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Reports of protests are overblown. A few incidents around the country, but nothing major.

5 (45.5%)

A few major incidents in capitals, but nothing much in DC.

5 (45.5%)

A major incident in DC, but nothing much around the country.

0 (0%)

More than 10 capitals have major upheavals, but nothing much in DC.

0 (0%)

A major incident in DC plus more than 10 capitals with significant upheavals.

1 (9.1%)

More than half the capitals around the country have problems with protesters, but DC is quiet.

0 (0%)

DC has major problems, while more than half the capitals around the country also have considerable trouble with protesters.

0 (0%)

Huge disruption to the day.

0 (0%)

Total Members Voted: 9

Voting closed: January 19, 2021, 10:49:21 PM

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“If any foreign power recklessly chooses to interfere in our democracy, I will not hesitate to respond as president to impose substantial and lasting costs."

- Biden

Why haven’t we heard anything remotely like this from Trump?

[NeedsAdjustments]

It was the year before the election (14 months, actually) and voters should get to decide.
And Obama is unpopular (Job approval ratings hovering around 48%)

These were the two justifications for not considering Obama’s SCOTUS pick replacing Scalia. That’s it. All they had.

Now?  We are a little over 100 days from the election.
Trump is the least popular “president” in modern history, with approval ratings rarely getting over 42%.
And Republicans are now saying they will fill a SCOTUS vacancy during a lame duck session when Trump loses the election.

Can we stop pretending there is one ounce of good faith on the Republican side please?

At the very least I hope Joe makes this a major campaign issue, and when he wins Biden should expand the court.

[bambu.]

Can't see Biden standing up to China in the South China Sea.

[luee]

Florida teachers sue as DeSantis distances himself from school openings

https://www.politico.com/states/florida/story/2020/07/20/florida-teachers-sue-as-desantis-distances-himself-from-school-openings-1302355

Florida BOE threatens to defund teachers. Reopening classrooms in the height of a pandemic is insane.
Boy toy guv is in big trouble now.

[NeedsAdjustments]

Can't see Biden standing up to China in the South China Sea.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.ft.com/content/c63264a4-47f1-11e6-8d68-72e9211e86ab

US President Barack Obama in March delivered a stark admonition to Xi Jinping over the South China Sea, warning the Chinese leader of serious consequences if China reclaimed land at Scarborough Shoal, one of the most dangerous flashpoints in Asia.

According to current and former officials, Mr Obama raised the stakes with Mr Xi after US intelligence concluded that China was moving towards reclaiming land at the shoal where Chinese and Philippines ships engaged in a high-stakes confrontation in 2012.

Following the meeting in Washington, China withdrew its ships from the area. That gave the White House a victory that some officials saw as vindication for a tougher approach than over the previous three years when it failed to force China to curb its controversial activities in the South China Sea.

[NeedsAdjustments]

Not to say Biden’s policies will be all the same as Obama’s of course, but on foreign policy and on China little reason to think they will be substantially different.

Meanwhile Trump has talked tough on trade with China while failing to capture any real concessions, and has relented to China on human rights, Hong Kong, and carried their water on COVID.

Ivanka’s Xi-granted  copyrights there need to be protected after all.

[LarryBnDC]

Can't see Biden standing up to China in the South China Sea.

That’s because you’re an idiot.

[NeedsAdjustments]

So just last week I posted that Trump was in a lose-lose situation on COVID.  Continue to ignore it and get slammed for doing nothing in the face of the biggest challenge to this nation since Vietnam, or do an about-face and play-act as a "president" and only highlight the last five months of doing nothing.

With the briefings starting up again and a tweet of himself wearing a mask (no, Trump, you are not the most patriotic American.  Far, far from it) it seems he is choosing the later option.  And as I said, the play-acting will look hollow as hell, even more than it did in March, because the overarching questions through all of this will be "What did you do over the last three months?  Its August!  Why are we surging when countries in Europe have this under control?"

What is he going to do, issue another five-point plan that he will immediately ignore?

Most likely he will use the briefings as an opportunity to push his policy preferences; re-open the schools, states should continue reopening, go back to bars, etc, etc.  So the exact opposite of information sessions focused on the public's health.

[NeedsAdjustments]

Good stuff in the Times today re: Trump's secret police force. 

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/20/opinion/portland-protests-trump.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage

“It doesn’t surprise me that Donald Trump picked C.B.P. to be the ones to go over to Portland and do this,” Representative Joaquin Castro, Democrat of Texas, told me. “It has been a very problematic agency in terms of respecting human rights and in terms of respecting the law.”

It is true that C.B.P. is not an extragovernmental militia, and so might not fit precisely into Snyder’s “On Tyranny” schema. But when I spoke to Snyder on Monday, he suggested the distinction isn’t that significant. “The state is allowed to use force, but the state is allowed to use force according to rules,” he said. These agents, operating outside their normal roles, are by all appearances behaving lawlessly.

Snyder pointed out that the history of autocracy offers several examples of border agents being used against regime enemies.

“This is a classic way that violence happens in authoritarian regimes, whether it’s Franco’s Spain or whether it’s the Russian Empire,” said Snyder. “The people who are getting used to committing violence on the border are then brought in to commit violence against people in the interior.”

Castro worries that since the agents are unidentified, far-right groups could easily masquerade as them to go after their enemies on the left. “It becomes more likely the more that this tactic is used,” he said. “I think it’s unconstitutional and dangerous and heading towards fascism.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/21/opinion/portland-homeland-security.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage

The difference lies less in the acts themselves than in the ways these events developed. Use of military force against strikers and protesters is certainly controversial, but for the most part it unfolds along clear lines of responsibility and involves powers expressly granted to the president. As the example of Washington and the Whiskey rebellion demonstrates, it was part of the constitutional design. President Trump’s internal security force was, by contrast, created out of public view, using loopholes and expansive interpretations of the law. The reason Customs and Border Protection can be used to police a protest in Portland is, for example, because the Department of Homeland Security can supplement law enforcement from one agency with personnel from another.

There are other elements beyond the fact of its existence that make the emergence of an internal security force extremely troubling. As a candidate, Trump actively cultivated both the leadership and the rank-and-file at of the border police and ICE. In turn, they gave him his support — unions for both agencies endorsed Trump for president. Under his leadership, these agencies have shown themselves to be deeply simpatico with the administration’s draconian approach to immigration at the southern border, with aggressive action against migrants, asylum-seekers and unauthorized immigrants.

A secretive, nationwide police force — created without congressional input or authorization, formed from highly politicized agencies, tasked with rooting out vague threats and answerable only to the president — is a nightmare out of the fever dreams of the founding generation, federalists and antifederalists alike. It’s something Americans continue to fear and for good reason. It is a power that cannot and should not exist in a democracy, lest it undermine and destroy the entire project.

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https://www.foxnews.com/politics/biden-muslim-voters-summit-taught-schools-islamic-faith


Whattt??



Joe - what?

Dude, how is this remotely notable for you?  Not even Fox News could find a way to spin this to make it sound bad.

[Yankguy1]

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/biden-muslim-voters-summit-taught-schools-islamic-faith


Whattt??



Joe - what?

Dude, how is this remotely notable for you?  Not even Fox News could find a way to spin this to make it sound bad.

Now hold on.  Kid, like his favorite President, proves every day that it's much more preferable to know nothing about a subject. 

[NeedsAdjustments]

https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/20/politics/donald-trump-mask-tweet/index.html

Trump tweeted a picture of himself wearing a mask (finally) and called it patriotic.

Had he done it in March, it might have been. Instead, it is desperate and self-serving.

It might still save lives.

Not wrong, but I notice how even now he couldn't prevent himself from saturating the tweet with Trumpian hedges, like "many people say..." and couldn't resist the opportunity for self-promotion; "There is nobody more Patriotic than me, your favorite President!"

Why is it so impossible for this guy to just do the right thing without getting something out of it?

[NeedsAdjustments]

Don't sleep on this.  Russia is at it again, and this time the Trump Campaign has help in Congress:

Democratic leaders are asking the FBI for an urgent briefing arising out of concern that members of Congress are being targeted by a foreign operation intended to influence the 2020 presidential election, according to a letter they released publicly on Monday.

Among the Democrats’ concerns is that a Senate investigation being led by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) has become a vehicle for “laundering” a foreign influence campaign to damage Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, according to two people familiar with the demand.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer demanded the all-Congress briefing Monday, citing “specific” intelligence that a foreign influence operation targeted lawmakers to “launder and amplify disinformation in order to influence congressional activity.”

Though the letter did not mention the Johnson investigation, it included a classified addendum that the two sources say identified the probe as one of the sources of their concern.

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/07/20/democrats-fbi-briefing-foreign-interference-campaign-373134

[Yankguy1]

"There is nobody more Patriotic than me, your favorite President!"

I actually found this amusing, in a "what a clown" sense.

[barton]

Anything coming from you that accuses anybody else of being a liar is hilarious.

I've been advocating for that and for gun education in schools for 40+ years, dolt. The understanding of the role of religion in history and in society is vital to understand those societies. Your problem is that you don't want people taught about religion. You want them taught your religion.

Which one?

Mammon seems the most probable.