July 4, 2020

Jimmie Johnson becomes first NASCAR driver to test positive for the coronavirus

Source: LA Times

Seven-time NASCAR champion Jimmie Johnson has tested positive for the coronavirus and will miss this weekend’s race at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

The 44-year-old Johnson is the first driver in any NASCAR series to test positive and the news cast a shadow over the historic NASCAR-IndyCar doubleheader races coming up Saturday and Sunday. There was no indication any races would be affected.

Hendrick Motorsports said Johnson will not return until he is cleared by a physician. Has no symptoms, but was tested today after his wife tested positive.

Johnson earlier Friday held a Zoom session with reporters to discuss Sunday’s race and an upcoming test of an Indy car on the road course at the fabled venue. He will now miss that test, as well as what was supposed to be his final Brickyard 400. Justin Allgaier will replace him Sunday in the No. 48 Chevrolet.

Read more: https://www.latimes.com/sports/story/2020-07-03/jimmie-johnson-first-nascar-driver-test-positive-coronavirus

July 4, 2020

Let's Finish the American Revolution

Our nation’s founding was a mess of contradictions. We must push America closer to its ideals.

As baffling as it is to find statues of traitors, slaveholders and killers of Union soldiers ensconced in many a prominent square, consider the historical discordance of Custer County, S.D.

The hard beauty of the Black Hills, sacred land to Native Americans, overshadows the county, the main town and the state park, all named for George Armstrong Custer. The hard history was shaped by the slayer of those native people. Custer’s willful trespass into territory promised by treaty to the Sioux set the stage for the last violent encounters between New World and Old.

Just under 20 miles from Custer is Mount Rushmore, which President Trump plans to visit this Fourth of July weekend. A mere seven miles from Custer is the Native American Rushmore — a still unfinished carving of the Oglala Sioux leader Crazy Horse, 641 feet long and 563 feet high.

Here is the American paradox in a grid of stark geology.

No country can last long without a shared narrative. You wonder, on an Independence Day when the mood of the country is more angry and fearful than it’s been in a long time, if this nation can ever have such a thing again.

I think we can. But to make that happen, it will take an imaginative projection of the best instincts of those four imperfect men whose visages are chiseled into stone, as well as the Sioux warrior honored just down the road.

Before we get to them, let’s talk about him. Trump wants a fireworks display in the pine forest around Rushmore in the middle of fire season. There will be no required social distancing for the crowd. And the world’s most powerful narcissist will be projecting his dream to have his face carved next to those of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt.

There you have it — everything that is so awful about him in one appearance, putting the lives of American citizens and a national landmark at risk to protect his eggshell ego.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/03/opinion/fourth-of-july.html

July 3, 2020

The political theater of Kayleigh McEnany's scripted walk-offs

Kayleigh McEnany’s press briefings don’t just draw to a close. They tend to end with a flourish — a true walk-off moment.

It happened again at the White House on Monday. President Trump’s press secretary was speaking to reporters when one asked about his denial of reports that Russian operatives offered bounties to Taliban members who kill American troops in Afghanistan. But, a reporter noted, Trump had also claimed that he had never been briefed on the subject — so how could he be certain there were never any bounties?

McEnany was ready for this one.

Quickly flipping pages in her briefing binder, McEnany launched into an extended critique of the New York Times, which broke the Russia story last week. Reading from her notes, she rattled off a series of alleged errors published by the Times in its reporting about Russia over the past four years, including a claim that 17 intelligence agencies had agreed about Russian interference in the 2016 election. (Only four agencies had done so.)

Then she unleashed the uppercut punch: “It is inexcusable, the failed Russia reporting of the New York Times. And I think it’s time that the New York Times, and also The Washington Post, hand back their Pulitzers.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/media/the-political-theater-of-kayleigh-mcenanys-scripted-walk-offs/2020/07/02/a9b7d09a-ba41-11ea-bdaf-a129f921026f_story.html

July 3, 2020

Tampa residents find 9-foot alligator on doorstep

A Lake Magdalene area home drew crowds from startled passers-by Tuesday morning.

The reason? A nearly 9-foot alligator, missing two limbs, was sitting on the doorstep.

According to a Facebook post by Croc Encounters, the wildlife sanctuary received a call from the home’s residents, who could not get the alligator to move.

The residents warned people with a sign, saying “Delivery Stop! Leave Packages here! ALLIGATOR at front door!! (seriously).”

https://www.tampabay.com/news/tampa/2020/07/03/tampa-residents-find-9-foot-alligator-on-doorstep/

One thing I never cared for about living in Florida...alligators outside the front door...

July 3, 2020

A massive repudiation of Trump's racist politics is building

Four years ago, Christopher Parker, an African American political scientist at the University of Washington, made the provocative argument that Donald Trump’s candidacy could “do more to advance racial understanding than the election of Barack Obama.”

“Trump’s clear bigotry,” Parker wrote in the American Prospect, a liberal journal, “makes it impossible for whites to deny the existence of racism in America. . . . His success clashes with many white Americans’ vision of the United States as a fair and just place.”

Those words seem prescient today, after four years of President Trump’s racism, from the “very fine people” marching with neo-Nazis in Charlottesville to, in just the past week, a “white power” retweet and a threat to veto defense spending to protect the names of Confederate generals; after a pandemic disproportionately ravaged African American communities while an indifferent president tried to move on; after Trump-allied demonstrators, some carrying firearms and Confederate flags, tried to “liberate” themselves from public health restrictions; after the video of George Floyd’s killing showed the world blatant police brutality; after Trump used federal firepower against peaceful civil rights demonstrators of all colors.

The reckoning Parker foresaw is now upon us. White women, disgusted by Trump’s cruelty, are abandoning him in large number. White liberals, stunned by the brazen racism, have taken to the streets. And signs point to African American turnout in November that will rival the record level of 2012, when Obama was on the ballot. This, by itself, would flip Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin to Democrats, an analysis by the liberal Center for American Progress shows.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/07/03/massive-repudiation-trumps-racist-politics-is-building/

July 3, 2020

Our declaration this Independence Day should be liberation from Trump

“This Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn.”

Frederick Douglass’s historic oration and cry of pain, anger and resolve were delivered to the Rochester Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society’s Fourth of July observance in Rochester, N.Y., in 1852.

Douglass did not use the occasion to take anything away from the Founders and their legacy. “I cannot contemplate their great deeds with less than admiration,” he told the crowd of more than 500 abolitionists. “They were statesmen, patriots and heroes, and for the good they did, and the principles they contended for, I will unite with you to honor their memory.”

But Douglass knew he was commemorating the signing of the Declaration at the very hour millions of black men, women and children in America were chained to servitude. “The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence, bequeathed by your fathers,” Douglass said to his largely white audience, “is shared by you, not by me.”

So it was, then.

What is this Fourth of July to America?

This day in national life, I submit, is President Trump’s. It has been appropriated by his shameless narcissism.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/our-declaration-this-independence-day-should-be-liberation-from-trump/2020/07/03/bfa53998-bc98-11ea-bdaf-a129f921026f_story.html

July 3, 2020

Putin Considering Not Running Trump for Relection

MOSCOW (The Borowitz Report)—Faced with “deeply discouraging” 2020 polls, Vladimir Putin is “seriously considering” not running Donald J. Trump for reëlection, according to Kremlin sources.

The Russian President had been holding out hope that Trump could somehow stop his precipitous slide in popularity, but a recent roundup of polls showing Joe Biden crushing him in several battleground states made Putin realize that “his guy is a lost cause,” one source said.

“Putin has been talking about not running Trump for reëlection for months now, but it looks like he’s finally ready to pull the rip cord,” the source added.

According to Kremlin insiders, Putin is actively mulling a number of possible Republican replacements for Trump, including Representative Devin Nunes, Senator Mitch McConnell, and Senator Rand Paul, but he does not relish the idea of making the switch.

“You have to understand, Putin has spent years training Trump to be so obedient,” the source said. “It’s going to be hard breaking in a new one.”

https://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/putin-considering-not-running-trump-for-reelection

July 3, 2020

It's a library book, not a Hot Pocket

Tampa Bay librarians warn of a dangerous practice: patrons microwaving borrowed books to try to sanitize them in the time of the coronavirus.

The victim was a romance novel, large print, recently returned to the Kent District Library in Michigan.

But inside was a mystery: Librarians discovered the book’s innards were charred.

Turned out, someone put the book in a microwave oven, apparently attempting to kill off any coronavirus the last reader might have left behind.

Libraries are used to dealing with books dropped in a bathtub, penned across the margins or left out in the rain.

“I’ve never seen a burned book,” said Kent District Library regional manager Elizabeth Guarino-Kozlowicz.

And please, librarians say. Don’t.

https://www.tampabay.com/news/health/2020/07/03/its-a-library-book-not-a-hot-pocket/

July 3, 2020

Nancy Pelosi calls out Trump's con

Following a briefing on Russia’s payment for bounties on U.S. troops, Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) put out a succinct statement, ending with this: "Our Armed Forces would be better served if President Trump spent more time reading his daily briefing and less time planning military parades and defending relics of the Confederacy.” That statement and Pelosi’s remarks in her weekly news conference appear to confirm news reports that the matter was included in Trump’s daily briefing (which the White House has denied).

At her news conference on the day before the start of the Fourth of July holiday weekend, Pelosi all but declared Trump AWOL from his post as commander in chief. Careful not to tie her remarks to the Gang of Eight briefing, she asserted, “Of course, the president should have been briefed. This is of the highest priority. Force protection, a threat to our men and women in uniform.” She continued, “It was in his PDB, presidential daily brief, but it wasn’t verbally [relayed],” adding:
“That doesn’t mean that he shouldn’t have read that.”

Pelosi has been part of intelligence briefings as a member of the Gang of Eight and before that on the House Intelligence Committee for decades. She was, therefore, well-equipped to call out Trump’s latest excuse for not having acted on intelligence or been (orally) briefed: "You got the con. The White House put on a con that if you don’t have 100 percent consensus on intelligence, it shouldn’t rise to a certain level,” she told reporters. That, however, is just poppycock. She correctly pointed out that if you needed to have 100 percent certainty before alerting the president to a threat to the troops, you would never look into anything.

She is right, of course. We have seen a familiar pattern of deflection and misdirection on this scandal. First, Trump was not “briefed.” (Well, he was briefed through the PDB.) But it was a hoax. (Then why was it in the PDB?) The upshot is that Trump, to this day, has taken no action in defense of our troops. At a time when the Kremlin was placing bounties on the heads of our servicemen and women, he was calling for Russia to be let into the Group of Seven.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/07/03/pelosi-calls-out-con/

July 3, 2020

Trump's Re-election Message Is White Grievance

Republicans in D.C. just pretend not to see it.

A lot of Republicans are acting puzzled about Donald Trump’s re-election pitch. “He has no message,” one Republican source told Reuters. “He needs to articulate why he wants a second term,” said another. Some have expressed hope that Trump would find a way to become less polarizing, as if polarization were not the raison d’être of his presidency.

It’s hard to know if Republicans like this are truly naïve or if they’re just pretending so they don’t have to admit what a foul enterprise they’re part of. Because Trump does indeed have a re-election message, a stark and obvious one. It is “white power.”

The president started this week by tweeting out a video that encapsulates the soul of his movement. In it, a man in The Villages, an affluent Florida retirement community, shouts, “White power!” at protesters from a golf cart bedecked with Trump signs. “Thank you to the great people of The Villages,” wrote Trump. Only after several hours and a panic among White House staffers did the president delete the tweet.

His spokesman claimed he hadn’t heard his supporter’s extremely clear words. Trump, naturally, never disavowed them.

And why would he? Republicans might act as if they don’t know why Trump’s fans are so unfailingly loyal. Some commentators spent the first year or two of his presidency dancing around the reason he was elected, spending so much time probing the “economic anxiety” of his base that the phrase came to stand for a type of willful political blindness.

But Trump understands that he became a significant political figure by spreading the racist lie that Barack Obama was really born in Kenya. He launched his history-making presidential bid with a speech calling Mexican immigrants rapists and adopted a slogan, “America First,” previously associated with the raging anti-Semite Charles Lindbergh. Throughout the 2016 campaign, he won the invaluable prize of earned media with escalating racist provocations, which his supporters relished and which captivated cable news.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/02/opinion/trump-racism-2020-election.html