July 6, 2020

Pence Walks Out of "Hamilton" Again in Own Living Room

WASHINGTON, D.C. (The Borowitz Report)—Mike Pence’s turbulent relationship with “Hamilton” continued over the weekend, as he walked out of the Broadway show in his own living room.

Pence, who walked out after the Tony Award–winning musical in 2016, when the cast tried to address him, told reporters that he tuned in to the streaming version of “Hamilton” on July 4th specifically to walk out of it once more.

“I wanted to send the cast of ‘Hamilton’ a strong message,” Pence said. “The minute it began, I turned to my wife and said, ‘Mother, I’m out.’ ”

He immediately followed through on his threat, leaving Mrs. Pence alone in their living room for the next two and a half hours as she watched “Hamilton” in its entirety.

Pence dismissed reporters’ questions about the limited impact of his gesture, since the cast of “Hamilton” was unable to see him get up from his couch and leave in a huff.

“President Trump told me to walk out of my living room, and I am grateful for the opportunity to obey him,” Pence said, adding that he intends to walk out of “Hamilton” again tonight.

https://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/pence-walks-out-of-hamilton-again-in-own-living-room

July 6, 2020

Trump's immoral campaign is also incoherent

President Trump’s defense of white nationalism — from his glorification of Confederate statues to his refusal to acknowledge, let alone address, systemic racism to his demonization of immigrants — is immoral and un-American. Moreover, both the message and the mass events he uses to propagate it are unsustainable as the basis for a presidential campaign. Here are 10 reasons why:

• If left-wing mobs are attacking the country, why doesn’t/hasn’t Trump done something about it? He’s president after all.

• Does Trump have a plan (beyond statues) to address this non-problem? (Hint: It’s not a problem; it’s not “solvable”; and it offers nothing but a conduit for bile.) A president is expected to govern, not simply to vent.

• Why should Americans care about statues when some 127,000 people are dead from covid-19 and unemployment is in double digits? His obsession seems especially bizarre given that the country is experiencing actual carnage thanks to his incompetent response.

• Since no significant violence is perceptible, how does he sustain the illusion that his followers are under siege? (Watching a crowd tear down a Confederate monument or two is not exactly bloodcurdling.)

• What states can be won without nonwhite voters, college-educated voters, young voters and suburban women (granted, there is some overlap among these) for whom his message is repulsive? (He can hold his racial-grievance sessions in red states such as Oklahoma and South Dakota, but how do his messages play in states that are actually in contention?)

• Who are these Democrats that he claims support violence? (I haven’t seen any of them on the ballot.) Does anyone outside his cult think former vice president Joe Biden defends mayhem?

• What will Trump do when events he needs to spread his message of racial grievance and belligerent opposition to medical expertise add to the pandemic death toll (since they are held without mandatory masks and social distancing)?

• With states such as Texas and Pennsylvania requiring masks and/or banning mass events, will Trump appear and break the law, stay away or capitulate to health experts?

• Will any incumbent Senate Republican in a competitive race (e.g., Maine, North Carolina, Colorado, Montana, Georgia, Arizona, Iowa) appear with him? While Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) and Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) can be counted on to regurgitate Trump’s message of white grievance, does Trump plan on throwing overboard any Republican who won’t?

• As corporate boycotts pressure Facebook to police hate speech and Washington’s NFL football team to pick a name that is not racially offensive, what happens when Trump’s donors and surrogates (not to mention right-wing media outlets) come under similar pressure to sever ties with him?

Trump is running a campaign akin to George Wallace’s in 1968, when he denounced “a few anarchists, a few activists, a few militants, a few revolutionaries, and a few Communists … [whose day] is going to be over soon.” If you think I exaggerate, consider that Wallace in 1968 declared, “The American people are not going to stand by and see the security of our nation imperiled, and they’re not going to stand by and see this nation destroyed, I can assure you that.” Wallace insisted, in words that are eerily familiar to voters who listen to Trump: “The pseudo-intellectuals and the theoreticians and some professors and some newspaper editors and some judges and some preachers have looked down their nose long enough at the average man on the street.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/07/06/trumps-immoral-campaign-is-also-incoherent/

July 6, 2020

Trump's awful new reelection strategy makes a powerful case against him

After denying the very existence of the novel coronavirus for weeks, then explicitly disavowing all responsibility for its carnage, then blaming a dozen other people and entities for his own disastrous failures, then flirting with the idea of playing “wartime president” against the pandemic only to rapidly jettison that pose, President Trump has now adopted yet another posture toward the biggest public health emergency in modern times:

Suck it up, America.

Over the weekend, Trump claimed that “99 percent” of cases are “totally harmless.” This disgusting lie appears based on an absurdly downgraded death-rate calculation and ignores multiple realities: The virus’s degradations are severe and persistent even in many who survive it, and carriers spread it to others — indeed, we’re hitting new highs in case levels as we speak.

But claims like this will be increasingly central to Trump’s reelection effort. The Post reports that his advisers, recognizing the dire threat the virus poses to his chances, are seeking to “reframe his response”:

There are actually two layers of depravity here. The first is the suggestion that Trump’s own past handling of the coronavirus can be somehow disconnected from the rolling catastrophe of this moment.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/07/06/trumps-awful-new-reelection-message-makes-powerful-case-against-him/

July 6, 2020

Iran Admits Serious Damage to Natanz Nuclear Site, Setting Back Program

Source: New York Times

A Middle Eastern intelligence official said Israel planted a bomb in a building where advanced centrifuges were being developed.

A fire at Iran’s main nuclear fuel enrichment site caused significant damage, setting back the country’s nuclear program by months, the government acknowledged on Sunday, after initially saying the destruction was minor.

A Middle Eastern intelligence official with knowledge of the episode said Israel was responsible for the attack on the Natanz nuclear complex on Thursday, using a powerful bomb. A member of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps who was briefed on the matter also said an explosive was used.

Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity when discussing sensitive intelligence and operational topics.

Suspicion in Iran has focused on Israel and the United States, which have sabotaged the nuclear program in the past and have vowed to keep Iran from developing nuclear weapons. In the past, Israel and the United States have used cyberattacks to damage Iran’s nuclear program, but that has been ruled out as a cause in this case, the Revolutionary Guards member said.


Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/05/world/middleeast/iran-Natanz-nuclear-damage.html

July 6, 2020

A Trump-Backed Senate Candidate's Hedge Fund Disaster

President Trump’s favored Senate candidate in Alabama, Tommy Tuberville, is known for his career as a college football coach.

But he also had a brief stint as co-owner of a hedge fund. It did not go well.

A little more than a decade ago, after departing from Auburn University where he was head coach, Mr. Tuberville entered into a 50-50 partnership with a former Lehman Brothers broker named John David Stroud. Their ventures, which included TS Capital Management and TS Capital Partners — T for Tuberville and S for Stroud — turned out to be a financial fraud. Mr. Stroud was sentenced to 10 years in prison, and Mr. Tuberville was sued by investors, who accused him of fraud and violating his fiduciary duty to take care of their investments; he reached a private settlement in 2013.

The episode has been seldom discussed in Mr. Tuberville’s Republican primary campaign for the Senate, in which his opponent in the July 14 runoff is Jeff Sessions, the former senator and attorney general who became an object of Mr. Trump’s ire after recusing himself from the Russia inquiry. The winner will face Doug Jones, considered perhaps the most vulnerable Democrat in the battle for control of the Senate.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/05/us/politics/tommy-tuberville-senate-hedge-fund.html

Looks as if ol' Tommy has the Republican qualifications to run for the Senate.

July 6, 2020

A vicious culture war is all Trump has left

“Dear Michael,” wrote British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan in 1957 to the head of his Conservative Party’s research department, “I am always hearing about the Middle Classes. What is it they really want? Can you put it down on a sheet of notepaper and I will see whether we can give it to them.”

Macmillan’s puckish letter to Michael Fraser, the party official, is cited in Alistair Horne’s fine biography of the moderate Tory leader who figured out an answer good enough to sweep to victory two years later. Macmillan, in any event, had something important going for him: In the Britain of the late 1950s, he could plausibly declare that “most of our people have never had it so good.”

That is not a claim President Trump can make in a summer of pandemic and widespread unemployment. And so Trump has decided that what he can give to white middle-class voters whose support he desperately needs to win back is — a culture war.

Trump’s vile speeches at Mount Rushmore on Friday and at the White House on the Fourth of July signal that he sees one and only one possible path to victory: He will tear an already riven nation to pieces.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/a-vicious-culture-war-is-all-trump-has-left/2020/07/05/4ca0986c-bca1-11ea-8cf5-9c1b8d7f84c6_story.html

July 6, 2020

Man Setting Off M-80 In Woods Takes Moment To Reflect On How Promise Of Freedom Yet Unfulfilled

NORPHLET, AR—Breathing deeply of nitrous oxide as he listened to the powerful explosions, solemn and somber local man Maxwell Baker reportedly took a moment while doing whippets and setting off M-80s in the woods behind Hardee’s Saturday to reflect upon the unfulfilled promise of American freedom.

“This nation was conceived as a city on a hill, yet we’re still generations away from achieving that founding vision,” said Baker, tossing an empty canister of Reddi-wip to the ground as he stood amongst a cluster of trees off the expressway and ruminated on the true meaning of Independence Day.

“It’s important to remember these noble ideals we’re celebrating are just that—ideals, and not a reality we’ve brought forth upon this land. We’re more than 200 years into this so-called ‘grand experiment,’ and what do we have to show for it? Mass incarceration? Economic inequality? Unending racial injustice? True liberty is enjoyed only by the wealthy and the privileged.”

At press time, Baker was meditating on the inseparable relationship between capitalism and oppression while heading down to the Hardee’s parking lot to see what would happen if he tied the fuses of a couple M-80s together and set them off in a dumpster.

https://local.theonion.com/man-doing-whippet-while-setting-off-m-80-in-woods-behin-1844265945

July 5, 2020

Militias flocked to Gettysburg to foil a supposed antifa flag burning, an apparent hoax

Militias flocked to Gettysburg to foil a supposed antifa flag burning, an apparent hoax created on social media

For weeks, a mysterious figure on social media talked up plans for antifa protesters to converge on this historical site on Independence Day to burn American flags, an event that seemed at times to border on the farcical.

“Let’s get together and burn flags in protest of thugs and animals in blue,” the anonymous person behind a Facebook page called Left Behind USA wrote in mid-June. There would be antifa face paint, the person wrote, and organizers would “be giving away free small flags to children to safely throw into the fire.”

As word spread, self-proclaimed militias, bikers, skinheads and far-right groups from outside the state issued a call to action, pledging in online videos and posts to come to Gettysburg to protect the Civil War monuments and the nation’s flag from desecration. Some said they would bring firearms and use force if necessary.

On Saturday afternoon, in the hours before the flag burning was to start, they flooded in by the hundreds — heavily armed and unaware, it seemed, that the mysterious Internet poster was not who the person claimed to be.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/hundreds-of-armed-men-went-to-gettysburg-to-defend-it-from-a-phantom-antifa-flag-burner-created-on-social-media/2020/07/04/206ee4da-bb05-11ea-86d5-3b9b3863273b_story.html

July 5, 2020

Ernst: Obama 'Failed' On Ebola But Trump Is 'Stepping Forward' On COVID-19

Source: Talking Points Memo

Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) on Sunday bashed former President Barack Obama’s handling of Ebola, a viral disease that two Americans died from, but praised President Trump’s response to the coronavirus as cases surge in several cities.

When pressed by CNN’s Dana Bash on Sunday morning about whether she’d criticize Trump now that almost 130,000 Americans died from the coronavirus — given how she criticized Obama during her Senate run in 2014 by accusing him of “failed leadership” on Ebola — Ernst replied that “we all have responsibility in stopping the spread” before emphasizing the importance of mask-wearing and social distancing.

“We all should do our part to make sure that we are protecting others as well. So this is a virus that’s not going to go away soon,” Ernst said. “We want to make sure that we are watching this and doing everything that we can as a federal government, including the research and development of therapeutics and vaccinations to make sure that we are doing the right thing as a nation.”

Asked whether the President is exhibiting failed leadership himself on coronavirus, Ernst denied the notion by arguing that he is “stepping forward” and pointing out that Vice President Mike Pence that is “spearheading the task force efforts on the coronavirus.”

Read more: https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/joni-ernst-obama-failed-leadership-ebola-trump-stepping-forward-coronavirus

July 5, 2020

With Department Stores Disappearing, Malls Could Be Next

Brick-and-mortar retail was in the midst of seismic changes even before the pandemic. Analysts say as much as a quarter of America’s malls may close in the next five years.

The directory map for the Northfield Square Mall in Bourbonnais, Ill., has three glaring spaces where large department stores once stood. Soon there will be a fourth vacancy, now that J.C. Penney is liquidating stores after filing for bankruptcy.

With so much empty space and brick-and-mortar retail in the midst of seismic changes even before the pandemic hit, the mall’s owners have been talking with local officials about identifying a “higher and better use for the site,” though they have declined to elaborate on what that could be.

“Filling in one anchor space, generally, is doable,” said Elliot Nassim, president of Mason Asset Management, which co-owns the Northfield Square Mall and dozens of other enclosed shopping centers. “But once you get hit by two others and you’re dealing with three anchor closures, that’s usually where we become a little more likely to put it into the bucket of a redevelopment.”

The standard American mall — with its vast parking lots, escalators and air conditioning, and an atmosphere heavy on perfume samples and the scent of Mrs. Fields cookies — was built around department stores. But the pandemic has been devastating for the retail industry and many of those stores are disappearing at a rapid clip. Some chains are unable to pay rent and prominent department store chains including Neiman Marcus, as well as J.C. Penney, have filed for bankruptcy protection. As they close stores, it could cause other tenants to abandon malls at the same time as large specialty chains like Victoria’s Secret are shrinking.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/05/business/coronavirus-malls-department-stores-bankruptcy.html