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blueseas
blueseas's Journal
blueseas's Journal
September 2, 2020
Kenosha business owner declines *I President Trump photo-op, former owner replaces him
Snip:
Tom Gram’s century-old camera shop burned to the ground a week ago during the unrest in Uptown Kenosha.
Gram said he declined President Trump’s request to be a part of his tour of damage Tuesday in Kenosha.
Instead, a former owner of the shop was invited and he praised the president’s efforts.
Link:
mj4.com/news/local-news/kenosha-business-owner-declines-president-trump-photo-op-former-owner-replaces-him?utm_source=nextdraft&utm_medium=email
August 11, 2020
All the best
Thanks you guys were a beacon of sanity back then and even more so now.
Take care.
Cluedin your former mod.
June 16, 2020
"The Black Lives Matter Foundation" Raised Millions. It's Not Affiliated With The Black Lives Matter
Employees of Apple, Google, and Microsoft have raised millions of dollars for the Black Lives Matter Foundation thinking it's the international racial justice movement seeking to end police brutality. That couldn’t be further from the truth.
Snip:
The Black Lives Matter Foundation, a Santa Clarita, California–based charitable organization that has one paid employee and lists a UPS store as its address, has a very different goal, according to its founder: “bringing the community and police closer together.”
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/black-lives-matter-foundation-unrelated-blm-donations?utm_source=nextdraft&utm_medium=email
May 8, 2020
FILE - In this April 16, 2020, file photo, President Donald Trump speaks about the coronavirus in the James Brady Press Briefing Room of the White House in Washington, as Dr. Deborah Birx, White House coronavirus response coordinator, listens. The Trump administration has shelved a set of detailed documents created by the nation’s top disease investigators meant to give step-by-step advice to local leaders deciding when and how to reopen mass transit, day care centers, restaurants, bars and other public places during the still-raging pandemic. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)
GAINESVILLE, Fla. (AP) — The Trump administration shelved a document created by the nation’s top disease investigators with step-by-step advice to local authorities on how and when to reopen restaurants and other public places during the still-raging coronavirus outbreak.
The 17-page report by a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention team, titled “Guidance for Implementing the Opening Up America Again Framework,” was researched and written to help faith leaders, business owners, educators and state and local officials as they begin to reopen.
It was supposed to be published last Friday, but agency scientists were told the guidance “would never see the light of day,” according to a CDC official. The official was not authorized to talk to reporters and spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity.
The AP obtained a copy from a second federal official who was not authorized to release it. The guidance was described in AP stories last week, prior to the White House decision to shelve it.
Link:https://apnews.com/7a00d5fba3249e573d2ead4bd323a4d4
Trump administration buries detailed CDC advice on reopening
FILE - In this April 16, 2020, file photo, President Donald Trump speaks about the coronavirus in the James Brady Press Briefing Room of the White House in Washington, as Dr. Deborah Birx, White House coronavirus response coordinator, listens. The Trump administration has shelved a set of detailed documents created by the nation’s top disease investigators meant to give step-by-step advice to local leaders deciding when and how to reopen mass transit, day care centers, restaurants, bars and other public places during the still-raging pandemic. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)
GAINESVILLE, Fla. (AP) — The Trump administration shelved a document created by the nation’s top disease investigators with step-by-step advice to local authorities on how and when to reopen restaurants and other public places during the still-raging coronavirus outbreak.
The 17-page report by a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention team, titled “Guidance for Implementing the Opening Up America Again Framework,” was researched and written to help faith leaders, business owners, educators and state and local officials as they begin to reopen.
It was supposed to be published last Friday, but agency scientists were told the guidance “would never see the light of day,” according to a CDC official. The official was not authorized to talk to reporters and spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity.
The AP obtained a copy from a second federal official who was not authorized to release it. The guidance was described in AP stories last week, prior to the White House decision to shelve it.
Link:https://apnews.com/7a00d5fba3249e573d2ead4bd323a4d4
April 28, 2020
The Secret Group of Scientists and Billionaires Pushing a Manhattan Project for Covid-19
They are working to cull the world’s most promising research on the pandemic, passing on their findings to policy makers and the White House.
A dozen of America’s top scientists and a collection of billionaires and industry titans say they have the answer to the coronavirus pandemic, and they found a backdoor to deliver their plan to the White House.
The eclectic group is led by a 33-year-old physician-turned-venture capitalist, Tom Cahill,.....
Fixed the link:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-secret-group-of-scientists-and-billionaires-pushing-trump-on-a-covid-19-plan-11587998993
Anyone has a subscription, to WSJ? Thanks everyone
April 19, 2020
Conspiracy theorists have released a new film that has been viewed almost 5 million times since it was uploaded to YouTube on April 10. The 77-minute “documentary” is an homage to the founding tenets of the “Pizzagate” and QAnon conspiracy theories, presented with professional production quality and storytelling.
https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/out-of-shadows-is-a-qanon-film-going-viral/?link_id=41&can_id=bd85735f14962f3dd28c92002ae87091&source=email-remix&email_referrer=email_780479&email_subject=against-excessive-quarantine-protests
Right Wing Watch Video on Out of Shadows
Conspiracy theorists have released a new film that has been viewed almost 5 million times since it was uploaded to YouTube on April 10. The 77-minute “documentary” is an homage to the founding tenets of the “Pizzagate” and QAnon conspiracy theories, presented with professional production quality and storytelling.
https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/out-of-shadows-is-a-qanon-film-going-viral/?link_id=41&can_id=bd85735f14962f3dd28c92002ae87091&source=email-remix&email_referrer=email_780479&email_subject=against-excessive-quarantine-protests
February 15, 2020
https://www.thedailybeast.com/border-patrol-is-sending-tactical-agents-to-make-arrests-in-sanctuary-cities
he specially trained officers are being sent to cities including Chicago and New York to boost the enforcement power of local Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, according to two officials who are familiar with the secret operation. Additional agents are expected to be sent to San Francisco, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Houston, Boston, New Orleans, Detroit and Newark, N.J.
The move reflects President Trump’s persistence in cracking down on so-called sanctuary cities, localities that have refused to cooperate in handing over immigrants targeted for deportation to federal authorities. It comes soon after the Justice Department and Department of Homeland Security announced a series of measures that will affect both American citizens and immigrants living in those places.
Lawrence Payne, a spokesman for Customs and Border Protection, confirmed that the agency was deploying 100 officers to work with ICE, which conducts arrests in the interior of the country, “in order to enhance the integrity of the immigration system, protect public safety, and strengthen our national security.”
The deployment of the teams will run from February through May, according to an email sent to C.B.P. personnel, which was read to The New York Times by one official familiar with the planning.
Border Patrol Will Deploy Elite Tactical Agents to Sanctuary Cities
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/14/us/Border-Patrol-ICE-Sanctuary-Cities.htmlBorder-Patrol-ICE-Sanctuary-Cities.htmlhttps://www.thedailybeast.com/border-patrol-is-sending-tactical-agents-to-make-arrests-in-sanctuary-cities
he specially trained officers are being sent to cities including Chicago and New York to boost the enforcement power of local Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, according to two officials who are familiar with the secret operation. Additional agents are expected to be sent to San Francisco, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Houston, Boston, New Orleans, Detroit and Newark, N.J.
The move reflects President Trump’s persistence in cracking down on so-called sanctuary cities, localities that have refused to cooperate in handing over immigrants targeted for deportation to federal authorities. It comes soon after the Justice Department and Department of Homeland Security announced a series of measures that will affect both American citizens and immigrants living in those places.
Lawrence Payne, a spokesman for Customs and Border Protection, confirmed that the agency was deploying 100 officers to work with ICE, which conducts arrests in the interior of the country, “in order to enhance the integrity of the immigration system, protect public safety, and strengthen our national security.”
The deployment of the teams will run from February through May, according to an email sent to C.B.P. personnel, which was read to The New York Times by one official familiar with the planning.
February 13, 2020
I have lived in autocracies most of my life, and have spent much of my career writing about Vladimir Putin’s Russia. I have learned a few rules for surviving in an autocracy and salvaging your sanity and self-respect. It might be worth considering them now:
Rule #1: Believe the autocrat. He means what he says. Whenever you find yourself thinking, or hear others claiming, that he is exaggerating, that is our innate tendency to reach for a rationalization. This will happen often: humans seem to have evolved to practice denial when confronted publicly with the unacceptable. Back in the 1930s, The New York Times assured its readers that Hitler’s anti-Semitism was all posture. More recently, the same newspaper made a telling choice between two statements made by Putin’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov following a police crackdown on protesters in Moscow: “The police acted mildly—I would have liked them to act more harshly” rather than those protesters’ “liver should have been spread all over the pavement.” Perhaps the journalists could not believe their ears. But they should—both in the Russian case, and in the American one. For all the admiration Trump has expressed for Putin, the two men are very different; if anything, there is even more reason to listen to everything Trump has said. He has no political establishment into which to fold himself following the campaign, and therefore no reason to shed his campaign rhetoric. On the contrary: it is now the establishment that is rushing to accommodate him—from the president, who met with him at the White House on Thursday, to the leaders of the Republican Party, who are discarding their long-held scruples to embrace his radical positions.
He has received the support he needed to win, and the adulation he craves, precisely because of his outrageous threats. Trump rally crowds have chanted “Lock her up!” They, and he, meant every word. If Trump does not go after Hillary Clinton on his first day in office, if he instead focuses, as his acceptance speech indicated he might, on the unifying project of investing in infrastructure (which, not coincidentally, would provide an instant opportunity to reward his cronies and himself), it will be foolish to breathe a sigh of relief. Trump has made his plans clear, and he has made a compact with his voters to carry them out. These plans include not only dismantling legislation such as Obamacare but also doing away with judicial restraint—and, yes, punishing opponents.
To begin jailing his political opponents, or just one opponent, Trump will begin by trying to capture members of the judicial system. Observers and even activists functioning in the normal-election mode are fixated on the Supreme Court as the site of the highest-risk impending Trump appointment. There is little doubt that Trump will appoint someone who will cause the Court to veer to the right; there is also the risk that it might be someone who will wreak havoc with the very culture of the high court. And since Trump plans to use the judicial system to carry out his political vendettas, his pick for attorney general will be no less important. Imagine former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani or New Jersey Governor Chris Christie going after Hillary Clinton on orders from President Trump; quite aside from their approach to issues such as the Geneva Conventions, the use of police powers, criminal justice reforms, and other urgent concerns.
Rule #2: Do not be taken in by small signs of normality. Consider the financial markets this week, which, having tanked overnight, rebounded following the Clinton and Obama speeches. Confronted with political volatility, the markets become suckers for calming rhetoric from authority figures. So do people. Panic can be neutralized by falsely reassuring words about how the world as we know it has not ended. It is a fact that the world did not end on November 8 nor at any previous time in history. Yet history has seen many catastrophes, and most of them unfolded over time. That time included periods of relative calm. One of my favorite thinkers, the Jewish historian Simon Dubnow, breathed a sigh of relief in early October 1939: he had moved from Berlin to Latvia, and he wrote to his friends that he was certain that the tiny country wedged between two tyrannies would retain its sovereignty and Dubnow himself would be safe. Shortly after that, Latvia was occupied by the Soviets, then by the Germans, then by the Soviets again—but by that time Dubnow had been killed. Dubnow was well aware that he was living through a catastrophic period in history—it’s just that he thought he had managed to find a pocket of normality within it.
Rule #3: Institutions will not save you. It took Putin a year to take over the Russian media and four years to dismantle its electoral system; the judiciary collapsed unnoticed. The capture of institutions in Turkey has been carried out even faster, by a man once celebrated as the democrat to lead Turkey into the EU. Poland has in less than a year undone half of a quarter century’s accomplishments in building a constitutional democracy.
[link:httphttps://www.nybooks.com/daily/2016/11/10/trump-election-autocracy-rules-for-survival/?utm_source=nextdraft&utm_medium=email|
Autocracy: Rules for Survival
I have lived in autocracies most of my life, and have spent much of my career writing about Vladimir Putin’s Russia. I have learned a few rules for surviving in an autocracy and salvaging your sanity and self-respect. It might be worth considering them now:
Rule #1: Believe the autocrat. He means what he says. Whenever you find yourself thinking, or hear others claiming, that he is exaggerating, that is our innate tendency to reach for a rationalization. This will happen often: humans seem to have evolved to practice denial when confronted publicly with the unacceptable. Back in the 1930s, The New York Times assured its readers that Hitler’s anti-Semitism was all posture. More recently, the same newspaper made a telling choice between two statements made by Putin’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov following a police crackdown on protesters in Moscow: “The police acted mildly—I would have liked them to act more harshly” rather than those protesters’ “liver should have been spread all over the pavement.” Perhaps the journalists could not believe their ears. But they should—both in the Russian case, and in the American one. For all the admiration Trump has expressed for Putin, the two men are very different; if anything, there is even more reason to listen to everything Trump has said. He has no political establishment into which to fold himself following the campaign, and therefore no reason to shed his campaign rhetoric. On the contrary: it is now the establishment that is rushing to accommodate him—from the president, who met with him at the White House on Thursday, to the leaders of the Republican Party, who are discarding their long-held scruples to embrace his radical positions.
He has received the support he needed to win, and the adulation he craves, precisely because of his outrageous threats. Trump rally crowds have chanted “Lock her up!” They, and he, meant every word. If Trump does not go after Hillary Clinton on his first day in office, if he instead focuses, as his acceptance speech indicated he might, on the unifying project of investing in infrastructure (which, not coincidentally, would provide an instant opportunity to reward his cronies and himself), it will be foolish to breathe a sigh of relief. Trump has made his plans clear, and he has made a compact with his voters to carry them out. These plans include not only dismantling legislation such as Obamacare but also doing away with judicial restraint—and, yes, punishing opponents.
To begin jailing his political opponents, or just one opponent, Trump will begin by trying to capture members of the judicial system. Observers and even activists functioning in the normal-election mode are fixated on the Supreme Court as the site of the highest-risk impending Trump appointment. There is little doubt that Trump will appoint someone who will cause the Court to veer to the right; there is also the risk that it might be someone who will wreak havoc with the very culture of the high court. And since Trump plans to use the judicial system to carry out his political vendettas, his pick for attorney general will be no less important. Imagine former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani or New Jersey Governor Chris Christie going after Hillary Clinton on orders from President Trump; quite aside from their approach to issues such as the Geneva Conventions, the use of police powers, criminal justice reforms, and other urgent concerns.
Rule #2: Do not be taken in by small signs of normality. Consider the financial markets this week, which, having tanked overnight, rebounded following the Clinton and Obama speeches. Confronted with political volatility, the markets become suckers for calming rhetoric from authority figures. So do people. Panic can be neutralized by falsely reassuring words about how the world as we know it has not ended. It is a fact that the world did not end on November 8 nor at any previous time in history. Yet history has seen many catastrophes, and most of them unfolded over time. That time included periods of relative calm. One of my favorite thinkers, the Jewish historian Simon Dubnow, breathed a sigh of relief in early October 1939: he had moved from Berlin to Latvia, and he wrote to his friends that he was certain that the tiny country wedged between two tyrannies would retain its sovereignty and Dubnow himself would be safe. Shortly after that, Latvia was occupied by the Soviets, then by the Germans, then by the Soviets again—but by that time Dubnow had been killed. Dubnow was well aware that he was living through a catastrophic period in history—it’s just that he thought he had managed to find a pocket of normality within it.
Rule #3: Institutions will not save you. It took Putin a year to take over the Russian media and four years to dismantle its electoral system; the judiciary collapsed unnoticed. The capture of institutions in Turkey has been carried out even faster, by a man once celebrated as the democrat to lead Turkey into the EU. Poland has in less than a year undone half of a quarter century’s accomplishments in building a constitutional democracy.
[link:httphttps://www.nybooks.com/daily/2016/11/10/trump-election-autocracy-rules-for-survival/?utm_source=nextdraft&utm_medium=email|
February 6, 2020
But while these shadowy outside forces preoccupied politicians and journalists, Trump and his domestic allies were beginning to adopt the same tactics of information warfare that have kept the world’s demagogues and strongmen in power.
Every presidential campaign sees its share of spin and misdirection, but this year’s contest promises to be different. Potemkin local-news sites, micro-targeted fearmongering, and anonymous mass texting. Both parties will have these tools at their disposal. But in the hands of a president who lies constantly, who traffics in conspiracy theories, and who readily manipulates the levers of government for his own gain, their potential to wreak havoc is enormous.
The Trump campaign is planning to spend more than $1 billion, and it will be aided by a vast coalition of partisan media, outside political groups, and enterprising freelance operatives. These pro-Trump forces are poised to wage what could be the most extensive disinformation campaign in U.S. history. Whether or not it succeeds in reelecting the president, the wreckage it leaves behind could be irreparable.
THE DEATH STAR
The campaign is run from the 14th floor of a gleaming, modern office tower in Rosslyn, Virginia, just outside Washington, D.C. Glass-walled conference rooms look out on the Potomac River. Rows of sleek monitors line the main office space. Unlike the bootstrap operation that first got Trump elected—with its motley band of B-teamers toiling in an unfinished space in Trump Tower—his 2020 enterprise is heavily funded, technologically sophisticated, and staffed with dozens of experienced operatives. One Republican strategist referred to it, admiringly, as “the Death Star.”
Presiding over this effort is Brad Parscale, a 6-foot-8 Viking of a man with a shaved head and a triangular beard. As the digital director of Trump’s 2016 campaign, Parscale didn’t become a household name like Steve Bannon and Kellyanne Conway. But he played a crucial role in delivering Trump to the Oval Office—and his efforts will shape this year’s election.
The Billion-Dollar Disinformation Campaign to Reelect the President
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/03/the-2020-disinformation-war/605530/?utm_source=nextdraft&utm_medium=emailBut while these shadowy outside forces preoccupied politicians and journalists, Trump and his domestic allies were beginning to adopt the same tactics of information warfare that have kept the world’s demagogues and strongmen in power.
Every presidential campaign sees its share of spin and misdirection, but this year’s contest promises to be different. Potemkin local-news sites, micro-targeted fearmongering, and anonymous mass texting. Both parties will have these tools at their disposal. But in the hands of a president who lies constantly, who traffics in conspiracy theories, and who readily manipulates the levers of government for his own gain, their potential to wreak havoc is enormous.
The Trump campaign is planning to spend more than $1 billion, and it will be aided by a vast coalition of partisan media, outside political groups, and enterprising freelance operatives. These pro-Trump forces are poised to wage what could be the most extensive disinformation campaign in U.S. history. Whether or not it succeeds in reelecting the president, the wreckage it leaves behind could be irreparable.
THE DEATH STAR
The campaign is run from the 14th floor of a gleaming, modern office tower in Rosslyn, Virginia, just outside Washington, D.C. Glass-walled conference rooms look out on the Potomac River. Rows of sleek monitors line the main office space. Unlike the bootstrap operation that first got Trump elected—with its motley band of B-teamers toiling in an unfinished space in Trump Tower—his 2020 enterprise is heavily funded, technologically sophisticated, and staffed with dozens of experienced operatives. One Republican strategist referred to it, admiringly, as “the Death Star.”
Presiding over this effort is Brad Parscale, a 6-foot-8 Viking of a man with a shaved head and a triangular beard. As the digital director of Trump’s 2016 campaign, Parscale didn’t become a household name like Steve Bannon and Kellyanne Conway. But he played a crucial role in delivering Trump to the Oval Office—and his efforts will shape this year’s election.
January 30, 2020
Snip:
“Obituaries reflect what the present thinks of the past,” wrote journalism professor Kathleen McElroy.
What will the future think of President Donald Trump and two historic votes senators must take on his impeachment?
Snip:
Member Obituary
Edward Hutchinson (Michigan) Edward Hutchinson, Ex-Congressman, Dies, N.Y. TIMES, July 24, 1985, at B5.
“Former Representative Edward Hutchinson, who was the ranking Republican on the House Judiciary Committee in the debate on impeaching President Nixon, died Monday. He was 70 years old.”
“Mr. Hutchinson, who did not seek re-election to his Michigan seat in 1976, was first elected to the House in 1963. Long considered highly loyal to Mr. Nixon, Representative Hutchinson led the Michigan Republican delegation in August 1974 in calling for Mr. Nixon’s resignation or impeachment after the Watergate scandals.”
Ex-Rep. Hutchinson Dies; On Watergate Panel, WASH. POST, JULY 24, 1985, at C4.
“Former Rep. Edward Hutchinson, 70, a Michigan conservative who was the ranking Republican on the House Judiciary Committee when it voted 27 to 11 to impeach President Nixon, died July 22 at a hospital in Naples, Fla.”
“Mr. Hutchinson voted against every article of impeachment brought against the president even after other Republicans had abandoned him. After the committee vote and further Watergate-related revelations, Mr. Hutchinson called for Nixon's resignation.”
Read More:
https://www.justsecurity.org/68154/lessons-for-life-the-obituaries-of-republicans-who-opposed-nixons-impeachment/?utm_source=nextdraft&utm_medium=email
Lessons for Life- Obit. of Republicans who opposed Nixon Impeachment.
Snip:
“Obituaries reflect what the present thinks of the past,” wrote journalism professor Kathleen McElroy.
What will the future think of President Donald Trump and two historic votes senators must take on his impeachment?
Snip:
Member Obituary
Edward Hutchinson (Michigan) Edward Hutchinson, Ex-Congressman, Dies, N.Y. TIMES, July 24, 1985, at B5.
“Former Representative Edward Hutchinson, who was the ranking Republican on the House Judiciary Committee in the debate on impeaching President Nixon, died Monday. He was 70 years old.”
“Mr. Hutchinson, who did not seek re-election to his Michigan seat in 1976, was first elected to the House in 1963. Long considered highly loyal to Mr. Nixon, Representative Hutchinson led the Michigan Republican delegation in August 1974 in calling for Mr. Nixon’s resignation or impeachment after the Watergate scandals.”
Ex-Rep. Hutchinson Dies; On Watergate Panel, WASH. POST, JULY 24, 1985, at C4.
“Former Rep. Edward Hutchinson, 70, a Michigan conservative who was the ranking Republican on the House Judiciary Committee when it voted 27 to 11 to impeach President Nixon, died July 22 at a hospital in Naples, Fla.”
“Mr. Hutchinson voted against every article of impeachment brought against the president even after other Republicans had abandoned him. After the committee vote and further Watergate-related revelations, Mr. Hutchinson called for Nixon's resignation.”
Read More:
https://www.justsecurity.org/68154/lessons-for-life-the-obituaries-of-republicans-who-opposed-nixons-impeachment/?utm_source=nextdraft&utm_medium=email
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Number of posts: 11,698