Month: March 2022

Remember this?

“See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda.” — George Bush, “President Participates in Social Security Conversation in New York,” May 24, 2005.

Yeah. He also said, “If this were a dictatorship it would be a heck of a lot easier… as long as I’m the dictator. Hehehe” so there’s that.

Margaret Sullivan talks about the power of propaganda in her latest piece in the Washington Post:

You don’t need belief. All you need is confusion.

That’s how authoritarian leaders manage to control the populace, the great German political philosopher Hannah Arendt once explained.

“If everybody always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any longer,” she said in an interview nearly five decades ago.

When that happens, people lose the capacity not only to act but even to think and judge. “And with such a people,” she concluded grimly, “you can then do what you please.”

Arendt knew of what she spoke. She was a survivor of the Holocaust who devoted herself to the study of totalitarian regimes. It was Arendt who coined the phrase “the banality of evil” to describe the chilling mentality that guided the SS officer Adolph Eichmann, convinced that in helping to craft Adolf Hitler’s Final Solution, he was simply a man “doing his job.”

Flash forward to a new war in Europeand a new diabolical way to confuse the populace of Vladimir Putin’s Russia:a raft of Russian-language videos that bill themselves as fact-checks of falsehoods by Ukrainian propagandists — but are actually fakes themselves.

This is next-level disinformation, a mind-bending 21st-century version of what Arendt warned us about.

One video pushed by pro-Russian sources on social media made a big show of dunking on footage of a huge explosion in an urban area — claiming that while Ukrainian propagandists had tried to present it as a recent missile strike in Kharkiv, it was actually an unrelated explosion from 2017, according to an analysis by the investigative news outlet ProPublica.

The unspoken message? Don’t believe all these reports you’re seeing of Russian missile strikes in Ukraine! The catch? This supposed fact-check was a pure straw man: ProPublica’s analysis found virtually no evidence that the above-mentioned explosion footage was being trafficked on social media at all, let alone by Ukrainian propagandists presenting it as something it’s not.

This is some twisted stuff: actual lies spread by what looks like the debunking of lies.

The phony fact-check videos — there are about a dozen of them — have garnered more than a million views on the messaging app Telegram and are finding a ready audience on Twitter, too. No one knows their precise source or sources, but pro-Russian officials are doing what they can to spread them. A screenshot from one of the fake debunking videos was broadcast on Russian state TV, ProPublica reported; another was circulated by an official Russian government Twitter account.

The researchers who examined the videos see an obvious purpose, one that will resonate with those who know their 20th-century European history.

“The reason that it’s so effective is because you don’t actually have to convince someone that it’s true. It’s sufficient to make people uncertain as to what they should trust,” Patrick Warren of Clemson University’s Media Forensics Hub, which led the research in the story, told ProPublica.Advertisement

And when the legitimate press has been run out of the country, there’s no way to know or check.

As Russian forces bomb civilian targets in Ukraine — including, horrifically, a maternity hospital in an attack that killed three this week and injured 17 others — the truth is too ugly. So the strategy is to deny, accuse and obfuscate.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova dismissed reports of the hospital bombing as “information terrorism,” according to Reuters, while Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov scoffed at the “pathetic shouting about so-called atrocities by the Russian armed forces.”

It’s all part of Putin’s much broader campaign to control the message in Russia. That includes shutting down the independent press, blocking Facebook and making journalistic truth-telling — described as “false news” if it doesn’t hew to the party line — a crime punishable by a prison term. Even the words “war” and “invasion” are off limits.Advertisement

On Thursday, the Russian embassy in the United Kingdom tweeted out photographs it claimed were evidence that a popular beauty blogger was masquerading as a woman injured in the Mariupol hospital bombing. (“Wondering how the Russian government will deal with being accused of war crimes?” the Russian-born American journalist Julia Ioffe noted darkly on Twitter. “By accusing the injured pregnant women of being actors in makeup.”)

Part of the reason this tactic works is that there are so many faked-up videos and photographs circulating on the Internet these days that skepticism really is necessary. Indeed, it’s unwise to share such images unless they are from a reliable source that is doing serious verification and vetting.

There could be no doubt, though, of the memorable photograph that appeared on many newspaper front pages Thursday — including The Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, USA Today and others around the world — showing an injured pregnant woman being carried on a stretcher amid the rubble of the bombed-out hospital grounds.

In the digital age, keeping reality under lock and key isn’t as feasible as in Hannah Arendt’s day. What is possible, though, is sowing endless doubt.

“Truth will out,” wrote Shakespeare in an era much further removed than Arendt’s from our own dystopian moment.

Maybe so, but Putin and his henchmen will do their best to make people unable to recognize it. And, “with such a people,” as Arendt put it, “you can then do what you please.”

Let’s not kid ourselves. That same dynamic is at work here in these United States. And way too many people who should know better are happy to go along with anything that advances their own agenda.

Krugman:

Let me offer two theories about recent events. You tell me which you find more credible.

Theory A: The reason President Biden has been sounding so forceful and effective lately is that the Disney Corporation has secretly replaced the real Biden with an animatronic robot.

Theory B: Biden’s socialist economic policies are the reason U.S. gasoline prices have shot up so much lately.

If forced to choose, I’d go for theory A. It’s ridiculous, of course, but it’s not quite as easy to refute, not quite as cynical an insult to voters’ intelligence, as theory B. But theory B is, of course, what Republicans are running with.

There are three things you need to know about gasoline prices. First, the price of crude oil — the stuff that comes out of the ground — is set in a global market, not country by country. Second, fluctuations in the price of gasoline, which is refined from crude, overwhelmingly reflect fluctuations in that global price. Third, U.S. policy has little effect on world oil prices, and virtually none at all in the short run — say, the 14 months that Biden has been in office.

About crude prices: A number of countries export oil: Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf producers, Venezuela, Norway, various others and, in normal times, Russia. Where they ship the oil depends on the price they can get. This more or less levels prices around the world: Any country with above-average prices will attract extra shipments, driving prices down; any country with below-average prices will see imports fall off, driving prices up.

As usual in economics, there are some pesky details: Not all crude oil is the same, and refineries in any one country may not be adapted to use oil from all sources. But these things only matter at the margin. There are two widely cited prices of oil — West Texas Intermediate, which reflects prices in, duh, Texas, and Brent, which reflects prices in Europe. And they move almost perfectly in tandem:

You can see the big recent run-up in both prices. This crude run-up has been reflected, pretty much one-for-one, in gasoline prices at the pump — everywhere. It’s true that average prices for gasoline differ at lot among countries, because taxes on consumers are much higher in Europe than they are in the United States. But short-run fluctuations are driven by the price of crude and are similar everywhere. Here’s what has happened in the United States:

And here’s what has happened in Britain:

So for those blaming Biden for rising prices here, I regret to inform you that he is not the prime minister of Britain, or the German chancellor, or …

So rising gas prices in America, then, are part of a global story that has nothing to do with the policies of the current administration. Still, can’t the United States have some impact on that global story? We are, after all, the world’s largest oil producer, accounting for about 20 percent of world output in 2020. Can’t America do something to reduce global oil prices?

Yes, in principle. Not so much in practice.

U.S. oil production did increase a lot after 2010 — a trend that, as it happens, began under the Obama administration and continued for part of Donald Trump’s term:

But this had little to do with policy; it was all about new technology, specifically fracking. Oil production then slumped in 2020, not because of policy but because prices plunged during the pandemic. Now it’s coming back, again thanks to events rather than policy. It seems safe to say that nothing either Trump did or Biden did has had any appreciable effect on U.S. oil production, let alone U.S. gasoline prices.

Of course, that’s not what Republicans would have you believe. They want the public to give Trump credit for low prices in 2020, when demand for oil was low because Covid had the world economy on its back. They want voters to blame environmental concerns, which have blocked the Keystone XL pipeline and might block drilling on public land, for high prices at the pump right now — even though it will take years before these policy changes will have any effect, and that effect will be modest even then.

I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised. After all, we’re talking about a party that’s in denial about everything from climate change to vaccine effectiveness, so what’s a bit of economic nonsense thrown into the mix? But somehow I find myself shocked all the same. For you don’t need scientific understanding or even rudimentary statistical analysis to see that President Biden can’t possibly be responsible for high U.S. gasoline prices; all you need to do is spend five minutes looking at what’s happening in the rest of the world.

But will voters see through this latest Republican disinformation campaign? Will Democrats make an effective case for the truth? I wish I was more optimistic than I am.

wo years ago today, the World Health Organization declared that the new coronavirus, first detected just a few weeks before in Wuhan, China, had become a global pandemic. That same day the NBA suspended its season and actor Tom Hanks revealed that he and his wife Rita Wilson had contracted the virus. Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes of Health told a congressional panel that the Covid-19 pandemic in the United States would get significantly worse.

“The number could go way up and be involved in many, many millions.”

President Donald Trump addressed the nation from the Oval Office that night and made this big announcement:

Unfortunately, Trump hadn’t conferred with European leaders so they were caught unaware when he announced that he planned to halt all travel and imports from the continent. Almost as soon as he stopped speaking, aides were rushing to correct what he said, explaining that the ban would only apply to some European travelers and not to goods.

Trump was typically offensive even in that formal setting, peppering his speech with comments such as “this is the most aggressive and comprehensive effort to confront a foreign virus in modern history,” and “a large number of new clusters in the United States were seeded by travelers from Europe” which became his stock in trade over the next year as he finally settled on “China virus” and “Kung flu” as the xenophobic catch phrases of choice.

Throughout the prior few weeks, we’d been following the story with growing interest but it was just a little over a month earlier that Trump had been acquitted in his first impeachment trial and, as usual, his chaotic presidency brought fresh outrages every day so the impact of Covid abroad hadn’t truly hit home. On March 9th, two days before, Trump held one his most memorably inane Covid press avails when he visited the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta. He said he didn’t want to allow some Americans stranded on a cruise ship back into the country because he wanted to keep his “numbers” down. It was then that he reminded us just how dangerous it was that a man with his temperament was in charge during such a serious crisis. Recall this asinine comment:

You know, my uncle was a great person. He was at MIT. He taught at MIT for, I think, like a record number of years. He was a great super genius. Dr. John Trump. I like this stuff. I really get it. People are surprised that I understand it. Every one of these doctors said, “How do you know so much about this?” Maybe I have a natural ability. Maybe I should have done that instead of running for President.

We were soon learning new phrases like “social distancing” and “flatten the curve” and started wearing make-shift masks everywhere, hoarding toilet paper and inexplicably sterilizing our canned goods. Quarantined in our homes watching the horror unfold on TV, seeing the hospitals and morgues over flowing, bodies being stored in refrigerator trucks. Watching the case numbers grow exponentially was bizarre and disorienting. Many Americans still had to go out into the world and do their jobs. Health care workers, grocery store clerks, delivery drivers, cops and food providers were forced to expose themselves and their families to this deadly plague every day just to keep the country going. Many of them died.

The unemployment rate went from 4.4% in March to 14.7% in April. The stock market fell out of bed repeatedly, schools and businesses closed, and a whole lot of people started getting very sick and dying. None of us had ever been through anything like it.

We learned very quickly that the nation was unprepared for a public health emergency like this. The consolidation of hospitals in recent years resulting in fewer beds for more people left us extremely vulnerable to a mass illness event and our lack of supplies and inability to get the ones we had to where they were needed was a clear national disgrace, all of which was exacerbated by the sheer ineptitude of the Trump administration’s federal response.

Sensing an opportunity to be the center of attention, Trump took over the daily Covid briefings and turned them into a macabre vaudeville act, pushing snake oils cures and battling with the media. But within weeks, he lost what little interest he had in properly dealing with the crisis as he grew concerned it was going to hurt his re-election chances. From that point on, the pandemic became a political football — and the country has suffered for it ever since.

On March 11, 2020, the number of coronavirus cases in the U.S. had just crossed the 1,000 mark and 29 Americans had died. Today, the death toll is nearing one million, a number that was considered unthinkable two years ago. And although the numbers have come down rapidly from our most recent surge, we are still experiencing 1,500 deaths per day. This is the new normal.

For all the great sacrifices for the common good so many people have made in this crisis, Covid politics seeded during Trump’s last year in office have shown Americans a side of our culture that isn’t very pretty. Our vaunted individualism and worship of personal freedom has an ugliness that revealed itself in this critical situation. The refusal to accept the need for collective action to protect everyone, especially the vulnerable, by millions of our fellow Americans has broken the already fragile social contract and as a result cumulative U.S. Covid-19 deaths per capita are the highest among all large, high-income countries. How embarrassing. How tragic.

The latest surge has receded and the mandates and requirements are all coming down. It seems unlikely at this point that they will ever be reinstated even if a new variant comes our way as many public health experts expect will happen. The country is exhausted with COVID and just wants to move on which is understandable. But many Americans are also exhausted from the endless political battle surrounding it.

The COVID vaccines are a medical miracle of which the right could have taken ownership and led the way if it wanted. Trump was begging for credit as the man who single-handedly invented them. Masks and other mitigation efforts are minor inconveniences that might have been seen as acts of solidarity, even patriotic duty. Instead, COVID-19 became just another political weapon, with the right wing literally choosing to die rather than join in any common effort with their political enemies.

Hundreds of thousands of people have now died unnecessarily in America’s culture war — and it isn’t over yet. 

Salon

Once again, it’s Jonathan Pie:

In other news, Russia is threatening to use chemical or biological weapons in Ukraine and attempting to blame its victims in advance “or to create a false flag operation using them,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki tweeted Thursday night. “It’s a clear pattern.”

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For The Win, 4th Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free, countywide get-out-the-vote planning guide for county committees at ForTheWin.us. This is what winning looks like.

“The Case for Reparations” by Ta-Nehisi Coates in The Atlantic (June 2014) was eye opening for someone who spent a few formative years in Chicago. I did not spend them living on the South Side, and was too young to know much about real estate or race relations. So although I’d heard the term, Coates detailed account of how decades of redlining and government policies on home loans served to keep Black people living there impoverished was as new as it was shocking.

From The Windy City, we moved South the year Goldwater fever was as dominant. So were white people. Schools would remain segregated for another half decade or so.

Four years ago in Montgomery, Alabama, the National Memorial for Peace and Justice opened on a site overlooking the Alabama State Capitol. I wrote at the time that it was inspired by the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin and the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg. This museum remembers the victims of white supremacy, including those who died in over 4,000 lynchings.

A few months earlier, a federal judge lifted a consent decree dating from 1982 that inhibited the Republican Party from engaging in “ballot security” measures. The decree arose from violations in New Jersey of the Voting Rights Act and other civil rights laws. Among other things, Democrats accused Republican operatives of “efforts to disenfranchise duly registered black and Hispanic voters.” Their “National Ballot Security Task Force” operation allegedly included the posting of armed, off-duty police outside polling stations “in predominantly black and Hispanic precincts.” (Digby has written about the GOP’s 1964 Operation Eagle Eye in Arizona in since this blog’s earliest days. )

There is more, of course. The decades-long, federal “war on drugs” tended to be heavily waged in minority communities. Lengthy criminal sentences for minor drug offenses fell heavily on minority communities. The school-to-prison pipeline targets primarily minority students. Despite a downward trend, the U.S. still has the highest incarceration rate in the world. That statistic, too, disproportionately impacts U.S. minorities, particularly Black Americans.

High-visibility killings of Black Americans by police, including the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, sparked Black Live Matter protests from coast to coast in 2020. There are too many to name.

That walk down memory lane is precipitated by this headline from Thursday:

Florida lawmakers approve an elections police force, the first of its kind in the U.S.

From the Washington Post:

The agency will be the first of its kind in the nation. Its staff of 25 will be part of the Department of State, which answers to DeSantis. Both chambers approved its creation by wide margins after debate that had Democrats invoking the name of the late civil rights leader John Lewis and a Republican representative making reference to Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin. The governor has indicated he will sign the measure into law.

“It’s drastically improved from what the governor wanted, but I don’t believe we should have an elections police force at all,” said Joe Scott, the elections supervisor in Broward County. “These are people who will be looking for crimes where there are none. That has the potential to intimidate a lot of voters and the organizations who try to help voters.”

The bill also includes harsh repercussions for some voting practices that were common in the state until last year, when the legislature, at the governor’s behest, passed sweeping changes to state elections laws.

One of the most controversial penalties is for “ballot harvesting.” The 2021 law made it a misdemeanor for anyone to have more than two ballots, which impacts efforts at churches and community centers to have volunteers gather ballots and deposit them at an elections office or in a drop box. The bill passed this week raises that to a felony, punishable with a fine of up to $50,000 and five years in prison.

“So now we’re criminalizing certain acts around the elections process that most folks, particularly in the Black community, have long held as a way to assist those in need,” said Genesis Robinson, political director of Equal Ground, a voting rights advocacy group. “To spend time in jail for simply trying to be a good neighbor, that’s a problem.”

The Florida bill (and legislation like it in other states) targets practices and voting methods for increasing voter turnout that are heavily used by minority communities: drop boxes, voter registration drives, vote-by-mail. Between Janu­ary 1 and Decem­ber 7, 2021, the Brennan Canter reports, “at least 19 states passed 34 laws restrict­ing access to voting.”

Redlining, segregation, lynchings, the “war on drugs,” police shootings, and more, all heavily target minority communities in this “land of the free.”

And the war on voting? Same communities.

Just don’t call it systemic.

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For The Win, 4th Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free, countywide get-out-the-vote planning guide for county committees at ForTheWin.us. This is what winning looks like.

Comedian Blaire Erskine broke down in a video she posted on Tuesday night, decrying what she called “unhinged f*cking people” trolling her.

Erskine, who rose to fame in 2020 mocking Trump supporters and those opposed to wearing masks amid the coronavirus pandemic, recently called out comedian and activist Anthony Walker for soliciting donations so he could, as Erskine put it, “go to Ukraine to kill Russians, ‘to f*ck up Russians’” amid Russia’s military invasion of the Eastern European country.

Mediaite, by Jackson Richman Mar 9th, 2022,

I saw Blaire’s video online late at night and was moved by it. I’ve been writing about how the right uses online threats and intimidation for years. I downloaded it and added captions. Then she deleted her account. Today she restored it, not wanting her attackers to win.

I planned to write a piece about what happened, who benefits and profits from threats and harassments. I’d go into the legal situation & tech side. In short I’d go into the classic male Mr. Fixit mode with “Here is what you need to do!” Luckily I’ve been around enough great women who taught me to first shut up and listen.

So listen to what Blair said

Here is the text:
I’m really sorry to be even making this um because no one likes to see, fuckin. Like, the last thing anybody wants to see is a white woman crying on social media and and I get that.

The past several days, I’ve gotten a lot of messages from unhinged fucking people saying things like, “I’m going to regret, you know, making certain posts”, or that “something’s coming my way.” And that it’s a good thing I’m an attention whore cause I’m about to get a lot of attention.” Saying things like, “You’re going to rape me to teach me a lesson.”

All because I fucking made a few posts about a guy who I feel is using the word Ukraine as a way to grow his following. And I stand behind that, um, there’s a guy on Twitter, his name is Anthony Walker. And he is asking for donations, personal donations, so he can go to Ukraine, to tell Russians to fuck up Russians.

And that’s not how any of this is supposed to be working. There are legitimate organizations you can donate to. I care so much because my husband is from Ukraine and he has family over there, and it’s personal. And so I called out his behavior. And I asked for a response, which he hasn’t given.

And I’m just I imagine that he’s that there’s a group with all of these people who were doing sending me these messages in a targeted way. I don’t even think I’m making any sense right now. But they’re scary messages.

And I have reached out to Twitter, and I’ve reached out to Instagram. And each time I’m told that none of the things that really scary things, these people are saying violate you know, policies, and it’s fucked up. It’s fucked up.

People should not be allowed to threaten someone’s, you know, life, you know, threaten someone with rape threaten someone with in any sort of way. And it’s crazy, but nothing warranted it.

And I’m just fucking pissed off that women like, just like cannot be safe anywhere. And this is so stupid. Like, I’m a very privileged white lady online, who’s been incredibly lucky. And, you know, I should not be fucking complaining. It’s just like, fucking I’m fucking pissed.

And I just wanted to make this to say that if a woman is online, and she’s complaining about men and women who are harassing her and saying really scary fucking things, do not tell her to ignore them, help her! Report those people!

Like never tell a women to be quiet about someone who is harassing her. It does not help. It doesn’t help. It doesn’t do anything. Those people should be called out and humiliated.

And it’s fucked up that anybody’s first response would be, “Oh, just ignore the haters.” They’re not haters. They’re people who are threatening to hurt and rape me for having a goddamn opinion.

And if you work for Instagram, or Facebook or Twitter, whatever the fuck like, do something! Because this is like, I’m lucky to have a platform to help me out but other women do not. This is just a fucked up situation. Happy International Women’s Day.

What Can Be Done?

Blaire has returned. In her video she explains why it shouldn’t be her that leaves, but them. She reads some threats to prove they are real. Then she talks about how Twitter and her lawyers are trying to deal with it.

It’s a good thing I didn’t launch into Mr. Fixit mode, she’s already on it!

For those who are in a similar situation or being harassed online, I recommend these resources.

1. Crash Override is a crisis helpline, advocacy group and resource center for people who are experiencing online abuse. We are a network of experts and survivors who work directly with victims, tech companies, lawmakers, media, security experts, and law enforcement to educate and provide direct assistance working to eliminate the causes of online abuse.
   
2. A Guide to Protecting Yourself From Online Harassment
3. Cyber Civil Rights Initiative FAQ for victim CCRI Safety Center
4. HeartMob, a community dedicated to helping those experiencing online harassment

For this blog, focusing on politics and the media, next time I’ll address how the media regularly put themselves in the position of defending the people making threats and not the person being attacked. I believe that the media’s attitudes about speech, and how they cover online bullies in politics, has not led to helping the victims, but excusing the perpetrators.

I hope that Blaire’s star continues to rise and that the unrepentant, intentional bullies pay a price for their actions.

Everyone’s been saying that Trumpism has gone local and here’s a perfect example:

The Kootenai County Republican Central Committee has reportedly planned and recruited volunteers to infiltrate the Kootenai Democrats, install an “antisemitic troll” as party chair and funnel money donated to Democrats to local Republicans instead.

A recorded phone call between Kootenai County resident John Grimm and a person he identified as KCRCC Youth Chair Dan Bell appeared to reveal the plan.“Long story short, we want to take over the Democrat Party,” Bell reportedly said during the Tuesday call…

Grimm, who ran unsuccessfully for Kootenai County Sheriff in 2020, said he recorded the call to remove any uncertainty about what was said. “I know from personal observation that certain members of the KCRCC are masters of deception with an ability to twist the meaning of even their own statements,” he said. Grimm also made it clear that he’s a staunch, conservative Republican but that the KCRCC has “gone too far.”

Listen to the full 30-minute recording here.

[…]

Bell said KCRCC Chair Brent Regan — who also is chair of the Idaho Freedom Foundation, a nonprofit that promotes conservative causes and candidates — is “totally on board” with the plan.“If we pull this off, this will be national news,” Bell said…

In the recording, Bell said at least 25 Republican volunteers had committed to running as Democrats as of Tuesday, while the KCRCC aims to recruit at least 40. “We’re going to do a bum rush on Thursday and Friday so that our people are on the ballot and theirs aren’t,” he said. The deadline to file for May’s primary election is 5 p.m. Friday.

After that, Bell said, Democrats will have to scramble to find write-in candidates, then spend time and money promoting them. Meanwhile, Bell said he’ll use the Idaho Republican Party’s software to access the contact information of Constitution Party members, as well as unaffiliated conservative voters, and recruit them to make campaign calls for the KCRCC. “We’re going to call these voters and say, ‘Hey, if you want to vote in the primary and take out the liberals, request a Democrat ballot and vote for our people for precinct committee,” Bell said.

Local Republicans reportedly carried out a similar, largely unsuccessful takeover plan in 2014. “We have a much stronger effort than they did in 2014,” Bell said. “I think we can actually pull it off this time.”

Paula Neils, former chair of the Kootenai Democrats, described the previous effort. She said local Democrats discovered that 11 precinct captain candidates were Republicans who had changed their affiliations and filed to run in order to disrupt the Democratic Party’s operations. “We recruited some write-in candidates in those districts to counter their efforts,” Neils said.

The party poured considerable time and money into promoting their write-in candidates, Neils said, five of whom were elected. She said she asked the six “fake Democrats” to step down. “If they could honestly and legitimately say they were aligned with our values and could follow our bylaws, they were most welcome to stay,” she said. “But if they were there for other reasons, they should resign.” A few did just that, Neils said, while the others attended one or two meetings and no more. “They weren’t really serious about what they were doing,” she said.

This time, however, she said local Republicans appear to be making a concerted effort to dismantle the Democratic Party in Kootenai County.“I think it’s kind of an underhanded, dirty trick,” Neils said. “It’s dishonest and unethical.”

“Why are they worried about Democrats?” she said. “We don’t have enough power in the county or even the state to disrupt their agenda.”

She said she hopes local Republicans push back against the effort to infiltrate the Kootenai County Democrats. “I would like to think the Republicans who hold their real values dear will say, ‘This is awful and I’m not going to put up with this anymore,’” she said.

Upon election, Bell said, the KCRCC’s plants would vote David J. Reilly in as party chair.“A guy that they call racist, antisemitic, Holocaust denier,” Bell said. “That same guy would be the chair of the Kootenai Democrat Party.” A recent Pennsylvania transplant, Reilly was condemned by the nation’s largest pro-Israel organization for his antisemitic writings and called an “antisemitic troll” by The Daily Beast. Reilly, whose social media posts in 2020 included comments that “all Jews are dangerous” and that more Americans should believe antisemitic stereotypes, ran unsuccessfully for a seat on the Post Falls School Board in 2021.

The KCRCC endorsed his candidacy.

The party chair calls meetings. With Reilly in that position, Bell said, there simply won’t be another meeting of the Kootenai Democrats for at least two years, when the next primary election occurs. Bell said Brent Regan came up with the idea to install Reilly as party chair.

In addition to using the local Democratic Party’s website and social media channels to promote conservative causes, Bell said Reilly would use his position to take money donated to Democrats and give it to Republicans. “He’s going to revamp their website,” Bell said. “He’s going to take donations and spend that on conservative causes.”

Under Idaho law, theft by false promise occurs when a person obtains the property of another by representing that he or a third person will engage in particular conduct with no intention to actually engage in that conduct.

Grimm is not the only local Republican who came forward about being courted by the KCRCC as part of this alleged plan. A woman who did not want to be named told The Press that Greg McKenzie approached her at a recent KCRCC meeting and tried to recruit her for what she called a “scheme” to infiltrate the Democratic Party. McKenzie was elected to the North Idaho College board of trustees in 2020, after the KCRCC endorsed him.

“He asked if I was willing to register as a Democrat,” she said. The woman said she was confused by the question, until McKenzie explained the KCRCC’s plan to fill the local Democratic Party’s ranks with their own members. “He said it’s a thing where you register and then you can get into their organization and sway votes,” she told The Press on Wednesday. When the woman refused to participate, McKenzie allegedly asked if she would be willing to recruit other volunteers instead. She said she declined.

But remember folks, it’s the Democrats who are rigging elections:

In an email to The Press, McKenzie said he did not recall the conversation. He also said he believes The Press is working with local Democrats to have Democrats change their party affiliation in order to vote in the Republican primary.

Similarly, Regan said in a Facebook post on Thursday that “Democrats, socialists and hacks in the media” are calling for Democrats to “infiltrate the Republican Party” and vote in the Republican primary.

He also asserted that “prominent Democrats” are running for office as Republicans.

“Now, just like all bullies, they are upset when Republicans fight back,” Regan wrote.

Democrats are powerless in Idaho. But, of course, these Republican assholes are wallowing in grievance and victimhood anyway blaming the small minority of Democrats for making them act like a bunch of adolescent barbarians.

It’s not just Idaho:

Dallas Heard, chair of the Oregon Republican Party, has resigned, citing “evil” inside the party he leads. Heard, who is also a state senator from Myrtle Creek, wrote a blistering letter to inform the party of his decision.

“My physical and spiritual health can no longer survive exposure to the toxicity that can be found in this community,” wrote Heard. “We truly have an equal if not greater evil than the Democrats walking among us.”

The letter was initially posted to social media by the account of David Medina, a conservative activist from the Portland area who frequently attends and posts videos from rallies protesting COVID-19 mandates, and has been linked to violent protests at the Oregon Capitol as well as the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

“The endless slander, gossip, conspiracies, sabotage, lies, hatred, pointless criticism, blocking of ideas, and mutiny brought against my administration has done what I once never thought possible, They have broken my spirit. I can face the Democrats with courage and conviction, but I can’t fight my own people too,” Heard wrote.

Lest you think this guy is some paragon of common sense:

Heard will continue to serve in the Oregon Senate, where he has been vocal in the past two sessions about his opposition to the state’s mask mandate. Last month, majority Democrats in the Senate voted to eject Heard from the Capitol unless he agreed to follow the mask requirement. Heard would not agree and was removed. He was allowed to participate in committee meetings, which were held virtually.

The Republican Party has gone stark raving nuts.

A lot. This is from Charles Gaba, who’s work on pandemic data has been outstanding:

A few days ago, Peter Hotez MD PhD, Dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine and Professor of Pediatrics and Molecular Virology & Microbiology at Baylor College of Medicine where he is also the Co-director of the Texas Children’s Center for Vaccine Development (CVD) and Texas Children’s Hospital Endowed Chair of Tropical Pediatrics, estimated that a stunning 250,000 U.S. COVID-19 deaths have been caused specifically due to people refusing to get vaccinated.

There’s a lot of different ways to measure this, of course, and other estimates vary depending on when the study was conducted and what methodology they used. For instance, back in October, the Kaiser Family Foundation estimated that at least 90,000 deaths were preventable due to vaccine refusal. They updated this in December to put their estimate at 163,000. In KFF’s case, they used June 1st as their start date.

The decision on when to “start” a vaccine-based estimate can be tricky for several reasons.

First, it’s not like everyone became eligible to get vaccinated at the same time. Besides participants in the clinical trials, the first U.S. resident to get vaccinated was a New York nurse named Sandra Lindsay, on December 14th, 2020. Throughout January & February 2021, the vast majority of those vaccinated in the U.S. were senior citizens, healthcare workers and a few other select populations. Over 26.5 million Americans had gotten their first dose by February 1st, and over 50 million doses had been administered as of February 26th.

On March 19th, the federal government reported having administered its 100 millionth COVID-19 vaccination shot…and ten days later, on March 29th, 6 states opened the floodgates and started allowing all adults to get vaccinated. By April 18th, 50% of all U.S. adults had gotten at least their first doses, and on April 19th, 2021, the last U.S. states (as well as Puerto Rico and Washington DC) started allowing all adults to #GetVaxxed.

Now, it wasn’t until May 10th that the Pfizer vaccine was given emergency use authorization by the FDA for adolsecents 12-15 years old, and children age 5-11 wouldn’t become eligible until early November, but every adult was eligible as of mid-April.

The other thing to keep in mind is that someone isn’t considered “fully” vaccinated until they receive their second shot, which isn’t administered until 3 or 4 weeks after the first one…and even then, it’s supposed to be another 2 weeks before the vaccine is supposed to be fully effective.

So, what’s the best start date to use given all of this? I could see arguments being made for May 1st, June 1st or July 1st depending on your POV. I was using July 1st for a long time but more recently decided to move back to May 1st.

WIth that in mind, here’s my own crude attempt to estimate just how many COVID-19 deaths could have been prevented if as many people as possible had simply gotten vaccinated as soon as they were able to do so.

According to data from Johns Hopkins University, the CDC and various state health departments:

–Since May 1st, 2021, over 381,000 Americans have died of COVID…a national death rate of around 115 per 100,000 residents (115/100K).

-Of the 3,114 U.S. Counties (or county equivalents) nationally, 2,176 of them have had a COVID death rate higher than the national average since 5/01/21.

–The highest-vaccinated tenth of the U.S. consists of 100 counties where the average total population vaccination rate is over 80%.

–In those 100 counties, the average COVID death rate since 5/01/21 is 60.9/100K. Total COVID deaths since 5/1/21: ~21,000.

-In the other 3,014 counties, the death rate is 121/100K, or twice as high. Total COVID deaths since 5/1/21: ~360,000.

This means that if the other 90% of the U.S. had the same death rate as the most-vaccinated 100 counties, only around ~180,000 Americans would have died in those counties since May.

In other words, if the entire U.S. population had gotten vaccinationed at the same pace as the top tenth did, at least 180,000 fewer people likely would have died of COVID since last May.

Of course, as noted above, adolescents have been able to get vaccinated since mid-May, and children 5 and older since last November. It’s now mid-March 2022. This means that over 312 million Americans could have gotten their first and second shots by now, or over 94% of the total U.S. population.

Now, 94% is probably too much to ask under any circumstances, but what about 85 or 90%?

Well, the 30 most-vaccinated counties as of this writing (average 2-dose vaccination rate: 87%) have a combined population of just over 5 million people…and a COVID death rate since 5/1/21 of just 44/100K.

If the rest of the country matched that death rate, we would’ve seen around ~146,000 since May 1st of last year, instead of the ~381,000 who actually died since then. That’s a difference of 235,000 people.

Does this mean that Dr. Hotez’ 250K figure is overstated? Not at all; again, my estimated range above is a back-of-the-envelope-math sort of thing. I obviously haven’t adjusted for things like age, income, education, geography, population density, race and probably several other factors. The actual number could be somewhat higher than 235K.

Having said that, given that the Kaiser Family Foundation’s far more stringent analysis put the figure at 163,000 between June and December (starting a month later and ending nearly 3 months earlier), I’m pretty damned sure it isn’t any lower than this range. After all, an additional ~162,000 Americans have died of COVID since KFF’s last update on December 10th, 2021.

Bottom line: Get vaccinated, get boosted, and keep wearing a mask indoors in public for awhile longer…because you never know who HASN’T gotten vaccinated.

The government just announced that they are keeping the mask mandates for airports and airplanes until April 18th. I will personally be keeping my mask mandate on airplanes forever.

Just watch this BBC report from the front. But be warned, it’s graphic.

Nothing humans do is more utterly insane than war.

It’s very odd that he never mentioned this before, isn’t it? Is he making an argument that he should be president for life, like his good buddy Vlad?

I think it’s probably true that Putin talked to Trump about Ukraine. Trump got it in his head that the Ukrainians were terrible, corrupt people from somewhere. I doubt that Putin ever promised him he wouldn’t invade as long as Trump was in office but you never know. He was almost certainly pushing Trump to withdraw from NATO, seeing how much he loathed the Europeans who he insisted were trying to rip off America by refusing to pay their “dues.” If that meant he wouldn’t invade as long as Trump was doing his bidding I’m sure the thought it was quite a good deal.

Trump is still very cagey about his good pal Vlad and there has to be a reason for that. I wonder if he thinks those secret conversations might have been recorded?