June 20, 2020

Check out this overflow crowd at Coronafest 2020

Trump claimed there'd be 70,000 people outside the arena.


https://twitter.com/abbydphillip/status/1274461483062222850


This is what overflow looks like at the Trump rally in Tulsa right now. Pence is scheduled to speak out here in about 10 minutes. People still streaming in but not nearly the number the campaign said they were expecting.

June 18, 2020

There's a podcast on Spotify about hitman Charles Harrelson, Woody Harrelson's father

It sounds interesting. Woody looks like him.


https://twitter.com/Spotify/status/1272998017692577792





“Everybody liked Charlie.” Uncover the truth of hitman Charles Harrelson’s past crimes and conspiracies with Son of a Hitman, a Spotify Original Podcast. Listen now on Spotify.

June 17, 2020

Trump asked China's Xi to help him win reelection, according to Bolton book

By
Josh Dawsey
June 17, 2020 at 2:46 p.m. EDT
President Trump asked Chinese President Xi Jinping to help him win the 2020 U.S. election, telling Xi during a summit dinner last year that increased agricultural purchases by Beijing from American farmers would aid his electoral prospects, according to a damning new account of life inside the Trump administration by former national security adviser John Bolton.

During a one-on-one meeting at the June 2019 Group of 20 summit in Japan, Xi complained to Trump about China critics in the United States. But Bolton writes in a book scheduled to be released next week that “Trump immediately assumed Xi meant the Democrats. Trump said approvingly that there was great hostility among the Democrats.

“He then, stunningly, turned the conversation to the coming U.S. presidential election, alluding to China’s economic capability to affect the ongoing campaigns, pleading with Xi to ensure he’d win,” Bolton writes. “He stressed the importance of farmers, and increased Chinese purchases of soybeans and wheat in the electoral outcome. I would print Trump’s exact words but the government’s prepublication review process has decided otherwise.”

The episode described by Bolton in his book, “The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir,” bears striking similarities to the actions that resulted in Trump’s impeachment after he sought to pressure the Ukrainian president to help dig up dirt on Democratic rival Joe Biden in exchange for military assistance. The China allegation also comes amid ongoing warnings from U.S. intelligence agencies about foreign election interference in November, as Russia did to favor Trump in 2016.


https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-asked-chinas-xi-to-help-him-win-reelection-according-to-bolton-book/2020/06/17/d4ea601c-ad7a-11ea-868b-93d63cd833b2_story.html


And Trump told Xi that Americans were clamoring for him to change the constitutional rules to serve more than two terms, according to the book.



Trump's ass is grass.

June 17, 2020

Trump Considers Suing His Niece Over Her Tell-All Book, Saying She Signed an NDA

This past Sunday, news broke that the president’s niece, Mary Trump, was on track to publish a “harrowing and salacious” book this summer about her world-famous uncle. By Sunday night, the president had been privately briefed on what he could expect from the upcoming book. By Tuesday, he had begun discussing siccing his lawyers on his niece.

According to two people familiar with the situation, Donald Trump has told people close to him that he’s getting his lawyers to look into the Mary Trump matter, to explore what could be done in the way of legal retribution—or at least a threat—likely in the form of a cease and desist letter. One of the sources with knowledge of the situation said that in the past couple of days, the president appeared irked by news of her book and at one point mentioned that Mary had signed an NDA years ago.

Mary Trump signed an NDA following a 2001 settlement after litigation disputing Fred Trump’s estate, according to people familiar with the matter. That NDA states she is not allowed to publish anything regarding the litigation or her relationship with Donald, Maryanne and Robert.

It’s not clear what type of response the president or his personal legal team will ultimately pursue. But his administration and his outside counsel have been busy during this tumultuous election year—one already ravaged by a cratered economy, a mass protest movement against police brutality and institutional racism, and the coronavirus pandemic—combating other new manuscripts and memoirs authored by top Trump associates turned bitter enemies.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-considers-suing-his-niece-mary-trump-over-her-tell-all-book-saying-she-signed-an-nda?via=twitter_page

June 16, 2020

The NAACP on Trump's "police reform" executive order

https://twitter.com/AprilDRyan/status/1272972586943754242


“This was a federal photo op, not a federal response! Executive orders in this space have very little authority. There’s no team, there’s no funding. That’s not a response, that’s a photo op!” -
@NAACP
head
@DerrickNAACP
on
@CNN
about Trump executive order. #TrumpPressConference

June 11, 2020

G.O.P. Platform, Rolled Over From 2016, Condemns the 'Current President'

WASHINGTON — When Republicans read the platform their party is using for the 2020 campaign, they may be surprised to see that it is full of condemnations of the sitting president.

“The survival of the internet as we know it is at risk,” the platform reads. “Its gravest peril originates in the White House, the current occupant of which has launched a campaign, both at home and internationally, to subjugate it to agents of government.”

The warning about speech online is one of more than three dozen unflattering references to either the “current president,” “current chief executive,” “current administration,” people “currently in control” of policy, or the “current occupant” of the White House that appear in the Republican platform. Adopted at the party’s 2016 convention, it has been carried over through 2024 after the executive committee of the Republican National Committee on Wednesday chose not to adopt a new platform for 2020.


The platform censures the “current” president — who in 2016 was, of course, Barack Obama — and his administration for, among other things, imposing “a social and cultural revolution,” causing a “huge increase in the national debt” and damaging relationships with international partners.



https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/11/us/politics/republican-platform.html?smtyp=cur&smid=tw-nytimes

June 6, 2020

"I'd like to tell you a story about Bruce Springsteen and the New York City Police Department."

https://twitter.com/JohnGallagherJr/status/1269049272936419328


"Bruce Springsteen’s song “American Skin (41 Shots)” is a tender, moving ode to Amadou Diallo. Diallo was a 23 year old Guinean immigrant who was shot 19 times by 4 plain clothes cops outside his NYC apartment in 1999. 41 shots were fired. He was unarmed. The cops were acquitted.

When Bruce debuted the song in Atlanta in 2000 it was considered controversial. The largest police union in NYC was like “That’s it! The Boss is cancelled!” They called for the NYPD to boycott Bruce and refuse to offer security for his upcoming shows at Madison Square Garden.

Listening to the song now, it’s hard to imagine what made them so mad. It isn’t angry or accusatory, just sorrowful. It offers up the simple, powerful refrain...

“You can get killed just for living in your American skin.”

It is a stunning song. Give it a listen.

The fact that it made the NYPD so mad tells us a lot about why they are doing what they are doing right now. The party line has always been the same...

Question our authority and become our enemy. It doesn’t matter if you’re a famous rockstar or a citizenry demanding reform.

Last Sunday, Ed Mullins, president of the second largest police union in NYC, tweeted Chiara de Blasio’s arrest record after she was arrested protesting. It included her license info and address. Chiara is the Mayor’s daughter. She’s 25. Mullins has been on the force since 82.

The Sergeants Benevolent Association’s account was briefly suspended because posting people’s private information without their knowledge, also known as doxxing, is a dangerous violation of Twitter Rules. The tweet was removed and Mullins quickly regained control of the account.

In February, Mullins tweeted that members of the NYPD were “declaring war on Mayor de Blasio and did not respect him.” He also tweeted a video that referred to black people as “monsters” and public housing as “war zones.” This is the head of NYC’s second largest police union.

This week he put out a statement praising officers for their recent performance during protests. He proclaimed that the NYPD answered to a “higher power” and will “win the war on New York City.” Then he went on Fox News and begged Trump to call in the National Guard to occupy us.

He told Laura Ingraham that the NYPD was “losing the city of New York.” I guess I’ve been naive all this time because I didn’t realize it belonged to them.

Yesterday the NYPD sought and was granted the right to arrest anyone and hold them for more than 24 hours in crowded jail cells without arraignment while the covid-19 pandemic still looms. This is a rare and stunning suspension of habeas corpus.

To recap, the president of the second largest police union in New York City publicly declared war on both its mayor and its citizens in the last four months. It’s not making many headlines right now but it seems like a red flag and a pretty big deal to me!

The thing about Mullins is, cops love him! He’s been a union boss since 2002. They love that he visits Trump in D.C. and trashes the Dem Mayor and owns the libs on his divisive, partisan Twitter account. How do you change that? How do you fix what doesn’t see itself as broken?"

June 3, 2020

Tired of bad cops? First, look at their labor unions.

By Daniel DiSalvo
June 3, 2020 at 9:57 a.m. EDT
Daniel DiSalvo is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and professor of political science at the City College of New York-CUNY.



The purpose of policing is to promote public safety and uphold the rule of law so that individuals and communities can thrive. The purpose of police unions, however, is to win members better salaries and benefits and to protect their job security — specifically by pushing for safeguards against investigation, discipline and dismissal. These protections can make it difficult for police chiefs to manage their forces effectively and can allow a few bad officers to act with impunity, poisoning an entire organizational culture in the process.



The most notorious example of this problem emerged from Chicago after the 2014 killing of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald by officer Jason Van Dyke. Before that fatal incident, Van Dyke had been the subject of 20 civilian complaints, 10 of which alleged excessive use of force. But under the union rules then in place, the complaints proved toothless. As a task force appointed by Mayor Rahm Emanuel in the wake of the shooting reported, “The collective bargaining agreements between the police unions and the City [had] essentially turned the code of silence into official policy.”

To be sure, many of the protections demanded by police unions reflect the unique challenges of policing. Because of the nature of their work, law enforcement officers tend to have adversarial relationships with the citizens and communities they serve. False or exaggerated complaints are inevitable, and it is understandable that labor representatives would want to protect their members against these threats.

Problems arise when these provisions are exploited to help cover for bad policing. In many American cities, police union contracts limit the amount of time an officer accused of misconduct can be interviewed, who can interview him and when an interview can occur. Houston and Louisville, for example, allow for delays of up to 48 hours before an interview with an officer accused of wrongdoing. On one hand, these rules protect officers who, because they must make statements on the record, surrender as a condition of their jobs their constitutional right to remain silent. On the other hand, this grace period can be used as time for officers to “get their story straight.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/06/03/tired-bad-cops-first-look-their-labor-unions/

June 2, 2020

Want police reform? We need independent medical examiners and coroners.

Justin Feldman is an assistant professor of epidemiology at the New York University School of Medicine.

Floyd’s death is hardly the only case in which medical examiners have produced baffling findings after conducting autopsies of people who died while in police custody. This case is more proof that if we want police accountability, we need to make sure medical examiners can issue honest, independent reports on how people such as Floyd died.

If discrepancies between what seem like obvious causes of death and what actually shows up in autopsy reports or on death certificates seem shocking, they aren’t uncommon. I know, because I worked with a group of other epidemiologists to match police killings reported in the media to death certificate summaries we obtained from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (Under the privacy agreement governing the release of those summaries, we cannot discuss individual cases in detail.) We found that coroners and medical examiners throughout the United States routinely report findings that minimize the responsibility of police.

Our study identified 71 people who died in police custody after they had been subject to a Taser shock, chokehold or other form of restraint; after being transported in a police vehicle; or after being denied water while in detention. Medical examiners and coroners determined that only 24 of those people lost their lives because force was applied to them. In some of these cases, investigators correctly assigned a diagnostic code specific to police-related injury. But in others, the coroners and medical examiners used diagnostic codes meant to indicate a homicide between civilians. Even if these discrepancies were errors rather than deceptions, the result was that fewer police-involved deaths showed up in mortality data.

And a majority of these deaths — 47 of the 71 — were attributed to causes such as accidental injury, respiratory disease or mental illness, rather than to the actions of police officers. In some cases, the cause of death was reported as “undetermined.” While I did not have access to the full medical-examiner reports for these deaths in custody, the results strongly suggest that the role of police actions in the deaths were also minimized.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/06/02/want-police-reform-we-need-independent-medical-examiners-coroners/

June 2, 2020

NC Gov Roy Cooper told RNC highly unlikely they'd be allowed to hold in person convention

https://twitter.com/tanyamendis/status/1267873088185778176

BREAKING: Tennessee’s Governor confirms that
@GOPconvention
leaders are going to Nashville Thursday to tour potential convention sites.

NC Governor Roy Cooper told them it was highly unlikely they'd be allowed to hold an in person convention in Charlotte

https://twitter.com/Hunt_Saenz/status/1267870117070856194

#NEW:
@NC_Governor
sent this letter back to
@GOPChairwoman
saying an in-person #RNC is “very unlikely.” He said planning a scaled back Convention is a necessity. RNC wanted 19,000 people in Spectrum Center.
@wcnc