He has the entire banner to himself today:
Republicans officially nominate Trump for second term
That is New York Times, my print was Washington Compost, as "the GOP convention marks a crucial moment for Trump, a first-term Republican president tasked with reshaping a campaign he is losing by all accounts, at least for now. A deep sense of pessimism has settled over the electorate 10 weeks before Election Day. Just 23% of Americans think the country is heading in the right direction, according to a new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research."
I know I'm headed the wrong way when I flip below the fold and turn into the rest of the paper.
The Globe's A2 Nation lead and co-lead:
"Postmaster general says he is ‘not engaged in sabotaging the election’" by Catie Edmondson and Nicholas Fandos New York Times, August 24
A defiant Louis DeJoy, under tough questioning from Democrats, defended the cost-cutting measures he put in place as postmaster general and rejected suggestions that the changes were intended to influence the 2020 election by making mail-in voting less reliable.
“I am not engaged in sabotaging the election,” an increasingly exasperated DeJoy told Democrats on Monday. “We will do everything in our power and structure to deliver the ballots on time.”
DeJoy, a megadonor to President Trump, is embroiled in a political firestorm as recent changes aimed at reducing the Postal Service’s costs — including cutting overtime and limiting trips — have led to delays in mail delivery, including medicine, pension checks, and bills. That has fueled concerns about whether the service will be able to handle what is expected to be a record number of mail-in ballots for the 2020 election.
DeJoy, at times shouting over his Democratic questioners, criticized the “false narrative” that he said was being promoted about both his intentions and the changes, which he described as necessary to address the Postal Service’s financial woes but that civil rights groups, state attorneys general, and Democrats have derided as an attempt to disenfranchise voters.
What the Democraps are doing is setting the stage for a contested election without concession -- because a clean election has Trump 91% likely to win, meaning he wins in November and Demonrats have to get rid of him another way.
DeJoy told House lawmakers that he did not put in place many of the changes that had caused concern — including the removal of blue mailboxes and mail-sorting machines. He acknowledged that some of the changes he had implemented, such as reducing overtime and limiting trips, had caused delays but said, “transitions don’t always go smoothly,” adding that while “we are very concerned with the deterioration in service, we’re seeing a big recovery this week.”
As the hearing wore on, and DeJoy found himself being asked to tread the same ground again and again, he appeared to grow weary of trying to prove that his intentions were good. Democrats attacked the postal head for making changes in the midst of a pandemic and so close to the election.
I don't blame him, because the entire country is weary of the brow-beating clowns that were on display last week.
Many Democrats were not satisfied with that explanation, and the hearing turned testy when Representative Stephen Lynch of Massachusetts accused DeJoy of “incompetence” and asked “how can one person screw this up in just a few weeks?”
What else is new?
Lynch just be in tight primary to be so testy.
After repeatedly asking whether DeJoy would return the mail sorting machines that have already been removed from post offices, the postal leader barked, “I will not.” He then added that Lynch had spread “misinformation” during his furious monologue.
They are good at that'll and I'm glad he bit back.
Trump has stoked concerns about the validity of mail-in voting before the 2020 election, saying last week that allowing universal voting by mail would lead to people fraudulently casting multiple ballots — a practice that specialists say has been exceedingly rare in places where mail-in voting has been common for many years.....
Yeah, fraud is a problem in target countries like Belarus, not here.
Putting aside the biased media, Trump is right. The machines are bad enough, but there were at least exit polls. Democrats will have ballot-fillers working overtime and bundling as many as they can for delivery.
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The Globe says he better deliver or they will sue:
"N.Y. attorney general asks judge to order Eric Trump’s testimony" by William K. Rashbaum and Danny Hakim New York Times, August 24, 2020
The New York State attorney general’s office has stepped up its inquiry into whether President Trump and the Trump Organization committed fraud by overstating assets to get bank loans, asking a judge to order Eric Trump to answer questions under oath and the company to hand over documents, court papers show.
They are reaching, and this is purely political now that we are almost 60 days out from the vote.
Eric Trump, who is Donald Trump’s son and an executive vice president of the company, abruptly canceled an interview with the attorney general’s office last month, and last week the Trump Organization told the office that the company and its lawyers would not comply with seven subpoenas related to the investigation.
The filings were made last week in state Supreme Court in Manhattan by the attorney general, Letitia James, and became public Monday. They come as Donald Trump faces legal actions on other fronts. The Manhattan district attorney’s office has suggested in court filings that it is investigating possible bank and insurance fraud by the president and the Trump Organization.
She has been gunning for him all month.
The attorney general’s office started the civil inquiry in March 2019 after Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, told Congress that the president had inflated his assets in financial statements to banks when he was seeking loans and had understated them to reduce his real estate taxes.
I'm sure it is $tandard practice in that indu$try.
Obama's IRS investigated him during the campaign and found nothing, or else they would have used it.
The office initially subpoenaed records from two of the Trump Organization’s lenders, Deutsche Bank and Investors Bank, seeking loan records for four of the company’s big projects and a failed effort to buy the NFL’s Buffalo Bills in 2014.
Fishing around for anything they can portray out of context.
The Trump Organization at first provided some information and sought to forestall the attorney general from seeking a similar court order eight months ago, after the company failed to turn over information on a particular property, but more recently, the attorney general’s office said, the Trump Organization had stalled and stonewalled, according to the filings, some of which were sealed.
The Trump Organization’s chief legal officer, Alan Garten, said in a statement that the company had done nothing wrong and had “tried to cooperate in good faith with the investigation at every turn.”
It's the investigators operating in bad faith, and they are personified by Comey, Strzock, and that hole crowd too numerous to mention.
Garten accused the attorney general of “continued harassment of the company as we approach the election” and said the timing of motion, coming just before the Republican National Convention, “once again confirms that this investigation is all about politics.”
The White House declined to comment. Donald Trump has complained about James and her predecessors for years, saying he is the victim of politically motivated investigations.
We all see it. Doesn't mean he is squeaky clean, but compared to the filth he succeeded and the challenger he vanquished last time and the perv he is running against now.... he's damn near saintly.
The investigation is reviewing a number of Trump properties, including several that were raised in Cohen’s congressional testimony. The Seven Springs estate in Westchester County, N.Y., the Trump International Hotel and Tower in Chicago, 40 Wall St. in lower Manhattan, and the Trump National Golf Club in Los Angeles were the subject of the subpoenas.
While the inquiry is civil, if James found evidence of criminal offenses, she could refer the case to another law enforcement agency or ask New York Governor Andrew Cuomo to authorize criminal prosecution.....
James should be prosecuting him for mass-murder after stuffing sick patients into nursing homes!
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I guess the Weisselberg never went pop.
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Now some brief stories after I have already been peppered with ads that are lively and far from saintly:
"Clusters of devastating wildfires continued to rage in Northern California on Monday, although there was some relief for firefighters: A turn in the weather did not deliver a feared barrage of new lightning strikes overnight. More than 14,000 firefighters have been scrambling to protect communities from two dozen major blazes, which have left at least seven people dead and dozens injured, and have forced more than 100,000 people from their homes. Roughly 1.1 million acres have burned since Aug. 15, according to Cal Fire, the state’s firefighting agency. Many of the hundreds of fires burning across the state have been sparked by lightning strikes, and there were fears that a new round of dry lightning storms Sunday and Monday would make matters worse, but the lighting strikes so far have not been widespread, and moisture has helped to diminish some of the fires. “Mother Nature has helped us quite a bit,” said Billy See, a Cal Fire assistant chief."
Mother Nature, huh?
That is where the printed Globe put out the fire, and are they laying off the DEW lasers?
"Almost 700,000 acres of that have been in the groups of fires known as the LNU Lightning Complex and the SCU Lightning Complex, which have become the second- and third-largest fires in state history. On Monday morning, the largest, the LNU complex, which stretches across Napa and surrounding counties, was 22 percent contained. The SCU complex, which has burned more than 347,000 acres to the east of San Jose, was 10 percent contained.“We’re going to hopefully see a little bit of a quieter period,” said David King, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in the Bay Area. “We didn’t see the thousands and thousands of lightning flashes that we saw last week, but we did see lightning strikes, and it only takes one strike to potentially start a new wildfire.” The weather also helped firefighters make progress against the CZU Lightning Complex north of Santa Cruz, which has grown to 78,000 acres but is now 13 percent contained. A 70-year-old man was killed in the fire and found near his home, officials said at a news conference Monday, adding that he was “likely leaving the fire” in his vehicle. They added that the city of Santa Cruz was not under a direct threat, though thousands of residents from the area are still under evacuation orders."
Not only are people being evacuated and being moved to camps, 'er, shelters, they are being sent to fight the fires as the Napa valley breadbasket of the world is on fire, further compromising the food chain and supply. Famine and the starvation of millions this winter could very well become a horrifying reality.
Water, water, everywhere, and not a drop to drink:
"Tropical Storm Marco began falling apart Monday, easing one threat to the Gulf Coast but setting the stage for the arrival of Laura as a potentially supercharged Category 3 hurricane with winds topping 110 miles per hour and a storm surge that could swamp entire towns. The two-storm combination could bring a history-making onslaught of wind and coastal flooding from Texas to Alabama, all complicated by the coronavirus pandemic, forecasters said. Still a tropical storm for now, Laura churned just south of Cuba after killing at least 11 people in the Dominican Republic and Haiti, where it knocked out power and caused flooding in the two nations that share the island of Hispaniola. Laura was not expected to weaken over land before moving into warm, deep Gulf waters that forecasters said could bring rapid intensification late Wednesday into Thursday."
That's when the print Globe petered out, and the collapse of Marco would seem to indicate a ginned-up weather system that got a boost from some sort of HAARP string.
"The deaths reportedly included a 10-year-old girl whose home was hit by a tree and a mother and young son who were crushed by a collapsing wall. “We’re only going to dodge the bullet so many times, and the current forecast for Laura has it focused intently on Louisiana,” Governor John Bel Edwards told a news briefing. Shrimp trawlers and fishing boats were tied up in a Louisiana harbor ahead of the storms. Red flags warned swimmers away from the pounding surf. Both in-person classes and virtual school sessions required because of the coronavirus pandemic were canceled in some districts. A food bank that has been twice as busy as normal since March providing meals to people affected by the pandemic prepared to shut down for a few days because of the weather, but not before distributing a last round of provisions to the needy. State emergencies were declared in Louisiana and Mississippi, and shelters were being opened with cots set farther apart, among other measures designed to curb infections."
The second storm is scheduled to slam into red states and Trump's electoral college base.
What are the chances of such history being made?
If a tree falls in the city does anyone hear the CQD?
That's the electoral environment that we are in:
"Thousands allowed to bypass environmental rules in pandemic" by Ellen Knickmeyer and Cathy Bussewitz Associated Press, August 24, 2020
Thousands of oil and gas operations, government facilities, and other sites won permission to stop monitoring for hazardous emissions or otherwise bypass rules intended to protect health and the environment because of the coronavirus outbreak, the Associated Press has found.
Did the Event 201 simulators fail to account for that?
The result: approval for less environmental monitoring at some Texas refineries and at an Army depot dismantling warheads armed with nerve gas in Kentucky, manure piling up and the mass disposal of livestock carcasses at farms in Iowa and Minnesota, and other risks to communities as governments eased enforcement over smokestacks, medical waste shipments, sewage plants, oilfields, and chemical plants.
Yeah, about that coming famine..... ?
The Trump administration paved the way for the reduced monitoring on March 26 after being pressured by the oil and gas industry, which said lockdowns and social distancing during the pandemic made it difficult to comply with antipollution rules.
Waivers were granted.
Almost all those requesting waivers told regulators they did so to minimize risks for workers and the public during a pandemic — although a handful reported they were trying to cut costs.
Environmentalists and public health specialists say it may be impossible to fully determine the impact of the country’s first extended, national environmental enforcement clemency because monitoring oversight was relaxed. “The harm from this policy is already done,” said Cynthia Giles, an EPA assistant administrator in the Obama administration.
The Environmental Protection Agency has said it will end the COVID enforcement clemency this month.
Refinery giant Marathon Petroleum, already struggling financially before the pandemic, was one of the most aggressive in seeking to dial back its environmental monitoring. On the same day EPA announced its new policy, the Ohio-based company asked Indiana officials for relief from its leak detection, groundwater sampling, spill prevention, emissions testing, and hazardous waste responsibilities at its facilities statewide. Indiana declined to issue a comprehensive waiver but agreed to consider individual requests.
Almost every state reported fielding requests from industries and local governments to cut back on compliance. Many were for activities like delaying in-person training or submitting records by e-mail rather than paper. Others, however, were requests for temporary exemptions or extensions on monitoring and repairs to stop the flow of harmful soot, toxic compounds, disease-carrying contaminants, or heavy metals, AP found.
Regulators, for example, waived in-person inspections at parts of a former nuclear test site in Nevada, switching to drive-by checks.
The AP’s findings run counter to statements in late June by Susan Bodine, EPA’s assistant administrator for enforcement, who told lawmakers the pandemic was not causing “a significant impact on routine compliance, monitoring, and reporting.”
They lied about it like the EPA did regarding Ground Zero after 9/11?
Was Whitman who was in charge, wasn't it?
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Speaking of gaseous spew:
"Fiat Chrysler is recalling nearly 132,000 vehicles worldwide to fix a problem that could cause some diesel engines to stall. The company says magnetic material on a crankshaft position sensor wheel can come off over time, cutting off a signal and causing the engines to stall. Fiat Chrysler says it has no reports of crashes or injuries. It says the problem only happens on a small percentage of the vehicles. Dealers will update software so the engines keep working even if the crankshaft position signal is lost. Fiat Chrysler says in US government documents posted last weekend that the recall is expected to start Oct. 2...."
Is there anyone out there who doesn't make a car that is a piece of $hit?
"Driverless car startup Luminar Technologies Inc., backed by tech billionaire Peter Thiel, is going public via a $3.4 billion merger with blank-check company Gores Metropoulos Inc., bolstering efforts to get its laser sensors onto the production linesof global automakers. The deal will be paid for with $400 million in cash from the blank-check company, as well as $170 million from other investors including Thiel, a unit of Volvo Car, and GoPro founder Nick Woodman, according to a statement on Monday."
That behind-the-curtain player who ranks up there with Billy G and Bloomberg, and will be a ma$$ive beneficiary of the Great Re$et that is getting up off the ground:
"Boeing is preparing to bolster the long-term safety of its troubled 737 Max with technology borrowed from space vehicles and urban drones that can provide data to help back up its sensors. The system — known as synthetic air data — takes existing information on the aircraft, runs it through a computer program and produces readings that mimic what costly additional sensors provide. Added as a result of pressure from overseas regulators, it would reduce the risk of accidents such as those on the Max, but it would also address a wide range of deadly air crashes triggered by confusing cockpit readings, according to engineers andacademic research. It’s already proved its value on Boeing’s 787, and Airbus is adopting similar techniques in its aircraft."
Maybe you should try another airline:
"The Trump administration on Monday gave American Airlines emergency approval to deploy a new weapon against COVID-19: a surface coating that kills coronaviruses for as many as seven days. The Environmental Protection Agency issued the emergency declaration for Allied BioScience Inc.’s SurfaceWise2 product, allowing it to be used in some American Airlines planes and airport facilities, as well as two Texas locations of Total Orthopedics Sports & Spine. All three companies are based in Texas, which sought the exemption. ‘‘This is a major, game-changing announcement for our efforts to combat coronavirus and COVID-19,’’ EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler said on a conference call. The move comes as the Trump administration seeks to propel emerging treatments and protections against the coronavirus, and as several companies race to deliver an effective, safe vaccine."
The disinfectants are making us sick.
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Here is proof that something can bloom in the desert:
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, left, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu bumped elbows ahead of making a joint statement to the press after meeting in Jerusalem on Monday (Debbie Hill/POOL/AFP via Getty Images/AFP via Getty Images)
He sure looks like he is on top of the world with a big smile under that mask, and Pompeo finally put one on!
I would swung my elbow at his jaw.
"On Mideast trip, Pompeo mixes diplomacy with partisan politics" by Isabel Kershner and David M. Halbfinger New York Times, August 24, 2020
JERUSALEM — The backdrop for Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s planned speech to the Republican National Convention promised to be spectacular: sweeping views of Jerusalem’s Old City, with the domes and spires of its holy sites, but even before his plane touched down in Israel on Monday, Pompeo was being criticized there and in the United States for breaking a longstanding taboo against mixing diplomacy and partisan politics.
Why not? The global masters are not even trying to hide things anymore.
The conspiracies are in plane sight, the sex-trafficking is openly promoted, and now this, a confirmation of who really controls the foreign policy of the United States.
For President Trump, and particularly his evangelical Christian supporters, few locations have the resonance of the holy but fiercely contested city of Jerusalem. Soon after landing in Israel, Pompeo met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a conservative who has forged a tight alliance with Trump and the Republican Party.
In remarks after the meeting, both men addressed their joint stance against Iran, praised the strength of the US-Israel alliance, and celebrated the recent diplomatic coup of an Israeli-Emirati accord brokered by the Trump administration.
Netanyahu said the deal ushered in “a new era where we could have other nations join.” Standing alongside Pompeo at his office in Jerusalem, he said: “We discussed this, and I hope we’ll have good news in the future, maybe in the near future. I think it makes sense.”
Pompeo said he had come in part to congratulate the Israelis and Emiratis.
“What’s taking place here is deeply consistent with what President Trump set out to do: create a more stable, more prosperous Middle East,” he said. “This is a really good step in that direction.”
Neither of them addressed the brewing political dispute about Pompeo’s plan to record a video address from a rooftop location in Jerusalem, possibly the King David Hotel, to be shown later at the Republican convention.
There is little secret about why Pompeo would choose such a setting for his speech. One of Trump’s signature foreign policy actions was recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in 2017, and relocating the US Embassy to the city from Tel Aviv a few months later, upending decades of US policy and flouting an international consensus.
As questions arose about the appropriateness of Pompeo’s planned speech, however, a State Department spokesperson said that Pompeo would be addressing the convention “in his personal capacity.”
“No State Department resources will be used,” the spokesperson said. “Staff are not involved in preparing the remarks or in the arrangements for Secretary Pompeo’s appearance. The State Department will not bear any costs in conjunction with this appearance,” but Wendy R. Sherman, who served as undersecretary of state for political affairs in the Obama administration, described the plan as “unprecedented and wrong.”
Halie Soifer, executive director of the Jewish Democratic Council of America and a former national security adviser to Senator Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee for vice president, called the planned remarks “unprecedented and highly unethical.”
Harris's husband is a guy by the name of Emhoff, so.... it really doesn't matter which party, Israeli's concern is their concern.
Daniel B. Shapiro, the US ambassador to Israel under President Obama, said that coming to the region to build on the Israel-United Arab Emirates deal and to try to add momentum to that process made perfect sense, but he said timing a visit to Jerusalem to address the Republican convention from there was “cheap, transparent politics of the lowest order.”
“It violates a core principle which is drilled into every foreign service officer from the first day of their training: that the State Department needs to conduct itself overseas above American politics,” he said.
Every single perspective the Times offers comes from a joo-know-who.
Pompeo’s four-day tour includes planned stops in the United Arab Emirates and in Sudan and Bahrain, two other countries that have shown signs of warming ties with Israel.
The State Department said in a statement that he would meet in Sudan with Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok and Abdel Fattah el-Burhan, the country’s top general, to discuss continued US support for the civilian-led transitional government and to “express support for deepening the Sudan-Israel relationship.”
Now you know why Bashir was overthrown and a color revolution implemented!
Pompeo also met in Jerusalem with Defense Minister Benny Gantz and Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi, both of the centrist Blue and White party....
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Did Russia ever come up?
Related:
"Authorities in the Gaza Strip on Monday announced the first coronavirus cases spread through the community, raising fears of a potentially devastating outbreak in the impoverished Palestinian territory blockaded by Israel and Egypt. Until now, all the cases reported in Gaza were linked to quarantine facilities for residents returning from abroad. The Health Ministry said four people from the same family have tested positive for the virus in central Gaza and investigations were underway to track the source of the infection. A full lockdown was imposed on the al-Maghazi refugee camp, where the family lives. The Islamic militant Hamas group, which rules Gaza, announced a 48-hour curfew in the entire territory, closing businesses, schools, mosques and cafes....."
That's the last thing Gaza, the world's biggest outdoor prison, needs.
"U.N.-mediated talks involving Syrian government, opposition and civil society envoys were put “on hold” after three participants turned up positive for COVID-19, just hours after the meetings started in Geneva on Monday, the United Nations said. The office of U.N. Syria envoy Geir Pedersen said the three delegations had gotten off to a “constructive first meeting” before the talks were suspended. They are discussing a possible new constitution for the war-battered country — a step he has called a prospective “door-opener” to a final resolution of the country’s devastating nine-year civil war. His office did not specify which delegation or delegations that the three participants were from. The meeting, set to last through the week, is the first of its kind in nine months....."
Remember when they brought cholera to Haiti?
Also see:
Jerry Falwell Jr. agrees to resign from Liberty University
He was getting too cozy with a male who they befriended by a Florida pool and went into business together and who then had an extramarital affair with his wife after Falwell posted a photo on social media showing him with his pants unzipped, stomach exposed and arm high around the waist of his wife’s pregnant assistant.
That can only help Democrats, right?
"Several protesters and a person who illegally entered a secure area were arrested in the hours before North Carolina’s scaled-back share of the Republican National Convention on Monday, local police said, noting that the event itself was conducted without disruption....."
The FBI was called in to investigate but isn't answering questions, and the fireworks will reach a crescendo on Thursday.
Rivals hit Jake Auchincloss over marijuana skepticism
Including from a coke addict(?).
Meanwhile, the SJC just gave them permission to stuff the ballot boxes for Biden.
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"Why Trump’s Approval Ratings on the Economy Remain Durable" by Jim Tankersley New York Times, August 24, 2020
NEW YORK — It is an enduring political question amid a pandemic recession, double-digit unemployment and a recovery that appears to be slowing: Why does President Trump continue to get higher marks on economic issues in polls than his predecessors Barack Obama, George W. Bush, and George H.W. Bush enjoyed when they stood for reelection?
Oh, that must burn their asses as it says the American people don't blame Trump, and see him as a victim.
Trump’s relative strength on the economy, and whether Joe Biden can cut into it over the next 10 weeks, are among the crucial dynamics in battleground states in the Midwest and the Sun Belt that are expected to decide the election. Many of these states have struggled this summer with rising coronavirus infection and death rates as well as job losses and vanishing wages and savings — hard times that, history suggests, will pose a threat to an incumbent president seeking reelection, yet polling data and interviews with voters and analysts suggest that a confluence of factors are raising Trump’s standing on the economy issue, which remains a centerpiece of his pitch for a second term.
The president has built an enduring brand with conservative voters, in particular, who continue to see him as a successful businessman and tough negotiator. Many of those voters praise his economic stewardship before the pandemic hit, and they do not blame him for the damage it has caused. In interviews, some of those voters cited record stock market gains — although only about half of Americans own any stock at all — as evidence of a rebound under the president.
That is the only place there has been one, and he has failed the leadership test.
“He’s had failures — so have I — in business,” said Dale Georgeff, 58, of Cedarburg, Wis., a Trump supporter who owns parts of a brewery and a vehicle paint shop and also sells insurance, “but I think the biggest thing is that — and I think this is how it rubs certain people the wrong way — he’s treating this like a business, and he’s running it like a business.”
David Winton, a Republican strategist and pollster, said that Trump’s ratings had been bolstered by the economy’s adding 9 million jobs in May, June and July, after it lost more than 20 million in March and April. Trump’s approval on the economy “has still generally remained positive and better than his overall job approval,” he said. “This has certainly been helped by the last three good monthly jobs reports that occurred despite the continuing restrictions on many businesses to operate.”
The LOCKDOWNS have BACKFIRED on the Demonrats!
Polling suggests that Americans who form Trump’s voter base are less likely to have lost a job or income than Democratic or independent voters. That divergence is partially driven by race — the coronavirus crisis has disproportionately harmed Black and Latino workers, who lean heavily Democratic — but may also reflect regional divides. Small-business owners in small, more rural states that backed Trump in the 2016 election report less economic damage from the crisis than those in larger blue states, according to an analysis of census survey data by the Economic Innovation Group in Washington.
That and the race angle is a crock of $hit.
Plenty of Trump voters have been hurt, but they know where the blame lies and why!
Perhaps most notably, Trump is reaping the benefits of extreme polarization of the American electorate, a divide so intense that it has overpowered long-running connections between economic performance and presidential approval ratings. For many Republican voters and conservatives, optimism about the economy and approval of the president have become deeply entwined — and for Democrats, disfavor for Trump brought pessimism over the economy even in the years of growth and low unemployment before the crisis.
The pre$$ can't stand it!
Polls conducted in June, July, and August for The New York Times by online research firm SurveyMonkey underscore the degree to which even Republicans hit hard by the crisis continue to give Trump and his economy high marks. Eight in 10 Republican respondents who lost a job in the recession and have yet to return to work approve of Trump’s handling of the pandemic. Nearly 3 in 10 Republicans who lost jobs say they are better off economically than they were a year ago, a sentiment that is shared by barely 1 in 10 Democrats who have kept their jobs throughout the crisis.
“For so many of these voters, opinions of Trump are basically baked in,” said Amy Walter, national editor for the Cook Political Report in Washington, “and what the actual economic situation is in November is less important to them than it would be in a different time with different candidates.”
Why change the devil you know in midstream?
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I think he wins in a landslide, no matter how much fraud the Democrats pull, say 385-153 in the electoral college.
Related:
"Stocks plowed higher on Wall Street Monday, as hopes for a COVID-19 treatment and vaccine had investors looking ahead to the possibility of a healthier economy that has shed the virus. The S&P 500 rallied 1 percent and added to the all-time high it set last week, when it erased the last of its losses from the coronavirus pandemic. It followed up on solid gains for stock markets across much of Europe and Asia. Hope was rising as pharmaceutical companies continue to work toward a possible vaccine for COVID-19 and after the US government on Sunday approved an emergency authorization to allow the use of convalescent plasma to treat patients. The plasma comes from patients who have recovered from the coronavirus, and it may help people battling the disease, though global health officials say the therapy is still experimental. Such hopes helped invigorate shares of industries that have been badly beaten down by pandemic life. Airlines climbed, for example, amid the possibility that people may feel safe enough to travel again in the future. Delta Air Lines rose 9.3 percent, and American Airlines Group added 10.5 percent."
They make it sound like the economy is literally infected, and that is almost as offensive as the sick TSA officers and the stricter mask requirements on flights.
Proof the market is rigged as they cut there losses to make things look better:
"Exxon Mobil Corp, Pfizer Inc., and Raytheon Technologies Corp. were kicked out of the Dow Jones Industrial Average as part of the stock benchmark’s biggest reshuffling in seven years, actions that will boost the influence of technology companies that have dominated the 2020 stock market. Salesforce.com, Amgen Inc., and Honeywell International will enter the 124-year old equity gauge a week from today, its overseers said. The moves were prompted when Apple Inc.’s stock split effectively reduced the sway of computer and softward stocks in the price-weighted average. While any change to the Dow is notable, the ejection of Exxon Mobil — the world’s biggest company as recently as 2011 — marks a particularly stunning fall from grace, reflecting the decline of commodity companies in the American economy. Worth $525 billion in 2007 and more than $450 billion as recently 2014, the stock had fallen in four of six years before 2020 and is down another 40 percent since January."
Time to divest from oil and gas in favor of the Great Re$et:
"A Norwegian pension fund said Monday that it is divesting over $47 million from 27 companies, including Exxon and Chevron, as part of its commitment to combating climate change. The fund warned other major oil and gas companies it mightdrop them as well. Storebrand, which manages assets worth $91 billion, had over $12 million invested in Exxon and more than $10 million in Chevron. It said it is also selling its stocks in UK-based mining company Rio Tinto and German chemicals maker BASF."
They going to stop pumping oil out of the North Sea, even as their economy is adrift because of all the positive tests.
Better send out an SOS:
"TikTok Sues US Government Over Trump Ban" by Mike Isaac and Ana Swanson New York Times, August 24, 2020
SAN FRANCISCO — TikTok sued the US government Monday, accusing the Trump administration of depriving it of due process when President Trump used his emergency economic powers to issue an executive order that will block the app from operating in the country.
The suit, which was filed in the US District Court for the Central District of California, is TikTok’s most direct challenge to the White House and escalates an increasingly bitter back-and-forth between the popular video app and US officials.
Trump has repeatedly said TikTok, which is owned by Chinese Internet company ByteDance, poses a national security threat because of its Chinese ties. Relations between the United States and China have soured in recent months over rifts in geopolitics, technology, and trade. The campaign has been partly provoked by China’s more assertive posture but also Trump’s desire to convince voters that he is tough on China.
What if it is more than politics and an actual threat?
As part of that, Trump’s advisers have zeroed in on technology companies that they say are beholden to the Chinese government through security laws, including ByteDance, Chinese telecom equipment maker Huawei, and Internet company Tencent, the owner of WeChat.
Trump’s first executive order against TikTok draws its legal authority from the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which allows the president to regulate economic transactions in a national emergency. Past administrations have used it to punish foreign governments, as well as drug kingpins and hackers, but have never used it against a global technology company.
He stepped on some toes.
Jason M. Waite, a partner at law firm Alston & Bird, said that courts would probably be reluctant to challenge the president on national security grounds, but if a court does decide to rule against Trump, that could end up curtailing the powers of the presidency.
They have near imperial power now; however, Trump has rarely avail himself of it so far.
His political instincts tell him not to be who they think he is.
“I do think the US should be concerned about having to defend IEEPA actions and the impact that could have on the authority of a future president,” Waite said.
TikTok said in a blog post explaining the grounds for its lawsuit that the Trump administration “failed to follow due process and act in good faith, neither providing evidence that TikTok was an actual threat, nor justification for its punitive actions.” The company also claimed that the purported national security threat identified by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States was based on “outdated news articles” and did not address the documentation provided by TikTok demonstrating the security of user data.....
PFFT!
The security of user data is completely compromised, and we have far greater and more existential concerns at the moment.
--more--"
Maybe you better be careful ordering food, kids.
