Walter Einenkel

Republican strategist and strange person Frank Luntz was on CNBC’s Squawk Box with Andrew Ross Sorkin and Joe Kernen. Squawk Box is the business show where Sorkin represents the liberal point of view, while Kernen represents the conservative point of view. In reality, there is not much of a difference between the two except for maybe a few degrees difference in how much bulllshit they are willing to sling out to the public. That and Sorkin is clearly a younger man than Kernen.

On Tuesday, a 17-year-old worker in Pennsylvania reportedly suffered a displaced jaw that will require surgery after asking a couple to wear masks. According to NBC News, the teen was working at Sesame Place theme park located near Philadelphia when a couple at the park attacked him for reminding them that they needed to wear masks. Middletown Township police Lt.

In a July 2020 poll conducted by Civiqs, 82% of Democrats polled said that they wear a mask whenever they leave the house, compared to only 27% of Republicans. In general, about two-thirds of women polled said they always wore a mask, while just less than half of the self-identifying men said the same. It seems obvious on one level as (mostly) white males are more conservative and Republican-leaning than any other general demographic.

Video has begun to spread around the internets purportedly showing LA County, California law enforcement training their guns (including what appears to be an assault rifle) on three Black teenagers while bystanders plead with police, telling them that they are threatening the wrong people.

Fox News’ push right now is to have schools reopen, children go to school, teachers return to classrooms, and the world to pretend that the COVID-19 pandemic is just a bad case of the flu. That’s the angle being taken (and proven wrong time and again over the past few months), but the propaganda wing of the Republican Party has its marching orders and those orders are to drive their viewers off of a cliff.

As COVID-19 continues to tragically break new records of spread throughout the country, our testing capacity is beyond strained. Places like California, early in its response to the growing pandemic, are finding themselves hard-pressed to test enough people fast enough. Meanwhile, insufficient and slow testing and not enough stimulus support from the federal government for the overwhelming majority of Americans has led to new outbreaks.

There are a few things that equal the mediocrity and base idiocy of Donald Trump. Their names are Donald Jr., Eric, Ivanka, and Jared. But, the greasy, sweaty, desperate nature of Donald Trump Jr. has a special patina of existential impotency that is hard to ignore. It’s hard to ignore, in part, because not unlike his father, Junior speaks at a loud blunt volume of dumb about 100% of the time.

Donald Trump Jr.’s newest idea is to self-publish a new book.

On Tuesday, famous racist former senator and Trump attorney general Jeff Sessions lost his bid for a comeback after losing in the Alabama Republican primary to former Auburn Tigers football coach Tommy Tuberville. Tuberville will face off in November for the Senate seat held by Democratic Sen. Doug Jones. Sen. Jones defeated alleged serial sexual assaulter and troller of high school schoolyards Republican Roy Moore in a special election in 2017.

Tucker Carlson announced on his show Monday evening that he would be taking a long vacation. This small respite for the public sphere comes after weeks and weeks of transparent, high-pitched racism, and pro-fascistic takes on the part of Carlson. It also comes after a long weekend for the Fox News hate machine, where Carlson’s top writer, Blake Neff* was outed by CNN for being a racist, homophobic dickweed—straight, no chaser.

As the Black Lives Matter movement and related concerns make headlines around the world, and while corporations make mostly superficial statements of support for Black communities in the United States, corporations are actually not putting their money where their mouths are. In fact, corporations like Target and Viacom seem to be betting against the journalism that uncovers racial injustice across our country.

AT&T is a prime example of how the conservative economic view of the world does not work out for anyone other than the top one percent. After being gifted tens of billions of dollars in the Republican tax giveaway, the telecom giant has proceeded to layoff thousands upon thousands of workers. In fact, since the 2017 tax “cuts,” every couple of months AT&T announces new rounds of layoffs and store closures.

One of the grand tricks the telecom industry was able to achieve by getting its henchman, Ajit Pai, into the majority chairman position in the FCC was to kill net neutrality protections. The most special part of this was Pai’s argument that the FCC did not have the power to enforce, and should not have the power to enforce, any regulations on the telecommunications landscape.

Whether or not the final tallies of how deadly the 2019 novel coronavirus is will be higher, lower, or the same as the seasonal flu is something we will not know for a long time. We do know that there are well over 10 million confirmed cases around the world (more than a quarter of those cases in the United States) and over 500,000 deaths attributed worldwide to COVID-19.

On June 30, Montclair, New Jersey, resident Fareed Nassor Hayat, a law professor at the City University of New York School of Law, took to his Facebook page to post a video of a woman in his neighborhood reportedly harassing him and his family. Hayat wrote that a woman named Susan had called the police and filed a “false report of assault against me when told to leave our property.

Like most industries, NASCAR has a racism problem. One of the more obvious markers of that racism is the preponderance of Confederate memorabilia found in and around NASCAR events. This is something that NASCAR recently addressed by banning the flying of Confederate flags at sanctioned events.

On Thursday, retail giant Macy’s announced new “restructuring” plans to “address sales impact from the COVID-19 pandemic.” According to Macy’s, the company—like most retail businesses—is facing steep declines in profits as a result of the current public health and economic crises.

The Trump campaign, like other conservative campaigns before his, has been trying to rally up the masses in the face of a terrible economic outlook and public health crisis. All of these things have been mismanaged by an administration beset with scandal after scandal. So Trump and crew are trying their best to do what they do best: create a circus dog and pony show made out of anger, hate, fear, racism, and xenophobia.

On Thursday, University of Florida president Kent Fuchs released a statement with the title “Another step toward positive change against racism.” One of the important takeaways from the statement was that the university would end the practice of using unpaid inmate labor. “There are agriculture operations where UF has relied on prison and jail inmates to provide farm labor.

On Tuesday, California’s largest utility company, Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E), pleaded guilty to 84 counts of manslaughter related to the 2018 Camp Fire in Paradise, California. According to the BBC, in a Superior Court in California’s Butte County, Judge Michael Deems read all 84 victims’ names while PG&E chief executive Bill Johnson watched each victim’s image projected on a screen and vocally pleaded guilty to each count.

Over the weekend, a video went up online purporting to show a white male ripping down Black Lives Matter posters and art that were put up along a chainlink fence just outside of a Philadelphia community center. In the video, the man says that his tax dollars “pay for” the fence, which gives him the right to pull down the artwork … put up on the fence by other people whose tax dollars pay for that fence.

Former Buffalo police officer Cariol Horne tried to do the right thing back in 2006. In 2006, a white police officer Horne was working with began choking a handcuffed Black suspect. Horne pulled that officer off of the suspect and was summarily fired for her protection of a Buffalo citizen. At the time, Horne was called out for what higher ups called her “extreme lack of professionalism.

Speaking with podcast host Pat Campbell on Monday, a top Tulsa Police Department official gave his thoughts on the Black Lives Matter protests for racial justice. Major Travis Yates began by questioning what George Floyd was doing before the 10 minutes captured on video by witnesses. He then attacked statistics showing Black Americans are at considerably higher risk of being killed or hurt by police officers.

As the United States tries once again to reconcile its white supremacist systems and the toll it has taken on millions of American citizens, Las Vegas continues having bizarre Republican operatives saying wackadoo racist things. Meet Michele Fiore. Fiore is the Las Vegas mayor pro tem you might remember as the lawmaker who during previous BLM protests said she supported shooting protesters, and subsequently clarified she meant just the Black Lives Matters ones.

On Tuesday, the Senate confirmed Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr. as the 22nd Air Force chief of staff. This is a historic moment as Brown becomes the first Black military service chief in the United States. He is only the second Black officer to serve on the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Donald Trump nominated Brown on March 2, but Republican Sen.

On June 3, the Los Angeles City Council introduced a motion to cut $100-150 million from the city police department budget. The council cited the week’s protests in the name of Black citizens like Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and Ahmaud Arbery. The motion said that “A city’s budget is a reflection of a government’s values, principles and priorities.

On June 3, the Los Angeles City Council introduced a motion to cut $100-150 million from the city police department budget. The council cited the week’s protests in the name of Black citizens like Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and Ahmaud Arbery. The motion said that “A city’s budget is a reflection of a government’s values, principles and priorities.

The Reopen America movement—made up of a conservative, mostly white, and frequently heavily armed set of protests—was a sad affair. In some cases the protests were dangerous affairs as armed white guys screamed in the faces of law enforcement and threatened to take over government buildings. While obviously small, these anti-government “control” theatrical events always seemed to come up against very restrained and sober law enforcement.

On June 1, 2020, a collection of peaceful protesters gathered on Benjamin Franklin Parkway in downtown Philadelphia. As curfew approached, the mostly young crowd began to be corralled by bike police officers. An escalation of events took place and 21-year-old Temple University engineering student named Evan Gorski was arrested. According to Philadelphia police, Gorski allegedly “assaulted a police officer by pushing him off a bike, causing him to break a hand.