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May 25, 2020

OPINION by T. KEITH GURNEE

I usually like what Stewart Jenkins writes, but his recent piece about Trump as The Denier in Chief was over-the-top pointed. While President Donald Trump is often guilty of acting nonpresidential and exaggerating his accomplishments, hes gotten a lot of things done, including his timely response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The question is: would Stews candidateJoe Gaffeman Bidendo any better? Its hard to believe how Biden has gotten to where he is today. Despite a sputtering campaign, his exaggerating his record, his penchant for plagiarism, his mental misfires, and his propensity for a constant stream of gaffes the latest a televised response to a black correspondent wherein Biden spat out if you dont support me you aint black! Joe somehow finds himself not only as the de facto nominee of the Democratic Party but even holding a comfortable lead over President Trump in national polls.

Having been a Democrat most of my life, todays Democratic Party is unrecognizable from that which attracted me to it during John F. Kennedys presidency. As a No Party Preference voter today, the Democratic Party left me during the Clinton years. Still, when Joe Biden announced his candidacy for president back in 2019, I had hoped that if any Democrat were to be elected to the presidency, please let it be Joe Biden.

Biden seemed the only choice among legitimate contenders that centrist Democrats, Independents, and disaffected Republicans could get behind. As the most experienced candidate, it looked like it was Joes race to lose. But after reflecting upon his past and during this past year, he not only doesnt appear to be up to the task, but it looks like Bidens having a real problem with the truth. Indeed, this may be Bidens Achilles Heel that too few understand and that could prove to be his undoing.

For example, in April 2019, Biden appeared on The View TV show, looked into the eyes of its viewers, and said We didnt have one single whisper of a scandal under the Obama administration, a statement that he repeated two months later. That statement, in and of itself, was an absolute falsehood. Here are but a few of the scandals that occurred during his term as VP under the Obama administration:

1. The Fast and Furious firearms operation/gunrunning sting of Atty. Gen. Eric Holder that flopped in 2010, allowing 1,400 guns to fall into the hands of Mexican drug cartels, two of which were used to murder a U.S. border agent, only to be followed by a cover-up and stonewalling by the Obama administration.

2. The Obama/Biden administrations failure to act on its proclaimed Syrian Red Line of 2012 when Syria used chemical weapons to kill its own people. That failure directly led to the genesis of ISIS and its murderous activities in beheading Americans and the taking of thousands of innocent civilian lives.

3. The terrorist swap scandal of 2012 when the administration traded five known Islamic terrorists detained in Guantanamo for the deserter Beau Bergdahl, whose desertion led to the deaths of six American soldiers who searched for him.

4. Secretary of State Hilary Clintons Benghazi scandal that resulted in the deaths of four Americans in 2012 followed by another coverup in 2013.

5. The IRS targeting scandal when the IRS was weaponized to harass political groups in 2013, followed by another cover-up.

6. The NSA mass surveillance scandal discovered in 2013 by the leaks of Edwards Snowden.

7. The Russian/Ukrainian invasion scandal of 2014 that the Obama/Biden administration tolerated by sending blankets to the Ukrainians while refusing to send them what they needed to help them resist the Russian invasion and their seizure of Crimea.

8. The Biden Ukrainian scandal that funneled millions of dollars to Joes son Hunter from foreign governments in Ukraine and China while Joe Biden himself openly and successfully urged the Ukraine to fire a high-level official investigating the Bidens connections.

9. The Iran nuclear deal of 2015 which sent millions of U.S. dollars to Iran, which were used to export terrorism by bankrolling Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthi rebels in Yemen while continuing its quest for nuclear weapons.

10. In what could be the biggest scandal of them all, the Obama/Biden administrations FISA abuse scandal of 2016 that weaponized the FBI, the intelligence agencies, and the Justice Department to set up a takedown of an often unpopular but duly elected president. The other shoe has yet to drop on this one.

Then came the Democrats Impeachment disaster earlier this year that Biden openly supported. Showcasing the shamefully poor performances of Adam Schiff, Jerome Nadler, Nancy Pelosi, and Fritz Schumer who put on the weakest of cases, the impeachment trial ended up little more than a popcorn fart. And now comes the revelation that Sen. Biden groped a legislative aide in 1993 who once lived right here in Morro Bay.

Not a trace of scandals Joe? This bundle of snafus under Bidens watch have featured a veritable legacy of scandals. Joe would do better to own up them and apologize for them rather than conveniently forgetting them or sweeping them under the rug.

Today, Biden is still considered as having the best chance to beat Donald Trump. Will democratic and independent voters be willing to overlook the scandals of such a flawed candidate out of their abject hatred of Donald Trump? With Bernie Sanders out of the race, will the Dems lose the enthusiasm of the Progressives who just might stay home instead of voting come election day?

Only time will tell.

See more here:
Joe Biden's problem with the truth - Cal Coast News

A nationwide effort by Democrats is underway in at least 16 states to overturn restrictions on mail-in voting and third-party ballot harvesting. States where suits have been filed include the swing states of Minnesota, Pennsylvania, and Florida.

The effort is being backed by the National Redistricting Foundation, a Democratic group headed by the Obama administrations Attorney General Eric Holder. The suits appear to be funded by Priorities USA, a Democratic super PAC. A Wall Street Journal headline from April read, Biden Campaign Indicates Priorities USA Is Preferred Super PAC Nod from the presumptive Democratic nominee sends a message to top donors on where to focus contributions.

For example, the Pennsylvania lawsuit, funded by Priorities USA, seeks to mandate mail-in ballots, require the counting of votes received by mail after election day, and strike down Pennsylvania prohibitions on ballot harvesting, meaning the third-party mass collection of absentee and mail-in ballots.

The efforts in other states are similar. Democrat lawsuits in Minnesota take a similar, if less direct, path. A suit filed in Minnesota earlier this year by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee seeks to strike down a law prohibiting ballot harvesting.

Last week, conveniently just after Minnesota Democrats failed to get mail-in voting through the state legislature, another suit was filed by the Minnesota Alliance for Retired Americans Educational Fund, the local chapter of D.C.-based political action group Alliance for Retired Americans, a prominent left-wing and union-linked group that supports Democratic causes across the United States. The plaintiffs claim that requiring voters to have a notary public or registered voter witness and sign their absentee ballot is a threat to safety.

Another plaintiff in the same suit is a 24-year-old Yale Law School student, who complains that he cast his Minnesota absentee ballot too late in 2018, which disallowed it from being counted.

Getting rid of Minnesotas rule requiring a witness when casting an absentee ballot and requiring that ballots be received by election day would turn Minnesotas absentee voting system into a de facto mail-in balloting system. Critics allege Minnesotas absentee voting system is already subject to abuse. For example, more than 25,000 Minnesota voters in 2018 had a challenged voter-registration status, meaning something in the states systems flagged them as ineligible to vote. Nevertheless, these voters are allowed to vote absentee and self-certify that they are eligible.

In the 2008 election between former Sens. Norm Coleman, R-Minn., and Al Franken, D-Minn., election judges controversially rejected about 12,000 absentee ballots, and more than 1,000 ineligible felons were still allowed to cast votes in that election. After Coleman initially won by about 700 votes, a recount declared Franken the winner by a mere 312 votes.

Unfortunately, the corporate media has grossly mischaracterized these lawsuits, couching their aims in humanitarian terms. Minnesotas Star Tribune ran a headline titled Older Minnesota voters file suit to change absentee voting rules. The corporate media has conveniently ignored that Democrats are using the coronavirus pandemic to accomplish their longtime goal of overturning much of American election law.

Even more stunning, all 16 lawsuits are being run by Perkins Coie attorney Marc Elias. Elias was chief counsel to both the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee in the 2016 presidential election, and was one of the key figures in the Russiagate conspiracy to remove President Donald Trump from office.

Elias and another Perkins Coie partner, Michael Sussmann, hired the opposition-research firm Fusion GPS to try to create ties between the Trump campaign and Russia. This led to Fusion GPS paying money to former British spy Christopher Steele, who paid money to anonymous Russian sources via a British national named Edward Baumgartner, who had ties to Russia.

These Russian sources, working with Steele and Fusion GPS, came up with the allegations in the so-called Steele dossier, which circulated throughout the highest levels of the Obama administration during the 2016 election. This occurred despite no part of the dossier being anything close to verified. The intelligence agencies had good reason to doubt the dossiers author, and knew it was politically motivated.

Nevertheless, the Obama administrations intelligence agencies used them to spy on the Trump campaign and the Trump transition team.In one specific instance, Democratic lawyers Elias and Sussmann directly worked to plant now-debunked stories in the media about a server in Trump tower communicating with Russias Alfa Bank. Elias has faced no repercussions to date for his role in the Russiagate matter.

In total, Democrats plan to spend tens of millions of dollars on the lawsuits run by Perkins Coie and Elias. The Trump campaign and Republican groups are planning to spend at least $10-$20 million to counter the Democrats efforts.

Original post:
Law Firm That Attempted To Overturn 2016 Election Behind 2020 Lawsuits - The Federalist

Judge Emmet G. Sullivans appointment of an independent attorney suggests that Michael Flynn is not out of the woods yet.Photograph by Charles Dharapak / AP / Shutterstock

Michael Flynn, President Trumps first national-security adviser, pleaded guilty to lying to F.B.I. agents, in December, 2017, in a case brought by the special counsel Robert Mueller. Earlier this month, the Justice Department asked Judge Emmet G. Sullivan, who oversaw the case against Flynn, to dismiss it, on the ground that the F.B.I. had no basis to conduct an interrogation of him. What should Sullivan do? What can he do? Can a judge maintain a prosecution that the governmentthe prosecution itselfrefuses to continue? Can this judge deny the governments motion and just proceed to sentence Flynn? The answers are not entirely clear. But there is a clue about what may happen in an especially dramatic chapter from Sullivans past.

Last week, John Gleeson, a retired federal judge, published an op-ed piece in the Washington Post, denouncing the Justice Departments attempt to dismiss the case. The record reeks of improper political influence, Gleeson wrote. Government motions to dismiss at this stage are virtually unheard of. He offered the court a suggestion: It can appoint an independent attorney to act as a friend of the court, ensuring a full, adversarial inquiry, as the judge in the Flynn case has done in other situations where the department abdicated its prosecutorial role. Sullivan clearly read the piece, because he promptly appointed Gleeson himself, who is now in private practice, to argue against the dismissal of the case against Flynn.

Gleesons passing reference to Sullivans history in other situations as a foe of prosecutorial misconduct is the clue to what may happen this time. It was a reference to a disgraceful episode in the recent history of the Justice Department: the failed prosecution of Senator Ted Stevens, Republican of Alaska. In brief, Stevens was charged with neglecting to report as gifts certain renovations that had been made on his vacation home in Alaska. He was convicted in a trial before Judge Sullivan in 2008, shortly before he lost a bid for a seventh term in the Senate. During and especially after the trial, it came out that prosecutors had withheld a variety of exculpatory material from Stevenss defense. In light of this, Eric Holder, in one of his first acts as Attorney General, in 2009, dropped the prosecution. Not satisfied with simply ending the case, Sullivan ruled that the interest of justice requires the appointment of a non-government disinterested attorneyin that case, it was Henry F. Schuelke III, a Washington lawyerto investigate the prosecutorial misconduct. While Schuelke was conducting his inquiry, Stevens died in a plane crash, and one of the prosecutors committed suicide. (I wrote about the Stevens prosecution saga here.)

In other words, Sullivan has appointed Gleeson to much the same role as he had named Schuelke, a decade earlier. Of course, there is a major difference between the Stevens and Flynn cases. Stevens was about an excess of prosecutorial zeal, while Flynn is about insufficient effort by the Justice Department: cheating to win versus cheating to lose. Nothing has changed on the merits of the case against Flynn, therefore there is no credible explanation for the motion to dismiss, other than there might be some kind of improper behavior going on here, Sam Buell, a professor at Duke Law School and a former federal prosecutor, told me.

The big question for Gleeson, then, is how he will want to proceed with his investigation. He could simply review the Justice Departments pleadings in the case and conclude, as he did in his op-ed piece, that there is no basis for the governments legal conclusionthat the F.B.I.s interrogation of Flynn was justified, and his guilty plea for lying should stand. At that point, Sullivan would have to decide whether to grant the governments motion and end the case, anyway, or proceed to sentence Flynn. (Sullivan could also seek to charge Flynn with contempt for lying in his courtroom about his interactions with the F.B.I.) It would apparently be without precedent for Sullivan to sentence a defendant even though the government has moved to dismiss the case, but that doesnt necessarily mean it cant happen.

Alternatively, Gleeson could ask to proceed much as Schuelke did, and ask Sullivan for permission to examine witnesses to determine why the Justice Department reversed course. (Schuelke took two years and produced a five-hundred-page report about the misconduct in the Stevens case.) An investigation with witnesses would open the door for Gleeson to examine William Barr, the Attorney General, and others in his chain of command to determine if there was any improper influence in the governments decision. Either way, it looks as if Gleeson will move with considerably more dispatch than Schuelke did. In a letter to Sullivan this week, Gleeson wrote that he will make his first report to the court on June 10th.

In the meantime, on Tuesday afternoon, Flynns lawyers asked the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit to order Sullivan to dismiss the case, as the Justice Department requested. In the absence of such an order, which seems unlikely, Gleeson will plow ahead. He said that his submission on June 10th will report any additional factual development I may need before finalizing my argument. This means that he will indicate at that time whether he wants Sullivan to call witnesses before deciding whether to dismiss the case. The judge, for his part, has set a hearing in the case for July 16th, which may turn out to be only the beginning of his inquiry into why the Justice Department tried to drop the case against Flynn.

Read more here:
A Case From a Judges Past May Offer a Clue as to How the Michael Flynn Inquiry Will Proceed - The New Yorker

As far as I can tell, what is now being referred to by Donald Trump and some of his more enthusiastic supporters as "Obamagate" does not involve a discrete scandal. Instead, umbrage is being taken at the fact that, in addition to refusing to throw his attorney general, Eric Holder, under the bus in 2011, Barack Obama did not shed many tears on behalf of right-wing 501(c)(3) groups on the receiving end of extra attention from the IRS or seriously object to the investigation of a presidential candidate he thought unlikely to win office.

Whatever one thinks of these things, there is no "gate" here. The conspiratorial framing is an implicit rejection of Obama's entire presidency, as if every aspect of it, from his famous speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention until the day Donald Trump took the oath of office had been part of a single overarching plot against the American people.

The gate suffix is nearly as old as the original scandal to which it owes in name. As early as 1974, William Safire (whose reputation as an authority on good English has always baffled me) was denouncing the iniquities of "Vietgate," which he would follow up with "Billygate," "Briefingate," "Contragate," "Debategate," and goodness knows how many more without his editors telling him to find another metaphor. The first of these was a reference to the issuing of presidential pardons for draft dodgers, a policy open to criticism but not a common-law offense punishable under any jurisdiction carried out at the behest of a sitting president. Like so many subsequent gates, it did not involve an underlying crime that became the object of a cover-up certainly not a crime as brazen as the burglarizing of a hotel room in the hope of obtaining a dubious advantage in an election whose outcome was never remotely in doubt.

It is astonishing how rare it is to encounter both of these conditions the specific offense and the conspiracy to obscure it from public view fulfilled in the vast gate-related literature. Instead one finds offenses that were never hidden from the world ("Hailgate," a video of white supremacists openly employing the Nazi salute at a conference) or simply crimes against taste ("Donutgate," i.e., the time Ariana Grande licked a doughnut); there are procedural offenses ("Emailgate"), accidents ("Elbowgate," i.e., Justin Trudeau's elbowing of a female member of the Canadian parliament), mean-spirited public remarks ("Faceliftgate," when President Trump asserted that MSNBC's Mika Brzezinski had undergone the aforementioned surgical procedure), embarrassments ("Fartgate," which doomed Congressman Eric Swalwell's never very serious presidential aspirations), and government policies worthy of criticism ("Pastygate," widespread disagreement with taxes levied in 2012 upon meat pies and other cooked snacks by the Conservative government in Britain). There are also cases in which there does not appear to be any underlying offense ("Russiagate") but in which attempts at journalistic investigation are met with resistance comparable to that of the Nixon administration. In some instances ("Gamergate") there is neither a crime nor a conspiracy but a kind of generalized resentment in search of an incident that might justify it after the fact. Obamagate most resembles the last of these: an insinuation of conspiracy so wide ranging that it cannot by definition be refuted, even by Trump's attorney general.

Why do we insist on appending this meaningless suffix to everything from using the profits of arms sales to fund right-wing militias to doubts about Hillary Clinton's ability to open a pickle jar? I suspect it is because Watergate is the founding myth of contemporary journalism, the lens through which we insist upon seeing all of reality. The urgency with which we lavish attention upon insignificant events (and journalistic attempts to place them inside an implied meta-narrative of cover-up) becomes self-justifying; the currency of scandal is thoroughly debased even as it remains the only acceptable journalistic tender. This is what made Trump's presidency possible: politics re-conceived not as the pursuit of the common good but as an agon of irreconcilable totalizing worldviews, each the product of its own bespoke mythology complete with heroes, villains, bards, noble deeds, and ancient wrongs. So far from being the perfect object of journalists' meta-investigative obsession, he is its totally predictable consequences.

Meanwhile the destruction of the post-war consensus on the mixed economy, the disastrous consequences of globalized free trade, the downside of unregulated instantaneous mass communication, the rise in drug addiction and so-called "deaths of despair" are all stories that became tragedies before they were ever seriously reported. A country whose attention was fixed instead upon Valerie Plame, Dan Rather, one of Janet Jackson's breasts, lane closures in New Jersey, and how Tom Cruise felt about being mocked in an episode of South Park was astonished to learn facts about ordinary life, such as the decline in the American life expectancy during the last decade.

When everything becomes a scandal, nothing is.

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Continue reading here:
'Obamagate' and the end of scandal - The Week

As absurd, ridiculous, unthinkable as it may seem, the act of wearing a mask has become a badge declaring allegiance to a political tribe, an actual flashpoint for confrontation. Like believing in climate change, it has become a litmus test those who wear masks are branded a Socialist, a Communist, devoted to a Nanny State, or despicably, the Common Good.

And you have to ask yourself why that would be, that instead of Americans coming together to defeat the worst crisis to befall the nation in over a century, there would be the deliberate effort to make the already unprecedented partisan polarization that much worse.

Were the Wild West, Gov. Tony Evers told MSNBC just hours after Wisconsins Republican-majority Supreme Court struck down his authority to issue a stay-at-home order. Were just leaving it open. Were going to have more cases. Were going to have more deaths. Its a sad occasion for the state. I cant tell you how disappointed I am.

Wisconsin Senator Tammy Baldwin, The Hill reported, tweeted, The people of Wisconsin have done their part to advance our common good during this pandemic and now the WI Supreme Court has done the bidding of @SenFitzgerald & @repvos once again to put politics ahead of public health. Its shameful they cant put your health and safety first.

Obamas Attorney General Eric Holder said the courts ruling was motivated by politics and ideology and had callously puts lives at risk.

But, The Hill reported, Trump hailed the opinion and the defeat for Evers: The Great State of Wisconsin, home to Tom Tiffanys big Congressional Victory on Tuesday, was just given another win, Trump tweeted. Its Democrat Governor was forced by the courts to let the State Open. The people want to get on with their lives. The place is bustling!

Trump refuses to let Dr. Fauci (or anyone) testify in front of House committees. He suppressed the CDCs 68-page guidelines detailing how businesses, industries, public entities should reopen. He threatens to withdraw from the World Health Organization and threatens China with a renewed tariff war to shift blame for the fact that the pandemic that has already struck over 1.5 million Americans, killed 90,000, and taken the jobs of 36 million numbers that far exceed any other country and shine an ultraviolet light on the ineptitude of the Trump administration.

The pandemic has become so politically charged, and Trump so desperate to reopen the economy to get those deadly numbers down which might hurt his election and stuff people back into those massive adoring rallies, that Trump-friendly governors are now keeping secret how many people are dying.

Surely it is a bad look for Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, having noted that 80 percent of the hospitalized COVID-19 patients were black, observing that reopening the state was A-OK even while the numbers of sick were rising because the coronavirus had little impact [on Georgias white society].

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has now ordered Medical Examiners not publish the death rates. Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts is keeping secret the number of deaths in meat-packing plants, which Trump ordered to reopen under the Defense Production Act, without requiring employers to provide safe conditions for workers.

Even the way the dead are counted has become a way of hiding the politically-inconvenient truth: they arent counting the dead in nursing homes (hot spots), veterans homes, or those who had other ailments even if COVID-19 was the thing that did them in. And while Trump is challenging the number of dead (or suggesting that 90,000 Democrats died to make him look bad), Dr. Fauci agrees that the number reported could actually be 50 percent higher.

Now the Big Lie from the guy who has already made 18,000 of them, is about a vaccine. How funny that a leading anti-vaxer, is now pushing a Warp Speed vaccine that could not possibly be sufficiently tested for efficacy or health risks if, as Trump says, it will be out by the end of the year (conveniently, just after the election).

Is this like his health plan (better, cheaper than Obamacare, you just wait and see!), he promised in the 2016 campaign? So far, his only health plan is to destroy Obamacare, even as 28 million people have lost their employer-sponsored health insurance, and Trump refuses to reopen enrollment.

What exactly is the plan to produce not 330 million, but billions of doses of a vaccine?

What is the plan to administer it? Thats what Dr. Rick Bright, the nations top vaccine specialist before being fired for refusing to hype snakeoil (hydroychloroquine), wondered about before a House committee (the Senate is too busy trumping up Obamagate to care), while chastising the Trump administration for failing to produce sufficient PPE.

The federal government is jumping through hoops to allow companies to develop a vaccine, so the federal government should set rules and say any company that develops a vaccine, the next day that patent, that formula should be given to companies across the globe so they can produce vaccine to treat everyone, Governor Andrew Cuomo said in Tuesdays coronavirus briefing at Northwell Health, Manhasset. It cant be where only the rich, the privileged can get it. This is a matter of public health, national security.

Cuomo is proposing an Americans First Law that makes sure that government funding supports workers, keeps people employed, and does not allow corporations to get the money but gleefully downsize (rightsize) anyway.

He is calling for a repeal of the cap on SALT (State And Local Taxes) deductions which so penalizes New York and other blue states and is pushing for $500 billion in funding so that states and local government can maintain vital services, including hospital workers, police, fire, teachers.

Its about priorities, values, he said. I understand large corporations fund the political accounts of officials, but they get elected by people people still vote, people still matter. Show the same consideration for workers you showed for corporations.

Cuomo continues to maintain that the pandemic isnt a Red versus Blue thing, but I challenged him that was wishful thinking or perhaps just being diplomatic, not to piss off those who control the purse strings. New York is already staring at a $61 billion budget deficit because of COVID-19 and will need federal aid within a matter of weeks or start cutting services.

I have no doubt that many politicians act through politics. But I am saying today, in this situation, they should rise above and this should not be about politics, it should not be about red versus blue. People who are dying are Americans, red white and blue. It is such an ugly concept in this situation where people are dying to say they will not bail out a blue state.

Tell that to McConnell, who in the midst of the Great Recession, as Americans were losing their homes, jobs, health care, retirement and college savings, McConnells priority was to make Obama a one-term president. Now, McConnell is salivating at the political advantage the pandemic affords: weakening Democratic governors and suppressing Democratic votes in the bargain.

Continued here:
Viewpoint: Politicizing a pandemic - Blog - The Island Now