Fascism

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The former senior CIA official once in charge of the hunt for Osama bin Laden has spent the summer calling for the slaughter of his fellow Americans.

Michael Scheuer calls Black Lives Matter a “terrorist organization” and a “semi-human mob.” On his blog and his podcast, Scheuer rages against a widespread, treasonous conspiracy targeting not only President Trump but the fundamental character of the American republic. It deserves “punishment... we’ve not seen before in this country.” 

Kyle Rittenhouse, the 17-year old charged with murder for shooting demonstrators at a Kenosha, Wisconsin, protest, is a “young hero.” If America is lucky, Scheuer wrote last week, “Rittenhouse’s necessary, patriotic, and constitutional actions will power the formation of militias across the United States.” In July, he wrote that “loyal Americans know their domestic enemies, as well as their locations, in detail, and will be able to act swiftly to eliminate them and the threat they pose.”

Scheuer’s advocacy of violence follows a long trajectory. In December, he endorsed the increasingly violent QAnon conspiracy movement, which the FBI has called a potential wellspring of domestic terrorism. Those who deny QAnon’s unhinged hallucinations are, to Scheuer, “coup-ists [and] insurrectionists.” Last month, Scheuer claimed vindication against critics when Trump seemed to acknowledge QAnon. Scheuer has long been comfortable with violence. His career-making 2004 book Imperial Hubris argued that America would need to wage a far bloodier war, including the destruction of civilian infrastructure, unless it divests its imperial role in the Mideast. Sixteen years later, Scheuer’s enemy is domestic. “The only thing I would be upset about if it came to war is that not enough Democrats would get killed,” he said on his podcast in July.

Counterterrorism experts have long since written Scheuer off as a crank. Yet Scheuer’s advocacy of political violence looks disturbingly like a harbinger. Trump’s one-time consigliere Roger Stone urged Trump to declare martial law and jail his critics if he loses the November election. Ally Michael Caputo, now at the Department of Health and Human Services, reportedly invented a left-wing insurrection on a Facebook Live chat. And over the weekend, Trump endorsed federal agents shooting dead a suspect in the killing of a right-wing protester. “That’s the way it has to be, there has to be retribution when you have crime like this,” he told Fox News, echoing a point he made earlier in the summer.

Michael Scheuer Hunted Bin Laden for CIA. Now He Wants Americans Dead.

• Where do they find these people??
  

[Admin]

Trump's election strategy:

• He either wins, if he loses it's because of voter fraud
  
• He doesn't commit to a peaceful transmission of power
  
• He wages a campaign against mail-in voting because more Democrats are likely to vote that way
  
• The Republican party is already waging multiple lawsuits in multiple states against mail-in voting
  
• There is no evidence mail-in voting is susceptible to fraud (see below)
  
• One reason for the months long campaign against mail-in voting is to discourage it and there is evidence this works
  
• Trump wants to rush the Supreme Court vacancy so that it's more likely to side with him in a contested election
  
• There is plenty of evidence Russia is interfering in favor of Trump, according to Trump appointee FBI director Christopher Wray. But Trump denies this and attacks Wray instead
  
• Doctored videos of Biden
  
• Holding multiple political rallies that are a public health risk and flouting local guidelines
  

There is no evidence mail-in voting is susceptible to fraud

• Trump's own voter fraud commission was disbanded as they didn't find any evidence
  
• Trump FDI appointee Christopher Wray argues there is no evidence
  
• Ultra-conservative Heritage Foundation says there is no voter fraud with mail-in voting
  
• Yet Meddows attacks Wray
  
• Trump argues that absentee voting is very different from mail-in voting, it's not
  
• Mail-in voting is fine in Florida, because there is a Republican Governor
  

[Admin]

This is worth contemplating, because in this election year we are grappling with something entirely new. The president, the Republican Party, and its campaign machine are collectively seeking to create a completely false picture of the world. This isn’t just a matter of wishful thinking or a few white lies. The president’s campaign staff needs voters to believe that

• the pandemic is over, or else that it never mattered; 
  
• that 200,000 people did not really die; that schools aren’t closed; 
  
• that shops aren’t boarded up; 
  
• that nothing much happened to the economy; 
  
• that America is ever more respected around the world; 
  
• that climate change isn’t real; 
  
• that the U.S. has no legitimate protesters, only violent thugs who have been paid by secretive groups. 
  

This fantasy has to be repeated every day, in multiple forms, on Fox News, in GOP Facebook ads, on websites like RedState. Inevitably, it will affect people’s brains...

The adherents of the QAnon cult may have literally been driven past the point of reason. In order to make sense of the world they can see all around them, they have created an elaborate and obviously false explanation—that an omniscient Trump is fighting a cabal of deep-state satanists and pedophiles. No wonder Republicans, instead of shunning QAnon believers, are working to elect some of them to Congress in November. They genuinely serve a function, helping Trump supporters navigate the gap between the reality they live in and the fiction they see on Fox and Facebook.

Looking at this bizarre moment in a longer lens can be quite sobering. Parallel situations are hard to come by, and I can think of no similar election to take place in any democracy, no moment when Danes or Spaniards were forced to choose between reality and fiction. The only historical parallels come, inappropriately, from Stalin’s Soviet Union, Maoist China, and other regimes that created elaborate propaganda versions of the world and then forced people to pretend they were true. But those alternative realities were backed up by violence. America does not have that kind of police state. There are no mass arrests or concentration camps for political dissidents. Nobody is forcing people to swallow the Republican Party fantasy. The decision to do so remains purely voluntary.

Lying for Trump Comes With a Cost - The Atlantic

[Admin]

Wallace, the debate moderator, asked Trump to disavow and condemn white supremacists. He didn’t do it, instead merely telling the Proud Boys group to “stand by” while criticizing left-wing movements like antifa. Set aside, if you can, the moral failure of Trump refusing to denounce white supremacists. That’s horrible enough. But he’s the commander in chief, and not condemning white supremacists is a dereliction of duty — since they are the greatest domestic terrorist threat to the United States.

“Racially motivated violent extremism,” mostly from white supremacists, has made up most of the recent domestic terrorist threats, FBI Director  Christopher Wray told the House Homeland Security Committee this month. The Trump-friendly Department of Homeland Security has drafted memos making the same point. And the State Department has, for the first time ever, designated white supremacist groups as terrorists.

There’s a reason Trump’s own administration makes that case. The past few years have seen mass shootings perpetrated by white nationalists in the US, and their danger to the homeland has of late surpassed that of radical Islamic groups like al-Qaeda and ISIS (though those groups still remain dangerous). To think of white supremacy, then, is to think of an ideology that animates a major national security risk.

Yet when confronted with the chance to shout it down, Trump didn’t. That’s wrong on its own, but it’s also shocking to see the president not denounce a threat to millions of Americans. Worse now, the one specific white supremacist group he was asked to denounce — the Proud Boys — are already celebrating that moment. “Trump basically said to go fuck them up!” one group leader said after that debate moment..

Who won the presidential debate? 3 winners and 4 losers from the first Trump-Biden debate. - Vox

[Admin]

Some developments:

• Trump still doesn't condemn white supremacists or any proud boys (he claims not to know them like he claimed not to know David Duke a couple of years ago), surprise, surprise..
  
• Those proud boys take Trumps "Stand down and stand by" as an order and a recruiting tool. Add to that Trumps exhortation that the elections are rigged and calling on his people to go to the polling boots and you have, at the minimum, voter intimidation. 
  
• A DHS threat assessment report that was supposed to come out in the spring (summer at the latest) covering internal and external threats pointed to white supremacists and Russian interference as the biggest security threats. A whistleblower already argued that Ken Cuccinelli interfered to get that language to change and drafts have shown altered language (see below), and now the report simply doesn't come out..
  
• Texas Governor is making one ballot drop-off site per county available, a blatant act of voter suppression (see below), as for instance there is now just a single place for the whole of Houston (good luck if you don't have a car..).
  

All three drafts state that white supremacist extremists are the deadliest threat. However, the placement and language about white supremacy in three versions of the DHS draft documents differ slightly. The earliest available version of the "State of the Homeland Threat Assessment 2020" drafts reads: "We judge that ideologically-motivated lone offenders and small groups will pose the greatest terrorist threat to the Homeland through 2021, with white supremacist extremists presenting the most lethal threat."

White supremacy is 'most lethal threat' to the US, DHS draft assessment says - CNNPolitics

On Thursday, Abbott backtracked on his earlier order and issued a new executive order only allowing counties to offer voters a single place to return their ballots. Abbott’s order also said officials had to let official poll-watchers inspect the process. Abbott’s order quickly drew outcry and accusations of voter suppression. Texas already severely limits mail-in voting to those who are 65 and older, or who meet a select few other requirements. The state has aggressively opposed a slew of lawsuits seeking to ease those restrictions amid the pandemic. Texas has seen massive growth among Hispanic and other minority voters in recent years, and many of the restrictions in place are seen as a blatant effort to preserve white political power. Harris county clerk Chris Hollins said the new proclamation issued by Abbott “will result in widespread confusion and voter suppression”. “Multiple drop-off locations have been advertised for weeks,” Hollins said in a statement. “Our office is more than willing to accommodate poll watchers at mail ballot drop-off locations. But to force hundreds of thousands of seniors and voters with disabilities to use a single drop-off location in a county that stretches over nearly 2,000 sq miles is prejudicial and dangerous.” Abbott’s Thursday order is the latest in a series of moves Republicans across the country have made to limit how Americans can return their mail-in ballots.

Outrage as Texas governor orders closure of multiple ballot drop-off sites | US news | The Guardian

[Admin]

• 5 years of hate: Trump’s history of encouraging violence, from 2015 to 2020 - Vox
  
• That's a pretty comprehensive and scary list..
  

[Admin]

Ken Klippenstein, D.C. correspondent for The Nation, discussed the implications Monday in an interview with Hill.TV's "Rising" of the police killing of Michael Reinoehl, a self-described Antifa activist who had been suspected of shooting and killing a pro-Trump demonstrator in Portland, Ore. Klippenstein said there was unhappiness in law enforcement circles of the administration's applause for the killing of Reinoehl.

“The folks I know in law enforcement are extremely angry about it because whether or not that's what happened, the message sent to the public is that the marshals and local law enforcement in the FBI that served with them in this operation are just these kind of lawless roving gangs that are going to go out and do the president's bidding,” he told Hill.TV's Krystal Ball. Questions have been raised about whether law enforcement made a real effort to arrest Reinoehl before shooting and killing him. But the killing has been trumpeted by Attorney General William Barr. 

DC correspondent on the death of Michael Reinoehl: 'The folks I know in law enforcement are extremely angry about it' | TheHill

• Encouraging eliminating suspects without due process
  
• Where is Bill Barr about the plot to kidnap and kill two US Governors? He pretended not to know about the FBI investigation when it was well underway. Extremely implausible. And has yet to comment in public about it. 
  

[Admin]

A new executive order from President Trump makes it easier to hire and fire civil servants that work on policy, stripping some protections from career employees before a potential change in administration. Federal employee unions are billing the order as the biggest change to federal workforce protections in a century, converting many federal workers to “at will” employment.  It also makes it easier to hire new employees outside of the competitive process — something critics say could be used to hire policy employees without appropriate experience.

Trump order strips workplace protections from civil servants | TheHill

• Apart from labor rights issue this is clearly yet another attempt to ply government institutions to the will of the President and increase the tools with which independent (or better, competent) officials can be replaced by cronies and yes men.
  

[Admin]

At a rally in Allentown, Pennsylvania, on Tuesday, President Donald Trump said something incredible -- even by his standards. Recounting how his campaign had to move the site of the rally to comply with Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf's Covid-19 protocols, Trump said this: "I'll remember it, Tom. I'm gonna remember it, Tom. 'Hello, Mr. President, this is Governor Wolf, I need help, I need help.' You know what? These people are bad." Let's be very clear what Trump is doing here: He is threatening to withhold federal aid -- or some sort of other assistance -- the next time Pennsylvania needs it because the state's governor, according to the President, made it difficult to find a site to hold a campaign rally. Yes, really. Oh, and by the way, a spokeswoman for Wolf's office insisted to Pittsburgh Tribune-Review that Trump's version of this story is simply wrong -- that the governor's office sent a letter to Trump's campaign earlier in the year requesting that they adhere to social distancing and masks guidelines, but that's it.

The absolutely bonkers threat Donald Trump made this week - CNNPolitics

1. It shows, again, that Trump believes that the federal government is essentially a tool that he can use to reward friends and punish political enemies.
   
2. There's a chilling effect here, other governors will pay attention.
   

[Admin]

According to the White House, president Trump ended the coronavirus pandemic. The one that's still going on. And is affecting up to 83,000 more Americans every day. A press release seen by Politico and other news outlets lists "ending the Covid-19 pandemic" as one of Trump's greatest scientific achievements from his first term in office. The briefing, which was released by the White House Office of Science and Technology, goes on to claim:

From the outset of the Covid-19 pandemic, the Administration has taken decisive actions to engage scientists and health professionals in academia, industry and government to understand, treat, and defeat the disease.

Trump ridiculed for 'desperate' claim that he ended the coronavirus pandemic | indy100

• From the Ministry of Truth..