...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
Friday, July 31, 2020
Sad
Looks like they were expecting a bit larger crowd...
Flashbacks of Tulsa.
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
UPDATE:
About those ventilators
That's $500 MILLION.[A report from] the House Oversight and Reform Committee released Friday finds that the Trump administration overpaid by as much as $500 million for ventilators and was slow to respond to an offer to accelerate shipments in the early days of the coronavirus outbreak.
The Hill
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.The report finds that the Trump administration paid the manufacturer Philips $15,000 per ventilator, more than any other American purchaser. Some purchasers buying as few as just one ventilator negotiated prices down to as low as $9,327 per ventilator, the report said.
[...]
“The Trump Administration’s mishandling of ventilator procurement for the nation’s stockpile cost the American people dearly during the worst public health crisis of our generation,” Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.), the chairman of the Oversight and Reform subcommittee that did the report, said in a statement.
“Not only did the Administration jeopardize the health and safety of the American people — but it squandered more than half-a-billion dollars that could have been used to better support our nation’s crisis response efforts.”
[...]
The original contract was for 10,000 ventilators and made in 2014. It was delayed, but an extension given by the Obama administration had a deadline of November 2019, the committee said, in time for the pandemic.
The Trump administration gave three additional extensions in 2017 and 2018, the report said. “Had the Trump Administration held Philips to the terms of the Obama-era contract, the country would have had 10,000 ventilators that it needed when the coronavirus crisis struck,” the committee said.
Get ready for back to school
Well done, Georgia.In a report published Friday, the CDC said more than 250 people — mostly children — tested positive for the coronavirus after attending an overnight summer camp in Georgia where masks weren’t required.
A total of 597 Georgia residents attended the summer camp in June. The camp imposed most but not all of the CDC’s guidelines to slow or prevent the spread of COVID-19.
Of the 344 test results that were available to the CDC, 260 — or 76 percent — were positive, indicating children might play an “important role” in transmitting the disease, according to the report.
The camp, which was not named in the report, required staff members to wear cloth masks but did not extend that requirement to campers. Windows and doors were not left open to increase ventilation in camp buildings, according to the CDC.
Large groups of kids sleeping in the same cabins, as well as singing and cheering, likely contributed to transmission, the report said.
“These findings demonstrate that SARS-CoV-2 spread efficiently in a youth-centric overnight setting, resulting in high attack rates among persons in all age groups, despite efforts by camp officials to implement most recommended strategies to prevent transmission,” the report reads.
Georgia allowed overnight camps to operate beginning May 31. The camp cited in the study was open June 17-27.
[...]
Georgia is now experiencing a large COVID-19 outbreak, reporting more than 3,300 new cases a day.
The Hill
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
Team Trump's disastrous failure
Perhaps it's because Jared is part of the team determined to destroy this country.On Friday, July 31, the U.S. House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus, which is investigating the federal response, will hold a hearing to examine the “urgent need” for a comprehensive national plan, at which Dr. Fauci, CDC director Robert Redfield, and Admiral Brett Giroir will testify. Among other things, the subcommittee is probing whether the Trump administration sought to suppress testing, in part due to Trump’s claim at his Tulsa, Oklahoma, rally in June that he ordered staff to “slow the testing down.”
[...]
On March 31, three weeks after the World Health Organization designated the coronavirus outbreak a global pandemic, a DHL truck rattled up to the gray stone embassy of the United Arab Emirates in Washington, D.C., delivering precious cargo: 1 million Chinese-made diagnostic tests for COVID-19, ordered at the behest of the Trump administration.
[...]
This purchase did not appear in any government database. Nor was there any contract officer involved. Instead, it was documented in an invoice obtained by Vanity Fair, from a company, Cogna Technology Solutions (its own name misspelled as “Tecnology” on the bill), which noted a total order of 3.5 million tests for an amount owed of $52 million. The “client name” simply noted “WH.”
[...]
An Abu Dhabi–based artificial intelligence company, Group 42, with close ties to the UAE’s ruling family, identified itself as the seller of 3.5 million tests and demanded payment. Its requests were routed through various divisions within Health and Human Services, whose lawyers sought in vain for a bona fide contracting officer.
According to documents obtained by Vanity Fair, [the tests] were examined in two separate government laboratories and found to be “contaminated and unusable.”
[...]
During that period, more than 2.4 million Americans contracted COVID-19 and 123,331 of them died of the illness.
[...]
The secret, and legally dubious, acquisition of those test kits was the work of a task force at the White House, where Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and special adviser, has assumed a sprawling role in the pandemic response. That explains the “WH” on the invoice. While it’s unclear whether Kushner himself played a role in the acquisition, improper procurement of supplies “is a serious deal,” said a former White House staffer. “That is appropriations 101. That would be not good.”
[...]
[There was] an even more extraordinary effort that Kushner oversaw: a secret project to devise a comprehensive plan that would have massively ramped up and coordinated testing for COVID-19 at the federal level.
[...]
The irony is that, after assembling the team that came up with an aggressive and ambitious national testing plan, Kushner then appears to have decided, for reasons that remain murky, to scrap its proposal.
Vanty Fair
You want to read that again?Inside the White House, over much of March and early April, Kushner’s handpicked group of young business associates, which included a former college roommate, teamed up with several top experts from the diagnostic-testing industry. Together, they hammered out the outline of a national testing strategy. The group—working night and day, using the encrypted platform WhatsApp—emerged with a detailed plan obtained by Vanity Fair.
Rather than have states fight each other for scarce diagnostic tests and limited lab capacity, the plan would have set up a system of national oversight and coordination to surge supplies, allocate test kits, lift regulatory and contractual roadblocks, and establish a widespread virus surveillance system by the fall, to help pinpoint subsequent outbreaks.
The solutions it proposed weren’t rocket science—or even comparable to the dauntingly complex undertaking of developing a new vaccine. Any national plan to address testing deficits would likely be more on the level of “replicating UPS for an industry,” said Dr. Mike Pellini, the managing partner of Section 32, a technology and health care venture capital fund. “Imagine if UPS or FedEx didn’t have infrastructure to connect all the dots. It would be complete chaos.”
[...]
Some of those who worked on the plan were told that it would be presented to President Trump and likely announced in the Rose Garden in early April.
[...]
But no nationally coordinated testing strategy was ever announced. The plan, according to the participant, “just went poof into thin air.”
[...]
Countries that have successfully contained their outbreaks have empowered scientists to lead the response. But when Jared Kushner set out in March to solve the diagnostic-testing crisis, his efforts began not with public health experts but with bankers and billionaires. They saw themselves as the “A-team of people who get shit done,” as one participant proclaimed in a March Politico article.
Kushner’s brain trust included Adam Boehler, his summer college roommate who now serves as chief executive officer of the newly created U.S. International Development Finance Corporation, a government development bank that makes loans overseas. Other group members included Nat Turner, the cofounder and CEO of Flatiron Health, which works to improve cancer treatment and research.
A Morgan Stanley banker with no notable health care experience, Jason Yeung took a leave of absence to join the task force. Along the way, the group reached out for advice to billionaires, such as Silicon Valley investor Marc Andreessen.
[...]
According to one participant, the group did not coordinate its work with a diagnostic-testing team at Health and Human Services, working under Admiral Brett Giroir, who was appointed as the nation’s “testing czar” on March 12. Kushner’s group was “in their own bubble,” said the participant. “Other agencies were in their own bubbles. The circles never overlapped.”
As it evolved, Kushner’s group called on the help of several top diagnostic-testing experts. Together, they worked around the clock, and through a forest of WhatsApp messages. The effort of the White House team was “apolitical,” said the participant, and undertaken “with the nation’s best interests in mind.”
[...]
The plan called for the federal government to coordinate distribution of test kits, so they could be surged to heavily affected areas, and oversee a national contact-tracing infrastructure. It also proposed lifting contract restrictions on where doctors and hospitals send tests, allowing any laboratory with capacity to test any sample. It proposed a massive scale-up of antibody testing to facilitate a return to work. It called for mandating that all COVID-19 test results from any kind of testing, taken anywhere, be reported to a national repository as well as to state and local health departments.
And it proposed establishing “a national Sentinel Surveillance System” with “real-time intelligence capabilities to understand leading indicators where hot spots are arising and where the risks are high vs. where people can get back to work.”
[...]
But the effort ran headlong into shifting sentiment at the White House. Trusting his vaunted political instincts, President Trump had been downplaying concerns about the virus and spreading misinformation about it—efforts that were soon amplified by Republican elected officials and right-wing media figures. Worried about the stock market and his reelection prospects, Trump also feared that more testing would only lead to higher case counts and more bad publicity. Meanwhile, Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House’s coronavirus response coordinator, was reportedly sharing models with senior staff that optimistically—and erroneously, it would turn out—predicted the virus would soon fade away.
[...]
Most troubling of all, perhaps, was a sentiment the expert said a member of Kushner’s team expressed: that because the virus had hit blue states hardest, a national plan was unnecessary and would not make sense politically. “The political folks believed that because it was going to be relegated to Democratic states, that they could blame those governors, and that would be an effective political strategy,” said the expert.
[...]
“It was very clear that Jared was ultimately the decision maker as to what [plan] was going to come out,” the expert said.
And those test kits that were sent to the UAE embassy?[B]ecause the virus had hit blue states hardest, a national plan was unnecessary and would not make sense politically. “The political folks believed that because it was going to be relegated to Democratic states, that they could blame those governors, and that would be an effective political strategy."
[...]
On April 27, Trump stepped to a podium in the Rose Garden, flanked by members of his coronavirus task force and leaders of America’s big commercial testing laboratories, Quest Diagnostics and LabCorp, and finally announced a testing plan: It bore almost no resemblance to the one that had been forged in late March, and shifted the problem of diagnostic testing almost entirely to individual states.
[...]
It soon became clear that ceding testing responsibility to the states was a recipe for disaster, not just in Democratic-governed areas but across the country.
In April, Phoenix, Arizona, was struggling just to provide tests to its health care workers and patients with severe symptoms of COVID-19. When Mayor Kate Gallego reached out to the federal government for help, she got an unmistakable message back: America’s fifth-largest city was on its own. “We didn’t have a sufficient number of cases to warrant” the help, Gallego told Vanity Fair.
Phoenix found itself in a catch-22 [...] “On a call with the county last week the Mayor was told that the region has [not] received FEMA funds related to testing because we don’t have bad numbers. The problem with that logic is that the Mayor believes we don’t have bad numbers because [of] a lack of testing.”
In June, Phoenix’s case counts began to rise dramatically. At a drive-through testing site near her house, Gallego saw miles-long lines of cars waiting in temperatures above 100 degrees. “We had people waiting 13 hours to get a test,” said Gallego. “These are people who are struggling to breathe, whose bodies ache, who have to sit in a car for hours.”
[...]
Gallego’s own staff members were waiting two weeks to get back test results, a period in which they could have been unwittingly transmitting the virus. “The turnaround times are way beyond what’s clinically relevant,” said Dr. James Lawler, executive director of international programs and innovation at the Global Center for Health Security at the University of Nebraska Medical Center.
[...]
Gallego ultimately prevailed in her public demand for help: Health and Human Services agreed to set up a surge testing site in Phoenix. “The effect was, we had to be in a massive crisis before they would help,” said Gallego.
And that is where the U.S. finds itself today—in a massive testing crisis.
[...]
It is obvious to experts that 50 individual states cannot effectively deploy testing resources amid vast regulatory, financial, and supply-chain obstacles.
[...]
Experts are now warning that the U.S. testing system is on the brink of collapse. “We are at a very bad moment here,” said Margaret Bourdeaux. “We are about to lose visibility on this monster and it’s going to rampage through our whole country. This is a massive emergency.”In late January, Rajiv Shah, president of the Rockefeller Foundation, went to Davos, Switzerland. [...] There, he had coffee with WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, whom he’d known from his years working in global public health, first at the Gates Foundation and then as director of USAID, an international development agency within the U.S. government.
Shah returned to New York, and to the Rockefeller Foundation headquarters, with a clear understanding: SARS-CoV-2 was going to be the big one.
[...]
On April 21, the Rockefeller Foundation released a detailed plan for what it described as the “largest public health testing program in American history,” a massive scale-up from roughly 1 million tests a week at the time to 3 million a week by June and 30 million by the fall.
Estimating the cost at $100 billion, it proposed an all-hands-on-deck approach that would unite federal, state, and local governments; academic institutions; and the private and nonprofit sectors. Together, they would rapidly optimize laboratory capacity, create an emergency supply chain, build a 300,000-strong contact-tracing health corps, and create a real-time public data platform to guide the response and prevent reemergence.
The Rockefeller plan sought to do exactly what the federal government had chosen not to: create a national infrastructure in a record-short period of time.
[...]
Reaching out to state and local governments, the foundation and its advisers soon became flooded with calls for help from school districts, hospital systems, and workplaces, all desperate for guidance. In regular video calls, a core advisory team that includes Shah, former FDA commissioner Mark McClellan, former National Cancer Institute director Rick Klausner, and Section 32’s Mike Pellini worked through how best to support members of its growing coalition.
[...]
In the absence of trustworthy federal guidance, the Rockefeller team hashed out an array of issues: How should schools handle symptomatic and asymptomatic students? What about legal liability? What about public schools that were too poor to even afford a nurse?
(Last week, the CDC issued new guidelines that enthusiastically endorsed reopening schools and downplayed the risks, after coming under heavy pressure from President Trump to revise guidelines that he said were “very tough and expensive.”)
[...]
It may seem impossible for anyone but the federal government to scale up diagnostic testing one hundred-fold through a painstaking and piecemeal approach. But in private conversations, dispirited members of the White House task force urged members of the Rockefeller coalition to persist in their efforts. “Despite what we might be hearing, there is nothing being done in the administration on testing,” one of them was told on a phone call.
[...]
Despite the Rockefeller Foundation’s round-the-clock work to guide the U.S. to a nationwide testing system essential to reopening, the foundation has not yet been able to bend the most important curve of all: the Trump administration’s determined disinterest in big federal action.
On July 15, in a video call with journalists, Dr. Shah looked visibly frustrated. The next day, the Rockefeller Foundation would be releasing a follow-up report: It called on the federal government to commit $75 billion more to testing and contact tracing, work to break through the testing bottlenecks that had led to days-long delays in the delivery of test results, and vastly increase more rapid point-of-care tests.
Though speaking in a typically mild-mannered tone, Shah delivered a stark warning: “We fear the fall will be worse than the spring.” He added, putting it bluntly: “America is not near the top of countries who have handled COVID-19 effectively.”
Just three days later, news reports revealed that the Trump administration was trying to block any new funding for testing and contact tracing in the new coronavirus relief package being hammered out in Congress.
[...]
The gamble that son-in-law real estate developers, or Morgan Stanley bankers liaising with billionaires, could effectively stand in for a well-coordinated federal response has proven to be dead wrong.
Who ordered them?Finally, on June 26, lawyers for the Department of Health and Human Services sent a cable to the embassy, directed to the company which had misspelled its own name on the original invoice: Cogna Technology Solutions LLC.
The cable stated, “HHS is unable to remit payment for the test kits in question, as the Department has not identified any warranted United States contracting officer” or any contract documents involved in the procurement. The cable cited relevant federal contract laws that would make it “unlawful for the Government to pay for the test kits in question.”
But perhaps most relevant for Americans counting on the federal government to mount an effective response to the pandemic and safeguard their health, the test kits didn’t work. As the Health and Human Services cable to the UAE embassy noted: “When the kits were delivered they were tested in accordance with standard procedures and were found to be contaminated and unusable.”
An FDA spokesperson told Vanity Fair the tests may have been rendered ineffective because of how they were stored when they were shipped from the Middle East. “The reagents should be kept cold,” the spokesperson said.
Although officials with FEMA and Health and Human Services would not acknowledge that the tests even exist, stating only that there was no official government contract for them, the UAE’s records are clear enough. As a spokesperson for the UAE embassy confirmed, “the US Government made an urgent request for additional COVID-19 test kits from the UAE government. One million test kits were delivered to the US government by April 1. An additional 2.5 million test kits were delivered to the US government by April 20.”
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
Homegrown election interference
And I'm the Queen of England.As President Trump ramps up his unfounded attacks on mail balloting as being susceptible to widespread fraud, postal employees and union officials say the changes implemented by Trump fundraiser-turned-postmaster general Louis DeJoy are contributing to a growing perception that mail delays are the result of a political effort to undermine absentee voting.
[...]
DeJoy, a North Carolina logistics executive who donated more than $2 million to GOP political committees in the past four years, approved changes that took effect July 13 that the agency said were aimed at cutting costs for the debt-laden mail service. They included prohibiting overtime pay, shutting down sorting machines early and requiring letter carriers to leave mail behind when necessary to avoid extra trips or late delivery on routes.
[...]
The new policies have resulted in at least a two-day delay in scattered parts of the country, even for express mail, according to multiple postal workers and union leaders. Letter carriers are manually sorting more mail, adding to the delivery time. Bins of mail ready for delivery are sitting in post offices because of scheduling and route changes. And without the ability to work overtime, workers say the logjam is worsening without an end in sight.
[...]
In a meeting with DeJoy on Thursday, the head of one of the nation’s largest postal workers unions said he shared the “deep concerns” of postal workers that the new procedures are causing mounting backlogs that could affect the election.
[...]
[Mark] Dimondstein said DeJoy told him that he is committed to mail voting and providing full assistance to states as they run their elections.
[...]
In Michigan, which is gearing up for its Aug. 4 primary, election administrators said they have fielded complaints from voters who had not yet received their ballots as of this week. Election clerks are advising voters to drop off their ballot Tuesday rather than sending it back via mail, out of fear that the ballots will not be returned in time to be counted.
[...]
And four Senate Democrats wrote to DeJoy on Thursday, demanding information about the new procedures, calling them “questionable.”
“Your failure to provide Congress with relevant information about these recent changes or to clarify to postal employees what changes you have directed as Postmaster General, undermines public trust and only increases concerns that service compromises will grow in advance of the election and peak mail volumes in November,” wrote Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (N.Y.), Sen. Gary Peters (Mich.), Sen. Amy Klobuchar (Minn.) and Sen. Thomas R. Carper (Del.).
[...]
The delays are especially alarming given the impending flood of campaign and election mail and a potential resurgence of coronavirus cases in the fall that could lead to staff shortages, Postal Service employees said.
[...]
In a meeting Wednesday with Ronnie Stutts, president of the National Rural Letter Carriers Association, DeJoy said his relationship with the president does not affect his decisions at the agency, Stutts said.
WaPo
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
GOP ethics - always in the news
Arizona's 6th District needs to drag his ass back home.GOP Rep. David Schweikert on Thursday was formally reprimanded by the House Ethics Committee and ordered to pay a $50,000 fine for misusing official funds after a two-year probe.
The bipartisan ethics panel found that Schweikert violated 11 different rules and standards, which also included campaign finance violations, pressuring staff into working on his campaign and a “lack of candor and due diligence” throughout the investigation.
[...]
The Arizona Republican has agreed to pay the fine and admitted to the violations, which stemmed from dealings with a former top aide, Oliver Schwab.
[...]
The rebuke from the Ethics panel ends a lengthy — and at times, contentious — investigation into Schweikert’s payments to a consulting firm owned by his longtime chief of staff.
[...]
“We are pleased the Committee has issued their report and we can move forward from this chapter,” a spokesperson for Schweikert wrote in a statement that did not address the substance of the findings. “As noted in the review, all issues have been resolved and Congressman Schweikert will continue working hard for Arizona’s 6th District.”
Politico
I want to know why Schweikert was giving money to Schwab.Among the biggest findings from the Ethics panel is that Schkweirt [sic] had paid over $270,000 to a firm whose sole employee is Schwab over seven years, violating the limit on outside income for senior congressional aides. Schwab left his congressional job in 2018 after seven years. That same year, the aide also repaid the campaign more than $50,000.
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
He was looking to distract
Trump sucks all the oxygen out of the room. His only goal at all times is to keep the focus on himself and off reality.
But what he really wanted was to step on the news that had just come out about the tanking economy.
Signaling his intention to file lawsuits when he loses.President Donald Trump’s go-it-alone presidency crested on Thursday with a suggestion that the country delay the November election.
[...]
[I]t forced Trump’s supporters either to defend the president’s musings as a savvy attempt to troll and distract his critics, or to insist it was just the president playing thoughtless pundit.
[...]
On Thursday night, Trump himself explained the tweet as an attempt to focus the country on the prospect of massive mail-in voter fraud, a phenomenon that researchers say does not exist and could be guarded against with more funding. At a news briefing, Trump flashed article after article for the cameras about anecdotal problems with absentee votes during the primaries.
“I don’t want to delay,” he claimed. “I want to have the election. But I also don’t want to have to wait for three months and then find out that the ballots are all missing and the election means nothing.”
“That’s what’s going to happen,” he added, predicting that with “litigation” the results could be unknown for “years,” perhaps forever. “Smart people may know it. Stupid people may not.”
Politico
But what he really wanted was to step on the news that had just come out about the tanking economy.
I think the only time he's ever said anything like that.“That’s what’s going to happen,” he added, predicting that with “litigation” the results could be unknown for “years,” perhaps forever. “Smart people may know it. Stupid people may not.”As is often the case, Trump dashed off his attention-hoovering tweet at an opportune moment Thursday morning. The worst economic decline ever recorded in U.S. history had just been announced. An aid package to save tens of millions of consumers was stuck in a deadlock. The rampant pandemic at the core of the problem was spiraling further out of control. And his poll numbers were floundering just three months away from the election.
[...]
Jared Kushner, Trump’s senior adviser and son-in-law, even raised alarm in liberal circles in May when he told Time magazine that he could not “commit one way or the other” to holding the election on Nov. 3, the date that is set by law. “Right now that’s the plan,” he said, later clarifying that there had not been any “discussions” inside the White House about changing Election Day.
Indeed, each time Trump or anyone in his circle walks up to the line of saying the election may be delayed or that the president may refuse to leave office — nightmare scenarios frequently bandied about in progressive circles and joked about on late-night shows — they always back off.
“Certainly, if I don't win, I don't win,” Trump told Fox News’ Harris Faulkner in a June interview. “You go on, do other things.”
And then he said he doesn't kid. He's just sucking up oxygen and trying to stay afloat.During one stretch earlier this year, the president would often make playful suggestions about staying in office beyond the constitutional limit of two terms, sarcastically tweeting and joking about it at rallies.
No he hasn't.Any time one of Trump’s critics has suggested that the president might be serious about these authoritarian ponderings, MAGA world has attacked. The reaction was most pronounced in April, when Biden, Trump’s presumptive 2020 Democratic rival, predicted Trump would try to find a way to push back the November election.
“Mark my words,” Biden said at a fundraiser. “I think he is going to try to kick back the election somehow; come up with some rationale why it can't be held."
Trump campaign spokesman Tim Murtaugh lashed out at the time, calling the remarks “the incoherent, conspiracy theory ramblings of a lost candidate who is out of touch with reality. President Trump has been clear that the election will happen on November 3rd.”
Which is exactly what he's been doing all his life, only now it fucking matters, because he's the president of the United States of America, ffs.On Fox News that night, anchors and guests castigated and mocked Biden for the remarks, saying he was deranged and trying to instill fear in the electorate.
[...]
Three days later, Trump himself explicitly shot down the prospect: “I never even thought of changing the date of the election. Why would I do that?”
Yet Thursday’s tweet appeared to put the concept back in the realm of possibility — despite the fact that Trump can’t unilaterally move the election.
[...]
Trump himself Thursday night even disavowed any desire to delay the election, describing a desired image of himself on election night “standing, hopefully hand held high, big victory.”
It’s “not real.” said a former Trump adviser who remains close to the campaign, claiming no one has spoken about it. The person described it as Trump just tweeting something without giving it much thought or discussion.
Bingo.[A] former Trump adviser heard an administration official had contacted an outside attorney to see whether Trump could halt the U.S. Postal Service from sending out mail-in ballots, citing attempted fraud or foreign interference.
[...]
The point, said Stephen L. Miller, conservative media critic and contributor to The Spectator, is “to get you and an entire media apparatus to write about it instead of GDP crashing, or John Lewis’ funeral, which Trump should be attending instead of tweeting, and like usual, it worked.”
[...]
And Trump had doused yet another media cycle with his own narrative — rinse, repeat.
Ripple effects
Donald Trump may go down in history books as the man who destroyed America. If someone had actually wanted to destroy this country via biological warfare, their timing was perfect with Trump in office. Oh, look. I'm starting a conspiracy theory.The coronavirus recession is taking an axe to revenue streams for key government programs like Social Security, Medicare and highway infrastructure.
The high rate of unemployment during the pandemic means fewer payroll taxes are being collected to fund Medicare and Social Security, and less driving means the federal gas tax isn’t bringing in as much money for the Highway Trust Fund as it normally does.
The Hill
So I hope Democrats have a better idea. I have one: stop funding Space Force and endless wars and bailouts of huge corporations and banks. Tax the ultra-wealthy at reasonable rates such as were in place before Ronald Reagan and crack down on off-shore tax evasion. You get the picture.Republicans are hoping to tackle the issue by including legislation called the TRUST Act in the COVID-19 relief package under negotiation with Democrats.
The bill, sponsored by Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), would require Congress to appoint bipartisan committees to come up with plans for each ailing fund starting next year. If the committees can agree on a plan, they would receive an up-or-down vote in each chamber.
[...]
Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles, who both co-chaired the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform in 2010, are among those who have endorsed Romney’s bill.
"While most people in Washington would prefer to put – or leave! – their heads in the sand, the TRUST Act would create a truly bipartisan process to save these important programs," they said in a joint statement.
Experts from the Brookings Institution and the Progressive Policy Institute also gave their nod of approval, as did CRFB.
But House Democrats aren’t on board, posing a considerable roadblock to the bill’s inclusion in a final COVID-19 relief measure.
[...]
House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal (D-Mass.) said he was "troubled" by the bill, saying closed-door commissions could not be trusted to protect vulnerable beneficiaries.
"In 2010, a similar closed-door commission made cuts to the Cost-of-Living Adjustment (COLA); hiked the retirement age (which is an across-the-board benefit cut for all retirees); changed the Social Security benefit formula to reduce the amount people receive each month; and made cuts to Medicare that forced seniors and individuals with disabilities to pay more for drugs, doctor visits, and hospital care by increasing cost-sharing like co-pays," he said in a statement on the TRUST Act.
Don't expect the federal coronavirus response to get better
You're as shocked as I am, no doubt.The Trump administration abruptly required hospitals to stop reporting COVID data to CDC and use a new reporting system set up by a contractor. Two weeks in, the promised improvements in the data have yet to materialize.
NPR
A feature, not a bug.Michael Caputo, HHS assistant secretary for public affairs, framed the switch at the time in a statement to NPR as a technology upgrade from "the CDC's old data gathering operation," which "just cannot keep up with this pandemic."
"The new faster and complete data system is what our nation needs to defeat the coronavirus," Caputo wrote.
[...]
Instead, the public data hub created under the new system is updated erratically and is rife with inconsistencies and errors, data analysts say.
Surprise, surprise.The data now available to the public appears to be neither faster nor more complete.
[...]
The established system was disrupted by a memo dated July 10, issued to hospitals by HHS. In the memo, HHS took the unusual step of instructing hospitals to stop reporting the capacity data to CDC, and to instead use a reporting platform developed recently by the private contractor, TeleTracking. As NPR has reported, the details of how the contract was awarded to TeleTracking are unclear.
You see where they're going with this.Lawmakers plan to grill members of the White House Coronavirus Task Force about the reporting change, and what's being done to ensure the data remains public and reliable, in a Friday morning hearing of the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus. Several House subcommittees have already launched an investigation into to the data change.
The delays and problems with data on the availability of beds, ventilators and safety equipment could have profound consequences as infections and deaths soar throughout most of the country, public health experts say.
[...]
For instance, knowing which hospitals have the capacity to take on new patients is critical.
[...]
When HHS took over the collection and reporting of this hospital capacity data, it promised to update "multiple times each day." Later, the agency walked that back to say it would be updated daily.
[...]
On Thursday, an HHS spokesperson told NPR via e-mail, "We will be updating the site to make it clear that the estimates are only updated weekly."
[...]
CDC posted estimates derived from the data to show an approximation of the actual availability of ICU beds, accounting for the lags and gaps in reporting. These estimates — promised on the HHS website — have not been updated in over a week.
By contrast, the CDC estimates was updated three times a week. And while the data sent to CDC was vetted for accuracy before being posted publicly, the data sent to the new platform appears to be posted as it is received and contains multiple anomalies, analysts note.
[...]
Still, hospitals are required to report this data daily to TeleTracking, either directly or via their state health department. Failure to do so could affect the state's access to remdesivir, one of the few drugs that's shown promise in treating severe COVID-19 cases, according to the HHS guidance to hospitals and the American Hospital Association.
[...]
Hospitals got only a few days notice of the change and scrambled to adapt.
[...]
The only information about hospital capacity that appears to be updated regularly on the HHS Protect site is the percentage of hospitals that have submitted data in the past seven days.
[...]
Public health groups objected to the change as unnecessary and burdensome for hospitals in the midst of a pandemic. Open government organizations demanded that HHS rescind its guidance and return control of the data to CDC. On Tuesday, 22 state attorneys general added to the chorus of those demanding that HHS reverse course.
[...]
[A] higher level of compliance is not the whole picture, according to a CDC official familiar with the former reporting system. The tallies do not include certain categories of hospitals, including rehabilitation or veterans' hospitals, which have suffered COVID-19 outbreaks. These rehabilitation and veterans' hospitals had previously been included in the data reported by CDC.
Another feature: completely useless data.The organizers of the tracking website COVID Exit Strategy initially found the data provided by HHS Protect to be unusable. "It had some states like Rhode Island having an inpatient bed utilization of above 100%," says site co-founder Ryan Panchadsaram, "And Rhode Island is a state where hospitalizations are quite low for COVID."
The article includes specific data anomalies in various states. Continue reading by clicking here.The site stopped pulling hospital capacity data from HHS Protect for several days but resumed the reporting on July 30, using a dataset from HealthData.gov with a "user beware" warning that reads in part: "For the time being, we recommend cross-checking these numbers with the ones reported on a state's official website to get an accurate picture."
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
Ohio's GOP
[Ohio state representative Larry] Householder was arrested last week in connection with a $60 million racketeering conspiracy involving a 2019 nuclear power plant bailout bill that he helped pass, allegedly in exchange for payments. On Thursday, a federal grand jury indicted Householder with conspiracy to commit racketeering, a charge punishable by up to 20 years in prison.
[...]
The Republican-controlled House did not vote on whether to expel Householder from the legislature, WOSU reports, and he is running unopposed for reelection in the fall.
NPR
And, I presume, a lot of people hustling for legal representation.Federal agents arrested Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder and four others Tuesday as part of a $60 million racketeering and bribery investigation that prosecutors described as one of the largest public corruption cases in Ohio history.
[...]
The criminal complaint accused Householder of creating an enterprise, Generation Now Ohio, to collect large sums of money for him and others involved in the conspiracy and to advocate for the bailout of the nuclear plants. Some of the money also was spent on Householder's political campaign, as well as on the campaigns of allies, the complaint said.
[...]
"Unlike campaign or PAC contributions, they were not regulated, not reported, not subject to public scrutiny – and the enterprise freely spent the bribe payments to further the enterprise’s political interests and to enrich themselves.”
[...]
All the charges are tied to what federal prosecutors said was a criminal enterprise dedicated to securing a bailout for two nuclear power plants in northern Ohio owned by FirstEnergy Solutions of Akron. The bailout is expected to cost the state's utility ratepayers $1 billion.
A criminal complaint unsealed Tuesday described the effort as "Householder's Enterprise" and stated that he and his associates secretly used money from an energy company to expand their political power, enrich themselves and conceal their criminal conspiracy.
[...]
Also charged Tuesday were four lobbyists and Republican operatives:
Matthew Borges, former Ohio Republican Party chair and consultant; Neil Clark, founder of Grant Street Consultants and once called by USA Today “one of the best connected lobbyists in Columbus"; Juan Cespedes, co-founder of The Oxley Group in Columbus; Jeffrey Longstreth, adviser to Householder; Generation Now Ohio, a nonprofit that federal prosecutors link to Longstreth and Householder, also faces racketeering charges.DeVillers said the arrests Tuesday will not end the investigation and that agents will continue to interview potential witnesses and execute search warrants in the coming days and weeks. "We're not done with this case," he said. "There are a lot of federal agents knocking on a lot of doors."
Cincinatti.com
How stinky is that? Giving your criminal enterprise a name that will taint a legitimate nonprofit.The Generation Now named in the complaint is unrelated to the Cincinnati-based workforce development nonprofit of the same name.
Despicable.DeVillers said Generation Now was set up as a social welfare entity, which allowed it to avoid disclosing its donors. But he said "not a dime of the money" that flowed to the group went to social programs.
And now he's known as a racketeer. Soon he'll be known as a felon.Chris Hoffman, special agent in charge of the FBI's Cincinnati office, which led the [two-year-long] investigation, said the charges Tuesday represent "a shameful betrayal of the public trust."
[...]
The 82-page criminal complaint alleges Generation Now received about $60 million in exchange for Householder and other’s help in the passage of House Bill 6 and the blocking of a ballot initiative to overturn the legislation.
[...]
Householder also came under FBI scrutiny during his first term as Ohio's House speaker from 2001 to 2004. The FBI launched an investigation in 2004 into allegations that Householder and his aides took kickbacks from vendors and traded legislation for campaign contributions. The investigation ended in 2006 with no charges filed.
[...]
His rough-and-tumble approach to politics was reflected often in the criminal complaint unsealed Tuesday. In a conversation recorded by the FBI in January 2018, Householder discussed how he would use Generation Now money to help political allies.
According to an excerpt of the conversation in the complaint, when he was reminded that some in the House supported another candidate for the Speaker's job, Householder replied, "Yeah, we can f*** them over later."
[...]
Householder is one of the biggest names in Ohio politics and has been a major player for years in the state's Republican Party. He's known as an aggressive fundraiser who doesn't shy away from hardball tactics on the campaign trail or in the statehouse.
Thursday, July 30, 2020
Obama at John Lewis funeral
I still can't forget that Obama paved the way for the shit we're going through because when he took over from war criminal George W Bush, he said, in essence, "Forget about it." Don't look back, move forward, he said. If you don't address the evil behind you, it will overtake you again.
On the bright side, Trump wasn't there. The other ex-presidents were (except Jimmy Carter, who sent something to be read because he's way too old to risk going out into public spaces). Trump wasn't at either Elijah Cummings' service or John McCain's. I've been a little obsessed about the idea that in the future, if we have one, it will be hard to stomach having Trump attending things with all the other ex-presidents. Maybe he simply won't.
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
Impeachment or 25th Amendment - however you can do it
This asshat needs to go.
Postpone the election, but make sure that we get the results on the same day.
Fucking nutjob.
Postpone the election, but make sure that we get the results on the same day.
Fucking nutjob.
Nobody likes him
It won't happen, but it's a good idea.
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
When it gets so bad the groveling GOP finds a spine
They're starting to test the waters, because they're beginning to realize how likely it is that Trump's going down for the count.
And this jackass's as well...
Ooooh, bold statement. (Eyeroll)House Republicans strongly pushing back on the idea that Election Day could be delayed after President Trump raised the prospect in a Tuesday tweet.
[...]
“I am dropping off my primary election ballot today. I feel safe and secure in doing so. @realDonaldTrump - no reason to mess with our election date. States must ensure procedures to monitor accuracy with federal oversight,” Rep. Paul Mitchell (R-Mich.) tweeted.
Freshman Rep. Dusty Johnson (R-S.D.) said be believes a change would compromise the election’s legitimacy.
[...]
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said that “he understands the president’s concerns” about mail-in voting,” but that "the current election date should remain.
The Hill
Not only should we NOT, it would be impossible to not have it on the day we have it.“We should go forward with our election. No way should we ever not hold an election on the day that we have it," McCarthy said.
And may that day be McConnell's political demise.Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Thursday said the Nov. 3 general election will not be postponed, shooting down President Trump’s suggestion on Twitter that the election could be postponed to safeguard against mail-in ballot fraud.
“Never in the history of the Congress, through wars, depressions and the Civil War have we ever not had a federally scheduled election on time, and we’ll find a way to do that again this Nov. 3,” McConnell told Max Winitz, the lead evening anchor at WNKY 40.
When Winitz asked whether the Nov. 3 election date is “set in stone,” McConnell responded, “That’s right.”
“We’ll cope with whatever the situation is and have the election on Nov. 3 as already scheduled.”
And this jackass's as well...
Another bold statement.Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), one of Trump’s close allies, said that while election fraud is a concern, it does not warrant postponing the elections.
[...]
“In South Carolina, we had a very large primary in June and were able to do it in person. I think we can be able to able to safely vote in person in November,” he said.
“I think delaying the election probably wouldn’t be a good idea,” he added.
If you can't join 'em, beat 'em
If you can't stop the ruling, don't fund it.
..but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.The House on Thursday passed an amendment aimed at overturning the Trump administration’s transgender military ban.
The measure, from Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.) and 28 Democratic co-sponsors, was approved by voice vote as part of a group of a few dozen amendments passed while the House considers a $1.3 trillion spending package that includes the fiscal year 2021 defense appropriations bill.
The amendment would block the use of funds to implement the Pentagon’s transgender service policy, which says transgender people can only serve in the military if they do so in their biological sex or get a waiver.
The House approved the same amendment last year, but it did not survive negotiations with the Senate and White House to be signed into law in the final spending bill.
Since then, the military has granted just one waiver to allow a transgender person to serve openly. A report to Congress last month also said that as of February, the military had only considered two waivers total and that 19 people were medically disqualified from enlisting or commissioning as an officer because of the policy.
[...]
“The Department of Defense should not be spending taxpayer money on a politically motivated policy that keeps qualified people out of the military, particularly when the military continues to face enlistment shortfalls,” Aaron Belkin, director of the Palm Center, said this week in a statement on the House amendment.
The Hill
Your joke for the day
It should have been the other way around.
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
Desperate
He both wants to suppress voting by refusing vote by mail AND delay the election so more people can vote? He'll argue anything. Both sides if it occurs to him. Are all narcissists like this? (The one I know is. Just wants to argue and tell you that it's you who's wrong.)
You wish.
Thankfully, he doesn't have the power to change the election date. It's a federal law that require an act of Congress to change. He would if he could.
Also, absentee voting IS mail-in voting.
UPDATE:
Uhhhhh...Matthew?
UPDATE:
Looks like the GOP are figuring that out for themselves.
UPDATE:
You wish.
Thankfully, he doesn't have the power to change the election date. It's a federal law that require an act of Congress to change. He would if he could.
Also, absentee voting IS mail-in voting.
UPDATE:
Uhhhhh...Matthew?
UPDATE:
UPDATE:
Serpico II
He should expect to find another career.A longtime Los Angeles police SWAT sergeant is suing the LAPD, alleging the unit is run by a “SWAT Mafia” of veteran cops who encourage the use of deadly force and ostracized him for revealing its behavior.
Sgt. Tim Colomey, who spent 11 years as a SWAT supervisor until last November, filed a whistleblower lawsuit alleging retaliation for revealing that a group of veteran officers controlled the tactical unit’s operations and membership and punished him and others for speaking out.
Colomey said in the lawsuit filed Tuesday in Los Angeles County Superior Court that those leaders, who dubbed themselves the “SWAT Mafia,” “glamorize the use of lethal force, and direct the promotions of officers who share the same values while maligning the reputations of officers who do not.”
[...]
Colomey alleges that commanders “are aware of the serious and systemic problems that are linked to the SWAT Mafia’s power, but they have all turned a blind eye to these problems,” and that it has poisoned the entire unit.
LA Times
Frank Serpico empathizes. Who was driving that car?The SWAT accusations from Colomey come just a year after he was featured in a department podcast, “Born in Boston: A SWAT Story,” in which he told of surviving a near-fatal injury to rise to be a SWAT leader. He was riding with a partner, now Deputy Chief Dominic Choi, pursuing an armed suspect when he was hit by a car during a foot chase.
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
There goes Ruth again
You KNOW they thought she had Covid-19.The court said in a statement that the 87-year-old Ginsburg underwent a minimally invasive procedure to “revise a bile duct stent” at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. The stent had originally been placed last August, when Ginsburg was treated for a cancerous tumor on her pancreas.
[...]
The procedure follows another one earlier this month at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore to clean out the stent. Ginsburg had gone to the hospital after experiencing fever and chills and was treated for a possible infection.
Politico
Ginsburg, the oldest justice on the nine-member court, announced earlier this month that she is receiving chemotherapy for a recurrence of cancer. The liberal justice, who has had four earlier bouts with cancer, said her treatment so far has succeeded in reducing lesions on her liver.
Still tagging accounts without checking to see if he's got the right one
Does the airplane even HAVE a twitter account?
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
Pulling troops out of Germany
The Pentagon will begin shifting thousands of U.S. troops out of Germany “within weeks” and move the headquarters of U.S. European Command from the country to Belgium, Defense Secretary Mark Esper announced on Wednesday.
Some 11,900 personnel will be moved from Germany, taking U.S. forces there from 36,000 to 24,000. Roughly 5,600 of the troops will be repositioned elsewhere in Europe — including Belgium, Italy, Poland and “opportunities to put forces into the Baltics” — while some 6,400 would come back to the United States.
The Hill
Every. Single. Time.Lawmakers in both parties are panning the Trump administration’s plan to pull nearly 12,000 U.S. troops out of Germany.
Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) blasted the move as a “grave error,” while Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) said President Trump shows a “lack of strategic understanding.” “Once more, now with feeling: U.S. troops aren’t stationed around the world as traffic cops or welfare caseworkers – they’re restraining the expansionary aims of the world’s worst regimes, chiefly China and Russia,” Sasse said in a statement.
Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin “are reckless – and this withdrawal will only embolden them,” Sasse added. “We should be leading our allies against China and Russia, not abandoning them. Withdrawal is weak."
[...]
But Trump has repeatedly cast the move as punishment for Germany not fulfilling NATO’s goal of countries spending at least 2 percent of their gross domestic product on defense.
On Wednesday, moments after Esper argued the drawdown is about strategy, Trump reiterated that he is doing it to penalize Berlin.
The Hill
[Senator Mitt] Romney offered an amendment to the Senate’s version of the annual defense policy bill that sought to prevent a Germany withdrawal, but the measure was not granted a vote.
The House’s version of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), though, does include a bipartisan amendment aimed at blocking a drawdown by requiring several certifications before it can move forward. The two versions of the bill now need to be reconciled.
Trumpland isn't giving up
They've got 63 million doses of hydroxychloroquine to get rid of.
By the way, when was America's Frontline Doctors formed?
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
At least THAT was smart.Vice President Pence on Tuesday met with doctors from the viral video that social media platforms have removed for spreading misleading information about coronavirus.
The doctors, who are members of the group America’s Frontline Doctors, posted on Twitter promoting the anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine, which has not been proven to effectively treat COVID-19, to Pence during a meeting.
Pence's meeting with the doctors came after the group’s physicians spoke in a Monday video in front of the Supreme Court building, claiming that masks are not needed to prevent COVID-19 spread, and that hydroxychloroquine was a cure.
[...]
Simone Gold, the leader of America’s Frontline Doctors, tweeted that the doctors were requesting the administration help in “empowering doctors to prescribe hydroxychloroquine without political obstruction.”
[...]
The most prominent physician in the video, Stella Immanuel, who has made unfounded claims about alien DNA being used in medical treatment, was not present at the meeting with Pence.
The Hill
Why do they need help from the federal government? No one is standing over doctors to prevent them from prescribing the drug. (Yet.) I think Team Trump contacted these doctors to put them up to this BS, and I think this confirms it...Another doctor, James Todaro, posted that the group is “doing everything to restore the power of medicine back to doctors.”
“Doctors everywhere should be able to prescribe Hydroxychloroquine without repercussions or obstruction,” he tweeted.
Any proper meeting by a vice president of practicing physicians to discus Covid-19 would have included doctors who are against prescribing hydroxychloroquine and for economic shutdowns.Jenny Beth Martin, the co-founder of Tea Party Patriots, the group that promoted Monday’s press conference, also confirmed the meeting on Twitter.
[...]
The vice president’s schedule listed the meeting as a session with “practicing physicians on COVID-19,” CNN reported. It’s not immediately clear how many patients the doctors have treated.
Both the Tea Party Patriots and America’s Frontline Doctors are advocating against any additional economic shutdowns to prevent coronavirus spread.
And he's going to blame the disastrous loss of lives on Democrats and scientific experts, saying they're blocking him from doing it."With hydroxy, all I want to do is save lives," Trump said. "All I want to do is save lives."
By the way, when was America's Frontline Doctors formed?
Continue reading.Dr. Simone Gold is a doctor and lawyer in Los Angeles who publicly takes credit as the founder of “America’s Frontline Doctors,” a group whose website was set up 12 days ago, and amusingly appears to be down right now.
Gold has been a regular on the right-wing media circuit during the pandemic, appearing on Fox News on May 21, arguing that patients are being harmed by the shutdowns taking place across the country.
Gold also appeared on PragerU’s YouTube channel back in May, insisting that more people will die from the lockdowns than from the coronavirus pandemic, and has done YouTube videos for the Tea Party Patriots Foundation, the nonprofit co-founded by Jenny Beth Martin.
[...]
In short, [America’s Frontline Doctors are] pro-Trump ideologues who are pushing unproven science during a pandemic that’s so far infected over 4.3 million Americans and killed more than 148,000.
Strangely enough, “America’s Frontline Doctors” also appear to have ties to the Trump regime. In fact, one person who spoke at the press conference on Monday was at the White House for a roundtable discussion just a couple of weeks ago and Trump promoted multiple videos from the group on his Twitter account. It’s also no surprise that many of them have appeared on Fox News in recent months, the president’s favorite TV channel.
[...]
Below, we have a rundown of some of the people who spoke at yesterday’s press conference for “America’s Frontline Doctors” and how they make their living during this pandemic. Most are actually doctors, but not all of them are currently practicing medicine—like the guy who currently makes his money promoting bitcoin.
Gizmodo
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
We'll never hear the end of it
Is his doctor Trump's doctor? Or Stella Immanuel?Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) said Wednesday he will take an anti-malaria drug that experts have warned doesn’t treat the coronavirus after he tested positive for the virus.
"My doctor and I are all in," Gohmert said about hydroxychloroquine during a Wednesday evening interview with Fox News, according to Newsweek.
"I got a text before I came on from a friend doctor who just found out he had it, and he started the regimen too — zinc and hydroxychloroquine. And that will start in a day or two, so thank you," the congressman added.
The Hill
Unless Gohmert dies, he - and the Trumpets - will claim hydroxychloroquine cured him.
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
Another milestone for the US
Another milestone for Shell Oil Co., too.
I'm guessing they won't be supporting a Trump reelection. Well, in typical corporation mode, they'll contribute to BOTH campaigns, but Biden's will no doubt get the lion's share.
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
Wednesday, July 29, 2020
Trump campaign has pulled out of advertising in Michigan
And it's not like they don't have enough money.
Sad!President Donald Trump’s campaign is not currently running television or radio ads in Michigan and its allied super PAC has been dark in the state for most of July, a possible indication that the key Upper Midwestern battleground is beginning to fall out of reach.
The Trump campaign stopped running ads in Michigan last week, while it continues to advertise in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, according to the ad tracking firm Medium Buying. America First Action, the pro-Trump super PAC, has not aired advertising there since July 2 and its latest flight that ties Joe Biden to the “Defund the Police” movement is not scheduled to air in Michigan. Instead, the spot is running in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Arizona and North Carolina.
[...]
A Trump official noted the campaign has reserved time in Michigan for the homestretch. “Biden can continue to spend a million a week there if he wants to,” the aide said.
[...]
Whereas the Biden campaign doubled its total advertising in Michigan from June to July, Trump reduced its allocation there by more than half the amount over the same period. After spending $2.5 million in June, the president’s team shrunk its Michigan budget to under $1 million in July.
[...]
“The numbers speak for themselves and the advertising dollars speak for themselves,” said a Trump administration official who was involved with the 2016 campaign. “The campaign thinks they have a better shot in Pennsylvania and that’s why they are matching Biden on advertising there.”
[...]
“The numbers are dismal,” said one GOP pollster familiar with internal data tracking the state.
[...]
Trump has not led in a single public poll of Michigan all year.
McClatchy
Hello, Susan
Oh my goodness! Are they TRYING to elect their opponent?
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
Amen
Trump can talk shit all he wants, but the "others" know this was hurting - not helping - Republican prospects in November.
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