John Yoo, Defender in Chief

At Amazon, John Yoo, Defender in Chief: Donald Trump's Fight for Presidential Power.

Trump Bets on Law-and-Order Message to Sway Swing Voters

Hell, I'd take that bet!

At WSJ:

President Trump and his supporters have seen an opening in the presidential race in recent weeks as protests against racial injustice have at times turned volatile, with images of violent clashes in the news https://t.co/oMLswoBbPw

— Catherine Lucey (@catherine_lucey) August 29, 2020

President Trump and his supporters have seen an opening in the presidential race in recent weeks as a fresh wave of protests against racial injustice have at times turned volatile, with images of violent clashes playing out in the news.

Mr. Trump emphasized law and order in his speech Thursday accepting the Republican nomination, saying that if Democratic nominee Joe Biden won the White House, “No one will be safe.” Vice President Mike Pence used almost the same words in his speech a day earlier, and one of the campaign’s most-aired recent ads employs similar language.

With Mr. Trump trailing the former vice president in national polls, and by a smaller margin in many battleground states, his team is banking that the chaotic images from places such as Kenosha, Wis., and Portland, Ore., won’t just rally their base, but sway undecided voters and suburban voters who had been moving away from Mr. Trump. “The more chaos and anarchy and vandalism and violence reigns, the better it is for the very clear choice on who’s best on public safety and law and order,” Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway told Fox News this week.

Mr. Biden’s team rejects that notion, saying most of those voters support what have been largely peaceful protests against police shootings of Black people, and noting that the unrest is taking place under Mr. Trump’s watch. “This happens to be Donald Trump’s America,” Mr. Biden said on Thursday. He added: “I condemn violence in any form, whether it’s looting or whatever it is.”

Democrats spent much of their convention focusing on the coronavirus pandemic, which has claimed more than 180,000 lives in the U.S., the most of any country in the world. They think Mr. Trump’s handling of the pandemic is the issue that will define the 2020 election.

But the unrest that has emerged since the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis police custody on May 25 has become a wild card in the last months leading up to the election. It regained national attention this past week after the police shooting Sunday of Jacob Blake, a 29-year-old Black man, in Kenosha stirred protests there. Some anti-Trump strategists have expressed concern that violence stemming from the protests is a vulnerability for Democrats.

Sarah Longwell, strategy director for Republican Voters Against Trump, which produces ads opposing the president’s re-election, said she had conducted recent focus groups with women who voted for Mr. Trump in 2016 but are reconsidering their support. “Six or seven weeks ago, as I was listening to these voters, they were very clearly upset by the way President Trump had handled the racial crisis, even more so than the pandemic,” Ms. Longwell said.

More recently, however, she said, “Everybody jumps to the violence and the looting. There was still a lot of criticism of Trump, but they were immediately focused on what was happening to businesses, violence in the streets.”

It remains unknown who is responsible for damage to businesses and other buildings in Kenosha, though authorities have suggested that outside agitators with no connection to the peaceful daytime protests were responsible for some of the violence after nightfall. A 17-year-old resident of Antioch, Ill., was arrested and charged in connection with the shooting of protesters near midnight Tuesday that left two people dead and one injured.

In July, a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll found that voters in growing numbers believed that Black and Hispanic Americans are discriminated against and that support was rising for the Black Lives Matter movement.

Polls vary on where voters rank crime as an issue. A Journal/NBC News survey this month found crime to be well behind the economy, coronavirus and other matters as a top concern for voters. A recent Pew Research Center survey that asked likely voters about issues of importance in the election found that “violent crime” ranked fifth overall, narrowly behind coronavirus and well behind the economy and health care. But for Republicans, it was the second-most important issue after the economy...

That Biden "peaceful protests" line is so much bull.

The Lincoln Project Attacks President Trump (VIDEO)

Sarah Rumpf has it, at Mediaite:

Lincoln Project Gets Personal In New Ad, Mocking ‘Impotus Americanus’ Trump’s Weight and ‘Ruddy Orange' Color https://t.co/1nBvF2SALd via @mediaite

— Sarah Rumpf (@rumpfshaker) July 31, 2020

This is the most merciless @ProjectLincoln ad yet.

I would not want to work in the White House today.#ImpotusAmericanus https://t.co/oJHMGSkzxQ

— Jesse Damiani (@JesseDamiani) July 31, 2020

Commentary at Althouse, "The Lincoln Project indulges in fat shaming, color shaming, and the depreciating masculinity in this tone-deaf attack on Trump":

I only got half way through this before clicking it off. It might be funnier to fans of David Attenborough nature programs, but to me the reliance on a English-accented supercilious male voice was just embarrassingly out of touch with present-day America...

Hopes for Economic Recovery Fizzle Amid Coronavirus Resurgence

I called the second California lockdown weeks ago. My wife works retail, and I suspect her employer is going back to curbside business soon, although they haven't yet. Frankly, everything else is locked down again, just like back in March.

Next, I'm predicting California colleges and universities will announce their spring 2021 classes will be all online.

We'll see.

At NYT, "A Resurgence of the Virus, and Lockdowns, Threatens Economic Recovery":

The U.S. economy is headed for a tumultuous autumn, with the threat of closed schools, renewed government lockdowns, empty stadiums and uncertainty in federal support for businesses and the unemployed all clouding hopes for a rapid rebound from recession https://t.co/5R9puWpvrn

— NYT Politics (@nytpolitics) July 15, 2020

WASHINGTON — The United States economy is headed for a tumultuous autumn, with the threat of closed schools, renewed government lockdowns, empty stadiums and an uncertain amount of federal support for businesses and unemployed workers all clouding hopes for a rapid rebound from recession.

For months, the prevailing wisdom among investors, Trump administration officials and many economic forecasters was that after plunging into recession this spring, the country’s recovery would accelerate in late summer and take off in the fall as the virus receded, restrictions on commerce loosened, and consumers reverted to more normal spending patterns. Job gains in May and June fueled those rosy predictions.

But failure to suppress a resurgence of confirmed infections is threatening to choke the recovery and push the country back into a recessionary spiral — one that could inflict long-term damage on workers and businesses large and small, unless Congress reconsiders the scale of federal aid that may be required in the months to come.

The looming economic pain was evident this week as big companies forecast gloomy months ahead and government data showed renewed struggles in the job market. A weekly census survey on Wednesday showed 1.3 million fewer Americans held jobs last week than the previous week. A new American Enterprise Institute analysis from Safegraph.com of shopper traffic to stores showed business activity had plunged in the second week of July, in part from renewed virus fears.

Amazon on Wednesday extended a work-from-home order for eligible employees from October to January, and Delta Air Lines said on Tuesday it was cutting back plans to add flights in August and beyond, citing flagging consumer demand.

The nation’s biggest banks also warned this week that they are setting aside billions of dollars to cover anticipated losses as customers fail to pay their mortgages and other loans in the months to come.

May and June will prove to be “easy” in terms of recovery, Jennifer Piepszak, the chief financial officer of JPMorgan Chase, said during an analyst call on Tuesday. “We’re really hitting the moment of truth, I think, in the months ahead,” she said.

Jamie Dimon, the bank’s chief executive, said much of the economic pain had been blunted by federal spending, which was now running out. “You will see the effect of this recession,” he said.

Some companies that used small-business loans to retain or rehire workers are now beginning to lay off employees as those funds run out while business activity remains depressed. Expanded benefits for unemployed workers, which research shows have been propping up consumer spending throughout the spring and early summer, are scheduled to expire at the end of July, while more than 18 million Americans continue to claim unemployment.

Many states are already renewing lockdowns, including California, where officials have ordered indoor bars, restaurants, gyms and other establishments to close. College sports conferences are beginning to cancel fall sports, including the lucrative football season, and concert tours are out of the picture.

“The earlier-than-anticipated resumption in activity has been accompanied by a sharp increase in the virus spread in many areas,” Lael Brainard, a Federal Reserve governor, said on Tuesday. “Even if the virus spread flattens, the recovery is likely to face headwinds from diminished activity and costly adjustments in some sectors, along with impaired incomes among many consumers and businesses.”

Most economists abandoned hope for a “V-shaped” recovery long ago. Now they are warning of an outright reversal, with mounting job losses and business failures. And this time, much of the damage is likely to be permanent.

“Our assumption has to be that we’re going into re-lockdown in the fall,” said Karl Smith, the vice president of federal policy at the conservative Tax Foundation in Washington.

Until recently, Mr. Smith said, he had been pushing administration officials and members of Congress to begin phasing out an extra $600 per week for unemployed workers — perhaps replacing it with an incentive payment for Americans who return to work — and to shift spending toward tax incentives.

The last two weeks of coronavirus data changed his mind. He is now calling for another large economic rescue package from Washington, including extending the enhanced unemployment benefits, offering more aid to small businesses and perhaps sending another round of stimulus checks to American households.

More.

Democrats Encourage Race Hatred? Who Knew?

At the Other McCain, "White Lives Don’t Matter: Democrats Encourage Murderous Racial Hatred":

#BlackLivesMatter is a racial hate movement promoted by Democrats who believe that it will help them win elections. The essential message of the movement’s propaganda is that all white people are evil racist oppressors. If any white person dares object to this hateful message, his objection will be cited as proof that he is a racist. The wave of criminal violence inspired by #BlackLivesMatter is not an accidental consequence of this propaganda; violent crime is the desired result because Democrats have embraced a radical “worse is better” mentality. The worse conditions become in the black community, the more motivativation there will be for black voters to go to the polls in November, and (because Democrats always get about 95% of the black vote) this increase in turnout will mean that Democrats win more elections...

Still more.

Democrats Could Take Both Chambers of Congress

I suppose I should be picking it up with my own election analyses, but it's not been a normal election year, obviously. I've seen journalists dropping the "tsunami" word lately, suggesting the November elections will be a tidal wave washing all of the GOP incumbents out to sea.

You'd think so, actually. This is looking like the best year for Democrats I can remember, like ever.

In any case, at LAT, "As Trump sinks, he’s pulling down the Republican Senate, too":

President Trump’s faltering reelection campaign is dragging the Republican Senate down with him, giving Democrats their best hope in more than a decade of winning control of both houses of Congress and the presidency https://t.co/MhKKWEgiZy

— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) July 18, 2020

CRANBERRY ISLES, Maine —  President Trump’s faltering reelection campaign increasingly is dragging on the Republican Senate, giving Democrats their best hope in more than a decade of winning control of both houses of Congress as well as the White House.

Democrats now threaten Republican Senate incumbents in Georgia, Iowa and Montana — states that had seemed reliably red — in addition to Colorado and Arizona, where Democrats have had the advantage for months, and Maine, where GOP Sen. Susan Collins is facing the toughest election in her long career.

The challengers have been swamping Republican rivals in fundraising and moving ahead in polls, leading independent analysts to dial up their assessment of the Democrats’ chances.

“After Donald Trump’s unexpected victory in 2016, there’s a temptation to avoid making political projections,” wrote Nathan Gonzales, a nonpartisan analyst and editor of Inside Elections. “But one election result shouldn’t cause us to ignore the data. And right now, the preponderance of data points to a great election for Democrats, including taking control of the Senate.”

New campaign finance reports filed with the Federal Election Commission this week show that most Democratic Senate challengers out-raised their GOP rivals in the last three months — some by as much as 3 to 1.

In Georgia, where both Senate seats are up, polls have tightened so much that the Trump campaign and other GOP committees have begun advertising in a state that hasn’t backed a Democrat for president or Senate in more than 20 years.

Even worse for incumbent Republicans: Their fate is largely in the president’s hands. The Trump-dominated political environment, turned sour for his party by his handling of the coronavirus crisis and the nationwide protests over racism, has essentially made the Senate’s state-by-state contests a single, nationalized campaign.

Republicans currently control the Senate 53 to 47. Democrats need a net gain of four seats for a majority, or three if Joe Biden wins the presidency. When the Senate is split 50-50, the vice president is the tiebreaker.

But Democratic ambitions have grown larger: Biden said this week he could see his party winning 55 seats. Many Republicans fear that could happen.

“Panic is gripping the Senate races,” said Rob Stutzman, a California Republican political strategist who is a vocal Trump critic. “A lot of candidates are in a really, really tough spot.”

One sign of how nationalized the Senate races have become: An analysis by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics finds that a record 69% of money contributed to Senate candidates now comes from outside their states. That’s up from 59% in 2018, as donors across the country are treating individual races as a referendum on Trump and GOP control of the Senate.

Nowhere is the national profile of a race as high as here in Maine. Sara Gideon, the speaker of the state House who won the Democratic primary Tuesday, stands to gain about $4 million raised in a national fundraising drive for the benefit of whichever Democrat won the nomination to challenge Collins.

The incumbent is a rare Republican with a record of supporting abortion rights, but her vote to confirm Brett M. Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court despite his opposition to abortion rights has drawn donations and attention to her race from coast to coast.

“We are following all the campaigns where there is a chance of tipping a seat to Democrats,” said Sonia Cairns, an 80-year-old Minneapolis retiree who is planning to donate to Gideon. “Of course I need to know more about Sara Gideon, but I want a Democrat to win that Senate seat.”

A Center for Responsive Politics analysis by senior researcher Doug Weber found that both parties saw a surge in out-of-state giving, but it was more pronounced for Democrats. Republicans pulled in 64% of their contributions from out of state; for Democrats it was 72%.

A big money advantage built on out-of-state support can be a shaky political foundation, warned Sheila Krumholz, executive director of the center.

“It’s great to raise money, but only voters can cast ballots,” she said...

Can the Republican Party Survive?

I've thought about this, especially in light of the "Never Trump" movement.

But nah. We have a two-party system. It's awfully hard for another party to come along and just bump off one of the two major parties we now have. Ross Perot has a chance, but made a huge a strategic mistake by pulling out of the race in early summer 1992. I mean, the dude still went on to win 20 percent of the national popular vote. Bill Clinton won that year with just 43 percent nationwide.

It's hard to knock off the top two. It take an enormous grassroots groundswell.

I suspect the current GOP will lose a few presidential elections and then try to reform into a liberal-progressive party, something along the lines of the old Rockefeller Republicans, or even the Republicans of the Bush Dynasty. Just writing this makes me cringe, since some Republicans have already tried that and got crushed (Jeb Bush, blech.)

In any case, at Yahoo, "Trump’s Party Cannot Survive in a Multiracial Democracy":

15 years ago this week a GOP chairman apologized for the party's role in racial polarization. There were many exit ramps on the road to Trump. https://t.co/dLZIJJ3Bsb via @bopinion

— Francis Wilkinson (@fdwilkinson) July 15, 2020

It was 15 years ago this week that the Republican Party almost took an exit ramp on the long, dark highway from Richard Nixon’s Southern Strategy to Donald Trump’s white nationalism.

On July 14, 2005, Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman stood before the annual convention of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and issued a mea culpa. “By the ’70s and into the ’80s and ’90s, the Democratic Party solidified its gains in the African-American community, and we Republicans did not effectively reach out,” Mehlman said. “Some Republicans gave up on winning the African-American vote, looking the other way or trying to benefit politically from racial polarization. I am here today as the Republican chairman to tell you we were wrong.”

Mehlman went on to make a case that Democrats were taking Black voters for granted and that Republicans offered policies, on school choice and more, that could help Black families. As President George W. Bush’s emissary, he had some credibility. Bush had won about 4 in 10 Hispanic votes and had recently appointed Condoleezza Rice as secretary of state, succeeding Colin Powell. After Barack Obama, they remain the two highest-ranking Blacks in federal government history.

Weeks later, the exit ramp that Bush and Mehlman had envisioned was washed away by Hurricane Katrina. Government incompetence and inaction (sound familiar?) led to harrowing results for hundreds of thousands along the Gulf Coast. New Orleans was the epicenter of failure, neglect and suffering. The federal abandonment of a majority-Black city made a travesty of Republican political outreach.

Yet even that wasn’t the last chance. In 2008, the party nominated Senator John McCain for president. McCain, like Bush, represented a heavily Hispanic state in the Southwest. In a 2002 memoir, McCain had excoriated himself for pretending, while campaigning in South Carolina in 2000, that he didn’t consider the Confederate flag offensive.

Given the fallout from Bush’s cataclysmic failures, McCain didn’t have much of a chance. But he made things worse — subverting his campaign by choosing Sarah Palin as his running mate. By 2010, the Palinized GOP was waging a race-based culture war while its congressional leaders indulged racist tropes about the first Black president.

In the first decade of the 21st century, the Republican Party seemed eager to shed its racist baggage. By the second decade, it was adding to its stock.

John Pitney, a professor of American politics at Claremont McKenna College, has examples of Republican National Committee “outreach” to Blacks going back four decades. “When I was working at the RNC, Lee Atwater established an Outreach Division,” said Pitney, referring to the legendary South Carolina political operative who had helped George H.W. Bush win the White House. “It was an expensive flop. Among other things, African-American activists remembered the 1988 campaign and blamed him for exploiting racial fears over the crime issue.”

Despite decades of failure, the exit ramp seems always there for the taking. In 2013, the RNC produced an “autopsy” of the party’s loss in 2012, which called for the GOP to become more inclusive. “The pervasive mentality of writing off blocks of states or demographic votes for the Republican Party must be completely forgotten,” it stated. The Tea Party wing of the party rebelled; the report was denounced.

In 2016, Republican voters got yet another chance. They could’ve voted for Jeb Bush, John Kasich or Marco Rubio, each of whom offered a vision of a party capable of growing beyond its white nationalist base. Instead, they chose a candidate enthusiastically endorsed by former Klansman David Duke. “Smart GOP politicians have longed for the exit ramps, but GOP primary voters always insist that they stay on the road to perdition,” Pitney said.

How many more exit ramps do Republicans get? As Ronald Brownstein points out in a data-driven essay on Trump’s “neo-Nixonian” 2020 campaign: “Americans today are far more racially diverse, less Christian, better educated, more urbanized, and less likely to be married. In polls, they are more tolerant of interracial and same-sex relationships, more likely to acknowledge the existence of racial discrimination, and less concerned about crime.”

What Brownstein describes is an American enlightenment that viscerally rejects Republican resentment and chauvinism. The GOP embrace of Trump has further narrowed the party’s already restricted access to the growing segments of the American electorate. It is deeply unpopular among voters under 40 who will determine the future of the U.S. ...

Still more, FWIW.

Fearmonger Fauci

I like Dr. Fauci. Axios had a good comparison between Fauci and Dr. Birx yesterday. See, "Why Deborah Birx is the real power doctor."

But I get why people have a problem with him.

See Michelle Malkin, "Protect Your Family from Fearmonger Fauci":

As a responsible parent & citizen, I will NOT let terror rule my children’s lives. We cannot hide from germs, people or adversity. https://t.co/SYwNj4Ce9R#FireFauci #NoGatesVaccine #ReopenAmerica #ReopenSchools #FreeTheChildren

— Michelle Malkin (@michellemalkin) May 14, 2020

This Mother’s Day weekend, my family defied government pandemania. We drove out east from Colorado Springs to the tiny town of Calhan for a lovely little hike in the purple-and-gold-hued Paint Mines archeological district. Unmasked, we basked in the sunshine, fresh air and freedom. The park was teeming with moms like me who put family bonding over “social distancing.”

We were not alone — and that was a glorious thing.

There is nothing public health fossil Dr. Anthony Fauci can do or say to stop me from making the best choices for my children’s health, sanity and resilience. He appeared before the Senate on Tuesday to heckle states like Colorado not to get back to business — back to life — too soon and too quickly. “Needless suffering and death” will occur, he told The New York Times. “I think we better be careful (that) we are not cavalier in thinking that children are completely immune from the deleterious effects,” he testified.

Irked by Kentucky GOP Sen. Rand Paul’s very necessary reminder that no federal infectious disease bureaucrat is the “end-all” decider of our fate, Fauci warned against reopening schools because children in New York are “presenting with COVID-19 who actually have a very strange inflammatory syndrome, very similar to Kawasaki syndrome.”

How dare you accuse us parents of being “cavalier” with our children’s health, Fauci, when you are scaring them with dubious, unverified claims connecting a few cases of an alleged mystery pediatric disease to the coronavirus?

How dare you toss around so cavalierly the uncorroborated specter of “Kawasaki syndrome” (a rare but treatable disease) while untold numbers among the 57 million K-12 students suffer from the effects of panic-induced anxiety, depression, phobias and isolation?

Here are some actual facts about Fauci’s Kawasaki hype: Peer-reviewed studies over the last several years have identified multiple theories of the inflammatory disease’s etiology, including genetic factors, environmental triggers, superantigens, bacterial infections and viruses. A blinded, case-control retrospective study on kids at Children’s Hospital in Denver investigating whether one strain of human coronavirus infection was a factor among Kawasaki syndrome patients “failed to demonstrate an association.” The Mayo Clinic diseases and conditions information website states that “scientists don’t believe the disease is contagious from person to person.” Moreover, the Mayo Clinic states: “Kawasaki disease is usually treatable, and most children recover from Kawasaki disease without serious problems.”

The truth is that Fauci is misleading American families and educators through arrogant acts of both omission and commission. The Kawasaki lie is not his first or last lie. Before he embraced masks for all, he smugly dismissed the measure in March during a “60 Minutes” interview because it would “make people ‘feel’ a little bit better, and it might even block a droplet, but it’s not providing the perfect protection people think that it is.”

Now, he says, face coverings “should be a very regular part” of our daily lives.

Dutiful reporters ignore the flip-flop, slavishly acting as stenographers for Fauci and the rest of the dishonest “deep state.” “Masks are here to stay,” The Washington Post Lifestyle section chirped last week. To which I say:

Hell, no.

As a responsible parent and citizen, I will not let terror rule my children’s lives. I speak from heart-wrenching personal experience over the past five years as my teenage daughter, already battling chronic pain and joint hypermobility requiring multiple surgeries, also suffered from severe clinical OCD that left her unable to do mundane things — like use a public bathroom, eat out at a restaurant or ride in a crowded vehicle. She lost friends. She fell into depression. Her physical and emotional health deteriorated. She was homebound, helplessly trapped in the worst kind of self-imposed lockdown...

Still more.

'Reporters are expected to work in dangerous places. I just never figured the White House to be among them...'

Well, he does admit it's a cushy job.

An interesting inside take on reporting from the White House:

Anyone who has seen a post-apocalyptic movie knows that a desolate White House offers a ripe backdrop for end times. https://t.co/e9iNAkAmk7

— Noah Bierman (@Noahbierman) May 15, 2020

Unmasking the Deep State

At the Other McCain, "The ‘Deep State’ Unmasked: Joe Biden Targeted Trump Aide Gen. Flynn."

Also, bombshell at AoSHQ, "Oh Wow: Devin Nunes Says That Criminal Referrals Are Coming. Not Just for the FBI/CIA Coupists. But for Mueller's Team of 13 Angry Democrats."

And the ominous flaming skull, "LUNATIC LAWLESS "JUDGE" EMMIT SULLIVAN ENLISTS HIS OWN PRIVATE PROSECUTOR TO PRESS CASE AGAINST FLYNN; CONSIDERS IMPOSING HIS OWN CHARGES OF PERJURY AND CONTEMPT ON FLYNN."

Timeline of FBI's FISA Abuse

At the Epoch Times, an amazing newspaper, "Timeline of FBI’s FISA Abuse in Trump Campaign Investigation":

INFOGRAPHIC🔎Timeline of #FISAAbuse in Trump Campaign Investigation: https://t.co/pkDss2owxg#EpochTimes provides a comprehensive timeline of details from the #IGReport, describing how @FBI rushed to #Spy on the Trump campaign and the flaws in its case. pic.twitter.com/mDbwxGGdp2

— The Epoch Times (@EpochTimes) May 12, 2020

In its pursuit of establishing surveillance on the Trump campaign, the FBI turned its attention to Trump campaign adviser Carter Page in the spring of 2016, culminating in the issuance of a FISA warrant—which allows for some of the most intrusive spying methods on an American citizen.

As part of this process, the FBI relied extensively on the flawed Steele dossier, leading an FBI legal counsel to note that this was “essentially a single source FISA.”

A report issued by Department of Justice (DOJ) Inspector General Michael Horowitz reveals a surprising number of details on how this process developed, as well as numerous problems with the evidence that was presented to the FISA court.

Important information was at times altered or not properly shared with the DOJ.

Here we provide a comprehensive timeline of details from the inspector general’s report, describing how the FBI rushed to spy on the Trump campaign and the flaws in its case...

Click through to see the whole thing, with an amazing graph of the timeline. I had to register by email, but apparently you get 20 "free" articles a month, which is the most for any pay-walled newspaper I've seen.

Unmasked

At WSJ, "The Flynn Unmaskers Unmasked":

The Flynn Unmaskers Unmasked: Now we know who knew about the Russian calls, including Joe Biden. https://t.co/KVJhdV4Nra

— Kimberley Strassel (@KimStrassel) May 13, 2020

When news stories appeared in early 2017 about Michael Flynn’s conversation with Russia’s ambassador to the U.S., these columns wondered how Mr. Flynn’s call was so widely known. The names of private U.S. citizens caught on tape by U.S. intelligence are supposed to be “masked” so their privacy is protected.

Well, now we know. GOP Senators Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson on Wednesday released a declassified list of Obama Administration officials who in their waning days in power “unmasked” the conversations of Mr. Flynn, who was set to become President Trump’s National Security Adviser. It seems everyone but the night janitor wanted to know who Mr. Flynn was talking to.

A stunning 39 separate officials snooped on Mr. Flynn’s conversations with foreign actors, lodging nearly 50 unmasking demands between Nov. 30, 2016 and Jan. 12, 2017. Our sources say the nearly dozen redacted names on the list are likely intelligence types—who might have a legitimate interest in knowing who their foreign targets were speaking to in the U.S. But most of the rest are partisan officials who had no business spying on their successors.

The list includes then White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough, then Vice President Joe Biden, and then Secretary of Treasury Jacob Lew. Ambassador to the U.N. and Obama confidante Samantha Power made no fewer than seven requests, though she told Congress she had no recollection of unmasking Mr. Flynn.

Mr. Flynn was unmasked by at least four U.S. ambassadors, six Treasury officials, and people connected to the Energy and Justice departments and NATO, among others. Then FBI Director James Comey, then CIA Director John Brennan and then Director of National Intelligence James Clapper also made the list. This means they had access to the transcripts of any phone conversations Mr. Flynn had with foreign sources as he prepared to take power.

The media cordon sanitaire that protects Democrats will say this is no big deal because unmasking is routine and legal. But if the masking rule means nothing in practice, why pretend it exists?

The Flynn unmasking is important because it occurred amid a media frenzy over supposed Trump campaign collusion with Russia. Leaks to the Washington Post about the conversations between the Russian ambassador and both Mr. Flynn and soon-to-be Attorney General Jeff Sessions were played up as central to the collusion scandal. They caused Mr. Sessions to recuse himself from the Russia probe and Mr. Flynn to be fired. While unmasking isn’t illegal, leaking intelligence is.

There are other dots to connect. Documents released last week show that former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates first learned about the Flynn wiretapping from no less than President Barack Obama in a Jan. 5, 2017, Oval Office meeting. At least one of the unmaskers must have told Mr. Obama.

The dates of the unmaskings raise further questions. The FBI’s interest in Mr. Flynn was supposedly triggered by conversations starting Dec. 29, 2016. Yet Mr. Flynn was first unmasked a month earlier—shortly after Mr. Trump named him security adviser.

The McDonough unmasking takes place on Jan. 5, 2017—the day of the Oval Office meeting at which Mr. Flynn was discussed. Mr. Biden’s unmasking request was made on Jan. 12, 2017—the day the Washington Post reported on the Flynn-Russia conversation. Mr. Biden has some explaining to do.

All of this is fodder for U.S. Attorney John Durham as he tries to unmask the origins of the Russia collusion political ambush...

Anthony Fauci Warns of 'Needless Suffering and Death' (VIDEO)

He actually toned it down in his testimony today, but he's not kowtowing to President Trump.

At CNN and NYT:

Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the U.S.’s top infectious disease expert, plans to deliver a stark warning to the Senate on Tuesday: Americans would experience “needless suffering and death” if the country opens up prematurely. https://t.co/fAhFPbSgv7

— The New York Times (@nytimes) May 12, 2020

@CovidActNow was highlighted in Donald G. McNeil Jr.'s latest feature on Coronavirus reopening. There have been hundreds of articles on Covid Act Now, but few in national pubs.

Donald McNeil is the top @nytimes reporter on COVID, so this is great to see.https://t.co/Hw4n62Mpya

— Zack Rosen (@zack) May 11, 2020

Brad Pitt is the Man

I love this guy.

The skit's not that funny, actually, but the context is. Dr. Fauci wanted Pitt to impersonate him on 'SNL' and got his wish.

Fauci's came under intense fire from conspiracy-minded bottom-dwellers, and a while back he got a majority security upgrade, including armed federal marshals taking posts outside his home. 

At HuffPo:

The coronavirus task force doctor critiqued the Oscar-winning actor's performance on "Saturday Night Live." https://t.co/qwKnKqJB6e

— HuffPost (@HuffPost) April 28, 2020

And 'SNL':

And now, a message from Dr. Anthony Fauci. #SNLAtHome pic.twitter.com/LYemNAWaAT

— Saturday Night Live - SNL (@nbcsnl) April 26, 2020

Everyone Loses in the U.S.-Chinese Clash?

I was just skimming through my old copies of Foreign Affairs and came across this piece, from last year, by Weijian Shan.

It's amazing how quickly it's out of date, and badly wrong, considering the corona epidemic and its effects. President Trump has always been a nationalist on trade, and while he's been woefully uneven on China --- both praising and disparaging Beijing, often during the same press conference --- the strategy that Shan denounces is exactly what the U.S. should pursue.

Here, "The Unwinnable Trade War: Everyone Loses in the U.S.-Chinese Clash—but Especially Americans":

It is in the best interests of both the U.S. and China to move away from zero-sum thinking and put an end to the ad hoc decoupling that the trade war has threatened, argues Weijian Shan.https://t.co/oV4by2z06x

— Foreign Affairs (@ForeignAffairs) October 13, 2019

The trade war has not really damaged China so far, largely because Beijing has managed to keep import prices from rising and because its exports to the United States have been less affected than anticipated. This pattern will change as U.S. importers begin to switch from buying from China to buying from third countries to avoid paying the high tariffs. But assuming China’s GDP continues to grow at around five to six percent every year, the effect of that change will be quite modest. Some pundits doubt the accuracy of Chinese figures for economic growth, but multilateral agencies and independent research institutions set Chinese GDP growth within a range of five to six percent.

Skeptics also miss the bigger picture that China’s economy is slowing down as it shifts to a consumption-driven model. Some manufacturing will leave China if the high tariffs become permanent, but the significance of such a development should not be overstated. Independent of the anxiety bred by Trump’s tariffs, China is gradually weaning itself off its dependence on export-led growth. Exports to the United States as a proportion of China’s GDP steadily declined from a peak of 11 percent in 2005 to less than four percent by 2018. In 2006, total exports made up 36 percent of China’s GDP; by 2018, that figure had been cut by half, to 18 percent, which is much lower than the average of 29 percent for the industrialized countries of the Organ-ization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Chinese leaders have long sought to steer their economy away from export-driven manufacturing to a consumer-driven model.

To be sure, the trade war has exacted a severe psychological toll on the Chinese economy. In 2018, when the tariffs were first announced, they caused a near panic in China’s market at a time when growth was slowing thanks to a round of credit tightening. The stock market took a beating, plummeting some 25 percent. The government initially felt pressured to find a way out of the trade war quickly. But as the smoke cleared to reveal little real damage, confidence in the market rebounded: stock indexes had risen by 23 percent and 34 percent on the Shanghai and Shenzhen exchanges, respectively, by September 12, 2019. The resilience of the Chinese economy in the face of the trade war helps explain why Beijing has stiffened its negotiating position in spite of Trump’s escalation.

China hasn’t had a recession in the past 40 years and won’t have one in the foreseeable future, because its economy is still at an early stage of development, with per capita GDP only one-sixth of that of the United States. Due to declining rates of saving and rising wages, the engine of China’s economy is shifting from investments and exports to private consumption. As a result, the country’s growth rate is expected to slow. The International Monetary Fund projects that China’s real GDP growth will fall from 6.6 percent in 2018 to 5.5 percent in 2024; other estimates put the growth rate at an even lower number. Although the rate of Chinese growth may dip, there is little risk that the Chinese economy will contract in the foreseeable future. Private consumption, which has been increasing, representing 35 percent of GDP in 2010 and 39 percent last year, is expected to continue to rise and to drive economic growth, especially now that China has expanded its social safety net and welfare provisions, freeing up private savings for consumption.

The U.S. economy, on the other hand, has had the longest expansion in history, and the inevitable down cycle is already on the horizon: second-quarter GDP growth this year dropped to 2.0 percent from the first quarter’s 3.1 percent. The trade war, without taking into account the escalations from September, will shave off at least half a percentage point of U.S. GDP, and that much of a drag on the economy may tip it into the anticipated downturn. (According to a September Washington Post poll, 60 percent of Americans expect a recession in 2020.) The prospect of a recession could provide Trump with the impetus to call off the trade war. Here, then, is one plausible way the trade war will come to an end. Americans aren’t uniformly feeling the pain of the tariffs yet. But a turning point is likely to come when the economy starts to lose steam.

If the trade war continues, it will compromise the international trading system, which relies on a global division of labor based on each country’s comparative advantage. Once that system becomes less dependable—when disrupted, for instance, by the boycotts and hostility of trade wars—countries will start decoupling from one another.

China and the United States are joined at the hip economically, each being the other’s biggest trading partner. Any attempt to decouple the two economies will bring catastrophic consequences for both, and for the world at large. Consumer prices will rise, world economic growth will slow, supply chains will be disrupted and laboriously duplicated on a global scale, and a digital divide—in technology, the Internet, and telecommunications—will vastly hamper innovation by limiting the horizons and ambitions of technology firms...

Did Coronavirus Hit Earlier?

In January, I had the worst flu I've every had. I was down for at least a week, laid out in bed, only drinking Seven-Up and eating Cheesehead string cheese sticks now and then.

My oldest son keeps saying I had COVID then, but my symptoms were classic flu-like. Just major, major cough and congestion, and I was expectorating the super yucky dark green mucus. I literally thought I was going to hospital, although I wasn't in much pain beyond the coughing, which was harsh.

Anyway, I just sent my son this piece, and he's yucking it up, telling my he's 95 percent sure I had corona, lol.

At NYT, "Amid Signs Coronavirus Came Earlier, Americans Ask: Did I Already Have It?":

A coroner in Illinois told me he believes coronavirus cases have been missed. Included in the undercount: himself. https://t.co/UgF3fLSSvC

— Julie Bosman (@juliebosman) April 24, 2020

New revelations have left people wondering about ailments early this year. Doctors are thinking back to unexplained cases. Medical examiners are looking for possible misdiagnosed deaths.

CHICAGO — In January, a mystery illness swept through a call center in a skyscraper on Michigan Avenue in Chicago. Close to 30 people in one department alone had symptoms — dry, deep coughs and fevers they could not shake. When they gradually returned to work after taking sick days, they sat in their cubicles looking wan and tired.

“I’ve started to think it was the coronavirus,” said Julie Parks, a 63-year-old employee who was among the sick. “I may have had it, but I can’t be sure. It’s limbo.”

The revelation this week that a death in the United States in early February was the result of the coronavirus has significantly altered the understanding of how early the virus may have been circulating in this country. Researchers now believe that hidden outbreaks were creeping through cities like Chicago, New York, Seattle and Boston in January and February, earlier than previously known.

The new timeline has lent credence to a question on the minds of many Americans: Did I already have the coronavirus?

The retroactive search is happening on many levels. People who had suffered dreadful bouts with flulike illnesses are now wondering whether it had been the coronavirus. Doctors are thinking back to unexplained cases. Medical examiners are poring over their records looking for possible misdiagnosed deaths. And local politicians are demanding investigations.

Brian Gustafson, a coroner in Rock Island County, Ill., said he had no capability to perform post-mortem coronavirus tests, but firmly believed that coronavirus deaths and illnesses were missed across the country during weeks, early this year, when the authorities believed the virus was mainly overseas.

Included in Mr. Gustafson’s suspicions of an undercount: himself. He is convinced that he had the coronavirus in January, when he was so crushingly tired and feverish, he could scarcely summon the strength to walk to the bathroom from his bed.

“I think it was here long before we knew it,” said Mr. Gustafson, who is also a nurse and said he believes that he contracted the virus from one of the recently deceased people who was brought to the coroner’s office long before anyone in Illinois was looking for positive coronavirus cases. “That’s the only logical thing I can think of.”

Some people have spent part of their days sheltering at home going over the details of their bouts with what could have been the coronavirus. In Rothschild, Wis., Tommie Swenson and his girlfriend, Tammy Swikert, keep thinking of the illness they contracted during the winter that spread widely through their village of 5,000 people.

It was nothing like the flu, said Mr. Swenson, a retired truck driver. Milk and soda tasted funny, or like nothing at all. He could barely sleep at night, he had such a rattling cough and felt a crushing weight on his chest.

“We talk about it all the time,” Mr. Swenson said. “What if we did have the coronavirus? Are we immune to it now, or are we going to catch it again? What does this mean?”

Infectious disease experts say the answer is complicated. Many believe that between five and 20 times more people have been exposed to the coronavirus than have tested positive, and there is a growing body of data to support that...

Still more.

I never lost my sense of taste or smell, so I'm still not convinced I had it. But no doubt there were corona deaths way before anyone appreciated the seriousness of the pandemic, or its deadliness.

LBCC Loses Nearly $2 Million Amid Coronavirus

Yeah, but my college is expected to get $14 million from the Care package passed by Congress. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

At the Long Beach Press-Telegram:

Long Beach City College has lost nearly $2 million so far due to coronavirus https://t.co/YtgK6toBdr

— LB Press-Telegram (@presstelegram) April 23, 2020

The American Social Distancing Farce

From Michelle Malkin, "The Grand Farce of American Social Distancing":

We are not a serious country. America’s “social distancing” campaign has gone both too far and not far enough. The restrictions and guidelines are arbitrary, irrational and unevenly applied.

While children’s swings and slides are now crime scenes, golf courses and pickleball courts in my city are wide open.

Weed and booze stores are considered “essential.” Ice cream, dessert joints and fast-food outlets with takeout and delivery services are still operating. But family-owned, sit-down restaurants that have been staples in our community have been forced to shut their doors after decades in business.

Barbershops and hair salons here were ordered to close three weeks ago, but government employees on landscaping crews who cut grass — like the ones I’ve seen all crammed together in a city truck — are still earning paychecks subsidized by the taxpayers sidelined from their jobs in the name of safety and public health.

In my state, and across the country, private gyms have been forbidden spaces for the masses for weeks. But if you’re a celebrity or Beltway elitist, you can still stay in shape while sanctimoniously taping public service announcements telling everyone else to stay at home.

Jennifer Lopez and Alex Rodriguez have been racking up social media clicks by sharing cozy family quarantine videos and coping tips from their multi-million-dollar Florida mansion. “We all need to take care of ourselves, mentally and physically, and also be respectful of the health and well-being of others. At a time when people need to stay apart, we can still find other ways to feel togetherness. Stay connected, and most importantly, stay safe,” Rodriguez tweeted to his 1.2 million fans. Yet, last week, the power couple was caught by paparazzi exiting a Miami gym whose front-door sign read: “This gym is not open. Stay home stay safe.”

Actors Mario Lopez and Mark Wahlberg have also become quarantine time favorites, sharing dance routines, home workouts and homeschool scenes to show their commitment to self-isolation. But last week, the buff Hollywood bros ventured out to a posh Los Angeles F45 Training facility to tape a partner workout together (with a two-person film crew) that they told their viewers to replicate in their apartments or backyards...

Keep reading.

The Strange Post-Social Distancing Purgatory

From Juliette Kayyem, at the Atlantic, "After Social Distancing, a Strange Purgatory Awaits":

Over the past week, I’ve been informally contacting friends and colleagues in a variety of fields—sports, travel, architecture, entertainment, arts, the clergy, and more—to ask them how their world might look after social distancing. The answer: It looks weird.

We will get used to seeing temperature-screening stations at public venues. If America’s testing capacity improves and results come back quickly, don’t be surprised to see nose swabs at airports. Airlines may contemplate whether flights can be reserved for different groups of passengers—either high- or low-risk. Mass-transit systems will set new rules; don’t be surprised if they mandate masks too.

Changes like these are only the beginning. After most disasters, recovery occurs days or weeks or a few months later—when the hurricane has ended, the flooding has subsided, or the earth has stopped shaking. Once the immediate threat has abated, a community gets its bearings, buries its dead, and begins to clear the debris. In crisis-management lingo, the response phase gives way to the recovery stage, in which a society goes back to normal. But the coronavirus crisis will follow a different trajectory.

Until scientists discover a vaccine, doctors develop significantly better medical treatments, or both, people all over the world will be working around, sharing space with, and sheltering from a virus that still kills. The year or years that follow the lifting of stay-at-home orders won’t be true recovery but something better understood as adaptive recovery, in which we learn to live with the virus even as we root for medical progress.

During this strange purgatory, places such as schools will be governed by direct orders from public officials, and large corporate employers will have tremendous influence on work-related norms. But Americans spend a good amount of our life and money in other spaces. After basic needs are addressed or met, what will it be like to be you?

Face shields—not masks, but clear plastic full-face shields—will be required for fans at sports games or concerts, to the extent that those happen at all. Golf could become the sport of choice as it’s easy to maintain distance and is outdoors. Not coincidentally, the PGA Tour announced plans this week to restart its season in June.

In some of the rosier scenarios, COVID-19 testing and tracking become widespread enough that most businesses can stay open...

Still more.

Trump Opens Space for Business

From Glenn Reynolds, "IT’S PAYWALLED, BUT I’VE GOT A PIECE IN THE WSJ WITH TAYLOR DINERMAN ON THE TRUMP SPACE PUSH: Trump Opens Outer Space for Business: An executive order and a prospective treaty aim to make celestial mining an attractive investment":

President Trump acted two weeks ago to bring about the kind of 21st century that we expected in the 20th. If all goes well, it will open the way for mankind to become a true “multiplanet species,” as Elon Musk puts it.

An April 6 executive order, “Encouraging International Support for the Recovery and Use of Space Resources,” is meant to spur a new industry: the extraction and processing of resources from the moon and asteroids to facilitate settlement of the solar system. With this order, Mr. Trump ended an era of legal uncertainty in outer space and laid the foundation for international cooperation on American terms.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration plans a manned moon mission in 2024, followed by a “sustained lunar presence.” The U.S. National Space Council, led by Vice President Mike Pence, has been quietly working on an international agreement known as the Artemis Accords, which would clarify the 1967 Outer Space Treaty and provide a solid basis for private enterprise to operate on the moon, Mars and beyond.

The Outer Space Treaty, to which the U.S. and all other major countries are parties, bars “national appropriation” and sovereignty over the moon and other so-called celestial bodies, declaring that they “shall be the province of all mankind.” Some have read into that provision a prohibition on the private appropriation of resources. The executive order rejects that position: “Outer space is a legally and physically unique domain of human activity, and the United States does not view it as a global commons.” . . .

The Trump order also rejects the 1979 Moon Treaty, which was intended to supplant the Outer Space Treaty. The Moon Treaty purports to ban private exploitation of space resources and mandate that any such activity take place under the supervision of an international authority with a rake-off going to Third World governments. President Carter initially supported the pact, but facing popular opposition, the Senate never took up ratification. Mr. Trump’s statement specifically notes that only 17 of the 95 members of the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space have ratified the Moon Treaty. None have a major space program.

As a follow up to the executive order, the administration has been quietly preparing the Artemis Accords, which it plans to present first to America’s partners on the International Space Station—Canada, Europe, Japan and Russia—and later to other nations. Parties would “affirm that the extraction and utilization of space resources does not constitute national appropriation under Article 2 of the Outer Space Treaty.” . . .

I love the smell of sovereignty in the morning.

Still more at the link.