July 5, 2020

Trump would do anything for Putin. No wonder he's ignoring the Russian bounties.

Russia’s pattern of hostility matches Trump’s pattern of accommodation.

Russian President Vladimir Putin appears to have paid Taliban rebels in Afghanistan to kill U.S. soldiers. Having resulted in at least one American death, and maybe more, these Russian bounties reportedly produced the desired outcome. While deeply disturbing, this effort by Putin is not surprising: It follows a clear pattern of ignoring international norms, rules and laws — and daring the United States to do anything about it. Putin sees the United States as his central enemy. He fears our democratic values; believes that we actively promote these values to undermine autocrats, including himself; and loathes the liberal international order, which, in his view, serves American hegemony and weakens Russia. This latest act is designed to keep the United States bogged down in Afghanistan.

More alarming is President Trump's response: Nothing. This, too, follows a pattern of fealty before Putin, as the president has consistently praised Putin, dismissed Russia's meddling in the 2016 election, never criticized Russian annexation of Crimea, and uttered not a word about violations of human rights and growing autocracy in Russia. Trump's embrace of Putin, despite the clear costs to U.S. national security, has tightened. But this latest moment of indifference — silence about the killing of American soldiers — marks a new low.

We now know what to expect of Putin, whose litany of belligerent acts is long and increasingly audacious. In 2008, he invaded the republic of Georgia and then recognized its territories of Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent states, an obvious and violent attack on international law. In 2014, he violated Ukrainian sovereignty by annexing Crimea, defying one of the most sacred rules of the international order since the end of World War II. After the annexation, Putin armed (and at times supported with his own soldiers) separatist movements in eastern Ukraine, resulting in more than 13,000 deaths and roughly 2 million displaced citizens; these rebels also used a Russian rocket to shoot down Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 over Ukraine, killing all 298 people on board. In 2015, Putin deployed the Russian air force to Syria to prop up a ruthless dictator; his pilots committed war crimes when bombing Syrian civilians indiscriminately, according to the United Nations.

In 2016, Putin violated American sovereignty, trying in several ways to influence the outcome of our presidential election. The same year, Russian intelligence agents allegedly sought to orchestrate a coup in Montenegro just as the country was preparing to join NATO. In 2018, Putin attempted to assassinate an apostate intelligence officer, Sergei Skripal, in Britain, using a toxin easily traced back to Russia. Then in 2019, his agents allegedly killed Zelimkhan Khangoshvili, a Chechen Georgian citizen, in Berlin, where he had sought asylum after previous attempts on his life. And now in 2020, American intelligence officials revealed that Putin has offered Taliban fighters bounties to kill U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/trump-would-do-anything-for-putin-no-wonder-hes-ignoring-the-russian-bounties/2020/07/01/0013f1d0-bb19-11ea-8cf5-9c1b8d7f84c6_story.html

July 4, 2020

Inside the Cult of Trump, His Rallies are Church and He is the Gospel

Trump’s rallies—a bizarre mishmash of numerology, tweetology, and white supremacy—are the rituals by which he stamps his name on the American dream. As he prepares to resume them for the first time in months, his followers are ready to receive.

Yusif Jones, standing in front of a long row of porta-potties, slides his plastic Trump mask over his face. “I’m him!” he exclaims. He puffs up his chest in his homemade Trump shirt. It’s a short-sleeved American flag pullover, onto which he has ironed black felt letters across vertical red and white stripes: GOT TRUMP? Then he flashes the O.K. sign, a silver ring on his pinky. “I’m him, dude!”

For Trump supporters like Jones, the O.K. sign—thumb meeting index finger, three fingers splayed—is a kind of secret handshake. It began as a joke—a “hoax” meant to trick liberals into believing that the raised fingers actually represent the letters WP: white power. The joke worked so well that it became real. Now, in certain circles, O.K. does mean white power—unless you say it doesn’t. Jones, a big, vein-popping, occasionally church-going white man burdened with what he calls an “Islamic” name by his hippie mother, revels in this kind of coded message, a sense of possessing knowledge shared only by a select few. It’s Möbius strip politics, Trumpism’s defining oxymoron: a populist elite, a mass movement of “free thinkers” all thinking the same thing. They love Trump because he makes them feel like insiders even as they imagine him their outsider champion. That’s what’s drawn Jones here, to the CenturyLink Center in Bossier City, Louisiana, two weeks before Thanksgiving. Like many of the president’s 14,000 followers waiting for the rally to begin, Jones believes that Trump is on a mission from God to expose (and destroy) the hidden demons of the deep state.

To attend a Trump rally is to engage directly in the ecstasy of knowing what the great man knows, divinity disguised as earthly provocation. Jones tells me about Jesse Lee Peterson, a right-wing pastor and talk show host who calls Trump “the Great White Hope.” He doubles over and slaps his knee, signaling to me that it’s another joke. “He’s black!” says Jones, meaning Jesse Lee Peterson. “I love that dude,” he says. He considers Peterson, like the White Hope himself, awesomely witty. Jones straightens up. “But it’s true!” he adds. Which is how racism works at a Trump rally, just like the president’s own trolling—signal, disavowal, repeat; the ugly words followed by the claim that it was just a joke followed by a repetition of the ugly words. Joking! Not joking. Play it again, until the ironic becomes the real.

Later, I listen to Peterson’s show. He calls Trump the Great White Hope because, he says, “Number one, he is white. Number two, he is of God.” Peterson does not mean this metaphorically. Trump is the chosen one, his words gospel.

Peterson is hardly fringe in this belief. Many followers deploy a familiar Christian-right formula for justifying abuses of power, declaring Trump a modern King David, a sinner nonetheless anointed, while others compare him to Queen Esther, destined to save Israel—or at least the evangelical imagination of it—from Iran. Still others draw parallels to Cyrus, the Old Testament Persian king who became a tool for God’s will. “A vessel for God,” says former congressman Zach Wamp, now a member of The Family, the evangelical organization that hosts Trump every year at the National Prayer Breakfast. Lance Wallnau, a founding member of Trump’s evangelical coalition, dubs him “God’s chaos candidate”: “the self-made man who can ‘get it done,’ enters the arena, and through the pressure of circumstance becomes the God-shaped man God enables to do what he could never do in his own strength.”

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/06/inside-the-cult-of-trump-his-rallies-are-church-and-he-is-the-gospel

This article describes of some of the truly insane beliefs of Trump's cult; these are the people Trump is speaking to with his idiotic remarks.

There are a lot of mentally ill people in this country.

On an aside, an annual subscription to Vanity Fair is only $8 today.

July 4, 2020

Trump's push to amplify racism unnerves Republicans who have long enabled him

President Trump’s unyielding push to preserve Confederate symbols and the legacy of white domination, crystallized by his harsh denunciation of the racial justice movement Friday night at Mount Rushmore, has unnerved Republicans who have long enabled him but now fear losing power and forever associating their party with his racial animus.

Although amplifying racism and stoking culture wars have been mainstays of Trump’s public identity for decades, they have been particularly pronounced this summer as the president has reacted to the national reckoning over systemic discrimination by seeking to weaponize the anger and resentment of some white Americans for his own political gain.

Trump has left little doubt through his utterances the past few weeks that he sees himself not only as the Republican standard-bearer but as leader of a modern grievance movement animated by civic strife and marked by calls for “white power,” the phrase chanted by one of his supporters in a video the president shared last weekend on Twitter. He later deleted the video but did not disavow its message.

Trump put his strategy to resuscitate his troubled reelection campaign by galvanizing white supporters on display Friday night under the chiseled granite gaze of four past presidents memorialized in the Black Hills of South Dakota. He celebrated Independence Day with a dystopian speech in which he excoriated racial justice protesters as “evil” representatives of a “new far-left fascism” whose ultimate goal is “the end of America.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-racism-white-nationalism-republicans/2020/07/04/2b0aebe6-bbaf-11ea-80b9-40ece9a701dc_story.html

Tie his rotten carcass and an anvil around the necks of every Republican running for election.

July 4, 2020

Video was a glimpse into political discourse in 'America's friendliest' retirement community

‘White power’ video was a glimpse into Trump-era political discourse in ‘America’s friendliest’ retirement community

Sharon Sandler was already irritated as she walked toward the growing line of golf carts preparing to parade around one of her retirement community’s town squares for President Trump’s birthday.

Sandler, who is in her 60s, had spent the early afternoon of June 14 at an anti-racism vigil that sought to honor the memory of people killed by police, but whoever controlled the Villages’ sound system wouldn’t lower the volume, she said, so a solemn moment was pierced with a hydrant of Fox News.

Within minutes, Sandler’s silent protest devolved into a profanity-laced screaming match, with Sandler at the center. The confrontation would later draw international outrage when Trump, last Sunday morning, shared a video showing one of his supporters at the parade pumping his fist and screaming, “White power!”

The tweet was deleted hours later and the White House said Trump had not heard what the man had said. But to Sandler, who settled here a decade ago, the episode showed what Trump’s presidency has done to political discourse in a community that bills itself as a friendly, laid-back place where people 55 and older can live like millionaires on a retiree’s budget.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/white-power-video-was-a-glimpse-into-trump-era-political-discourse-in-americas-friendliest-retirement-community/2020/07/04/0ca405dc-bbc0-11ea-8cf5-9c1b8d7f84c6_story.html

July 4, 2020

Another Florida record for COVID-19 cases to start the July 4th weekend

Source: Tampa Bay Times

The state reports another 11458 cases.

The state of Florida has another record for positive tests of COVID-19.

The Department of Health reported another 11458 cases on Saturday. The department also reported another 18 deaths it attributed to the coronavirus, including two in Hillsborough County and one in Pinellas.

A dashboard maintained by the department shows an additional 245 hospitalizations from the outbreak.

Florida is closing in on 200,000 coronavirus cases and may surpass that number this weekend. Saturday’s count takes the total number of cases in the state to 190,052.

Read more: https://www.tampabay.com/news/health/2020/07/04/another-florida-record-for-covid-19-cases-to-start-the-july-4th-weekend/

July 4, 2020

At Mount Rushmore, Trump exploits social divisions, warns of 'left-wing cultural revolution'

Source: Washington Post

At Mount Rushmore, Trump exploits social divisions, warns of ‘left-wing cultural revolution’ in dark speech ahead of Independence Day

At the foot of Mount Rushmore’s granite monument to his presidential forebears, President Trump on Friday delivered a dark speech ahead of Independence Day in which he sought to exploit the nation’s racial and social divisions and rally supporters around a law-and-order message that has become a cornerstone of his reelection campaign.

Trump focused most of his address before a crowd of several thousand in South Dakota on what he described as a grave threat to the nation from liberals and angry mobs — a “left-wing cultural revolution” that aims to rewrite U.S. history and erase its heritage amid the racial justice protests that have roiled cities for weeks.

Praising presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt, the men carved into the cliffs behind him, Trump declared that their legacies are under assault from protesters who have defaced and torn down statues. As he has done with increasing fervor in recent weeks, the 45th president denounced not just rioters and vandals but also much of the social movement that propelled the mass demonstrations in response to the killings of black men at the hands of police.

“The radical ideology attacking our country advances under the banner of social justice. But in truth, it would demolish both justice and society,” Trump said. “It would transform justice into an instrument of division and vengeance and turn our free society into a place of repression, domination and exclusion. They want to silence us, but we will not be silenced.”

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-mount-rushmore-fireworks/2020/07/03/af2e84f6-bd25-11ea-bdaf-a129f921026f_story.html

July 4, 2020

European Workers Draw Paychecks. American Workers Scrounge for Food.

In the pandemic, the United States has relied on expanded unemployment benefits, while European governments have subsidized wages, avoiding a surge in joblessness.

In the southeast corner of Ireland, Brian Byrne’s event-planning business was confronting a calamity. It was the middle of March, and the coronavirus pandemic was nearing peak lethality. As the government barred gatherings like music festivals, his revenue disappeared, forcing him to consider laying off his four full-time workers.

But a swiftly arranged government program spared their jobs. It provided 70 to 85 percent of their wages, enabling Mr. Byrne to keep them employed.

“It oddly hasn’t been a stressful time,” he said. “I can keep the team together, keep them motivated. We’re basically doing everything we can to be ready for when the restrictions are eased.”

Across the Atlantic in New York, the pandemic cost Salvador Dominguez his job selling Manhattan real estate. He eventually qualified for an emergency expansion of federal unemployment benefits, but not before 72 agonizing days of waiting. He borrowed from friends and family members to pay his rent, and he harvested food from the trash at a high-end grocery store.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/03/business/economy/europe-us-jobless-coronavirus.html

July 4, 2020

Treasury, SBA appear to miss deadline to disclose small business loan data

Source: Washington Post

Administration officials had told lawmakers they would release names of some Paycheck Protection Plan borrowers before the holiday weekend

The Treasury Department and Small Businesses Administration appear unlikely to release information on hundreds of thousands of Paycheck Protection Program loans this week as planned, a setback in the Trump administration’s promises to be transparent about one of the largest economic stimulus packages ever created by the federal government.

After offering contradictory statements on how much information they would release about more than 4.8 million forgivable loans issued from the $660 billion program, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and SBA Administrator Jovita Carranza announced last week that they would release the names of borrowers who received at least $150,000 in funds before the holiday weekend.

But as of Friday afternoon — a government holiday — the Treasury Department and SBA did not indicate any plans to release the data. Congressional aides, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to brief the press, said they don’t expect the data to be released before Monday.

It wasn’t clear what was causing the delay. Spokesmen for the Treasury Department and SBA did not return requests for comment Friday on the reason for the delay.

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/07/03/treasury-sba-appear-miss-deadline-disclose-small-business-loan-data/

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Well surprise, surprise, surprise...

July 4, 2020

The sordid saga of Ghislaine Maxwell

Ghislaine Maxwell arrived in New York some 30 years ago as the young and glamorous emissary of her wealthy and influential father, an international man of mystery. Robert Maxwell was born Jan Ludvik Hyman Binyamin Hoch in the meager circumstances of an Eastern European shtetl. He lost most of his family in the Holocaust, escaped the Nazis and earned combat honors while fighting as a volunteer in the British Army under his new name, Ivan du Maurier.

After Germany’s surrender, the resourceful young man persuaded the Czechoslovakian communist government to supply air power to the Israelis in their 1948 war for nationhood. At the same time, he was establishing himself under yet another name, Maxwell, amid the battered and dazed society of post-war England. He became a publisher, a dealmaker, a member of Parliament, an empire builder, a cooker of ledger books, a swashbuckler who persuaded the Oxfordshire council to lease to him a vast mansion donated for more civic purposes by the family of Lady Ottoline Morrell, whose salon hosted the likes of Virginia Woolf and T.S. Eliot.

The youngest of Maxwell’s nine children, Ghislaine, hosted parties at the mansion, known as Headington Hill Hall, while attending nearby Oxford University. Thus she learned the power of money in making glamorous friends. Where the money came from was of little importance — her father was known to British satirists as “the bouncing Czech” on account of his finagled finances. Access to wealth made one matter.

She delivered magnificently on her New York assignment, introducing the Maxwell brand to Manhattan’s high society in time for daddy’s purchase of the most widely circulated newspaper in the city at the time, the Daily News, in 1991. Maxwell’s London tabloid war with Rupert Murdoch was going global. But no sooner had father and daughter scored their coup than it all fell to pieces. Mysterious to the end, Maxwell pitched over the side of his massive yacht, the Lady Ghislaine, on a quiet night off the coast of Spain as his empire collapsed into a rubble of looted pension funds.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-sordid-saga-of-ghislaine-maxwell/2020/07/03/8e3fe18c-bd51-11ea-80b9-40ece9a701dc_story.html

July 4, 2020

Black Lives Matter is America's ray of light this Independence Day

ON A day that celebrates the values this nation aspires to, it would be natural to mourn America’s fall as moral exemplar under a leader who shows contempt for democratic norms. His holiday plans, summoning crowds to endanger themselves for his greater glory, provide a sad reminder. But, in fact, much of the world has been inspired this year by a different sort of illumination from America, far brighter and more significant than the spectacle of a pyrotechnic show.

In a report in The Post recently, Brussels bureau chief Michael Birnbaum wrote: “Europeans have lamented that the United States has relinquished its role as a global moral leader under President Trump. But the proliferation of Black Lives Matter protests around the world has solidified belief here that American society remains a superpower of influence, even if its politicians do not.”

Mr. Birnbaum writes that while sympathy demonstrations have been held in many countries since the killing of George Floyd, nowhere has the movement “forced a more powerful reckoning than in Europe, where increasingly diverse societies have often done little to grapple with their colonial legacies and modern-day discrimination.”

“In Rome, Paris, Amsterdam, Berlin, Brussels, Madrid, Lisbon and cities across Britain,” he writes, “protesters have taken to the streets to express solidarity with Americans but also demand changes within their own countries.” Like many Americans, they are struggling to come to terms with the everyday toll of racial prejudice in their societies, and demanding another look at discrimination in employment, housing and pay, among other things.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/black-lives-matter-is-americas-ray-of-light-this-independence-day/2020/07/03/faba0330-bd36-11ea-80b9-40ece9a701dc_story.html