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AMERICA IN CRISIS

‘Chaos’: Kushner-Commandeered Supply Chain Task Force Operates in the Dark, Turned Government Into Arm of Big Business

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Jared Kushner is best known for his failures, and his decision to commandeer the supply chain task force and turn it into an arm of Big Business may be his greatest.

The supply chain task force, a part of the larger coronavirus task force, should be helping the federal government procure desperately-needed personal protective equipment (PPE) including face masks and shields, along with life-saving medical equipment like ventilators, at a lower cost, and distributing it to the areas that need it the most.

But under Kushner’s manipulation, the supply chain task force has “virtually no accountability,” NBC News reports. It has “operated almost entirely in the dark, releasing few details of their arrangements with the big companies; created a new and convoluted emergency response system; and sown confusion and distrust in the states and among the people who need medical supplies.”

“Jared and his friends decided they were going to do their thing,” one senior government official told NBC News. “It cost weeks.”

Congressional officials warn the supply chain group is mired in “chaos, secrecy and ineptitude.”

NBC reports under Kushner the supply chain task force has spent about one million dollars each on 40 chartered FedEx flights in a deal for chemical giant DuPont to send its made in the USA Tyvek material over to Vietnam, where it is sown into body suits.

Those suits used to sell for $5 each. The federal government, in addition to basically donating what would amount to $40 million to DuPont, is now paying up to three times as much for the suits: $15 each, NBC News reports. To make matters worse, instead of paying FedEx $1 million per flight the federal government could have used U.S. military aircraft which would have cost less than half: $410,000 per flight.

And if all that weren’t bad enough, DuPont only sold 60 percent of the suits to the federal government.

“We actually helped get raw materials supplied from Richmond, Virginia, and we flew that s— to Vietnam, all so that DuPont could sell us” their products, said a senior federal official involved in the coronavirus effort.

President Donald Trump and HHS, which announced the deal last week, described the arrangement as one in a string of massive successes in delivering badly needed medical equipment into the U.S. in an expedited fashion.

Read the entire report here.

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AMERICA IN CRISIS

‘Clear and Present Danger’: Majority of Trump Voters Believe It’s ‘Time to Split the Country’ in Two – Report

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3 years ago

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September 30, 2021

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The highly-respected University of Virginia’s nonpartisan Center for Politics has released a new study that finds a majority of Trump voters believe it’s time to split the country into two, with “red states” and “blue states” seceding from the Union.

The organization, headed by Larry Sabato of “Sabato’s Crystal Ball,” reports that four in ten Biden voters agree.

“The divide between Trump and Biden voters is deep, wide, and dangerous. The scope is unprecedented, and it will not be easily fixed,” said UVA Center for Politics Director Larry J. Sabato.

“In order to figure out ways to bridge these divides, we need to understand not just the divides themselves, but also understand the ways in which we can, together, move forward to reach common ground. This project helps us do both,” said Larry Schack of Project Home Fire, a new initiative partnering with the UVA Center for Politics.

The report top-line revelations include: “Trump and Biden voters are at crisis stage”; there is tremendous “fear and distrust among Biden and Trump voters”; and “Many Trump and Biden voters believe the deck is stacked against them, and their commitment to democracy is wavering.”

Crystal Ball’s managing editor, Kyle Kondik, tweeted out some charts (below) from the project. Among the disturbing but unsurprising revelations:

Eight in 10 Biden and Trump voters say elected officials from the opposition party present a “clear and present danger” to democracy. Almost eight in 10 Biden and Trump voters say Americans who support the opposite party have also become a “clear and present danger” to the American way of life.

The report also finds strong areas of common ground, including on the need for improvements to the electric grid, water supply, roads, rail, and bridges, and raising taxes on the wealthy.

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AMERICA IN CRISIS

McConnell Rushes to TV Cameras to Gush ‘The Era of Bipartisanship Is Over’ After Infrastructure Talks Break Down

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4 years ago

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June 8, 2021

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U.S. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) wasted no time in rushing to find TV cameras to brag “the era of bipartisanship is over,” after talks between the Biden White House and McConnell’s hand-picked surrogate, Senator Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV) broke down Tuesday afternoon.

“As you look to what the Majority Leader has in mind for June, it’s pretty clear the era of bipartisanship is over,” McConnell said, referring to Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer’s intention to bring legislation on paycheck fairness, LGBTQ equality, and gun control to the floor for votes.

It took McConnell less than one hour from the time news broke about the talks, which had been going on for about two weeks, and when he spoke to reporters.

“One-hundred percent of our focus is on stopping this new administration,” McConnell said one month ago. “What we have in the United States Senate is total unity from Susan Collins to Ted Cruz in opposition to what the new Biden administration is trying to do to this country,” he added.

President Joe Biden’s initial proposal for an infrastructure bill was $2.3 trillion. He came down to $1.7 trillion in hopes the GOP would come up and meet him there. His offer is now $1 trillion. The GOP is at $330 billion, according to NBC News.

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AMERICA IN CRISIS

The Frightening Parallels Between QAnon and Hitler’s Nazis

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4 years ago

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September 10, 2020

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The QAnon conspiracy cult enjoyed a major victory when, on August 11, far-right extremist Marjorie Taylor Greene won a GOP congressional primary in Georgia — and given how overwhelmingly Republican her district is, Greene is likely to win the general election in November and be sworn into the U.S. House of Representatives in January 2021. QAnon, known for their outrageous conspiracy theories, believe that the U.S. government has been infiltrated by an international ring of pedophiles and Satanists and that President Donald Trump was put in power to battle them. And Gregory Stanton, president of Genocide Watch and an expert on the history of anti-Semitism, believes that there are parallels between QAnon’s outrageous views and the views that Nazis promoted in Germany during the 1930s.

Describing QAnon’s views in an article published by Just Security on September 9, Stanton writes, “A secret cabal is taking over the world. They kidnap children, slaughter and eat them to gain power from their blood. They control high positions in government, banks, international finance, the news media and the church. They want to disarm the police. They promote homosexuality and pedophilia. They plan to mongrelize the white race so it will lose its essential power. Does this conspiracy theory sound familiar? It is. The same narrative has been repackaged by QAnon.”

According to Stanton, there are countless parallels between QAnon’s conspiracy theories and the anti-Semitism that Adolf Hitler and his Nazis promoted in Germany before and during World War II.

“The Nazis worshiped Adolf Hitler as the leader who would rescue the white race from this secret Jewish plot,” Stanton explains. “Nazi ‘stormtroopers’ — storm detachment, Sturmabteilung —  helped bring Hitler to power. Nazi Germany went on to conquer Europe and murder 6 million Jews and millions of Roma, Slavs, LGBTQ and other people.”

Central to Nazi ideology, Stanton notes, was the anti-Semitic 1902 pamphlet, “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” and Stanton stresses that QAnon’s ideology is a “rebranded version” of that pamphlet.

“QAnon purveys the fantasy that a secret Satan-worshiping cabal is taking over the world,” Stanton observes. “Its members kidnap white children, keep them in secret prisons run by pedophiles, slaughter and eat them to gain power from the essence in their blood. The cabal held the American presidency under the Clintons and (former President Barack) Obama, nearly took power again in 2016, and lurks in a ‘Deep State’ financed by Jews, including George Soros — and in Jews who control the media. They want to disarm citizens and defund the police. They promote abortion, transgender rights and homosexuality. They want open borders so brown illegal aliens can invade America and mongrelize the white race.”

Stanton continues, “QAnon true believers think Donald Trump will rescue America from this Satanic cabal. At the time of ‘The Storm,’ supporters of the cabal will be rounded up and executed. The QAnon conspiracy theory has now spread to neo-Nazis in Germany, where over 200,000 German QAnon accounts infest the internet.”

Stanton goes on to write that QAnon’s critics “are perplexed at how any rational person could fall for such an irrational conspiracy theory.” But when people are suffering hardships, Stanton explains, they “respond to fear and terror” and “blame their misfortunes on scapegoats” — which is what happened in Germany during the 1930s.

“In the 1930s,” Stanton recalls, “millions of Europeans were unemployed. Violent battles between Nazis and communists raged in city streets. Democratic governments were powerless. Fascist dictators ruled Spain and Italy. Hitler took power in Germany and conquered Western Europe. Stalin’s communists conquered the East. The Hitler-Stalin Pact sealed totalitarian rule over most of Europe. It took World War II and the deaths of millions to defeat the Nazis’ genocidal tyranny, and another 50 years to free the gulags of the Soviet Union.”

Stanton adds that in 2020, it is obvious that QAnon’s influence is growing when a QAnon supporter like Greene is “likely” on her way to Congress and President Donald Trump praises her as a “future Republican star.”

“The world has seen QAnon before,” Stanton warns. “It was called Nazism. In QAnon, Nazism wants a comeback.

Image by Anthony Crider via Flickr and a CC license

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