewish-funeral-1280852
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2020/06/12/seattle_mayor_durkan_chaz_has_a_block_party_atmosphere_could_turn_into_summer_of_love.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/07/us/defund-police-seattle-protests.html
The list could be longer, but the question it leaves in the minds of wavering voters is exactly the question Trump most wants asked: Can the left be trusted with power?
Let me ask that question more specifically. Can the left be honest that the tragedies unfolding today in American cities are as much the story of insufficient policing as they are of abusive policing? Does it get that "law and order" is a precondition to civil liberty, not an impediment to it? Is it willing to say that the American founders who bequeathed us the institutions of liberal democracy should be honored, not despised? And does Joe Biden have the nerve to stand up to the extremes in his own party, or does he just mean to appease them?
Is he Bill Clinton, or George McGovern?
I've been fairly enthusiastic about Biden's candidacy, largely because I think he represents the best chance for the moderate Democratic wing to prevail over its left one. But his wan and sometimes unsteady speech in Pittsburgh, with its brief defense of the police and its anodyne call for healing, isn't going to assuage the voters he needs in swing states.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/30/opinion/joe-biden-crime-bill.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/17/opinion/joe-biden-conservative-2020.html
And need them he does. It's always possible that Trump will overplay his hand on law and order. And Biden may still have a commanding lead in national polls. But he's up by an average of just 2.7 points in battleground states, according to the RealClearPolitics average of polls. And the phenomenon of the "shy voter" is coming into sharper focus: Nearly 12 percent of Republicans and 11 percent of independents say they're unlikely to give telephone pollsters their true opinion on how they'll vote in November because they think "it's dangerous to express an opinion outside of the current liberal viewpoint," according to a study cited by Bloomberg. When did we hear that before?
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/elections/trump-vs-biden-top-battleground-states/
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-08-28/new-study-suggests-polls-are-missing-shy-trump-voters
Biden can do something about this. He can publicly call out far-left ugliness (not just violence) the next time he sees it. He can pay a visit to the people who've had their businesses burned to the ground in Kenosha and tell them that their grievances will be heard, and their property protected, in a Biden administration. He can even call the family of the right-wing activist killed on Saturday in Portland. What better way to prove that a Biden presidency stands for unity than to express sympathy for the victims of violence, regardless of their politics.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztl4BKA8DpE
Too many progressives are unthinkingly helping Trump. Biden helps himself when he tells them, publicly, that their sort of help isn't needed.
___________________________________________
Kennedy/Markey primary today. Ed Markey, the incumbent, has been in this position since 2013. He's also 100 years old. Joe Kennedy, the challenger, half Markey's age, has represented MA-04 in the U.S. House of Representatives since 2013. Since Massachusetts is a deep blue state, the winner of the Democratic primary is all but certain to win the general election in November. This race has been close, lots of social media screaming over this race. The Democratic primary race for Massachusetts' First District has also attracted national attention, with Mount Holyoke Mayor And Admitted Rapist Alex Morse challenging incumbent Richard Neal. Morse had been hit last month with not only allegations of improper sexual relations with students while teaching at UMass Amherst and Amherst College, but his own admission that he used his position of power to force students into engaging in sexual relations. Morse has also been attacked for his record on police brutality that has occurred under his mayoralty. Polls have shown Neal in the lead, but by progressively smaller margins throughout the summer.
Notre Dame to resume in-person teaching as virus situation improves
https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2020/08/28/notre-dame-resume-in-person-teaching-next-week-virus-situation-improves/
Ice Sheet Melting Is Perfectly in Line With Our Worst-Case Scenario, Scientists Warn | Mass loss from 2007 to 2017 due to melt-water and crumbling ice aligned almost perfectly with the IPCC's most extreme forecasts; "We need to come up with a new worst-case scenario for the ice sheets."
https://www.sciencealert.com/ice-sheet-melting-is-perfectly-in-line-with-our-worst-case-scenario-scientists-warn
'Hotel Rwanda' hero Paul Rusesabagina arrested on terror charges; daughter says he's kidnapped
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2020/09/01/hotel-rwanda-hero-paul-rusesabagina-arrested-terror-charges/3454264001/
https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/31/africa/rwanda-genocide-paul-rusesabagina-arrest/index.html
Reminder: Wisconsin's Governor Called a Special Session on Police Reform. Republicans Stopped It After 30 Seconds
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/political-commentary/wisconsin-legislature-jacob-blake-shooting-kenosha-gerrymander-gun-violence-1053561/
Taliban attacked a military base in Afghanistan, killing 3
https://news.yahoo.com/taliban-attacked-military-afghanistan-killing-035317728.html
Navajo Nation Residents File Voting Rights Complaint Against Arizona's Secretary of State
https://nativenewsonline.net/sovereignty/6-navajo-nation-residents-file-voting-rights-complaint-against-arizona-s-secretary-of-state
Trump campaign accepted $2,000 from leader of neo-Nazi group Aryan Nations
https://forward.com/fast-forward/453577/trump-campaign-donations-morris-gulett-neo-nazi/
Federal judge upholds California ban on carrying guns in public
https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/09/01/judge-upholds-california-ban-on-carrying-guns-in-public/
Barr's removal of career national security official, weeks before election, raises concerns
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/barrs-removal-career-national-security-official-weeks-election/story?id=72726426
Head of USPS Board of Governors is also Head of Mitch McConnell's Super PAC
https://www.yahoo.com/huffpost/mitch-mcconnell-robert-duncan-usps-super-pac-042433031.html
From 2019: We are not prepared for a pandemic. Trump has rolled back progress President Obama and I made to strengthen global health security.
https://twitter.com/JoeBiden/status/1187829299207954437
A federal judge has extended the deadline for absentee ballots to be returned in Georgia, ruling they must be counted if postmarked by Election Day
It's no great secret that Joe Biden and I disagree on a number of issues. But there's no question that the economic proposals Joe Biden is supporting are strong and will go a long, long way in improving life for working families. We must elect him and throw Trump out of office.
https://twitter.com/MarcACaputo/status/1300878644710117376
But Biden WILL: The Trump admin will not join a global effort to develop, manufacture and equitably distribute a coronavirus vaccine, in part because the World Health Organization is involved, a decision that could shape the course of the pandemic. The US government is not doing anything to develop or manufacture covid19 antibodies or covid19 vaccine.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/coronavirus-vaccine-trump/2020/09/01/b44b42be-e965-11ea-bf44-0d31c85838a5_story.html
I will never touch any vaccine that trump comes out with. Who knows if he is adding bleach, hcq, has death as a side effect. No to any trump vaccine
The number of fires in the Brazilian Amazon last month was the second-highest in a decade for August, nearing the crisis levels that unleashed a flood of international condemnation last year. Fires meanwhile tripled year-on-year in the Pantanal, the world's largest tropical wetlands
https://www.france24.com/en/20200901-brazilian-amazon-fires-near-level-of-2019-crisis
All nationalists have the power of not seeing resemblances between similar sets of facts. A British Tory will defend self-determination in Europe and oppose it in India with no feeling of inconsistency. Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits, but according to who does them, and there is almost no kind of outrage — torture, the use of hostages, forced labour, mass deportations, imprisonment without trial, forgery, assassination, the bombing of civilians — which does not change its moral colour when it is committed by 'our' side . . . The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them.
Trump, who has repeatedly pushed conspiracy theories about Biden's health just as he did with Hillary Clinton's health in 2016, calls for Lockhart to be fired for speculating about Trump's health.
Federal prosecutors are preparing to charge ex-Trump fundraiser Elliott Broidy in connection with efforts to influence the U.S. government on behalf of foreign interests
https://washingtonpost.com/national-security/justice-department-elliott-broidy/2020/09/01/1eaff4fa-ea16-11ea-970a-64c73a1c2392_story.html
Black man sentenced to life after stealing hedge clippers gets possible shot at freedom. The Louisiana Supreme Court's chief justice has denounced the life sentence as rooted in racist laws passed after the Civil War
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/black-man-sentenced-life-after-stealing-hedge-clippers-gets-possible-n1236759
New York City Delays Start of School to Ready for In-Person Classes. The system's 1.1 million children will not return to school until Sept. 21.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/01/nyregion/schools-open-coronavirus-nyc.html
House Dem staff identifies 10,856 loans in which the borrower received multiple PPP loans, for a total of over $1 billion in outstanding loans. PPP rules prohibit companies from receiving multiple loans. https://coronavirus.house.gov/sites/democrats.coronavirus.house.gov/files/2020-09-01.PPP%20Interim%20Report.pdf
Trump took credit for deploying the National Guard to Wisconsin, saying "once they responded and once we took control of it, things went really well." NYT: "This is false. It was governors, not the president, who sent the National Guard to Kenosha."
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2020/09/01/us/trump-vs-biden#fact-check-president-trump-took-undue-credit-for-the-relative-calm-that-has-settled-in-kenosha
All possible Massachusetts hot takes
Markey-Morse: Massachusetts is woke
Kennedy-Neal: Massachusetts is neolib
Kennedy-Morse: Massachusetts loves youthful energy
Markey-Neal: Massachusetts loves incumbents
This new report from the US Postal Service's internal watchdog warns that late ballots, bad envelope designs, and outdated registries could jeopardize voting in November. This audit doesn't account for DeJoy's proposed changes, which he said he would postpone. The IG's office is investigating those changes separately.
https://www.businessinsider.com/usps-watchdog-inspector-general-dejoy-vote-mail-problems-2020-election-2020-9
Fort Hood commander being removed from his position and will no longer assume a new command after incidents at the Army base, including Vanessa Guillen's disappearance, according to a US Army statement.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/military/fort-hood-commander-loses-post-denied-transfer-after-incidents-army-n1239008?cid=sm_npd_nn_tw_ma
It's fun to figure out what gets under their skin. Trump (and some on the left) have spent months lying that Biden has cognitive issues and now they have a fucking meltdown about a random tweet:
https://twitter.com/TVietor08/status/1300905615007473664
White House order temporarily banning evictions for rest of the year published in Federal Register today by CDC
https://s3.amazonaws.com/public-inspection.federalregister.gov/2020-19654.pdf
With the scent of smoke still in the air, Trump continued to link the violence to the Democrats, blaming those in charge of Kenosha and Wisconsin while raising apocalyptic warnings if their party should capture the White House.
Trump admin, trying to prevent an eviction crisis, says it'll use CDC quarantine authority to prevent renters from being evicted. Renters who make no more than $99k/year, or $198k per couple, qualify--if they're likely to become homeless if kicked out, admin officials say.
https://twitter.com/VinceCoglianese/status/1300895770271461389
A great reason why Joe Biden and Kamala Harris should do more press conferences and take more questions from reporters: People are already getting ready to vote by mail in a lot of states. Americans are voting earlier than they normally might.
https://twitter.com/kathrynw5/status/1300908543231492097
Raps/Celtics are on game 2 whilst Clippers and Lakers still don't know who they're going to face. Unfair amount of rest for those teams
Gasol dropping coverage on the high screen gives a wide open 3 every time. He needs to come up a bit because our other guys will switch and rotate when he gets blown by.
Fact check: @DRUDGE strongly supported Trump in 2016, not only in the general but also in the Republican primaries. And the last time Trump knocked Drudge's web traffic, Drudge went on record & told me his site was actually experiencing record traffic. https://cnn.com/2020/04/18/media/matt-drudge-trump/index.html
https://twitter.com/oliverdarcy/status/1300915583677083648
Biden in fundraiser just now said that despite the anxiety of "the talking heads," polls show him continuing to leading among suburban women, young voters and old voters by "large majorities, not because of me. It's because they don't like what's going on."
Biden said of Trump, "This is a president who makes things worse, not better ... Violence isn't a problem in Donald Trump's eyes—it's a political strategy. And the more of it, the better it is for him."
Records reviewed by AP reveal a pattern of DeJoy's family winning coveted opportunities after making generous financial contributions.
https://apnews.com/a838c0bb546e2dae6b159bcd2f7b7277
FEMA has told states that beginning Sept. 15 it will no longer pay for masks and PPE in most non-emergency settings — including schools, public housing and courthouses.
https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/09/01/908413181/fema-says-it-will-stop-paying-for-cloth-face-masks-for-schools
Kemba just got no call getting poked in the eye are you kidding me
IRS Commissioner Withholding Trump's Tax Returns Illegally And Unconstitutionally Profits Off Of Trump Properties. He Made Hundreds Of Thousands Of Dollars From Trump Properties
https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/irs-commissioner-who-withheld-presidents-tax-returns-continues-to-profit-off-of-trump-properties-documents-show/
https://www.citizensforethics.org/charles-rettig-trump-properties/
Marcus Smart throws himself at Pascal Siakam, the refs call a foul on Siakam, wiping out the Raptors transition bucket and forcing Toronto to use their challenge
https://streamable.com/9qsku7
The Boston Celtics defeat the Toronto Raptors by a score of 102-99 behind Jayson Tatum's 34/6/8 and take a 2-0 series lead
The Raptors just took 0 free throws in the first half.
Siakam steps out of bounds
https://streamable.com/18ww47
Jayson Tatum gets called for the "air punch" technical foul
https://streamable.com/66epn8
Tatum absolutely fools Siakam with the simple look-off to Kemba before stepping in and drilling the triple
https://streamable.com/s5elua
Kemba ditches Ibaka with the crossover and then hits the filthy step-back midrange, gets the "cardiac" call out of Doris
https://streamable.com/96ud8p
Kevin "Klutchmaier" Kiermaier home runs in his third straight game and ties it up
https://bdata-producedclips.mlb.com/e4f5f64a-4a98-4246-9412-6c8a120067af.mp4
For the "Astros are going to lead the league in batters being hit by pitches!!!!" crowd... Astros have been hit by pitches 14 times this year, half as many as Cubs (29) and Mets (28). Sixteen teams have been hit by more pitches than the Astros.
https://twitter.com/brianmctaggart/status/1300892719737376776?s=09
Ian Happ bounces one into the Allegheny for his 10th homer of the year.
https://bdata-producedclips.mlb.com/be54a5ab-68fc-4696-824f-d7fa71e465fa.mp4
Video supposedly showing Joe Biden falling asleep during a interview is heavily manipulated.
https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-biden-asleep-altered/fact-check-video-showing-joe-biden-falling-asleep-during-live-interview-is-manipulated-idUSKBN25S63S
Trump Stopped Going to Dover AFB To Receive Bodies After Getting Berated On First Visit | Vice President Pence attended "dignified transfer" ceremonies for two years by himself after the father of a slain SEAL "rattled" Trump In February 2017.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/donald-trump-dover-afb-returning-soldiers-bodies-lie_n_5f4ebdc9c5b6250f655c1ca8
If Kennedy pulls this off, will be another loss for the "very online" candidate (Markey) and another win for the "Twitter isn't real life" crowd this year.
1.1 innings of exit velocities against Matt Harvey. That's brutal. And it's painful considering how good Harvey once was.
https://twitter.com/DSzymborski/status/1300958538211172353/photo/1
Kennedy is doing well in working-class cities, Markey in well-heeled suburbs
Kennedy and Markey in a tight race but just 25K votes have been counted - and Kennedy is up 2%. Votes just getting counted in Richie Neal's district, and the Ways and Means chairman has a narrow lead over his self-admitted rapist and antisemitic challenger
Rep. Richard Neal (D) leading in Springfield, MA (where he used to be mayor) 67%-33% so far. If that holds, he shouldn't have much of a problem.
This continues to be the most off-base dog whistle of all time. Cory Booker's base is like white moms in Montclair: "You know who's going to be in charge of it? Cory Booker. That's going to be nice" -- Trump is barely trying to conceal his racism
https://twitter.com/PeterHamby/status/1300951274829930496?s=20
Biden (moderate-leaning-liberal) won the Massachusetts primary, not Warren or Sanders.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Democratic_Party_presidential_primaries#Schedule_and_results
Sigh....Kiermaier misses the dive allowing the Yankees to score 3 runs
https://bdata-producedclips.mlb.com/a1c039eb-7ec4-41b3-aca1-b0fb435fc176.mp4
Amazon delivery drivers are hanging smartphones in trees near Whole Foods to get an edge on other drivers in snagging routes that pay as little as $15, highlighting the competition for delivery work in a bleak job market.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-09-01/amazon-drivers-are-hanging-smartphones-in-trees-to-get-more-work
Two Kanye West electors have officially filed suit in Virginia to remove the rapper from the ballot claiming their oaths were obtained under false pretenses.
https://twitter.com/Bencjacobs/status/1300962749716066304
Massachusetts Democratic Primary Election Results
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/09/01/us/elections/results-massachusetts-primary-elections.html
End of Jazz/Nuggets series
https://streamable.com/bgv31n
Donovan Mitchell: "The pain that's on my face and the way I feel....I can only imagine what's going through these victim's families....This is a game, people lost their family members to police brutality, the way that I'm feeling right now is nothing compared to that"
https://streamable.com/4sexd4
Utah eliminated, after blowing a 3-1 series lead. Tremendous emotion for that series, I wanted Utah to advance.
Kyle Hart so far: 11 IP, 24 H, 21 R (19 ER), 10 BB, 13 SO, 2 HR. 15.55 ERA.
Rays Kiermaier said Yankees 3B coach Phil Nevin was an instigator again
https://twitter.com/juanctoribio/status/1300977182869794817
The Reds' DH, Matt Davidson, has pitched the most innings for the Reds in tonight's game
Almost all the MLB last night were wild
YEP: Rays Cash on the Yankees: Poor judgement. Poor coaching. Poor teaching.
https://twitter.com/juanctoribio/status/1300975480846331904
Rays and Yankees clear benches after the game ends
https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/1300974697170042880/pu/vid/1280x720/L33DDSFn3ojmGcGQ.mp4
Cardinals 1-4 hitters tonight: 14-21, 4 2B, 2 HR, 12 RBI, 3 BB, 1 HBP, 2 Ks
Aaron Nola tonight versus the Nationals: 8.0 IP, 0 R, 2 H, 3 BB, 9 K
Iranian wrestling champion receives a double death sentence on top of 74 lashes while his two brothers are jailed for a total of 81 years for taking part in a protest against the regime
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8685299/Iranian-wrestling-champion-receives-double-death-sentence.html
China's Military Has Surpassed US in Ships, Missiles and Air Defense. Remember when Trump promised to rebuild the US military and make the US military the "global leader"?
https://www.military.com/daily-news/2020/09/01/chinas-military-has-surpassed-us-ships-missiles-and-air-defense-dod-report-finds.html/amp
'I support Joe Biden's pro-science agenda': 81 Nobel laureates endorse Biden for president
https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/02/politics/joe-biden-nobel-laureates-endorsement/index.html
New filing shows USPS board chairman is also director of Mitch McConnell super PAC. Mike Duncan under scrutiny over "irregular" process that led to Louis DeJoy's appointment as postmaster general
https://www.salon.com/2020/09/01/new-filing-shows-usps-board-chairman-is-also-director-of-mitch-mcconnell-super-pac/
Melania Trump used private email to discuss official government business
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/melania-trump-used-private-email-accounts-while-in-the-white-house-says-former-colleague-and-friend/2020/09/01/3f678ae2-eb3c-11ea-99a1-71343d03bc29_story.html
Markey defeats Kennedy III in MA Democratic U.S. Senate primary race. Markey just barely won.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/09/01/us/elections/results-massachusetts-primary-elections.html
Thankfully Richard Neal defeated Alex Morse
500 Faith Leaders Endorse Joe Biden And Kamala Harris For The White House
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/faith-leaders-back-biden-harris_n_5f4d5031c5b64f17e14163c0
GO VEGAN. STOP EXPLOITING ANIMALS: Thousands of baby chicks arrive dead to farmers in Maine
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/08/20/usps-turmoil-thousands-chicks-arrive-dead-farmers-maine/5614777002/
DHS withheld July intelligence bulletin calling out Russian attack on Biden's mental health
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/dhs-withheld-july-intelligence-bulletin-calling-russian-attack/story
HHS cancelling ventilator contracts, resulting mass reduction of ventilators
https://apnews.com/2f697994ea3e53eb966c58106fd96461
China is ramping up nuclear and missile forces to rival U.S
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/china-is-ramping-up-nuclear-and-missile-forces-to-rival-us-pentagon-says/2020/09/01/00c4dca4-ec95-11ea-a21a-0fbbe90cfd8c_story.html
Sarah Sanders says Trump told her to go to North Korea and take 'one for the team' after Kim Jong Un winked at her
https://www.businessinsider.com/donald-trump-sarah-sanders-one-for-team-kim-jong-un-2020-9
Sanjay Gupta Points Out Just How Unusual Trump's Walter Reed Visit Really Was | Trump Repeatedly Denied That He Had A Mini-Stroke, Even Though No News Agency Claimed He Had Suffered One.
https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_5f4f1984c5b6250f655c7dcd
Butler, when asked about Giannis not guarding him late in the game: "I look at it like this. He is one of the best help side defenders that there are in the league. And that's what he's been doing all year long." | "Uh, no. I'm not surprised. I look at it like this. He is one of the best help side defenders that there are in the league. And that's what he's been doing all year long. And I think you can't get stuck on what we do. I think you've really just got to focus on what you do – you've been doing it all year. Nah, I'm not surprised. If he switches out…and he's guarding me, you know we're going to do what we have to do to still win. But I'm gonna tell you: You're not going to be able to leave me, so then that's taking away their weakside defense. So either way it goes, we're gonna be in a good spot. We've got way more guys who can do what I just did last night better than I can do, so we'll see."
https://theathletic.com/2038637/2020/09/02/jimmy-butler-unplugged-on-miami-giannis-minnesota-philly-and-everything-in-between/
Jamal Murray finds out Round 2 vs. the Clippers starts on Thursday
https://streamable.com/4wgy9n
Murray and Mitchell embrace after the game in a show of brotherhood and sportsmenship
https://streamable.com/2cdjtn
Donovan Mitchell just had the best shooting series of all time
Donovan Mitchell now officially owns the record for most made threes in a playoff series with 33
Robert "Time L/rd" Williams is averaging 10.5 PPG on this Raptors series on 100/0/25 shooting splits
Jokic hits the tough shot to give Denver a 2 point lead
https://streamable.com/xbn7s8
Game 2: Marcus Smart throws himself at Pascal Siakam, the refs call a foul on Siakam, wiping out the Raptors transition bucket and forcing Toronto to use their challengeHighlights
https://streamable.com/9qsku7
Denver Nuggets Become The 12th Team In NBA Playoff History To Comeback From 3-1 Deficit
The Rockets have lost their last 7 playoff games officiated by Scott Foster while Chris Paul's teams have lost 9 straight Scott Foster playoff games.
Let's appreciate Nikola Jokic's playoff series against the 2x DPOY in Rudy Gobert: 26.3 PPG / 8.1 RPG / 5.4 APG
Nikola Jokić in Game 7 against the Utah Jazz: 30/14/4
Kenosha Shop Owner Was Replaced In Trump's Damage Tour After Declining To Be Featured | A Kenosha business owner rebukedTrump for appearing to use his leveled shop for political gain after he refused to participate in Trump's tour of the city's damage and was later replaced by a man who was misrepresented as the shop's current owner.
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/kenosha-shop-owner-was-replaced-in-trumps-damage-tour-after-declining-to-be-featured
https://www.tmj4.com/news/local-news/kenosha-business-owner-declines-president-trump-photo-op-former-owner-replaces-him
Rudy Gobert's 4th quarter : 10 PTS on 3/4 FG, 12 REBS including 7 OREBS, 1 BLK
Georgia likely removed nearly 200k from voter rolls wrongfully
https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/02/politics/georgia-voter-rolls-report/index.html
https://www.acluga.org/sites/default/files/georgia_voter_roll_purge_errors_report.pdf
NO, REALLY? Microplastic causes significant damage to populations of soil-dwelling creatures that maintain the fertility of the land, research has found.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/sep/02/microplastic-pollution-devastating-soil-species-study-finds
Iowa is not doing OK. Everyone wants to talk about Portland, no one is talking about what a huge failure Iowa is | Popular rhetoric in conservative media posits that Democratic-run cities are doing poorly. But let me tell you about the red state of Iowa. Things are not OK in Iowa. Iowa has the fastest growing number of COVID-19 cases per capita in the nation. And congratulations. It takes a state full of negligent leaders to achieve this important honor.
https://www.thegazette.com/subject/opinion/staff-columnist/iowa-is-not-doing-ok-everyone-wants-to-talk-about-portland-no-one-is-talking-about-what-a-huge-failure-iowa-is-20200902
Joe Biden to visit Kenosha on Thursday
https://www.axios.com/biden-kenosha-visit-08913e67-7b61-4c03-845b-de51970ecfac.html
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/514768-biden-to-visit-kenosha-on-thursday
Condemning the violence and looting and burning ignores the root cause, rioters and looters are revolting against capitalism and poverty and unemployment and lawlessness of elected leaders etc
Pueblos, lawmakers seek pause on Chaco plan | A coalition of Native American tribes and members of New Mexico's congressional delegation are asking federal officials for more time to consider a proposal that would govern oil and gas drilling and other development near Chaco Culture National Historical Park. The UNESCO World Heritage Site has served as a rallying cry for environmentalists and pueblos that have been trying to stop drilling in the San Juan Basin. They say there are culturally significant sites outside the park's boundaries that could be compromised if more development is allowed. The Interior Department earlier this year agreed to extend the comment period by 120 days, and another round of virtual meetings was held this week, with the first session dedicated to the Navajo Nation, which has jurisdiction over much of the land that surrounds the park. The checkerboard also includes federal, state and private land.
https://www.abqjournal.com/1491587/pueblos-seek-pause-on-chaco-plan.html
The Pirates will honor Roberto Clemente's life and legacy by recognizing number 21 in an unprecedented manner, ESPN has learned. All Pirates' players will wear number 21 to celebrate Roberto Clemente Day Wednesday, September 9.
https://twitter.com/MarlyRiveraESPN/status/1301204050311081984
The A's will play 16 games in 13 days beginning this Friday with 6 of the 16 being of the 7-inning variety. More specifically the A's will play 10 games in a 7 day span from Sep 8-14.
https://twitter.com/jdjohndickinson/status/1301200352104988673
Republicans Have No Climate Plan. Why Isn't That Headline News? The climate crisis is not some far-away threat. It's here now, and it demands a swift and comprehensive political response, no matter your political allegiances.
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2020/09/02/sitting-president-has-no-climate-plan-why-isnt-headline-news
Biden is asked during presser about mandatory lockdowns. Biden says "There is going to be no need to shut down the whole economy...I am going to insist..that every responsible person in this country...that they wear a mask." So it sounds like pivoting from lockdowns to masking.
In case the tweet is deleted: Kyle Rittenhouse's lawyer declaring that his client started a second revolutionary war.
https://twitter.com/JoshuaPotash/status/1301013495828406272
The fetishization of Kyle Rittenhouse by some people on the right is one of the most dangerous, irresponsible actions we have witnessed in a long time.
https://mailchi.mp/thebulwark/america-is-a-powder-keg
Clippers forward Marcus Morris has been fined $35,000 for recklessly striking Mavericks guard Luka Doncic above the shoulders on Sunday.
https://twitter.com/ShamsCharania/status/1301202477702881280
Jimmy Butler Sends Impassioned Warning to Rest of NBA: 'I'm So F------ Locked in'
https://heatnation.com/media/jimmy-butler-sends-impassioned-warning-rest-nba-so-f-locked-in/
The NBA avoided an absolute disaster tonight when Mike Conley missed his shot. Rudy Gobert's foot was clearly out of bounds in the moments immediately leading to that shot and would have resulted in the most shameful L2M report the NBA ever filed had Conley scored.Highlights
https://streamable.com/seaeas
Mavericks' Luka Doncic has been fined $15,000 for throwing the ball off the legs of referee on Sunday.
https://twitter.com/ShamsCharania/status/1301202659467288577
Steve Kerr on Kevin Durant: 'Most talented basketball player I've ever seen in my life'
https://www.netsdaily.com/2020/8/30/21408161/steve-kerr-on-kevin-durant-most-talented-basketball-player-ive-ever-seen-in-my-life
Doc Rivers said he expects Patrick Beverley to play in Game 1 against the Nuggets.
Everyone on the Nuggets will have to step up. They're gassed after going to G7, so if they get swept I wouldn't be shocked.
Biden says he'd like live onscreen fact checks to combat Trump 'lies' during debates
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-election/joe-biden-donald-trump-debate-onscreen-fact-check-ticker-a9702021.html
I think this is a good negotiation: Trump wants drug tests and Biden wants live fact checks. Perfect!
Landry Shamet today, on Kawhi's clutch scoring in the 1st round: "I caught myself kind of laughing when he scored like 8 possessions in a row. There's nothing the defense can do. You can definitely see it and feel it. At the end of a game, he kind of goes to that next level."
Joe Biden lays out his school reopening plan and takes questions from reporters
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lR1jF1IG_og
Court-Mandated Engineering Reports Predict Section of Steve Bannon's '$500 Used Car' Border Wall Will Fall into Rio Grande
https://lawandcrime.com/awkward/court-mandated-engineering-reports-predict-section-of-steve-bannons-500-used-car-border-wall-will-fall-into-rio-grande/
He is crazy. He is unraveling. Wake up.
https://twitter.com/ProjectLincoln/status/1301194762498629632?s=20
No bounce in support for Trump as Americans see pandemic, not crime, as top issue
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-poll/no-bounce-in-support-for-trump-as-americans-see-pandemic-not-crime-as-top-issue-reuters-ipsos-poll-idUSKBN25T1I3?il=0
^Because covid19 has a direct negative impact on most people (catastrophic unemployment and catastraphoc debt explosion, changes in how people do their jobs, people forced to work more hours and do more things at work, people forced to deal with paranoid customers, people forced to wear masks, everybody on edge, most people financially suffering, hundreds of thousands dead, millions who tested positive, so many businesses suffering from catastrophic revenue losses, the entire arts/humanities field derailed, trillion-dollar film/arts industry losing catastrophic amounts of revenue,etc, whereas crime is normal and lived-with. Sad but true.
Nancy Pelosi seen without mask inside San Francisco hair salon
https://www.bbc.com/news/amp/world-us-canada-53994209
Here's from the actual book "In Defense of Looting": The destruction and looting of Jewish and Korean immigrant-owned stores is justified by the author because Jews and Koreans are "the face of capital."
https://twitter.com/lhfang/status/1301225509745909760
"They saw three Black people, unarmed, dropping off a U-Haul," McMillon said. "They got guns, they started shooting. That's why it's racially motivated."
https://tallahassee.com/story/news/local/2020/09/01/gunfire-tallahassee-parking-lot-leads-arrest-armed-couple-complaints-racism/5654072002/
Flashback: July 2016: Trump: "The crime and violence that today afflicts our nation will soon come to an end. Beginning on January 20th 2017, safety will be restored."
https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/1301248546541371394
Melania has gone from plagiarizing DNC speeches and plagiarizing her predecessor's First Lady programmes to plagiarizing scandals (using private server for First Lady work) from a former first lady/presidential hopeful.
Boone said he might reflect tonight and "tighten up my coaching techniques," firing back at Cash's criticism of the Yankees' coaching. Boone called Cash's remarks "reckless and inflammatory."
https://twitter.com/JackCurryYES/status/1301251654378033153
Aroldis Chapman being suspended 3 games. Aaron Boone and Kevin Cash 1 game apiece.
http://twitter.com/YankeesWFAN/status/1301247159812194307
Managers get suspend along with their pitchers now. Agree with it or not, that's the precedent that's been set. I do not agree with suspending Boone, we all know Boone does not order his pitchers to hit batters, we all know Boone is not that kind of person. I'm a Tampa Bay Ray fan and only agree with suspending Aroldis, and suspending him permantly because we know he throws 98+ mph, we know he could potentially kill someone.
Giants batted around the Rockies in the bottom of the 1st, scoring 4.
Denver has zero chance of beating the Clippers. We knew a year ago it was gonna come down to the Lakers/Clippers, and I've seen nothing the last 2 weeks that's made me think anything differently.
By the time the Lakers and Thunder/Rockets play game 1 of their second round series on Friday, both ECSF series will have played 3 games already.
Game 7 of the Nuggets-Jazz drew 3.385 million viewers on ABC. One of the most-watched games since the restart and very big for the NBA — a non-LeBron James game drawing robust numbers. Tops among all demos (Adults watching 18-34, 18-49 and 24-54.)
CBO: U.S. government debt will nearly equal the size of the entire economy for first time since World War II
https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2020/09/02/government-debt-economy-coronavirus/
Joe Biden Said The Police Officers Who Shot Jacob Blake And Breonna Taylor Should Be Charged
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/mollyhensleyclancy/biden-jacob-blake-breonna-taylor-police-charged
Data shows Covid-19 has killed more police officers this year than all other causes combined
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/09/02/coronavirus-deaths-police-officers-2020/
Republican Rep. Clay Higgins Threatens To Shoot Armed Protesters: 'I'd Drop Any 10 Of You' | His social media post, which was removed by Facebook, had a photo of armed Black men.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/clay-higgins-shoot-protesters_n_5f4fc0bfc5b604981ca3c751
Trump is now promising to end the lawlessness that he promised to end four years ago | During the 2016 campaign, Donald Trump repeatedly promised to restore "law and order" to the United States. Now as president, he is promising the same thing.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/09/02/trump-is-now-promising-end-lawlessness-that-he-promised-end-four-years-ago/
A second Trump administration appointee has been ousted at the Food and Drug Administration in the wake of the agency's botched announcement about an experimental therapy for COVID-19, which medical experts said damaged the health regulator's credibility with the public. An FDA spokesperson confirmed Wednesday that John "Wolf" Wagner, a political appointee installed by the White House earlier this summer, is no longer heading the agency's office of external affairs. Instead, Heidi Rebello, a longtime FDA career official, has stepped into the position on an acting basis, overseeing all FDA public communications. Politico first reported the news.
https://apnews.com/fe123eaff5652cb5c4cbb5f50558ec77
Yeah, it's dumb she did that. But the people screaming "gotchya!" just packed 1200 people in a tight space with no masks to cheer for their dear leader. So I don't care about their hypocritical opinions.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Speaker-Pelosi-calls-salon-visit-a-set-up-15538247.php
The Trump administration imposed sanctions against the International Criminal Court's (ICC) chief prosecutor and one of her top aides as the court continues to probe alleged war crimes committed by U.S. forces in Afghanistan.
https://thehill.com/policy/defense/514823-trump-administration-imposes-sanctions-on-icc-prosecutor-investigating-alleged
'Forcing beliefs' or forcing knives into animals throats..what's worse?
Asked about Trump in NC today suggesting people should test the absentee system by trying to vote twice, Bill Barr tells @wolfblitzer that "he's trying to make the point" about problems in the system. Asked if it's legal, "I don't know what the law is in that particular state"
https://twitter.com/mkraju/status/1301269855681863682
Attorney General doesn't know if it's illegal to vote twice
"But look at me, obviously I really don't know what the law is for the federal government either, it just gets in the way of me being a contemptible hack and fixer."
Barr when asked about Trump's claim of "thugs on plane" to Wolf: "I don't know what the president is referring to.": Trump said the incident was "under investigation right now."
https://usnews.com/news/us/articles/2020-09-01/trump-alleges-plane-loaded-with-thugs-sought-to-damage-rnc
Bill Barr calls it a "false narrative" that there's an "epidemic" that Black people are subject to police brutality; says to @wolfblitzer on @CNNSitRoom there are very few cases. Says Black people who feel they're treated differently by police doesn't reflect "deep-seeded racism"
https://twitter.com/mkraju/status/1301266679377387527
Trump is simultaneously saying:
- Biden is on drugs, controlled by shadowy forces, spied on him
- There was a thug plane, Soros maybe funds Antifa
- Covid19 deaths are inflated
- Mass voter fraud in '16, he can only lose now if rigged, mail voting is rigged
https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/02/politics/fact-check-trump-conspiracy-theories-biden-covid-thugs-plane/index.html
Biden Calls for Broader Federal Aid to Open Schools Safely | Joe Biden said the task of reopening schools safely constituted a 'national emergency' and needed a more robust federal response, accusing President Trump of mismanaging the issue.
https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/biden-calls-for-broader-federal-aid-to-open-schools-safely-11599075658
Cuomo says the L line subway tunnel under the East River now has cell service, becoming the first under-river tunnel to have it in the subway system.
https://twitter.com/SteveKopack/status/1301265783423729666
Covid-19 hospitalizations, which are the most objective near-term measure of epidemic's intensity, are continuing to fall. Total deaths are also declining over time as a percent of total hospitalizations, reflecting improved healthcare delivery and declining in-hospitality mortality
https://twitter.com/ScottGottliebMD/status/1301203068105748482
A Minnesota man who attended a motorcycle rally in Sturgis, South Dakota last month with thousands of other bikers has died of COVID-19. He is the first reported death from that rally.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/weeks-after-sturgis-motorcycle-rally-first-covid-19-death-reported-n1239088?cid=eml_nbn_20200902
The Kanye for president signature gatherer freaked out when learning azgreenday was a reporter, refused to give his name, and said he had signed an NDAA. He just peeled off in his car.
https://azcentral.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/08/20/petition-effort-underway-qualify-kanye-west-arizona-ballot/3401444001/
Ah yes, the woman who was banned by Uber and Lyft for ranting about Muslims on Twitter and handcuffed herself to a Twitter office building in protest. The district is heavily Democratic, so Loomer has little chance of winning.
https://cbsnews.com/news/laura-loomer-wins-gop-primary-florida-district/
"Just 13% of Black people out of work from April to June received unemployment benefits, compared with 24% of White workers, 22% of Hispanic workers and 18% of workers of other races." (And let's be clear - even 24% is still far too low.)
https://cnbc.com/2020/09/01/just-13percent-of-black-people-out-of-work-get-pandemic-unemployment-benefits.html
Pro-Trump Right Wing Extremist Boogaloo member arrested for mailing threats to California public health official
https://www.yahoo.com/gma/alleged-boogaloo-member-arrested-mailing-025759333.html
Reggae pioneer Toots Hibbert of Toots and the Maytals in medically induced coma, likely suffering from COVID19.
https://jambands.com/news/2020/09/02/update-reggae-legend-toots-hibbert-placed-in-medically-induced-coma/
Judge Orders Gen. Mattis, Other Former Pentagon Leaders to Testify About Origins of Trump's Transgender Military Ban
https://lawandcrime.com/lawsuit/gen-mattis-among-former-pentagon-leaders-ordered-to-testify-in-lawsuit-challenging-trumps-transgender-military-ban/
"Party lawyers are girding for a worst-case scenario in which Mr. Trump fights in courts and state legislatures after declaring a premature victory."
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/02/us/politics/voting-election-day.html
White House is aware that Biden is also going to Shanksville, Pennsylvania on Sept. 11th: To mark the 19th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks (Flight 93 crashed in Shanksville), Trump will travel to Shanksville, Pennsylvania on Sept. 11th
Fridayhttps://hosted.ap.org/berkshireeagle/article/aaaf994511fb2a1165bdc7a2fa640b07/trump-biden-will-both-mark-911-anniversary-shanksville
No one can out-campaign Trump, this is a power move. Seems more personal to NEW YORK CITY man Donald Trump, who I heard filed for disaster-relief, back then, so it was "personal" to honor and remember at Ground Zero, but dude is insane and forgets that, or is it he so unpopular in his home town now can't ever go back? Face with tears of joy
Trump just told his voters to commit voter fraud and vote twice in November.
https://twitter.com/i/status/1301258371811758085
Turnout in Massachusetts was *insane* yesterday - expanded mail voting plus early voting helped. 1,381,594 votes counted in the Markey-Kennedy primary, a state record. Kennedy, while losing, got more votes than the total cast in the 2013 primary that got Markey the seat.
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https://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/514800-to-fight-climate-change-strand-fossil-fuel-assets-not-workers
To fight climate change, strand fossil fuel assets, not workers
The Hobet-21 coal site in Boone County, W. Va., was on its last legs in 2014, when environmental groups brought a renewed campaign against it. The mountaintop removal mine survived decades of bankruptcies, lawsuits and the increasingly untenable economics of coal. Executives flipped their liabilities from one owner to the next, even as they received multi-million dollar buyouts. When the site finally closed the following year, hundreds of ex-miners and their families were left with a scarred landscape, a shell of a pension plan and expiring health care. State efforts to remediate and return Hobet-21 to economic use have fallen flat, and in the five years since the mine closed Boone County has lost one-third of its jobs and half of its tax base.
https://content.sierraclub.org/press-releases/2014/12/patriot-coal-s-hobet-21-mining-complex-major-source-harmful-pollution
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-coal-hobet/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/coal-jobs-in-appalachia/
https://appvoices.org/2020/04/03/tom-clarke-abandons-mines-in-west-virginia/
https://data.bls.gov/cew/apps/data_views/data_views.htm
https://www.wvsao.gov/localgovernment/
This is the story of coal communities in 21st century America — an uncontrolled experiment in disinvestment. Nationwide, 278 different counties across 46 states have experienced the closure of at least one coal power plant since 2000, according to U.S. Energy Information Administration and Census Bureau data. Hundreds more communities are home to mines and power plants that will likely close as coal consumption plummets over the next decade. These communities could face fiscal instability that threatens their ability to provide essential services like education, and job losses that will ripple beyond the mining sector. But their future is not set in stone.
https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/data/browser/#/?id=1-AEO2020®ion=0-0&cases=ref2020&start=2018&end=2050&f=A&linechart=~ref2020-d112119a.32-1-AEO2020&map=&ctype=linechart&sourcekey=0
https://www.brookings.edu/research/the-risk-of-fiscal-collapse-in-coal-reliant-communities/
https://www.wvgazettemail.com/news/anxiety-in-the-coalfields-coal-tax-decline-leaves-boone-finances-in-limbo/article_e099948a-773a-5ee3-b8d8-a557d9c615e2.html
https://academic.oup.com/ej/article-abstract/115/503/449/5086021
Environmental advocates, myself included, often cite the need for a "just transition" to ensure that workers in polluting industries are not left behind in the shift to a low-carbon economy. Until now, our rhetoric has not been matched with policy action. To accelerate the clean energy transition and build a broad coalition for climate action, policymakers must mobilize significant public resources toward the people and places that depend on the fossil fuel industry.
Let's be clear: Dismantling fossil fuel assets is necessary to preserve a habitable planet. Hobet-21 was a nightmare both for the climate and for vulnerable communities nearby, flushing the local watershed with toxic chemicals. The fossil fuel industry's increasingly untenable environmental and economic position, highlighted by activists, media personalities and major financial institutions alike, means that hundreds of billions of dollars in fossil fuel investments are poised to become "stranded assets" in coming years.
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/features/MountaintopRemoval
https://www.forbes.com/sites/sebastianblanco/2020/02/06/mad-moneys-jim-cramer-is-done-with-fossil-fuels/#2051a8c626eb
https://www.npr.org/2020/01/14/796252481/worlds-largest-asset-manager-puts-climate-at-the-center-of-its-investment-strate
https://www.ft.com/content/95efca74-4299-11ea-a43a-c4b328d9061c
The fossil fuel era is also marked by repeated exploitation of workers and communities, many of whom are held captive by the industry's ups and downs. For decades, automation has been decimating employment in mining communities. More than 1,500 oil and gas workers died from 2008 to 2017 in the quest for fracked fuels and American energy dominance. And in bankruptcy after bankruptcy, coal executives have cheated workers out of their hard-earned benefits.
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2017/01/25/automation-guarantees-a-bleak-outlook-for-trumps-promises-to-coal-miners/
https://apps.publicintegrity.org/blowout/us-oil-worker-safety/
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-patriot-bankruptcy/bankrupt-patriot-coal-asks-court-to-slash-union-pensions-idUSBRE93S09B20130429
https://apnews.com/0244927e260f9108e48808a6db7c0d6f
Too often, though, the climate policy community falls into the same trap as the fossil fuel industry: prioritizing physical capital over human lives. Too often, we tally power plant closures without recognizing their acute local consequences. And, too often, we devise policy based on energy system models rather than community needs. At the end of the day, it does not matter which combination of forces caused the demise of fossil fuel facilities like the Hobet mine. If we overlook affected workers, we will have failed in our commitment to climate justice.
To strand fossil fuel assets without stranding workers, federal policy makers should establish and invest in major new programs that create high quality jobs in emerging sectors, guarantee worker benefits and develop social and physical infrastructure in fossil fuel-dependent regions. These investments must empower community decision-making, not impose a one-size-fits-all approach.
https://nationaleconomictransition.org/platform/
First, in response to the immediate jobs crisis induced by the coronavirus pandemic, lawmakers should pass proposed legislation to stimulate tens of thousands of jobs cleaning up abandoned mines and plugging old oil and gas wells. Policy can also incentivize the location of clean manufacturing in historically fossil fuel-reliant communities, with stipulations for quality union jobs and strong labor standards — something the clean energy industry has often lacked.
https://energypolicy.columbia.edu/research/report/green-stimulus-oil-and-gas-workers-considering-major-federal-effort-plug-orphaned-and-abandoned
Second, today's bankruptcy laws allow executives to squirm out of employer obligations and environmental clean-up. Policymakers should guarantee worker pensions, health care and disability benefits, and reform the bankruptcy process to consistently hold companies accountable for clean-up, so communities are not left with scarred landscapes and polluted waterways.
https://appvoices.org/2019/10/11/coal-bankruptcy-cleanup/
Finally, we need a massive deployment of federal funds to fossil fuel-producing regions to build the social and physical infrastructure to improve local public health outcomes, education and economic diversification. Investments should expand physical and mental health services, repair crumbling water infrastructure and increase broadband access.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/appalachia-eastern-kentucky-water-shutoffs_n_5a7c91b2e4b0c6726e10b620
There is a well-trod slogan in the climate movement: People and planet over profit. Historically, however, when profits in an industry disappear, our society abandons the people that depend on it for their livelihoods.
It doesn't have to be that way.
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NBA is fining Boston's Marcus Smart $5K for flopping in Game 2 victory over Toronto, source tells ESPN.
https://twitter.com/wojespn/status/1301278008758677508
Wolf Blitzer asked AG William Barr about Trump's planefulla thugs claim.
Barr claimed they have numerous reports of people flying in to DC with the intention to cause a riot.
Blitzer pressed about the thug plane.
Barr conceded he doesn't know what Trump is referring to.
https://twitter.com/ddale8/status/1301288747422552064
Nancy Pelosi's haircut is by far the biggest story on Facebook right now. 13 of the top 25 top-performing link posts on US Facebook in the last 24 hours (and 4 of the top 5) are about it.
Man Charged for Assault on Metropolitan Police Officer Who Was in Proximity to Confrontation of Senator Rand Paul
https://twitter.com/Bencjacobs/status/1301287561365782528
The IA Dept of Public Health spokesperson who said she was ousted partly because she was seen as too aggressive in sharing information with the media during the pandemic has filed a lawsuit. Polly Carver-Kimm is holding a news conference Thursday.
https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/health/2020/07/15/iowa-health-department-ousts-spokesperson-polly-carver-kimm-who-was-taken-off-coronavirus-duties/5447293002/
A fair amount of stupidity in liberal Twitter discourse — such as people being uncomfortable saying looting is bad — stems from having decided literal communists like Osterweil are cool, in the high school sense, and not wanting to be mocked by them.
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https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/09/there-no-defense-looting/615925/
The Pinnacle of Looting Apologia
If the real, lasting change you wish to effect is burning society to cinders, then perhaps looting is the right tool.
Graeme Wood
Staff writer at The Atlantic
Last week, NPR's Code Switch published an interview with Vicky Osterweil, the author of In Defense of Looting: A Riotous History of Uncivil Action. NPR summarizes the book as an argument that "looting is a powerful tool to bring about real, lasting change in society." If the real, lasting change you wish to effect is burning society to cinders and crippling for a generation its ability to serve its poorest citizens, then I suppose I am forced to agree. Osterweil sees an upside. Looting is good, she says, because it exposes a deep truth about the great American confidence game, which is that "without police and without state oppression, we can have things for free." She came to this conclusion six years ago, and in her book, which is written "in love and solidarity with looters the world over," she defends this view as ably as anyone could.
https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2020/08/27/906642178/one-authors-argument-in-defense-of-looting?t=1598683114434
https://thenewinquiry.com/in-defense-of-looting/
Osterweil's argument is simple. The "so-called" United States was founded in "cisheteropatriarchal racial capitalist" violence. That violence produced our current system, particularly its property relations, and looting is a remedy for that sickness. "Looting rejects the legitimacy of ownership rights and property, the moral injunction to work for a living, and the 'justice' of law and order," she writes. Ownership of things—not just people—is "innately, structurally white supremacist."
The rest of the remedy is more violence, which she celebrates as an underrated engine for social justice. The destruction of businesses is an "experience of pleasure, joy, and freedom," Osterweil writes. It is also a form of "queer birth." "Riots are violent, extreme, and femme as fuck," according to Osterweil. "They rip, tear, burn, and destroy to give birth to a new world." She reserves her most pungent criticism for advocates of nonviolence, a "bankrupt concept" primarily valuable for enlisting "northern liberals." Liberal is pejorative in this book. Martin Luther King Jr. is grudgingly acknowledged as a positive figure, but not as positive a figure as he would have been if he had kicked some white-capitalist ass and put a few pigs in the ICU. The "I Have a Dream" speech was, Osterweil writes, "the product of a series of sellouts and silencings, of nonviolent leaders dampening the militancy of the grass roots" and "sapping the movement's energy." More to her taste is Robert F. Williams, who practiced armed resistance, and Assata Shakur, who murdered a New Jersey police officer and remains a fugitive in Cuba. The violence needn't be in self-defense—Shakur's certainly was not. Osterweil quotes the "wisdom" of Stokely Carmichael: "Responsibility for the use of violence by black men, whether in self-defense or initiated by them [emphasis mine], lies with the white community."
By now you have guessed that I am not the audience for this book. I have a job, and am therefore invested in building a system where you get paid for your work and pay others for theirs, and then everyone pays taxes to make sure that if these arrangements don't work out, you can still have a dignified life. (Easily my favorite line in the book was written not by the author but by her publisher, right under the copyright notice: "The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author's intellectual property," it says. "Thank you for your support of the author's rights.") My job sometimes entails traveling to countries recently or currently destroyed by civil unrest, and that experience has made me appreciate the fragility of peace, and has not made me eager to conduct a similar experiment in my own city.
I am also from recent-immigrant stock. Osterweil euphemizes looting as "proletarian shopping," and no one from a place that has recently experienced this phenomenon can take seriously her assurance that it can happen justly and bloodlessly. When I think of riots and smashed storefronts, I think of Kristallnacht. I think of American businesses built by penniless immigrants who preferred to forfeit their vacations and weekends for 30 years rather than see their children suffer as they did; I think of these businesses ransacked in 30 minutes and left in ruins. Osterweil at least has the psychology right when she says that looting can be "joyous and liberatory." I have never seen a sullen looter, but I have seen plenty of shop owners crying next to the smoking remains of their children's future.
Absent from this book is even fleeting recognition that anyone (or nearly everyone) might prefer the current nonrevolutionary arrangement. Osterweil does not say what property-less system of government or anti-government she prefers, but I suspect it is not democracy, a term she uses only sneeringly. Nor is it clear how she intends to move from the past disgraces and present unrest to her goal, whatever it is, other than by rioting and stealing things until morale improves. What do you do when the free stuff runs out, the businesses and ordinary people who invested in your city decide not to make that mistake again, and—oops!—a few shopkeepers get beaten to death? This messy process is the "new world opening up, however briefly, in all its chaotic frenzy," she writes. To me it sounds like a prequel to The Road.
Osterweil is unable or unwilling to relate to anyone at all with anything resembling a sense of humanity. Comrades and enemies alike are described without compassion, emotional detail, or distinction as people endowed with feelings or moral complexity. Once cast as a villain, a villain one remains, with no intricacies of the human condition explored under any circumstances. In the NPR interview, Osterweil describes the Los Angeles convenience store where Latasha Harlins was shot to death in 1991 as the location of "white-supremacist violence." That shooting, which came two weeks after the beating of Rodney King and contributed to riots that killed 63 people, was perpetrated by the store owner, a female Korean immigrant—an irony that surely deserves probing. But Osterweil's great class war has only two sides, so a working-class Korean woman is effortlessly enlisted on the side of the white-supremacist cisheteropatriarchs. Osterweil quotes a communist magazine: "Just as Jews were in 1965, Koreans in 1992 were 'on the front-line of the confrontation between capital and the residents of central LA—they are the face of capital for these communities.'" As explanations of communal violence go, this is contemptibly inane.
Her conviction that her opponents deserve violence would be easier to abide if it were not obvious that nearly everyone counts as an opponent. Up against the wall are members of the media; "liberal commentators, de-escalators, nonprofiteers, right-wing trolls, vigilantes, and, of course, the police"; clergy who physically intercede between cops and protesters; and Nation of Islam members whose crime was to "broker a peace between gang leaders" and "chase looters" from neighborhood stores. You are not safe, at least not forever, even if you yourself are a victim of racism or capitalism. Perhaps you think that Dr. King's speeches were more inspiring because he did not deliver them with a rifle in his hand, like Saddam Hussein. People like you are not part of the real civil-rights movement. "They must allow the real movement to change them," Osterweil writes, "or they can only live to see themselves become its enemy."
Happily I see very few people sharing Osterweil's NPR interview approvingly, and nearly everyone consuming it in that joyous and liberatory mode known as "hate reading." I haven't yet encountered anyone who has read the actual book, which combines tedium and indecency in ways I had not previously contemplated. America is, after all, the country that nominated Joe Biden, who said that looters and rioters "make a mockery" of Black Lives Matter and "should be tried, arrested, and put in jail." The consensus, especially among Donald Trump supporters, seems to be that NPR must be beyond salvage if it uncritically distributes sophomoric agitprop. (A sample question: "A lot of people who consider themselves radical or progressive criticize looting. Why is this so common?" I might have led with: "What do you think will do more for your community—a store that employs six people, or in that same location, a pile of bricks and broken glass?")
Instead of writing off NPR or Code Switch, I prefer to think of them as coming very close to doing excellent journalism—and indeed I am jealous that I did not think of conducting this interview first. Since looting became widely reported in this season of protest over police violence, the reaction has split among those who do not support the protests or the looting, those who support the protests but denounce the looting, and those who support the protests and consider the looting a condign response to systemic injustice. Osterweil is enthusiastically in the last category and has given voice to a view that has heretofore been only gestured at. Good journalists find such voices and interrogate them roughly and fairly. The roughly part could, in the case of the NPR interview, have used a little work.
In a funny reversal of the normal polarities of "cancel culture," conservatives might object to NPR's decision to give Osterweil a platform at all, given that her defense of looting is a call to criminal behavior likely, even if not intended, to cause death and impoverishment. Should NPR also interview Nazis? Yes, actually—if the year is 1933, and most Americans don't know what Nazis believe. Osterweil is not a Nazi (I have even sweeter compliments for her where that came from), but she has taken up a position that others espouse implicitly. A full exploration of that position is exactly what we need, and Code Switch found its best defender. If Osterweil's defense is a bad one, she has now given other pro-looters a chance to reply to it and say why. If they do not, we can assume that they agree with Osterweil, and her argument is the pinnacle of looting apologia. A week ago, you could have said that looting might not be so bad, and I might have wondered what you meant by that. Now I will ask you if your reasons are the same as Osterweil's, and I will make fun of you if you say yes. This is progress. For that, thank Code Switch.
Graeme Wood is a staff writer at The Atlantic and the author of The Way of the Strangers: Encounters With the Islamic State.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0812988752/theatla05-20/
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Clippers discuss how to push Congress in passing the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act | "She is the one who wrote, in conjunction with the Black Caucus, the George Floyd bill. And that is something the [National Basketball] Players Association and the league is trying to get through. We need [Senate Majority Leader] Mitch McConnell to actually introduce it to the floor of the Senate."
https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/29796186/clippers-discuss-how-push-congress-passing-george-floyd-justice-policing-act
In 2016, an Iowa Trump supporter tried to vote twice because she was afraid her first ballot for Trump would be changed to a vote for Hillary Clinton
https://iowapublicradio.org/political-news/2016-10-28/des-moines-woman-says-she-voted-twice-for-trump-because-the-polls-are-rigged#stream/0
An internal Census Bureau document sent to members of Congress warns that the new truncated deadline set by the agency's director last month has the potential to undermine the integrity of the count and lead to serious errors.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/leaked-document-warns-serious-errors-census-data-under-fast-tracked-n1239115
This obsession by Barr, et al is never applied to right-wing vigilantes like Kyle Rittenhouse, the Oath Keepers, etc. The rhetoric has long been used against the left to group the violent and non-violent together as organized, un-American fifth columnists.
https://twitter.com/justinjm1/status/1301275063522603008
In 2015, Kenosha cop Pablo Torres shot and killed a man armed with a bucket. It was his first day back after another shooting 10 days earlier. He had a 200-page disciplinary file, with 9 excessive force complaints. The Kenosha police union paid tribute to him with this billboard.
https://twitter.com/radleybalko/status/1301134139643572224
https://kenoshanews.com/opinion/our-view-billboard-is-too-much-too-soon/article_d61e0428-274b-57c2-b3f2-bab0d0e9ebdf.html
https://fox6now.com/news/officer-pablo-torres-file-nearly-200-pages-of-documents-reveal-tale-of-two-officers
A Black man who had run naked through the streets of a western New York city died of asphyxiation after a group of police officers put a hood over his head, then pressed his face into the pavement for two minutes, according to video and records released Wednesday by the man's family. Daniel Prude died March 30 after he was taken off life support, seven days after the encounter with police in Rochester. His death received no public attention until Wednesday, when his family held a news conference and released police body camera video and written reports they obtained through a public records request.
https://apnews.com/5c2f0cf366e560b7f41ebb3c964b099c
San Francisco Bay Area officer charged with manslaughter in the April shooting death of Black man in a Walmart store.
https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/1301302700353761281?s=20
Trump orders illegal and unconstitutional review to illegally and unconstitutionally defund Democratic-led cities, including his own home city of NYC, and Seattle, Portland, and DC.
https://nypost.com/2020/09/02/trump-orders-review-to-defund-nyc-other-anarchist-cities/
Today Trump suggested that if people receive a ballot in the mail, they should send it in & then still go vote in person. He claims if their mail-in ballot has already been "tabulated," they shouldn't be able to have their vote count twice. To be clear, this is voter fraud. He is telling voters to commit voter fraud.
The Rays bat around the Yankees in the top of the 1st inning
Brosseau takes Montgomery deep to go up 4-0 in the first
https://bdata-producedclips.mlb.com/9d5f881f-6703-4f7b-91d6-5e2c6e85e24d.mp4
Randy Arozarena takes Jordan Montgomery deep for his first home run as a Ray
https://bdata-producedclips.mlb.com/d5a482be-d588-4b93-ab0f-b8787f47ae8d.mp4
Surprise: Trump's Top Trade Adviser Is Under Investigation for Verbally Abusing Employees and Striking Sketchy Coronavirus Deals
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/09/peter-navarro-coronavirus-deals
For Round Two of the U.S. Open, Naomi Osaka is wearing a mask tonight featuring Elijah McClain's name. Her mask for Round One featured Breonna Taylor's name.
https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/1301310210292809728
Barely a peep from Republicans that the federal debt could be bigger than the entire US gross domestic product for the first time since 1946,
It is come to this: parents creating Covid19 dashboards for outbreaks at schools because the government doesn't.
ttps://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/dad-sets-up-website-to-track-number-of-covid-cases-in-quebec-schools
They're rooting for chaos and violence because they think it helps them win a second term. Now ask yourself, is that really who you think should be running the country?
https://twitter.com/JoeBiden/status/1301302636881342466
Tom Seaver
https://www.nydailynews.com/sports/baseball/mets/ny-tom-seaver-obituary-20200903-fyusabaogjepzf6uixn6476k5u-story.html
The media is currently involved in mainstreaming all manner of radical malarky from academia, instead of working as a bulwark against it. And I'm not talking about free healthcare. I'm talking about stuff like In Defense of Looting, which is peak Your Brain on Academia.
Jimmy Butler Pulls The Chair On Giannis & Pushes Him Back Down When He Tries To Get Up
https://streamable.com/yt3ff9
Lopez and Butler play ring around the Rosie
https://streamable.com/81nrll
Bam Adebayo smashes it over DiVincenzo from the lob by Herro
https://streamable.com/087yz0
Giannis euro-steps around Bam for the dunk
https://streamable.com/oxrhpj
Renfroe is hit by Ben Heller with 1 out and the umpires say to the Yankees reliever, "you gone!"
https://twitter.com/stevecarney/status/1301324089315987456
Mike Brosseau hits his second home run of the game
https://streamable.com/tjkigg
Hyun-Jin Ryu (robbed of Cy Young award last season) against MIA tonight: 6.0 IP, 5 H, 1 R/ER, 2 BB, 8 SO, 99 pitches. 2.72 ERA
The Yelp reviews for eSalon after Pelosi's hair appointment are...lit
https://twitter.com/cimarcos/status/1301325358881480704
After an anti-BLM post drew internal fire, Zuckerberg changed FB's employee forum. "You won't be able to discuss highly charged content broadly in open groups". Still the Wild West for everyone else.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/facebooks-internal-black-lives-matter-debate-got-so-bad-mark-zuckerberg-had-to-step-in
Once again, the Kremlin has used a favorite weapon — an agent from the Novichok class of chemicals — in an effort to silence a political opponent. The mode of attack leaves no doubt as to where the responsibility lies — the Russian state. This outrageous and brazen attempt on Mr. Navalny's life is just the latest incident in a long history of murder and poisoning of dissidents, investigative journalists, anti-corruption activists, and opposition leaders under the Putin regime. It is the mark of a Russian regime that is so paranoid that it is unwilling to tolerate any criticism or dissent. The Kremlin no doubt thinks that it can act with impunity. Donald Trump has refused to confront Putin, calling him a "terrific person." He has said nothing about intelligence reports that Putin placed bounties on the heads of American soldiers in Afghanistan. He has yet to condemn the attack on Mr. Navalny. His silence is complicity. Americans are less safe with Donald Trump in the White House. As president, I will do what Donald Trump refuses to do: work with our allies and partners to hold the Putin regime accountable for its crimes.
https://joebiden.com/2020/09/02/statement-by-vice-president-biden-on-the-poisoning-of-alexey-navalny/
I've released 21 years of my tax returns. What are you hiding, @realDonaldTrump?
https://twitter.com/JoeBiden/status/1301316478889680897
I actually agree with all of those calls. They were all fouls, all tough calls for a ref to make, and all the right calls. Interesting ending to that game. Can't remember seeing one end like that.
Giannis Antetokounmpo played 36 minutes in tonight's loss to Miami. No other Bucks starter played more than 33.
The Miami Heat defeat the Milwaukee Bucks 116-114 behind 23/5/4 from Goran Dragic and game-winning FT's from Butler to take a 2-0 series lead
Jimmy Butler hits both game-winning free throws
https://streamable.com/9dpbl8
Giannis commits a costly shooting foul on Butler's shot attempt
https://streamable.com/gpsw19
Giannis misses both clutch free-throws, one short, one long
https://streamable.com/tdj475
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Seaver
Harden swats Dort's game-winning three, he knows he's stepping out of bounds and OKC might get the ball back but he also knows he's wasting valuebable seconds on the clock. OKC is the last to touch the ball so Houston gets that ball and the game at that point is over. The expression on Dort's face says it all, it drops into a dead zone.
https://streamable.com/kq0dhz
The Houston Rockets stave off the Oklahoma City Thunder 104-102 despite Harden's cold game to clinch the 7 game series
Lu Dort Becomes Youngest Player To Score 30+ Points In Game 7 In NBA Playoff History
Thunder guard Chris Paul says referee Scott Foster made a point to tell him before the Game 7 loss to the Thunder tonight that he also reffed his Game 7 loss to the Spurs in 2008 when CP was with the Hornets.
Russ slaps the ball out of the ref's hands then yells at him. No tech given
https://streamable.com/llxoi3
Dort splashes another 3 for 30 points
https://streamable.com/u6g9y3
Chris Paul at 35, is the oldest player in NBA history to have a triple double in a game 7
Yep agreed: Chris Paul blasts Scott Foster for giving him delay of game call "that shit don't make no sense, that's crazy, we could have won the game but that situation' "the league know, they're gonna fine me, they know the history, I said his name"
https://streamable.com/0422z9
Frantic sequence by the Thunder/Rockets
https://streamable.com/n9ttb6
Eric Gordon and Robert Covington tonight: 41 points 13 rebounds 4 assists 4 steals 4 blocks on 13-26 FG, 11-20 3PT, 5-6 FT
Dort Fights Through 3 Screens to Contest Harden's Shot
https://streamable.com/8zswv7
In the last 4 minutes and 18 seconds of a NBA Game 7 between the Houston Rockets v OKC Thunder - the teams made 2 free throws and 3 field goals combined. They missed 14 shots ,including 6 layups, had 6 turnovers, foul away from the ball with 1 second left and one sequence with 3 separate flops.
With 30 points tonight against James Harden and the Rockets, Lu Dort surpasses James Harden for most points in a playoff game by a Thunder rookie
Zack Wheeler vs WSH tonight: 6.2 IP, 3 H, 0 R, 2 BB, 6 K, 109 Pitches; lowers season ERA to 2.20
Shane Bieber, Zach Plesac, and Triston Mckenzie in the last 3 games against the Royals: 18 IP, 1 ER, 8 H, 21 K, 4 BB
Adam Duvall becomes 2nd NL Player in history to hit 3 HRs in a game at Fenway. One night after Ozuna did it first.
Zac Gallen vs the Dodgers: 7IP, 1H, 0R, 2BB, 7K, 97P. 23 straight starts to his career giving up 3 or fewer runs
San Diego Padres bat around the Angels in the top of the 8th, breaking a tie with 8 runs
Tatis Jr.'s throw to first base for the final out of the Padres' 11-4 win was measured at 95.4 mph. According to @AndrewSimonMLB, that's the hardest throw of Tatis' career.
https://twitter.com/mlbstats/status/1301385867198685184
An MIT study found Vote By Mail fraud to be 0.00006%. They came to that conclusion using 20 years of national voting data. Do not let #DonaldTrump or the #GOP tell you otherwise. Vote early. Vote in person. Vote by mail. It's all safe! - Creatives4Biden
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3adx6UjguA
Nancy Pelosi says her visit to a hair salon was a 'setup.' Employees of salon agree that it was a set-up. The eSalon's owner, Pro-Trump Right-Wing Extremist Republican Erica Kious, denied Pelosi's claim. She said that her salon has been closed for months because of the pandemic and that she found Pelosi's remarks "hurtful." "I just thought about, you know, my staff and people not being able to work and make money and provide for their families. And if she's in there comfortably, without a mask and feeling safe, then why are we shut down?" Kious told Fox News' Tucker Carlson on Wednesday evening. Less than two hours later, Jonathan DeNardo, the stylist who blew out Pelosi's hair, released a statement through an attorney contradicting Kious. The statement says the law firm is in possession of photographs and videotape that show that Kious has been operating her salon in violation of state and local restrictions since April. The statement also says that Kious authorized Pelosi coming to the salon for her blow out, and that she was critical of the House speaker because she erroneously believed Pelosi was behind the restrictions that shut down her salon. (The rules were put in place by Gov. Gavin Newsom and San Francisco Mayor London Breed.) "Ms. Kious has also been actively encouraging and almost forcing stylists who operate at eSalon to violate such orders for her own financial benefit in the form of receiving lease payments," the statement says. "The fact that Ms. Kious is now objecting to Speaker Pelosi's presence at eSalon, and from a simple surface-level review of Ms. Kious' political leanings, it appears Ms. Kious is furthering a set-up of Speaker Pelosi for her own vain aspirations."
https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2020-09-02/pelosi-hair-fallout-salon-mask
Trump campaign sues Democratic Montana governor to limit mail-in voting even though most people in Montana are pro-Trump Republicans+Libertarians
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-montana/trump-campaign-sues-democratic-montana-governor-to-limit-mail-in-voting-idUSKBN25U04S
Enough with the Kennedy Dynasty hot takes. Joe lost because he was impatient. A promising but impatient young man's sense of entitlement took a drubbing, not the Kennedy legacy, when Senator Ed Markey finished first. "This isn't a time for waiting, for sitting on the sidelines," Kennedy said when he launched his upstart campaign a year ago, leaving mystified voters wondering when a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives had become "the sidelines." That certainly was not Kennedy's pitch in 2012 when he defeated a crowded field to replace Barney Frank, the retiring Democratic congressman from the much-amended district once represented by his father Joseph Patrick Kennedy II, his great uncle John Fitzgerald Kennedy, his great-great grandfather John "Honey Fitz" Fitzgerald. Joe's reputation then, born of a stellar academic record at Stanford and the Harvard Law School, was of a charming but sober Kennedy, more interested in issues than in the spotlight his family name invariably attracts. By most measures, he fulfilled those expectations during four terms in the House, doing yeoman's work on health care, immigration, disability rights and a host of fields first plowed by previous generations of Kennedys in public service. He was the antithesis of a showboat, attracting fewer comments about his charisma than about his melting lip balm and awkward delivery when he offered the Democrats' rebuttal to Donald Trump's State of the Union speech in 2018. He made that speech from Diman Regional Vocational Technical High School in Fall River, underscoring the Kennedy scion's commitment to the hardscrabble corners of his district. Like his grandfather, Robert Francis Kennedy, he championed the poor and the working poor, people with struggles he would never encounter in his own cosseted life or in the lives of most of those he knew at Harvard and Stanford or in Hyannis Port. He overreached when he tried in this race to paint himself as the true man of Massachusetts and the incumbent a creature of Washington, based on where they spent the most time in residence. It was an odd argument, given that RFK launched his own bid for the Senate from New York in a Long Island house he had only just purchased. Markey does own a home in suburban Washington, as did Ted Kennedy during his long tenure in the Senate, but Markey lives in the small house in Malden in which he was reared in modest circumstances. In his impatience for higher office, dedicated civil servant and political/social activist Joe Kennedy lost Massachusetts a congressman it would have preferred to keep.
Biden to arrive in Kenosha just as the city achieves a fragile calm.
Remember: 100% of the Republican who said they would vote for Hillary voted for Trump. We know this because Trump's popular vote total was one of the highest for a Republican Presidential candidate. Hillary lost because 8+ million Democrats voted for Trump, Johnson, Stein and other, and another 8+ million stayed home, refusing to vote altogether. Democrats lost 16+ million voters.
Former Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder is the latest high-profile Republican to back Biden for president. In a USA Today op-ed, he calls Trump a bully who lacks a moral compass and ignores the truth. He rips the tax cuts, too. He says Biden has strong moral character & empathy | Former Republican Michigan governor (2011-2019) Rick Snyder: "I will continue to support and stand up for Republican policies and values, and support Republican candidates, but I will not support Donald Trump for reelection."
https://www.freep.com/story/opinion/contributors/2020/09/03/rick-snyder-endorses-joe-biden/5700702002/
Opponents of the Kremlin have a way of ending getting poisoned. Russians can't hold their government accountable for these crimes, but Trump and Republicans can at least not reward the Kremlin by treating Putin like a normal leader.
I realize Republicans for Biden probably won't move any voters, because most Republicans are pure-Trumpists, but some of these are surprising to me. Snyder and Trott are not RINOs. They are conservative Republicans.
Retired Congressmen Joe Schwarz and Dave Trott - both Michigan Republicans - endorsed Biden.
https://twitter.com/Politics1com/status/1301488885197926400
Facebook to limit some advertising week before election butwill still let politicians and their groups run ads with lies and conspiracy theories and hate speech through the end of October
https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/03/tech/facebook-political-ads-election/index.html
Clevinger first start for San Diego Padres today versus the Angels. Heaney pitching for the Angels, facing one of the best powehouse lineups in the league. Greinke pitching today, Houston v Taxes, Lance Lynn pitching for Texas. Great day for afternoon baseball, early evening playoff basketball, and late-night playoff basketball and hockey, with tennis matches thrown in. Kershaw pitching for the Dodgers later tonight.
A cargo ship carrying 43 crew and nearly 6,000 cattle from New Zealand to China has capsized in storm off Japan. Japan's coastguard said it had rescued one crew member. Three boats, five planes and two divers had been deployed to continue the search. 6,000 cows HORRIFICALLTY DROWNED TO DEATH, MURDERED BECAUSE YOU REFUSE TO GO VEGAN.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/ship-carrying-6-000-cattle-43-crew-capsized-storm-japan-n1239158?cid=sm_npd_nn_tw_ma
This is what @Pct1Constable wants you to see: where the US #covid economy and policy has brought us to today. It's an awful scenario where so many need help, from jobs to housing and our thanks to the Constables for allowing the public to see the raw truth
https://twitter.com/KyungLahCNN/status/1301345195544502274
Israel usually strives for success, but this is bad. Very bad. Daily world #COVID19 stats. Israel is at the top. More than 3000 new positive cases today. Highest since the beginning of the pandemic.
https://twitter.com/Foxyonat/status/1301493309156872197
Hotels are closing as tourism plummets. This company is turning them into affordable housing https://fastcompany.com/90545992/hotels-are-closing-as-tourism-plummets-this-company-is-turning-them-into-affordable-housing
Reminder that hotels could be used as quarantine sites to help reduce the spread of coronavirus — coincidentally keeping hotels financially afloat as well
It is wild, when you think about it, that people create single-use grocery bags that pollute the environment for millennia. Every time you use one, you make a thousand-year decision. Modern humans are making thousand-year decisions all the time, with very little attention or care. Under business-as-usual, there will be about 646 metric tons of plastic pollution in the ocean by 2040 -- roughly equivalent in weight to all the fish in the sea. The idea that every single piece of plastic you touch will last forever is pretty mind-blowing.
https://www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/publications/the-new-plastics-economy-rethinking-the-future-of-plastics
Hall of Fame guard Steve Nash has signed a four-year contract to become the next coach of the Brooklyn Nets
https://twitter.com/wojespn/status/1301515827783573504
Sixers are close to a deal with Tyronn Lue to be next HC.
https://twitter.com/jonjohnsonwip/status/1301553608207618054
It's not just Trump. All Republicans must go.
Oversight Committee Leaders Refer Reports Of Multiple Hatch Act Violations During GOP Convention For Investigation
https://oversight.house.gov/news/press-releases/oversight-committee-leaders-refer-reports-of-multiple-hatch-act-violations
Kenosha Officials Lift Curfew, Citing Relatively Peaceful Recent Protests
https://www.wgbh.org/news/national-news/2020/09/03/kenosha-officials-lift-curfew-citing-relatively-peaceful-recent-protests
Mark Zuckerberg says Facebook won't allow Trump to declare victory before the results are in even though Trump has already declared victory. He has already said if Democrats win it's because they committed mass voter fraud to win and he'll fight the results to the death.
Biden launches massive 1 week $45 million ad buy in AZ, FL, MI, MN, NV, NC, OH, PA, & WI. That's $18 mil more than he spent on media during the ENTIRE 1 year long primary. All thanks to the #1 fundraising month of all time at $364.5 mil. #2 was Obama Sept 2008 at $153 mil ($191 mil after inflation)
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/09/joe-biden-pours-massive-fundraising-haul-into-new-battleground-tv-ad-blitz
http://www.financesherald.com/joe-biden-and-democrats-raised-a-record-350-million-usd-in-donations-in-august/
The NRA's former second-in-command is breaking with the group's orthodoxy & calling for universal background checks & so-called red flag laws, assailing the organization as more focused on money and internal intrigue than the Second Amendment, while thwarting constructive dialogue on gun violence.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/03/us/politics/nra-book-wayne-lapierre.html
New Minnesota, Wisconsin Trump Ads Underestimating The Intelligence Of Voters
https://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2020/09/02/kamala-harris-says-new-minnesota-wisconsin-trump-ads-underestimating-the-intelligence-of-voters/
After the President of the United States suggested supporters should try voting twice, the North Carolina Board of Elections wants to remind you that's a Class 1 felony.
https://twitter.com/aseitzwald/status/1301528356492652547
New Biden ad on Social Security solvency looks to woo voters in key battleground states (video)
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/meet-the-press/blog/meet-press-blog-latest-news-analysis-data-driving-political-discussion-n988541/
Bernie Sanders says he supports Joe Biden, disagrees that Biden has adopted 'socialist agenda'
https://www.msnbc.com/stephanie-ruhle/watch/bernie-sanders-says-he-supports-joe-biden-disagrees-that-biden-has-adopted-socialist-agenda-91070533576
881,000 people claimed jobless benefits last week as labor market continues to feel pain of pandemic
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/09/03/some-881000-people-claimed-jobless-benefits-last-week-labor-market-continues-feel-pain-pandemic/
Mass Surveillance Program Exposed By Snowden Was Illegal, U.S. Court Rules | An appeals court said the warrantless telephone dragnet that secretly collected millions of Americans' records violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/mass-surveillance-program-exposed-by-snowden-was-illegal-us-court-rules_n_5f50b017c5b6946f3eada7d5
Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Reps. Ayanna Pressley, Barbara Lee Unveil Bill Confronting Racism as a Public Health Crisis
https://www.theroot.com/exclusive-sen-elizabeth-warren-and-reps-ayanna-press-1844941000
Organizer of Trump boat parades in Florida facing charge of threatening neighbor
https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/514810-organizer-of-trump-boat-parades-in-florida-facing-charge-of
Biden launches ad on police violence against Black Americans
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/514964-biden-launches-ad-on-police-violence-against-black-americans-in-key
Only far left whack jobs are calling for defunding police. Most people don't want to defund police. Biden's plan calls for reforms to policing. It's better and more nuanced. He's calling for better training, demilitarizing, and other reforms. He's not screaming about taking their budget away to penalize them.
The Democrats' plan to fix the virus, the economy, reopen schools safely, stop police violence against minoritiy people and return the country to normal:
https://joebiden.com/joes-vision/
New York City Republican Leaders Endorse Trump's Plan To Defund Their Own City. California and New York contribute 25% of the Federal tax revenue. Maybe CA and NY should stop funding the federal government.
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/kadiagoba/trump-new-york-city-funding
Double exclamation mark I got censured by the US public broadcaster @VOANews. All VOA services received orders yesterday to unpublish/not publish my interview to Mauricio Claver-Carone, Special Assistant to Trump, on how VOA's foreign journalists are being expelled from the country. [Thread]
https://twitter.com/briciosegovia/status/1299754286579146758?s=20
This is the translation of the interview segment that @VOANews does not want you to see. The interview was originally in Spanish for the Spanish Service of VOA, @VOANoticias.
https://twitter.com/briciosegovia/status/1299754288269402118
For context,I explained in this other thread the critical situation in which @VOANews foreign-born journalists are in. The federal agency that oversees VOA @USAGMgov is trying to expel dozens of these journalists from the US. Some,to repressive countries Down pointing backhand index
https://twitter.com/briciosegovia/status/1299754289968164869
My interview was shared on @VOANoticias website yesterday morning. In the afternoon, the original text and video were altered. All reference to VOA journalists' situation was deleted. Spot the difference: screenshot of @VOANoticias website in the morning Vs. afternoon. Down pointing backhand index
https://twitter.com/briciosegovia/status/1299754291117391873
Here is the link to the censured interview on @VOANoticias website. Questions and responses on VOA situation have been deleted. Down pointing backhand index
https://twitter.com/briciosegovia/status/1299754939057610754
.@VOANoticias usually schedules its tweets. The original interview was shared this AM in a scheduled tweet by mistake. I quoted it in a tweet of mine saying "If they delete this tweet, they confirm the are censuring". The tweet was taken down 37min. later.
https://twitter.com/briciosegovia/status/1299757047181967366
Before @VOANoticias deleted the tweet with the uncensured interview, I had time to record my cellphone screen and the part of the interview in which Mauricio Claver-Carone, Special Assistant to President Trump, commented on VOA journalists' situation. Down pointing backhand index
https://twitter.com/briciosegovia/status/1299758089487482880
This full (uncensured) interview can no longer be seen on any @VOANews @VOANoticias platforms. It has been deleted after @VOANews management ordered all the organization to unpublished/not publish it. The irony about all this is that @VOANoticias slogan is "A Free Press Matters".
https://twitter.com/briciosegovia/status/1299759068421279750
Right pointing backhand index When @VOANews management emailed all the organization ordering to unpublish/not publish my interview, I responded asking for the reason. The only answer I got was the deactivation of my corporate username that gave me access to my email, communication and publishing platforms.
https://twitter.com/briciosegovia/status/1299760102669463555
CLARIFICATION: I meant to say I got *censored. Although, since I got kicked out of the system, I guess I also got censured.
https://twitter.com/briciosegovia/status/1299767337827151873
Black man dies after police cover his head with hood and press his face into the ground while he is naked and handcuffed
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/daniel-prude-black-man-dies-suffocation-spit-hood-rochester-ny-police/
Democrats will hand Trump four more years if they don't strongly condemn rioting. Many of these undecided voters are buying into Trump's charges that former Vice President Joe Biden and the Democrats are not coming out strongly enough against the riots taking place all over the country, and those voters are correct. It's not enough for Biden to just say he is against rioting and looting. The Democrats need to make a strong statement that all violent protesters should be arrested and prosecuted to the full extent of the law.
Joe Biden Has a Plan to Reopen Schools. Trump Does Not. The Safety of Our Country's Kids Is on the Ballot.
https://washingtonmonthly.com/2020/09/03/biden-has-a-plan-to-reopen-schools-trump-does-not/
Joe Biden: Trump+Republicans Are Why Your Kids Can't Go To School
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/09/03/biden-school-trump-is-why-your-kids-cant-go-school/
Greinke congratulates Andrus on a nice take. Then strikes him out with a 70 mph breaker.
https://v.redd.it/9bakqutzbzk51
At the start of Biden's meeting in Kenosha, Wisc., a man extends his hand to shake hands. "Can't do that," Biden says, before feeling the man's biceps and exclaiming, "Nice guns!"
MAJOR SIGH, Robert Pattinson, who spent at least 20 years heavily smoking and heavily drinking, tested positive for covid-19. NOT GOOD. AT ALL.
https://www.cnet.com/news/robert-pattinson-reportedly-diagnosed-with-covid-19-suspending-production-on-the-bat/
https://www.theverge.com/2020/9/3/21420347/the-batman-delayed-robert-pattinson-covid
A federal lawsuit alleges officials in Kenosha enforced their curfew selectively, targeting demonstrators protesting police brutality while allowing "militia members" and supporters of law enforcement to roam the street.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/02/us/kenosha-curfew-lawsuit-protests-jacob-blake/index.html
Joe Biden in Kenosha: "As much as they say that Black Lives Matter has lost some standing since the president's gone on this rant on law and order, etcetera -- you still have 50 percent of people supporting it."
Joe Biden in Kenosha: "We're going to nationalize $15 an hour" minimum wage. "No one should ever work — have to work two jobs just to make it. That's not right in America."
Immigration advocates are suing Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf alleging his memo "imposing draconian changes" to DACA is invalid because he was illegally appointed. Background: https://courthousenews.com/top-two-heads-of-homeland-security-found-to-be-leading-illegally/
Joe Biden in Kenosha: I grew up in a neighborhood where you either became a firefighter or a priest and I wasn't qualified to be either, so here I am.
Joe Biden in Kenosha: If you things are bad now, Joe Biden, in Kenosha, says his hometown of Wilmington was subject to the longest military occupation since Reconstruction. True. Riots in 1968 led to a 9-month occupation by the National Guard, major fires, etc.
https://www.delawareonline.com/story/news/local/2018/06/09/1968-wilmington-riots-national-guard-occupation-news-journal-archives/680382002/
This is the kind of event Biden and Democrats need to be putting together in all swing states: As part of the Trump Campaign's "law & order" strategy, VP addressed another "Cops for Trump" event. "We will always back the blue," he told police in Raleigh NC., and again warned "you won't be safe in Joe Biden's America." And he recd the endorsement of the Southern States PBA.
https://twitter.com/markknoller/status/1301601464788365316
"Hennessey Fire's disastrous trail from Napa County to Vacaville | In a state becoming more and more accustomed to climate change-stoked disasters, the breadth of the LNU Complex and other fires further illustrated what the future could look like as the planet...
https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Whatever-anyone-can-spare-How-lightning-in-15538666.php
Joe Biden in Kenosha: "Regardless of how angry you are, if you loot or you burn you ought to be held accountable. Period. It just cannot be tolerated, across the board."
Meanwhile, thousands of people are driving up to see Trump: 3.5 hours before Trump's rally, and with the parking lot already full, here's the backlog in Latrobe.
https://twitter.com/scottdetrow/status/1301604502827675653
The image that the Biden event in Kenosha, Wisc., seem meant to evoke: Joe Biden as a listener. Person after person from the community comes to the microphones as he sits at the front of the church, listening silently.
Joe Biden talks policy in Kenosha, Wisconsin:
PennState's director of athletic medicine, Wayne Sebastianelli, says that cardiac MRI scans revealed that roughly 30-35 percent of Big Ten athletes who tested positive for COVID-19 appeared to have myocarditis. "When we looked at our COVID-positive athletes, whether they were symptomatic or not, 30 to roughly 35 percent of their heart muscles (are) inflamed"
https://centredaily.com/sports/college/penn-state-university/psu-football/article245448050.html
i CaN't bE vEgAn cAuSe pROteiN: I know we aren't gorillas, but just a casual reminder that the most jacked primate on the planet eats almost nothing but plants.
https://i.redd.it/2fo2vwbjryk51.jpg
I normally dismiss polls as lies (a poll is an ELECTION DAY TABULATED VOTE) but this is great: Martha McSally down 17 points in new Fox News poll showing Democrats surging in key states
https://www.salon.com/2020/09/03/martha-mcsally-down-17-points-in-new-fox-news-poll-showing-democrats-surging-in-key-states/
Judge rules that Kanye West is off Virginia's ballot | The suit alleged that 11 of West's 13 electors may be invalid and asked the court to block West's name from appearing on ballots. The judge agreed and said the electors were obtained by improper, fraudulent and/or misleading means.
https://www.nbc12.com/2020/09/03/judge-rules-that-kanye-west-is-off-virginias-ballot/
The NBPA has partnered with Vote.org to create an online platform where players can check registration status, register, request mail-in ballot. Players are increasingly aware of need to become registered voters -- and vote.
https://twitter.com/ShamsCharania/status/1301616729320165376
Gsellman today vs Yankees: 1.2 IP, 4H, 4ER, 3BB, 50 pitches including 40 in the 2nd inning
Ann Romney will join Michelle Obama on TV to encourage people to vote this fall
https://www.sltrib.com/artsliving/2020/09/03/ann-romney-will-join/
Trump leading FL Hispanic likely voters 45%-43%, per @QuinnipiacPoll. Small sample, etc. but that would be a big change from '16, when Clinton pretty clearly won FL Hispanics by double digits.
https://twitter.com/Redistrict/status/1301630298908745729
"Enrollment in kindergarten so far this year is 36,914, according to figures released Monday by L.A. Unified — down about 6,000 students or 14% from last year. The two prior years, kindergarten enrollment had dropped about 2,000 students each year."
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-08-31/lausd-kingergarten-enrollment-drop
Anti-Trump Lincoln Project to unleash Facebook army to get out the vote for Biden in AZ NC FL TX PA
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/09/03/anti-trump-lincoln-project-to-unleash-facebook-army-to-get-out-the-vote.html
Trump once said Republicans would be 'sick at even the thought' of voting twice. Then he told them to go do it.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/09/03/trump-once-said-republicans-would-be-sick-even-thought-voting-twice-then-he-told-them-go-do-it/
Lessons to be learned today. Apparently if you homer me you get DFA shotly there after. First it was what's his name with the Brewers, now it's Smoak. Dang. For all the hitters out there, #ProtectYourself and #SaveYourJob. Don't homer me
Thunder-Rockets Game 7 most-watched NBA game since January 31, most-watched first round game on cable since 2018, most-watched first round game on ESPN since 2017. Five of 11 most-watched NBA games since 7/30 restart have come since suspension of play.
https://www.sportsmediawatch.com/2020/09/nba-ratings-thunder-rockets-game-7-jazz-nuggets-espn-abc/
James Harden entered at the 8 min mark down 94-91. Scored and assisted on final 13 HOU points and closed out the Thunder. Floater, Assist, Assist, Layup, Assist, Block. Win.
Alabama Public Service Commission Illegally And Constitutionally Upholds And Increases 'Sun Tax' On Solar Power Users
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/01092020/alabama-public-service-commission-solar-sun-tax
Islamic terrorists burn the French flag in Pakistan after Charlie Hebdo reprints cartoons mocking the Prophet Mohammed as Islamic terrorist trial begins
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8694417/Protesters-burn-French-flag-Pakistan-Charlie-Hebdo-reprints-cartoons-mocking-Prophet-Mohammed.html
Extinction Rebellion activists glue themselves to ground outside parliament in London
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/extinction-rebellion-xr-parliament-glue-news-today-a9702581.html
___________________________
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/09/trump-americans-who-died-at-war-are-losers-and-suckers/615997/
Trump: Americans Who Died in War Are 'Losers' and 'Suckers'
The president has repeatedly disparaged the intelligence of service members, and asked that wounded veterans be kept out of military parades, multiple sources tell The Atlantic.
Jeffrey Goldberg
5:32 PM ET
When President Donald Trump canceled a visit to the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery near Paris in 2018, he blamed rain for the last-minute decision, saying that "the helicopter couldn't fly" and that the Secret Service wouldn't drive him there. Neither claim was true.
Trump rejected the idea of the visit because he feared his hair would become disheveled in the rain, and because he did not believe it important to honor American war dead, according to four people with firsthand knowledge of the discussion that day. In a conversation with senior staff members on the morning of the scheduled visit, Trump said, "Why should I go to that cemetery? It's filled with losers." In a separate conversation on the same trip, Trump referred to the more than 1,800 marines who lost their lives at Belleau Wood as "suckers" for getting killed.
Belleau Wood is a consequential battle in American history, and the ground on which it was fought is venerated by the Marine Corps. America and its allies stopped the German advance toward Paris there in the spring of 1918. But Trump, on that same trip, asked aides, "Who were the good guys in this war?" He also said that he didn't understand why the United States would intervene on the side of the Allies.
Trump's understanding of concepts such as patriotism, service, and sacrifice have interested me since he expressed contempt for the war record of the late Senator John McCain, who spent more than five years as a prisoner of the North Vietnamese. "He's not a war hero," Trump said in 2015 while running for the Republican nomination for president. "I like people who weren't captured."
There was no precedent in American politics for the expression of this sort of contempt, but the performatively patriotic Trump did no damage to his candidacy by attacking McCain in this manner. Nor did he set his campaign back by attacking the parents of Humayun Khan, an Army captain who was killed in Iraq in 2004.
Trump remained fixated on McCain, one of the few prominent Republicans to continue criticizing him after he won the nomination. When McCain died, in August 2018, Trump told his senior staff, according to three sources with direct knowledge of this event, "We're not going to support that loser's funeral," and he became furious, according to witnesses, when he saw flags lowered to half-staff. "What the fuck are we doing that for? Guy was a fucking loser," the president told aides. Trump was not invited to McCain's funeral. (These sources, and others quoted in this article, spoke on condition of anonymity. White House spokeswoman Kayleigh McEnany did not respond to email and telephone requests for comment.)
Trump's understanding of heroism has not evolved since he became president. According to sources with knowledge of the president's views, he seems to genuinely not understand why Americans treat former prisoners of war with respect. Nor does he understand why pilots who are shot down in combat are honored by the military. On at least two occasions since becoming president, according to three sources with direct knowledge of his views, Trump referred to former President George H. W. Bush as a "loser" for being shot down by the Japanese as a Navy pilot in World War II. (Bush escaped capture, but eight other men shot down during the same mission were caught, tortured, and executed by Japanese soldiers.)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2018/12/01/george-hw-bush-pearl-harbor-changed-everything-world-war-ii-made-him-hero/
When lashing out at critics, Trump often reaches for illogical and corrosive insults, and members of the Bush family have publicly opposed him. But his cynicism about service and heroism extends even to the World War I dead buried outside Paris—people who were killed more than a quarter century before he was born. Trump finds the notion of military service difficult to understand, and the idea of volunteering to serve especially incomprehensible. (The president did not serve in the military; he received a medical deferment from the draft during the Vietnam War because of the alleged presence of bone spurs in his feet. In the 1990s, Trump said his efforts to avoid contracting sexually transmitted diseases constituted his "personal Vietnam.")
On Memorial Day 2017, Trump visited Arlington National Cemetery, a short drive from the White House. He was accompanied on this visit by John Kelly, who was then the secretary of homeland security, and who would, a short time later, be named the White House chief of staff. The two men were set to visit Section 60, the 14-acre area of the cemetery that is the burial ground for those killed in America's most recent wars. Kelly's son Robert is buried in Section 60. A first lieutenant in the Marine Corps, Robert Kelly was killed in 2010 in Afghanistan. He was 29. Trump was meant, on this visit, to join John Kelly in paying respects at his son's grave, and to comfort the families of other fallen service members. But according to sources with knowledge of this visit, Trump, while standing by Robert Kelly's grave, turned directly to his father and said, "I don't get it. What was in it for them?" Kelly (who declined to comment for this story) initially believed, people close to him said, that Trump was making a ham-handed reference to the selflessness of America's all-volunteer force. But later he came to realize that Trump simply does not understand non-transactional life choices.
"He can't fathom the idea of doing something for someone other than himself," one of Kelly's friends, a retired four-star general, told me. "He just thinks that anyone who does anything when there's no direct personal gain to be had is a sucker. There's no money in serving the nation." Kelly's friend went on to say, "Trump can't imagine anyone else's pain. That's why he would say this to the father of a fallen marine on Memorial Day in the cemetery where he's buried."
I've asked numerous general officers over the past year for their analysis of Trump's seeming contempt for military service. They offer a number of explanations. Some of his cynicism is rooted in frustration, they say. Trump, unlike previous presidents, tends to believe that the military, like other departments of the federal government, is beholden only to him, and not the Constitution. Many senior officers have expressed worry about Trump's understanding of the rules governing the use of the armed forces. This issue came to a head in early June, during demonstrations in Washington, D.C., in response to police killings of Black people. James Mattis, the retired Marine general and former secretary of defense, lambasted Trump at the time for ordering law-enforcement officers to forcibly clear protesters from Lafayette Square, and for using soldiers as props: "When I joined the military, some 50 years ago, I swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution," Mattis wrote. "Never did I dream that troops taking that same oath would be ordered under any circumstance to violate the Constitutional rights of their fellow citizens—much less to provide a bizarre photo op for the elected commander-in-chief, with military leadership standing alongside."
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/06/james-mattis-denounces-trump-protests-militarization/612640/
Another explanation is more quotidian, and aligns with a broader understanding of Trump's material-focused worldview. The president believes that nothing is worth doing without the promise of monetary payback, and that talented people who don't pursue riches are "losers." (According to eyewitnesses, after a White House briefing given by the then-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Joe Dunford, Trump turned to aides and said, "That guy is smart. Why did he join the military?")
Yet another, related, explanation concerns what appears to be Trump's pathological fear of appearing to look like a "sucker" himself. His capacious definition of sucker includes those who lose their lives in service to their country, as well as those who are taken prisoner, or are wounded in battle. "He has a lot of fear," one officer with firsthand knowledge of Trump's views said. "He doesn't see the heroism in fighting." Several observers told me that Trump is deeply anxious about dying or being disfigured, and this worry manifests itself as disgust for those who have suffered. Trump recently claimed that he has received the bodies of slain service members "many, many" times, but in fact he has traveled to Dover Air Force Base, the transfer point for the remains of fallen service members, only four times since becoming president. In another incident, Trump falsely claimed that he had called "virtually all" of the families of service members who had died during his term, then began rush-shipping condolence letters when families said the president was not telling the truth.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/10/donald-trump-is-rush-shipping-condolences-to-military-families/543606/
Trump has been, for the duration of his presidency, fixated on staging military parades, but only of a certain sort. In a 2018 White House planning meeting for such an event, Trump asked his staff not to include wounded veterans, on grounds that spectators would feel uncomfortable in the presence of amputees. "Nobody wants to see that," he said.
Jeffrey Goldberg is the editor in chief of The Atlantic and a recipient of the National Magazine Award for Reporting. He is the author of Prisoners: A Story of Friendship and Terror.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0375726705/theatlanticmonthA/ref=nosim/
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https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/vicky-osterweils-case-for-looting
Examining Vicky Osterweil's Case for Looting
By Isaac Chotiner
September 3, 2020
This summer's protests against racism and police violence, in response to the killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and other Black Americans, represented the largest popular movement since the civil-rights era. They also, in some cases, led to violence, as police fired pepper spray and rubber bullets and forcibly detained protesters, some of whom burned police stations and cars and looted stores, in Minneapolis, Atlanta, and Portland, among other cities. Liberal politicians and Black Lives Matter activists have condemned the destruction of private property, saying that it distracts from the cause of racial justice. But last week, a writer and activist named Vicky Osterweil published a book, called "In Defense of Looting," that makes a radical attack on that assumption.
Osterweil, who first wrote an essay of that title during the Ferguson uprising, claims in her book that "those who participate in rioting and looting tend to be the most politically informed and socially engaged in the neighborhood," and that their actions should be understood "as essential tactics in fighting racial capitalism." She leans heavily on provocation, titling one chapter "All Cops Are Bastards" and writing that when nonviolence is "pushed as a philosophical, moral, or religious principle, it gains a nasty, authoritarian edge." She denounces local politicians and political groups who might try to limit looting during an uprising, adding, "This book is spit in their eyes."
Coming in the midst of violent clashes in Portland and Kenosha, Wisconsin, the book caused alarm among liberals and conservatives. After NPR published an interview with Osterweil, politicians from both parties condemned her defense of looting, and conservatives criticized NPR for giving her a platform. In response to the interview, the Times columnist Bret Stephens, an anti-Trump conservative, wrote that NPR "was doing its small part to make sure the president would be re-elected." As President Trump claims that "no one will be safe in Biden's America," Stephens asked, "Does Joe Biden have the nerve to stand up to the extremes in his own party, or does he just mean to appease them?" On Monday, in Pittsburgh, Biden seemed to answer the question, saying, "I'm going to be very clear about all of this—rioting is not protesting. Looting is not protesting. Setting fires is not protesting. None of this is protesting. It's lawlessness, plain and simple. And those who do it should be prosecuted."
I spoke by phone with Osterweil last week, several days before the NPR interview was published. I wanted to understand how she reconciled looting with democratic government, and what limits, if any, she placed on her defense of it. During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we discussed whether Americans should be seeking change from within the political system, whether Black business owners should have their property destroyed, and why Osterweil compares small-business owners to slaveholders.
--- You use the word "revolution" a lot in the book. Is the reader supposed to assume that you think that looting should replace democratic politics, or do you see them going hand in hand?
I think now is a very good time to challenge the concept that we live in an even imperfect democracy. You have Donald Trump admitting he is trying to shut down the constitutionally mandated Post Office to do voter suppression, and too many people in prisons, and in dozens of states felons can't vote. It's not a straightforward narrative toward more and more democracy, and Donald Trump lost the election by a few million votes, but the Electoral College, which was designed specifically to continue empowering the plantation owners in the South, still handed it to him.
I don't believe that we will be able to find justice in the voting booth. We face ecological and social crises right now, like horrible police violence and killing that is unending, and the rise of a far right. I think a lot of people have spent the last five years really trying to convince the Democratic Party to take this on with Bernie Sanders or even Elizabeth Warren. And the Democratic Party has, in my opinion, responded with contempt and solidified behind Joe Biden.
--- But if Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren had won the Democratic nomination, they would be leading a movement to get themselves voted into office to achieve change that way.
Absolutely, and I was not a supporter of either of them. Even those paths of reform through the Democratic Party, for example, will not actually be that efficient. I think that any real social change has come from people moving in the streets, has come from people fighting outside of elections and outside of the parliamentary method that we're taught in a civics class, if people still have those.
--- So you feel like the Democratic Party was too dismissive of Warren and Sanders, but at the same time you yourself did not support them?
I think the Democratic Party made an error in that if they had chosen to get behind Warren or Sanders, they could have captured a lot of the energy that we have been seeing in the last three months. They could have had that energy going into the election instead. Personally, that's not a tragedy to me, but I'm more excited about the move of energy because I think it's where the real change comes from.
--- You criticize people in the book who look down on looters, and you say that judging looters is "implying that they don't know what they are doing." What do you think people who criticize looters are implying when they criticize them?
One of the criticisms of looters comes from within the movement, and it's often people who are sympathetic but relatively new to thinking about these things, and they have a reflexive anti-looting position that has to do with the fact that it's a very radical and frightening tactic. The book is written, in part, to those people, not to critique them but to help them see the ways in which, in fact, it is a powerful tactic that goes back to our whole history of liberation struggles.
But I also do think that there are a lot of people who use disdain of looters as a dog whistle. On his Web site, Donald Trump, for example—I keep going back to this guy—had a page about law enforcement where he said, "We will support families, but we do not support looters." So I spend a lot of the intro of the book sort of calling out the racialized history of the word "looting," and the language that has always been used to denigrate racialized people—Black, indigenous, colonized people rising up.
--- That's undeniable, but you are chiding people for making assumptions about looters. Aren't you making an assumption that these people are revolutionaries who are carrying out some political, ideological act? How do you know that when you see private property destroyed or taken?
I don't think those are necessarily revolutionary activists acting with political consciousness. I think a lot of people think that, in order for something to be political, people have to be yelling a slogan as they do it or something, that there's a standard at which something becomes political that's based in the intentions of what the person is doing. And I don't subscribe to that belief in political action. I think that actions have their own effects and logics and that we are in a moment during those riots that is a generalized moment of anti-police action. People are in the streets. They're chanting, "Black lives matter."
--- That's definitely why many people are in the streets. But most activist groups say they want no part of looting, and so I'm wondering how we know that the people who are choosing to take property are part of the same political movement. I'm sure some of them are, but how do you make that assumption?
I think that the question is sort of backwards, because there is no movement without these moments of rioting and looting and property destruction. They reappear, and they fight side by side with people, and there have been studies from the nineteen-sixties that showed that folks who participated in rioting and looting were in fact people who are very politically active and connected to their community.
--- Many political movements have used methods that are not always democratic at times, from Nelson Mandela on. But I read an interview with you where you said, "In the case of riots, as looting is usually done by people who live in the neighborhoods where it occurs, distinctions are often made between businesses that gentrify or oppress, and those that don't. Liquor stores, pawn shops, pharmacies, and gentro-cafes tend to be hit much more readily than the quaint 'small business' the phrase is designed to evoke." Lots of these places could be "small businesses," and I wouldn't want to make a claim that young men going into liquor stores are doing it because they view these things as having an oppressive or gentrifying character. I don't know who owns the businesses of a lot of places in my neighborhood. I think a lot of people don't. Are you over-interpreting these actions as having some political character?
https://jewishcurrents.org/stealing-away-in-america/
I think there's also a liberatory political character to people just getting what they want for free.
--- Which people?
To people in a movement getting what they want for free. Rich people get it from the exploitation of people working for them and through their generation of rents and profits, through labor and through ownership of factories and stores. I think that when people loot during a riot, they are solving a lot of the immediate problems that make their lives very, very hard, and they may also take the opportunity to make their lives more pleasurable. Liquor is also really expensive, and it's often one of the only pleasures people who live in those neighborhoods can actually afford, but it's still expensive on their terms. And being able to have that stuff for free allows you to have more communal pleasure, pleasures that are totally normal.
--- You write, "Though the buildings destroyed may be located in a predominantly Black or proletarian neighborhood, the losses go to the white, bourgeois building and business owners, rarely the people who live near them." There have been lots of stories from Atlanta, from Minneapolis, from Seattle, about small-business owners, often non-white small-business owners, who are very unhappy with the things that have gone on, and I'm not sure that taking things from them makes any sort of point.
People know who they're attacking in their neighborhoods. A lot of the people who are rioting or looting in a neighborhood have worked for those small businesses. They have shopped in those small businesses. They have been followed around by security in those small businesses. Personally, I've had a tremendous number of service jobs, and I've never been treated worse than I was at two family-owned businesses that I've worked with.
--- It seems like we're slipping up on whether these businesses are perfect, which I'm sure they're not, and whether it's O.K. to take their property, which would seem like different things, right?
I guess what I'm saying is that small businesses also oppress the community in a similar way that large businesses do, often more directly. That form of oppression is real, and then when people riot and loot, they're striking back against that form of oppression.
--- You also said in that interview, "I believe we should trust those who loot and riot to understand their targets and their actions: to have analyzed the social world they live in, and therefore to trust them when they select the targets of their rage and resistance—especially when that rage is applied to property. No amount of lost business is worth a lost life." It seems like you are describing them as somewhat political figures who are making extremely clear calculations. Is that wrong?
https://jewishcurrents.org/stealing-away-in-america/
I'm describing their actions as politically legible and understandable, and I am describing them as people who know what they're doing, yeah.
--- I thought you were slightly disputing that earlier.
Oh, no, no.
--- You also say, "I think riots and militant violent action in general get slandered as being macho and bro-y, and lots of our male comrades like to project that sort of image. That definitely happens, but I actually think riots are incredibly femme. Riots are really emotive, an emotional way of expressing yourself. It is about pleasure and social reproduction. You care for one another by getting rid of the thing that makes that impossible, which is the police and property. You attack the thing that makes caring impossible in order to have things for free, to share pleasure on the street." Can you explain a little more what you mean?
So it's not always my favorite mode of doing feminist analysis to describe things as feminine or masculine. I think there are tremendous limits to that mode. I think, in this instance, one of the ways that people tend to think about militant action is being very macho and male chauvinist. And I think that that slander is dangerous, because it is very necessary that our movements not be male chauvinist and be anti-patriarchal and feminist at their core. But I think that we have a tendency to immediately equate those things with masculinity. It's part of the way that the idea of nonviolence versus violence works, right? I don't think looting is a particularly violent action. It's mass shoplifting. It's violent against property and against the bottom lines of the store owners, but it's not hurting, it's not physical violence.
--- If you're taking from a store owner who needs to pay her daughter's hospital bills or whatever it is, that could have an effect on someone's health. This seems to be a type of connection that people on the left often want to make, no?
Sure, but there's no really clean or easy way to struggle without ever hurting anyone.
--- I was reading a piece in the Times a while back, which I just looked up again before this interview, and there's a scene there where an immigrant from Iraq named Hussein Aloshani is "waving his arms," as the Times says, "in frustration." Looters are near his store and he's saying that he doesn't have any insurance for it. I'm wondering, when you read things like that, what is your emotional response?
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/31/us/minneapolis-protests-business-looting.html
Can I ask you, did he in fact get looted, or were they just near his store?
--- I don't know what ended up happening.
Like I said, in Minneapolis, there was a community bookstore, for example, that was amid the row of all the corporations that we saw get hit in that neighborhood. And that bookstore went untouched. You see it often in neighborhoods—in the sixties, people would put up signs that said "Black-owned." You see it again now, people putting up "Black Lives Matter" signs in their store, but often in those instances, that store owner might have been able to tell them that and might have been able to communicate with them, so they're just people who are acting, you know? But I don't know. I don't know what happened to him.
In any case, I feel empathy for this man who's terrified of losing everything, obviously. I feel anger at the way in which capitalism in America has often organized its society such that you have immigrant groups who end up working as store owners and small-business people in largely Black communities. It's an old pattern. It's easier for them to get loans and business startups. You saw that in 1992, where there were so many Korean immigrants, and in Watts in 1965, there were a lot of Jewish immigrants and Jews who were store owners there. So it's a pattern that is established to produce these racial hierarchies that often has real, disastrous human consequences, and it's tragic to me. But also I think you see a lot of what we saw in New York or even in Chicago two weeks ago, where looters specifically go down to fancy downtown. They attack the Magnificent Mile in downtown or through SoHo in New York. I think there is a lot of that as well.
--- Right, but those places also have people working for them who may not be of great means. I was curious if it changed your calculation if the looters were of a higher economic status than the people they were looting.
I find that very hard to imagine. Looting is a very, very risky and dangerous endeavor that one can only take very rarely, and I find it very hard to imagine that anyone participating in looting is more well off than the store owners.
--- We saw some property destruction in Brooklyn and elsewhere, where I would not be surprised at all if the people who were rioting or looting were of more means than the people whose stores they were looting. But it feels like you're getting close to saying you've got to break some eggs to make an omelette.
I certainly don't think that any ends justify any means, or that any action is acceptable. I think that revolutionaries have made a tremendous number of mistakes, going in authoritarian directions with terrors and violence that I think have been ill placed, but I think it is really about centering and understanding the fact that Black oppression in this country, and the class and colonial oppression has gone alongside that, is an ongoing travesty, a total tragedy, and most of the things that happen during looting and rioting are happening in self-defense against those systems, as an attempt to break away from that form of oppression.
And on the small-business-owner thing, I think if we can think of property as the evil that we saw slavery as, which was very clearly a horrifying regime built on incredible violence, obviously. We all accept that. Most of us do, in this day and age. And the idea of a small slaveholder being ruined by a fugitive running away because he only enslaved two people, right? That's possible.
--- Sorry, are you comparing small-business owners to small slaveholders?
I am saying that the naturalization of those systems, the naturalization of slavery and the way that property works was built on a violence that is very similar to the way that property is naturalized now. So the naturalization of property now is built on an unimaginably violent prison system, imperialist war, anti-Blackness to its core, and a murderous police, and now we have to start seeing property as part of those systems of oppression very, very directly.
--- Yeah, so to go back to the omelette and eggs, it just seems like when you see any private property as akin to slavery, you're basically saying anything goes because slavery is really bad and you need force to destroy it.
No, I am not saying . . . Well, yeah. Let me think about that. I don't think anything goes. I don't think that attacks on property should be understood as going too far, and I think that we do actually have to overthrow the system of property and of capitalism and of the state. You have to do it in order to save the planet from ecocide, in order to serve the people in this community who are at constant threat of violence from the police. The police need to be abolished. Property needs to be abolished.
--- Do you feel the same way about Black people's private property?
What do you mean?
--- Black people own small businesses. Black people own goods. They participate in the same system. Are their goods and businesses part of the problem or the solution?
I don't think that's a solution. We had a Black president, and these questions didn't shift. I don't think there's some amount of Black private property or Black middle-class size that could be gained that would mean freedom from anti-Black oppression, and I think there will always, as you said, there will be limits, and there will always be fewer paths to that sort of wealth for Black folks. The Black middle class goes back to the colonial days. There were Black middle-class people in the North already. Not that many of them, and they weren't understood as Black yet in many instances, but they were there. The question is not of the right people acquiring enough property and becoming middle class, and then we get freedom. That will never work.
--- The reductio ad absurdum here seems like me—a white guy with a good job who's been very fortunate in his life—as part of this revolution, looting a Black-owned store, and I'm trying to figure out whether you think that would be wrong, if I was doing it in the service of bringing down capitalism.
For me, hypotheticals like that are pretty unproductive. I think that if you find yourself moved to be part of the movement and moved to be in the street with people and to be fighting side by side, you will decide for yourself and in communication with them and as part of that movement and that community.
--- How much does political backlash worry you? I think that a lot of people thought that the protests that happened around George Floyd would be politically catastrophic for the left, and it doesn't seem like that's been the case, which shows the problems with being overly cautious. But most people do not believe in abolishing private property, and a lot of people will take what you are saying as very extreme. I don't have poll numbers about looting on me right now, but I think we would both acknowledge that if you ask people whether they approve or disapprove of looting, there would be a vast, vast, vast majority of people of every race in this country who would oppose it.
In terms of polling, there was a poll that came out days after the first police precinct was burned down in Minneapolis that showed that it was polling at fifty-four per cent, so it was fifty-four-per-cent popularity for burning down a police station. It was polling better than Biden and way better than Trump. A lot of people don't think they would like something until they see it, because they can't imagine the way that it would come about.
--- Just to clarify that poll number, I've got it here from Monmouth, in early June. The question was not about the police station burning down specifically, but about the actions of protesters generally. Seventeen per cent of people said they were fully justified, thirty-seven per cent said partially, thirty-eight per cent said not at all. I don't think that that's asking whether it is O.K. to burn down a police station.
No, totally.
--- You've mentioned Trump a couple times, and you do say in the book that "mass media is the enemy of liberation." Do you have any concern about referring to media as the enemy, given the way he's tried to frame the media?
I think that the way he talks to and treats the media is reprehensible. I think it's also a strategically advantageous terrain for him to argue on, because it allows a standard trope among many journalists and writers, of which I'm partially one, to defend themselves and see themselves as a noble Fourth Estate, and when Trump is attacking that, of course that's part of his creeping Fascist authoritarian breakdown on society, and it should be opposed. But also the media will generally tend to support the ruling class's central arguments.
--- Should I throw in a link to your book in the intro, or do you want to encourage people to go take it for free from their local bookstore?
You can include a link if you like. No problem. People should support their local bookstores. If they go to bookshop.org, they'll support local bookstores that way. I just want people to read it. That's what I want people to know. I want them to read it, however they get it.
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https://thenewinquiry.com/in-defense-of-looting/
In Defense of Looting
By Vicky OsterweilAugust 21, 2014
For most of America's history, one of the most righteous anti-white supremacist tactics available was looting.
As protests in Ferguson continued unabated one week after the police killing of Michael Brown, Jr., zones of Twitter and the left media predominantly sympathetic to the protesters began angrily criticizing looters. Some claimed that white protesters were the ones doing all of the looting and property destruction, while others worried about the stereotypical and damaging media representation that would emerge. It also seems that there were as many protesters (if not more) in the streets of Ferguson working to prevent looting as there were people going about it. While I disagree with this tactic, I understand that they acted out of care for the struggle, and I want to honor all the brave and inspiring actions they've taken over the last weeks.
Some politicians on the ground in Ferguson, like alderman Antonio French and members of the New Black Panther Party, block looting specifically in order to maintain leadership for themselves and dampen resistance, but there are many more who do so out of a commitment to advancing the ethical and politically advantageous position. It is in solidarity with these latter protesters–along with those who loot–and against politicians and de-escalators everywhere that I offer this critique, as a way of invigorating discussion amongst those engaged in anti-oppression struggle, in Ferguson and anywhere else the police violently perpetuate white supremacy and settler colonialism. In other words, anywhere in America.
• • •
The dominant media is itself a tool of white supremacy: it repeats what the police deliver nearly verbatim and uncritically, even when the police story changes upwards of nine times, as it has thus far in the Brown killing. The media use phrases like "officer-involved shooting" and will switch to passive voice when a black man is shot by a white vigilante or a police officer ("shots were fired"). Journalists claim that "you have to hear both sides" in order to privilege the obfuscating reports of the state over the clear voices and testimony of an entire community, members of which witnessed the police murder a teenager in cold blood. The media are more respectful to white serial killers and mass murderers than to unarmed black victims of murder.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/14/media-black-victims_n_5673291.html
And yet, many of the people who perform this critique day-in, day-out can get jammed up by media perceptions of protesters. They want to correct the media's assertion that protesters were all looters for good reason: the idea of black people looting a store is one of the most racially charged images in the white imaginary. When protesters proclaim that "not all protesters were looters, in fact, most of the looters weren't part of the protest!" or words to that effect, they are trying to fight a horrifically racist history of black people depicted in American culture as robbers and thieves: Precisely the image that the Ferguson police tried to evoke to assassinate Michael Brown's character and justify his killing post facto. It is a completely righteous and understandable position.
However, in trying to correct this media image—in making a strong division between Good Protesters and Bad Rioters, or between ethical non-violence practitioners and supposedly violent looters—the narrative of the criminalization of black youth is reproduced. This time it delineates certain kinds of black youth—those who loot versus those who protest. The effect of this discourse is hardening a permanent category of criminality on black subjects who produce a supposed crime within the context of a protest. It reproduces racist and white supremacist ideologies (including the tactic of divide-and-conquer), deeming some unworthy of our solidarity and protection, marking them, subtly, as legitimate targets of police violence. These days, the police, whose public-facing racism is much more manicured, if no less virulent, argue that "outside agitators" engage in rioting and looting. Meanwhile, police will consistently praise "non-violent" demonstrators, and claim that they want to keep those demonstrators safe.
In working to correct the white-supremacist media narrative we can end up reproducing police tactics of isolating the individuals who attack property at protests. Despite the fact that if it were not for those individuals the media might pay no attention at all. If protesters hadn't looted and burnt down that QuikTrip on the second day of protests, would Ferguson be a point of worldwide attention? It's impossible to know, but all the non-violent protests against police killings across the country that go unreported seem to indicate the answer is no. It was the looting of a Duane Reade after a vigil that brought widespread attention to the murder of Kimani Gray in New York City. The media's own warped procedure instructs that riots and looting are more effective at attracting attention to a cause.
But of course, the goal is not merely the attention of dominant media. Nor is the goal a certain kind of media attention: no matter how peaceful and well-behaved a protest is, the dominant media will always push the police talking points and the white-supremacist agenda. The goal is justice. Here, we have to briefly grapple with the legacy of social justice being won in America: namely that of non-violence and the civil rights movement. And that means correcting a more pervasive and totalizing media and historical narrative about the civil rights movement: that it was non-violent, that it claimed significant wins because it was non-violent, and that it overcame racial injustice altogether.
In the 400 years of barbaric, white supremacist, colonial and genocidal history known as the United States, the civil rights movement stands out as a bright, beautiful, all-too-brief moment of hope and struggle. We still live in the shadow of the leaders, theory, and images that emerged from those years, and any struggle in America that overlooks the work (both philosophical and organizational) produced in those decades does so at its own peril. However, why is it drilled into our heads, from grade school onward, in every single venue, by presidents, professors and police chiefs alike, that the civil rights movement was victorious because it was non-violent? Surely we should be suspicious of any narrative that the entire white establishment agrees is of the utmost importance.
The civil rights movement was not purely non-violent. Some of its bravest, most inspiring activists worked within the framework of disciplined non-violence. Many of its bravest, most inspiring activists did not. It took months of largely non-violent campaigning in Birmingham, Alabama to force JFK to give his speech calling for a civil rights act. But in the month before he did so, the campaign in Birmingham had become decidedly not-non-violent:
I use the rather clunky phrase not-non-violent purposely. For some non-violence ideologues breaking windows, lighting trash on fire or even building barricades in the street is "violent". I once watched a group of black teens chanting "Fuck the Police" get shouted at for "being violent" by a white protester. Though there are more forms of violence than just literal physical blows to a human body, I don't believe a conception of "violence" which encompasses both throwing trash in the street and the murder of Michael Brown is remotely helpful. Frustratingly, in protest situations violence tends to be defined as "whatever the nearest cop or non-violence practitioner says it is." Calling breaking a window "violent" reproduces this useless definition and places the whole argument within the rhetorical structure of non-violence ideology. Not-non-violent, then, becomes the more useful term
Protesters had started fighting back against the police and Eugene "Bull" Conner, throwing rocks, and breaking windows. Robert Kennedy, afraid that the increasingly riotous atmosphere in Birmingham would spread across Alabama and the South, convinced John to deliver the famous speech and begin moving towards civil rights legislation.
This would have been impossible without the previous months of courageous and tireless non-violent activism. But it is also the emergent threat of rioting that forced JFK's hand. Both Malcolm X and MLK had armed bodyguards. Throughout the civil rights era, massive non-violent civil disobedience campaigns were matched with massive riots. The most famous of these was the Watts rebellion of 1965 but they occurred in dozens of cities across the country. To argue that the movement achieved what it did in spite of rather than as a result of the mixture of not-non-violent and non-violent action is spurious at best. And, lest we forget, Martin Luther King Jr., the man who embodied the respectable non-violent voice that the white power structure claims they would listen to today, was murdered by that same white power structure anyway.
Though the Civil Rights movement won many battles, it lost the war. Mass incarceration, the fact that black wealth and black-white inequality are at the same place they were at the start of the civil rights movement, that many US cities are more segregated now than they were in the sixties: no matter what "colorblind" liberals would say, racial justice has not been won, white supremacy has not been overturned, racism is not over. In fact, anti-black racism remains the foundational organizing principle of this country. That is because this country is built on the right to property, and there is no property, no wealth in the USA without the exploitation, appropriation, murder, and enslavement of black people.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/08/28/these-seven-charts-show-the-black-white-economic-gap-hasnt-budged-in-50-years/
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/06/schools-are-more-segregated-today-than-during-the-late-1960s/258348/
As Raven Rakia puts it, "In America, property is racial. It always has been." Indeed, the idea of blackness was invented simultaneously with American conceptions of property: via slavery. In the early days of colonial America, chattel slavery was much less common than indentured servitude—though the difference between the two was not always significant—and there were Irish, French, German and English immigrants among these populations. But while there had always been and continued to be some black freedmen, over the course of the 17th century light-skinned European people stopped being indentured servants and slaves. This is partially because production exploded in the colonies much faster than a working population could form to do the work–either from reproduction or voluntary immigration–and so the cost of hired labor went through the roof. Even a very poor and desperate European became much more expensive than an African bought from the increasingly rationalized transatlantic slave trade.
http://thenewinquiry.com/essays/black-riot/
The distinction between white and black was thus eventually forged as a way of distinguishing between who could be enslaved and who could not. The earliest working definition of blackness may well have been "those who could be property". Someone who organized a mob to violently free slaves, then, would surely be considered a looter (had the word come into common usage by then, John Brown and Nat Turner would have been slandered with it). This is not to draw some absurd ethical equivalence between freeing a slave and grabbing a flat screen in a riot. The point, rather, is that for most of America's history, one of the most righteous anti-white supremacist tactics available was looting. The specter of slaves freeing themselves could be seen as American history's first image of black looters.
On Twitter, a tongue-in-cheek political hashtag sprang up, #suspectedlooters, which was filled with images of colonial Europeans, slave owners, cowboys and white cultural appropriators. Similarly, many have pointed out that, had Africa not been looted, there wouldn't even be any black people in America. These are powerful correctives to arguments around looting, and the rhetorical point—that when people of color loot a store, they are taking back a miniscule proportion of what has been historically stolen from them, from their ancestral history and language to the basic safety of their children on the street today—is absolutely essential. But purely for the purposes of this argument—because I agree wholeheartedly with the political project of these campaigns—I want to claim that what white settlers and slave traders did wasn't mere looting.
It was genocide, theft, and barbarism of the lowest order. But part of how slavery and colonialism functioned was to introduce new territories and categories to the purview of ownership, of property. Not only did they steal the land from native peoples, but they also produced a system under which the land itself could be stolen, owned by legal fiat through force of arms. Not only did they take away Africans' lives, history, culture, and freedom, but they also transformed people into property and labor-power into a saleable commodity. Chattel slavery is the most barbaric and violent form of work coercion—but as the last 150 years has shown, you can dominate an entire people through law, violence, and wages pretty well.
Recently an Instagram video circulated of a Ferguson protester discussing the looting and burning of the QuikTrip convenience store. He retorts the all too common accusation thrown at rioters: "People wanna say we destroying our own neighborhoods. We don't own nothing out here!" This is the crux of the matter, and could be said of most majority black neighborhoods in America, which have much higher concentrations of chain stores and fast food restaurants than non-black neighborhoods. The average per capita income in Ferguson, MO is less than $21,000, and that number almost certainly gets lower if you remove the 35% white population of Ferguson from the equation. How could the average Ferguson resident really say it's "our QuikTrip"? Indeed, although you might hang out in it, how can a chain convenience store or corporate restaurant earnestly be part of anyone's neighborhood? The same white liberals who inveigh against corporations for destroying local communities are aghast when rioters take their critique to its actual material conclusion.
http://racismstillexists.tumblr.com/post/32806122005/density-of-fast-food-restaurants-in-black-neighborhoods
The mystifying ideological claim that looting is violent and non-political is one that has been carefully produced by the ruling class because it is precisely the violent maintenance of property which is both the basis and end of their power. Looting is extremely dangerous to the rich (and most white people) because it reveals, with an immediacy that has to be moralized away, that the idea of private property is just that: an idea, a tenuous and contingent structure of consent, backed up by the lethal force of the state. When rioters take territory and loot, they are revealing precisely how, in a space without cops, property relations can be destroyed and things can be had for free.
On a less abstract level there is a practical and tactical benefit to looting. Whenever people worry about looting, there is an implicit sense that the looter must necessarily be acting selfishly, "opportunistically," and in excess. But why is it bad to grab an opportunity to improve well-being, to make life better, easier, or more comfortable? Or, as Hannah Black put it on Twitter: "Cops exist so people can't loot ie have nice things for free so idk why it's so confusing that people loot when they protest against cops" [sic]. Only if you believe that having nice things for free is amoral, if you believe, in short, that the current (white-supremacist, settler-colonialist) regime of property is just, can you believe that looting is amoral in itself.
White people deploy the idea of looting in a way that implies people of color are greedy and lazy, but it is just the opposite: looting is a hard-won and dangerous act with potentially terrible consequences, and looters are only stealing from the rich owners' profit margins. Those owners, meanwhile, especially if they own a chain like QuikTrip, steal forty hours every week from thousands of employees who in return get the privilege of not dying for another seven days.
And the further assumption that the looter isn't sharing her loot is just as racist and ideological. We know that poor communities and communities of color practice more mutual aid and support than do wealthy white communities—partially because they have to. The person looting might be someone who has to hustle everyday to get by, someone who, by grabbing something of value, can afford to spend the rest of the week "non-violently" protesting. They might be feeding their family, or older people in their community who barely survive on Social Security and can't work (or loot) themselves. They might just be expropriating what they would otherwise buy—liquor, for example—but it still represents a material way that riots and protests help the community: by providing a way for people to solve some of the immediate problems of poverty and by creating a space for people to freely reproduce their lives rather than doing so through wage labor.
Modern American police forces evolved out of fugitive slave patrols, working to literally keep property from escaping its owners. The history of the police in America is the history of black people being violently prevented from threatening white people's property rights. When, in the midst of an anti-police protest movement, people loot, they aren't acting non-politically, they aren't distracting from the issue of police violence and domination, nor are they fanning the flames of an always-already racist media discourse. Instead, they are getting straight to the heart of the problem of the police, property, and white supremacy.
Solidarity with all Ferguson rebels! Justice for Mike Brown!
_____________________________________
Bryce Harper nabs Luis Garcia who commits embarrassing TOOTBLAN.V
https://streamable.com/9xyhfg
Yoan Moncada: "My body has not been the same after the virus." Said it's a weird feeling and a daily battle to try to find that strength and energy
https://twitter.com/scottmerkin/status/1301638668659163146
Donald Trump, in a White House meeting, asked that a military parade exclude wounded veterans, because "nobody wants to see" amputees. My story here:
https://theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/09/trump-americans-who-died-at-war-are-losers-and-suckers/615997/
"Pelosi salon" has been mentioned 112 times on Fox News this week.
"Covid-19" has been mentioned 72 times, according to TVeyes.
https://twitter.com/EricBoehlert/status/1301648890169643008
Joe Biden went to Kenosha today and did what a president should. He listened and centered the people in the community. He did not incite, he brought calm. Basically, Joe Biden went to Kenosha today and did what Donald Trump has never - brought people together.
The nation owes a huge debt of gratitude to Marian Wright Edelman. Such a legacy on behalf of children. https://nytimes.com/2020/09/03/nyregion/marian-wright-edelman-childrens-defense-fund.html
Trump administration illegally and unconstitutionally eliminate funding for disinfecting N.Y. subways, schools
https://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/ny-coronavirus-trump-pulls-funding-20200903-5nlxvmprwneifpk4lgmcb7hpwa-story.html
A poll conducted in late July and early August said that active-duty members of the U.S. military believe white nationalism presents a greater threat than North Korea to the country.
https://www.militarytimes.com/news/pentagon-congress/2020/09/03/troops-white-nationalism-a-national-security-threat-equal-to-isis-al-qaeda/
Biden Vows to Establish White House National Commission On Policing If Elected | "I'll bring everyone to the table, including police chiefs, including civil rights activists, including NAACP, including the Latino community," Biden told a crowd of 20 community members gathered at the Grace Lutheran Church in Kenosha. "We're going to sit down there, and we're going to work it out because a significant portion of the police are decent people, but there are a lot of bad folks in every organization." It's pretty much all he can do from the White House. Policing change will have to come mostly from states and cities with a few Congressional changes here and there. He also has concrete plans for immediate action; stopping military equipment, fund community policing training, ban choke holds, create a database of complaints against police, aggressively pursue pattern and practice investigations. He also has plans to fund the social programs that people are protesting for.
https://www.newsweek.com/biden-vows-establish-white-house-national-commission-policing-if-elected-1529581
U.S. intelligence is sounding an alarm over Russia's continued efforts to disrupt American elections. The Department of Homeland Security says that Moscow is "amplifying criticisms of vote by mail," in order to undermine public trust in the electoral process.
https://twitter.com/CBSEveningNews/status/1301653676591919120
"Many election officials in states likely to decide the presidential race — the frontline planners — say they believe they'll be ready. But they also warned of a worrisome uncertainty that could undermine efforts to run a safe, fair and accurate election"
https://apnews.com/33890b66f6525bf259253241ae72b7e2
The lack of understanding of or interest in the military is always particularly striking from someone (Shitstain Trump) who attended a military academy for high school.
Toronto look outclassed (Celtics/Raptors Game 3)
The world has been deprived of playoff Kemba for too long, and we're being laid back with interest
This is one of those games where you really feel the wrath of Tatum and Kemba. When they're feeling it you can't really stop them. Too talented
Boston is not even playing at their best form
Kemba with the Meteor
Leading Senate Democrats Demand Immediate U.S. Sanctions for Russian Interference in 2020 Elections
https://www.wyden.senate.gov/news/press-releases/leading-senate-democrats-demand-immediate-us-sanctions-for-russian-interference-in-2020-elections
Coronavirus19 cases tied to Maine wedding have increased sixfold
https://www.newsweek.com/coronavirus-cases-tied-maine-wedding-have-increased-sixfold-state-health-officials-say-1529576
Navajo Nation Joins Lawsuit Challenging the Trump Administration's Move to Shorten 2020 Census
https://nativenewsonline.net/sovereignty/navajo-nation-joins-lawsuit-challenging-the-trump-administration-s-move-to-shorten-2020-census
7 Rochester police officers suspended over Daniel Prude's death
https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/03/us/rochester-police-daniel-prude-death/index.html
Kanye West's bid to get on the Arizona ballot as an independent presidential candidate in November has hit a legal roadblock. Maricopa County judge Scott McCoy ruled on Thursday in favor of a group of Arizonans who sued to keep West off the ballot. They claimed West can't be on the ballot as an independent because he's a registered Republican in Wyoming. But West's lawyers said West being registered with the GOP in a different state was irrelevant to getting on the Arizona ballot. They said since he registered with the Federal Elections Commission as a member of "The Birthday Party," not Republican, he can be on the ballot. But the judge didn't agree. It's unclear if West's lawyers will appeal.
https://www.azfamily.com/news/politics/arizona_politics/county-judge-bans-kanye-west-from-appearing-on-arizona-ballot/article_7121743c-ee3c-11ea-a797-0b01cd664458.html
Damaged Venezuelan oil tanker drawing international concern: "The consequences could be catastrophic for the entire Caribbean."
https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/damaged-venezuelan-oil-tanker-drawing-international-concern-72779229
Trump in PA is again encouraging people who voted by mail to vote again in person, if they aren't sure their vote was received, so that their vote is counted. He says that mail votes simply won't be counted if they are received later on. THIS IS A FELONY. TELLING PEOPLE TWO VOTE TWICE IS A FELONY. ARREST HIM ALREADY.
https://twitter.com/fran_chambers/status/1301675955845582854
If it's shocking to you that the nations top attorney had to make up a case to prove that mail in voter fraud is a big problem that should tell you a lot about the rest of the examples of fraud he talks about. There are no studies that shows high rates of mailed ballot fraud. There are no massive indictments. There is no evidence to suggest something Barr claims must simply exist bc "logic."
ATTEMPTING TO VOTE TWICE IS A FELONY. YOU WILL GO STRAIGHT TO PRISON FOR 3, 4+ YEARS.
Trump: If they didn't waste a year and a half of my life on impeachment
Me: Impeachment from the beginning of the official inquiry to acquittal lasted roughly 4.5 months
J.D. Davis ties the game in the 9th inning with a home run to dead center off of Aroldis Chapman
https://streamable.com/n4xbjc
Andrew Heaney vs SD: 7 IP, 3 H, 0 ER, 2 BB, 6 K, 117 pitches
The Los Angeles Clippers blowout the Denver Nuggets 120-97 behind 29/2/3 from Kawhi Leonard to take a 1-0 series lead
Draymond Green picks apart Jokic's defensive effort. Draymond sounded offended by that lack of effort
https://streamable.com/ayh9rh
93% percent of protests this summer were peaceful. Despite several incidents of protests against racism and police brutality turning violent, more than 90 percent of the summer's protests were peaceful, according to an analysis released Thursday. The report, produced by the nonprofit Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project, identified 7,750 protests between May 26 and Aug. 22 in 2,400 locations, according to The Washington Post. The report found that about 220 became "violent" — a term defined as demonstrators fighting with police or with counterprotesters. The term also applies to demonstrations that resulted in property damage. In 93 percent of cases analyzed, there was no violence.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/the-united-states-is-in-crisis-report-tracks-thousands-of-summer-protests-most-nonviolent/2020/09/03/b43c359a-edec-11ea-99a1-71343d03bc29_story.html
Barr claims a man collected 1,700 ballots and filled them out as he pleased. Prosecutors say that's not what happened. | "That's not what happened at all," said Andy Chatham, who is now in private practice. "Unfortunately, it speaks volumes to the credibility of Attorney General Barr when he submits half-truths and alternative facts as clear evidence of voter fraud without having so much as even contacted me or the district attorney's office for an understanding of the events that actually occurred," he added later. After being asked about Chatham's account, Kerri Kupec, a Justice Department spokeswoman, said in a statement: "Prior to his interview, the Attorney General was provided a memo prepared within the Department that contained an inaccurate summary about the case which he relied upon when using the case as an example."… Mike Snipes, the No. 2 prosecutor in the office then, said investigators initially suspected there were "potentially 1,700 fraudulent ballots, but we did not uncover that, at all." "We actually thought there was voter fraud initially, and we couldn't find it except that little tiny case," he said. Snipes said he could not address Barr's comments specifically.
https://www.dallasobserver.com/news/dallas-county-grand-jury-indicts-one-for-west-dallas-voter-fraud-9646968
Iranian musician Mehdi Rajabian to stand trial for collaborating with female artists | Even after serving previous prison terms over charges related to his work, Rajabian has approached the upcoming trial with defiance. "I strongly believe in the philosophy and message of music, artistic independence and an uncensored world," Rajabian said in a text messages from the Iranian city of Sari, after posting bail. | His trial comes amid a broader push by Iran's ultraconservatives to silence voices calling for an end to rules limiting the behavior and expression of women in the country ahead of next year's presidential election.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2020/09/03/iranian-musician-mehdi-rajabian-stand-trial-collaborating-with-female-artists/
Blue Lives Matter supporters arrested with slew of firearms outside Kenosha after police received tip about possible shooting
https://abcnews.go.com/US/blue-lives-matter-supporters-arrested-slew-firearms-kenosha/story?id=72808923
The oil and gas industry has been illegally and unconstitutionally allowed to pay far less than usual to the government for the right to drill on public lands under an illegal and unconstitutional Republican policy
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/sep/04/trump-cuts-oil-and-gas-drillers-rent-on-public-lands-as-state-budgets-suffer
Just hours after an interview was posted online in which Michael Reinoehl took responsibility for the fatal shooting of right-wing domestic terrorist Aaron Danielson, Trump via twitter ordered Reinoehl executed and he has been. Law enforcement officers stormed his residence and murdered him on Trump's order instead of arresting him. Reinoehl killed right-wing domestic terrorist Aaron Danielson in self-defense.
https://www.npr.org/2020/09/04/909515885/protester-suspected-in-portland-shooting-death-killed-by-law-enforcement
https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/04/us/portland-protest-suspected-killer/index.html
VICE News posted a short interview Michael Reinoehl did with an independent journalist just before he was executed by Trump's order
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/v7g8vb/man-linked-to-killing-at-a-portland-protest-says-he-acted-in-self-defense
If the revelations in today's Atlantic article are true, then they are yet another marker of how deeply President Trump and I disagree about the role of the President of the United States. I have long said that, as a nation, we have many obligations, but we only have one truly sacred obligation — to prepare and equip those we send into harm's way, and to care for them and their families, both while they are deployed and after they return home. That's the foundation of what Jill and I believe. It's why we've always prioritized the health and well-being of our service members, veterans, and military families. We've visited troops coming home wounded in Walter Reed. We've hosted wounded veterans in our home to share a Thanksgiving meal. And, as the proud parents of a son who served in Iraq, we've made supporting military spouses, caregivers, and children a focus of our service. Generations of American troops have shed blood around the world in defense of our freedoms and to protect U.S. vital interests. From the frontlines of our own Revolution to Belleau Wood to the Normandy beaches to the mountains of Afghanistan, the sacrifice and bravery of our troops and their willingness to serve our nation should be honored. Duty, honor, country — those are the values that drive our service members. Those are the values that have formed the core of America's defense for centuries. And if I have the honor of serving as the next commander in chief, I will ensure that our American heroes know that I will have their back and honor their sacrifice — always.
https://joebiden.com/2020/09/04/statement-by-vice-president-biden-on-the-atlantic-article/
Political group tied to Kanye West campaign law firm sent misinformation on Biden with mail-in ballot applications to battleground state voters | An Ohio-based political advocacy group that shares a Republican-allied law firm with Kanye West's political campaign is sending unsolicited mail-in ballot applications containing misinformation on Democratic candidates to voters in Pennsylvania and Minnesota -- both key battleground states for the 2020 election. Common Sense Voters of America LLC, which was registered in June by the same law firm representing West in his suit to get on the Ohio ballot, sent mailers in August containing images of fake headlines about Democratic nominee Joe Biden. While the mail-in ballot applications sent to voters appear to be legitimate, the mailers also include misinformation about Democratic candidates including Biden, his running mate California Sen. Kamala Harris and Minnesota Sen. Tina Smith, while positively portraying positions taken by President Donald Trump and Republicans.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/04/politics/pennsylvania-minnesota-mailers-misinformation/index.html
Lincoln Projects response to reports about Trump's disrespect for troops
https://twitter.com/ProjectLincoln/status/1301902114386395136?s=20
Joe Biden explains why he believes Kenosha officer should be charged in Jacob Blake shooting | "What I say is the investigation should go forward," Biden told WISN. "We should make sure when all the facts are in and then a decision be made, but based on its appearance, unless they can show something different than what everybody saw, it looks like an overuse of force." Critics have accused Biden and other Democrats such as Evers of a rush to judgment. "No, I said it looks like an overuse of force," Biden said. "But let's wait. I talked to the governor about it. The attorney general is still investigating, and let the investigation take its course." | The investigation by the Wisconsin Department of Justice is ongoing. Earlier this week, state officials said they had reviewed 28 videos and interviewed 88 people.
https://www.mysanantonio.com/news/article/Joe-Biden-explains-why-he-believes-Kenosha-15542982.php
Ron Jeremy Pleads Not Guilty To 20 Charges Of Sexual Assault Against 13 Women; Faces Possible Life Sentence
https://deadline.com/2020/08/adult-film-star-ron-jeremy-charged-with-three-counts-of-rape-1202967642/
It has to be incredibly difficult to honestly discern the difference between consensual and non-consensual with someone like him who has had sexual relations of all sorts with as many people as he has, both publicly and privately.
Ted Roosevelt V Responds to Shocking Report that President Trump Called Fallen Soldiers "Losers". He invoked two of President Roosevelt's sons who died during war. "Even as sons of a president, born into privilege, they understood they had an equal obligation to serve this great nation."
https://www.townandcountrymag.com/society/politics/a33925959/ted-roosevelt-v-tweet-response-president-trump-calling-fallen-soldiers-losers/
Three members of a volunteer police advisory board in Portland have resigned within 24 hours, citing failed commitments within the agency tasked with police accountability. The three members have rescinded their place in the 11-person Citizen Review Committee, which serves as a volunteer advisory board to the Independent Police Review—the city's police oversight agency that investigates complaints made against police officers. "The events of this past weekend were a tipping point for me," wrote member Adam Green in his Wednesday resignation letter. Last weekend, a Portland resident called Aaron J. Danielson was shot and killed when supporters of Donald Trump clashed with protesters against police brutality. Following the shooting, protesters gathered outside of Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler's home and called for his resignation. On Monday, video emerged of a police officer repeatedly punching a protester on the ground while trying to detain him. "We continue to witness excessive force used by officers on the streets. Members of the media continue to be threatened. Armed Trump supporters are allowed to parade through downtown Portland while pointing guns at people that aren't wearing Trump gear." "These are just a few examples of a failed system with failed leadership. I can no longer support this system in any way," Green, who was appointed as a recorder at the Citizen Review Committee in April of this year, said. The other two members that have resigned were Hillary Houck, appointed to the committee two years ago, and Carol Johnson, an attorney and director of civil rights at Oregon Labor and Industries. Portland's City Council has referred a measure to the November ballot asking citizens to scrap the Independent Police Review and replace it with a new model supported by Portland City Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty. In the meantime, chair of the CRC Candace Avalos, who supports the overhaul, said the Independent Police Review has stopped recruitment for the oversight board at a time when both agencies are due to see their workload rise.
https://www.newsweek.com/portland-police-oversight-resignation-blm-1529359
Biden on QAnon believers: "I've been a big supporter of mental health. I'd recommend that people who believe maybe should take advantage while it still exists in the Affordable Care Act...Have you guys found that plane load of people in uniforms and weapons and flying around?"
https://twitter.com/mkraju/status/1301933884079247360
Two former sr Trump admin officials confirm .@JeffreyGoldberg reporting that President Trump disparaged veterans and did not want to drive to honor American war dead at Aisne-Marne Cemetery outside Paris.
https://twitter.com/JenGriffinFNC/status/1301975321495973889
Two Senior Officials Confirm Trump's Personal Attacks On US Soldiers
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/two-senior-officials-confirm-some-of-trumps-remarks-about-fallen-soldiers-to-ap
Howard Dean cites brother's execution by North Vietnamese in tweet saying 'F--- you, Donald Trump'
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/515168-howard-dean-cites-brothers-execution-north-vietnamese-f-you-donald-trump
Ex-DHS official says Trump tried to rescind order for half-staff flags for John McCain
https://thehill.com/policy/national-security/department-of-homeland-security/515177-ex-dhs-official-says-trump-tried-to
The Justice Department today announced a federal criminal complaint charging Michael Robert Solomon, 30, and Benjamin Ryan Teeter, 22, with conspiring and attempting to provide material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization (Hamas). Solomon and Teeter, who were taken into custody yesterday evening, made their initial appearances earlier today before Magistrate Judge Tony N. Leung in U.S. District Court in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The defendants were ordered to remain in custody pending a formal detention hearing, which is scheduled for Wednesday, Sept. 9, 2020.
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/two-self-described-boogaloo-bois-charged-attempting-provide-material-support-hamas
Facebook took down Racist Antisemitic KKK Republican Candidate Marjorie Taylor Greene's green post showing Greene holding a rifle next to pictures of three Democratic congresswomen threatening violence against them
https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-deleted-gop-candidates-post-threatening-violence-against-aoc-2020-9
South Dakota dismisses "elite class of so-called experts," carries on with South Dakota state fair after Sturgis rally fueled COVID-19 surge, resulting in Sturgis attendees spreading it all over the country, one Sturgis attendee died of covid19
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/09/03/south-dakota-covid-19-sturgis-rally-state-fair-kristi-noem/5709042002/
Biden isn't running on a "plan" for a "blanket shutdown." When talking about how we need to listen to scientists, he was asked what he'd do if the scientists said we need a shutdown because of a future flu-Covid crisis combo. He said that in that case, he'd shut it down.
Michael Malone on coaches not allowed family to visit: "Players have their families here...referees are allowed 1 guest...coaches are not allowed anybody. Shame on you NBA. This is crazy. I miss my family..60 days + not granted privilege that my family come is criminal in nature"Beat Writer
https://twitter.com/NotoriousOHM/status/1301968939715444736
Charles Barkley Fires Back At "Full Of Crap" Reporters On TV Saying Steve Nash Was Hired Because Of "White Privilege"
https://streamable.com/0mkhu5
DOJ Admits Bill Barr Was Wrong About Massive Mail-in Ballot Fraud Example He Cited on CNN
https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/doj-admits-bill-barr-was-wrong-about-massive-mail-in-ballot-fraud-example-he-cited-on-cnn/
Trump: I do get along with Putin but I've been tougher on Russia than anybody by far
DHS draft document: White supremacists are greatest terror threat
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/09/04/white-supremacists-terror-threat-dhs-409236
Trump pivots back to the poisoned Putin critic, calls it "tragic" but then adds: "We haven't had any proof yet but I will take a look. It is interesting everyone is always mentioning Russia." Says China should is "far worse" and that "you're always asking about Russia." And mentions if Hillary won, the US would be at war with North Korea, and many millions would have died, and North Korea is a country he has a "great relationship" with. Note that Trump and Republicans have also forced Israel to sign "peace agreements" with Islamist terrorist dictatorship regimes so Trump can say he fixed the Middle East.
Excerpt from an article by Quinn Cook: "When I was with the Warriors, I played against Bron during the 2018 NBA Finals and he was calling out many of our sets before they even happened. He's able to do that because he watches a ton of film and his attention to detail is incredible."
https://www.basketballnews.com/stories/nba-rumors-lakers-quinn-cook-la-los-angeles-lebron-james-anthony-davis-playoffs-chemistry-bubble-leadership
Judicial Panel Rules North Carolinians who can't vote solely because they owe fines/fees from a past felony should be able to vote this year
https://www.wral.com/judges-open-nc-voting-to-some-felons-on-probation/19270899/
Trump goes from saying the atlantic article is a lie because the sources are anonymous, to attacking John Kelly a failure and coward and weak and incompetent who couldn't handle the job, even though John Kelly is never quoted in the atlantic article and has not released a statement about the article LOL. Trump PROVED the article was factual by attacking John Kelly. And attacking marine John Kelly as weak and unable to handle pressure is certainly one way to deny you would ever disparage the troops. And compared to Mattis and some of the others in command structure early in the administration, Kelly was the one most willing to carry water for Trump and his ideas. Everyone ends up with the knife in their back at some point with this guy.
Do you know how many people get fired for doing/saying the type of shit trump just did at the press conference? Crazy
After 6 Murder Trials and 24 Years, Charges Dropped Against Curtis Flowers | Prosecutors on Friday dropped murder charges against Curtis Flowers, a Black man who was tried six times for the same killings by a white prosecutor who was found to have pushed to keep Black jurors out of the case. Mr. Flowers had been accused in the 1996 killings of four people in a furniture store in Winona, Miss. The six previous trials — over more than two decades — ended in mistrials or convictions that were later reversed.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/04/us/after-6-murder-trials-and-24-years-charges-dropped-against-curtis-flowers.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtis_Flowers
All through the primaries, Joe Biden was portrayed as an anachronism, a man who had missed his moment by a decade or three. Even as mainstream media outlets published fawning profiles of his many rivals, they largely dismissed his chances. Most pundits seemed to believe that nobody would support Biden if he didn't happen to be the most senior Democrat in the race. But Biden not only beat a dozen competitors to win the Democratic Party's nomination he has also persistently led Donald Trump in the polls, adeptly handling the extraordinarily turbulent politics of 2020. The simplest explanation is that people like Joe Biden, and they like him for a reason: In contrast to Trump and certain vocal parts of the Democratic Party, he actually expresses the view of most Americans. If Democrats manage to win back the White House—and avert the danger that four more years of Trump would pose to peace, unity, and democracy in America—it will be thanks to qualities that a younger or more radical candidate would probably lack. When mass protests over the killing of George Floyd spread across the United States, the American public reacted in a far less divided way than a quick look at the partisan media landscape might suggest. According to opinion polls, most Americans believe that Derek Chauvin committed murder, that police brutality is a serious problem, and that we need to do more to eliminate racism. Other polls show that most Americans also believe that violent protest is illegitimate and that it is a bad idea to "defund the police." But many political and media elites have failed to capture this consensus. The worst offender is, as always, Donald Trump, who seems unable to express empathy for those who suffer from injustice, and still seems to think that he can boost his standing by inflaming the country's racial tensions. But some on the left have also veered toward the extremes. They have embraced deeply unpopular messages such as "defund the police," or refrained from criticizing violent protesters. In the past few months, writers for publications including The Nation and The New York Times have dismissed the idea that looting and rioting are forms of political violence. Just a few days ago, NPR published a soft interview with a white author who defends looting by claiming that it "strikes at the heart of property, of whiteness and of the police." And anyone on Twitter will have seen numerous versions of the argument that rioting and looting aren't happening at a significant scale, that it doesn't matter if they are happening, and that at any rate, such behavior is a reasonable reaction to injustice. This abdication of moral responsibility by parts of the commentariat has made it more difficult for elected Democrats to oppose political violence. On Saturday, for example, Senator Chris Murphy wrote on Twitter: "This isn't hard. Vigilantism is bad. Police officers shooting black people in the back is bad. Looting and property damage is bad. You don't have to choose. You can be against it all." When some social-media users criticized his message, he took it down, and apologized for giving the impression that he "thought there was an equivalency between property crime and murder." Murphy was right the first time: It shouldn't be hard to support peaceful protests for racial justice while unequivocally denouncing looting. But evidently, the easy test proved too hard for him to pass. On the ground, the failure to pass this same test has had dire consequences. Authorities in Portland, Oregon, have, in all but the most egregious cases, declined to press charges against protesters who break the law. One man who benefited from this policy is Michael Reinoehl, a white man who wrote on social media that "every Revolution needs people that are willing and ready to fight ... I am 100 % ANTIFA all the way!" In July, Reinoehl was apprehended at a local protest for being in possession of a loaded gun and resisting arrest. But he was quickly let go. A few weeks later, the charges against him were dropped. On Saturday, he attended a protest in Portland, where he allegedly shot and killed a Trump supporter. (Reinoehl was killed Thursday night when a federal fugitive task force moved to arrest him.) As George Packer has rightly noted in these pages, the violent clashes in Kenosha, Wisconsin; Portland; and other cities around the country have opened a big opportunity for the incumbent president: "If Donald Trump wins, in a trustworthy vote, what's happening this week in Kenosha, Wisconsin, will be one reason." Voters, Packer said, believe Democrats are being sincere when they denounce police brutality. But do they also believe that Democrats are being sincere when they criticize political violence—often, like Murphy, rather gingerly? Thankfully, most Black officials and community leaders have ignored online hand-wringing about the perils of criticizing lawlessness. They have wholeheartedly embraced the mass movement for racial justice—and unreservedly condemned the extremists and opportunists who loot stores, burn down neighborhoods, or engage in juvenile fantasies of political revolution. Black politicians including Keisha Lance Bottoms, the mayor of Atlanta, and John J. DeBerry Jr., a Democratic state representative in Tennessee, have denounced those intent on destruction. Citizens with the most personal reasons to seek revenge, including George Floyd's brother and Jacob Blake's mother, have made moving pleas not to descend into disorder. The Democratic Party's nominee for president has also condemned violence early, often, and without ambiguity. On June 2, Biden made clear that he does not condone riots, no matter the cause they supposedly serve: "There is no place for violence, no place for looting or destroying property or burning churches, or destroying businesses." Since then, Biden has repeatedly made the same point much more directly than many of his colleagues have. In a live speech from Pittsburgh on Monday, he drove the point home: "Rioting is not protesting. Looting is not protesting. Setting fires is not protesting," he insisted. "It's lawlessness, plain and simple. And those who do it should be prosecuted." Perhaps the most powerful moment of Biden's speech came when he dismissed, with a wry smile, the idea that he might have secret sympathies for political violence: "Do I look like a radical socialist with a soft spot for rioters? Really?" The question Biden put to the American people in Pittsburgh is whether they would feel safer under his watch or that of a president who, in hope of political gain, has embraced chaos for the past three months. Polls suggest an answer. Some 40 percent of Americans say that a Biden victory would make them feel less safe. But that figure is 50 percent for Trump. As long as Biden continues to be as emphatic about his views as he was on Monday, voters will see that his disavowal of violence is sincere. And if they are faced with a decision between a president who is forever making excuses for those who commit violence in his name, and a challenger who is willing to call out the sins of his "own" side, their decision shouldn't be difficult. If unrest isn't becoming a vulnerability for Biden, that's because he has been so much more astute in avoiding Trump's trap than the young and online. The latter have absorbed the preposterous lesson that to criticize riots (many of which are perpetrated by white political extremists) is to betray the movement for racial justice. Far from being a source of weakness, the fact that Biden honed his political instincts over many decades is a source of electoral strength. And if Biden becomes the 46th president of the United States, it will not be despite his failure to understand (what most members of his own party believe to be) the spirit of the moment; it will be because he had the good political judgment to eschew it.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/09/what-biden-understands-left-does-not/616000/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/joe-bidens-campaign-has-a-problem-and-it-begins-with-the-candidate/2020/02/06/7493855c-4904-11ea-9164-d3154ad8a5cd_story.html
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/12/joe-biden-campaign-collapse.html
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/10/joe-biden-2020-campaign.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/07/22/abolish-police-gallup-poll/
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/06/17/poll-voters-defund-police-reforms-324774
https://www.dataforprogress.org/blog/6/2/george-floyd-murder
https://www.ipsos.com/sites/default/files/ct/news/documents/2020-06/topline_reuters_george_floyd_protests_06_02_2020_0.pdf
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/nypd-budget-cuts-aoc-defund-protests-black-lives-matter-new-york-city-vote-a9595146.html
https://www.thenation.com/article/activism/blm-looting-protest-vandalism/
https://twitter.com/cbsnews/status/1267877443911778306
https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2020/08/27/906642178/one-authors-argument-in-defense-of-looting
https://twitter.com/MollyJongFast/status/1301218580839755777
https://twitter.com/rob_sheridan/status/1300066393199501312
https://twitter.com/ChrisMurphyCT/status/1298995351211319296
https://twitter.com/chrismurphyct/status/1299009972550995968
https://www.instagram.com/p/CBgt4xAFmZ4/
https://www.oregonlive.com/crime/2020/08/man-under-investigation-in-fatal-shooting-after-pro-trump-rally-allegedly-took-loaded-gun-to-earlier-portland-protest.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/03/us/michael-reinoehl-arrest-portland-shooting.html
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/08/how-biden-loses/615835/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/08/31/trump-allies-keep-accusing-biden-not-condemning-violence-shortly-after-biden-condemns-violence/
https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/31/politics/joe-biden-pittsburgh-violence-speech/index.html
https://twitter.com/daveweigel/status/1301219424469426184
A new Trump ad shows people cleaning up after violence while it hails his greatness. But it turns out the footage is owned by a French news org that's threatening to sue. And a man in the ad is a *Biden* backer who's furious at being included:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/09/04/new-trump-ad-features-some-oddly-placed-footage-now-its-owner-may-sue/
Kanye West is still submitting signatures in Arizona despite a judge ordering him off the ballot yesterday---the case is now pending in the Arizona Supreme Court in what is shaping up to be a very unusual legal showdown
https://twitter.com/Bencjacobs/status/1302017250950553600
Another update from the Kanye beat: Isaac Ford, son of longtime Democratic U.S. Rep. Harold Ford Sr., is the one who submitted kanye west's ballot application today. The Ford family was long involved in Tennessee Democratic politics. Isaac is a drug addict and alcoholic.
https://tennessean.com/story/news/politics/2020/08/20/kanye-west-presidential-campaign-submits-tennessee-petition/5618716002/
https://twitter.com/mjohnso27/status/1296510189034708997
Milwaukee sure flops a lot. Must be the teaching of their overrated shit HC. I mean, I didn't expect much more from a man named "Khris" but Giannis and Bledsoe, wow. If Kyle Lowry is watching he's jealous af.
Giannis really robbed Harden and LeBron out of an MVP in back to back years
Bucks should definitely be worried if they are only up by seven with this 5 vs 8,crap 👀.
Willians Astudillo is BACK and doing what he does best- leg out runs
https://bdata-producedclips.mlb.com/f0d7e147-03cd-482d-ac98-c28f4cf886cb.mp4
Former Cubs reliever Pedro Strop is signing back with the Cubs. Was recently released by Cincinnati. Both Chicago teams had interest in him but he's going back to the N. Side. He'll report to the alternate site in South Bend.
https://twitter.com/jesserogersespn/status/1302004619858636810
Billy Hamilton DFA by the Mets
https://twitter.com/NYPost_Mets/status/1302002835329032192
Montrezl Harrell On Sixth Man Of The Year Award, "I'm Blessed That My Grandmother Put The Ball In My Hands"
https://streamable.com/rq5obp
Derrick Jones Jr. Rises Up For The Monster Swat
https://streamable.com/vptg4o
Frank Vogel says that Rajon Rondo will play tonight and come off the bench. It will be his first game action since March.
https://twitter.com/mcten/status/1302023680738947072
Bam Adebayo with a putback slam and an alley-oop in back to back plays.
https://streamable.com/dp1rkn
The Lakers won't reveal their lineup until they have to announce it 30 min before tipoff. Meanwhile Mike D'Antoni just told us Eric Gordon will guard LeBron.
A big deal: the entire United States military will be required to participate in Trump's payroll tax scheme. Military families' payroll taxes will be deferred and then effectively doubled in January, and their paychecks will be set to fall by over 10% in 2021. Trump did this.
https://twitter.com/RepDonBeyer/status/1302018729144967169
I'm a loser, my wife is a loser, my twin brother @AVindman is a loser. We are a family of public servant suckers... #losers #HereRightMatters
https://twitter.com/YVindman/status/1302004736636448770
Buttigieg: "Look, the president today lied on Twitter about never calling John McCain a loser. Now he's asking us to believe that OK, he's lying about that today because we can check and see the footage. But he's not lying about the other stuff? He must think we're all suckers."
https://twitter.com/kathrynw5/status/1302029449207054336
Note the similarity to his answers on Russian bounties on US soldiers and election interference.
https://nytimes.com/live/2020/09/04/us/trump-vs-biden/trump-says-the-us-has-not-received-proof-that-navalny-was-poisoned
Giannis scoring at the half: 7 pts on 25% FG, 3/8 FTA, 0/4 3PA
It's a bit harder to educate readers/the public on this when the president, who has HIMSELF often been an anonymous source for the media over decades (to promote himself), disparages anonymous sourcing as people who don't really exist.
Eight months into the pandemic, obesity has turned out to be one of the clearest predictors of a difficult battle against covid-19. It may also be driving the stunning coronavirus death rate in the United States
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/coronavirus-obesity-risks/2020/09/04/0f370980-e22f-11ea-b69b-64f7b0477ed4_story.html
Giannis: travels, puts shoulder into defender, lays it in
Commentators: Wow what an absolutely wonderful move by the MVP
Giannis...yikes, but also a workhorse: https://www.espn.com/nba/boxscore?gameId=401241767
Duncan Robinson colder than Antarctica
Giannis is getting bailed out so hard by Brook and Middleton
The Heat are as cohesive of a team as I've ever seen but I don't see a world in which LeBron or Kawhi don't run them over in the finals
In Texas, Republicans fight voting by mail expansion while encouraging their voters to use it
https://www.texastribune.org/2020/09/04/texas-republicans-vote-by-mail/
Conor Lamb Says 'Actions Speak Louder Than Words' After Trump Denies Report Claiming He Called Soldiers 'Losers' And 'Suckers'
https://pittsburgh.cbslocal.com/2020/09/04/conor-lamb-donald-trump-report-soldiers-suckers-and-losers/
Judge blocks Trump administration from detaining migrant children in hotels
https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/04/politics/migrant-children-detained-hotels-flores/index.html
Trump Boasted of Avoiding STDs While Dating: Vaginas Are 'Landmines ... It Is My Personal Vietnam'
https://people.com/politics/trump-boasted-of-avoiding-stds-while-dating-vaginas-are-landmines-it-was-my-personal-vietnam/
Now the whole bounties on American soldiers don't sound as bad, Trump doesn't care
Trump said the story is not true but if it was true then John Kelly leaked the story. Okay clearly the story is true because how else would he know who it was lol.
Giannis finally remembered he can just do whatever he wants in the lane without getting any offensive calls or travels
Brook Lopez is a brick fucking wall lmao
Take Leonard Out
Get Meyers Leonard outta there!
The CDC tells stores not to argue with angry anti-mask customers. "Don't argue with customers if they make threats or become violent," the CDC advises. "Don't attempt to force anyone who appears to be angry or violent to follow COVID-19 prevention policies."
https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2020/08/26/cdc-stores-dont-argue-angry-anti-mask-customers/5633550002/
The Heat blocked on 4 possessions in a row
https://streamable.com/sxlg18
Giannis took 5 steps on that spin, he travels all game long, so does LeBron
Trump Defenders: He Doesn't Hate the Troops, He's Just 'an Asshole'
https://www.thedailybeast.com/trumps-defenders-he-doesnt-hate-the-troops-he-just-sounds-like-an-asshole
This was not the game to be missing a key scorer off the bench in Kelly O. Not only did the Heat's Meyers Leonard give the Bucks their lead with a quick 8-0 run immediately after he checked into the game in the third with everything coming at his expense, but all of Miami's shooters have gone cold tonight. Duncan, Herro and Nunn can't hit a shot at all right now and Dragic with a below average shooting night as well.
The balance of scoring and assists by the Miami starters in the box score is aesthetically pleasing
https://www.espn.com/nba/boxscore?gameId=401241767
Unknowing Oklahomans appear on Kanye West's application for presidential candidacy
https://kfor.com/your-local-election-hq/unknowing-oklahomans-appear-on-kanye-wests-application-for-presidential-candidacy/
Reading this, I couldn't help recalling Trump's conduct at CIA's Memorial Wall two days after his inauguration. Unlike every other president, Trump didn't acknowledge the sacrifice of those memorialized there. Rather, he boasted about the size of the inaugural crowd.
https://twitter.com/MichaelJMorell/status/1301896775884845056
White House plans to bar federal agencies from racial sensitivity training, labels racial sensitivity training as "un-American"
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/09/04/white-house-racial-sensitivity-training/
A federal judge on Friday ruled that Education Secretary Betsy DeVos' effort to boost the amount of emergency pandemic relief that flows to private school students is illegal and struck down the policy
https://politico.com/news/2020/09/04/devos-private-school-relief-rule-struck-down-409272
Flashback: July 2015: At the heart of @realDonaldTrump statement is a lack of respect for those who have served - a disqualifying characteristic to be president
https://twitter.com/LindseyGrahamSC/status/622457428676886528
Just going to say here again that media organizations have collectively failed to help audiences understand that "anonymous sources" are NOT "people whose names and affiliations we don't know". They are people who names and affiliations we have agreed not to publish.
That really felt like Butler teleported into the paint for that rebound. He almost got to the rim before his shot lol
Jimmy Butler doing a pickup strategy where he knows he will miss the basket but be in the perfect spot for the rebound to shoot again and make the basket
The latest word as Game 1 nears is that Lakers vs. Rockets -- normally as big as it gets in China for the NBA -- will not be broadcast tonight via the country's official national broadcaster (CCTV) or Tencent. Rockets games, of course, have been banned from Chinese TV all season
https://twitter.com/TheSteinLine/status/1302042025936781318
Giannis with a spin move and a travel not called.
https://streamable.com/77g5h1
Soledad O'Brien Documentary Focuses On Homeless In First Days Of COVID-19:
http://baltimoretimes-online.com/news/2020/sep/04/soledad-obrien-documentary-focuses-homeless-first-/
Scene: Kanye West campaign in Arizona 👇🏼
NBC: "Who here is from Arizona?"
Paid gatherers: [...]
NBC: "Who here wants Kanye West to be president?"
Paid gatherers: [...]
https://twitter.com/VaughnHillyard/status/1302045107055595520
Kanye West has spent $1,473,284 in Arizona -- those $$ passed thru an Arizona firm calling itself "Fortified Consulting."AZ consultant @MeghanCox, who has worked for litany of GOPers, was seen, today, talking with individuals claiming to be with Kanye West's campaign here.
https://twitter.com/VaughnHillyard/status/1302011847705493505
"Tonight, the President… as he insists he would never attack an honored member of our military, attacks an honored member of our military, a decorated former Marine general who is also a Gold Star father," @jimsciutto. https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/04/politics/donald-trump-military-the-atlantic-story/index.html
https://twitter.com/AC360/status/1302041251785703425
Melania Trump, a birther who spread the racist birther lie, now believes anonymous sources are dangerous. What was the First Lady's "motivation" to spread a racist lie when she had no evidence?
https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/1302021126294507522
Two members of the 417 Second Amendment Militia group from Missouri traveling to Kenosha, Wisconsin, were arrested Thursday by federal officials and charged with illegally possessing a cache of weapons. Michael M. Karmo and Cody E. Smith were separately charged and ordered to be temporarily detained until their bail hearings on September 8 at 10:30 a.m. in front of Magistrate Judge Stephen C. Dries. Karmo, 40 and Smith, 33, were roommates for a month, worked together and were members of the 417 Second Amendment Militia, a pro-law enforcement group, according to the criminal complaint. They traveled by car to Kenosha to "see for themselves" what was going on at the protests, attended a "Make America Great Again" rally and planned to go to Portland to "take action" if police were defunded, according to Karmo's criminal complaint.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/04/politics/militia-members-kenosha/index.html
In a competitive battle, Bears are expected to name Mitchell Trubisky the starting QB, source tells ESPN. It's due to his progression, leadership and overall performance throughout camp. Nick Foles made decision difficult for Matt Nagy, but the team feels strong about its QBs.
https://twitter.com/AdamSchefter/status/1302026779503276032
He's contradicting with NATO and UN/OPCW. He's undermining his own State Department. He's sacrificing American influence and credibility. And for what? To irritate the press? To own the libs? This is so activating. He has a reasonable record to run on and he sets it on fire.
https://twitter.com/NoahCRothman/status/1302012387340451842
Butler really balling out in the 4th. Some people are built to shine under pressure man, you gotta admire that
I'm trying to figure what Bucks front office was thinking by not surrounding Giannis with another decent player.
Giannis needs help, someone like a Bradley Beal
The Miami Heat defeat the Milwaukee Bucks, 115-100 behind 30/6/7 by Jimmy Butler and take a 3-0 series lead
Jimmy Butler outscored the Milwaukee Bucks 17-13 in the 4th quarter, helping the Heat to overcome an 11 point deficit and defeat the team with the best record in the league.
Butler hits the free throws again to wrap things up
https://streamable.com/bbewfj
Butler loses Hill and Iggy throws a perfect lob for the tip in
https://streamable.com/z6sop0
Jimmy Butler strips the ball from Brook Lopez and scores on the other end
https://streamable.com/58pcmm
Giannis can't get the wide layup to fall
https://streamable.com/tguf2j
Iran's enriched uranium stockpile 10 times limit
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-54033441
The fact is we're more than six months into this pandemic, and:
- 11.5 million Americans don't have their jobs back
- Almost 30 million are on unemployment
- We're down 720,000 manufacturing jobs
- Nearly 1 in 6 small businesses have closed their doors
https://twitter.com/JoeBiden/status/1301990709910794243
Now is not the time for a victory lap, Mr. President. Just because your wealthy friends and donors are doing well doesn't mean everyone else is. Get off the golf course. Call the leaders of Congress to the White House. And make a deal that delivers for working people.
https://twitter.com/JoeBiden/status/1301990711013838849
Lebron wears a Dodgers hat on his way to play the Rockets in the playoffs as a shot at Houston for cheating in the 2017 World Series
https://twitter.com/Lakers/status/1302017709694099456
OMB will instruct federal agencies to come up with a list of all contracts related to training sessions involving "white privilege" or "critical race theory," and do everything possible within the law to cancel those contracts, the memo states.
https://washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/09/04/white-house-racial-sensitivity-training/
.@JoeBiden: "If these statement are true, the president should humbly apologize to every gold star mother and father and every blue star family that he's denigrated and insulted. Who the heck does he think he is?!?"
https://twitter.com/cspan/status/1302053332995932181
Trump's re-election campaign is fighting a group of Navajo Nation citizens who want Arizona's mail-in voting requirements changed in line with a dozen other states, for fear that ballots sent from the tribe's reservation won't be counted in Nov.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/trump-campaign-seeks-block-navajo-nation-voters-lawsuit-over-arizona-n1239328
The Bucks were outscored by 27 in the 4th quarter, the worst points differential in a 4th quarter of a playoff game in the shot clock era.
https://twitter.com/SportsCenter/status/1302056347559751680
Several drug makers developing Covid-19 vaccines plan to issue a public pledge not to seek government approval until the shots have proven to be safe and effective, an unusual joint move among rivals.
https://wsj.com/articles/covid-19-vaccine-developers-prepare-joint-pledge-on-safety-standards-11599257729
52% of young adults in the US are living with their parents. That's the highest share since the Great Depression
https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/04/us/children-living-with-parents-pandemic-pew/index.html
DC penalizes Postmaster DeJoy and wife for underpayment of property taxes
https://www.wusa9.com/article/news/local/dc/dc-penalizes-postmaster-dejoy-and-for-undepayment-of-property-taxes/65-678571d9-a5e6-449b-b77b-113aee35c9f1
The Houston Rockets defeat the Los Angeles Lakers 112-97 behind 36/2/5 from James Harden to take a 1-0 series lead
Lebron James scored zero points in the fourth quarter in the Lakers game 1 loss to the Rockets
Westbrook hits a 3 then gives some attitude
https://streamable.com/7y2kwk
PJ Tucker with the insanely active defense on Anthony Davis results in an airball
https://streamable.com/8g9nq4
Budenholzer says Giannis/Middleton playign 35-36 minutes is "pushing the ceiling"…wow. Fire that idiot coach already.
Russell Westbrook Stays Playing Defense Even On A Dead Ball
https://streamable.com/38rt49
Harden dances on Green and drains the runner over AD
https://streamable.com/fbmm12
Harden slams it with LeBron in pursuit
https://streamable.com/g4dz6f
Harden postgame interview after putting rockets up 1-0Misc. Defense, Defense, Defense
https://streamable.com/mem5mm
Eric Gordon with 23 points on 7/14 FGS and excellent defence on LeBron James as Rockets take game 1
Rockets and Lakers both ended game 1 with 41 rebounds
We all suspected Giannis lightly sprained his ankle early in the game: Bud says Giannis was cleared by the medical staff as good to go despite the right ankle tweak in the 1st quarter. Said it didn't affect the way he used Giannis tonight and doesn't regret not playing him (or Khris Middleton) more in the game.
https://twitter.com/matt_velazquez/status/1302053773544771584
Ohtani and the Angels walks off the Astros in the 11th
https://streamable.com/xemymd
The Dodgers continue their prolonged response to Pillar's grand slam with their third home run of the 8th inning, this one from Mookie Betts
https://bdata-producedclips.mlb.com/9723ed1c-3acc-409c-ae73-d7a6c4c86188.mp4
Zach Davies tonight @OAK: 7 IP, 4 H, 0 R, 4 BB, 5 K on 105 pitches. His season ERA drops to 2.23.
Dylan Bundy vs. Astros: 7 IP, 6 H, 2 R, 1 BB, 8 K on 100 pitches
Manny Machado - afraid of getting hit by a pitch after Tatis homered - hits his 12th home run of the year instead
https://bdata-producedclips.mlb.com/22424a5e-3e43-4e61-b36c-dc461b6f1566.mp4
Fernando Tatis Jr. isn't satisfied with Trout being alone atop the home run leaderboard, so he hits his 14th round tripper of the year
https://bdata-producedclips.mlb.com/c11368a2-3c15-45c2-936f-8b43d5284192.mp4
Yu Darvish today: 7 IP 1 H 1 ER 0 BB 11K
Iguodala beat Giannis with a cross over and deliver a dime to Bam to finish strong over Giannis
https://streamable.com/9m1hmj
Brook Lopez vs Miami: 20.7PPG, 4.7RPG, 1.7BPG, 1.0SPG, on .632 / .533 / .917 splits
Rockets announce that Danuel House Jr. is out for "precautionary reasons" but not in concussion protocol.
https://twitter.com/espn_macmahon/status/1302080857071640578
The Milwaukee Bucks could become the first 1-seed since the NBA/ABA merger to be swept before reaching the Conference Finals
Jake Arrieta against the Mets: 7 IP, 7 H, 2 ER, 1 BB, 7 K, 102 pitches
Lance McCullers Jr. gets pulled after walking three consecutive batters, fails to record an out. His replacement, Luis Garcia, who hasn't pitched above Class A in his career, makes his MLB debut with the bases loaded.
Trump campaign going dark in Arizona, cancels planned TV blitz
https://www.azmirror.com/2020/09/04/trump-campaign-going-dark-in-arizona-cancels-planned-tv-blitz/
I'm really loving how Pete Buttigieg kicked the shit out of Fox News tonight over this story. Flawless.
https://twitter.com/cmclymer/status/1302040687161102336
DHS to label white supremacists as the 'most persistent and lethal threat' to the US even though Islamic terrorists (American and non-Americans alike) murdered more Americans on American soil than white supremacists have.
https://thehill.com/policy/national-security/515244-dhs-to-label-white-supremacists-as-the-most-persistent-and-lethal
Coward Liar Trump illegally and unconstitutionally calls for firing of Fox reporter who quoted Atlantic article on veterans
https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-veterans-suckers-jennifer-griffin-1529849
Trump is "Wrecking the Country" says retired Four Star General Barry McCaffrey
https://www.msnbc.com/deadline-white-house/watch/trump-is-wrecking-the-country-says-retired-four-star-general-barry-mccaffrey-91153477800
'Miracle on the Hudson' pilot Sully Sullenberger criticizes Trump after reports the president called US troops killed in combat losers and suckers
https://www.businessinsider.com/sully-pilot-trump-troops-losers-miracle-hudson-2020-9
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/sully-sullenberger-hudson-river-rips-trump-twitter_n_5f530009c5b6946f3eb218b7
Judge temporarily bans Detroit police from using batons, gas, chokeholds on protesters
https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/detroit/2020/09/04/chokehold-police-tactics-against-protesters-temporarily-banned/5721952002/
'World's loneliest elephant' okayed to quit zoo for new life - An animal welfare group says that Kaavan the elephant will be allowed to leave his Pakistani zoo and transferred to better conditions
https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/worlds-loneliest-elephant-okayed-quit-zoo-life-72834609
Kentucky Republican Represenatative Thomas Massie defended accused Kenosha murderer Kyle Rittenhouse and said he showed 'incredible restraint' in shooting three people
https://www.businessinsider.com/massie-defended-rittenhouse-showed-great-restraint-2020-9
Biden Says He'll Reverse Trump Policies on Cuba
https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/national-international/biden-discusses-approach-to-cuba-in-nbc-6-interview/2603419/
A Florida congresswoman (and former DNC chair) was blocked from visiting two USPS mail sorting facilities amid concerns for delayed mail delivery
https://www.businessinsider.com/congresswoman-blocked-from-visiting-two-usps-mail-sorting-facilities-2020-9
Kyle Rittenhouse and his militia defense ignores that private paramilitaries are illegal
https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/kyle-rittenhouse-his-militia-defense-ignores-private-paramilitaries-are-illegal-ncna1239397
Good: Federal court upholds NJ ban on large-capacity gun magazines
https://www.northjersey.com/story/news/2020/09/04/nj-gun-laws-federal-court-upholds-ban-high-capacity-magazines/5718526002/
Sen. Harris says she "would not trust Donald Trump," regarding the president's push to have a coronavirus vaccine ready for distribution before Election Day.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/harrris-vaccine-i-would-not-trust-donald-trump-n1239422
Hundreds of university researchers have been warned to watch out for suspicious mail after the FBI said that a suspicious package was sent to coronavirus scientists on the East Coast.
https://buzzfeednews.com/article/kenbensinger/suspicious-package-covid-19-researchers-fbi
Biden's transition team makes everybody happy (leftists, progressives, moderates, and a corporatist)
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/09/05/biden-transition-team-obama-alums-409325
Michael Bloomberg is giving $100 million to help graduates of historically Black med schools pay off their loans
https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/03/business/michael-bloomberg-black-schools-donation/index.html
YEP: 'Nightmare Scenario': Bernie Sanders Warns Nation That Is Trump Laying Groundwork for Election Result Mayhem
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/09/05/nightmare-scenario-sanders-warns-nation-trump-laying-groundwork-election-result
Multiple boats have sunk in a boat parade honoring President Trump on Lake Travis in central Texas. It wasn't immediately clear exactly how many boats sunk.
https://nydailynews.com/news/national/ny-texas-lake-boats-distress-20200905-dmzron4vergyhg7nhaiuivzzmi-story.html
U.S. weapons experts believe North Korea may be preparing to test a new strategic weapon system that would vastly expand Kim Jong Un's arsenal and defy President Trump's threshold requirements for continued engagement with the United States.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/north-korea-may-be-prepping-submarine-launched-ballistic-missile-test-n1239420
Anita Hill tells Gloria Borger: Notwithstanding all of his limitations in the past, and the mistakes that he made in the past, notwithstanding those -- at this point, between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, I think Joe Biden is the person who should be elected
https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/05/politics/anita-hill-joe-biden-voting/index.html
Here's the order from Judge Walton granting our motion in part to compel DOJ/FBI to produce by October 30 the FBI 302s from the Mueller probe that were withheld & sent to other govt agencies for review. Yesterday, govt atty said 25% of the entire set were sent out.
https://twitter.com/emptywheel/status/1302353398445080577?s=20
Trump misses self-imposed deadline to release Supreme Court shortlist via
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/trump-misses-self-imposed-deadline-release-supreme-court-short-list-n1239029
New York attorney general moves to empanel a grand jury in the death of Daniel Prude, a Black man who was hooded and held down by police in Rochester.
https://apnews.com/64457a3583b2c5956fca4b78ef4a52a4
Trump Has Illegally And Unconstitutionally Used $58.4 Million In Campaign Donations To Pay Personal Debt
https://www.thedailybeast.com/president-trump-has-used-dollar584-million-in-campaign-donations-for-legal-bills-nyt-reports
The early injury report for Sunday's game 4 between the Bucks and Heat lists Giannis Antetokounmpo as questionable with a right ankle sprain.
https://twitter.com/malika_andrews/status/1302365915472957442
So: Elvis Andrus benched, Rougned Odor benched, Corey Kluber out for the year (officially), Jose Leclerc out for the year (officially), Danny Santana out for the year (officially) Does this qualify as a weekend news dump?
https://twitter.com/ThreeTwoEephus/status/1302374974980751362
Interesting, a billionaire needs donations to fight his own legal battles.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/president-trump-has-used-dollar584-million-in-campaign-donations-for-legal-bills-nyt-reports
Kyle Lowry effort is so impressive. Every loose ball or weird rebound, Kkyle always manages to fly in and at least get a poke on the ball
A reminder: The widow of Sgt. La David Johnson describes her 2017 conversation with Trump. Trump told her, "he knew what he signed up for but it hurts anyways." "It made me cry because I was very angry about the tone of his voice and how he said it."
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/myeshia-johnson-soldier-s-widow-says-trump-couldn-t-remember-n813176
Yesterday, CBP stood by this Border Patrol-produced dramatized video promoting a misleading narrative about violent migrant crime. Now the video has been removed from the U.S. Border Patrol YouTube page and other official social media accounts.
https://news.yahoo.com/the-gotaway-online-video-produced-and-posted-by-the-border-patrol-spreads-fear-of-migrants-005550760.html
Trump's director of national intelligence, John Ratcliffe, has ordered ODNI coms staff to freeze out NYT reporters as punishment for a NYT Magazine article by DraperRobert on the politicization of intelligence re Russian interference in the 2020 election.
https://nytimes.com/2020/09/05/us/politics/court-approves-warrantless-surveillance-rules-while-scolding-fbi.html
Despite Zuckerberg's claims that Facebook had removed a militia event where people discussed gathering in Kenosha to shoot and kill protesters, Facebook never took any such action. The event was taken down by the militia group after two people were killed.
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/facebook-failed-kenosha
Bryce Harper has been ejected, and is screaming at first-base umpire Roberto Ortiz.
https://twitter.com/AnthonyDiComo/status/1302406929709494272
Steven Souza Jr DFA between games of a doubleheader. Yikes
https://twitter.com/jesserogersespn/status/1302402479045390336
Leaked notes obtained by the Telegraph say that when Theresa May asked for Trump to take a strong stand after Russia poisoned Sergei Skripal, Trump replied "I'd rather follow than lead."
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/09/05/exclusive-leaked-meeting-notes-show-boris-johnson-said-trump/
The Toronto Raptors defeat the Boston Celtics 100-93 behind 22/11/7 from Kyle Lowry to even the series at 2-2
Crazy how one shot by OG just changed a potential sweep to a 2-2 series
The fast-growing Creek Fire in Fresno County has trapped about 1,000 people near Mammoth Pool reservoir. Unable to evacuate, they've been told to shelter in place and to jump in the reservoir if necessary.
https://twitter.com/sfchronicle/status/1302408923429974016
https://www.sfchronicle.com/california-wildfires/article/fires-live-updates-Vacaville-Santa-Cruz-California-15495508.php
"According to Cohen, Trump's sycophantic praise of the Russian leader during the 2016 campaign began as a way to suck up and ensure access to the oligarch's money after he lost the election." | "Cohen asserts that another reason that Trump consistently praised Putin was to fulfill his long-held desire to slap his name on a proposed Trump Tower project in Moscow."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/cohen-trump-book/2020/09/05/235aa10a-ef96-11ea-ab4e-581edb849379_story.html
Imagine time traveling to like 2005 and telling people that 15 years from now Osama bin Laden's niece wants Trump to be reelected
In response to our #FOIA lawsuit, the Justice Department has been withholding vast swaths of information from Michael Cohen's FBI interview summary specifically related to Trump Tower Moscow because the govt wants to control the narrative.
https://twitter.com/JasonLeopold/status/1302410350147461120
Patrick Beverley gets ejected out of the game
https://streamable.com/2qw0ev
Patrick Beverly tonight: 2-3-1 in 15 minutes including an ejection
34 year old Kyle Lowry plays 44 minutes, including the entire 2nd half. 22 points, 11 rebounds, 7 assists. 4/10 from 3
Trump has arrived at his golf course in Virginia for the second day in a row. The president has no public events scheduled today .Potentially, even as a cynical political calculation given the news and revelations of the week, the president might have decided to do something other than golf both days of yet another weekend in a row — but he did not change his schedule
The Biden campaign is seizing on Trump's remarks about soldiers and veterans by resurfacing a primary ad highlighting Joe Biden's experience as the reason why he "understands the awesome power, responsibility and sacred duty of being Commander-in-Chief". The campaign is specifically targeting military families online by running the ad on Facebook and Instagram in and around a 50-mile radius of areas in battleground states that house military bases like Fort Bragg in N.C., Fort McCoy in Wisconsin this week.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ly_1OVnuFGE
In a New York Times review of 203 counties where students comprise at least 10% of the population, about half experienced their worst weeks of the pandemic since August 1. In about half of those, new infections are peaking right now.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/06/us/colleges-coronavirus-students.html
More awful injury news for the #Bluejays in Boston. Red-hot Teoscar Hernández expected time miss serious time due to an undisclosed injury. MRI scheduled for later today.
https://twitter.com/longleysunsport/status/1302616653688045570
China has stopped renewing press cards for journalists at US organizations. Chinese officials imply journalists will be expelled if Trump administration doesn't renew visas of Chinese media employees this fall. CNN, WSJ and Getty are all affected.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/06/us/politics/china-us-journalists-visas-expulsions.html
The spy wars over coronavirus vaccines are heating up as China and Russia expand efforts to steal U.S. research. The University of North Carolina was one target.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/05/us/politics/coronavirus-vaccine-espionage.html
A contrast of two pool reports:
- Biden pool report: "He's attending church services at St. Joseph on the Brandywine. The pool glimpsed Biden walking toward the church door at 10:35 a.m."
- Trump pool report: "The caravan pulled into Trump National in Sterling, Virginia at 9:55."
TRUMP IS GOLFING ON SUNDAY AGAIN. TRUMP NEVER GOES TO CHURCH.
Historians will insist that the roots of the Trump Presidency had to be something deep and profound but what actually happened is new client-side copies of emails the FBI had already reviewed surfaced & a bunch of reporters and editors lost their minds.
Kenny on the Bucks entering Game 4: "The Portland Trailblazers did this. They faced elimination like the last 5 games of the bubble, and they won every game. You can win here. There's no hostile environment." Shaq: "But they don't have a Dame Lillard."
https://streamable.com/6q5btg
Rockets' GM Morey: Re-signing D'Antoni 'probably No.1' priority
https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/nba/columnist/mark-medina/2020/09/05/rockets-should-make-mike-dantoni-part-long-term-future/5732629002/
Nick Nurse (Raptors' coach) played Giannis more minutes in the all-star game (30.8) than Giannis averaged under Budenholzer during the regular season (30.4)
Judge Orders Trump Admin To Resume Census Field Operations
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/federal-judge-california-trump-administration-temporary-restraining-order-census-field-operations
To stop Trump, we need to vote in person, even if you have to crawl through broken glass
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2020/09/06/voting-person-order-get-trump-out-office-vote-person-column/5685300002/
Assistant Texas attorney general loses job after bigoted, conspiracy theory tweets surface
https://kvia.com/news/texas/2020/09/06/assistant-texas-attorney-general-loses-job-after-bigoted-conspiracy-theory-tweets-surface/
Trump Admin's Small Business Bailout Has Been Plagued by Waste, Fraud and Abuse
https://truthout.org/articles/trump-admins-small-business-bailout-has-been-plagued-by-waste-fraud-and-abuse/
A federal judge in Washington has reportedly ordered the Trump administration to resume issuing diversity visas to immigrants through a lottery system. "To be clear, there is no statutory requirement that every available diversity visa be issued each year, " U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta, an Obama appointee, wrote in in his decision on Friday, The Associated Press reported. "But that does not mean that the State Department could effectively extinguish the diversity program for a given year by simply sitting on its hands and letting all pending diversity visa applications time out."
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/515314-judge-orders-resumption-of-diversity-visas
The US Attorney should mail DeJoy his indictment
Okay, hold on. Bloomberg describes this guy as a "Shy Trumper," someone "hesitant to share their politics with pollsters, colleagues, and friends." But this guy also self-published a book called "TRUMPBOOK: How Digital Liberals Silenced A Nation Into Making America Hate Again"
https://twitter.com/jbenton/status/1302651365253165056
Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, said his magazine's story about Trump calling Americans who died in battle "losers" and "suckers," was just the tip of the iceberg
https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/06/media/jeffrey-goldberg-atlantic-trump-reliable-sources/index.html
I get why it's tempting for anti-Trump folks to cast the Israel-UAE deal as insignificant. But half of Israel's population is Middle Eastern Jews who were pushed out of Arab and Muslim countries after living as second class citizens. This is a historical reversal of that reality. I think this deal would have eventually happened under any US president, and Trump is mostly just taking credit for regional trends, but that doesn't mean the deal isn't profoundly consequential.
Marlins pitcher Trevor Rogers against the Rays in his 3rd big league start: 6 IP, 4 H, 3 ER, 10 K's
Dean Kremer's MLB Debut for the Orioles: 6 IP, 1 H, 1 ER, 3 BB, 7 K. Starts his MLB career with a 1.50 ERA
Shane Bieber first three innings: 45 pitches 9 batters faced 7 strikeouts 0 hits Before today, Bieber vs. Opposing hitters 2020 1st time through the lineup: .509 OPS 2nd time through the lineup: .494 OPS 3rd time through the lineup: .347 OPS
https://twitter.com/buster_espn/status/1302665984583622656
Louis DeJoy Illegally And Unconstitutionally Used Bonuses To Reimburse Employees for Donations to Republicans Campaigns - Former employees of New Breed Logistics say DeJoy or his aides pressured them to contribute. | A Washington Post analysis of federal and state campaign finance records found a pattern of extensive donations by New Breed employees to Republican candidates, with the same amount often given by multiple people on the same day. Between 2000 and 2014, 124 individuals who worked for the company together gave more than $1 million to federal and state GOP candidates. Many had not previously made political donations, and have not made any since leaving the company, public records show. During the same period, nine employees gave a combined $700 to Democrats. Although it can be permissible to encourage employees to make donations, reimbursing them for those contributions is a violation of North Carolina and federal election laws. Known as a straw-donor scheme, the practice allows donors to evade individual contribution limits and obscures the true source of money used to influence elections.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/louis-dejoy-campaign-contributions/2020/09/06/1187bc2c-e3fe-11ea-8181-606e603bb1c4_story.html
https://www.justice.gov/criminal/file/1029066/download
Dallas Kuechel today vs the Royals. 5IP, 2H, 0R, 0BB, 2K on 49 pitches. Leaves with apparent injury
Jacob deGrom final line today against the Phillies: 7 IP, 3 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 2 BB, 12 SO, 1 HR, 108 pitches
Possible 110°F... everyone good?
https://twitter.com/MikeTrout/status/1302689246021525504
It normally doesn't get that hot in California, California has been consumed with an historic heat wave, the entire West Coast is roasting under historic temperatures and heat indexes (temperature+humidity)
Milwaukee's Giannis Antetokounmpo (right ankle sprain) is planning to play in Game 4 today vs. Miami, sources tell ESPN. (Tip is on ABC, 3:30 PM ET)
https://twitter.com/wojespn/status/1302681121629638656
Giannis laid his health and career on the line to play Game 3 to help his team avoid elimination. Playing with a sprained ankle. And he's had to leave the game with what appears to be a serious injury that will keep him off the court for some time. Getting helped off the court now, putting no weight on his right leg. Really terrible that his season ends like this. At least Giannis didn't quit, he came out and had his best game of the playoffs thus far.
I'm shocked Middleton has taken 5 shots. I don't recall any of them.
The Heat are trying to give Milwaukee the game but no, the Bucks don't want it
Giannis - 19 points
Rest of Bucks - 13 points
Heat should be ashamed they're down after full control of Q1 and first half of Q2
Heat started playing team ball, then got a little cute with it, thinking it was OK to miss shots.
Bucks lost Giannis and The Others realized they were playmakers too. (Bledsoe, Hill, Cash Money, DiVicenzo)
Bucks: desperate Heat: slightly too relaxed and seem a tad unnerved to end the half
Edge: Heat if they play as a team - the greatest strength.
The Bucks' offense flowing better without Giannis illustrates some of the coaching issues. Maybe that's why the coach plays Giannis less. Obviously he's their player and they are better with him, but it does seem like their offense could be designed better. Giannis ball handles too much and messes with their flow and gets too easuly frustrated and sloppy like Westbrook. I really wonder why they don't run screen and roll with Giannis. It seems like it's drive and kick or bust with the Bucks...
'This Is Against the Law and DeJoy Must Be Fired': Postmaster General Accused of Criminal Violation of Campaign Laws
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/09/06/against-law-and-dejoy-must-be-fired-postmaster-general-accused-criminal-violation
it's a measure of where we are in this race that a candidate visiting the grave of his dead son is both a campaign jab against the president of the United States, and also a personal emotional reaction to the news of the week
https://twitter.com/IsaacDovere/status/1302714555060154369
People thinking Mike Budenholzer knows how to adjust in the playoffs must not remember when he coached the Atlanta Hawks when they were the 1 or 2 seed every year and got killed every postseason
A new judicial ruling will open the door for some felons on probation or parole to vote in North Carolina's elections this fall. A panel of three judges ruled that part of the state's felon disenfranchisement law is unconstitutional.
https://www.newsobserver.com/news/politics-government/election/article245500600.html
What happens to your ballot after you mail it? @JoLingKent has the answer from one of the largest all vote processing centers in California. #MTP #IfItsSunday
https://twitter.com/MeetThePress/status/1302600219612323842
"The quotes were anonymous, but it has been an open secret in Washington that many prominent retired four-stars have regarded Trump with growing horror as he assaulted the traditions of discipline and professionalism that are bedrocks of military life."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/09/05/trumps-bad-marriage-with-military-has-finally-exploded/
"Novak Djokovic, the No. 1 seed in the men's draw, was disqualified from the U.S. Open after accidentally striking a lineswoman with a ball hit in frustration," reports @nytimes
https://twitter.com/DavidBegnaud/status/1302705778394984450
U.S. Tennis Association says Novak Djokovic will lose all ranking points earned...& be fined the prize money won at the @usopen
after "his actions of intentional hitting a ball dangerously or recklessly within the court or hitting a ball with negligent disregard..."
https://twitter.com/DavidBegnaud/status/1302719097172406272
__________________________
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/06/us/politics/biden-china.html
On a steamy August day along the Chinese coast, Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. stepped off a minibus at a seaside compound for a series of unusual meetings with China's Communist Party leaders.
At a lunch banquet, Mr. Biden and three other senators argued with Chinese officials about what the O.J. Simpson trial had revealed about the integrity of the U.S. legal system. When the senators met afterward with the party secretary, Jiang Zemin, they sparred over that and other thorny issues: missile technology proliferation, human rights and Taiwan.
https://www.csmonitor.com/2001/0810/p6s1-wosc.html
But Mr. Biden, leading his first overseas trip as the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was also there in Beidaihe in 2001 to help usher in an important era in America's relationship with China — the building of a commercial link that would allow the Communist nation entry into the World Trade Organization.
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/22/world/asia/chinas-communist-elders-take-backroom-intrigue-beachside.html
Joe Biden's China Journey
As a United States senator, he spoke of transforming China through trade. As a presidential candidate two decades later, he denounces it as a "dictatorship."
By Edward Wong, Michael Crowley and Ana Swanson
Sept. 6, 2020
Updated 5:16 p.m. ET
"The United States welcomes the emergence of a prosperous, integrated China on the global stage, because we expect this is going to be a China that plays by the rules," Mr. Biden told Mr. Jiang, recalled Frank Jannuzi, the Senate aide who organized the trip and took notes at Mr. Biden's side.
https://mansfieldfdn.org/about/mansfield-foundation-board/frank-jannuzi/
The senator traveled days later to a dirt-road village near the Great Wall. Seven thousand miles from Delaware, his adopted home state, Mr. Biden glad-handed bemused locals like a candidate, even taking communion from a Catholic priest. He returned to Washington seeing more promise than peril, offering reporters the same message he had delivered to Chinese leaders: The United States welcomed China's emergence "as a great power, because great powers adhere to international norms in the areas of nonproliferation, human rights and trade."
Two decades later, China has emerged as a great power — and, in the eyes of many Americans, a dangerous rival. Republicans and Democrats say it has exploited the global integration that Mr. Biden and many other officials supported.
The 2020 election has been partly defined by what much of Washington sees as a kind of new Cold War. And as Mr. Biden faces fierce campaign attacks from President Trump, his language on China points to a drastic shift in thinking.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/15/us/politics/trump-ads-joe-biden.html
Mr. Biden calls Xi Jinping, the authoritarian Chinese leader, a "thug." He has threatened, if elected, to impose "swift economic sanctions" if China tries to silence American citizens and companies. "The United States does need to get tough on China," he wrote this winter in an essay in Foreign Affairs. Mr. Biden now sees the country as a top strategic challenge, according to interviews with more than a dozen of his advisers and foreign policy associates, and his own words.
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2020-01-23/why-america-must-lead-again
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/policy-2020/foreign-policy/
Mr. Biden's 20-year road from wary optimism to condemnation — while still straining for some cooperation — is emblematic of the arc of U.S.-China relations, which have deteriorated to an unstable and potentially explosive state. But as Mr. Trump denounces the Washington establishment's failures on China, Mr. Biden, an avatar of that establishment, is not recanting his past enthusiasm for engagement.
In a Foreign Affairs essay in 2018, two former Obama administration officials who advise Mr. Biden, Kurt M. Campbell and Ely Ratner, said Democratic and Republican administrations had both been guilty of fundamental policy missteps on China.
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2018-02-13/china-reckoning
"Across the ideological spectrum, we in the U.S. foreign policy community have remained deeply invested in expectations about China — about its approach to economics, domestic politics, security and global order — even as evidence against them has accumulated," they wrote. "The policies built on such expectations have failed to change China in the ways we intended or hoped."
While refraining from admitting fault in his previous views, Mr. Biden speaks these days not of transforming China but of restoring the United States, according to his policy statements and interviews with his aides. They say the United States must regain its role as a leader of liberal values and economic innovation, and that will give Washington the standing to rally like-minded nations to constrain China.
Among Mr. Biden's priorities are rebuilding alliances and reasserting a global defense of democracy, which Mr. Trump has eroded, they say. Mr. Biden's "Build Back Better" economic plan promotes investments in U.S. industries and research, partly to compete with China. And he sees some areas where Washington and Beijing can cooperate: climate change, health security and nonproliferation.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/09/us/politics/biden-buy-american.html
But relations are at their lowest point since the re-establishment of formal ties in 1979. Chinese officials have accelerated their authoritarian policies, and Beijing's assertions of power in Hong Kong, the South China Sea and elsewhere are seen in Washington as open defiance.
While Trump administration hawks aim to set the two nations on a long-term course of confrontation, Mr. Trump himself vacillates wildly on China. He halted his damaging trade war this year, then called Mr. Xi "a very, very good friend" and expressed "much respect!" on Twitter. But Mr. Trump now talks angrily of the "China virus," referring to the coronavirus outbreak.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/25/world/asia/us-china-trump-xi.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/18/us/politics/trump-china-bolton.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/22/business/economy/trade-economy.html
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1243407157321560071
To Change China
Mr. Biden says he has had a "long interest in the evolving nature of the Chinese Communist Party" from his first visit to the country "as a kid in the Senate" in April 1979, as part of the first U.S. congressional delegation to the country since China's Communist revolution in 1949. He met with the country's leader, Deng Xiaoping, who was then beginning to transform China's command economy with market reforms.
Hosting Chinese officials as the vice president in May 2011, Mr. Biden recalled that trip fondly. While acknowledging a "debate" on the question, he said he "believed then what I believe now: that a rising China is a positive, positive development, not only for China but for America and the world writ large."
https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2011/05/09/remarks-vice-president-joe-biden-opening-session-us-china-strategic-econ
But as the country boomed over the decades, Mr. Biden was also a frequent critic, especially on human rights.
Outraged by the 1989 crackdown against protesters around Tiananmen Square, he introduced legislation to create a federally funded news media network to promote democratic values within the country. Mr. Biden realized China was a "brutal system," said James P. Rubin, a Senate Foreign Relations Committee aide who later served as a State Department spokesman. The station went online in 1996 as Radio Free Asia and operates to this day.
Mr. Biden also saw limits to what the United States could realistically demand. In 1991, as Congress debated granting China favored-nation trading status, he acknowledged the country had a "reprehensible" record on human rights and "unfair trade practices." But he argued that the top priority for the United States was China's sale of missiles to Iran and Syria, which could threaten Israel.
https://www.nytimes.com/1991/11/15/opinion/IHT-its-time-to-rope-inchinas-rogueelephant-act.html
By the end of the decade, Republicans and a growing number of moderate Democrats were extolling the benefits of freer trade with China. When the Senate debated in September 2000 whether to end 20 years of annual reviews of China's status and permanently normalize trade, paving the way for the country's entry into the World Trade Organization, Mr. Biden was a strong supporter.
Like many others in Congress, he argued that China's global integration might "influence the structure of their internal social, economic and political systems." Permanently normalized trade, he said on the Senate floor, "continues a process of careful engagement designed to encourage China's development as a productive, responsible member of the world community." Mr. Biden also predicted that Delaware's chemical and poultry industries would benefit, as well as General Motors and Chrysler, both of which operated major plants in the state.
On Sept. 19, 2000, the Senate approved the measure, 83 to 15. As in the House, much of the modest opposition centered on China's record on human rights and workers' rights.
https://www.nytimes.com/2000/09/20/news/final-passage-of-bill-to-normalize-us-ties-is-approved-83-to-15-senate.html
Mr. Trump now calls China's entry into the World Trade Organization "one of the greatest geopolitical and economic disasters in world history."
But support for China's membership was widespread at the time, including in corporations and the Republican Party. And excluding the world's most populous nation from the international trade system might have led to worse outcomes, analysts say.
Chad Bown, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, said that if China had not joined the World Trade Organization, the United States could have still lost manufacturing jobs to other countries as global trade and automation increased.
"It's not obvious to me that if China hadn't been allowed in, that things would have developed in the U.S. differently," he said.
The United States also exacted a heavy price for China's membership, far higher than for any other country that had joined the group thus far. China was forced to lower its high tariffs, alter thousands of laws and regulations, and adopt policies to open up markets.
But over the decades, China disappointed hopes for a broader transformation. State-owned enterprises strengthened their control of strategic industries, officials coerced technology transfer from foreign companies or outright stole corporate secrets, and the Communist Party limited the development of an independent judiciary. As its economy became stronger, China's political system became less free.
Some Democrats say President George W. Bush neglected China during a crucial period. As Beijing pushed forward with its economic opening, Mr. Bush — along with most American policymakers, including Mr. Biden — remained consumed with the Middle East and Afghanistan after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.
Many American companies and consumers did benefit from the trade, but in parts of the country — especially in the industrial states that helped elect Mr. Trump in 2016 — shuttered factories and exported jobs produced fury at both Beijing and Washington.
Between 1999 and 2011, competition from China cost the United States more than 2 million factory jobs, according to academic research. In the midst of that, flaws in the U.S. financial system set off a global economic crisis. In 2008 and 2009, as Mr. Biden took the reins of the second most powerful office in the United States, the major G.M. and Chrysler plants in his state shuttered.
http://economics.mit.edu/files/11560
Basketball and Battleships
At the end of his first term, President Barack Obama rolled out an ambitious shift in U.S. foreign policy, moving diplomatic and military resources from the Middle East to Asia, mainly to address the challenge of China. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called it a "pivot," and Mr. Obama said "the United States is a Pacific power, and we are here to stay." He put Marines in Australia and tried forging a trade pact among 12 Pacific Rim nations that was implicitly aimed at countering China.
https://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/16/world/asia/united-states-sees-china-everywhere-as-it-shifts-attention-to-asia.html
https://2009-2017.state.gov/secretary/20092013clinton/rm/2011/11/176999.htm
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/nov/17/obama-asia-pacific-address-australia-parliament
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/17/world/asia/china-tpp-ambassadors.html
Mr. Biden met with Mr. Xi at least eight times in 2011 and 2012 to gauge China's incoming leader, even playing basketball with him at a high school in Sichuan Province.
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/18/world/asia/chinese-vice-president-xi-jinping-tours-los-angeles-port.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/22/world/asia/22china.html
Mr. Campbell, the assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs who helped organize the trips, recalled that Mr. Biden had ended up judging Mr. Xi as tough and unsentimental, someone who questioned American power and believed in the superiority of the Communist Party. In a White House meeting, he said, Mr. Biden told advisers, "I think we've got our hands full with this guy."
Mr. Xi and other Chinese officials saw the pivot as Cold War-style containment. And in 2013, they started bolstering territorial and maritime claims in the East China Sea and South China Sea, which the U.S. military dominates. Mr. Biden supported the administration's decision to fly U.S. bombers and sail warships through the zones, and he told Mr. Xi of Washington's growing anger. The old relationship was fading.
https://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/24/world/asia/china-warns-of-action-against-aircraft-over-disputed-seas.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/17/world/asia/spratly-archipelago-china-trying-to-bolster-its-claims-plants-islands-in-disputed-waters.html
"I wanted to make it clear that as long as they played by a set of basic international rules that were written, and he did not like the fact he didn't write them — they didn't write them — we'd have no problem," Mr. Biden said in his interview with The Times. "But to the extent they tried to fundamentally alter the rules of airspace and seaspace, what constitutes freedom of navigation, etc., then we'd have a problem."
A Kettle of Hawks
Hours before Mr. Biden gave his Democratic nomination acceptance speech in August on a stage in Wilmington, Del., he got an unexpected boost.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnmQr0WfSvo
Seventy-five Republican national security specialists, some of whom had worked for Mr. Trump, released a letter endorsing Mr. Biden. They asserted that Mr. Trump "lacks the character and competence to lead this nation and has engaged in corrupt behavior."
https://www.defendingdemocracytogether.org/national-security/
The writers mentioned two episodes from Mr. Trump's relationship with Mr. Xi: when he called on the Chinese leader last year to "start an investigation" into Mr. Biden and when he praised Mr. Xi as a "brilliant leader" — an example of Mr. Trump cozying up to dictators. The letter echoed recent devastating accounts, including from John R. Bolton, the former national security adviser, who called Mr. Trump's approach to China haphazard and based on self-interest rather than the national interest
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/20/us/politics/republican-national-security-biden.html
https://www.wsj.com/articles/john-bolton-the-scandal-of-trumps-china-policy-11592419564
That message dovetailed with Mr. Biden's: that Mr. Trump's supposed toughness on China was a mirage. The Biden campaign has hammered the president over his response to the coronavirus, running advertisements reminding voters that Mr. Trump praised Mr. Xi's handling of the pandemic. And Mr. Biden has said that Mr. Trump's trade deal with China is "failing."
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-china/biden-says-trumps-china-trade-deal-is-failing-badly-idUSKCN25131X
Mr. Biden's attempts to out-hawk Mr. Trump have prompted some blowback: Some Asian-Americans have criticized his anti-China advertisements as racist. And leftist critics of American power say Mr. Biden is perpetuating misguided ideas of U.S. superiority.
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/04/23/biden-ad-exposes-left-rift-china-202241
https://quincyinst.org/2020/03/09/why-joe-bidens-foreign-policy-vision-isnt-so-visionary/
But Mr. Biden is under political pressure to look tough. A new poll conducted by the Pew Research Center found that 73 percent of Americans have an unfavorable view of China, the highest in at least 15 years. More than half see China as a competitor.
https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2020/07/30/americans-fault-china-for-its-role-in-the-spread-of-covid-19/
With his trade proposals, Mr. Biden has tried to bridge the views between the Democratic Party's center and its left wing, led by Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont. That has sometimes resulted in ambiguity. Mr. Biden has not committed to removing Mr. Trump's tariffs on China; his aides say he would first review how they affect the American middle class.
Mr. Biden has also held back from promising to have the United States enter the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which, despite Mr. Obama's efforts, failed to gain enough support among Americans partly because of opposition from labor unions and progressive Democratic politicians. Japan helped finalize the agreement.
Some of Mr. Biden's ideas echo those of Trump officials, including incentives to move important corporate supply chains out of China. He envisions using the federal government's purchasing power, through "Buy American plans," to bolster manufacturing of critical goods like pharmaceuticals at home.
But while Mr. Trump and Mr. Sanders call for punishing China, Mr. Biden's aides emphasize a restoration of U.S. domestic strength. Speaking in June at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Jake Sullivan, one of Mr. Biden's top advisers, said the United States "should put less focus on trying to slow China down and more emphasis on trying to run faster ourselves." Aides say that includes making investments in scientific research and emerging U.S. industries, as well as restoring alliances abroad.
On human rights, Mr. Biden insists China must pay a price. A campaign spokesman said in August that Mr. Biden believed the Chinese government was committing "genocide" against ethnic Uighur Muslims in the Xinjiang region. Mr. Biden says he will impose sanctions and commercial restrictions on Chinese officials and entities responsible for repression. While the Trump administration has recently sanctioned companies and individuals involved in Xinjiang, Mr. Trump had previously encouraged Mr. Xi to keep building internment camps there, Mr. Bolton wrote, and to handle pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong in his own way.
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/08/25/trump-administration-china-genocide-uighurs-401581
https://twitter.com/elyratner/status/1278458007811248130
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/20/business/economy/china-sanctions-uighurs-labor.html
Mr. Biden plans to try to win China's cooperation on issues like climate change, Iran and North Korea. But that could be a challenge if Trump administration hawks succeed in hard-wiring hostility into the relationship. And regardless, every interaction with China, Mr. Campbell said, was a negotiation in which Chinese officials tried to find a source of leverage, "even when it's something that's in their mutual interest, like climate change."
In the past few years, China has lost the benefit of the doubt among Mr. Campbell and other key Biden advisers, all Obama administration veterans who are likely to hold important government posts if Mr. Biden wins.
In their 2018 essay, Mr. Campbell and Mr. Ratner urged "doing away with the hopeful thinking" of the past. Mr. Sullivan, Antony J. Blinken and Jeffrey Prescott, all members of Mr. Biden's inner circle, agree on the need to confront China on bad behavior. Susan Rice and Samantha Power, often mentioned as potential candidates for secretary of state, denounce Beijing's atrocities on ethnic Uighurs and repression in Hong Kong.
https://www.npr.org/2020/08/04/898853269/susan-rice-is-on-bidens-short-list-to-be-his-running-mate
"They'll use carrots and sticks and pressure and reassurance to negotiate with the Chinese side," said Susan L. Shirk, a China scholar at the University of California, San Diego, and a State Department official under President Bill Clinton. "I don't think they'll shy away from imposing costs."
https://gps.ucsd.edu/faculty-directory/susan-shirk.html
One thing is clear: If Mr. Biden becomes president, his 40-year association with China will reach a crescendo. Analysts on both sides of the Pacific say greater conflict may be inevitable, given the two nations' ideological systems, nationalist sentiments and trajectories — one a superpower on the ascent, the other trying to preserve its reach. Wang Yi, China's foreign minister, said his nation rejected a "new Cold War," but he emphasized that "the United States must abandon its fantasy of remodeling China to U.S. needs."
https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/zxxx_662805/t1804328.shtml
Mr. Wang's words have added resonance as Mr. Biden and his fellow policymakers wrestle with their earlier mission of trying to transform China. Even on his 2001 trip, Mr. Biden heard a similar message about the limits of American agency when he tried to highlight democratic ideals in a discussion with about 40 graduate students at Fudan University in Shanghai.
"There's a question I've been meaning to ask students of China," Mr. Biden said, according to Mr. Jannuzi, who is now the president of the Maureen and Mike Mansfield Foundation. "The students of Tiananmen Square, were they patriots or traitors to the People's Republic of China?"
There was silence. Then, a physics student, a scholar of Newton and Einstein, stood up.
"The students of Tiananmen were heroes of the People's Republic of China," he said. "Senator, change will come to China. But it will be we, the students of Newton, who determine the pace and the direction of that change, and not you or anyone else working on the banks of the Potomac."
Edward Wong is a diplomatic and international correspondent who has reported for The Times for more than 20 years, 13 from Iraq and China. He received a Livingston Award and was on a team of Pulitzer Prize finalists for Iraq War coverage. He has been a Nieman Fellow at Harvard and a Ferris Professor of Journalism at Princeton. @ewong
Michael Crowley is a White House correspondent, covering President Trump's foreign policy. He joined The Times in 2019 from Politico, where he was the White House and national security editor, and a foreign affairs correspondent. @michaelcrowley
Ana Swanson is based in the Washington bureau and covers trade and international economics for The New York Times. She previously worked at The Washington Post, where she wrote about trade, the Federal Reserve and the economy. @AnaSwanson
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Giannis Antetokounmpo has been diagnosed with a right ankle sprain and is out for the game
https://twitter.com/malika_andrews/status/1302708462711975937
Giannis exits the game with 19 points, 4 rebounds, 1 steal and 1 block in 11 minutes as he reinjures his ankle
Nikola Jokic (right wrist sprain) has been added to the Nuggets injury report and is questionable
https://www.twitter.com/TJMcBrideNBA/status/1302715750638063616
The Milwaukee Bucks (1-3) barely hold off the struggling Miami Heat (3-1) and keep their season alive by a score of 118-115 in OT behind 36/8/8 from Khris Middleton
Middleton heroic performance to keep the Bucks alive: 36-8-8 on 12-28 shooting
Bam Adebayo in Game 4 against the Bucks, 26 Points/ 12 Rebounds/ 8 assists on 10/13 shooting from the field in 44 Minutes
Jimmy Butler of the Miami Heat scored 2 points in the fourth and 2 points in overtime
The Heat had 9 games that went into overtime this regular season and won 8 of them
Middleton hits the dagger to give the Bucks a 4 point lead with 6.3 secs remaining
https://streamable.com/qsey0n
Fernando Tatis jr. hit a 2-run homer to give the Padres a 5-2 lead. It was his 15th HR of the season.
https://bdata-producedclips.mlb.com/2fff7268-419a-453d-9d11-12f203f18307.mp4
White Sox sweep the Royals in a 4-game series in Kansas City
Wilson Ramos hits the Mets' 5th home run of the day to put them up 14-1
https://streamable.com/r6dz7z
44% Of Greeks Would refuse to take a free Coronavirus Vaccine according to national poll, with the figure rising to 54% among the 17-34 age group
https://www.barrons.com/news/44-pct-of-greeks-would-snub-coronavirus-vaccine-poll-01599414004
Trump fancied several of the pieces in the U.S. ambassador's historic residence in Paris, where he was staying, and stole them, the art theft totalled $750,000
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-09-06/trump-ended-2018-france-trip-having-art-loaded-on-air-force-one
I called nearly two dozen donors that have given as much as $106,000 a piece to the RNC for its legal spending account to ask them how they felt about so much of their money being spent to defend Trump's personal interests. None of them would comment.
https://twitter.com/EricLiptonNYT/status/1302740496956174337
Los Angeles reports hottest day on record as temperature reaches 121 degrees Fahrenheit (49.4°C) in Woodland Hills
https://twitter.com/BNONews/status/1302739771371008001
The most obvious, yet still infuriating thing in #PeterStrzok book is his belated admission that #Comey blew it when he criticized #HillaryClinton on the eve of the '16 election, and that doing so "pushed the needle toward #Trump." Comey's ego ruined him and crippled the country.
https://twitter.com/howardfineman/status/1302671799155658754
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrzej_Gawroński_(actor)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annie_Cordy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jiří_Menzel
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tam_Ping-man
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lou_Brock
Lou Brock was the hitter Tom Seaver faced the most in his career. Seaver was the pitcher Brock faced the most times in his career. The two Hall of Famers passed five days apart. What a thing.
https://twitter.com/PeteAbe/status/1302740155137249295
All 10 of Bieber's strikeouts from today's Indians victory over the Brewers
https://twitter.com/FOXSportsCLE/status/1302712100549263361
Orca that carried dead calf for 17 days gives birth to healthy and precocious new baby
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/southern-resident-whales-new-calf-1.5714424
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