Tracker

I consider that a compliment. I think.

A Century Ago, One Lawmaker Went After the Most Powerful Cops in Texas. Then They Went After Him. The Texas Rangers were vicious enforcers of white power. J.T. Canales was the only Mexican American in the legislature. He lost the fight, but the reckoning he sought is finally underway. https://www.motherjones.com/crime-justice/2020/07/a-century-ago-one-lawmaker-went-after-the-most-powerful-cops-in-texas-then-they-went-after-him/

For the American right, masks are tyranny but Trump’s secret police aren’t Not long ago, heavily armed white men (and a handful of white women) stood on the steps of Michigan’s Capitol. They were protesting the governor’s lock down amid the spread of the new coronavirus. Gretchen Whitmer, they said, was infringing on their constitutional rights and liberties. They were showing they would not stand for it. It was a nice bit of political theater that has since grown nationally into a battle over wearing masks. Refuse to wear one, and you support the president. Wear one, and you don’t. But beneath the protests was something members of the press corps believed they should take seriously: a conservative ideology ever watchful of corrupt power. It should be clear to the press corps, and to a citizenry informed by the press corps, that those protests had nothing to do with the tyranny of government. It should be clear that when they said, “Don’t tread on me,” that didn’t include you. It should be clear, to everyone, that such protests weren’t principled. I’m not going to argue what they were really about. Maybe small men with small minds need to act up. What I do know: if there’s anything worthy of armed resistance, it’s the emergence of Donald Trump’s secret police force. Yet here we are. As far as I can tell, nothing but crickets. The secret police are real. Groups of heavily armed and unidentified federal agents in military dress have been gassing peaceful protesters in Portland, Oregon, under the guise of protecting “federal facilities,” meaning monuments. We now know they are with Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, among other agencies under the US Department of Homeland Security. These are the same agencies that gassed peaceful protesters out of Washington’s Lafayette Square so the president could do a photo shoot with a Bible in front of a church. Videos online have shown officers in Portland taking protesters into custody without reading their rights, loading them into unmarked vans, and threatening to shoot anyone attempting to follow them. Its activity goes beyond disappearing citizens amid social upheaval. The Oregonian, the state’s paper of record, reported Monday that “protecting” monuments from protesters seeking justice for the murder of George Floyd, in addition to greater racial equality over all, now includes spying on them as well as infiltrating their ranks. It reported: “The court records provide a window into the tactics of federal agencies based at the courthouse in downtown Portland at a time when local, state and congressional officials from Oregon have roundly criticized the national law enforcement presence.” https://www.alternet.org/2020/07/for-the-american-right-masks-are-tyranny-but-secret-police-arent/

Leaked memo: Trump administration authorized domestic surveillance of protests to protect statues The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) authorized domestic surveillance to identify threats against monuments and statues in response to President Donald Trump’s executive order targeting vandalism against federal memorials, according to a department memo obtained by Lawfare. The document, issued by the DHS Office of Intelligence & Analysis, described “Activities in Furtherance of Protecting American Monuments, Memorials, Statues and Combatting Recent Criminal Violence.” The document says DHS personnel are “collecting and reporting on various activities in the context of elevated threats targeting monuments, memorials and statues.” It also provides legal guidance on the “expanded intelligence activities necessary to mitigate the significant threat to homeland security” posed by threats to statues. Senior DHS official Ken Cuccinelli appeared to refer to intelligence gathering on protests during a Monday interview with CNN. “We got intelligence about planned attacks on federal facilities,” he said in response to questions about the administration’s controversial deployment of federal authorities to Portland. “If we get the same kind of intelligence in other places about threats to other facilities or officers, we would respond the same way.” https://www.alternet.org/2020/07/1151617/ (Sure as spit sounds like a dicatorial oversight on citizens exercising their right to protest)

Voters may see Trudeau as the lesser of two evils.

The sign on Ness at Ferry says "Sam's" restaurant.

The "troubles" in Ulster did not stop until ordinary women went out and started protesting and putting themselves in harm's way. That forced both sides to the table. What we are seeing is the emergence of a fascist state and if there is not a popular uprising, America will be in big trouble. All popular uprisings begin somewhere and Portland may be the flashpoint that dooms Trump and the racist parts of the GOP. Like what happened in Canada when Mulroney was PM, the right wing in the states will probably be split into the nutty and the insane factions. They will probably wander in the wilderness for a long time as well, and we had better hope that the Dems do not get drunk on power and succumb to the same excesses as the GOP.

The Cons have a larger problem- their unwillingness to expel members who openly voice racist comments. McKay is the only leadership candidate who has any credibility and he is as dynamic as a glass of warm milk.

There is a bit of an odd effect of the Coronavirus- the lumber mills in BC and elsewhere have had to cut production dramatically, so there is a shortage of lumber now.

Trump working with Bush torture lawyer to cut Congress out of lawmaking: report. Trump suggests he plans to exceed his legal authority to implement sweeping changes to health care and immigration President Donald Trump suggested in a Fox News Sunday interview that he planned to act beyond his legal authority to implement sweeping changes to immigration and health care policies based on an interpretation of a recent Supreme Court ruling granting him "powers that nobody thought the president had." Axios reported that the legally precarious strategy, which cuts Congress out of the lawmaking process, relies on a theory of executive power floated in June by John Yoo, the George W. Bush administration lawyer who drafted the memo justifying the use of torture as an interrogation technique. The first of the controversial orders will cover immigration, per Axios. Trump told Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace that he would also invoke the authority to create "a full and complete health care plan. "You heard me yesterday. We're signing a health care plan within two weeks — a full and complete health care plan that the Supreme Court decision on DACA gave me the right to do. So we're going to solve — we're going to sign an immigration plan, a health care plan and various other plans. And nobody will have done what I'm doing in the next four weeks." The Supreme Court gave the president of the United States powers that nobody thought the president had by approving, by doing what they did — their decision on DACA. And DACA's going to be taken care of also. But we're getting rid of it, because we're going to replace it with something much better. What we got rid of already, which was most of Obamacare — the individual mandate. And that I've already won on. And we won also on the Supreme Court. But the decision by the Supreme Court on DACA allows me to do things on immigration, on health care, on other things that we've never done before. And you're going to find it to be a very exciting two weeks. Yoo argued in a National Review article that a recent Supreme Court decision upholding the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program empowered the president to bypass Congress through prosecutorial discretion: choosing not to enforce federal laws. https://www.salon.com/2020/07/20/trump-working-with-bush-torture-lawyer-to-cut-congress-out-of-lawmaking-report/

Trump’s acting Homeland Security secretary just made a damning admission on Fox Appearing on Fox News Tuesday night, acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf — who has not been confirmed to his position by the Senate — made a damning admission about his department’s conduct in Portland. Federal officials in Portland have prompted a fierce backlash for aggressive and legally dubious tactics against protesters in the city. Local officials have demanded that the federal officials, some of them using unmarked vehicles and wearing camouflage without identifying insignia, leave and let police handle law enforcement. But President Donald Trump and Wolf seem intent on using the Homeland Security forces to intimidate, rough up, and apprehend protesters to make the federal government appear tough. And while he was speaking to Fox Host Martha MacCallum on Tuesday, Wolf seemed to confirm what many had accused his agency of doing: making unlawful arrests. “The department, because we don’t have that local support, that local law enforcement support, are having to go out and proactively arrest individuals,” Wolf said. “And we need to do that because we need to hold them accountable. This idea that they can attack federal property and law enforcement officers and go to the other side of the street and say ‘you can’t touch me’ is ridiculous.” https://www.alternet.org/2020/07/trumps-acting-homeland-security-secretary-just-made-a-damning-admission-on-fox-news/

Trump Seen At Event Without Mask Hours After Saying It’s ‘Patriotic’ To Wear One President Donald Trump on Monday called face masks “patriotic” and said on Twitter “there is nobody more Patriotic than me.” Hours later, he was seen without his patriotism. Footage from a fundraiser at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, above, shows multiple people, including the president, mingling without a mask. Health experts have been calling on people to wear face coverings when in public to help stop the spread of the coronavirus. Trump has only rarely been seen in one, and has resisted calls for a national mandate. https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/donald-trump-no-mask-fundraiser_n_5f1681f9c5b615860bb6a80b?ri18n=true (Shocking that Trump has been exposed as a liar and hypocrite)

Here's One For the WTF file: Trump horrifies viewers with warm wishes for accused sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell PBS NewsHour President Donald Trump horrified many viewers of his Tuesday coronavirus briefing — filled with many lies and distortions about the ongoing pandemic — when he was asked about the fate of Ghislaine Maxwell. The longtime girlfriend of the late Jeffrey Epstein, who was believed to have engaged in decades of sex trafficking and abuse of young girls, is now in federal custody. She faces multiple charges of participating in sex trafficking with Epstein, who was also a friend of the president before they reportedly had a falling out. A reporter asked Trump if he had any comment on the prospect that Maxwell might turn in powerful men as a part of her case. “I haven’t really been following it too much,” Trump said. “I just wish her well, frankly. I met her numerous times over the years, especially since I lived in Palm Beach, and I guess they lived in Palm Beach. But I wish her well, whatever it is.”

There is no way that Trump is going to admit he was wrong and back down. He would assume that would make him look weak, and his father taught him well that this was verboten. Yesterday, protesting women were gassed.

Ain't nuthin there unless it has happened int he last 24 hours. There is a vacant Robin's store there, though.

It would seemthat Ms. Payette has outstayed her welcome.

Aparty from the obvious racial slur, this has to be considered remarkable self-restraint for Trump. The clip was only 23 seconds, but that is usually enough for him to blame African-Americans for all the violence in the US, immigrants for all the STDs, Latinos for all the rapes and Obama for pretty much everything else that has gone wrong. And blame Joe Biden for the Russians making Trump look incompetent.

Trump Threatens to Send Federal Law Enforcement Into New York, Chicago President Donald Trump on Monday threatened to send federal law-enforcement officials into cities like New York and Chicago following his deployment of such forces to Portland, Oregon, over the weekend to crack down on protesters. “New York and Chicago and Philadelphia, Detroit, and Baltimore and all of these—Oakland is a mess—we are not going to let this happen in the country, all run by liberal Democrats,” the president told reporters in the Oval Office. “We’re going to have more federal law enforcement, that I can tell you.” In defiance of both state and local governments, Trump over the weekend escalated operations against protesters in Oregon, with Customs and Border Patrol agents snatching demonstrators off the streets and putting them into unmarked vans for detentions. The state’s attorney general filed a lawsuit against the feds, accusing them of unlawfully detaining protesters. The ACLU has also sued federal agents and local law enforcement, calling the situation a “constitutional crisis.” Nevertheless, Trump on Monday cheered the feds’ encroachment into Portland while threatening to do the same in other cities: “They’ve done a fantastic job, been there three days, and they have done a fantastic job in a very short period of time, no problem. A lot of people in jail, these are anarchists. These are not protesters. These are people that hate our country. We are not going to let it go forward.” https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-threatens-to-send-federal-law-enforcement-into-new-york-chicago (If this doesn't sound like dictatorial law enforcement, I don't know what it)

Trump Congratulates Self for Wearing Mask After Months of Refusing to Wear One A week after he publicly donned a face mask for the first time following months of refusal, President Donald Trump—who still opposes a nationwide mask mandate—posted a photo of himself with a face mask while declaring that “many people say” that it’s “patriotic” to wear a mask. “We are United in our effort to defeat the Invisible China Virus, and many people say that it is Patriotic to wear a face mask when you can’t socially distance,” he wrote. “There is nobody more Patriotic than me, your favorite President!” In an interview with Fox News’ Chris Wallace, the president—who has only publicly worn a mask once and defied mask guidelines in the past—said he was a “believer in masks” while stopping short of endorsing a federal mandate, saying he’ll leave it up to the governors. On Monday morning, meanwhile, U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams literally begged Fox News viewers to wear masks to stem the spread of the virus that’s killed over 140,000 Americans. https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-congratulates-self-for-wearing-mask-after-months-of-refusing-to-wear-one?ref=home (Aaaand...Trump falls back to using racist terms again)

I think it is important to distinguish between those who live in close quarters and are not deliberately exposing themselves to the risk of infection and those who do. The second group deserve the name "Covidiots".

No surprise there. Apparently there is what amounts to trench warfare between the rabid racist/misogynist staff and the few who are trying to maintain some shreds of professionalism. And we know who is going to win that battle, don't we? Fox will fight these allegations tooth and nail with all sorts of attacks on the plaintiffs and when the facts come out in court, they will offer to settle with NDA's.

Netflix Exposes Trump’s Shady Mob Ties in ‘Fear City: New York vs. The Mafia’ In the 1970s and 1980s, New York City was controlled by five major mob outfits—the Bonanno, Colombo, Gambino, Genovese and Lucchese families—that not only ran the region’s various illegal rackets, but also effectively operated the billion-dollar construction industry that was transforming the metropolitan landscape. Fear City: New York vs. The Mafia is the true story of the law enforcement and prosecutorial efforts to take down those kingpins, which played out in a manner eerily reminiscent of The Wire. And unsurprisingly, at least for those who lived in or around the five boroughs during that era, it’s a tale of crime and vice that invariably involves Donald Trump. The current commander-in-chief factors into the final episode of director Sam Hobkinson’s three-part Netflix miniseries (debuting July 22), since his Fifth Avenue Trump Tower was one of countless projects the mafia had a hand in completing. “So I told him that there’s jobs in here that did count, like Trump. Nineteen million,” says a gangster on a federal wiretap recording, thereby directly linking the future president to the shady mobsters who governed New York’s concrete and cement unions (and businesses). These crooks regulated which of eight chosen firms would get contracts and, in the process, kickback points from the gigs to their criminal superiors. As Fear City makes clear in just a few short minutes, anyone like Trump, who was knee-deep in the real estate scene, was invariably a bedfellow (either directly or indirectly) with the mafia.

FINALLY, A GLIMPSE OF SANITY IN THE GOP: Lincoln Project co-founder details how the conservative group will deal with Trump-enabling Republicans after the president is ousted In an interview with the Washington Post’s Greg Sargent, one of the founders of the Never-Trumper Lincoln Project said he is personally seeking “atonement” for some of the Republicans he once helped into office, and that the group is making plans to eliminate all traces of Trumpism once the president is gone. Lumped in with those “traces” are the GOP lawmakers who have enabled the president. According to John Weaver — who admitted that he helped get former GOP Senator Jeff sessions elected — the group has no plans to disband should Trump go down to defeat in November. With Sargent writing, “The Lincoln Project’s declared mission is ‘defeating Trump and Trumpism at the ballot box.’ That includes a pledge to elect Democrats over Republicans who, like Trump, do not ‘support the Constitution,’ he went on to point out that the group has been notable for the inclusion of Kellyanne Conway’s husband George, and longtime GOP strategist Rick Wilson known for his hard-hitting attacks on Democrats. Asked whether “the Lincoln Project is breaking permanently with the GOP embrace of voter suppression, gerrymandering and other anti-democratic tactics,” Weaver said absolutely, adding they are commited to ensuring the “drive-by Jim Crowism in many parts of the country is put to an end.” Asked about his work for Sessions, Weaver replied, “I have my own atonement to do every day about that. Did I contribute to putting a brick in the road to where we are today? Yeah, I did.” The political strategist pointed out that the group plans to release get-out-the-vote ads to go with the blunt-talking ads they have already aimed at Trump and GOP senators like Lindsey Graham (SC) and Susan Collins of Maine. Which brought up what the group plans to do after the election. Pressed whether the Lincoln Project will run “ads attacking President Biden for raising taxes on oil companies in early 2021,” Weaver said ‘no.’ “We’re not gonna do that,” he explained. ““He [Biden] will have a mandate to clean up the mess that Trump has created with the help of his enablers. That shouldn’t be held up. We intend to do all we can to make sure that doesn’t happen.” “Indeed, in Weaver’s telling, binding the ‘wounds’ of Trump, as the group’s mission puts it, includes working against Republicans who try to prevent Biden from addressing our deep crises, particularly among Trumpist Republicans such as Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) who use this to position themselves for 2024,” Sargent wrote, adding that Weaver told him, "We will not stand on the sidelines if an attempt to bind the wounds is held up. We plan on participating in that debate.”

Armed ‘Volunteers’ Defend White Supremacy in Charlottesville The TV cameras left but the white supremacists dug in, with law enforcement’s tacit approval, to “defend” the same Confederate statues that inspired the Unite the Right rally. In the pre-dawn hours of Monday, July 13, an anti-racist activist in Charlottesville, Virginia, awoke to find that someone, in the dark of night, had planted a flaming tiki torch on their front lawn. About half an hour later, another local anti-racist organizer would discover a blazing tiki-torch had also been placed, in his words, “very carefully and deliberately next to my mailbox.” Later in the day, another tiki-torch was found—this one unlit and abandoned by the side of a road, along with a bottle of a fuel, near the home of a third activist. The message was clear. “Tiki torches are irrevocably linked to August 11th and 12th,” one of the targeted activists told me, referring to the mob of neo-Nazis and Trumpists who descended on Charlottesville in 2017. “And so for us here, it's impossible to see this as anything other than intimidation, and I would say you'd have to be incredibly naive not to think of it as a threat of violence… It's clearly an effort to get myself and others to stop the work we do and to frighten us.” Three years after the Unite the Right rally, the national spotlight has moved on from Charlottesville but the white nationalists have not. Instead, openly armed “volunteers” are now posting themselves in public parks—making those parks feel much less safe, or public, to many—to protect monuments to racism. https://www.thedailybeast.com/armed-volunteers-defend-white-supremacy-in-charlottesville?ref=home

Sooooo.....you're daying that "I was just following orders" is not a viable defence?