2018 was a record-setting year for stocks, but it’s one investors would rather forget. The Dow fell 5.6%.The S&P 500 was down 6.2% and the Nasdaq fell 4%. It was the worst year for stocks since 2008 and only the second year the Dow and S&P 500 fell in the past decade.Dec 31, 2018
While MAGA tries to convince people that a 2.3% drop in the DOW today is a "Kamala Crash," even though she's not President, they completely have amnesia about the multiple "Trump crashes" that we saw when Trump WAS President.
I just thought it was worth pointing this out when you hear the Trumpers screeching about the “Kamala crash” over the next few days. I have no idea what the market’s are going to do but I know that they will be saying that they never went down with Trump. They did, even beyond COVID.
I felt that all the choices were pretty good and Walz is one of the best. He’s a progressive who knows how to talk about progressive issues in ways that sound very accessible to middle Americans. He’s an American archetype — a football coach. I think he makes a very good pair with Harris.
BREAKING: Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz will be the Democratic VP candidate, alongside Kamala Harris.
Walz forged a reputation as a Governor who makes good policy happen.
Last year he signed a law guaranteeing free breakfast and lunch for all Minnesota students. And that's not all 🧵 pic.twitter.com/i1GEzfmI6r
“The real threat to democracy is a failure to imagine the worst-case scenario,” Tony Gerber, co-director with Jesse Moss, told NPR Monday in an interview about their new documentary War Game. The film simulates U.S. officials responding to a post-election coup after a disputed election. “Insurgents take capitals, questioning the president’s military control,” says IMDB. Officials must counter a “Red Cell” radical faction coordinated by a fictional “Order of Columbus.”
Gerber is wrong here. The real threat to democracy is the flagged-bedecked Americans in diapers who have rejected democracy, the Constitution, and America’s founding vision for strongman rule. (And Supreme Court justices prepared to prop it up.)
Republicans plan to open a second front after November 5. The election they expect to lose at the ballot box they plan to win, or at least thwart, in court. Georgia is just one battlefield.
But the threat of violence War Game postulates is real. For those not paying attention, right-wing riots broke out over the weekend across England and in Ireland. Police arrested hundreds. Several officers were injured.
Violent protests gripped the #UK in the wake of a knife attack at a dance class. Violence erupted in several English cities on Saturday as crowds of anti-immigrant protesters faced off against police and counter-protesters. "Civil war is inevitable", says @elonmusk#UKRiotspic.twitter.com/TqvUA792nT
Far-right riots swept Britain over the weekend, with outbreaks of anti-immigrant violence in a number of cities and towns, leaving the new UK government scrambling to control the worst disorder in more than a decade.
Crowds of far-right agitators set fire to hotels housing asylum seekers, leaving those inside trapped and terrified, while throngs of rioters in other cities damaged public buildings and clashed with police, throwing objects at officers and smashing their vehicles.
Protests first broke out late last month, after an anti-immigrant misinformation campaign stoked outrage over a stabbing attack that left three children dead in Southport, northern England.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer chaired his first COBRA session on Monday morning – an emergency meeting of national agencies and branches of government – to discuss the response to the disorder. “This is not protest,” he said on Sunday, adding: “It is organized, violent thuggery and it has no place on our streets, or online.”
🚨 BREAKING: Prime Minister Keir Starmer's full address to the nation about the riots on Britain's streets pic.twitter.com/kluETspjXT
This is what actual unarmed resistance to fascism looks like. Not a hashtag. Not a black square pfp. Not a post on social media. Forming a human chain and putting your bodies on the line to protect the innocent. Breaking the noses of these Nazi freaks and making them afraid. https://t.co/yuz8RP5Js8
What provoked the riots? Disinformation spread widely on social media falsely blaming a Muslim immigrant for the stabbings. Rioters then set fire to hotels housing asylum seekers,
The gatherings ostensibly started as anti-immigration marches, organized on social media platforms like X and on WhatsApp and Telegram groups. They quickly turned disorderly and violent.
Protesters set ablaze two Holiday Inn hotels, in the town of Rotherham, northern England, and in Tamworth, in the Midlands, central England, that were believed to be housing asylum seekers awaiting a decision on their claims.
The Rotherham hotel at the time was “full of terrified residents and staff,” according to a statement by South Yorkshire Police Assistant Chief Constable Lindsey Butterfield.
The false reports are reportedly coordinated by foreign agents looking to destabilize western democracies.
Starmer added:
“People in this country have a right to be safe and yet, we’ve seen Muslim communities targeted, attacks on mosques, other minority communities singled out, Nazi salutes in the street, attacks on the police, wanton violence alongside racist rhetoric,” Starmer said at Downing Street.
“So no, I won’t shy away from calling it what it is: Far-right thuggery,” he added.
Knowledgeable friends on the ground say these thugs are simply itching for a fight, looking for an excuse. They know the social media reports are false. Some accounts promoting disinformation were opened in July 2024, one obviously from China, says a former counter-terrorism officer, but others hail from Russia and elsewhere. These English riots are a trial run for how events might play out in the U.S. after Trump loses in November, just what War Game considers.
It’s so clear that there is a coalition of some sort between the authoritarian petrostates, a number of US billionaires & various international oligarchs, authoritarian leaders like Putin & Orban, American & international right-wing movements — to attack and destabilize Western democracies. They are sick and tired of regular people being able to band together, implementing rule of law, taxes, unions, regulations and the rest of that stuff that gets in their way.
The Playbook
The playbook is to stir up racial, religious & nationalist division. Use social media & media outlets they own to spread victimization disinformation. Demand “free speech” rights to do it. You see the same stuff in countries around the world now. It’s like they are reading scripts prepared in “best practices” seminars. Use anti-refugee disinformation (“illegals”) to incite hatred, and “other” these vulnerable people who have nowhere to go. India’s authoritarian ruler is using anti-Muslim Hindu nationalism. Orban using Jews & other “others.” Etc etc around the world.
This is modern warfare for Russia, China, and others opposed to the democracies.
Many Americans opposed to democracy stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. We’re looking at how they might reprise that effort between November and January if GOP efforts to monkey-wrench the elections in court fail. But then they’ve monkey-wrenched the courts too.
“It’s OK to vote against Donald Trump,” Mesa, Arizona’s Republican mayor, John Giles told a press conference on Monday. Giles remains a registered Republican but is stumping for Kamala Harris. He hopes to see the GOP “get away from the personality cult our party has become.”
“I think the time has come for us as Arizona Republicans to admit the obvious,” Giles told reporters, “which is that our party’s nominee is not qualified for office and that we need to vote for the adult in the room, and that is Kamala Harris.”
“Character matters,” said former GOP state Rep. Robin Shaw.
The Harris campaign days ago named Giles and Shaw to head up a task force to do outreach to Arizona Republicans:
“As a lifelong Arizonan and longtime Republican, I strongly believe in defending democracy and standing up for our personal freedoms. Donald Trump and JD Vance represent the greatest threat to American values and institutions that I have seen in my lifetime – and that’s why I am committed to defeating him in November,” Giles said in a written statement.
Republican Mayor of Mesa, AZ John Giles:
“I think the time has come for us as AZ Republicans to admit the obvious…which is that our party’s nominee is not qualified for office and that we need to vote for the adult in the room, and that is Kamala Harris.” pic.twitter.com/ZV7F2KTGIE
— Republican Voters Against Trump (@AccountableGOP) August 5, 2024
Giles authored a July 29 guest column in The Arizona Republic asking fellow Republicans to “put country over party.” Not unlike President Joe Biden putting country over personal ambition.
Since 2014, I have had the honor of being mayor of Mesa, the nation’s 36th-largest city and one of the most conservative. Under Trump, American cities didn’t get the support they deserved. Infrastructure week was made into a joke.
But under the Biden-Harris administration, Mesa has seen historic federal funding for the Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport, along with investments to make sure our streets and public transit systems benefit from modern technology.
With the CHIPS Act, Vice President Kamala Harris and President Joe Biden are delivering thousands of new jobs to Arizonans and helping us grow critical industries.
Many of the Republicans backing Harris are also supporting Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego in his Senate race against Republican Kari Lake.
Peggy Neely, the former vice mayor of Phoenix, tied her support for Harris to reproductive rights and the fall of the landmark Roe v. Wade Supreme Court case. Additional supporters from city government are former Scottsdale City Council member Virginia Korte, former Mesa Vice Mayor Claudia Reeder Walters and former Paradise Valley Vice Mayor Dan Schweiker.
“Donald Trump’s radical and regressive agenda poses the biggest threat to women’s rights in decades, not just in Arizona, but across the entire country. Donald Trump must be unequivocally defeated at the ballot box to safeguard our future,” Neely said in a written statement.
Others in the advisory group include former Maricopa County Clerk of the Superior Court Judith Allen, former Arizona state Republican Party executive director Jane Lynch and finance director Todd Bradford, and former First Assistant Arizona Attorney General Robert Carey.
Someone recently warned that those attached to MAGA and fascism-curious movements around the world risk being recorded along with history’s villains. It’s too late for most of the Trump administration, for the Trump family, and for the “toxic” Trump Organization. But for Republicans who kept silent during the reign of Trump hoping he would just go away, time is running out.
The time to get on the right side of history is now.
On Friday, the Washington Post broke a bombshell story about a credible allegation of bribery involving the 2016 election of Donald Trump, Egypt’s dictator Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, and a mysterious $10 million all-cash withdrawal from an Egyptian state-run bank just five days before Trump became president — and adopted a more friendly aid policy toward the Middle Eastern nation.
The rumors of such an investigation have kicked around for years — most famously in the latter days of Trump’s term when part of a federal courthouse was closed off while prosecutors pushed for records from the Egyptian bank, although few details were known at the time. The new Post investigation revealed a stunning detail — that the Cairo bank had received a note from an agency believed to be Egyptian intelligence to “kindly withdraw” nearly $10 million in two, 100-pound bags full of U.S. $100 bills, five days before Trump became 45th president.
The case, which kicked off with a tip from a credible U.S. intelligence asset of a $10 million bribe from the Sisi regime to Trump to pay for a last-minute ad blitz in the 2016 campaign, remains a circumstantial one, lacking the smoking gun that could lie in Trump’s unexamined bank records. But what remarkable circumstances these are.
We know that Trump — reluctantly, at the urging of aides — did inject $10 million into his campaign in its final days. The Post said a Trump campaign official later told the FBI the money was structured as a loan which could be repaid to Trump. We now know about the Egyptian withdrawal of nearly $10 million in American cash, in line with the intelligence tip. And we know that Trump cozied up to Sisi — largely a U.S. pariah during the Obama administration — and even called him “my favorite dictator” before releasing nearly $1.4 billion in military aid to Egypt that had been held up because of its human-rights abuses.
The missing link in the probe was Trump’s bank records that might have shown receipt of $10 million. But, as the Post chronicled in great detail, the case was handed off in 2019 from the former special counsel, Robert Mueller, who’d chased the tip aggressively, to political appointees in then-Attorney General William Barr’s Justice Department, including Barr himself. The Trump appointees refused to go after Trump’s bank records from 2017 as he became president — even after the evidence of the Egyptian withdrawal that January. And President Joe Biden’s AG Merrick Garland, whose tenure has been marked by his political cowardice, didn’t restart the case before the statute of limitations expired in January 2022.
In many ways, the failed bribery probe is not an isolated incident. This is the third major case — in addition to the allegations of a Trump cover-up in Mueller’s probe of 2016 Russian election interference, and the 2016 hush money to Stormy Daniels that eventually led to Trump’s conviction on 34 state felony counts — in which Barr is alleged to have put his finger on the scales of justice in a case involving the president who appointed him. That alone is worthy of a congressional investigation.
Yes it is.
The Justice Department has not interfered in the investigation of Hunter Biden who may very well end up doing time for a minor crime that is rarely prosecuted under the circumstances. And the DOJ prosecuted Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez who will almost certainly will go to jail for accepting bribes from …. Egypt! NO thumbs on the scale for their own. If anything, at least in the Hunter Biden case, it’s the opposite. He would almost certainly not have been prosecuted if he weren’t the son of the president. But Trump has gotten away with corruption on an unprecedented scale and there seems to be little appetite for even the Senate to take it up for transparency purposes. (We know he can’t be prosecuted for this, unfortunately, since the high court will almost certainly define this as part of his official duties.)
I suspect that everyone is just holding their breath hoping that Trump will lose and they’ll finally be rid of him without inciting the right wing again. But giving him a pass or delaying justice combined with the Supremes putting their thumbs on the scale has resulted in even more cynicism about the judicial system. The Democratic Senate has been completely asleep at the wheel.
Trump and his cronies have taken a wrecking ball to the rule of law and the Department of Justice and I’m not sure if or when it can be rebuilt. I’m afraid that the negative consequences of this era are profound and long lasting and I’m not sure that anyone’s going to even attempt to do anything about it.
Maduro is not a right winger. This is not about ideology. It’s about authoritarianism. That’s what he cares about. So when you hear people saying that the “threat to democracy” isn’t worth talking about, keep this in mind.
TONIGHT: Leaders Across the Progressive Movement Rally in Support of Kamala Harris
On Monday, August 5th at 8pm ET progressive leaders, following in the footsteps of Win With Black Women and other groups that are mobilizing their communities to elect Vice President Kamala Harris as the 47th President of the United States, will be holding a “Progressives for Harris” organizing call. RSVP to receive call details.
The call features an all-star lineup of organizers and standard-bearers from across the progressive movement, including (with additions expected):
Chicago Teachers Union President Stacy Davis Gates
Detroit AFT President Lakia Wilson-Lumpkins
AFT Massachusetts President Jessica Tang
Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison
NYC Comptroller Brad Lander
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson
Wisconsin Assembly Minority Leader Greta Neubauer
Tennessee Assembly Member Justin Jones
Black Voters Matter Co-Founder LaTosha Brown
Center for Popular Democracy Analilia Mejia
MoveOn Executive Director Rahna Epting
Common Defense Executive Director Jose Vasquez
Green New Deal Network National Director Kaniela Ing
Gen-Z for Change Executive Director Elise Joshi
PCCC Co-Founder Adam Green
Center for Popular Democracy Co-Executive Director Analilia Meijia
People’s Action Executive Director Sulma Arias
Ahead of the call, Progressives for Harris released the following statement:
“Can anyone remember the last time this many progressive champions representing such a wide breadth of the progressive movement were together on an organizing call like this? It shows how excited progressives are to support the Harris campaign. We understand that this November we have a chance not just to defeat fascism but also to elect someone who will, with our movement’s help, fight for an America where everyone has a roof over their head, a good job, retirement security, great healthcare, clean air and water, and a livable future. Time to get to work!”
When former President Donald J. Trump walked onto the stage at his rally in Atlanta on Saturday, fog machines shot white plumes of smoke into the air, heralding his arrival.
If you looked closely, you could almost imagine steam pouring out of his ears, too. All week long, something had been giving him the vapors.
“Crazy Kamala,” he fumed a minute into his speech. “She was here a week ago — lots of empty seats — but the crowd she got was because she had entertainers.”
Four days earlier, Vice President Kamala Harris had packed about the same number of people (10,000) into the arena, the Georgia State University Convocation Center. It was the first major rally of her newborn campaign, and she had two rappers (Quavo and Megan Thee Stallion) on hand to hype up her crowd.
Mr. Trump, who has been shunned by much of the entertainment industry, spun this as somehow cheating in the all-important competition over crowd size.
“I don’t need entertainers,” he said on Saturday. “I fill the stadium because I’m making America great again.”
Actually, Trump’s crowds have thinned over the years. Sure he has a hard core cult of Trump Deadheads. But he doesn’t draw like he used to. It was certainly thinner in Atlanta.
Mr. Trump couldn’t help but focus on those who weren’t piling in. He claimed that Georgia State University officials in charge of the arena prevented him from letting in more people. “We have beautiful cameras set up for the overflow crowds,” he said. A massive screen flashed to a live video feed of his red-capped supporters milling around outside in the 90-degree heat.
In Mr. Trump’s telling, this wasn’t a safety protocol but a conspiracy to humiliate him, perpetrated by the university and other nefarious forces. It all connects, in his estimation, to the biggest numbers game he has ever lost. “If they’re going to stand in the way of admitting people to our rally, just imagine what they’re going to do on Election Day,” he said. […]
Thirty minutes into his speech, he became distracted again by the seating: “There’s some seats right up there — they could let them come in.”
He complained about the venue to Representative Marjorie Taylor-Greene, Republican of Georgia, who was sitting in the front row: “It’s obviously, Marjorie, a very liberal school, I guess, right? I’m not happy with the school.” He claimed that “they don’t want to show that we’re successful.”
And then he was back, once again, on Ms. Harris and her crowd size. “She has to go get entertainers,” he repeated. “They start leaving as soon as she opens her mouth.”
[…]
Still, an hour into his speech, the Atlanta crowd had emptied out more than usual. (Like Madonna, he often keeps his crowds waiting for an hour or more past the scheduled start time, which doesn’t help the situation.) Large splotches of blue had blossomed across the upper stands, and people on the floor had started to sneak away, too.
That’s because he’s incredibly boring.
Trump truly believes that his crowd sizes are indicative of his popularity in the country. He says he doesn’t believe in paying for polls when you have to do is look at them to see that he’s the winner. And he lies about the numbers of course.
It appears that Harris may be able to draw in ways that Clinton and Biden were not and the direct comparison between her crowd and his in the same arena has him rattled:
But there was something about Ms. Harris’s star turn at the same arena that had unsettled Mr. Trump. He seemed to be pining for the glory days of his first campaign, back when his rollicking rallies were but a harbinger of a stunning victory to come. He said that seeing two rappers open for Ms. Harris reminded him of how Mrs. Clinton used musicians to help summon the kinds of crowds he could command with ease.
“She got the idea from Hillary,” he told his supporters. “Hillary got Bruce Springsteen, I’ll never forget, and the place was pretty full.”
“Not full like our places are full,” he quickly added. “I don’t have a guitar. But our places are bigger — we get more people than anybody. I don’t care how many guitars they have.”
Justice Neil Gorsuch is pushing back against President Joe Biden’s recent proposals to restructure the Supreme Court.
“I just say: Be careful,” Gorsuch warned in an interview that aired on “Fox News Sunday.”
Less than a week after Biden announced he was reversing course and supporting 18-year term limits for justices and legislation to create a binding ethics code for the high court, the first of President Donald Trump’s three Supreme Court appointees encouraged Americans to think long and hard before taking steps that might undermine the independence of the judicial system.
“The independent judiciary … What does it mean to you as an American?” Gorsuch asked about Biden’s new plan during an interview linked to a new book Gorsuch is releasing this week. “It means that when you’re unpopular, you can get a fair hearing.”
“If you’re in the majority, you don’t need judges and juries, to hear you, to protect your rights, if you’re popular,” Gorsuch continued. “It’s there for the moments when the spotlight’s on you — when the government’s coming after you. And don’t you want a ferociously independent judge and a jury of your peers to make those decisions?”
That’s a very odd thing to say. People in the “majority” (however that’s defined for this purpose) don’t need judges and juries to protect their rights because they’re popular? Is that how this works? That’s news to me. I thought the judiciary was there to protect the rights of everyone regardless of their relative popularity. Good to know.
Meanwhile., Judge Chutkan is right out of the gate on the J6 case via TPM:
After its ponderous sojourn at the Supreme Court, the Jan. 6 case against Donald Trump was officially returned Friday to U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan in Washington, D.C., and she immediately picked it back up again and started moving it forward.
Among her initial actions, notably undertaken over the weekend, Chutkan:
–denied a pending Trump motion to dismiss the case on statutory grounds, but gave him the chance to re-up it once the immunity questions in the case are resolved.
–denied a pending Trump motion to dismiss the case on the grounds of selective and vindictive prosecution.
And just like that, the case was up and running again. But don’t hold your breath that this will go to trial before the election. Time is simply too short at this point.
The elephant in the room is the Supreme Court’s expansive ruling in this very case on presidential immunity, how much that narrows the indictment, what kind of evidentiary hearings Chutkan needs to address presidential immunity, and the still-unknown ways in which the high court’s unprecedented ruling effects this and the other Trump prosecutions.
Hanging over all of that will be at least one more trip to the Supreme Court to give it a chance to weigh in on whether Chutkan properly jumped through all the hoops it has put in her way. Again, there’s no way for all this to happen before Election Day.
In her order denying Trump’s motion to dismiss for selective and vindictive prosecution, Chutkan used some of the same direct and non-nonsense language that had marked her earlier handling of the case:
At the outset, the court must address—as it has before—Defendant’s improper reframing of the allegations against him. … At this stage, the court cannot accept Defendant’s alternate narrative.
Well!
Sadly, the Supreme Court majority seems to have decided that Trump is a persecuted minority who needs their protection so I wouldn’t get my hopes up. Sure, he refused to accept the results of the election and incited an insurrection but you can’t hold him responsible because his allegedly powerful political rivals are the ones trying to hold him to it.
Musk has long been a champion of the pivot to electric vehicles. His company Tesla has largely led the way in developing the industry, which for a time made Musk a darling of the climate-conscious left.
But Musk has more recently embraced conservative politics, especially the issue of free speech. Musk bought Twitter in 2022, rebranded it to X, and has dismantled many of the checks and balances meant to limit hateful speech and misinformation on the platform.
Musk has publicly supported Trump since the assassination attempt last month. Musk, however, has denied reports that he pledged a $45 million donation to a pro-Trump super PAC.
Musk is backing a corrupt “get out the vote” PAC which is now under investigation for election interference:
Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, has said he created and helped fund the America PAC, which is supporting former President Donald Trump. Musk has a net worth of over $225 billion, according to Forbes.
The committee has been acquiring detailed voter information from those living in Michigan and other battleground states after people submit their personal data through a section on the PAC’s website that says “register to vote.”
After clicking on the “register to vote” tab on America PAC’s website, users in states like Michigan can submit a ZIP code, address and phone number. People with a Michigan address are brought to a page that says “thank you” and asks users to “complete the form below” to help wrap up the voter registration process. As of Sunday afternoon, though, there was no other form to complete below the words “thank you.”
“Every citizen should know exactly how their personal information is being used by PACs, especially if an entity is claiming it will help people register to vote in Michigan or any other state,” a spokeswoman for the Michigan secretary of state’s office said in a statement to CNBC.
“While the America PAC is a federal political action committee, the Department is reviewing their activities to determine if there have been any violations of state law. We will refer potential violations to the Michigan Attorney General’s office as appropriate,” the spokeswoman added.
CNBC first reported on the group’s efforts and how the site does not directly register people to vote for those with an address in a swing state.
A person with direct knowledge of the PAC’s operations told CNBC that, at one point since the group registered with the Federal Election Commission in May, the links on the website were functioning properly — but admits now they’re not.
The group is planning to launch a new website in the coming weeks, this person explained. The person declined to be named in order to speak freely about private matters.
Five secretaries of state plan to send an open letter to billionaire Elon Musk on Monday, urging him to “immediately implement changes” to X’s AI chatbot Grok, after it shared with millions of users false information suggesting that Kamala Harris was not eligible to appear on the 2024 presidential ballot.
The letter, spearheaded by Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon and signed by his counterparts Al Schmidt of Pennsylvania, Steve Hobbs of Washington, Jocelyn Benson of Michigan and Maggie Toulouse Oliver of New Mexico, urges Musk to “immediately implement changes to X’s AI search assistant, Grok, to ensure voters have accurate information in this critical election year.”
Within hours of President Biden’s announcement that he was suspending his presidential campaign on July 21, “false information on ballot deadlines produced by Grok was shared on multiple social media platforms,” the secretaries wrote.
The secretaries cited a post from Grok that circulated after Biden stepped out of the race: “The ballot deadline has passed for several states for the 2024 election,” the post read, naming nine states: Alabama, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas and Washington.
You bet Trump is backing Elon’s company. Elon is delivering for him in a very big way.
