[johnu]

johnu, on 2020-July-12, 13:37, said:

Obviously this does not apply at all when talking about the US.

Florida Reports Over 15,000 COVID-19 Cases In Single-Day Record


At least these idiots are only putting other idiots at risk with their behavior (with the exception of the State employees who had to show up to deliver a warning from the state.


15000 new COVID-19 cases in Florida in a single day and this stable genius believes the virus is well contained??? As I've said before, this type of person represents a significant portion of the Republicans in the US, if not a majority of them.


The US has officially become Crazytown.

This is without even considering the Manchurian President stooge governors that have refused to order statewide mask wearing orders, and in some cases have prohibited local governments from instituting local mask wearing orders.

There is a reason the US has far more COVID-19 deaths and infections than any other country on the planet. The Manchurian President and his stooges have joined the COVID-19 war, but unfortunately for the country have joined on the side of the virus, not the people of the US.

Gallup poll: Democrats, women more likely to wear masks

Quote

The Gallup survey found mask-wearing remains a political issue, with 94 percent of Democrats stating that they “always” or “very often” wear masks when outside their homes, compared to 46 percent of Republicans who said the same.

Meanwhile, 36 percent of Republicans said they “rarely” or “never” wear a mask when going out, a position shared by only 2 percent of Democrats.

So a solid majority of Republicans are mask deniers.

[y66]

Tucker Carlson to Take ‘Long-Planned’ Vacation After Writer’s Resignation by Michael M. Grynbaum at NYT:

Quote

The Fox News star Tucker Carlson said on Monday evening that he would leave on a vacation, starting immediately, days after a writer on his program, Blake Neff, resigned over racist, sexist and misogynist messages that Mr. Neff published pseudonymously on an online message board.

Mr. Carlson told viewers that he would return to his show next week and described the vacation as “long planned,” suggesting that his time off had been set before Mr. Neff was revealed on Friday as the author of the offensive posts.

It was not the first time that Mr. Carlson has announced that he would take a break from the anchor chair in the immediate aftermath of a sensitive moment for his prime-time program. Last August, Mr. Carlson went on vacation two days after he likened white supremacy to a “hoax,” saying it was “actually not a real problem in America,” remarks that prompted some advertisers to distance themselves from his show.

In response to an inquiry on Monday, Fox News said that Mr. Carlson’s vacation was “preplanned.”

Mr. Neff, who had written for “Tucker Carlson Tonight” since 2017, resigned last week after Fox News learned of his activity on AutoAdmit, an online forum popular with law students. There, Mr. Neff had written messages that denigrated African-Americans, Asian-Americans and women. Fox News’s top executives condemned Mr. Neff’s conduct as “abhorrent” in a memo to staff and said the show had not previously been aware of his writings.

Mr. Carlson addressed the controversy for the first time on his Monday broadcast.

“What Blake wrote anonymously was wrong,” the host told viewers. “We don’t endorse those words. They have no connection to the show. It is wrong to attack people for qualities they cannot control.” He also described Mr. Neff as “horrified” and “ashamed” by the revelation of his online writings, which were first reported by CNN.

Mr. Carlson, who has used his platform to denounce a so-called cancel culture that he says stymies free speech, appended a somewhat defiant note. He said that Mr. Neff “has paid a very heavy price” for his behavior, “but we should also point out to the ghouls now beating their chests in triumph at the destruction of a young man, that self-righteousness also has its costs.”

“We are all human,” Mr. Carlson continued. “When we pretend we are holy, we are lying. When we pose as blameless in order to hurt other people, we are committing the gravest sin of all, and we will be punished for it, there’s no question.”

What happens to smug racist ass#ole cult personalities when their sponsors flee in droves? Go fish.

[Winstonm]

This is actually critical to retaining the rule of law in the U.S.A. From the New York Times:

Quote

We Can Still Get the Truth From Roger Stone
The Justice Department should vindicate the rule of law by putting him before a grand jury.

By Andrew Weissmann

Attorney General Bill Barr reportedly opposed President Trump's commutation of Roger Stone's prison sentence for seven felonies — the latest act by this administration to undermine the rule of law. If Mr. Barr's resistance is to be believed, the Department of Justice still has a path to vindicate the rule of law by putting Mr. Stone before a grand jury.In November 2019, a federal jury unanimously found Mr. Stone guilty, beyond a reasonable doubt, of lying to Congress about the coordination between the Trump 2016 campaign, Mr. Stone, WikiLeaks and Russia. The seven counts included five of perjury and one count each of obstruction of Congress and tampering with a witness. Mr. Stone was sentenced to spend 40 months in prison until he got his reward for keeping his lips sealed.

This does not have to be the end of the story.

Prosecutors are well armed to get to the bottom of what Mr. Stone knows but has refused to disclose. If there was nothing nefarious about his coordination efforts, why did he lie about them to Congress? This question remains unanswered, as the Mueller report notes.

In spite of the president's commutation, prosecutors can seek to discover the answer by calling Mr. Stone before a grand jury. Grand juries are used every day all across the country, at the federal and state levels, to investigate potential criminal matters.



Mr. Stone's criminal conviction resulted from his testimony under oath in the fall of 2017 before a Republican-controlled committee in Congress. He was asked about his interactions with WikiLeaks regarding Russian dirt on Mr. Trump's presidential rival Hillary Clinton and his potential coordination with Mr. Trump and others on the Trump campaign about the same.

Mr. Stone denied such communications. Yet scores of his own contemporaneous emails and texts proved otherwise. He repeatedly proclaimed his connections to WikiLeaks and in August 2016 privately wrote to Trump campaign senior advisers that he had a plan "to save" Mr. Trump but said it wouldn't be pretty.

At sentencing, the federal judge pointedly noted that Mr. Stone had been prosecuted for "covering up for the president," and Mr. Stone boasted just before the president's act of clemency that he had dutifully remained silent. Mr. Trump tweeted that Mr. Stone had "guts" for not cooperating with prosecutors.

To get at the truth of why he lied, Mr. Stone can be served with a grand jury subpoena — by a federal or state prosecutor — or even with a congressional subpoena, requiring him to answer the question: Why did you lie to Congress? And many others.

Mr. Stone has three options at that point.

First, he can choose to lie, but that would mean he could be prosecuted for perjury and obstruction of the grand jury. The president's commutation does not and could not apply to future crimes by Mr. Stone, including lying under oath to a grand jury. And federal charges need not be lodged until, say, Jan. 20, 2021. State charges could be brought sooner.



Mr. Stone's second option is to refuse to comply with the subpoena, but that could lead to his being held immediately in civil and criminal contempt. Contempt is simply the act of refusing to comply with an order to testify. Civil contempt is a legal tool that courts wield to coerce compliance with their orders and, notably, would not be subject to the president's clemency power. Criminal contempt is a penalty for the crime of willfully refusing to comply with such an order. Civil and criminal contempt can result in years of jail time.

And if Mr. Stone were to refuse to testify based on a valid Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate himself, the prosecution can obtain an immunity order from the court. That would require him to speak — if Mr. Stone lies then, he can be prosecuted for perjury, because testifying pursuant to an immunity order does not protect a witness from a perjury charge.

Finally, Mr. Stone's third choice — the one that does not carry with it the risk of criminal charges and jail — is simply to tell the truth. Does this ever happen? Yes. In the Enron investigation, after the company's treasurer, Ben Glisan Jr., pleaded guilty but refused to cooperate, we put him before the grand jury. Instead of facing additional jail time, he came clean and became one of the government's most compelling witnesses. In a Genovese mob case, a foot soldier who had pleaded guilty and then was served with a grand jury subpoena to learn who his conspirators were chose to cooperate, explaining to us, "I was willing to do my time, but I was unwilling to do the time for my conspirators."

Mr. Stone may well choose one of the first two options, but that would expose him to criminal liability — precisely the result that he has sought to avoid.

This Department of Justice may not authorize pursuing the truth about the unanswered question: Why did Roger Stone lie to Congress? But that does not mean future federal prosecutors must make the same decision or that a state prosecutor cannot now seek Mr. Stone's testimony.

The tools to get at the truth are there and should be used. If Mr. Barr does not support their use, we should all ask ourselves why not.

Andrew Weissmann, a senior prosecutor in Robert Mueller's special counsel investigation, is a senior fellow at N.Y.U. School of Law and the author of the forthcoming book "Where Law Ends: Inside the Mueller Investigation."

[johnu]

Winstonm, on 2020-July-14, 10:09, said:

This is actually critical to retaining the rule of law in the U.S.A. From the New York Times:

Quote

The tools to get at the truth are there and should be used. If Mr. Barr does not support their use, we should all ask ourselves why not.

For anybody following the actions of the Manchurian President's government paid personal shyster, the answer has been obvious since day 1.

[Winstonm]

Quote

Kansas Rep. Steve Watkins was charged Tuesday with three felonies and a misdemeanor related to an investigation into whether he illegally voted in a 2019 municipal election.

[y66]

I remember the good old days when ramble on rose was a song.

[Cyberyeti]

johnu, on 2020-July-13, 17:24, said:

LOL

My sister's husband was on a local TV news show because he complained about the post office not delivering any mail to his entire condo building for weeks. A couple of days after the interview aired, the post office dropped off a large sack of mail for the building. In this case, the squeaky wheel got the grease.

Do you have the option of having packages delivered to a local secure lockbox site? Fairly common in the US, and there have been a rash of porch thefts of package deliveries nationwide.

In some cases yes, I prefer normal mail for packages as I can pop into the sorting office which is close by and get them to drop it there from the depot for collection, which I can't do for couriers.

Anyway have fixed the fogging issue, am prefectly prepared to look ridiculous, a rolled up cotton handkerchief inside the top edge of the mask does the job (the much advertised tissue method didn't work at all).

Edit: and today got a letter through from Imperial college to do a swab test for part of their survey which is interesting

[y66]

Steven Lee Myers at NYT said:

The Trump administration has been a godsend for Xi, if only in making him seem like a reasonable leader.

[y66]

Time to crown the virus king:

Quote

There is now only one high-income country in the world in which the virus is spreading rapidly: the United States. Even in Sweden — which has had one of the least successful responses to the virus — the number of new cases has plummeted in the past two weeks.

By The New York Times | Source: Johns Hopkins University

In China, Japan, South Korea and several other Asian countries, the virus is under even better control than in Europe or Canada. In the chart above, lines for those Asian countries would be barely indistinguishable from the zero line.

[Winstonm]

y66, on 2020-July-14, 21:01, said:

I remember the good old days when ramble on rose was a song.

Who can cling to a Ramblin' Rose?

[Winstonm]

y66, on 2020-July-15, 08:10, said:

Time to crown the virus king:

Trump was right - I am sick and tired of winning.

Quote

“We’re going to win. We’re going to win so much. We’re going to win at trade, we’re going to win at the border. We’re going to win so much, you’re going to be so sick and tired of winning, you’re going to come to me and go ‘Please, please, we can’t win anymore.’ You’ve heard this one. You’ll say ‘Please, Mr. President, we beg you sir, we don’t want to win anymore. It’s too much. It’s not fair to everybody else.’” Trump said. “And I’m going to say ‘I’m sorry, but we’re going to keep winning, winning, winning, We’re going to make America great again sicker than its ever been.”

FHP

[y66]

Winstonm, on 2020-July-15, 10:48, said:

Who can cling to a Ramblin' Rose?

Quote

Someday, I’ll tell you who. Someday, I’ll tell you why. But they take them and they take them very gladly. They used to bring them out and they wouldn’t even let the airplanes land if they brought them back by airplanes. They wouldn’t let the buses into their country. They said we don’t want them. Said no, but they entered our country illegally and they’re murderers, they’re killers in some cases.”

There's a through-line in there somewhere. Someday, I'll tell you where.

[Winstonm]

The self-proclaimed "law and order" president plans to stick his nose into law and order that is none of his business:

Quote

President Trump will be "getting involved" in the case against a white St. Louis couple who went viral after a photograph showed them pointing guns at a group of Black Lives Matter demonstrators passing outside their mansion last month, Missouri Gov. Mike Parson said late Tuesday. Mark and Patricia McCloskey are under review for criminal charges and St. Louis Police Chief John Hayden confirmed Tuesday that he's applied for unspecified warrants related to the case. Meanwhile, CNN reports St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner has said Trump and Parson "came after her" for investigating the case and are "spreading misinformation and distorting the truth." Parson, a Republican, said he's spoken with Trump about the case and the president "doesn't like what he sees and the way these people are being treated." Parson said Attorney General Bill Barr "was represented on the call," and that he thinks the president and Barr "are going to take a look" at the McCloskey case. In an interview clip posted by Townhall on Tuesday, Trump defended the McCloskeys, saying: "I understand somebody local, they want to prosecute these people. It's a disgrace."

No doubt the law and order Attorney General Billy (the kid) Barr will be "just following orders".

Once these people are out of office, it will take a Nuremberg-type trial to uncover all the corruption. ]

[Trinidad]

Winstonm, on 2020-July-15, 12:56, said:

The self-proclaimed "law and order" president plans to stick his nose into law and order that is none of his business:[/font][/color]

No doubt the law and order Attorney General Billy (the kid) Barr will be "just following orders".

Once these people are out of office, it will take a Nuremberg-type trial to uncover all the corruption.

You're reading too much into this. The explanation is simply that the word "jurisdiction" has too many syllables.

Rik

[Winstonm]

Amazing. While the real world keeps butting in a destroying Trump's lies, the frothy right (including AG Billy Barr) keeps repeating the lies - almost as if they had taken a page from some totalitarian playbook about repeating big lies - or propaganda, as it is called.

Quote

AS PROTESTS AGAINST police violence spread to every state in the U.S. and dramatic images flooded in from cities across the country, President Donald Trump and his attorney general spun an ominous story of opportunistic leftists exploiting a national trauma to sow chaos and disorder. They were the anti-fascists known as “antifa,” and according to the administration they were domestic terrorists who would be policed accordingly.

But while the White House beat the drum for a crackdown on a leaderless movement on the left, law enforcement offices across the country were sharing detailed reports of far-right extremists seeking to attack the protesters and police during the country’s historic demonstrations, a trove of newly leaked documents reveals.

[Winstonm]

Quote

A North Carolina woman who became infamous for multiple racist incidents caught on video has died after being struck by a fire truck.

Trump, no doubt will order flags flown at half mast while AG Billy Barr will start an investigation of the fire department.

[y66]

Biden Expands Lead as Trump’s Approval Drops by Andrew Restuccia

Quote

WASHINGTON—Former Vice President Joe Biden’s lead over President Trump reached double-digits this month as Mr. Trump’s approval rating declined amid widespread disagreement with his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, according to a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll.

Less than four months before the November election, 51% of voters said they would vote for Mr. Biden if the election were held today, with 40% backing Mr. Trump. Mr. Biden’s lead over the president rose to 11 percentage points from 7 percentage points last month, as both candidates saw growth in the share of voters who view them very negatively.

But Mr. Trump maintained the backing of a majority of voters on the economy, with 54% approving of his handling of the matter, a record high in the poll. The U.S. economy officially entered a recession in February after the pandemic forced wide swaths of the economy to shut down, triggering millions of job losses. While activity showed signs of rebounding in May, economists expect the outlook could deteriorate as a wave of new cases forces states to pause or reverse reopening plans.

The president’s overall job-approval rating dropped 3 percentage points over the last month. Forty-two percent of voters approved of Mr. Trump’s performance, with 56% disapproving—his lowest job-approval rating since April 2018.

Peter Hart, a Democratic pollster who worked on the survey, said Mr. Trump faced the most challenging environment for an incumbent since Jimmy Carter in 1980 and Lyndon Johnson in 1968. Mr. Carter lost and Mr. Johnson decided not to run for reelection.

“President Trump has hit the trifecta in the misery market. The three key indicators—job rating, personal feelings, attitudes on re-election—are all deeply submerged underwater,” Mr. Hart said. “They represent the best measure of the standing and political strength of an incumbent president.”

The coronavirus crisis continued to drag on Mr. Trump’s chances of winning reelection, with 37% of voters approving of his handling of the continuing outbreak and 59% disapproving. The number of voters who approve of Mr. Trump’s response to the pandemic has steadily dropped, falling 6 percentage points since last month and 8 percentage points since March.

More than 136,000 people in the U.S. have died as a result of the virus and more than 3.4 million people have been infected, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. As states grapple with how and when to safely reopen, coronavirus cases are increasing across the country, with experts raising alarms about a resurgence of the illness.

Mr. Trump and his top advisers have often played down the threat, saying that the country is recovering from the pandemic. They have also emphasized the importance of reopening the economy.

By more than a 2-to-1 margin, voters said they are more likely to vote for a candidate who is more focused on stopping the spread of the virus than on reopening businesses. Nearly three-quarters of voters said they always wear a mask while shopping, working or when they’re around people outside their homes, an 11-percentage-point increase from last month. The share of Trump supporters who say they always wear masks climbed 15 points since June, from 39% to 54%.

Overall, nearly three-quarters of voters, 72%, said they believed the country was on the wrong track.

Republican pollster Bill McInturff, who conducted the survey with Mr. Hart and fellow Democrat Jeff Horwitt, said Mr. Trump’s path toward winning reelection is narrowing.

“There would have to be a sea change in these numbers to say how you would project that Trump would be winning a national vote,” he said, adding that the president could focus on winning the electoral college even if he loses the popular vote, as he did in 2016.

Though a narrow majority of voters support Mr. Biden for president, fewer—47%—say they want a Democratic-controlled Congress, down from 51% in June. Forty-three percent of voters say they prefer a Republican-controlled Congress.

Voters are paying close attention to politics, with 77% saying they are highly interested in the election. Voter interest, which typically jumps in September, has never been this high this far from an election.

Messrs. Trump and Biden are both facing low enthusiasm from voters, many of whom viewed them negatively and expressed discomfort with their candidacies. Forty-eight percent of voters viewed Mr. Trump very negatively, with another 6% viewing him somewhat negatively. Just over half of voters, 52%, said they were very uncomfortable with Mr. Trump.

It was the president’s highest very-negative number since January 2018, when the government shut down amid a dispute between Mr. Trump and Congress over immigration and the wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Meanwhile, one-third of voters have a very negative view of Mr. Biden, the highest such level the former vice president ever recorded in the poll. Another 13% have a somewhat negative view of him. Thirty-eight percent said they were very uncomfortable with Mr. Biden’s candidacy.

Voters signaled they are more enthusiastic about Mr. Trump than Mr. Biden, though neither candidate received high marks on that front. Just 14% of voters said they were enthusiastic about Mr. Biden compared with 23% who said the same about the president.

But Mr. Biden is holding on to the support of more members of his party than Mr. Trump is of his. Ninety-two percent of Democrats back the former vice president, while 84% of Republicans say they will vote for the president. Independents narrowly sided with Mr. Biden, 39% to 35%.

Voters appear to be still making up their minds about Mr. Trump’s decision last week to commute the sentence of Roger Stone, his longtime friend and political adviser who was convicted of making false statements, witness tampering and trying to impede a congressional investigation into Russian election interference. Nearly half of voters, 47%, said they hadn’t heard enough about the matter to give an opinion, while 16% supported the president’s decision and 36% opposed it.

The Journal/NBC News poll surveyed 900 registered voters from July 9 through July 12. The margin of error was plus or minus 3.27 percentage points.

So 37% of US voters are also lunatics? That feels high to me.

[akwoo]

y66, on 2020-July-15, 15:41, said:

So 37% of US voters are also lunatics? That feels high to me.

No - 37% of US voters really believe that it would be better for the country if a large number of people, disproportionately many of whom are poor or black or live in urban areas, died, though they might not admit it in such stark terms.

I've said before that about a third of my (mostly rural) county would be genuinely better off if Pol Pot took over and committed genocide of all the urban folks and smart folks. They're competitive for jobs in a 19th century economy. In a 21st century economy they end up mostly unemployed (and not in the unemployment statistics because they've given up looking for work).

This is not to denigrate them but to point out that our society has put them in such an economic situation.

[Winstonm]

y66, on 2020-July-15, 15:41, said:

Biden Expands Lead as Trump's Approval Drops by Andrew Restuccia


So 37% of US voters are also lunatics? That feels high to me.

Actual strong, hard-core Trump support is only around 15-20%. The rest is made up of anti-Democrats. These are the people who still fear the word socialism and worship the word capitalism. They tend to be strongly religious and strongly white identified. So, yes, there are a lot of lunatics.

[Winstonm]

Quote

Vice President Mike Pence

"To be very clear, we don't want CDC guidance to be a reason why people don't reopen their schools."

In other words - Only Dear Leader can tell you what to do. To be a true patriot, you must be willing to let your children die for Dear Leader.