erronis
erronis's JournalThe Times Drops the Big One and a Modest Proposal for a Deal with Donny: Wry Wing Politics
https://www.wrywingpolitics.com/the-times-drops-the-big-one-and-a-modest-proposal-for-a-deal-with-donny/Fascinating hypothesis.
...
As todays Times story lays out, Trump is in (ridiculously) deep debt, with huge bills coming due in the next couple years, for which he is personally on the hook. And the tab gets bigger if he loses his much-referenced tax audit (over $100 million including penalties), and bigger still if New York and god knows how many stiffed contractors, harassed women, former employees go after him hard post the immunity of the White House.
Trump desperately and I do mean desperately needs a way out of this looming apocalypse. One way is if he wins the election. But barring that he needs something like blanket immunity from the state of New York. And that would mean striking a deal.
As Ive said before, only a hopeless idiot would enter into any deal with Trump that didnt have airtight conditions and abusive-level penalties.
So this is my proposal:
Trump agrees to concede the election. In return, the Biden administration, in union with Andrew Cuomo and Vance in New York set the following conditions for Trump and his family, (since Ivanka and the boys appear to have fat chunks of fraud splatter in their laps as well) to avoid prosecution.
The deal requires Trump to submit to a public interrogation by tax and white collar fraud attorney/prosecutors into any and all of his business dealings, from the time he took over from his father through to today. This would include everything involving the Russians, the Saudis, the Qataris, the Turks, and any other thug-ocracy hes been trolling for loose change.
It also stipulates the deal is voided the second Trump lies, misstates or mischaracterizes any pertinent fact.
Why public?
Because the story of Trump and the foundational lies of Trumpism has to be told. It has to be admitted to and confessed by Trump himself. History has to be written by the winners from the mouth of the loser.
Gellmans post-election hellscape is based on the premise that we will never know. That the fog and stench of Trumpism and Federalist Society Bill Barr-ism is desaigned to prevent anything from ever being truly knowable. (Such is Putins game in Russia.)
I believe Adam Schiff for one will eloquently argue that accepting anything less than a full peeling of the Trump myth simply enables a smarter, less louche and preposterous Trump from picking up the pieces and starting all over again. Even the most oblivious and deficient Trumper has to be presented with stark evidence that theyve been conned again.
Thirty nine percent will ignore the Times tax blockbuster and/or dismiss it as fake news, and Biden still needs a solid victory in Florida election night and a landslide overall to neuter any plausible claim Trump and Barr might present.
But the basis is now visibly forming to squeeze Trump into a corner from which his only escape is a Walk of Shame, to reference the entirely apt Game of Thrones.
Repeat After Me, "It Will Never Be 'Normal' Again." : Wry Wing Politics
Good article (IMHO)
https://www.wrywingpolitics.com/repeat-after-me-it-will-never-be-normal-again/
There are separate discussions to be had about both, as there are over Bob Woodwards Rage, the New York Times Michael Schmidts, Donald Trump v. The United States and top Mueller prosecutor Andrew Weissmans Where the Law Ends.
But one stark takeaway from Toobin and Stelter is how completely unprepared the establishment was for Donald Trump. More to the point both are argue, is how unprepared traditional legal bureaucracies and journalism organizations still are even today, nearly four years and 20,000 lies after Trump was elected the first time.
And Who Would Be The Donald's Real "Losers" and "Suckers"? - Brian Lambert
https://www.wrywingpolitics.com/and-who-would-be-the-donalds-real-losers-and-suckers/A good read with some interesting ideas.
The immediate problem of course is what damage this highly instinctive, highly reactive, all but completely unreflective allegiance to the biggest apes constant false alarms does to the tribe in general.
Former Daily Caller Editor Reveals He Was Forced to Publish Oleg Deripaska
https://www.emptywheel.net/2020/08/26/former-daily-caller-editor-reveals-he-was-forced-to-publish-oleg-deripaska/Back in 2018, I was the opinion editor for The Daily Caller. I had worked for the website for about five years as a journalist and editor. I really believed in what we were doing. I believed in what founders Tucker Carlson and Neil Patel said they were building. (More on that later.)
In early March 2018, Deripaska submitted an opinion piece to The Daily Caller. He didnt submit it directly to me or through the Callers conventional submissions process. Presumably, villainous Russian billionaires are above such hoi polloi procedures. Instead, Daily Caller publisher Patel contacted me directly one day saying he had received Deripaskas op-ed. He wanted to know how I felt about it.
I hated it. Anyone with a passing knowledge of European politics would know who Deripaska is and what he represents. I had been in the U.S. foreign service for a bit, so, of course, I knew.
More importantly, Deripaskas op-ed itself wasand remainsan extraordinary exercise in audacious Russian propaganda.
[snip]
n the case of the 2018 Deripaska op-ed, which I myself published and placed despite my own doubts and qualms, The Daily Caller was the plaything of a Russian billionaire working directly with Russian spies who used conservative media to spout completely false and fabulous conspiracy theories.
Tucker Carlson. A known Russian asset. And groomed to be a star in the New GOP.
Via MW: Place Your Bets: What's Trump's October Surprise?
https://www.emptywheel.net/2020/08/22/place-your-bets-whats-trumps-october-surprise/... List of past surprises ...
First three of many:
conjures Nikki Haley replacing Pence in early October.
What's your favorite POS that the orange turd and friends will pull?
California GOP Consultant Rues 'Big Mistake' That Led to Family's COVID Infections
Source: Kaiser Health News
SACRAMENTO The tweet Richard Costigan posted July 23 was bluntly honest: We tried our best to limit exposure to #COVID19 but we slipped up somewhere.
Costigan tweeted while waiting anxiously in the parking lot of a hospital outside Sacramento. The veteran Republican political consultant had just dropped his wife, Gloria, off at the emergency room. He wasnt allowed to go in with her.
But they didnt wear masks, he said, and family members went in and out of the house to grab drinks and use the restroom. We thought wed done everything right, and we screwed up, Costigan said in a July 29 phone interview. We made a big mistake.
Now seven of the 10 family members who attended that backyard gathering are sick. Emma and Andrew dont have any symptoms but havent been tested. Exactly who introduced COVID-19 to the group is unclear. No one showed signs of sickness at the time. The first person to become sick was Glorias sister, then her niece then her mom.
Read more: https://khn.org/news/california-gop-consultant-rues-big-mistake-that-led-to-familys-covid-infections/
I have some respect for a (r)epuglicon that can admit some blame, some personal responsibility. Rare.
Hundreds Call Paper 'Unscholarly' and 'Racially Violent' - Medscape
https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/934722One petition, to the editor of the journal, Jonathan Imber, had garnered more than 550 signatories by the time of this writing. Another, to the author of the paper, the editorial board of the journal, and the CEO of Springer Nature, which publishes the journal, was at 400 and counting.
The essay, by Lawrence Mead, a public policy researcher at New York University, argues that racism and a lack of good jobs do not explain why America, the world's richest country, continues to have a problem with poverty. "More plausible," Mead states, are differences in "culture":
Link to petition:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nwWTW2sNrkn9mwxtcUBcGVZL2x6hXv7FOX3P_3VgTLA/edit
The Atlantic: A Vaccine Reality Check - So much hope is riding on a breakthrough, but a vaccine is
is only the beginning of the end.
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/07/covid-19-vaccine-reality-check/614566/
Should be available outside of the paywall.
Feeding these hopes are the Trump administrations exceedingly rosy projections of a vaccine as early as October, as well as the medias blow-by-blow coverage of vaccine trials. Each week brings news of early success, promising initial results, and stocks rising because of vaccine optimism. But a COVID-19 vaccine is unlikely to meet all of these high expectations. The vaccine probably wont make the disease disappear. It certainly will not immediately return life to normal.
Biologically, a vaccine against the COVID-19 virus is unlikely to offer complete protection. Logistically, manufacturers will have to make hundreds of millions of doses while relying, perhaps, on technology never before used in vaccines and competing for basic supplies such as glass vials. Then the federal government will have to allocate doses, perhaps through a patchwork of state and local health departments with no existing infrastructure for vaccinating adults at scale. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which has led vaccine distribution efforts in the past, has been strikingly absent in discussions so fara worrying sign that the leadership failures that have characterized the American pandemic could also hamper this process. To complicate it all, 20 percent of Americans already say they will refuse to get a COVID-19 vaccine, and with another 31 percent unsure, reaching herd immunity could be that much more difficult.
...
For all the uncertainties that remain ahead for a COVID-19 vaccine, several experts were willing to make one prediction. I think the question that is easy to answer is, Is this virus going to go away? And the answer to that is, No, says Karron, the vaccine expert at Johns Hopkins. The virus is already too widespread. A vaccine could still mitigate severe cases; it could make COVID-19 easier to live with. The virus is likely here to stay, but eventually, the pandemic will end.
Not mentioned in this are the anti-vaxxers, the conspiracy-theory nutjobs, the whackos who think it's OK to have 20-30% of the population die to "thin the herd."
Thousands of Police Discipline Records That New York Kept Secret for Decades - ProPublica
This will cause some major waves.
https://www.propublica.org/article/nypd-civilian-complaint-review-board-editors-note
The New York City police officer whose use of a prohibited chokehold led to the death of Eric Garner in 2014 had a record of misconduct. Garners last words I cant breathe became a rallying cry for the Black Lives Matter movement.
The city investigator who revealed the existence of the officers record was forced to resign in 2017; the officer himself wasnt fired until 2019.
When the death of George Floyd and footage of his pleas for his life ignited worldwide protests, activists in New York renewed their push to repeal the statute that kept disciplinary records under wraps, known as 50-a. State lawmakers finally acted, voting to repeal the provision, which had been on the books for decades.
Soon after, ProPublica asked New Yorks Civilian Complaint Review Board, or CCRB, for a list of officers, along with the complaints against them, and what discipline, if any, had been recommended.
Today, we are making this information public and, with it, providing an unprecedented picture of civilians complaints of abuse by NYPD officers as well as the limits of the current system that is supposed to hold officers accountable. Weve published a database that lets you search the police complaints so you can see the information for yourself. Data experts can also download the data.
I expect many will download the data to keep it safe since the powerful unions may prevail in their attempts to stop distribution.
I hope this opens up all the rest of the police departments to transparency.
Medicare is running out of money - Kaiser Health News
https://khn.org/news/another-problem-on-the-health-horizon-medicare-is-running-out-of-money/With record numbers of Americans out of work, fewer payroll taxes are rolling in to fund Medicare spending, the numbers of beneficiaries are rising, and Congress dipped into Medicares reserves to help fund the COVID-19 relief efforts this spring.
I think we have a real, impending health care crisis, said Dr. David Shulkin, who was undersecretary for health at the Department of Veterans Affairs under President Barack Obama for two years and led the VA for a year under Donald Trump.
In April, Medicares trustees reported that the Part A Trust Fund, which pays for hospital and other inpatient care, would start to run out of money in 2026. That is the same as the projection in 2019. But the trustees cautioned at the time that their projections did not include the impact of COVID-19 on the trust fund.
Given the uncertainty associated with these impacts, the Trustees believe that it is not possible to adjust the estimates accurately at this time, said the report.
So Shulkin, now a senior fellow at the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics at the University of Pennsylvania, did his own projections. Given even a conservative estimate of how many workers and businesses would not be contributing payroll taxes that finance Part A spending, he said, the trust fund could become insolvent as early as 2022 or 2023.
I think this is something that needs more immediate attention, he said.
Others who make projections agree the insolvency date is getting closer, maybe not as close as 2022.
This sounds like part of the (r)epuglicon's plan.
That money in accelerated and advance payments is supposed to be paid back, via a reduction in future payments. But there is a push in some quarters for that funding to be forgiven, which would make the Trust Funds hole even bigger.
It is not exactly clear what would happen if the Trust Fund were to become insolvent because it has never happened before. As the Congressional Research Service pointed out, There are no provisions in the Social Security Act that govern what would happen if insolvency were to occur.
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