Trump busted red-handed in plot to steal the midterms

 

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Today’s Action: Tell the FTC we need safeguards against corporate data abuse!

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BREAKING: Russian court denies Brittney Griner's appeal of 9-year prison sentence

Today's Top Stories:

Trump is already preparing to challenge 2022 midterm election results
Welcome to the new normal — unless Trump is stopped for good. New reports indicate that the disgraced ex-president has convened a series of in-person meetings and conference calls with allies and officials in battleground states to prepare for legal challenges to upcoming elections that could determine the balance of power in Congress ahead of the 2024 presidential election.

Take Action: Tell Merrick Garland it’s time to indict Donald Trump!

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VIDEO OF THE DAY: Ted Cruz humiliated with boos at Yankee Stadium
The despised Texas senator got a classic New York welcome during his weekend trip to a MLB playoff game.

Take Action: Tell Congress to add new tax brackets for the megawealthy!

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Democrats now in striking distance of a surprise Senate flip
No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen: Whoa.

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Clarence Thomas temporarily blocks Graham election case testimony
While many suspect partisan interference by the notorious right-wing radical justice, others argue that he is simply allowing both sides of the case to present their arguments. Sen. Graham is being called to testify to a grand jury in Georgia in a criminal investigation into whether Trump and his allies unlawfully tried to overturn 2020 election results in the state, arguing that his status as a senator gives him immunity.

Take Action: Demand Congress lower drug prices now!

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Liberal Democrats urge President Biden to seek negotiated Ukraine settlement
"Given the destruction created by this war for Ukraine and the world, as well as the risk of catastrophic escalation, we also believe it is in the interests of Ukraine, the United States, and the world to avoid a prolonged conflict," the 30 Democratic members of the House of Representatives said in a letter to Biden. The ominous threat of nuclear war, a looming food shortage crisis, and a stop to the senseless carnage all feel like very good reasons to sit down at the negotiating table.

Take Action: Protect renters from unfair evictions!

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Tucker Carlson reportedly threatens NRCC chair Tom Emmer in flap over son Buckley Carlson
There's beef brewing behind the scenes in the GOP as a member of NRCC chair Rep. Tom Emmer's staff accused a rival, Rep. Jim Banks, of hiring Tucker's 24-year-old son Buckley just to curry favor with the GOP elite. Tucker took umbrage at the idea that his son was a nepotism hire (shocking!) and immediately began bullying Emmer into giving up the staffer. Don Jr. and Marjorie Taylor Green immediately got in on the action themselves on social media, attacking Emmer. It's very ironic that Tucker of all people is so angry about this considering that he himself got his career started as a nepotism hire.

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Republicans caught darkening the skin color of Black candidates in their attack ads
In an unsurprising but appallingly racist bit of pre-election fearmongering, Republican candidates have been caught darkening the skin of Black Democrats like Mandela Barnes and Stacey Abrams in their attack ads in a transparent effort to play on racial prejudices among their base voters.

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Watch Richard Ojeda Count Down the Top 5 "Pro-Life" Hypocrites and Liars of the MAGA-GOP
OD Action Partner: Funny how all the talking points coming from the so-called "pro life" party are all LIES.

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Armed vigilantes are "monitoring" ballot drop boxes in Arizona
In an ominous sight we can expect to see more of in the next few weeks as threats of Trump-inspired violence and flagrant voter intimidation skyrocket, two armed and masked men wearing tactical gear surveilled a drop box outside the Maricopa County Juvenile Court building in Mesa. Police were called but were predictably useless, concluding that the men hadn't "broken any laws."

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Rishi Sunak will become the next UK prime minister
The 42-year-old Hindu will become the United Kingdom's first PM of color — and its first ex-Goldman Sachs PM as well. Surely great things are in store for Britain's public health system with a hedge fund ghoul at the helm!

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Trump raged against '60 Minutes' after it featured Dominion's CEO calmly dismissing his bogus election-fraud theories
"'60 Minutes' is not a News Show, it is a Democrat propaganda machine. Their story last night on Election Fraud was a JOKE!" wrote Trump, who went on to push a tired series of conspiracy theories, baseless claims about election fraud, and plots against him by the FBI.

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Adidas dumps Kanye West over antisemitic remarks
Ye's nearly decade-long partnership with the German sneaker giant helped make the rap superstar a billionaire and vaulted his Yeezy branded sneakers to a global audience. His ongoing antisemitic tirade this month brought that relationship to a screeching halt.

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Bloody Monday

Three killed in shooting at St. Louis high school

Police: Boyfriend at Texas hospital for baby's birth shoots 2 hospital employees dead after accusing his girlfriend of infidelity

Texas man who sold gun to synagogue hostage-taker gets nearly 8 years

Teen pleads guilty to 24 charges in Michigan school shooting

Argument over fender-bender escalates to shooting outside Hollywood body shop

Meanwhile, in the rest of the world...

Myanmar junta cruelly bombs rebel-organized concert, killing 50 including 4 singers

US charges alleged Chinese spies in telecoms probe case

Prominent Pakistani journalist shot dead in Kenya

5 Palestinians killed in Israeli raids on Nablus

Outgoing UK PM Liz Truss, whose failed economic plans triggered her stunning collapse, urges Rishi Sunak to cut taxes in farewell speech

Thousands evacuated as Cyclone Sitrang hits Bangladesh

More than 30 dead in tribal fighting on Papua New Guinea’s "island of love"

Hope...

This nearly lost ancient grain tradition could be the future of farming

Video gaming may be associated with better cognitive performance in children

Scientists discover why some people are mosquito magnets

Supernova explosions reveal precise details of dark energy and dark matter

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Today’s Action: Tell the FTC we need safeguards against corporate data abuse!

The Federal Trade Commission started a long-overdue rulemaking process regarding online surveillance practices and corporate data abuse. Even our most intimate online activity is currently tracked and legally recorded by companies, disproportionately — and unsurprisingly — affecting marginalized communities the most.

In the wake of the Supreme Court’s disastrous ruling earlier this year stripping Americans of our right to reproductive healthcare, the specter of criminalization has become even clearer. Uncontrolled access to our online habits and behaviors is an existential threat to basic privacy — one that can and will be wielded by moral zealots crusading for their dangerous vision of a theocratic America.

Corporations that want to keep unadulterated access to our online activity will certainly have lobbyists and other stakeholders ready to flood the FTC’s comment period in favor of continued, unfettered invasive data tracking. We must ensure that progressives and privacy advocates are also letting them know by the thousands that we demand sensible regulation that protects our privacy, data, and lives.

Join Fight For The Future’s call for meaningful safeguards against corporate data abuse and demand the FTC protects our online privacy now!

PS — Please don't forget to sign the petition to investigate Trump for stealing nuclear secrets, and be sure to follow OD Action on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

 @advocacy | 1002 Hull St., Louisville, KY 40204

RSN: FOCUS: Frank Rich | Trump Thinks Racism Is His Best Chance

 

 

29 August 20

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29 August 20

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ANOTHER $1,000 DONATION - WE HAVE A CHANCE! - After the worst start to a fundraising drive we have ever seen we are making up ground with donations as small as $1 and as large as $1,000. It’s amazing thing to see the partnership, the common commitment to change across such a broad economic spectrum. We still need a strong finish, but with that the August fundraiser will succeed. Let’s do this. / Marc Ash, Founder Reader Supported News

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FOCUS: Frank Rich | Trump Thinks Racism Is His Best Chance

Frank Rich, New York Magazine
Rich writes: "It was on what Democrats and even Republicans might agree was the most tedious night of this outrageous convention - Wednesday, when the star attraction was the soporific vocal stylings of Mike Pence - that I started to see how Trump could win reelection in spite of everything."

uring a week of police violence and vigilante murder in Wisconsin, in a year of preventable deaths and growing poverty, the Republican convention emphasized loyalty to Donald Trump, casting aside matters of policy and campaign law in favor of grievance. Was the convention just another concession to his outsize ego, part of the strategy to energize the party’s base in the run-up to November, or an attempt to win over undecided voters?

It was on what Democrats and even Republicans might agree was the most tedious night of this outrageous convention — Wednesday, when the star attraction was the soporific vocal stylings of Mike Pence — that I started to see how Trump could win reelection in spite of everything. And to fear that if he didn’t, he would stop at nothing to take an already teetering country down with him. Next to that commanding reality, the usual morning-after questions we ask about political conventions seem almost quaint and beside the point.

Sure, the convention was designed to energize the party’s base, but I dare say that any voter who was motivated to watch all or large chunks of this convention is already motivated to show up to vote. And sure, the entire spectacle was a monument to Trump’s ego, to the point of requisitioning and demeaning the actual monuments of Washington for that enterprise. As for those coveted undecided voters in battleground states, how many were actually tuned in? Harry Enten, the poll guru at CNN, says that “maybe 15 percent of voters” are watching either convention, “most of whom are hardcore partisans.”

The RNC was so boring Wednesday night that Tucker Carlson cut away early on, ditching the nattering Tennessee congresswoman Marsha Blackburn so he could launch into his now notorious defense of Kyle Rittenhouse’s killing spree in Kenosha: “How shocked are we that 17-year-olds with rifles decided they had to maintain order when no one else would?” At that instant, Carlson, implicitly speaking for Trump, the Republican Party, and its media enforcer, Fox News, crystalized what message mattered most about this convention and what message will matter most in Trump’s campaign over the crucial two months to come. As Trump would define it in a rare moment of focus during his endless drone of an acceptance speech, a vote for Joe Biden is a vote to “give free rein to violent anarchists and agitators and criminals who threaten our citizens.” The corollary, stated directly by Carlson and repeatedly embraced by Trump, is that arms-bearing white Americans can’t be faulted for wanting to take the law into their own hands.

For “anarchists and agitators and criminals,” read “Black people.” This racially tinged “law and order” message is nothing new either for Trump or a GOP that has been pursuing a “Southern strategy” since Richard Nixon codified it half a century ago. As many have noted, Trump is at a logical disadvantage in using it since, unlike Nixon, he is the incumbent president and the disorder he keeps decrying is happening on his watch. But what grabbed my attention on the convention’s sleepy third night was how Trump, on the ropes in summer polling, is nonetheless determined to take that message to a new and even more dangerous level by fomenting racial violence if need be. He will not only continue to boost arms-bearing white vigilantes as he has from Charlottesville to Portland, but, when all else fails, unabashedly pin white criminality on Black Lives Matter protesters.

Literally so. While the unrest in Kenosha was referenced repeatedly on Wednesday night, no one mentioned that the violence was all committed by white men: Rittenhouse, and Rusten Sheskey, the police officer who shot Jacob Blake seven times in the back while his three young sons looked on. Then along came Pence to raise the ante in his closing address. While trying to pound in the fear that Biden will coddle and encourage violent thugs, he brought up the ominous example of an officer who had been “shot and killed during the riots in Oakland, California.” The implication, of course, was that the officer had been killed by black rioters in that “Democratic-run city” when in fact the victim was murdered by a member of the far-right extremist movement known as “boogaloo” boys. 

Next to this incendiary strategy, the other manifest sins of the week, though appalling, seem less consequential as we approach the crucial post–Labor Day campaign. They did keep those of us in the press busy. The news media were unstinting in calling out every lie and alternative fact in every speech as well as every violation of the Hatch Act. Full notice was paid to every shameless rhetorical feint and stunt contrived to create an alternative reality in which the coronavirus and mask-wearing are in the past tense, the decimated economy is about to skyrocket, and Trump is a champion of both immigration (even from what he calls “shithole countries”) and health care covering preexisting conditions. But aside from the 42 percent or so who consistently approve of Trump no matter what he or those around him do, most other Americans will see for themselves whether COVID-19 has evaporated or their economic security has improved this fall. Those are realities that Trump, for all his subterfuge, cannot alter. But racial animus is a less tangible and more enduring factor in America’s political fortunes, and it has been a toxic wild card in every modern election.

In that sense, the most predictable alternative reality spun by the convention was the recruitment of seemingly every black Republican official in the country to testify on camera that Trump and his party love what he calls “the Black people.” This gambit is a GOP staple. At George W. Bush’s 2000 convention in Philadelphia, there were more African-Americans onstage than in the audience as the party brought on break dancers, gospel singers, and speeches by Colin Powell and the only Black Republican in Congress, J.C. Watts of Oklahoma (setting the template for Tim Scott this week). Then as now, this effort was not so much intended to woo unattainable Black voters as to “give permission” to white voters to put aside any guilt they might feel about casting votes for a party that habitually plays the race card.

But 2020 is not 2016. Bush was not widely seen as a racist. Trump is, and, unlike Bush, he commands a party that doesn’t even bother to hide its alliances with white supremacists. The suburban white women that pollsters tell us Trump has lost since 2016 know this about Trump and the GOP, and I imagine that the Trump campaign knows they know it. With the convention gone and Tim Scott’s poignant address soon forgotten, it’s time for Plan B, a fear campaign with no boundaries that might yet push defecting 2016 Trump voters back into the camp.

Biden had it exactly right when he characterized this plan on Thursday by calling out Trump for “pouring gasoline on the fire” and “rooting for more violence, not less.” That was true from day one of the convention, when the gun-toting St. Louis couple, the McCloskeys, were given a prominent spot in the festivities. The rifle that Mark McCloskey pointed toward Black Lives Matter protesters in St. Louis, an AR-15, was the same that Kyle Rittenhouse fired at protesters in Kenosha the following night.

But it’s not enough for Biden to identify the strategy that is being unleashed to derail him, and it shouldn’t have taken him most of the week to get to the point. He’s in a fight for his and the country’s life. A Democratic campaign that was pitched most of all on targeting Trump’s criminally negligent response to the pandemic must now pivot to combat the most lethal of all American viruses, racism, in its most weaponized strain.

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RSN: FOCUS: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar | Hope Is a Dying Ember for Black People in the US. Athletes Have Rekindled It.

 

 

28 August 20

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FOCUS: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar | Hope Is a Dying Ember for Black People in the US. Athletes Have Rekindled It.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Guardian UK
Abdul-Jabbar writes: "When I boycotted the 1968 Olympics because of racial inequality I was ostracized. Now white athletes are joining their black teammates in protests."

o you want to know what it feels like to be black in America this week? Think about Survivor, or Naked and Afraid, or Alone – or any of those wilderness shows in which a person’s survival in a hostile environment depends on keeping that crucial campfire burning bright. Inevitably, some disaster occurs and the fire nearly goes out. Then, on their hands and knees, the person tries desperately to fan one dying ember back to life.

For the African American community living in a hostile environment, that dying ember is hope. Hope that America was finally committed to racial equity. Hope that being black wasn’t a crime and the punishment wasn’t death. The popularity of the Black Lives Matter movement that swept through America this summer after the killings of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd stoked that hope inside us into a small but powerful sun.

Then this week, a black man, Jacob Blake, was shot seven times in the back by police, a 17-year-old was charged with intentional homicide after two men were killed at a subsequent protests, and the Republican National Convention featured speakers who, instead of voicing outrage over systemic racism and vowing to end it, complained about the audacity of ungrateful black people protesting that their husbands, sons, daughters, mothers, fathers, sisters, and brothers were being murdered by police while President Trump and the GOP conspired to take away their right to vote.

Yeah, hope in the black community took a big hit this week. The small sun set quickly. The dying ember had been extinguished.

But then along came the Milwaukee Bucks, my old team, who announced they would boycott Game 5 of the NBA playoffs, explaining, “Despite the overwhelming plea for change, there has been no action, so our focus today cannot be on basketball.” They demanded that the Wisconsin state legislature, after months of inaction, “take up meaningful measures to address issues of police accountability, brutality and criminal justice reform.” And just like that, the ember of hope was flickering to life again.

Other NBA and WNBA teams followed. Games were postponed. That both leagues spoke out immediately was courageous, especially given the hundreds of millions of dollars involved and all the expense and effort it took to create their sports bubbles. But it wasn’t that great of surprise because 81.1% of the NBA and 88% of the WNBA are black and their families and friends don’t live in a protective bubble.

As LeBron James explained, “I know people get tired of hearing me say it, but we are scared as black people in America. Black men, black women, black kids, we are terrified.” As tired as white people may be of hearing it, black people are even more tired of living it.

For me, what really brought the hearth fire of hope back to life was the instantaneous support of other sports teams and athletes. Major League Soccer, in which only 26% of players are black, postponed five games that day, with players from two teams, Inter Miami and Atlanta United, locking arms and refusing to play. Major League Baseball, with only about 8% African American players, also joined in with players from the Milwaukee Brewers and Cincinnati Reds sitting out their games and the Seattle Mariners voted unanimously to postpone their Wednesday game. More baseball teams joined the boycott on Thursday.

In tennis, perhaps the whitest of all the sports, former US Open champion Naomi Osaka walked away from her semi-final match at the Western & Southern Open on Thursday, tweeting, “I don’t expect anything drastic to happen with me not playing, but if I can get a conversation started in a majority white sport I consider that a step in the right direction.” Professional tennis organizations USTA, ATP, and WTA issued a statement in support of her stance and postponed tournament play on Thursday. I have never been prouder of my athlete colleagues.

In the past, these mostly white sports would have taken days, even weeks, to respond, let alone join in any form of protest, especially boycotting games. When I boycotted the 1968 Olympics because of the gross racial inequities, I was met with a vicious backlash criticizing my lack of gratitude for being invited into the air-conditioned Big House where I could comfortably watch my community swelter and suffer.

For those who think this isn’t personal for elite athletes because they are highly paid, read Sterling Brown’s story in the Players’ Tribune in which he describes being confronted by police over a parking violation in 2018 that resulted in them using a stun gun on him and one officer stepping on his career-dependent ankle. Body camera video shows the police worrying about the publicity of what they’ve done, then calling their commander to inquire about receiving overtime pay while one officer sings the “money, money” lyric from the O’Jays’ For the Love of Money. What amusing scamps the police can be.

Our work is not done because, as we see on nearly a weekly basis, the threat to black lives is real and imminent. The Kenosha police have been recorded giving water to the armed civilians, many from out of town, who roamed the streets during the protests, telling them, “We appreciate you guys. We really do.” One of those appreciated was the 17-year-old kid who has been charged with killing two protestors.

The threat is exacerbated by the GOP, who have made it their mission to equate protestors with looters in order to dismiss their proven concerns. In his keynote speech at the RNC, vice-president Mike Pence commented that “in the midst of this global pandemic ... we’ve seen violence and chaos in the streets of our major cities.” He’s right. But it’s been caused by the kind of racism the Trump administration has promoted.

In Pence’s speech, he told America: “Dave Patrick Underwood was an officer of the Department of Homeland Security’s Federal Protective Service, who was shot and killed during the riots in Oakland, California.” What he neglected to mention was that federal authorities say Underwood was killed by Steven Carrillo, an Air Force staff sergeant who was a member of a right-wing extremist group whose purpose is to start a race war.

It’s Los Angeles Clippers coach Doc Rivers who so powerfully expressed the feelings of most African Americans, myself included. Both our fathers were police officers, which we are proud of, though we cringe at how the systemic racism in police departments across the county tarnishes their accomplishments. “It’s amazing why we keep loving this country, and this country does not love us back,” Rivers said. “It’s really so sad ... I’m so often reminded of my color … We got to do better. But we got to demand better.”

This week American athletes demanded better. And rekindled our hope in America.

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