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NYU fascism expert explains the next moves in Trump’s ‘authoritarian playbook’: He’s ‘a fundamental break from American tradition’


At the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, there’s a poster which identifies “The 12 Early Warning Signs of Fascism.”

Here are the criteria:

Powerful and continuing nationalism
Disdain for human rights
Identification of enemies as a unifying cause
Rampant sexism
Controlled mass media
Obsession with national security
Religion and government intertwined
Corporate power protected
Labor power suppressed
Disdain for intellectuals and the arts
Obsession with crime and punishment
Rampant cronyism and corruption


This in too many ways is America in the Age of Trump. Trump and his regime are engaged in a white supremacist counterrevolution against the civil rights movement, in which the human rights of nonwhite people are being revoked. This includes a recent effort to circumvent the Constitution by deeming that undocumented immigrants (overwhelmingly Black and brown people) should be erased from the population for purposes of congressional representation.

Trump and his regime are criminalizing dissent. He has gone so far as to explicitly state that people who disagree with him are akin to Nazis and should be imprisoned or worse.

https://www.alternet.org/2020/07/nyu-fascism-expert-explains-the-next-moves-in-trumps-authoritarian-playbook-hes-a-fundamental-break-from-american-tradition/

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Trump’s Now Claiming He Got ‘Extra Points’ on Cognitive Test. ‘I'M COGNITIVELY THERE’


Haltingly repeating the phrase “person, woman, man, camera, TV” to show off his memory, the president claimed he left doctors in awe and received “extra points” on the test.
Amid renewed criticism of his COVID-19 response and new controversy over his decision to sic federal forces on Democratic-led cities, President Trump on Wednesday night resurrected his story about a 2018 cognitive test he insists he got a “perfect mark” on, now claiming he also got “extra points” for a particularly impressive feat.

The feat? Repeating the words “person, woman, man, camera, TV” in the right order.

In recent weeks, the president has repeatedly called on former Vice President Joe Biden to take the Montreal Cognitive Assessment while bragging that he left doctors “very surprised” that he scored perfectly on the exam. Fox News anchor Chris Wallace, however, pointed out to Trump that the exam isn’t actually hard, as it is meant to test cognitive impairment.

“They have a picture and it says ‘what’s that’ and it’s an elephant,” Wallace said to Trump on Sunday. Trump insisted at the time that other questions were much harder and Wallace “couldn’t answer many of the questions” while claiming he personally “answered all 35 questions correctly.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trumps-now-claiming-he-got-extra-points-on-cognitive-test?ref=home

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The Montreal Cognitive Assessment Test, which involves such tasks as identifying animals and drawing a clock, determines nothing other than that the taker is not suffering from mild cognitive dysfunction. 
But then, we are talking about a guy who had to buy his SATs....and a guy who would brag about the size of his morning stool....

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"******* Cold-Blooded’ GOP Operatives Accused of Running Ohio’s Largest Ever Bribery Scheme

A cross-reference of details in Ohio’s bombshell criminal complaint involving top state Republicans reveals a scandal that stretches from Columbus to Arizona to Washington. 
In September 2019, Matt Borges, an Ohio lobbyist and former chairman of the state Republican Party, reached out to a canvasser working to collect petition signatures to roll back a massive bailout of Ohio’s nuclear energy industry. According to federal prosecutors, he offered the canvasser $15,000 to be a double agent and provide the opposition with inside information.

The canvasser initially recoiled at the prospect, and immediately after the meeting contacted the FBI. The FBI wired him up and told him to circle back with Borges and accept the offer. According to criminal complaints handed down this week, the canvasser—referred to as Confidential Human Source 1—reconnected with Borges, got that $15,000 payment, and proceeded to provide extensive, damning details to investigators about what the U.S. attorney in Ohio’s Southern District called “likely the largest bribery [and] money-laundering scheme ever perpetrated against the people of the state of Ohio.”

Borges was one of five people arrested Tuesday; another was Larry Householder, the Republican speaker of Ohio’s state house of representatives. Prosecutors accuse them of orchestrating a massive bribery and racketeering scheme to funnel money from Ohio utility FirstEnergy into the pockets of Householder, his allies, and a sprawling network of interest groups, political action committees, and consulting firms. In exchange, the feds say, Householder, Borges, and their co-conspirators spearheaded successful legislative efforts to bail out FirstEnergy’s struggling nuclear-power business to the tune of $1.5 billion.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/*******-cold-blooded-gop-operatives-accused-of-running-ohios-largest-ever-bribery-scheme?ref=home

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The tweet trended on the social media site, and by midday Sunday had been “liked” over 598,000 times and retweeted over 170,000 times.

👁‍🗨 Which tweet is that you ask?


“Unprecedented, historic corruption: an American president commutes the sentence of a person convicted by a jury of lying to shield that very president,” Utah senator Romney said Saturday morning on Twitter.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-07-11/romney-lights-up-twitter-by-condemning-trump-s-move-on-stone?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_content=business&cmpid=socialflow-twitter-business&utm_campaign=socialflow-organic

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For the White House...kinda of a Hobson's Choice:

The safe choice:  have Trump reading crap through a teleprompter, looking and sounding though he would rather be golfing.
The other:  Trump riffing round the horn, with no one knowing what inane thing will come out of his mouth next

In any event, having a daily "update" on this medical crisis, with no medical people ("she's in the back) in sight.... is simply a waste of time from the get go.   

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21 hours ago, Tracker said:

******* Cold-Blooded’ GOP Operatives Accused of Running Ohio’s Largest Ever Bribery Scheme
Borges was one of five people arrested Tuesday; another was Larry Householder, the Republican speaker of Ohio’s state house of representatives. Prosecutors accuse them of orchestrating a massive bribery and racketeering scheme to funnel money from Ohio utility FirstEnergy into the pockets of Householder, his allies, and a sprawling network of interest groups, political action committees, and consulting firms. In exchange, the feds say, Householder, Borges, and their co-conspirators spearheaded successful legislative efforts to bail out FirstEnergy’s struggling nuclear-power business to the tune of $1.5 billion.

holy crap the FBI arrested a state house speaker? damn!

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Portland is now witnessing a standoff between protesters and an administration that continues to ratchet up its heated rhetoric to (falsely) describe the city as being in a state of total chaos and anarchy. While there have been incidents of rioting at night, including people launching fireworks at the federal building, setting fires outside, and allegedly attacking federal agents, the focal point of that activity largely centers on the city block housing the federal building. Despite the President's descriptions, Portland is not a city under siege. 

Mayor Ted Wheeler;
"This is clearly a waste of federal resources and it's getting increasingly dangerous," he said, referring to the teams of agents protecting the federal building, who routinely clash with some rioters at night. "We did not ask the feds to be here, we do not want them here. They're not helping the situation, they're not appropriately trained and we're demanding that they leave."

https://apple.news/Aj_RA8nn1R_2vWiN_1qzcRw


 

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