“Just think about the way we vote now,” Barr said. "You have a precinct, your name is on a list, you go in and say who you are, you go behind a curtain, no one is allowed to go in there to influence you, and no one can tell how you voted. All of that is gone with mail-in voting. There’s no secret vote. You have to associate the envelope in the mailing and the name of who’s sending it in, with the ballot.
“There’s no more secret vote with mail-in vote. A secret vote prevents selling and buying votes. So now we’re back in the business of selling and buying votes. Capricious distribution of ballots means (ballot) harvesting, undue influence, outright coercion, paying off a postman, here’s a few hundred dollars, give me some of your ballots,” the attorney general said.
Some jurisdictions require “secrecy sleeves” to separate the ballot from the envelope that could identify a voter. But would you trust that sleeve in Cook County, home of Johnny Rocco?
“You know liberals project,” Barr said. "All this bulls--- about how the president is going to stay in office and seize power? I’ve never heard of any of that crap. I mean, I’m the attorney general. I would think I would have heard about it. They are projecting. They are creating an incendiary situation where there will be loss of confidence in the vote.
“Someone will say the president just won Nevada. ‘Oh, wait a minute! We just discovered 100,000 ballots! Every vote will be counted!’ Yeah, but we don’t know where these freaking votes came from,” Barr said, promising to watch “Key Largo.”
Today Rachel Maddow revealed that CDC recommendations to the states for mask wearing are being reversed, while at the same time the infection rate at those states are rising.
It may be a back door effort at achieving herd mentality. Er, immunity.
Attorney General William Barr suggested on Wednesday that the calls for a nationwide lockdown to prevent the spread of the coronavirus were the "greatest intrusion on civil liberties" in history "other than slavery."
and here we have a Trump official accidentally telling the truth. Trump does not approve.
NEW: CDC Director Redfield to US Senate cmte.:
“These facemasks are the important, powerful public health tool we have ... I might even go so far as to say that this facemask is more guaranteed to protect me against COVID than when I take a COVID vaccine.” pic.twitter.com/7LJZ3U9xi1
Attorney General William Barr suggested on Wednesday that the calls for a nationwide lockdown to prevent the spread of the coronavirus were the "greatest intrusion on civil liberties" in history "other than slavery."
Trump could not have chosen a better henchman. That said, I can't help but see this guy each time Barr's face appears.
Attorney General William Barr suggested on Wednesday that the calls for a nationwide lockdown to prevent the spread of the coronavirus were the "greatest intrusion on civil liberties" in history "other than slavery."
The last of Biden-Harris's seven point plan to address COVID-19:
Implement mask mandates nationwide by working with governors and mayors and by asking the American people to do what they do best: step up in a time of crisis.
Experts say that if 95% of Americans wear masks between now and December, we can save almost 70,000 lives. Joe has called on:
Every American to wear a mask when they are around people outside their household
Every Governor to make that mandatory in their state
Local authorities to also make it mandatory to buttress their state orders
wow, what a totalitarian dystopia that sounds like.
Attorney General William Barr suggested on Wednesday that the calls for a nationwide lockdown to prevent the spread of the coronavirus were the "greatest intrusion on civil liberties" in history "other than slavery."
Ramping up their base. The election hinges on who gets out the vote. Will the millennial let us down with their usual very low turnout?
So preventing the spread of the virus is the greatest intrusion? What about the right to life, a human right? That doesn't count?
Other countries had lockdowns that greatly reduced the virus, often leading to less than 1/4 of our death rate. Very few of their people whine over civil rights. Almost all are happy that their lockdowns allows to get back to normal.
By not taking aggressive action aren't we locked by most of the industrialized civilized nations? Not being able to visit Europe or Canada.
ps - I have to give Trump credit. It took awhile,. He finally found an attorney general at his level of sleaziness. Not one iota of decency, justice or ethics in this last find.
Attorney General William Barr suggested on Wednesday that the calls for a nationwide lockdown to prevent the spread of the coronavirus were the "greatest intrusion on civil liberties" in history "other than slavery."
In response to a question about religious services and First Amendment freedoms during the coronavirus pandemic, Barr said this of the idea of national COVID-19 lockdowns: "Other than slavery, which was a different kind of restraint, this is the greatest intrusion on civil liberties in American history."
It's very hard to descuss this irresponsible toadie without using the F-word. There are people with guns who will take this as permission to use them against the enforcement of public health measures.
Bill Barr is out of control and this administration makes Joseph McCarthy’s communist witch hunt look pale by comparison. @RsAndIs4Bidenhttps://t.co/3g6Sgjt6ea
"You know, putting a national lockdown, stay at home orders, is like house arrest. Other than slavery, which was a different kind of restraint, this is the greatest intrusion on civil liberties in American history," Barr said as a round of applause came from the crowd.
Slavery was a different kind of constraint? Did he seriously just say that? How is this presidential race still even close?
Brianna Keilar debunks a Fox news segment on covid. It's a good look into the harm Fox is doing to the pandemic effort. Watching these liars is infuriating.
Brianna is the CNN host in the early afternoon. I frequently get a chance to watch her, and she's one of the sharpest hosts on CNN and one of the toughest interviewers. She don't take no sh!t.
Brianna Keilar debunks a Fox news segment on covid. It's a good look into the harm Fox is doing to the pandemic effort. Watching these liars is infuriating.
Brianna is the CNN host in the early afternoon. I frequently get a chance to watch her, and she's one of the sharpest hosts on CNN and one of the toughest interviewers. She don't take no sh!t.
I've been watching more CNN lately. Randomly. Tuned in to Erin Burnett and liked her.
I'm getting whiplash from MSNBC moving hosts all over the place. I have a few favorites but I'm shopping around. I'm also watching snippets of FOX which I recommend to get a sense of what the other voters are considering.
A not-too-long article indicating (not saying "proving") that there may be ways to detach some voters from the R candidate. Specifically, it's about changing his approval ratings on the economy. People need to hear loudly and often how his big-talk economy is actually affecting their families and communities.
Dan linked to it below but Chotiner’s interview of Danielle Pletka is an amazing document of how Republican elites have with very few exceptions gone all-in for Trump. There are too many intelligence-insulting whataboutisms to count, but here’s a representative sample:
I’m asking because he talked about liberating Michigan. And then what he said about Kyle Rittenhouse.
Well, again, Donald Trump’s reaction, for example, in the wake of Charlottesville was abhorrent. I find an unwillingness on the part of many to condemn the destruction that takes place. The shootings, the violence, the threatening that’s been taking place—I find that also extraordinarily troubling. Now, is it incumbent upon the President to behave better? Damn, yes. That is why, for the last three and a half years, I’ve done very little but condemn Donald Trump on these matters. I try to be fair in calling balls and strikes, as I tried to be fair with Obama. I’m a conservative, so my view of what a ball and a strike is is different from yours. Nonetheless, those things are abhorrent. The problem that I see and the problem that brought me to write this is that there is an almost equal and opposite reaction on the other side.
Needless to say, the reaction that is “equal and opposite” goes unspecified. “Donald Trump routinely inspires racist violence, but a sophomore at Oberlin questioned whether it was appropriate to call a mixture of Chicken of the Sea tuna and Heinz 57 sauce spread over Wonder Bread ‘sushi’ so really Both Sides Do It and I’ll take my upper-class tax cut, thanks.”
But this really gets to the core of the issue:
You wrote, “I fear that a Congress with Democrats controlling both houses—almost certainly ensured by a Biden victory in November—would begin an assault on the institutions of government that preserve the nation’s small ‘d’ democracy.” You then list things Congress would do and include national health care on the list.
Because, again, I think that if you have a unitary executive and legislative branch with absolutely no safeguards other than the courts, that they will usher in—like they did Obamacare, like they did the Iran deal—things that are fundamentally anti-democratic, or at least in anti-democratic spirits, things that will be bad for our country.
I’ve written about this before, but it’s remarkable how Republicans convinced themselves that it was “undemocratic” for a duly elected House majority and Senate supermajority to enact legislation the president won a landslide running on that Republicans have trouble repealing because it’s too popular. Needless to say, it’s Pletka’s views on healthcare that have no mass constituency because they’re grossly immoral, and Republican efforts to have the federal judiciary strike down the ACA base on endless series of idiotic ad hoc pretexts that threaten democracy. But when you start from the premise that it’s inherently illegitimate for Democrats to govern you can justify anything.
Equally instructive is her tapdancing around the lifelong racism of her beloved mentor Jesse Helms:
Saying this now about racial issues, how do you feel in hindsight about your work with Senator Helms? [Helms was known for decades of race-baiting campaign tactics and vehement opposition to the civil-rights movement.]
I did foreign policy for Senator Helms. I worked for the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. As far as I was concerned, in my work with him, he never uttered a racist statement, never betrayed a racial bias. To the contrary. And believed more than many of the people I worked with in human freedom, human rights, equality of opportunity. He fought for people who were disadvantaged. So there may have been a Jesse Helms one day who did things that were wrong.
You know things that were wrong. This isn’t a “may.”
But I worked for him on the Middle East and South Asia, and I was very proud of what we accomplished.
You know his record on South Africa, though, correct? [Helms opposed any sanctions against the apartheid regime in South Africa. When Nelson Mandela visited the Capitol in 1994, soon after he was elected South Africa’s first post-apartheid President, Helms turned his back on him.]
I didn’t work on South Africa. I worked on the Middle East and South Asia.
I understand that. But I’m saying you must know about the guy’s career? I mean, the Civil Rights Act, the Martin Luther King holiday, his interactions with Carol Moseley Braun, his ads, his comments about South Africa and African National Congress. This stuff isn’t completely unknown to you.
I’m not quite sure what this has to do with my article.
You said that you were opposed to racism and all its forms. And I was just asking whether you had—
Are you questioning whether I’m opposed to racism and all its forms?
I was questioning whether someone who is opposed to racism in all its forms has any second thoughts about Jesse Helms. Yes, that’s what I was asking.
Interesting question.
O.K., so we’re not going anywhere with that. Do you think that’s an unfair question? You’ve spoken out against Trump’s racism, and you’ve spoken out against racism of all sorts. I thought it was fair to ask about Helms, that’s all.
I think it’s fair to ask me anything you’d like. I’m assuming you think that it’s fair that I won’t answer certain questions, because you seem to want to trap me and discredit my views. So I’m just going to leave this topic alone, if that’s O.K., Isaac.
“I oppose racism in all its forms except the words and actions of Republican elected officials” is the bottom line here. And ultimately the Republican coalition is all racists or people who are fine with racists being in charge of public policy, and there’s not actually a meaningful moral distinction there.
But that writer, who goes by the pseudonym “streiff,” isn’t just another political blogger. The Daily Beast has discovered that he actually works in the public affairs shop of the very agency that Fauci leads.
William B. Crews is, by day, a public affairs specialist for the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. But for years he has been writing for RedState under the streiff pseudonym. And in that capacity he has been contributing to the very same disinformation campaign that his superiors at the NIAID say is a major challenge to widespread efforts to control a pandemic that has claimed roughly 200,000 U.S. lives.
Under his pseudonym, Crews has derided his own colleagues as part of a left-wing anti-Trump conspiracy and vehemently criticized the man who leads his agency, whom he described as the “attention-grubbing and media-whoring Anthony Fauci.” He has gone after other public health officials at the state and federal levels, as well—“the public health Karenwaffen,'' as he’s called them—over measures such as the closures of businesses and other public establishments and the promotion of social distancing and mask-wearing. Those policies, Crews insists, have no basis in science and are simply surreptitious efforts to usurp Americans’ rights, destroy the U.S. economy, and damage President Donald Trump’s reelection effort.
On the 48th day, we have Bill Barr saying this:
“Just think about the way we vote now,” Barr said. "You have a precinct, your name is on a list, you go in and say who you are, you go behind a curtain, no one is allowed to go in there to influence you, and no one can tell how you voted. All of that is gone with mail-in voting. There’s no secret vote. You have to associate the envelope in the mailing and the name of who’s sending it in, with the ballot.
“There’s no more secret vote with mail-in vote. A secret vote prevents selling and buying votes. So now we’re back in the business of selling and buying votes. Capricious distribution of ballots means (ballot) harvesting, undue influence, outright coercion, paying off a postman, here’s a few hundred dollars, give me some of your ballots,” the attorney general said.
Some jurisdictions require “secrecy sleeves” to separate the ballot from the envelope that could identify a voter. But would you trust that sleeve in Cook County, home of Johnny Rocco?
“You know liberals project,” Barr said. "All this bulls--- about how the president is going to stay in office and seize power? I’ve never heard of any of that crap. I mean, I’m the attorney general. I would think I would have heard about it. They are projecting. They are creating an incendiary situation where there will be loss of confidence in the vote.
“Someone will say the president just won Nevada. ‘Oh, wait a minute! We just discovered 100,000 ballots! Every vote will be counted!’ Yeah, but we don’t know where these freaking votes came from,” Barr said, promising to watch “Key Largo.”