Oppose
Gestapo tactics in the streets of U.S. cities
People do not want rights breached by
armed anonymous war tacticians who
kidnap people into dark SUVs.
Oppose
liberty and rights being trampled
by two portly sick men.
Monday, July 20, 2020
Sunday, July 19, 2020
The Trump Whitehouse being the cesspool it is, dismays good sense.
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| click the image to enlarge and read |
Guardian's reporting posted links to NYT and WaPo.
NYT headlining and quote:
Trump Administration Aims to Block New Funding for Coronavirus Testing and Tracing
The resistance to a funding proposal drafted by Senate Republicans has angered several members of the president’s party on Capitol Hill. The F.D.A. has issued emergency approval for pooled testing, a method that allows for much faster tracking of new infections.
Published July 18, 2020
Updated July 19, 2020, 7:14 a.m. ET
[Opening post caption]:
The White House pushes to eliminate billions from a relief proposal drafted by Senate Republicans.
The Trump administration has balked at providing billions of dollars to fund coronavirus testing and shore up federal health agencies as the virus surges across the country, complicating efforts to reach agreement on the next round of pandemic aid.
Senate Republicans had drafted a proposal that would allocate $25 billion in grants to states for conducting testing and contact tracing, as well as about $10 billion for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and about $15 billion for the National Institutes of Health, according to a person familiar with the tentative plans, who cautioned that the final dollar figures remained in flux. They had also proposed providing $5.5 billion to the State Department and $20 billion to the Pentagon to help counter the virus outbreak and potentially distribute a vaccine at home and abroad.
But in talks over the weekend, administration officials instead pushed to zero out the funding for testing and for the nation’s top health agencies, and to cut the Pentagon funding to $5 billion, according to another person familiar with the discussions. The people asked for anonymity to disclose private details of the talks, which were first reported by The Washington Post.
The suggestions from the administration infuriated several Republicans on Capitol Hill, who saw them as tone deaf, given that more than 3.5 million people in the United States have been infected with the coronavirus and many states are experiencing spikes in cases.
With unemployment benefits and a number of other aid measures included in the stimulus package set to expire at the end of the month, Congress is rushing to pull together the measure within the next two weeks.
WaPo:
Negotiations are expected to kick off with increased urgency because of the rapid growth of cases — and steady uptick in deaths — in the United States. The number of cases began falling in April but accelerated sharply after Memorial Day, shattering records in the past two weeks.
In late May, there were fewer than 20,000 new cases of coronavirus reported each day. On Friday, there were more than 76,000 new cases reported.
The two political parties are far apart on a number of contentious issues, such as unemployment insurance, but the conflict between Trump administration officials and Senate Republicans on money for testing and other priorities is creating a major complication even before bipartisan negotiations get under way. Some lawmakers are trying to reach a deal quickly, as enhanced unemployment benefits for millions of Americans are set to expire in less than two weeks.
One person involved in the talks said Senate Republicans were seeking to allocate $25 billion for states to conduct testing and contact tracing, but that certain administration officials want to zero out the testing and tracing money entirely. Some White House officials believe they have already approved billions of dollars in assistance for testing and that some of that money remains unspent.
Roughly 3.7 million Americans have already tested positive for the coronavirus in the United States, according to a Washington Post analysis. Wait times for test results can vary by state, but in some places people have to wait more than a week to find out if they tested positive.
Trump and other White House officials have been pushing for states to own more of the responsibility for testing and have objected to creating national standards, at times seeking to minimize the federal government’s role.
The last major coronavirus spending bill Congress approved, in April, included $25 billion to increase testing and also required the Health and Human Services Department to release a strategic testing plan. The agency did so in May, but the plan mainly reasserted the administration’s insistence that states — not the federal government — should take the lead on testing.
Several Senate Republicans including Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) are exploring pushing a testing and tracing provision in the next stimulus package but are expected to meet resistance from the White House.
“Cases and deaths are now both rising again, including in many red states,” said Sam Hammond, a policy expert at the right-leaning think tank the Niskanen Center, which has been working with Senate Republicans on testing legislation. “Senate Republicans have asked for funding to help states purchase test kits in bulk. As it currently stands, the main bottleneck to a big ramp-up in testing is less technical than the White House’s own intransigence.”
[italics and bolding added]
This is Trump deliberately being himself: Trump funched up pandemic response from day one, big time, perhaps on purpose so that many would die, and it continues from then to now and into the foreseeable future. Trump would rather play golf than govern. He is trying to fob off responsibility for his ongoing obscene dereliction upon states. Here is a link to an image of a train wreck. If you do not understand how this link relates to Trump, his administration, and the rest of the post, then go read something else.
Gary Gross in his latest current post at his blog out of St. Cloud, MN, posts a fine and dandy stand-up-and-salute fluff quote, but . . .
. . . he does not post about Portland! Not one single word. What he does post . . .
Newt Gingrich, the amphibian, blowing smoke, stringing words, bloviating as quoted here, from the quote, there:
Our national anthem says we are “the land of the free and the home of the brave.” Our Founding Fathers risked their lives, fortunes and sacred honor to defend freedom. The Civil War generation lost 630,000 Americans fighting for the Union and to end slavery. The Greatest Generation went across the planet risking its lives to defeat Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. By the way, through all these events, Congress met in person.
Now, we are told that our members of the House are too precious to risk their lives by coming to Washington.
To these members I would say: If freedom isn’t worth the risk, quit the Congress. Someone with more courage will replace you in a special election. The emotion driving the proposal for remote voting is an expression of a kind of cowardice I would never have expected to see in America.
The amphibian - waving the flag, surprisingly not quoting Scripture, all as a prelude to shitting on safe and sane House voting during a pandemic. Likely too a vote by mail hater. Hell can be insinuated into Portland where it never was wanted nor needed, just because a puffball got elected president, and federal thugs who you have to wonder about will go out and Nazi the community for their paychecks. Fine with Newt. He does not want sane voting. By our Representatives. By us. That's his shtick. Get in the way, because you're Newt.
If that _________ [fill in the blank] Gingrich actually believed one word of that flag wave prelude to mischief, he'd be denouncing snatch and grab of citizens in Portland to where if white supremacists in St. Cloud, MN, were to begin snatching folks off the street, bloggers perhaps, into dark SUVs spiriting them away to wherever, bystander witnesses would say, "Oh, that's just Trump again."
Newt is a studied hypocrite, but you don't have to make yourself one by quoting.
Newt and Trump are twin sons of different - - - mothers. Talking puffballs, i.e., hollow talking yard funguses full of nothing besides millions of grey fungus spores.
And then there is Barr. And then there is Pence. November beckons.
Saturday, July 18, 2020
“Usually when we see people in unmarked cars forcibly grab someone off the street we call it kidnapping,” said Jann Carson, interim executive director of the ACLU of Oregon. “The actions of the militarised federal officers are flat-out unconstitutional and will not go unanswered.”
Sleep tight, knowing you live under the rule of law, in the U.S. of A. where shit like that does not happen.
Trump is intent in turning us into one of his shithole countries. Lawless, run by brutality to quell dissent. Portland is a trial balloon.
“COVID-19 has been likened to an X-ray, revealing fractures in the fragile skeleton of the societies we have built,” Antonio Guterres said as he delivered the Nelson Mandela Annual Lecture.
That is the lecture given on International Mandela Day. This one by the UN's Secretary General. Link.
Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum said she would file a lawsuit in federal court against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the Marshals Service, Customs and Border Protection and Federal Protection Service alleging they have violated the civil rights of Oregonians by detaining them without probable cause. She will also seek a temporary restraining order against them. The ACLU of Oregon said the federal agents appear to be violating people's rights, which "should concern everyone in the United States."
The headline is from AP, carried by Strib, and it is about Trump being yet again a provocateur, needing to be severely criticized, and curbed. November cannot come soon enough.
Note that because the military declined to be Trump's foil, he is deploying other federal employees to do his malign dirty work. Nobody in office in Oregon wants the idiot show on their turf. And they make it clear. With a raging pandemic, this sort of diversionary circus stunt really annoys. This clear uninvited misuse of government power is costly and aimed against citizens. It is Trump in his full nuisance mode.
BOTTOM LINE: Trump has got to go. If it has to be Biden serving the eviction notice instead of a progressive, that's politics. Bad politics, but essential nonetheless.
Bernie serving the eviction notice would have been more fun, but cutthroats waylaid him. Bloomberg and others. There will be a reckoning over that, but it can await the ouster and replacement by Biden, as marginally an incremental a reform as that will be.
___________UPDATE__________
Chemical weapon deployment is reported, and a breach of lawful norms rather than lawful conduct:
Federal agents, some wearing camouflage and some wearing dark Homeland Security uniforms, used tear gas at least twice to break up crowds late Friday night, The Oregonian/OregonLive reported.
Protests against systemic racism and police brutality have been a nightly feature in deeply liberal Portland since Minneapolis police killed George Floyd on May 25. President Donald Trump has decried the disorder and Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf blasted the protesters as “lawless anarchists” in a visit to the city, helping make the clashes between police and demonstrators a national focus.
The administration has enlisted federal agents, including the U.S. Marshals Special Operations Group and an elite U.S. Customs and Border Protection team based on the U.S.-Mexico border, to protect federal property. But Oregon Public Broadcasting reported this week that some agents had been driving around in unmarked vans and snatching protesters from streets not near federal property, without identifying themselves.
Tensions also escalated after an officer with the Marshals Service fired a less-lethal round at a protester’s head on July 11, critically injuring him.
[italics added] If you imagine it's fun and comfort to be hauled into an unmarked van by cammie wearing men without any badging; where it could be Pepe the frog's Boogaloo bois looking to lynch, as much as federal agents, then fun to you is a sick thing.
The House should pass a resolution of condemnation, and request that heads of agencies appear for hearings. If discipline is so lax that unmarked clothing and unmarked vehicles are used to snatch Americans off the street - we have an agency problem that needs sunshine.
Inspector Generals of any involved agencies should be tasked by House leadership to investigate who did what from the agency in Oregon, and then appear to testify.
Agency budgets need review. If there's money for that level of misadventure, then there's too much money for the agency to handle safely.
This is bullshit-trampling on citizens' rights far more than requiring a pandemic related face covering; but that band of assholes deriding a "masking infringement on rights" have fallen silent about governmental snatching people off the street into unmarked vans and with neither a warrant nor jurisdiction to be off federal properties causing civilian havoc. The army told the _________ in chief no, it was against the law for them to conduct war against citizens, so the __________ went and used other more pliant tools of government.
(fill in the blank)
Strib carrying an AP feed: "Biden: After intel briefings, warns of election interference By WILL WEISSERT Associated Press July 17, 2020 — 10:30pm." That story should be fleshed out in detail.
WASHINGTON — Joe Biden said Friday night that he's begun receiving intelligence briefings as he warned that Russia, China and other adversaries were attempting to undermine the upcoming U.S. election in November.
The presumptive Democratic presidential nominee wasn't specific and offered no evidence while addressing a virtual fundraiser with more than 200 attendees. But, in the process, he confirmed receiving classified briefings after saying as recently as late last month that he wasn't getting them but might request one about reports of Russian bounties being offered on U.S. troops in Afghanistan.
"We know from before, and I guarantee you I know now because now I get briefings again. The Russians are still engaged, trying to de-legitimize our electoral process. Fact," Biden said Friday. "China and others are engaged as well in activities designed for us to lose confidence in the outcome."
The White House and National Security Council didn't immediately respond to requests for comment on Biden's statement. Reached by phone, a Biden spokesperson did not immediately provide further details.
If foreign interference is truly a burden to U.S. democracy, as implied, name the others. Why not? Some blowback? If a nation small enough with obvious financial ties that can be brought forward in quelling the "others" motivation and dedication, it should be done. Today, not later. I.e., step on their throats long enough and hard enough to get them to back off.
A few links:
Salon: Expect three authoritarian regimes — Israel, Russia and Saudi Arabia — to get Trump reelected in 202 [sic]
mondoweiss.net: Where’s the outrage over Netanyahu trying to interfere in the US election?
theleadersnews.com: Does Israel Interfere in American Elections? Ask Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib
timesofisrael.com: Redacted FBI document hints at Israeli efforts to help Trump in 2016 campaign
politico: ‘Netanyahu is essentially an Israeli Republican’
You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.
The Israelis get $3.4 billion per year of U.S. taxpayer money, and if that is not leverage to make them better world citizens, then have we other leverage? And backstep, why give them money at all that could be spent making citizens' lives better here?
It is our election. Not theirs. If Russians are a worry, Bibi and crowd are a bigger one, based on effectiveness if nothing else.
Even Trump supporters should acknowledge that any foreign attempt to influence of fix the U.S. presidential elections is wrong and should be quelled.
UPDATE: Link. Biden wants an explicit position known.
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