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I have been watching this Senate race in Maine, where Sen Susan Collins pales to Democrat contender Sara Gideon who is articulate and has a thin lead +8 points Senate Maine Polls
Sen Collins will never admit to voting (or wanting to) for Trump, but Gideon is in full support of Biden. The judges that Sen Collins voted in, particularly Brett Kavanaugh and the 170 judges Mitch McConnell pushed through were debated as well.
Hope there is a big win for the Dems come November.
PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — Democrat Sara Gideon sought to link Republican Sen. Susan Collins, of Maine, with President Donald Trump during their first debate Friday night, and she demanded several times that Collins say whether she’ll vote for him — a dare Collins wouldn’t take
Collins, who has said she didn’t vote for Trump four years ago, brushed off the question, saying voters are more interested in talking to her about issues than who she supports in the presidential race. “Let me say this: I don’t think the people of Maine need my advice on whom to support for president,” Collins said.
But Collins was critical of Trump’s handling of the pandemic after the president acknowledged on tape months ago, to journalist Bob Woodward in comments only recently released, that he deliberately played down the danger.
“I believe that the president should have been straightforward with the American people. The American people can take hard facts. He had an obligation as president to be straightforward,” Collins said.
Collins, who is seeking a fifth term and long enjoyed a reputation as a moderate who reached across the partisan aisle, is facing the toughest campaign of her career, and Democrats view unseating her as key to retaking control of the Senate.
In attack ads, Democrats have been hammering away at her votes for Brett Kavanaugh for the Supreme Court and for Trump’s tax breaks.
Collins was forced during the debate to defend her support for Kavanaugh, saying she has supported judges nominated by Democrats and Republican over the years as long as they were qualified and committed to precedent and the rule of law.
But Gideon, the speaker of the Maine House, said many of the federal judges nominated by Trump were incompetent.
“What we have seen over the past four years is a concerted effort to change the face of the judiciary, and we have seen nominees come from this president that are unqualified and not fit to be judicial nominees. Yet Sen. Collins has voted, as of this week, for 170 of them,” Gideon said…
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QAnon Website Shuts Down After N.J. Man Identified as Operator
A popular website for posts about the conspiracy group QAnon abruptly shut down after a fact-checking group identified the developer as a New Jersey man.
Qmap.pub is among the largest websites promoting the QAnon conspiracy, with over 10 million visitors in July, according to web analytics firm SimilarWeb Ltd., and served as the primary archive of QAnon’s posts. The website aggregates posts by Q, the anonymous figure behind the QAnon theory, and the creator of the Qmap.pub website is known online only as “QAppAnon.”
The fact-checking site Logically.ai identified Jason Gelinas of New Jersey on Sept. 10 as the “developer and mouthpiece” for the site. New Jersey state records connect QAppAnon to Gelinas’s home address, Bloomberg found.
Reached outside his home, Gelinas declined to comment on the Logically report, saying only that someone had sent it to him on Twitter after it was published.
“I’m not going to comment on any of that,” Gelinas said when asked if he was behind the website Qmap. “I’m not going to get involved. I want to stay out of it.”
Wearing an American flag baseball cap, Gelinas said that QAnon is a “patriotic movement to save the country.”
Hours after the initial contact from Bloomberg News, the website was no longer accessible.
A LinkedIn profile for Gelinas says he works as an information security analyst at Citigroup. Citigroup declined to comment.
The QAnon theory posits that President Donald Trump is battling a “deep state” ring of child-sex traffickers. It has already motivated some domestic extremists to violent acts or to threaten violence, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
As some in Trump’s inner circle have shown signs of support for the conspiracy or its followers, questions have swirled about the identities of those responsible for promoting it. In August, Trump said that QAnon followers are “people who love our country.” The president’s director of social media, Dan Scavino, as well as the President’s son, Eric Trump, have posted QAnon imagery.
QAppAnon, the online name of qmap’s creator, also runs a Patreon account, which receives more than $3,000 a month in donations, according to the Patreon site. In March, QAppAnon announced on Patreon an upcoming Android app named “Armor of God,” a social network for followers of QAnon.
In Armor of God’s Google Play Store profile, the service describes itself as a platform “designed for patriots worldwide to create and share content including prayers, news, memes and posts.” The developer’s email address listed on the Google Play page is “[email protected].”
According to New Jersey state business records, Patriot Platforms LLC’s address matches Gelinas’s home address. After a Bloomberg News investigation, the Armor of God app was no longer accessible on the Google Play store.
According to its website, Patriot Platforms “is a technology company building next generation social media applications and tools.” The description is similar to the buisness purpose stated on the New Jersey business record linked to Gelinas’s home address: “create next generation news and social media platforms.”As of Friday, the Patriot Platforms website was also offline.
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Smoke chokes West Coast as wildfire deaths keep climbing
Wildfire smoke that posed a health hazard to millions choked the West Coast on Saturday as firefighters battled deadly blazes that obliterated some towns and displaced tens of thousands of people, the latest in a series of calamities this year.
For people already enduring the coronavirus pandemic, the resulting economic fallout and political tensions evident in the Black Lives Matter protests and far-right counter protests, the fires added a new layer of misery.
“What’s next? You have the protests, coronavirus pandemic, now the wildfires. What else can go wrong?” lamented Danielle Oliver, 40, of Happy Valley, southeast of Portland.
The death toll from the fires in California, Oregon and Washington stood at 31 and was expected to rise sharply. Most of the fatalities were in California and Oregon.
Oregon’s emergency management director said officials were preparing for a possible “mass fatality event” if many more bodies turn up in the ash. And the state fire marshal resigned after abruptly being placed on administrative leave. The state police superintendent said the crisis demanded an urgent response that required a leadership change.
Oliver has an autoimmune disorder that makes her vulnerable to wildfire smoke, so she agreed to evacuate. She was nervous about going to a shelter because of the virus, but sleeping in a car with her husband, 15-year-daughter, two dogs and a cat was not a viable option.
Oregon Governor Kate Brown toured the Oregon State Fairgrounds in Salem, Ore., Saturday afternoon, Sept. 12, 2020, where she spoke with volunteers and evacuees. Brown also toured the animal facility where evacuated animals are being kept. Fires along Oregon’s Cascade Range grew Saturday, but at a slower rate than earlier in the week. (Beth Nakamura/The Oregonian via AP, Pool)
SALEM, Ore. (AP) — Wildfire smoke that posed a health hazard to millions choked the West Coast on Saturday as firefighters battled deadly blazes that obliterated some towns and displaced tens of thousands of people, the latest in a series of calamities this year.
For people already enduring the coronavirus pandemic, the resulting economic fallout and political tensions evident in the Black Lives Matter protests and far-right counter protests, the fires added a new layer of misery.
“What’s next? You have the protests, coronavirus pandemic, now the wildfires. What else can go wrong?” lamented Danielle Oliver, 40, of Happy Valley, southeast of Portland.
The death toll from the fires in California, Oregon and Washington stood at 31 and was expected to rise sharply. Most of the fatalities were in California and Oregon.
Oregon’s emergency management director said officials were preparing for a possible “mass fatality event” if many more bodies turn up in the ash. And the state fire marshal resigned after abruptly being placed on administrative leave. The state police superintendent said the crisis demanded an urgent response that required a leadership change.
Oliver has an autoimmune disorder that makes her vulnerable to wildfire smoke, so she agreed to evacuate. She was nervous about going to a shelter because of the virus, but sleeping in a car with her husband, 15-year-daughter, two dogs and a cat was not a viable option.
The temperature checks and social distancing at the American Red Cross shelter helped put her mind at ease. Now the family waits, hoping their house will survive. She has previously experienced homelessness.
“I’m tired. I’m tired of starting all over. Getting everything, working for everything, then losing everything,” she said.
Those who still had homes were not safe in them. A half-million Oregonians were under evacuation warnings or orders to leave. With air contamination levels at historic highs, people stuffed towels under door jambs to keep smoke out. Some even wore N95 masks in their own homes.
Some communities resembled the bombed-out cities of Europe after World War II, with buildings reduced to charred rubble piled atop blackened earth. Residents either managed to flee as the flames closed in, or perished.
Millicent Catarancuic’s body was found near a car on her 5-acre property in Berry Creek, California. The flames came so quickly she did not have time to get out.
On Tuesday, she packed several of her dogs and cats in the car but later called her daughter to say she decided to stay. Firefighters had made progress battling the blaze. The wind was calm. The flames still seemed far away. Then they rushed onto the property.
“I feel like, maybe when they passed, they had an army of cats and dogs with her to help her through it,” said her daughter, Holly Catarancuic.
In Oregon alone, more than 40,000 people have been evacuated and about 500,000 are in different levels of evacuation zones, Gov. Kate Brown said.
Fires along Oregon’s Cascade Range grew Saturday, but at a slower rate than earlier in the week, when strong easterly winds acted like a bellows, pushing two large fires — the Beachie Creek Fire and the Riverside Fire — toward each other and the state’s major population centers, including Portland’s southeastern suburbs.
Fire managers did get a spot of good news: Higher humidity slowed the flames considerably.
In California, a total of 28 active major fires have burned 4,375 square miles, and 16,000 firefighters are trying to suppress the flames, Cal Fire Assistant Deputy Director Daniel Berlant said. Large wildfires continued to burn in northeastern Washington state too.
In all, 22 people have died in California since wildfires began breaking out across the state in mid-August.
President Donald Trump will visit California on Monday for a briefing on the West Coast fires, the White House announced.
Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and the governors of California, Oregon and Washington state — all Democrats — have said the fires are a consequence of global warming.
“We absolutely must act now to avoid a future defined by an unending barrage of tragedies like the one American families are enduring across the West today,” Biden said.
The same smoke that painted California skies orange also helped crews corral the state’s deadliest blaze of the year by blocking the sun, reducing temperatures and raising humidity, officials said.
Smoke created cooler conditions in Oregon too, but it was also blamed for making the dirtiest air in at least 35 years in some places. The air quality index reading Saturday morning in Salem, the state capital, was 512.
The scale normally goes from zero to 500.
“Above 500 is literally off the charts,” said Laura Gleim, a spokesperson for the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality.
Because past air quality was rarely so poor, the government’s yardstick for measuring it capped out at 500, Gleim said. The department started monitoring in 1985.
The weather conditions that led up to the fires and fed the flames were likely a once-in-a-generation event, said Greg Jones, a professor and research climatologist at Linfield University in McMinnville, Oregon.
A large high-pressure area stretching from the desert Southwest to Alaska brought strong winds from the east toward the West Coast, reducing relative humidity to as low as 8% and bringing desert-like conditions, even to the coast, Jones said.
Instead of the offshore flows that the Pacific Northwest normally enjoys, the strong easterly winds pushed fires down the western slopes of the Cascade Range.
It isn’t clear if global warming caused the conditions, Jones said, but a warmer world can increase the likelihood of extreme events and contribute to their severity.
The smoke in Portland filled the air with an acrid metallic scent like dull pennies. It was so thick that Ashley Kreitzer could not see the road when she headed out to work as a ride-hailing driver.
“I couldn’t even see five feet ahead of me,” she said. “I was panicking, I didn’t even know if I wanted to go out.”
George Coble had no home to return to. He came with some of his employees Saturday to a wasteland of charred tree trunks just outside Mill City, Oregon. Coble lost everything: his fence-and-post business, five houses in a family compound and vintage cars, including a 1967 Mustang.
The family – three generations that lived in the compound — evacuated with seven people, three horses, five dogs and a cat.
“We’ll just keep working and keep your head up and thank God everybody got out,” Coble said. “There are other people that lost their family. Just be thankful for what you did get out with.”
Erik Tucker spent the day hauling buckets of water through what remained of his neighborhood to douse hot spots smoldering in tree trunks five days after the wildfire tore through the area.
Tucker, who lives in Lyons, Oregon, had expected the worst but found his family’s home still standing while homes just down the street were gone. He was coated in ash and smudged with charcoal.
“No power, debris everywhere, smoke, can’t breathe,” he said.
Wildfires scorch millions of acres in Western U.S. as Oregon braces for ‘mass fatality event’
Historic wildfires are burning millions of acres and destroying homes and entire towns in California, Oregon and Washington state, as officials brace for more fatalities and evacuations.
The fires have killed at least 20 people across the states and dozens more are missing.
Oregon Gov. Kate Brown said Friday that people are still missing and more than 40,000 have fled their homes as the state prepares for a “mass fatality event.”
President Donald Trump will visit California on Monday to be briefed on the state’s wildfires.
Historic wildfires are burning millions of acres and destroying homes in California, Oregon and Washington state, as officials brace for more fatalities and evacuations.
The fires have killed at least 20 people across the states and dozens more are missing. More than 1 million acres of land in Oregon have been burned and at least 10% of the state’s population is in evacuation zones. The state has dealt with the worst destruction as blazes have already decimated two towns.
Oregon Gov. Kate Brown said Friday that people are still missing and more than 40,000 have fled their homes. The state is preparing for a “mass fatality event” and has declared a state of emergency.
Authorities said a man has been arrested and charged with arson in connection with a fire in southern Oregon that has burned hundreds of homes. Oregon’s state fire marshal Jim Walker, who has served since 2014, had been put on administrative leave “pending the outcome of an internal personnel investigation,” the state police department said on Saturday.
In California, more than 3 million acres have burned, a record in the state’s history. The August Complex that started from a series of lightning strikes last month has become the biggest wildfire ever in California.
The weather in California could potentially improve with forecasts of less wind and some rainfall. However, the National Weather Service on Saturday issued a red flag warning in parts of Oregon and Northern California over the weekend, citing gusty winds and low humidity that could worsen the blazes.
Gov. Gavin Newsom of California gave a bleak update on the situation on Friday afternoon, saying the worst forecasts of climate change has impacted his state. He vowed to direct his administration to speed up California’s environmental goals and invest more in green energy.
“California, folks, is America fast forward,” Newsom said during a press conference at the Lake Oroville State Recreation Area in Butte County, which is damaged from the North Complex Fire. “What we’re experiencing right here is coming to communities all across the United States of America unless we get our act together on climate change.”
President Donald Trump will visit California on Monday where he will join local and federal fire and emergency officials to be briefed on the fires. The president is set to visit McClellan Park in Sacramento County, where the state’s fire agency Cal Fire has based its operations.
Washington Gov. Jay Inslee said the amount of land burned by the fires in just the past five days amounts to the state’s second-worst fire season following the season in 2015, and said the fires should be called climate fires, not wildfires. Fires in the state destroyed most of the homes in the town of Malden and killed a 1-year-old boy.
Climate change has triggered excessive heat and drought conditions across the world that exacerbate wildfires. In fire-prone California, six of the 20 biggest wildfires in state history have occurred this year.
“This is not an act of God,” Inslee said at a news conference Friday. “This has happened because we have changed the climate of the state of Washington in dramatic ways.”
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on Friday said that the state is sending roughly 190 additional firefighters and 50 more trucks to California. Fire crews are also being sent in from Utah and Colorado.
Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden said the fires demonstrate that climate change poses an “existential threat to our way of life.”
“Our thoughts are also with the millions of Americans living just outside the path of these fires, forced into an awful choice between relocating in the midst of an ongoing pandemic or staying put in a place where every breath they draw forces them to inhale smoke,” Biden said in a statement on Saturday.
“The science is clear, and deadly signs like these are unmistakable — climate change poses an imminent, existential threat to our way of life,” Biden said. “President Trump can try to deny that reality, but the facts are undeniable.”
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Trump promises to erase troops’ 2021 deferred tax debt, but lawmakers say he can’t
President Donald Trump promised this week to forgive all deferred payroll taxes (including those included in troops’ paychecks) if he wins re-election this fall, but lawmakers dismissed the assertion as unconstitutional and amounting to little more than pandering.
The news comes just days after federal officials confirmed that millions of federal workers — including service members from all five branches and Defense Department civilian employees — will see a pay boost of more than 6 percent for the rest of 2020, but have to pay back all of that money next year under Trump’s payroll tax deferral plan.
The move, designed to act as an economic stimulus in response to the ongoing effects of the coronavirus pandemic, has drawn criticism as a short-term ploy that could cause long-term financial damage for families whose paychecks will fluctuate over the next half year.
Many advocates have expressed concerns that troops and their families may not be able to handle significant reductions in pay for several months next year, but Trump on Thursday promised to handle that problem when it arises.
“When we win I, as your President, will totally forgive ALL deferred payroll taxes with money from the General Fund,” he said in a tweet.
“I will ALWAYS protect Seniors and your Social Security! (Democratic presidential candidate) Joe Biden will do the opposite, he will raise your taxes and DESTROY our Country!”
When we win I, as your President, will totally forgive ALL deferred payroll taxes with money from the General Fund. I will ALWAYS protect Seniors and your Social Security! Sleepy Joe Biden will do the opposite, he will raise your taxes and DESTROY our Country!The White House did not offer any explanation of how Trump might wipe away the debt, since Congress holds the power of taxation under the constitution.
In his memo outlining the payroll tax deferral, Trump instructed the Secretary of the Treasury to explore ways to eliminate the requirement to repay those taxes, to include lobbying Congress to adopt new legislation erasing the debt.
Democrats in Congress immediately attacked the president’s tax pledge.
The House of Representatives is not going to subject its staff to Donald Trump’s payroll tax scheme.
This policy will just create headaches for workers and give them smaller paychecks next year.
The Administration should let military service members and federal workers opt out. https://twitter.com/Fritschner/status/1304428322944946177
— Rep. Don Beyer (@RepDonBeyer) September 11, 2020
Rep. Don Beyer, D-Va., said that the administration “should let military service members and federal workers opt out” of the “payroll tax scheme.” Others called for the entire plan to be reversed.
The tax deferral affects all enlisted members, virtually all warrant officers and all officers up through the grade of O-4. Others who earn more than $8,666.66 a month will not have their Social Security taxes deferred and will continue to pay the payroll taxes.
Federal employees and servicemembers should not be forced into deferring their payroll taxes.
Trump’s policy will undoubtedly cause undue burden on so many individuals whose lives have already been turned upside down due to the pandemic. https://money.yahoo.com/amphtml/trumps-payroll-tax-deferral-is-mandatory-for-22-million-federal-employees-and-military-members-194730143.html
— Mark Takano (@RepMarkTakano) September 10, 2020
Repayment of the taxes would begin as early as January 1, when troops are expected to see a 3-percent pay raise go into effect. However, Congress still has not finalized plans for that annual raise, and it would not completely cover the money owed.
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FBI raids home of conservative conspiracy theorist Jack Burkman
Burkman confirmed the raid and said he was not arrested. His associate Jacob Wohl said that the agents took computers, papers and cellphones from the home but that it was unclear what the federal investigators were seeking.
Wait, it gets weirder,
OMG, surprise surprise,
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Why the hell are these two not in jail? I figured they would be after the voting fraud scam they just pulled.
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Good news
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An ongoing issue that only gets worse with climate change:
Inspector General Slams FEMA Over Repeatedly Flooded Homes
The Federal Emergency Management Agency fails to help tens of thousands of people whose homes have repeatedly flooded, according to a report by the Office of the Inspector General for the Department of Homeland Security.
A 2004 law requires FEMA to keep a list of homes that have repeatedly flooded, and prioritize those homes for federal assistance. But the new report finds that FEMA’s list is rife with errors and that nothing has been done to reduce the flood risk for most of the nearly 38,000 homes on the list. The Department of Homeland Security oversees FEMA.
FEMA “provides neither equitable nor timely relief” to those who own homes that have repeatedly flooded, the report states.
“These properties are really the tip of the iceberg when it comes to staring down our climate change future,” says Anna Weber, a flood analyst at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “Flood risks are increasing all across the country — this isn’t just a coastal problem. So, if we don’t act to address the risk to properties like these, we’re going to see more and more repetitively flooded properties all over the nation.”
Between 2005 and 2018, the number of repeatedly flooded properties in the U.S. nearly doubled, according to FEMA’s data. Climate change is driving more frequent and severe flooding in much of the U.S. because sea levels are rising, and hurricanes and other storms are dumping more rain.
When a house floods repeatedly in a short period of time, it’s eligible for special help from FEMA. For example, homeowners can apply for money to help cover the cost of raising the house’s foundation. Or, if multiple houses in a neighborhood are flooding, the local government can apply for federal funding to update drainage infrastructure.
In the most drastic cases, FEMA can help the local government purchase a home that has flooded multiple times and demolish it, allowing the people who lived there to move to a safer place and allowing water to flow with fewer obstructions and be absorbed into the ground more easily.
Demand for flood mitigation funds has skyrocketed in the last decade, according to the new report, and consistently outstrips the amount of money available through FEMA. That has led to mounting pressure from Congress to prioritize homes that are known to be at high risk, including those that have repeatedly flooded.
The vast majority of residential flood insurance is provided through the heavily indebted National Flood Insurance Program, which is funded with tax dollars.
Despite the cost to taxpayers, FEMA does not have an accurate list of properties that have flooded repeatedly, the report found. The inspector general’s office spot-checked about 800 homes on FEMA’s list and found that 140 of them were incorrectly classified.
Of the 140 misclassified homes, 111 of them had been elevated so they were no longer prone to flooding. But, because they were on FEMA’s list, the occupants were required to pay for expensive flood insurance.
Other homes on the list didn’t exist at all. In at least one case, the inspector general’s office found that a home that was on the list in 2019 had actually been purchased using federal flood mitigation funds and demolished more than 25 years earlier, in 1993.
The report’s authors found that FEMA’s inaccurate list makes it all but impossible for the agency to prioritize who should get federal help for flooding. The authors also express concern that FEMA “does not distinguish or prioritize relief for primary versus secondary residences,” which means people stuck in homes that flood over and over are competing with those whose beach houses are at risk.
“This subset of insured properties that flood over and over again have strained the [National Flood Insurance] Program’s finances,” said Velma Smith, a flood expert at the Pew Charitable Trusts, during a March 2019 congressional hearing on flood risk. “In some years, repetitive loss properties account for as little as 1% of the program’s policyholders but make 25 to 30 percent of its claims.”
FEMA acknowledged the report’s findings and agreed with all the recommendations. In a memo responding to the report, FEMA Associate Administrator Cynthia Spishak wrote that the agency will reach out to the communities with a large number of repeatedly flooded homes and come up with a plan by the end of 2021 to allocate funds more equitably and efficiently.
Information about how many homes have repeatedly flooded hasn’t always been publicly available. For more than a decade after FEMA began tracking repeatedly flooded properties, the agency didn’t release data about its list.
In 2017, the Natural Resources Defense Council published the data for the first time, after obtaining it through an open records request. Today, the group published a dashboard that allows anyone to search by county to see how many repeatedly flooded homes are in their area.
“Stormwater management and floodplain management are done at the county level,” Weber explains. “So, people can start to get an idea of not just what the physical risk is, but how different jurisdictions are working to address that risk and how well they’re doing.”
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In relief, Dershowitz is seeking $50,000,000 in compensatory damages and $250,000,000 in punitive damages for a total of $300,000,000. Dershowitz told Law&Crime in March that he was thinking of suing CNN because CNN “doctored the truth.”
The defamation lawsuit against CNN comes at a time when Dershowitz is locked in a defamation lawsuit with Virginia Roberts Giuffre , who claims Dershowitz’s former client Jeffrey Epstein forced her to have sex with Dershowitz when she was a minor. Dershowitz has denied the allegations, saying Giuffre is a liar and that they have never even met.
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2 posts were merged into an existing topic: WTF - Get Out the Vote - Voter resources 2020 & Obstacles
Trump doesn’t just ignore west coast disasters.
He’s also adept at ignoring southeastern disasters, particularly floods and hurricanes.
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Yeah and if it hits his neck of Florida he’ll have FEMA money in his pocket so fast scientists will use it to study how fast light can travel through bullshit.
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A post was merged into an existing topic: More Questionable Behavior from Trump, T Admin, DOJ, and R’s vs Dems, Press, Justice
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A post was merged into an existing topic: US in crisis - Black Lives Matter Fallout - National and local responses