Saturday, August 15, 2020

Slow Saturday Special: The Liars in the Boston Globe

They are literally keeping count:

"Reporter’s blunt question to Trump goes unanswered" by Tim Elfrink Washington Post, August 14, 2020

For more than half an hour on Thursday, President Trump sounded familiar themes at his coronavirus briefing: blasting presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden, arguing that the rapidly spreading virus is being effectively managed, and questioning the security of voting by mail.

Then he called on S.V. Dáte, HuffPost’s White House correspondent.

‘‘Mr. President, after three and a half years, do you regret at all, all the lying you’ve done to the American people?’’ Dáte asked.

Trump looked confused. ‘‘What?’’ he asked.

‘‘All the lying. All the dishonesties,’’ Dáte repeated.

‘‘That who has done?’’ Trump asked.

‘‘You have done,’’ Dáte said.

Trump paused briefly, then called on another reporter without answering.

The blunt exchange quickly went viral on Twitter, garnering millions of views by Friday morning and offering a new chapter in the fraught history of White House correspondents trying to hold Trump publicly accountable for his falsehoods.

Where the hell where they about 17 and a half years ago?

I don't blame Trump for not responded at all since it was not a serious question by a serious person. That is in no way an endorsement of that liar.

As president, Trump has been a prodigious spreader of misinformation. As of July, he has made more than 20,000 false or misleading claims while in office, according to an ongoing tally by the Washington Post’s Fact Checker. He has done so at an even greater rate in the last 14 months, tallying an average of 23 claims per day as the nation has been roiled by an impeachment trial and a pandemic.

If that isn't ever the Blackest kettle hollering pot, I don't know what is.

Oh, btw, Bezos is cleaning up over this whole $camdemic.

Trump’s regular falsehoods, combined with long stretches without briefings and the president’s open hostility to the press, have created historic challenges for reporters covering the White House, as the Post’s Paul Farhi has reported.

As opposed to the irregular falsehoods from the Bushes?

The Clinton and Obama lies?

Have they so quickly forgotten that who made them, a Mr. Richard Nixon?

Why did they drop Iran-contra, October Surprise, the Iraq lies, Tonkin, etc? 

Why has the pre$$ consistently lied in support of U.S. government aggression, and why is no one asking the reporters what was with the never-ending and ceaseless lies to this day?

Dáte, a veteran journalist and author who spent more than three decades at outlets including the Palm Beach Post and the Associated Press before joining HuffPost, has been particularly aggressive in urging his colleagues to push back on Trump’s falsehoods.

In an e-mail to his colleagues last year, Dáte urged journalists to ‘‘be more concerned about getting lied to as a matter of course — and the American public getting lied to, through us — than about access.’’

‘‘I’ve been in this business more than three decades, and what’s happening now is unprecedented,’’ Dáte wrote as part of an unsuccessful pitch to become president of the White House Correspondents’ Association. ‘‘We are attacked on a near daily basis using Stalinist language. We are called corrupt and dishonest. We are given false information from staff who often know full well that it is false.’’

That is how I have to read the paper, and the ceaseless whining from the pre$$ is most unbecoming.

Dáte has also written about the effects of Trump’s misinformation. In a January piece, Dáte called Trump’s repeated falsehoods ‘‘exhausting.’’

So is chronicling the massive amount of drivel and deceit that spews forth from the Globe every day.

‘‘I have never encountered a public official, a candidate for office, a bureaucrat, a defense lawyer or, frankly, an actual criminal who is as regularly and aggressively dishonest as the current president of the United States, and that includes a dozen years covering the Florida Legislature,’’ he wrote then.

The most troubling result, he suggested, was that Trump’s daily misstatements have become so common that they rarely get much attention.

‘‘It is no longer newsworthy that the person leading the world’s most powerful nation, commanding the most destructive arsenal in human history, is untrustworthy to his core,’’ he wrote.

As for what drove his decision to pose Trump such a direct question about his falsehoods on Thursday, Dáte didn’t immediately respond to a message from the Post, but on Twitter, he suggested that the query had been on his mind for some time."

I have a lot on my mind and don't need this fake news cluttering it up any more.

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Of course, when Biden and Harris walked away without taking questions the other day the pre$$ didn't complain at all.

{@@##$$%%^^&&}

Today's war lies:

"Tens of thousands of people flooded the heart of the Belarus capital of Minsk on Friday in a show of anger over a brutal police crackdown this week on peaceful protesters that followed a disputed election, and authorities sought to ease rising public fury by freeing at least 2,000 who were jailed earlier. Factory workers marched across the city shouting “Go away!” in a call for authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko to resign after 26 years of iron-fisted rule that was extended in an election Sunday. Friday’s crowds grew to more than 20,000, filling central Independence Square. About a dozen soldiers guarding the nearby government headquarters lowered their riot shields in what the demonstrators saw as a sign of solidarity, and women rushed to embrace and kiss the guards."

They offered them an olive branch, huh?

"Afghanistan has released the first 80 of a final 400 Taliban prisoners, paving the way for negotiations between the warring sides in Afghanistan’s protracted conflict, the government said Friday. Javid Faisal, spokesman for the Afghan National Security Council, made the announcement. Taliban officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak to the media, said 86 prisoners were freed. Prisoner releases on both sides are part of an agreement signed in February between the US and the Taliban. It calls for the release of 5,000 Taliban held by the government and 1,000 government and military personnel held by the insurgents, as a good will gesture ahead of intra-Afghan negotiations."

What is with the smiles on the faces?

"China accused the United States on Friday of trying to “demonize and stigmatize” relations between the two countries, in a scathing attack on the Trump administration’s designation of Chinese-funded language and culture programs in the US as foreign missions of the Chinese Communist Party. Foreign ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said the accusations against branches of the Confucius Institute were without basis and were motivated by “ideological prejudice and self-interest.’’ “We strongly deplore and oppose it,’’ Zhao said at a daily briefing. He said China would “reserve the right to make further responses to this matter.’’

I guess they do want Biden.

"North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong Un, says the nation is facing “two crises at the same time” — fighting the spread of the coronavirus and coping with extensive flood damage, but Kim has ordered his country not to accept any international aid for fear that outside help might bring in COVID-19, the state news media reported on Friday. Kim, who spoke during a meeting of the ruling Workers’ Party Politburo on Thursday, said that he sympathized with the “great pain” of families who had lost their homes to the floods and were living in temporary shelters, but he said “the situation, in which the spread of the worldwide malignant virus has become worse, requires us not to allow any outside aid for the flood damage but shut the border tighter and carry out strict anti-epidemic work,” according to the North’s official Korean Central News Agency. North Korea has also taken drastic actions against the coronavirus, sealing its borders in late January and quarantining all diplomats in Pyongyang for a month. It locked down the border city of Kaesong last month, suspecting a defector who crossed back over the border from South Korea of bringing the virus with him. North Korea’s swift actions were driven by fears that a COVID-19 outbreak could seriously test its woefully underequipped public health system and its economy, already struggling under international sanctions, analysts said. On Friday, however, North Korea lifted the lockdown, “based on the scientific verification and guarantee by a professional anti-epidemic organization.” The North Korean state news media has long insisted that there are no coronavirus cases in the country, although outside experts question the claim. The North did not reveal whether the defector who crossed back from South Korea had tested positive for the virus, and officials in the South have said there is no proof that he had it.

What could be next, a derecho?

You know things are bad when the North Koreans are more reasonable about home confinement than your government in the West?

Meanwhile, South Korea is reporting 103 new coronavirus cases. It is one of the country’s biggest daily jumps in months, and officials are expressing concern that infections are getting out of control in the capital of Seoul and other major cities as Koreans increasingly venture out in public. The figures released by the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Friday brought the national caseload to 14,873 cases, including 305 deaths. Eighty-three of the new cases were in the densely populated Seoul metropolitan area, where authorities have struggled to stem transmissions. Infections were also reported in other major cities such as Busan, Gwangju, and Ulsan. Friday’s jump was driven by local transmissions, which health authorities said could worsen because of the increase in travelers during the summer vacation season."

Just south of there:

"New Zealand is extending lockdown restrictions for an additional 12 days after detecting a dozen additional coronavirus cases linked to an Auckland cluster that ended the country’s three-month streak with no community transmission. Under the current regulations, residents of Auckland, New Zealand’s largest city, are barred from leaving their homes for any nonessential trips; they are also required to wear masks in public. The rest of the country is being asked to wear face coverings when social distancing isn’t possible and to avoid large events. Over the past week, New Zealand has found itself in a similar position to parts of neighboring Australia, which also appeared to have come close to defeating the virus before new cases bubbled up, but New Zealand had made far more progress, going more than 100 days without any community spread and lifting virtually all stay-at-home orders. With roughly 30 cases linked to the new cluster, New Zealand’s outbreak is still much smaller than the hundreds of cases being reported each day in the Australian hot spot of Melbourne. The new infections in New Zealand have been linked to one Auckland family, and health officials said Friday that genome testing indicated that the virus may have been imported from Britain or Australia. The family at the center of the cluster has not traveled abroad; how they became infected remains unclear."

They beat it before, they will beat it again, and you can no longer hit the beach in "free" France:

"France on Friday declared Paris and the Marseille region in the southeastern part of the country to be high-risk zones, granting local authorities powers to impose new restrictions aimed at containing the spread of the coronavirus. The declaration allows the authorities to restrict the movements of people and vehicles, limit access to public transportation and public buildings, and to close down restaurants, bars, and similar establishments. The moves come as France faces a resurgence of the virus. The daily average of 1,650 cases since the beginning of August has reached the level of infections in the first week of France’s lockdown, one of the strictest in Europe, in early March. The increase prompted Britain on Thursday to add France to its list of countries from which visitors have to quarantine. France reported more than 10,000 new confirmed cases over the past week."

If cases are exploding then the death rates are plummeting, and lockdowns have failed since we have herd immunity. 

WTF is going on here?

"India’s coronavirus death toll overtook Britain’s to become the fourth-highest in the world with another single-day record increase in cases Friday. According to the Health Ministry, India reported 1,007 deaths in the past 24 hours. Its total rose to 48,040 deaths, behind the United States, Brazil, and Mexico. India’s confirmed cases reached 2,461,190 with a single-day spike of 64,553 in the past 24 hours. More than 70 percent of people infected in India have recovered. The daily increase in newly reported infections was around 15,000 in the first week of July but jumped to more than 50,000 in the first week of August. The ministry cited its testing efforts, with more than 800,000 tests in a single day, taking cumulative tests to more than 26 million. Health experts say it needs to be higher."

Biggest lie (and liar) of all:

"For Palestinians, Israel-UAE deal swaps one nightmare for another" by Isabel Kershner and Adam Rasgon New York Times, August 14, 2020

JERUSALEM — When the unmarked United Arab Emirates plane touched down on the tarmac in Tel Aviv one night in May carrying 16 tons of unsolicited medical aid for the Palestinians, it was rejected by the leadership, which said that nobody had coordinated with them about the shipment.

That was just a prelude to a greater humiliation. Palestinian officials maintain that nobody consulted with them before Thursday’s surprise announcement by President Trump that Israel and the UAE had agreed to “full normalization of relations” in exchange for Israel’s suspending annexation of parts of the occupied West Bank.

If that was presented as some kind of a balm for the Palestinians, many of them considered it, instead, a stab in the back or a dagger to the heart. The diplomatic coup for Israel ruptured decades of professed Arab unity around the Palestinian cause. It swapped one Palestinian nightmare — annexation, which many world leaders had warned would be an illegal land grab — for another, perhaps even bleaker prospect of not being counted at all.

“This agreement is very damaging to the cause of peace,” said Husam Zomlot, the head of the Palestinian mission to the United Kingdom, speaking from London, “because it takes away one of the key incentives for Israel to end its occupation: normalization with the Arab world. It basically tells Israel it can have peace with an Arab country,” he added, “in return for postponing illegal theft of Palestinian land.”

Welcome to the new normal.

I suspect the UAE saw the explosion in Beirut and determined that it is time to sign up lest it happen to them.

Friday’s front pages blared out the disconnect. Israel’s popular Yediot Ahronot celebrated the “historic agreement” and the cut-price deal of “Peace in Exchange for Annexation,” but the Palestinian government-run Al-Hayat al-Jadida went with “Tripartite Aggression against the Rights of the Palestinian People,” in angry red letters.

The emerging Israeli-Emirati relationship is the most prominent achievement yet of what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has called an outside-in approach. That has entailed courting the outer circle of Sunni Gulf States to quietly come to terms with Israel and then bring along the Palestinians, rather than dealing with the Palestinians first.

The conservative-led Israeli government has long viewed the Palestinians as intransigent, unwilling, or unable to compromise on long-held principles that Israel sees as inflated demands.

That's the infamous Israeli projection again. They are the intransigent ones as it allows them to keep stealing land.

The policy also reverses the order of the Arab Peace Initiative of 2002, a proposal endorsed by the Arab League calling for full recognition of Israel by all the Arab and Islamic nations in return for complete Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories to the boundaries that existed before the 1967 Middle East war.

Mocking old predictions that Israel would become increasingly isolated and face a diplomatic “tsunami” for failing to resolve the Palestinian conflict, Netanyahu has instead touted economic peace and what he calls TTP — terrorism, technology and peace. Other countries, including Arab ones, he has argued, see Israel as an ally in fighting Islamist terrorism, a source of technological innovation and not as the obstacle to peace of old.

After creating it, of course!

More broadly, the agreement with the United Arab Emirates reflects the realignment in the Middle East of the pro- and anti-Iranian axes, leaving the Palestinians feeling isolated and, with the suspension of annexation as the justification, used as pawns.

Do they mean axis?

If so, that is a charged term from history, and this Jooi$h $lop is sickening.

Along with fatigue in the Arab world, the Palestinians are also battling their internal demons.

The Palestinian polity has long been weak, divided between the portions of the West Bank nominally controlled by Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, and his rivals in Hamas, the Islamic militant group that dominates Gaza.....

Israel helped create Hamas to split the PLO, and then used Abass (cui bono) to poison Arafat with Fatah basically becoming a Judenrat for Israel.

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{@@##$$%%^^&&}

The war at home is the Globe's top story and the world of politics is the epitome of lies and liars:

"Postal Service warns 46 states their voters could be disenfranchised by delayed mail-in ballots" by Erin Cox, Elise Viebeck, Jacob Bogage and Christopher Ingraham Washington Post, August 14, 2020

Anticipating an avalanche of absentee ballots, the Postal Service recently sent detailed letters to 46 states and the District of Columbia warning that it cannot guarantee all ballots cast by mail for the November election will arrive in time to be counted — adding another layer of uncertainty ahead of the high-stakes presidential contest.

The letters sketch a grim possibility for the tens of millions of Americans eligible for a mail-in ballot this fall: Even if people follow all of their state’s election rules, the pace of Postal Service delivery may disqualify their votes.

It will if it is a Trump vote as the Biden campaign will have a bank of form-fillers to garner as many "votes" as possible.

The Postal Service’s warnings of potential disenfranchisement came as the agency undergoes a sweeping organizational and policy overhaul amid dire financial conditions. Rank-and-file postal workers say the move is ill-timed and could sharply diminish the speedy processing of flat mail, including letters and ballots.

The ballot warnings go beyond the traditional coordination between the Postal Service and election officials, drafted as fears surrounding the coronavirus pandemic triggered an unprecedented and sudden shift to mail-in voting. Some states anticipate 10 times the normal volume of election mail. Six states and D.C. received warnings that ballots could be delayed for a narrow set of voters, but the Postal Service gave 40 others — including the key battleground states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Florida — more-serious warnings that their longstanding deadlines for requesting, returning, or counting ballots were ‘‘incongruous’’ with mail service and that voters who send ballots in close to those deadlines may become disenfranchised.

The machines were bad enough, but this is a travesty. 

The fraud will be massive as there will be no exit polls anywhere.

It will be a fake election, even more than it is already.

‘‘The Postal Service is asking election officials and voters to realistically consider how the mail works,’’ Martha Johnson, a spokeswoman for the USPS, said in a statement. In response to the Postal Service’s warnings, a few states have quickly moved deadlines — forcing voters to request or cast ballots earlier, or deciding to delay tabulating results while waiting for more ballots to arrive.

Trump has repeatedly claimed, without evidence, that mail ballots lead to widespread voter fraud and in the process politicized the USPS. This week, he said he opposes emergency funding for the agency — which has repeatedly requested more resources — because of Democratic efforts to expand mail voting.

The Postal Service’s structural upheaval alone has led experts and lawmakers from both parties to worry about timely delivery of prescription medications and Social Security checks, as well as ballots.

‘‘The slowdown is another tool in the toolbox of voter suppression,’’ said Celina Stewart, senior director of advocacy and litigation with the nonpartisan League of Women Voters. ‘‘That’s no secret. We do think this is a voter-suppression tactic.’’

No one is nonparti$an in the age of Trump.

Vanita Gupta, a Justice Department official in the Obama administration and now president and chief executive of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, said she viewed the situation as ‘‘the weaponization of the US Postal Service for the president’s electoral purposes.’’

Former President Barack Obama said Trump is trying to “actively kneecap the Postal Service” in order to hurt vote-by-mail in November.

Going to spy on his campaign again?

In an interview with his former adviser, David Plouffe, the former president pointed to Trump’s recent remarks linking his opposition to emergency USPS funding to his fears about mail-in ballots.

“What we’ve never seen before is a president say, ‘I’m going to try to actively kneecap the Postal Service to encourage voting, and I will be explicit about the reason I’m doing it.’ That’s sort of unheard of, right?” Obama told Plouffe on Cadence13’s “Campaign HQ” podcast.

On Thursday, a major union representing postal workers endorsed Democrat Joe Biden for president. The National Association of Letter Carriers, which represents 300,000 current and retired workers, said that Trump has long been hostile to the Post Office. His administration has called for an end to collective bargaining rights, proposed service cuts and has eyed the possibility of privatizing the functions of the agency.

Those things are okay when the Globe demands it of their staff; however, now we know which ballots they will throwing away!

It's voter suppression, all right, and it is going to be the suppression of Trump voters unless they actually show up to the polls.

DeJoy, in service changes last month, has drastically reduced overtime and banned extra trips to ensure on-time mail delivery. His reorganizations ousted several agency veterans in key operational roles, and the USPS is currently decommissioning 10 percent of its costly mail-sorting machines, which workers say could hinder processing of election mail, according to a grievance filed by the American Postal Workers Union and obtained by The Washington Post. Those 671 machines, concentrated in high-population areas, have capacity to sort 21.4 million pieces of paper mail per hour.

And it's BIDEN in a LANDSLIDE!

The machine reductions, together with existing mail delays and a surge of packages — a boon to the Postal Service’s finances but a headache for an organization designed to handle paper rather than boxes — also risk hamstringing the agency as the election approaches.

Lawmakers don't like the ‘‘discipline’’ they are bringing to the agency that ‘‘will increase our performance for the election and maintain the high level of public trust we have earned throughout our history.’’

The letters to states detailing concerns for November followed ramped-up vote-by-mail primaries marred by serious delivery problems. It ‘‘presented a need to ensure the Postal Service’s recommendations were reemphasized to elections officials,’’ Johnson said.

In New York City, for example, a 17-fold increase in mail-in ballots left results of a June congressional primary race in doubt for six weeks. During court wrangling over it, USPS workers said elections officials had dropped off 34,000 blank absentee ballots at a Brooklyn processing center on the day before the election, leaving postal workers scrambling in an attempt to deliver them overnight. Some voters received ballots after the election, and tens of thousands of voted ballots were initially thrown out because of delayed receipt.

I don't imagine there will be much of a problem in that gho$t town.

Sure won't carry the popular vote heft that it once did. Trump may just hold on yet despite the long odds.

The letters warning about November caution many states that their deadlines for voters to request an absentee ballot are too close to Election Day and that ‘‘the Postal Service cannot adjust its delivery standards to accommodate the requirements of state election law.’’ The letters put the onus on election officials to adjust deadlines or educate voters to act well before them.

Or just keep "finding" votes and counting "votes" until Biden wins, right?

Mail carriers, meanwhile, have warned that new cost-cutting measures at the USPS are slowing the delivery of mail ballots in key states. Recent contests have offered a preview of potential consequences, with voters — particularly in urban areas such as Detroit and the Bronx — complaining that their absentee ballots did not arrive until the last minute or at all.

The problems predate the cost-cutting measures — according to US Election Assistance Commission data submitted to Congress, but active registered voters [still have] the option to vote in person.....

You had better go that route if you are for Trump.

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Looks like Pennsylvania just went to Biden this time, and combined with Ohio he is at the magic 270 mark.

Trump will need to get nasty to pull this off:

"Safe in Suburbia? Here’s what Trump’s ‘housewives’ are actually worried about" by Stephanie Ebbert Globe Staff, August 14, 2020

Women are especially concerned with safety right now — though they’re more focused on viral invaders than low-income ones, and Trump, polls show, has been losing suburban support for months, but let’s start with Trump’s terminology, which seems to have forced the “soccer moms” of the ’90s into the wayback machine of the past four years and produced a campaign slogan for the 1950s.

I love it when the Globe presents women as completely and inviolately monolithic as a voting block, and she means the destruction of our cities, right?

“He seems to think we’re still living in ‘Leave it to Beaver’ time,” said Shannon Watts of California, who used to be “a stay-at-home mom” before 20 first-graders were shot in a suburban Connecticut classroom in 2012. Then she founded Moms Demand Action, a grass-roots organization fighting gun violence.

I will leave the staged and script SH slaughter for another time, and whadda woman!

Twenty-first century stay-at-home moms don’t typically stay home much, since they’re busy orchestrating tightly choreographed daily agendas for their families, but let’s be real here — these days, we all stay home because no one feels particularly safe. Governor Charlie Baker actually named an early phase of the state’s response to the pandemic “Safer at Home.” The year 2020 has been nothing short of apocalyptic, delivering the American carnage that Trump foresaw in his nomination speech four years ago, and the danger lurks in suburban supermarkets and schools, where no white picket fences or racial fear-mongering can keep it out.

The apocalypse has revealed a ruling cla$$ of pedophile perverts, I will grant them that. That's the real lurking danger, not the places cited above.

Suburban women are scared, certainly, as are urban women. Their children’s education is on hold. Those who still have jobs are perilously close to having to give up them up because their day care centers aren’t reopening. The coronavirus threatens to turn women back into the “The Suburban Housewives of America” that Trump remembers.

You ladies better get a hormone test.

Trump’s appeals to the suburbs likely owe to recent polls showing he’s losing them. Surveys have found him down by a historic margin among suburban voters, an average of 15 points. 

So says a An NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll that found that the suburbs are far more diverse than Trump may realize.

Not that there’s ever a good time to romanticize segregation or cloistered domesticity, but this moment seems particularly ill-suited.

All across Massachusetts this summer, suburban lawns sprouted signs denouncing hate and standing up for Black lives. It was especially notable in places we don’t think of as particularly diverse or radical: Hingham. Cohasset. Hamilton. Ipswich. There is a lot of guilt to be found in the suburbs and a lot of dawning awareness. As one white suburban mom’s sign put it at a Black Lives Matter vigil in June: “I am listening.”

She thinks that will save her from the mob, and the entire country is NOT Ma$$achu$etts, thank God!

Last month a Wall of Moms was built in Portland, Ore., where women trying to change the narrative that Black Lives Matter protesters were rioters put their own “mombods” on the line to be tear gassed by police.

Liars, liars everywhere, and not a narrative to be found!

“Trump thinks that suburban women are all white women and heavily independents and Republicans who he can appeal to. The fact is, he began to lose suburban women long ago,” said Lauren Leader, cofounder and CEO of All In Together, a nonpartisan nonprofit dedicated to advancing women’s civic leadership. “It was suburban women that delivered Congress to the Democrats.”

Advancing only the correct kind of women.

How sexist!

In the 2018 midterms that sent a record number of women to Congress, 38 of the 41 districts that turned from red to blue were suburban, according to an analysis by The New York Times.

You know where their analysis comes from, right?

Despite his “colossal gap with women,” as Leader put it, Trump needs to turn out the vote of white women and suburbanites who helped him win in 2016. Her organization, working with Lake Research and Emerson College Polling as the COVID-19 crisis plays out, has identified the swing voters it believes will be key: “Guardian Women,” who are defined less by their neighborhood boundaries and more by their security concerns and commitment to showing up to vote. They tend to be married women over 50, not college-educated, and to have an annual household income over $50,000. During this crisis, they’ve been working especially hard, caring for relatives.

“My assumption is that Trump sees that and thinks they’re persuadable, and they are persuadable,” Leader said. “My view is that decrying diversity is not the issue that he’s going to win them on.”

And that is WHAT SHE SAID!

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Here is what HE SAID:

"Trump is not entitled to details of tax returns inquiry, DA says" by Nicole Hong and William K. Rashbaum New York Times, August 14, 2020

NEW YORK — The Manhattan district attorney’s office said Friday that President Trump was not entitled to learn more about the scope of its criminal investigation into his business dealings, rejecting Trump’s latest effort to block a subpoena for his tax returns.

The office of the district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., wrote in a pair of new court filings that Trump should be treated like any other recipient of a subpoena, who is typically unable to access details of secret grand jury proceedings.

The filing came in response to Trump’s renewed efforts this month to stop Vance’s prosecutors from accessing eight years of his personal and corporate tax returns.

Whatever happened to Mary Trump, anyway, and isn't Vance the guy who let Weinstein off for campaign loot contributions?

Vance’s office said Friday that Trump was essentially complaining that prosecutors had never publicly revealed the full scope of the investigation. Grand jury proceedings are, by law, conducted in secret.

He is complaining about secret tribunals, huh?

In limited circumstances, the recipient of a subpoena may force more details about the investigation to be disclosed through a specific legal process — but only after offering evidence that a subpoena was issued in bad faith, the office said. Even in that case, the target of the investigation likely would not learn the details, and the information would not become public.

The president “seeks an end run around this process,” the office wrote.

Trump and Vance have been locked in battle for almost a year over the demand for the president’s tax returns.

The latest back-and-forth follows a decision by the Supreme Court, which last month ruled against Trump, who had asked the court to block the subpoena. In a 7-2 ruling, the justices rejected the president’s argument that he was immune from all criminal proceedings while in office but opened the door for him to challenge the subpoena on other grounds.

In their new arguments this month, Trump’s lawyers said the subpoena was so broad that it was tantamount to a political fishing expedition. Prosecutors had demanded tax documents dating to 2011.

In the letter earlier this week, Trump’s lawyers argued that the prosecutors should be required to show how each item requested in the subpoena was relevant to their investigation and within their jurisdiction.

Vance’s office has accused the president’s legal team of using delay tactics to slow the investigation until the statute of limitations on any potential crimes runs out.

When the Manhattan district attorney’s office subpoenaed the president’s accounting firm, Mazars USA, in August 2019, the investigation appeared to be focused on hush-money payments made in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election to two women who said they had affairs with Trump. The payments were arranged by Michael Cohen, the president’s former lawyer, but this month, in response to Trump’s argument that the subpoena was “wildly overbroad,” Vance’s office said it had a wide legal basis to obtain the financial records.

What they used to call a fishing expedition, and the whole sordid thing, if even true, amounts to a campaign violation and fine if precedent is to be held.

The office suggested in a court filing that it was investigating the president and his company for possible bank and insurance fraud, a much broader investigation than prosecutors had acknowledged in the past.

Here are some nibbles from the web:

Vance’s office wrote Friday that the president has been “put on notice repeatedly throughout this litigation that the investigation was not limited to Cohen’s 2016 payments,” pointing to comments last year by a federal judge who called the investigation “very complex” and extending over “many, many years.”

There were shots outside the WH the other day.

Even if Vance were to successfully obtain Trump’s tax returns, they would be protected by grand jury secrecy rules. They might never become public unless the district attorney’s office brought charges and introduced the documents as evidence at trial.

EVEN IF!

Vance issued his subpoena after federal prosecutors in Manhattan completed their own investigation into the hush payments. The federal investigation resulted in a guilty plea by Cohen, who admitted to campaign finance violations and other crimes in connection with the payments made to the two women.

Isn't that double jeopardy and illegal?

Both Trump and the company reimbursed Cohen. Vance’s investigation has been exploring, in part, whether the reimbursements violated any New York state laws.

Federal prosecutors said in a court filing last summer that they had “effectively concluded” their investigation into possible crimes committed by the president’s company, the Trump Organization, or its executives. Neither the company nor any of its leaders were charged.....

And pop goes the Weisselberg!

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"Ex-FBI lawyer expected to plead guilty in review of Russia inquiry" by Adam Goldman New York Times, August 14, 2020

WASHINGTON — A former FBI lawyer intends to plead guilty after he was charged with falsifying a document as part of a deal with prosecutors conducting their own criminal inquiry of the Russia investigation, according to his lawyer and court documents made public Friday.

The lawyer, Kevin Clinesmith, 38, who was assigned to the Russia investigation, plans to admit that he altered an e-mail from the CIA that investigators relied on to seek renewed court permission in 2017 for a secret wiretap on former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page, who had at times provided information to the spy agency. Clinesmith’s lawyer said he made a mistake while trying to clarify facts for a colleague.

OMG, they planted a spy in the campaign -- by mistake!

Clinesmith had written texts expressing opposition to President Trump, who is sure to tout the plea agreement as evidence that the Russia investigation was illegitimate and politically motivated. Trump has long been blunt about seeing the continuing investigation by the prosecutor examining the earlier inquiry, John Durham, as political payback whose fruits he would like to see revealed in the weeks before the election.

It's not about justice to the New York Times as they run cover for the Deep State.

Attorney General William Barr has portrayed Durham’s work as rectifying what he sees as injustices by officials who sought in 2016 to understand links between the Trump campaign and Russia’s covert operation to interfere in the election.

Prosecutors did not reveal any evidence in charging documents that show Clinesmith’s actions were part of any broader conspiracy to undermine Trump, and the Justice Department’s independent inspector general, Michael Horowitz, has found that law enforcement officials had sufficient reason to open the Russia investigation, known inside the FBI as Crossfire Hurricane, and found no evidence that they acted with political bias.

If you don't look for it, you won't find it, nor do the blinders help.

As part of their efforts to dissuade prosecutors from charging Clinesmith, his lawyers argued that his motives were benign, and other evidence indicated that he had not tried to hide the CIA e-mail from his colleagues.

Just having Brennan's CIA mixed up in this is shitty!

“Kevin deeply regrets having altered the e-mail,” Clinesmith’s lawyer, Justin Shur, said in a statement. “It was never his intent to mislead the court or his colleagues, as he believed the information he relayed was accurate, but Kevin understands what he did was wrong and accepts responsibility.”

Sure doesn't look like it!

Clinesmith, who resigned over the matter last year, was expected to be charged in federal court in Washington with a single felony count of making a false statement. A spokesman for Durham declined to comment.

Barr had previewed the agreement on Fox News’ “Hannity” on Thursday night. “It’s not an earth-shattering development, but it is an indication that things are moving along at the proper pace, as dictated by the facts in this investigation,” he said.

That was big news to Hannity!?

It is highly unusual for law enforcement officials to publicly discuss ongoing investigations, but Barr has long made clear his distaste for the Russia investigation and his view that Durham would remedy any issues with it.

And bury those that would embarrass untouchable and powerful people, like those that were involved in the Steel dossier that was funneled through Capitol Hill so Obama could begin an investigation.

Although the sprawling Russia investigation that was eventually run by a special counsel, Robert Mueller, uncovered the Kremlin’s complex operation to subvert the election and the Trump campaign’s expectation that it would benefit from foreign involvement, Republicans have seized on a narrow aspect of the inquiry — the investigation into Page — in a long-running quest to undermine it.

No, it did not!

The New York Times must be demented!

In a report made public last year, Horowitz revealed that the applications were riddled with serious errors and omissions. Among other things, he had learned of a troubling series of events in which Page’s association with the CIA was not accurately conveyed to the Justice Department and ultimately kept from the judges who approved the surveillance warrants.

Page had for years provided information to the CIA about his contacts with Russian officials. In CIA jargon, he was known as an operational contact — someone who agrees to be debriefed by agency personnel but cannot be assigned to collect information.

That relationship might have given law enforcement officials reason to be less suspicious of him, and the FBI was told about it: A CIA lawyer provided a list of documents in the August 2016 e-mail at the heart of the case against Clinesmith that explained Page’s relationship with the agency, but an FBI case agent who learned about Page’s ties to the CIA played them down while preparing the first wiretap application, according to the inspector general’s report. At the time, Clinesmith was not involved in determining whether Page was a CIA source, people familiar with the case said, but later in 2017, a supervisory FBI agent handling the third and final renewal application asked Clinesmith for a definitive answer on whether Page had been an agency source, according to Horowitz’s report. Clinesmith incorrectly said that Page was “never a sourceand sent the CIA’s information to the supervisor. He altered the original e-mail to say that Page had not been a source — a material change to a document used in a federal investigation.

OOOOPS!

The agent relied on the altered e-mail to submit the application seeking further court permission to wiretap Page, the inspector general wrote. By changing the e-mail and then forwarding it, Clinesmith misrepresented the original content of the document, which prosecutors said was a crime.

Clinesmith did not change the document in an attempt to cover up the FBI’s mistake. His lawyers argued that he had made the change in good faith because he did not think that Page had been an actual source for the CIA.....

Did you get all that disassembling double talk?

--more--"

Maybe they can deport him:

"Top Homeland Security officials are serving illegally, GAO says" by Michael D. Shear New York Times, August 14, 2020

WASHINGTON — President Trump’s top two officials at the Department of Homeland Security are illegally serving in their positions, with appointments that violated the laws governing who can fill Senate-confirmed positions, according to a report released Friday by the Government Accountability Office.

How ironic!

Chad Wolf, the acting secretary of homeland security, and Ken Cuccinelli, his deputy at the sprawling agency, are serving in violation of the Federal Vacancies Reform Act, which lays out specific orders of succession when senior officials resign, according to the GAO, Congress’ nonpartisan watchdog.

How often has that arcane rule been enforced?

The report said the improper appointments began after Kirstjen Nielsen was forced out of office as the department’s secretary in April of 2019.

“Because the incorrect official assumed the title of acting secretary at that time, subsequent amendments to the order of succession made by that official were invalid,” the GAO said Friday. The agency said that Wolf and Cuccinelli “are serving under an invalid order of succession.”

It will be the same on November 4th.

The report by the GAO follows a similar finding in March by a federal judge, who ruled that Cuccinelli’s appointment violated federal law and that two policies he put in place while he served in the position should be nullified.

Making law from the bench, judge?

The GAO does not have the ability to enforce its findings on the Trump administration, which has repeatedly defended its appointments of Wolf and Cuccinelli. In a statement, the watchdog said that it was referring the issue to the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general and to Congress, which could try to force their removals.

Like, impeach them?

Legal experts said the report would help bolster several court cases, including the one in Moss’ court, in which the appointments are being challenged.

“Holy cow: The *GAO* has determined that Chad Wolf was not lawfully named the Acting Secretary of Homeland Security, and that @HomelandKen (who already is using an inappropriate title) wasn’t lawfully appointed even to his *proper* position at DHS,” tweeted Stephen I. Vladeck, a law professor at the University of Texas at Austin, who studies the Vacancies Act.

“This is a remarkably big deal,” he added.

Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, said any policy decisions made by Wolf or Cuccinelli should be nullified, and the men should step down.

“President Trump’s efforts to install political sycophants to implement his extreme policies in an end run around the law and Senate have finally caught up with him,” Schumer said in a statement. “The determination by an independent congressional watchdog today invalidates actions Mr. Cuccinelli and Mr. Wolf have taken and both should immediately step down from their illegal roles,” but the White House has ignored such findings before. Last year, an independent government agency said Trump should fire Kellyanne Conway, his White House counselor, for repeated violations of an ethics law, the Hatch Act, which bars partisan politics from the federal workplace. The recommendation by the agency, called the Office of Special Counsel, went nowhere.

I would ignore Schumer, too, and it must be hell in that house.

The Vacancies Reform Act provides specific rules for how senior positions at federal agencies can be filled temporarily when a top official leaves. It requires that only certain officials in a department’s existing chain of command can be tapped as “acting” leaders while a president seeks Senate confirmation of a permanent replacement.

Trump’s administration has repeatedly sought to ignore the order of succession defined by the Vacancies Reform Act, seeking instead to elevate officials seen as more loyal to the president and his agenda than the civil servants in line to take on the “acting” positions.

Obama and Bush did it and it was no problem with the pre$$!

In the cases of Wolf and Cuccinelli, the GAO report found that the administration improperly skipped over the proper individual to succeed Nielsen and instead installed Kevin McAleenan, the commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, to serve as acting secretary....

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They are were set adrift along Mexico border, but somehow ran aground in Canada:

"The Canada-US border will remain closed to nonessential travel for at least another month, Canada’s public safety minister said Friday. The statement by Public Safety Minister Bill Blair came a day after Mexico announced a similar measure for its border with the United States. The land border restrictions aimed at controlling the coronavirus pandemic were first announced in March and have been renewed monthly. Many Canadians fear a reopening. Canada has flattened the epidemic curve while the United States has more confirmed cases and deaths from COVID-19 than any other country. Essential cross-border workers like health care professionals, airline crews, and truck drivers are still permitted to cross. Much of Canada’s food supply comes from or via the United States. Americans who are returning to America and Canadians who are returning to Canada are also exempted from the border closure. Canada sends 75 percent of its exports to the United States and about 18 percent of American exports go to Canada. Their border is the world’s longest between two nations."

I don't know about other Canadians, but the few I am aware of are nowhere near afraid of a reopen and are pretty damn fed up.

{@@##$$%%^^&&}

No doubt it will all end up at the Supreme Court:

"A three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit Friday threw out California’s ban on high-capacity magazines, saying the law violates the US Constitution’s protection of the right to bear arms. “Even well-intentioned laws must pass constitutional muster,” appellate Judge Kenneth Lee wrote for the panel’s majority. California’s ban on magazines holding more than 10 bullets “strikes at the core of the Second Amendment — the right to armed self-defense.” California Attorney General Xavier did not immediately say if he would ask a larger appellate panel to reconsider the ruling or if he would appeal to the US Supreme Court."

We will be needing those guns if the Democrats take total control:

"Report outlines ‘shocking’ wage gap between Black women and white men working in Mass. restaurants" by Meghan Sorensen Globe Correspondent, August 14, 2020

They want to unleash the Black Women against the white man!?

A new report states that Massachusetts has the second-highest race and gender wage gap for restaurant workers in the nation, tied with New York and behind only Alabama.

The report from One Fair Wage, a nonprofit that supports service workers, found that Black female restaurant workers in Massachusetts make on average $7.79 less per hour ― including tips — than white men in the same positions, which amounts to 40 percent less. The study concludes that the already-existing wage gap has been exacerbated by the pandemic. The study also found that most service workers have seen their tips decrease by 50 percent or more since the pandemic hit.

It $ure has, and I wouldn't worry about, for you will be out of work soon. Race won't matter.

“I was shocked,” said Saru Jayaraman, president of One Fair Wage, when she first saw the results of the report. “The results are so extreme in Massachusetts ... because it means that the pandemic has revealed the core inequalities that existed before and exacerbated them. Black and brown communities are hardest hit by the pandemic and by the economic situation.”

It's being exacerbated even further, creating a wealthy $upercla$$ that she doesn't care about. Just wants to get her loot from the white man working the line with her.

Maybe they just provide better service for the tip, rather than expecting it from the attitude you get from some of them.

One Fair Wage looked at 23 US states with large enough populations of Black restaurant workers to make the comparison statistically meaningful; the report was based on a mix of government data and worker surveys. The studies also compared Black women to white women and Latinx women, to tease out the disparities between race and gender. It was found that white women made less than white men but more than women of color.

Any which way from Sunday to divide us.

Liz Reinhardt, a Black resident of Boston who has worked in Massachusetts restaurants for seven years, was not surprised by the findings.

Nor was I, Ms. Reinhardt(?).

”In my experience working for a chain restaurant, I definitely see a disparity in the consistency of my tips compared to my peers of different races and genders,” said Reinhardt. “I noticed that my male counterparts tended to be promoted to higher positions that paid more or were more likely to get raises, and when female and especially minority servers like me asked for higher wages, it tended to be something that was just pushed off.” Reinhardt noted that this was not her experience in “mom and pop”-style restaurants that ensured that income and tips were fair.

Maybe you need to look in the mirror first.

The report says that race and gender pay inequalities are a result of three factors: women (and women of color in particular) being over-represented in lower-paid sectors of the industry; greater levels of occupational segregation between higher- and lower-paid positions for women of color in fine dining restaurants; and the fact that people of color (specifically Black workers) receive less in tips than equally qualified white workers.

Jayaraman, who is also a professor at UC Berkeley at the Goldman School of Public Policy, said that COVID-19 “has exacerbated the disparity in the situation between Black women and white men because the wage gap existed prior to the pandemic.

Is that the crew from the taxpayer-funded and -protected ivory tower?

Yamila Ruiz at One Fair Wage, who helps restaurant owners advocate for sustainable business models, said that she was not surprised by the data.

”We know that Boston is a very segregated city, and I think it’s a lack of restaurant owners and the community to really push for racial equity in restaurants,” said Ruiz. “It’s sad that it takes a report like this to reveal that information, but at the same time, now we’re armed with the tools that we need to be able to make progressive policy changes, and for restaurant owners to take it upon themselves to push for this racial equity within their own restaurants.”

: )

For $hame, Bo$ton, and I wouldn't worry about the fading and bankrupt restaurants.

The study also found that 93 percent of Black tipped-service workers have reported being unable to or unsure of whether they could afford rent, while 82 percent of Black workers reported that they can only afford groceries for two weeks or less.

To fix the growing wage gap, Jayaraman suggested guaranteeing workers full livable minimum wages and encouraging legislators to stop listening to corporate chains and pay attention to the struggles of workers.

“To understand that just before the pandemic, Massachusetts was the second-worst in the nation on this, resulting in a pretty horrific experience for workers of color and women of color in particular in the service sector during the pandemic, to me rises to levels of crisis proportions,” said Jayaraman.

--more--"

Also see:

Senator Kamala Harris
Senator Kamala Harris (Drew Angerer/Getty)

The Globe says she has the credibility to take the fight to Trump, and as Joe Biden's running mate, she will do far more than make history — she'll prosecute the case against Trump, and from the smirk on her face and the “nyah-nyah” way she smiles, I believe she is lying.

This is not funny at all:

A relative of a person whose body was pulled from a submerged car in the water off Black Falcon Pier was comforted at the scene.
A relative of a person whose body was pulled from a submerged car in the water off Black Falcon Pier was comforted at the scene (John Tlumacki/Globe Staff).

I don't see BLM anywhere.


Man dies during rescue attempt at dock in Lake Winnipesaukee

No one cares because it was just a white man doing the right thing and trying to be a hero so.....

Charles Morgan, 59, of West Tisbury, was killed in Florida on Aug. 2.
Charles Morgan, 59, of West Tisbury, was killed in Florida on Aug. 2.

Here is the man that killed him


Alphonso Washington (NBC Miami) 

The homeless career criminal brutally stabbed the white man to death.

Better get him a new suit for court:

"Saks Fifth Avenue opens a men’s store in Back Bay; It will occupy the former Barneys space in the Copley Place mall" by Janelle Nanos Globe Staff, August 14, 2020

The Globe is really working her hard these days in the hope that she will quit.

Right now might seem like a strange time to open a new menswear store in a mall: The pandemic has hit brick and mortar retailers hard as more people are shopping online; employees have fewer reasons to dress up for work; and customers have said they’re less inclined to shop in malls for fear of the virus spreading indoors, but Saks Fifth Avenue is bullish on the Back Bay.

As long as they can keep the lights on you can avoid that pile of $tank!

On Friday, it opened its new menswear store in the space formerly occupied by Barneys, which shuttered this past winter after filing for bankruptcy last August. Barneys’ new owner, the licensing company Authentic Brands, worked out a partnership to have Saks take over occupancy of the two-level store in the Copley Place mall.

They went bankrupt after hitting the bong!

Saks already has a storefront in the Prudential Center at 800 Boylston Street, and will operate the two in tandem, said Joe Gambino, a vice president and general manager at the company who will oversee both stores. The new location will be dedicated entirely to menswear, and will introduce over 30 new brands to the chain’s Boston presence, as well as services like made-to-measure tailoring, Gambino said.

“Mens is a huge portion of our total business, more so than ever, and it’s always been a high performing business,” he said, but the existing men’s shop in the Prudential Center was somewhat cramped and didn’t provide the opportunity they thought they could have with male shoppers.

“We candidly weren’t serving our customers the way we thought we could with extended offerings and services,” he said, “and clearly having Barneys move out of the market left a white space for that customer and for our existing customer.”

He will outfit you in a nice Italian suit.

While it might seem strange to open a new store while so many are closing in the city — after all, Lord and Taylor announced it would shut down its Prudential Center department store just last week — Saks may be looking to seize an opportunity, said Lauren Beitelspacher, a marketing professor at Babson College who studies retail.

They were called home by the angels.

“I’m wondering if this is a way to attract a different shopper and make shopping more experiential for men,” she said. Many menswear brands, like Brooks Brothers, which filed for bankruptcy last month, have failed to modernize and bring in a new, younger customer base. On Wednesday, the iconic menswear brand, which operated a sewing factory in Haverhill, was also acquired by Authentic Brands in a joint deal with Simon Malls.

Like the Men’s Wearhouse?

Beitelspacher said that Saks has a younger audience, and may be able to tap into having a high-net-worth client base of college students in the Back Bay — when they return, of course.

(Blog author shaking his head. What planet are these people deluding on?)

“Watching this younger generation, they really want that high-touch experience when they can afford it, they don’t want the stodgy, and they want to feel a special and customized experience,” Beitelspacher said. “If Saks is able to leverage that and create a unique experience that doesn’t alienate their older customer, it could be really successful.”

I have only one suit, and will no longer need it since weddings and funerals have been cancelled.

Despite the overall slump in retail sales during the pandemic, Gambino said the luxury market has remained steady — he noted the lines he’s seen outside the Louis Vuitton and Gucci stores while wandering through Copley Place.

$ay what?

“Over the last few months, despite what COVID would tell you, we’ve seen continued strong double-digit growth in many markets but particularly in mens,” Gambino said, and with other area menswear stores still struggling to reopen, the company wanted to seize the moment.

“We think we are going to become the destination for the menswear luxury client,” he said.

Why not? 

That is where ALL the MONEY IS!

--more--"

Plenty of $$$ for political conventions, too, as Congre$$ haggles over another Chump change check for you:

"Democrats plan DNC drive-in party at Suffolk Downs to watch Warren speak" by Matt Murphy State House News Service, August 14, 2020

Big-name actors, from John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John to Sam Neil, Jeff Goldblum, and a T-Rex, have graced the the summer screen at Suffolk Downs, but next week Hollywood will take the backseat for a night when Senator Elizabeth Warren and the Democratic Party’s newly minted vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris will have top billing at the East Boston drive-in.

It will be worse than the planned Democrapic Convention, and why is the Globe making her into a doll or a coin or a dollar in a rather $exi$t and dehumanizing way?

The Massachusetts Democratic Party plans to host a Democratic National Convention watch party at Suffolk Downs next Wednesday. While the “Ridin’ with Biden” event is primarily for the 114 delegates from Massachusetts who will no longer be traveling to Milwaukee for the convention, limited tickets are also available for purchase to the public.

“The excitement around a Joe Biden presidency is too great for us not to do something that celebrates what the Democratic National Convention means for this country. It means the beginning of the end of Donald Trump’s horrific presidency, and the restoration of decency and humanity to the White House,” said Gus Bickford, the chair of the state party.

“We are doubly excited that the day our delegates and other Democrats will be together in Boston is the day that our own incredible senator, Elizabeth Warren, will address the convention,” he said in a statement.

Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat from Massachusetts and 2020 presidential candidate, pauses on stage during a campaign event in the Brooklyn Borough of New York, U.S., on Tuesday, Jan. 7, 2020. Photographer: Gabriela Bhaskar /Bloomberg
Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat from Massachusetts and 2020 presidential candidate, pauses on stage during a campaign event in the Brooklyn Borough of New York, U.S., on Tuesday, Jan. 7, 2020 (Photographer: Gabriela Bhaskar /BloombergGabriela Bhaskar/Bloomberg).

What's with the odd look in the eyes, and excuse me, where is the bathroom or should I just go puke in the woods?

The theme of Wednesday night's program will be "A More Perfect Union," and it's the night that Harris will deliver her speech accepting the party's nomination for vice president after Joe Biden announced the California senator this week as his running mate choice.

Wednesday is also the night Barack Obama and the party’s 2016 nominee, Hillary Clinton, will address a convention that will be held virtually because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Other speakers will include House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers, New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham, and former Arizona congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords.

Are Democrats trying to lose this election?

Suffolk Downs sets up a drive-in movie series on the grounds of the former horse-racing track, and shows movies every Thursday night. Since the series began on July 16, attendees have been treated to “Grease” and “Jurassic Park.” This Thursday, the drive-in will be screening “Just Mercy,” starring Michael B. Jordan and Jamie Foxx. “La La Land” will be shown next Thursday, the night Biden accepts the Democratic nomination for president.

Nothing but reruns?

Local Boston food trucks will be supplying food for Wednesday night’s DNC viewing party.

For nondelegates interested in attending, a limited number of tickets are available starting at $46 per car for young Democrats under 35 and $246 per car for everyone else.

I could find a better way to spend $50!

Other premium ticket packages are available starting at $500 and going up to $5,000, which comes with recognition in a commemorative delegate book, daily invitations to virtual DNC events during the week of the convention and a virtual hosting role with the delegation.

Oh, it's $oooo worth it, and all for a great cau$e!

All money raised will go toward the Massachusetts Democratic Party.

--more--"  

Yeah, the $ickening politicians are still raking in the campaign loot!

Related:

"Across the entertainment industry, casts and crew are beginning to return to work after a five-month hiatus. Instead of crew members freely mingling, they’re being divided into “pods” that limit how production departments such as wardrobe or lighting can associate. Covid-19 officers monitor the health of the cast and crew to determine who is allowed on set. “Zones” dictate where those cast and crew can go. These changes might seem technical, but they hint at the far-reaching effects the virus will have on final screen products. Interviews with 12 executives, writers, agents and producers across the Hollywood spectrum suggest a dramatically transformed world of entertainment. Until a vaccine comes along, they say, covid-19 will change what Americans watch as dramatically as it has where they work, shop and learn. Forget the new normal — movies and TV are about to encounter the new austerity....."

The PERVS will literally be able to get away with murder #MeToo!

Flipping through the rest of the section I noticed that the comics are not funny but sick, and this advertisement didn't put me at ease (what's with the overpriced markdowns?):

Shop our summer sale.

She looks as pure as a saint, doesn't she?