Tracker

Maryland Governor Issues Blanket Pardon For Lynching Victims Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) on Saturday granted posthumous pardons to 34 lynching victims. His office said it was the first time a governor had issued a “blanket pardon” of this kind. Some children were among those pardoned, including Howard Cooper, a 15-year-old Black boy who was hanged by a white mob in 1885, and 13-year-old Frederick “whose full name was lost to history,” Hogan said. The governor signed the pardons at an event memorializing Howard, who was killed after an all-white jury found him guilty of raping a white woman. The woman never testified, but the jury reportedly reached its verdict in under a minute. Before Howard’s attorneys were able to appeal the conviction to the U.S. Supreme Court, the boy was dragged from a Baltimore County jailhouse by an angry mob and hanged on a nearby sycamore tree. According to a historic marker that was unveiled Saturday at the site where Howard was lynched, the boy’s “body was displayed so angry white residents and local train passengers could see his corpse” and pieces of the rope that had been used to hang him were later “given away as souvenirs.” “Howard’s mother, Henrietta, collected her child’s remains and buried him in an unmarked grave in Ruxton. No one was ever held accountable for her son’s lynching,” the marker reads. (Very magnanimous of them) Jim Crow Ballot ‘Purity’ Phrase Yanked From Texas Vote Suppression Bill At Last Minute. GOP lawmakers ultimately decided not to advertise the segregationist nature of the voting measure. A segregationist term from the Jim Crow era referring to the “purity” of ballots was yanked at the last minute before the Texas House passed a measure restricting voting. Eighteen amendments — 13 of them from Democrats — were added to the Republican election bill before it was passed 78-64 Friday. But an initial fight was over the bill’s statement of purpose. It initially said that said the measure was designed to “preserve the purity of the ballot box” — a phrase “drafted specifically to disenfranchise Black voters following the Civil War,” Democratic Rep. Rafael Anchía told bill sponsor Rep. Briscoe Cain (R). “Are you aware of the history of that?” he asked in comments on the floor. “No, I’m sorry to hear that ... Those are troubling things,” Cain said. Cain later noted that he’d be willing to agree to an amendment to change “purity” to “integrity or something,” reported the Austin-American Statesman. The word was stricken from the bill.

No real difference. Horrible.

Pro-Trump pastor shares bizarre conspiracy theory with his congregation to support his claims that Trump is still president A self-proclaimed Christian prophet is circulating an unfounded conspiracy theory that he believes is proof that Donald Trump is still President of the United States. According to Newsweek, megachurch pastor Johnny Enlow recently shared a Facebook post with his followers as he explained why he has reason to believe former President Donald Trump is still president. Enlow claims to have had a "vision" of Trump holding "a golden scepter" which he believes is proof that Trump is still in office. Enlow claims that in his vision, he could see Trump "seated on a throne holding a golden scepter... [with] a golden crown on his head." He said the vision was Trump's "PRESENT status from heaven's perspective." "Heaven does not recognize [Joe Biden] having any scepter nor wearing any crown. From heaven's perspective, there is only the legitimacy of [Trump]. God has assigned a massive contingency of angels to that scepter and to that crown." Pro-Trump pastor shares bizarre conspiracy theory with his congregation to support his claims that Trump is still president - Alternet.org

We're almost there. It ought to be frightening to Americans that their president and his gang violated almost every law or tried to- spying on the media and threatening them, trying to use the US military to impose martial law, conspiring with a foreign adversary to influence the election and on and on. This has become so normalized that many Americans hardly notice, and that is probably what Trump's GOP wants.

900,000 Americans Estimated To Have Died From COVID-19, Study Says Public health experts agree that official COVID-19 death tolls are undercounts, but there is disagreement over how high the actual tolls are. headshot Around 905,000 Americans may have died from COVID-19, according to a new study that arrived at a substantially higher number than the official government tally of 577,000 U.S. deaths.

Trump DOJ secretly obtained WaPo phone records: report There's a new bombshell report on the actions by the Justice Department under Donald Trump. "The Trump Justice Department secretly obtained Washington Post journalists' phone records and tried to obtain their email records over reporting they did in the early months of the Trump administration on Russia's role in the 2016 election, according to government letters and officials," Devlin Barrett reported on Friday for The Washington Post. "In three separate letters dated May 3 and addressed to Post reporters Ellen Nakashima and Greg Miller, and former Post reporter Adam Entous, the Justice Department wrote they were 'hereby notified that pursuant to legal process the United States Department of Justice received toll records associated with the following telephone numbers for the period from April 15, 2017 to July 31, 2017.' The letters listed work, home or cellphone numbers covering that three-and-a-half-month period." Jeff Sessions was attorney general during the time period the DOJ was investigating. The newspaper's acting executive editor, Cameron Barr, blasted the news. "We are deeply troubled by this use of government power to seek access to the communications of journalists. The Department of Justice should immediately make clear its reasons for this intrusion into the activities of reporters doing their jobs, an activity protected under the First Amendment," he said. Trump DOJ secretly obtained WaPo phone records: report - Alternet.org

Arizona’s Secretary Of State Targeted By Death Threats Amid Conspiracy-Fueled Ballot Recount Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs said she’s been the target of multiple death threats amid the ongoing review and recount of 2020 election ballots in her state — a Republican-led effort whose legitimacy has been questioned by Hobbs and other election officials. Hobbs, a Democrat and the state’s top election official, said Thursday that a man had called her office “saying I deserve to die and wanting to know ‘what she is wearing so she’ll be easy to get.’” Hobbs said that “it was one of at least three such threats today.” The secretary of state added that she and a staffer were later “chased” outside their office by a man she didn’t know.

502 COVID-19 cases reported in Manitoba as 1st B1617 variant cases discovered Highest single-day jump in COVID-19 cases since December; 4 cases of variant 1st found in India identified CBC News · Posted: May 07, 2021 12:30 PM CT | Last Updated: 1 hour ago A laboratory technician works on the genome sequencing of the virus that causes COVID-19 in this January file photo. Manitoba has now identified its first four cases of the B1617 variant of interest, which is contributing to India's surging COVID-19 caseload, officials said Friday. (Christophe Archambault/AFP/Getty Images) Manitoba reported 502 new COVID-19 cases on Friday, the province announced in a news release — its highest one-day jump since Christmas break. But the 524 infections reported on Dec. 27 were from a three-day period, after Manitoba took the previous two days off from reporting new cases. Before that, Manitoba had only reported more than 500 cases once: on Nov. 23, when 546 were posted. "These numbers are alarming," acting deputy chief public health officer Dr. Jazz Atwal said at a Friday afternoon news conference. "That's why meetings are underway right now to finalize new public health orders. -CBC Manitoba

In Calgary, the schools have gone to remote learning two weeks ago.

Federal Grand Jury Indicts 4 Ex-Police Officers Involved In George Floyd Death MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — A federal grand jury has indicted the four former Minneapolis police officers involved in George Floyd’s arrest and death, accusing them of violating the Black man’s constitutional rights as he was restrained face-down on the pavement and gasping for air, according to indictments unsealed Friday. The three-count indictment names Derek Chauvin, Thomas Lane, J. Kueng and Tou Thao. Specifically, Chauvin, Thao and Kueng are charged with violating Floyd’s right to be free from unreasonable seizure and excessive force. All four officers are charged for their failure to provide Floyd with medical care. Chauvin was also charged in a second indictment, stemming from the arrest and neck restraint of a 14-year-old boy in 2017. Thomas Lane, Tou Thao and J. Kueng appeared via videoconference in U.S. District Court in Minneapolis. Chauvin was not part of the court appearance. Chauvin was convicted last month on state charges of murder and manslaughter in Floyd’s death and is in Minnesota’s only maximum-security prison as he awaits sentencing. The other three former officers face a state trial in August, and they are free on bond. They were allowed to remain free after Friday’s federal court appearance.

Liz Cheney was behind the key move that stopped Trump from using military to overturn election: report Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) was the organizer of an open letter by all living former Defense Secretaries against the military intervening in election disputes. The revelation was made to Susan Glasser of The New Yorker by Eric Edelman, a friend of Cheney's who served as an advisor to her father. "Cheney's rupture with the House Republican Conference has become all but final in recent days, but it has been months in the making. Edelman revealed that Cheney herself secretly orchestrated an unprecedented op-ed in the Washington Post by all ten living former Defense Secretaries, including her father, warning against Trump's efforts to politicize the military," Glasser reported. "Cheney's rupture with the House Republican Conference has become all but final in recent days, but it has been months in the making. Edelman revealed that Cheney herself secretly orchestrated an unprecedented op-ed in the Washington Post by all ten living former Defense Secretaries, including her father, warning against Trump's efforts to politicize the military," Glasser reported. It wasn't the only action she took. "Little noticed at the time was another Cheney effort to combat Trump's post-election lies, a twenty-one-page memo written by Cheney and her husband, Phil Perry, an attorney, and circulated on January 3rd to the entire House Republican Conference. In it, Cheney debunked Trump's false claims about election fraud and warned her colleagues that voting to overturn the election results, as Trump was insisting, would 'set an exceptionally dangerous precedent.' But, of course, they did not listen. Even after the storming of the Capitol, a hundred and forty-seven Republican lawmakers voted against accepting the election results," Glaser wrote. (Now we know why the Trump GOPers have the vendetta against Liz Cheney)

The treadmill may not kill the company but the punitive damages from killing one child and injuring dozens of others are going to substantial. Aaaand....so many cats, so few good recipes.

Looks like we are in for a severe clampdown in a 6:00 PM announcement.

And guess who is going to get stuck with the bar tab once the party is over?

The GOP is waaay past grasping at the nuances of irony. They are into monomaniacal intent to create a system of politics that exclusively benefits them and can be manipulated at their will.

Damn. I pray that this is an aberration. One day can be anomaly but if we get 2 or 3 in a row....

Not sure if its been posted here already, but apparently the nut-fringe GOPers are demanding that every ballot cast in the last election be tested for bamboo fibers because they are certain that millions of ballots were printed up in China and slipped into ballot boxes everywhere to skew the election in favour of Biden. It just keeps getting crazier and crazier. What will be next- testing for soy sauce residue?

TINFOIL HAT: Tucker Carlson Makes BS Claim ‘30 People Every Day’ Are Dying From Vaccines. Here’s the Truth. Fox News host Tucker Carlson continued his reckless mission to mainstream vaccine skepticism on Wednesday night by dangerously speculating that thousands of Americans have died from COVID-19 vaccinations, citing a faulty open-sourced database that has become a haven for misinformation. Over the past few months, the Fox News star has repeatedly used his top-rated primetime show to cast doubt on both the efficacy and safety of the coronavirus vaccines. Despite the fact that countless clinical trials and real-time studies have found the shots to be overwhelmingly safe, Carlson has told his viewers not to trust the vaccines while questioning if they even work. Carlson ramped up his vaccine fear-mongering on Wednesday night, kicking off his program by asking his audience the following questions: “How many Americans have died after taking the COVID vaccine? That’s not Americans that will be killed by the virus, that is a huge number. It’s how many Americans have died after getting the vaccine designed to prevent the virus? Do you know the answer to that question?” Making sure to point out that he has “been completely in favor of vulnerable people taking the vaccine”—a disclaimer he regularly tosses out in these vaccine skeptical segments—Carlson pointed to the Center for Disease Control’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System to insinuate that dozens of people a day are dropping dead from the vaccines. “Between late December of 2020 and last month, a total of 3,362 people apparently died after getting the COVID vaccine in the United States,” Carlson exclaimed. “That is an average of roughly 30 people every day. So, what does that add up to? By the way, that reporting period ended on April 23, and we don’t have numbers past that.” “Not quite up to date, but we can assume another 360 people at that rate have died in the 12 days since,” he continued. “You put it all together, that is a total of 3,722 deaths, almost 4,000 people who died after getting the COVID vaccine. The actual number is almost certainly higher than that, perhaps vastly higher than that.” Claiming that “fewer than 1 percent of vaccine adverse events are reported by the VAERS system,” Carlson then pondered that the actual number of deaths from the vaccines must be severely underreported. Tucker Carlson Makes BS Claim ‘30 People Every Day’ Are Dying From Vaccines. Here’s the Truth. (thedailybeast.com)

No matter what is found or not found in the ballot recounts, the right-wing fascists in the US and Trump will never accept their losses.

The government doctors said today that everyone who wants one will be able to get their first dose by the long weekend. YAAAAY!!

Numbers are still plateaued. Over the next week, they should fall.

So is McDonalds but that does not mean its good.

The right wing has successfully managed to conflate the two to their core base. This despite repeated and overwhelming evidence that they are being treated like all-day suckers. This is what happens when you delegate your thinking and turn your moral compass off.