The people behind the protests like the one in Michigan are not just ordinary citizens concerned with rights being infringed upon. They are radical, extreme right wing agitators that include
Ammon Bundy, "the leader of the militia occupation of the Malheur national wildlife refuge in 2016 that become a rallying point for the anti-government right in the US and "
Phil Robinson, the prime mover in a group called the Michigan Liberty Militia, whose Facebook page features pictures of firearms, warnings of civil war, celebrations of Norse paganism and memes ultimately sourced from white nationalist groups like Patriot Front." Protesting a lock down order does not require carrying weapons, including assault type rifles or blocking the entrance to a hospital.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/17/far-right-coronavirus-protests-restrictions
I find it both sad and frightening that some are trying to 'normalize' these people just as they try to 'normalize' Trump. There is nothing normal about Trump's extreme narcissism and pathological lying. Personality disorders are not normal. Pathological lying is not normal. Attacking any media that dares not fawn over him and calling it the 'enemy of the people' is not normal. A president surrounding himself with
nothing but 'yes' men-sycophants is not normal. Childish and nasty name- calling fellow politicians and leaders like a playground bully is not normal. Declaring a president has 'total authority' over state governors and that he can do 'whatever (he) wants' under Art. 2 of the Constitution is not normal. Trump is not normal.
It's probably also well worth considering the entirely predictable astroturfing from rich people who are just seeing the loss of their profits, and it's not like the astroturfing that underlaid the Tea Party ever disappeared.
Doing OK????
Haven't you seen how the US has surged way ahead of the pack in infections and death? And still is lagging monumentally in getting up to some reasonable standard of testing citizens in preparation of getting back to 'normal.' Is this a sign of an effective leader of supposedly the greatest and most advanced nation?
I posit that Trump's reckless attempt to sweep the onrushing pandemic under the rug just because he wanted to have no 'bad numbers' for his re-election has resulted in needless suffering and death. Weeks were squandered which could have been used to take a more aggressive approach to mitigation and preparation. He has blood on his hands.
If you want some cold comfort, Trump is likely doing better than, for example,
Bolsonaro. He's "OK" in the sense that he's not the worst, though that's likely not really by choice.
Isn't this incitement to violence?
Yes. By reasonable standards. Going further, it's incitement to rebellion/insurrection and it sounds like the Boogaloo folk are at least
questioning whether they should act in response to Trump's call, presently. Even with that, though, I find myself expecting the GOP to try to dismiss it as nothing.
https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/493194-senate-adjourns-with-no-deal-on-small-business-loan-program
The Hill has Democrats blocking the deal. Do you have a quote from Trump implying Democrats are on vacation? It would seem if he wanted to throw mud like he's be better of saying that they blocked it.
They are because they want more funding for other things like hospitals included, not because they don't want more funding for the PPP.
Yes. The small business loans are not the only thing that needs addressed, after all. There's more going on than that, though...
Quite, so they have chosen to let PPP run out to haggle for a bunch of other stuff that they want. That seems like the point that Trump should be stressing. Whether most of them are on holiday or otherwise when they have decided not to vote to approve it is kind of secondary.
Not exactly. They didn't just "choose" to let PPP run out, just like they didn't just choose to let lots of other things run out that the GOP's less antsy about. It's probably also worth taking a moment to take a look at how those funds were used, though, before going further.
For example,
the Trump/McConnell 'urgent' COVID-19 small business loans were dumped into red states
And
McConnell and Trump have rigged emergency 'small business' relief for some big businesses
Shockingly, behavior like that makes it pretty friggin' clear that the GOP is not acting in particularly good faith, as usual. So the Democrats likely aren't quite so much in the mood to rush to support the blatant partisanship of the GOP without also getting other priorities met. Frankly, actually helping the USPS, for example, would be a fine priority to be pushing, on top of their push to not have the money primarily going to the people who fairly certainly need it least among the contenders.
There's some other factor at work that makes the US crazy. The details you listed, while they probably helped, are not sufficient.
It's probably worth pointing out, again, that rich libertarians and corporations have been pointedly funding and amplifying anti-government, anti-tax, anti-union, anti-regulations of any kind (very much including regulations on oil and gas), and so on efforts. Heavily. For many decades now.
Their propaganda and funding fairly certainly has quite a lot to do with the craziness that you've seen and likely will see.
I'm not far right. If you think I'm far right, you have an absurdly low threshold for such accusations.
I've just seen the clip. What specifically was dishonest about it, other than that they didn't think they were being interviewed by Veritas?
Mmm. Veritas has a history of deceptively editing things to make people sound very different than they did originally - and all of the edited videos are presented to support the GOP. In particular, O'Keefe's edited video hitjob on ACORN that spurred numerous investigations, all of which found ACORN to be completely innocent of any actual wrongdoing, and got ACORN shut down is something that is pretty perfectly emblematic about why they deserve exactly no trust from anyone. Ever.
They should try to impeach him. Sedition would at least be a crime.
You say that like what he was impeached for before wasn't criminal. Are you, perhaps, buying the nonsense that just because the Democrats didn't specifically include reference to the specific laws broken, given that impeachment is a political, not a criminal proceeding, that they couldn't have?
I also suspect that since Democrats/liberals tend to live in the metropolitan areas, that the GoP/conservatives hope that only Democrats will die.
On that note...
Where are the biggest spikes in coronavirus cases this week? States without stay-at-home orders
I hope you are not talking about the Bible, because this lunacy did not come from there.
Wait... you're trying to say that Jesus and
GOP Jesus are not one and the same?
To poke elsewhere...
White House Seeks To Lower Farmworker Pay To Help Agriculture Industry
Nothing could go wrong there!
In... news that's worth taking with a grain of salt -
Trump Offered Ukraine One Billion Dollars in Cash to Open Biden Investigation
For a short summation -
So @RudyGiuliani russian agent Telizhenko in an interview posted yesterday said Trump offered 1 billion in cash the end of last year for a Biden investigation to be opened up. How many laws were broken? Who exactly was going to pay for this?
The interview is apparently in Russian, though, and, as noted, is being claimed by a Russian.
