Hope Hicks has COVID and …
It was inevitable:
14 days minimum, and that’s assuming he’s asymptomatic. Hicks is reportedly feeling ill.
The worst part is that Joe Biden just spent 90 minutes indoors with an unmasked, reckless, super-spreader. Fingers crossed that he is negative.
Update —
What a prince:
Here’s a little smile to get you through the night:
Personally, I think this is the best thing about all the remote broadcasts. I love it when the cat jumps up on the chair or the the dog ambles around in the background — or the little adorable grandson decides to join the party. We are all more isolated than ever and spend so much time in front of screens that it’s nice to have a little window into the real lives of the people we watch all day. It’s all we’ve got right now.
Getting rid of him is job one. But it’s not the end of it. It’s just the beginning
This is just outrageous and it’s going to result in violence. These lies are not just the usual campaign spin. They are dangerous.
Representative Tom Malinowski, Democrat of New Jersey, is facing down death threats from QAnon supporters after the House Republicans’ campaign arm falsely accused him of lobbying to protect sexual predators.
QAnon supporters began targeting Mr. Malinowski, a first-term congressman, on Tuesday, after he led a bipartisan resolution condemning the movement, which spreads a baseless conspiracy theory that President Trump is battling a cabal of Democratic pedophiles.
QAnon believers seized on an advertisement released last month by the campaign arm, the National Republican Congressional Committee, that falsely claimed that Mr. Malinowski, then a lobbyist for Human Rights Watch, worked to block a provision in a 2006 crime bill that would have expanded registration requirements for sex offenders.
Death threats and other harassing messages have since poured into Mr. Malinowski’s office in Washington. In an interview on Wednesday, he called the threats “a direct result” of the advertisement, noting that the calls his office had received cited its central accusation.
“We’ve been warning the Republicans running this play for at least the last two or three weeks that they were playing with fire,” he said. “Now the match has been lit.”
The threats against Mr. Malinowski were earlier reported by BuzzFeed News.
QAnon, the New York Times columnist Kevin Roose has explained, is the umbrella term for a sprawling set of internet conspiracy theories that claim, falsely, that the world is run by a group of Satan-worshiping pedophiles who are plotting against Mr. Trump while operating a global child sex-trafficking ring. The F.B.I. has warned that QAnon poses a potential domestic terrorism threat.
The attack ad against Mr. Malinowski played directly to the group’s chief charge.
“In every city, in every neighborhood, around every corner, sex offenders are living among us,” the narrator of the ad intoned.
“Tom Malinowski chose sex offenders over your family,” the ad said.
A separate document circulated by Republican officials repeated the claim, specifically stating that Mr. Malinowski “worked to ensure sex offenders who violated children” would not have to join the registry.
Mr. Malinowski, a former State Department official in the Obama administration, has said he did not work on that bill — a statement corroborated by Human Rights Watch — and that his portfolio at the organization was focused on foreign policy matters.
But the campaign arm doubled down on its claim on Wednesday in response to the BuzzFeed News report.
“The only person who bears responsibility here is Tom Malinowski for his decision to lobby against the creation of a national sex offender registry,” Chris Pack, the communications director for the committee, said in a statement, calling the congressman’s actions “disgusting.” “Congressman Malinowski must live with the consequences of his actions.”
Mr. Malinowski said he had confronted Representative Tom Emmer of Minnesota, the National Republican Congressional Committee’s chairman, on Tuesday evening on the House floor about the QAnon death threats inspired by his committee’s ads. Mr. Emmer, he said, denied knowing what QAnon was and said that he was not responsible for what others did with the committee’s campaign material.
He knows what they did. And he’s fine with it.
This is who they are. And, I’m sorry, they’ve been this way for a very long time. They just used to be better at hiding it.
John Ratcliffe originally couldn’t get confirmed for Director of national Intelligence because he was completely unqualified and was found to have embellished his thin resume anyway. The Rogue Republican Party ended up confirming him and now he’s basically using the Intelligence Community as an arm of the Trump campaign:
President Trump’s spy chief ignored urgings from senior U.S. officials not to release information about Russian intelligence material containing unverified allegations about Hillary Clinton and the 2016 election, according to people familiar with the matter.
Officials at the Central Intelligence Agency and National Security Agency, as well as nonpolitical career personnel within the office of Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe, feared that sharing the information with Congress would give credence to unsubstantiated Kremlin-backed material. They argued the claim was sourced to Russian intelligence services that interfered in the 2016 election to denigrate Mrs. Clinton, that year’s Democratic presidential nominee, and could have been deliberate disinformation, the people said.
A CIA spokesman referred reporters to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which Mr. Ratcliffe runs. The NSA declined to comment and referred questions to the same office, known as the ODNI.
“We don’t comment on internal [intelligence community] deliberations,” an ODNI spokeswoman said.
On Tuesday, Mr. Ratcliffe sent a letter to Sen. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.), the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, that disclosed that Russian intelligence analysis obtained by U.S. spy agencies claimed that Mrs. Clinton, the 2016 Democratic nominee for president, had approved a campaign plan that year to tie then-candidate Donald Trump to Moscow’s hacking of Democratic emails. Mr. Graham then released the letter publicly.
“The [intelligence community] does not know the accuracy of this allegation or the extent to which the Russian intelligence analysis may reflect exaggeration or fabrication,” Mr. Ratcliffe said in the letter.
The Senate Intelligence Committee, on which Republicans have a majority, had already reviewed the Russians’ claim about Mrs. Clinton and deemed it to lack factual basis, according to people familiar with the matter. Politico earlier reported on the panel’s rejection of the Kremlin’s information.
Mr. Ratcliffe’s decision to release the material prompted criticism in interviews, on social media and in congressional testimony from Democratic lawmakers and former senior U.S. intelligence officials—many of whom have served both Republican and Democratic administrations—that Mr. Ratcliffe is using his position to help Mr. Trump’s re-election campaign.
“This is the most blatant act of politicization by a DNI that I have ever seen,” wrote Mike Morrell, a former senior CIA official under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, on Twitter.
Former FBI Director James Comey told the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, “It contains within it a statement that it is unverified information, so I really don’t know what he’s doing.”
Nick Merrill, a spokesman for Mrs. Clinton, said the claim was “utter, baseless, bullshit.”
Mr. Trump made a brief reference to the letter at Tuesday night’s presidential debate. “What happened today with Hillary Clinton, where it was a whole big con job,” Mr. Trump said.
Following the disclosure of his letter, Mr. Ratcliffe denied the Kremlin-sourced claims were Russian disinformation, and said they had “not been assessed as such by the intelligence community.”
Mr. Ratcliffe, a former Republican congressman, was a vocal supporter of Mr. Trump before taking the spy-chief job earlier this year. Democrats have accused him of abusing his position to try to help Mr. Trump in the November election, arguing Mr. Ratcliffe is seeking to wield intelligence—especially as it relates to Russian election interference—on behalf of Mr. Trump, who dismissed previous intelligence directors after clashing with them over the issue.
“Ratcliffe is even willing to rely on unverified Russian information to try to concoct a political scandal, a shocking abdication of his responsibilities to the country,” Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, a Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said.
How many of these cronies in Trump’s government are prepared to compromise the security of the United States for Donald Trump? How many will sell what they know once they are out of office — starting with Donald Trump?
If past is prologue, many.
This is much worse than it needs to be because Trump has mishandled the COVID pandemic so badly and his henchmen in the US Senate refuse to take action to support the economic turmoil that persists because of it.
1.4 million Americans filed new unemployment claims last week. For 28 consecutive weeks, more people have filed for benefits than during the single worst week of the Great Recession.
Washington Post’s Heather Long: “Layoffs are still going on at a rapid pace. 1.4 million Americans filed a *new* UI or PUA unemployment claim last week — about the same as the prior two weeks.”
CNBC: “The total is still well above anything the U.S. has seen since before the crisis.”
26 million Americans are receiving some form of unemployment relief – over 18 times where we were a year ago.
Washington Post’s Heather Long: “**26 million people are on unemployment**”
Nearly 63 million unemployment claims have been filed since the pandemic began, far surpassing the total during the entire Great Recession.
Business Insider: “The nearly 63 million unemployment-insurance filings made throughout the coronavirus pandemic trounce the 37 million filings seen during the 18-month Great Recession.”
Job growth slowed significantly in August.
Axios: “The labor market is rebounding, but the pace of hiring has dropped off. The slowdown could be a sign of what’s to come: a long, sluggish job market recovery… President Trump has praised job gains in recent months, even though they have consistently slowed from June’s surprise 4.8 million jump.”
BLS: “Total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 1.4 million in August, following increases of larger magnitude in the prior 3 months.”
Wall Street Journal: “The number of available jobs in the U.S. leveled off late this summer, the latest sign momentum in the labor market is easing six months after the coronavirus pandemic took hold in the U.S. The increase in the number of job postings, a real-time measure of labor-market activity, has slowed dramatically since late July, and last week stood about 20% below 2019 levels, according to data the job-search site Indeed.com shared with The Wall Street Journal.”
Fewer than half of jobs lost during the pandemic have come back, with 11.5 million fewer jobs than in February.
BLS: “Total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 1.4 million in August, following increases of larger magnitude in the prior 3 months. In August, nonfarm employment was below its February level by 11.5 million, or 7.6 percent.”
Washington Post’s Heather Long: “Official unemployment rate = 8.4% That’s the lowest unemployment rate since March but one of worst in modern history. **About 48% of the 22 million jobs lost during the pandemic have returned**”
Permanent job losses rose by 534,000 in August to 2.1 million since February.
BLS: “In August, the number of permanent job losers increased by 534,000 to 3.4 million; this measure has risen by 2.1 million since February.”
Hispanic and Asian unemployment remains over 10 percent, and the Black unemployment rate remains nearly twice that of white Americans.
Washington Post’s Heather Long: “This continues to be a highly uneven recovery. Black, Hispanic and younger workers remain over 10% unemployed Men: 8% Women: 8.4% Teens: 16.1% White: 7.3% Hispanic: 10.5% Asian: 10.7% Black: 13%”
There continue to be mass layoffs costing tens of thousands of jobs.
Yahoo News: “Still, a wave of new layoffs from major corporations looms. On Tuesday, Disney said it would be cutting 28,000 jobs in its resort business, in one of the deepest reductions announced so far during the pandemic period. Shell on Wednesday said it planned to slash up to 9,000 positions by the end of 2022. And airlines including American Airlines and United Airlines Holdings have each warned they could furlough some 19,000 and 12,000 workers, respectively, following the October lapse of provisions under Congress’s CARES Act that gave the industry billions to help keep workers on payrolls.”
Bloomberg: “Tens of thousands of job cuts announced by blue-chip companies in a 24-hour period are a warning sign for the world’s recovery and emerge just ahead of two key reports forecast to show limited progress in the U.S. labor market.”
Challenger Jobs Report: “Job cuts announced by U.S.-based employers jumped to 118,804 in September, up 2.6% from August’s total of 115,762, according to a monthly report released Thursday by global outplacement and business and executive coaching firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc. September’s total is 186% higher than the 41,557 job cuts announced in September 2019.”
Small businesses remain in peril with millions of small firms at risk and hundreds of thousands expecting to have to close in the next six months.
Bloomberg: “About one in 20 small firms say they expect to permanently shut down in the next six months, according to the latest Small Business Pulse Survey by the Census Bureau.”
CNBC: “Yelp also takes into account the businesses whose closures have become permanent. That number has steadily increased throughout the past six months, now reaching 97,966, representing 60% of closed businesses that won’t be reopening.”
The good news is that the unemployment rate is “only” 8.4% which the president will no doubt trumpet as the greatest unemployment rate in history.
Recall what he started out with in January 2017:
Jobs — The economy has added nearly 2.2 million jobs in the most recent 12 months. It has gained jobs for 75 straight months – the longest streak on record.
President Barack Obama was not so fortunate. When he took office, the economy had already lost 4.4 million jobs in the preceding 12 months.
During Obama’s first 13 months, the economy continued to shed another 4.3 million jobs. But as Trump enters office, employers are eager to hire millions more. The number of job openings continues to hold at near record levels.
The most recent figures show that as of the last business day in November, there were more than 5.5 million unfilled job openings — double the number in the month Obama took office in 2009.
The highest ever recorded in the nearly 16 years the Bureau of Labor Statistics has tracked this figure was in April 2016, when job openings topped 5.8 million. The figure has now been above 5 million every month for 22 months in a row.
Unemployment — Obama also leaves Trump an unemployment rate that is well below the historical norm.
Currently it stands at 4.7 percent. In all the months since 1948 the median jobless rate was 5.6 percent.
Thus Trump has been dealt a far better hand than Obama, who took office when the jobless rate was 7.8 percent and rising. It hit a peak of 10 percent in October of Obama’s first year.
Obama also leaves Trump an unemployment rate that is well below the historical norm.
Currently it stands at 4.7 percent. In all the months since 1948 the median jobless rate was 5.6 percent.
By the way, the airlines and Disney announced this week that they expect massive layoffs shortly. Since Trump hasn’t done anything to contain the coronavirus, most people don’t want to take the risk of killing themselves or other people in order to fly (or ride on Space Mountain) unless they absolutely have to. Thanks to Trump.
A coalition of 12 governors, including Govs. Jay Inslee (WA), Kate Brown (OR), Gavin Newsom (CA), Phil Murphy (NJ), Gretchen Whitmer (MI), Tony Evers (WI), Tim Walz (MN), Ralph Northam (VA), John Carney (DE), Steve Sisolak (NV), Michelle Lujan Grisham (NM) and J. B. Pritzker (IL), released a joint statement today on recent threats to the democratic process and reports of efforts to circumvent the election results.
“We do not take for granted the sacred right of every American to cast a vote, and to have that vote counted, in the presidential election held every four years. It is a right that is foundational to our democracy and essential to the continuation of our constitutional system of government — something to be cherished, revered and defended by elected leaders at all levels.
“Any efforts to throw out ballots or refuse a peaceful transfer of power are nothing less than an assault on American democracy. There is absolutely no excuse for promoting the intimidation or harassment of voters. These are all blatant attempts to deny our constituents the right to have their voices heard, as guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution, and to know the will of the people will be carried out.
“As governors, it is our solemn duty to protect the people of our states. Today, we affirm that all votes cast in the upcoming election will be counted and that democracy will be delivered in this election. That means all valid ballots cast in accordance with state and local laws must be counted, and that all states must properly appoint electors in accordance with the vote. We will not allow anyone to willfully corrupt the democratic process by delegitimizing the outcome or appointing fraudulent electors against the will of the voters.
“Our nation has held presidential elections and upheld the results throughout our history, even in times of great peril. We did it during the Civil War and both World Wars, and we can do it during a pandemic.
“And if the outcome of this election means the end of a presidency, he must leave office — period.
“We recognize that democratically held elections are not an exercise in controlling power. By its very nature, democracy is an exercise in determining and honoring out the collective will of the American people, regardless of the outcome. Disenfranchising voters in order to retain power strikes at the very heart of this promise. We call on elected leaders at all levels, from both parties, to speak out loudly against such efforts in the weeks ahead.”
A senior Taliban member told CBS News, “Trump might be ridiculous for the rest of the world, but he is sane and wise man for the Taliban.”
That’s quite the endorsement.
They have a lot in common, actually. They no doubt very much approve of his sexism, misogyny and violence toward women. It’s a bonding thing.
Of the flood of misinformation, conspiracy theories and falsehoods seeding the internet on the coronavirus, one common thread stands out: President Trump.
That is the conclusion of researchers at Cornell University who analyzed 38 million articles about the pandemic in English-language media around the world. Mentions of Mr. Trump made up nearly 38 percent of the overall “misinformation conversation,” making the president the largest driver of the “infodemic” — falsehoods involving the pandemic.
The study, to be released Thursday, is the first comprehensive examination of coronavirus misinformation in traditional and online media.
“The biggest surprise was that the president of the United States was the single largest driver of misinformation around Covid,” said Sarah Evanega, the director of the Cornell Alliance for Science and the study’s lead author. “That’s concerning in that there are real-world dire health implications.”
The study identified 11 topics of misinformation, including various conspiracy theories, like one that emerged in January suggesting the pandemic was manufactured by Democrats to coincide with Mr. Trump’s impeachment trial, and another that purported to trace the initial outbreak in Wuhan, China, to people who ate bat soup.
But by far the most prevalent topic of misinformation topic was “miracle cures,” including Mr. Trump’s promotion of anti-malarial drugs and disinfectants as potential treatments for Covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. That accounted for more misinformation than the other 10 topics combined, the researchers reported.
They found that of the more than 38 million articles published from Jan. 1 to May 26, more than 1.1 million — or slightly less than 3 percent — contained misinformation. They sought to identify and categorize falsehoods, and also tracked trends in reporting, including rises in coverage.
For example, on April 24, a day after Mr. Trump floated — and was ridiculed for — the idea that disinfectants and ultraviolet light might treat Covid-19, there were more than 30,000 articles in the “miracle cures” category, up from fewer than 10,000 only days earlier. Mr. Trump drove those increases, the study found.
To those who have been watching Mr. Trump’s statements, the idea that he is responsible for spreading or amplifying misinformation might not come as a huge shock. The president has also been feeding disinformation campaigns around the presidential election and mail-in voting that Russian actors have amplified — and his own government has tried to stop.
But in interviews, the Cornell researchers said they expected to find more mentions of conspiracy theories, and not so many articles involving Mr. Trump.
Public health experts know that clear, concise and accurate information is the foundation of an effective response to an outbreak of infectious disease. Misinformation around the pandemic is “one of the major reasons” the United States is not doing as well as other countries in fighting the pandemic, said Dr. Joshua Sharfstein, a vice dean at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and a former principal deputy commissioner at the Food and Drug Administration.
“There is a science of rumors. It’s when there is uncertainty and fear,” said Dr. Sharfstein, who teaches on public health crisis communications. In the absence of treatments or vaccines, he said, honest and consistent messaging is essential.
“This is what we need to save lives,” he said. “If it’s not done well, you get far more infections and deaths.”
Of course the one thing that really is proven to help stem to spread of the virus — social distancing and masks, are the things Trump mocks and demeans. But bleach drinking and hydroxychloroquine? What have you cot to lose, amirite?
Here’s an example of where we are right now:
Twenty-seven people infected with COVID-19 were reported dead on Wednesday — the most recorded in a single day in Wisconsin since the coronavirus pandemic hit the state six months ago.
The grim milestone came as the state also reported another record number of hospitalizations and 2,300 more people infected with the virus.
Much of Wisconsin is now considered a “red zone” for COVID-19 infections, according to the latest White House Coronavirus Task Force report on the state’s situation.
Guess who’s holding two super-spreader rallies this week in Wisconsin?
Yep. He’s doing it:
But that designation by his own task force isn’t stopping President Donald Trump from holding rallies in two of Wisconsin’s hardest hit cities this weekend, concerning public health officials about what effect the gatherings of thousands will have on Green Bay and La Crosse.
And, by the way, I think it’s always pretty hard to know if people are getting sick from his rallies because his followers are refusing to cooperate with public health officials and I’d guess quite a few of them are liars like him anyway. Our contact tracing measures are all screwed up because of this.
![A thread written by @SMBWhitney: ""February 25, 2001 Donald Trump Jr., was arrested in New Orleans on a charge of “public intoxication.” […]"](https://i0.wp.com/pbs.twimg.com/media/Ec4fs_MXYAAzCjA.jpg?quality=89&ssl=1)
Uhm:
[A]ccording to Vanity Fair senior reporter Emily Jane Fox’s new book, Born Trump, the president’s eldest son was once known by a lesser-known moniker, bestowed on him during his college years: “Diaper Don.”
While an undergraduate at the University of Pennsylvania, Trump Jr. reportedly earned a reputation around campus for his rowdy, inebriated habits — notably, passing out in his classmates’ rooms, and wetting their beds.
“Diaper Don would wake up in some stranger’s dorm room or off-campus apartment or bedroom in his frat house, covered in piss, walk back to his own room, and get blitzed that evening or the next anew,” Fox writes.
The young Trump’s rambunctious reputation only intensified on a spring break trip to Jamaica amid March Madness frenzy, Fox writes. Drunk and bitter over a basketball loss to Florida State, Trump Jr. stood up on a table and chanted to Florida students, “That’s all right! That’s okay! You’re gonna work for us someday.”
“These were kids from state school,” one Penn student at the bar that day recalled to Fox. “The subtext wasn’t hard for anyone to figure out.”
Junior pretty much admitted it himself in his recent wingnut welfare book Triggered: How the Left Thrives on Hate and Wants to Silence Us:
“Once I got going, it wasn’t easy to stop me – which, when you’re in college, isn’t a huge problem, as long as you’re getting your work done,” Trump, Jr. wrote. “But once I started thinking about a career and a life beyond school, it was. To be honest, I didn’t know how to drink in moderation.”
I would say that he has some nerve” but really that goes without saying. His name is Trump.
Overstimulated Trump-cult civilians are not the only sources of possible election mischief. The acting president is openly telegraphing his intent to try to hijack electors in state legislatures or have the Supreme Court hand him what he fails to win at the polls.
This prospect of rigging the election in state legislatures has been the source of murmurs for months. The acting president is hot to fill the vacant seat on the Supreme Court to ensure enough conservative justices who owe him (in his mind) will settle any post-election litigation in his favor. “I’m counting on them to look at the ballots, definitely, ” Trump said during Tuesday’s debate, seeming to think that falls under the court’s purview.
Greg Sargent points to legal analysis of whether selecting electors falls under the purview of Trump-friendly Republican legislatures. Could this work? Sargent asks:
To be clear, it shouldn’t.
The Constitution does assign to each state the authority to “appoint” its electors, in a “manner” that the legislature “may direct.”
But in a terrific piece, three legal scholars — Grace Brosofsky, Michael Dorf and Laurence Tribe — explain that precedent shows this means the legislature must “direct” how the state appoints its electors by making laws that create and define the process for doing so.
Virtually all states have made laws that provide for electors to be appointed in accordance with the popular vote outcome in them. (Maine and Nebraska do this by congressional district.) Thus, those scholars argue, legislatures can’t appoint pro-Trump electors without making a new law providing for appointment of electors based on legislators’ own will, not that of the voters.
Such a new law would require the governor’s signature. And in three states where this appears most likely to be tried — Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin — Democratic governors would veto any such effort by GOP-controlled legislatures.
The Supreme Court has upheld the principle that a governor can veto such an effort, those scholars note. In the 1932 case Smiley v. Holm, the court ruled that the Minnesota state legislature could not change election rules unilaterally in the face of such a veto.
This ruling confirmed that for the court, “state legislatures cannot alter” laws governing the selection of electors “except through their ordinary state lawmaking procedures,” which would require a gubernatorial signature and be subject to veto, the scholars argue.
So friendly legislatures can’t do this on Trump’s whim without a new law, no matter how loudly they scream that ongoing counting of mail ballots is fraudulent.
One hitch the legal scholars do not discuss in their focus on what Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin can and cannot do. North Carolina law provides for its state legislature to select electors in the event no winner has been declared by the “safe harbor” deadline in December.* If for some reason the legislature (currently GOP-controlled) cannot meet by noon the day before the Electoral College convenes, the governor picks. Gov. Roy Cooper is a Democrat.
In exercising their authority under subsections (a) and (b) of this section, the General Assembly and the Governor shall designate Electors in accord with their best judgment of the will of the electorate. The decisions of the General Assembly or Governor under subsections (a) and (b) of this section are not subject to judicial review, except to ensure that applicable statutory and constitutional procedures were followed. The judgment itself of what was the will of the electorate is not subject to judicial review.
Isn’t that special?
* UPDATE: Just to be clear, in a North Carolina presidential race tight enough to trigger recounts (with or without absentee ballots being contested), Democrats should expect teams of Republican attorneys are prepared to challenge in court certification of the election just long enough to trigger the Code Section 163-213 provisions above. Then guess who gets to decide the will of the electorate?
● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●
For The Win, 3rd Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free countywide GOTV mechanics guide at ForTheWin.us. This is what winning looks like.