#Kenosha County John Doe

[justicefor]

Do you know this man?

His body was found in 1997 in Pleasant Prairie, Kenosha County, Wisconsin.

He had:

Black hair and a grey mustache.

Was 39 to 60 years old.

Was about 5'11.

Wore a White T shirt (appeared dyed red), grey Jordache jeans, one heavy sock on left foot

Had distinctive tattoos of a bear claw and a dragonfly (pictured above).

Was White, Hispanic, Native American or a mix of those three.

May have been from Alaska, Washington, Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, North Dakota, and southern regions of the Canadian provinces (British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec). There is also a slight possibility for a region of origin in Colorado, New Brunswick (Canada), and New Foundland (Canada).

The DNA Doe Project is also raising money to try to identify him through gemetic geneaology.

If you think you know who this man is, please contact the Kenosha County Medical Examiner at 262-653-3869.

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

As he watches some men exit a CVS store across the street, Kyle Rittenhouse can be heard saying that he wished he had his rifle so he could shoot them.

At least that's what prosecutors say is going on in the short video formerly posted on YouTube. It's part of a motion they filed to use the 29-second clip as "other acts" evidence in Rittenhouse's trial on charges he fatally shot two protesters and wounded a third during protests in Kenosha last August.

The clip, taken 15 days earlier, appears to be taken by Rittenhouse or someone with him in a car, in the evening, parked across the street from a CVS store. You can see people inside, and a Black man as he jogs out of the store.

A voice that sounds like Rittenhouse says one of the men appears to be armed. Then, he says, "Bro I wish I had my (expletive) AR. l'd start shooting rounds at them."

In an affidavit accompanying the motion, Kenosha County Assistant District Attorney Thomas Binger says his office obtained the video last week. It does not say how or from whom.

The motion notes Rittenhouse had no personal interaction with anyone at the CVS store.

"Quite simply, the defendant saw something, jumped to a conclusion based on exactly zero facts, and then threatened to kill someone based on his baseless assumption and wrongful interpretation," the motion reads.

"The defendant’s understanding of the proper use of his “AR” and of deadly force is crucial to this case, and this video demonstrates that the defendant was eager to use deadly force in an unlawful situation."

Binger says the video is relevant to show Rittenshouse's state of mind when he fired the shots on Aug. 25, a crucial element to his self-defense claim.

"The video also demonstrates that the defendant fervently sought to insert himself as an armed vigilante into situations that had nothing to do with him. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the video proves that the defendant was ready and willing to use deadly force in a situation where it was completely unjustified."

In a second motion, Binger asks Circuit Judge Bruce Schroeder to compel Rittenhouse to turn over the names of anyone who has donated to his legal defense, $2 million bail or purchased "Free Kyle" merchandise through his family's web site.

Those people, he argues, should not be allowed to serve on the jury for Rittenhouse's trial, currently scheduled for Nov. 1.

Binger said it would be fine if a master list were given only to Schroeder, and then if only names from Kenosha County were shared with the prosecution, which he said might want to further investigate whether those people or family or associates wind up in the pool of potential jurors.

Almost immediately after Rittenhouse, then 17, was charged in the Kenosha shootings, he became a cause célèbre among some conservatives and gun rights advocates and money flowed in from around the country.

Much of it went to the #FightBack Foundation, a Texas organization his then-lawyers Lin Wood and John Pierce had formed just two weeks prior to supposedly sue news media outlets. Wood later left the defense, and after the family fired Pierce, they started the Milo Fund, a Nevada LLC, that supposedly provides more control of donated funds by Wendy Rittenhouse, the defendant's mother. It's named after a dog Rittenhouse got while out on bail.

Earlier, Binger filed other motions to allow "other acts" evidence -- that Rittenhouse had hit a girl who was fighting with his sister, and that he had met with members of the Proud Boys at a Racine County tavern after his arraignment in January.

Rittenhouse's lawyers say he did not know the men at the tavern, or know they were Proud Boys or that the OK sign they made with their hands in photos they took with Rittenhouse is often used by white supremacists.

The earlier motions are scheduled for a hearing Sept. 17.

[dipulb3]

The US has reported at least 50 mass shootings since the Atlanta spa shootings

New Post has been published on https://appradab.com/the-us-has-reported-at-least-50-mass-shootings-since-the-atlanta-spa-shootings/

The US has reported at least 50 mass shootings since the Atlanta spa shootings

The United States has seen at least 150 mass shootings in 2021, according to data from the GVA, a non-profit based in Washington.

Appradab considers an incident to be a mass shooting if four or more people are shot, wounded or killed, excluding the gunman; so does the GVA.

Here are the incidents reported since March 16.

April 18: Kenosha, Wisconsin

Three people were killed and three others wounded in a shooting at The Somers House tavern in Kenosha County, Wisconsin, according to the Kenosha County Sheriff’s Office.

April 17: Columbus, Ohio

A shooting at a vigil in Columbus, Ohio, left one dead and five others — including a 12-year-old child — wounded, the Franklin County Sheriff’s Office said. No suspects are in custody.

April 17: LaPlace, Louisiana

Nine juveniles were wounded by gunfire during a 12-year-old’s birthday party Saturday in LaPlace, Louisiana, a suburb of New Orleans, authorities said.

Deputies found multiple people shot when they responded to the scene Saturday, officials said in a statement posted to the St. John the Baptist Parish Sheriff’s Office Facebook page.

The agency initially said six people were injured, but in a subsequent post said nine were shot or grazed by gunfire, including two who remain in a hospital — a 14-year-old boy shot in the head and a 16-year-old hit in the stomach.

The shooting started “when verbal confrontations during a child’s birthday party led to gunfire,” officials said.

The sheriff’s office said that it is not aware of any fatalities related to the Saturday shooting, and no arrests have been made.

April 16: Detroit

Four people were wounded in a shooting during a vigil on Detroit’s east side when an unknown person fired into the crowd, Appradab affiliate WDIV reported. The victims were expected to recover.

April 15: Indianapolis

Eight people were killed and several others wounded in a mass shooting at an Indianapolis FedEx facility, Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department spokeswoman Genae Cook said.

April 15: Pensacola, Florida

At least six people were injured at an Escambia County apartment complex, as reported by Appradab affiliate WEAR-TV. No suspects are in custody.

April 15: Washington, DC

Four people were shot, including a teenage girl, in Northeast Washington, DC, affiliate WRC reported.

April 13: Baltimore

Police said a dice game turned violent when two people opened fire on a group, wounding four, according to Appradab affiliate WJZ-TV.

April 12: Chicago

Four people were shot, one fatally, and a fifth person was hit by a car in a shooting just after midnight on the Eisenhower Expressway, affiliate WMAQ reported.

April 11: Wichita, Kansas

One person was killed and three others injured in a shooting at a house party at an East Wichita Airbnb, as reported by Appradab affiliate KWCH.

April 11: Seattle

A toddler and three other people were injured when suspects fired into a business parking lot, according to Appradab affiliate KIRO 7.

April 10: Memphis, Tennessee

One person was killed and three others, including a mother and child, were injured after gunfire was exchanged in a Memphis neighborhood, according to Appradab affiliate WHBQ.

April 10: Koshkonong, Missouri

One person was killed and three others injured in a shooting at a convenience store, according to Appradab affiliate KY3.

April 10: Waterbury, Connecticut

Police responded to calls of a weapons complaint and found blood trails and four injured victims, reported Appradab affiliate WFSB.

April 10: Allendale, Michigan

An incident outside a house party resulted in four people being shot and one critically injured, according to Appradab affiliate WWMT.

April 9: Fort Worth, Texas

One person was killed and at least five others injured when people in two vehicles shot at each other on a Fort Worth, Texas, freeway, officials said.

April 8: Bryan, Texas

A gunman killed one person and wounded at least five others — four of them critically — at a cabinet manufacturer, police said.

April 7: Rock Hill, South Carolina

A former NFL player killed six people — including a prominent doctor, his wife and their two young grandchildren — before killing himself, authorities said.

April 7: Milwaukee

A 26-year-old man was charged with the shooting that killed two people and injured two others at a gas station, according to Appradab affiliate WDJT.

April 6: Detroit

One person was killed and three others injured after gunfire erupted from a car, according to Appradab affiliate WDIV.

April 5: Chicago

Seven people were wounded on Chicago’s South Side, Appradab affiliate WLS reported, when gunfire erupted after a fight on a sidewalk. The victims — six men and one woman — ranged in age from 18 to 39.

April 5: Baltimore

Five victims were taken to a hospital with multiple gunshot wounds, Baltimore police said.

April 4: Monroe, Louisiana

Police responded to Bobo’s Bar, where they found six victims with gunshot wounds, according to Appradab affiliate KNOE.

April 4: Birmingham, Alabama

An argument between two groups of men devolved into more than 30 shots fired at a park on Easter — killing a woman and wounding five other people, including four children, police said.

April 4: Beaumont, Texas

A man arrived at a home, threatening several people with a firearm before shooting four people, according to Beaumont Police.

April 3: Wilmington, North Carolina

Three people were killed and four others injured in a mass shooting at a house party, according to Appradab affiliate WECT.

April 3: Tuscaloosa, Alabama

Two men were arrested and charged with attempted murder after five people were injured during a shooting outside an Alabama bar, police said.

April 3: Dallas

In what police said was an apparent murder-suicide plot between 21-year-old and 19-year-old brothers, they killed their parents, sister, grandmother and then themselves, according to Appradab affiliate KLTV.

April 3: Quincy, Florida

Seven people were injured by gunfire near a nightclub after a fight broke out, according to Appradab affiliate WCTV.

March 31: Orange, California

Four people, including a child, were killed and another person wounded in a mass shooting at an office complex in Orange, California, according to authorities.

March 31: Washington, DC

Five people were shot in Washington, the DC Police Department said. The incident started as a dispute and ended with two people dead and three injured.

March 28: Cleveland

Seven people were shot at a Cleveland nightclub, according to Appradab affiliate WOIO. The victims, four men and three women, were all between 20 and 30 years old, and police believe several people fired inside the nightclub, the station reported.

March 28: Chicago

Four people in an SUV were shot on the I-57 expressway, according to Appradab affiliate WLS. All were taken to hospitals in critical condition.

March 28: Essex, Maryland

A man fatally shot his parents before shooting three people at a convenience store, killing two of them, Appradab affiliate WBOC reported, citing Baltimore County police. The suspect died by suicide.

March 27: Chicago

Four people were shot in Chicago’s South Austin neighborhood, according to Appradab affiliate WBBM. The victims, who included men ages 42, 53 and 64, were near a sidewalk when they were shot, the station reported.

March 27: Yazoo City, Mississippi

At least seven people were injured in a mass shooting at a nightclub, Appradab affiliate WLBT reported. At least six people were shot and another person suffered a laceration, the station reported.

March 27: River Grove, Illinois

A shooting on a party bus left three people injured and one dead, according to Appradab affiliate WLS. Police say the occupants of another vehicle fired at the bus while stopped at an intersection, the station reported.

March 26: Virginia Beach, Virginia

Three shootings in the city left eight people injured and two dead, according to the City of Virginia Beach.

March 26: Chicago

A gathering in Chicago’s Wrightwood neighborhood turned into a mass shooting, according to Appradab affiliate WLS. Two gunmen opened fire inside the gathering, wounding seven people and fatally shooting a 26-year-old man, the station reported.

March 26: Norfolk, Virginia

Police responded to a shooting that left four people wounded, Appradab affiliate WTKR reported. The victims — two 18-year-old men, a 17-year-old girl and a 21-year-old woman — sustained non-life-threatening gunshot wounds.

March 26: Memphis, Tennessee

Five people were shot, the Memphis Police Department said on Twitter. Three victims were pronounced dead at the scene, two were taken to a hospital in critical condition, and one was in non-critical condition, the tweet said.

Michael Tucker, the man identified as the suspect, was found dead in a motel in Nashville on April 1. Police spokesman Don Aaron said it is believed Tucker died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

March 26: Philadelphia

Outside of the Golf and Social Club, police say two suspects shot seven people, Appradab affiliate WPVI reported. Video released by police shows two suspects approaching a gathering crowd and opening fire.

March 23: Aliceville, Alabama

A shooting reported at an Aliceville home left two people dead and two injured, according to Appradab affiliate WVTM.

March 23: Boulder, Colorado

Ten people, including a Boulder police officer, were killed in a shooting at a King Soopers supermarket, according to police.

March 20: Philadelphia

One person was killed and another five were injured in a shooting at an illegal party, Appradab affiliate KYW reported. “There were at least 150 people in there that fled and believed they had to flee for their lives,” Philadelphia Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw said.

March 20: Dallas

Eight people were shot, one fatally, by an unknown assailant, according to police.

March 20: Houston

Five people were shot after a disturbance inside a club, according to police. One was in critical condition after being shot in the neck, and the rest were in stable condition, according to Appradab affiliate KPRC.

March 18: New Orleans

Four people were wounded in a shooting in New Orleans’ Seventh Ward, Appradab affiliate WDSU reported.

March 18: Gresham, Oregon

Four victims were taken to the hospital after a shooting in the city east of Portland, police said in an initial report.

March 17: Stockton, California

Five people who were preparing a vigil in Stockton, in California’s Central Valley, were shot in a drive-by shooting, the San Joaquin Sheriff’s Department said. None had life-threatening injuries.

March 16: Atlanta

Eight people, including six Asian women, were killed when a White gunman stormed three spas, police said. One person was wounded.

Appradab’s Christina Walker, Melissa Alonso and Josh Berlinger contributed to this report.

[ericvick]

Trump-Biden Election Fight May Be Too Close to Call for Days

(Bloomberg) — Close contests in five key states mean the U.S. presidential election may not be decided for days, or longer, even as President Donald Trump falsely claimed victory over Democrat Joe Biden with millions of ballots still to be counted.

As of 6 a.m. New York time Wednesday, Biden had 238 electoral votes while Trump had 213, leaving both shy of the 270 needed to secure immediate victories.

In a middle of the night speech from the White House, Trump threatened to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene to stop what he called the disenfranchisement of Republican voters, without offering evidence that any wrongdoing had occurred.

“Frankly, we did win this election,” he said, noting that he held a lead in a number of states where results were still uncertain. “So we’ll be going to the U.S. Supreme Court. We want all voting to stop.”

It wasn’t immediately clear what Trump meant, as states including Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Georgia and Nevada were counting legally cast votes. It is routine for states to continue counting votes after Election Day, and Pennsylvania said results likely wouldn’t be finalized for several days.

On Wednesday morning, a Biden official said the campaign is confident the Democrat will win Wisconsin and Michigan as mailed-in votes are tallied.

Technology shares led a rally in U.S. stocks, while Treasuries surged as the election lowered expectations for a massive federal spending bill.Treasuries jumped with the dollar as traders bet the prospect of divided government would make it harder to pass fresh stimulus. The benchmark S&P 500 Index rose for a third day after futures swung from losses to gains during the early U.S. morning.

The unusually large number of absentee ballots cast due to the coronavirus pandemic meant counting wasn’t complete. The unresolved outcome risks stoking tensions further in the U.S., beset by an economic downturn and the raging virus.

Despite the president’s claims, Biden ended Election Day with a strong chance of unseating the incumbent. A Biden win in the battleground state of Arizona — which Trump carried in 2016 — opened up a number of pathways to clinch a majority of Electoral College votes, primarily through Rust Belt states where both campaigns fought hard.

Story continues

Trump tried to create doubt about the legitimacy of the vote count early Wednesday after spending weeks warning without evidence of ballot tampering that would favor the former vice president. Trump’s comments drew criticism from Biden’s campaign and at least one of the president’s allies.

Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, a close Trump ally, told ABC News he disagreed with Trump’s remarks about the election results and said, “There’s just no basis to make that argument tonight. There just isn’t.”

Biden’s campaign manager, Jen O’Malley Dillon, said in a statement that Trump’s remarks were “outrageous, unprecedented and incorrect” and “a naked effort to take away the democratic rights of American citizens.”

Earlier, Biden told supporters sitting in cars outside the Chase Center in Wilmington, Delaware, that he was “on track to win this election” and urged his supporters to be patient as they waited for the ballots to be counted.

The Associated Press, relied on by many news organizations for election calls, said in a statement that it “is not calling the presidential race yet because neither candidate has secured the 270 Electoral College votes needed to claim victory.”

Both men still have paths to victory, though it appears that Biden has more options than Trump does. Trump needs at least four of the following states to pass 270 electoral votes: Georgia, North Carolina, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. He won them all in 2016.

If Biden wins any two of Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Georgia, he’ll win.

Biden edged to a small lead in Wisconsin, up almost 21,000 votes, as returns from Green Bay and Kenosha were added to the total. He also moved into a narrow lead in Michigan, with a sizable number of absentee ballots still left to count.

In Nevada, where tallying was halted until Thursday, Biden was clinging to a lead of almost 8,000 votes.

Biden is also carrying a lead of about 2 million in the popular vote.

There were few surprises among states where the AP announced winners, with Republican and Democratic states generally falling in line, despite expectations for several upsets. The only other Electoral College vote to flip so far, besides in Arizona, came from a congressional district in Nebraska that backed Biden after favoring Trump in 2016.

Trump won Florida, a crucial prize in the race to the White House that closed off Biden’s hopes for an early knockout in the election. The president also won Texas, which Democrats had hoped might turn blue and entirely reshape the electoral map.

Trump significantly outperformed in one of Florida’s most populous counties, Miami-Dade. After losing the county four years ago by 29 points, he lost by less than 8 to Biden.

The county is diverse, with large Cuban and Venezuelan populations Trump has courted by raising diplomatic and economic pressure on the socialist regimes in those countries. He accused Biden of sharing the regimes’ politics.

Trump won Ohio and Biden won Minnesota, states that each candidate had sought to take from the other but wound up politically unchanged from 2016.

Ohio was the first of several battleground states decided in the race.

Biden carried Minnesota even though Trump held multiple campaign rallies in a state he narrowly lost to Hillary Clinton in 2016. But Biden’s strength in the urban parts of the state kept it in the Democratic column.

Trump holds small leads in North Carolina and Georgia, though there are votes outstanding in each. Trump won both states in 2016.

In addition, Biden won Nebraska’s second congressional district, Minnesota, Hawaii, California, Oregon, Washington, Colorado, New York, Virginia, Illinois, Maryland, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont, Rhode Island, New Mexico, Delaware, District of Columbia and New Hampshire, according to the AP.

Trump won Nebraska’s other four Electoral College votes, Ohio, Florida, Texas, Iowa, Idaho, Kansas, Arkansas, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, West Virginia, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Missouri.

Nebraska is one of only two states, with Maine, that award an Electoral College vote to the winner of each congressional district. Trump won two districts and Biden won one. Trump won the state overall, giving him Nebraska’s two remaining Electoral College votes.

Maine’s second congressional district remained too close to call.

Even if Democrats yet claim the White House, a “blue wave” they hoped would also give them control of both chambers of Congress may fall short.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, was re-elected, the AP said. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, the Senate Judiciary Committee chairman, was re-elected despite a Democratic challenger who badly outraised him, and Senator Doug Jones, an Alabama Democrat, was defeated by Republican Tommy Tuberville.

Former Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper, a Democrat, defeated Senator Cory Gardner, giving his party one pickup. Other contested Senate seats remain undecided.

Biden is winning over Latino and African-American voters in numbers similar to Clinton four years ago, and is narrowing Trump’s margin among White voters, early exit polls from the AP show.

Trump had a 12-point lead among White voters in Tuesday’s election. Network exit polls four years ago showed him with a 20-point advantage among those voters. Biden led among Latino voters 30 points, Black voters by 82 points, and women by 12 points.

(Michael Bloomberg, the founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News, provided $100 million in support of Biden and his running mate Kamala Harris in Florida, half of that from his Independence USA PAC.)

(Updates with Biden lead in Michigan in 17th paragraph, popular vote in 19th.)

For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com

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©2020 Bloomberg L.P.

[newstechreviews]

Kelly Ferro is a busy mom on her way to the post office: leather mini-backpack, brunet topknot, turquoise pedicure with a matching ombré manicure. A hairdresser from Kenosha, Wis., Ferro didn’t vote in 2016 but has since become a strong supporter of Donald Trump. “Why does the news hate the President so much?” she says. “I went down the rabbit hole. I started doing a lot of research.”

When I ask what she means by research, something shifts. Her voice has the same honey tone as before, and her face is as friendly as ever. But there’s an uncanny flash as she says, “This is where I don’t know what I can say, because what’s integrated into our system, it stems deep. And it has to do with really corrupt, evil, dark things that have been hidden from the public. Child sex trafficking is one of them.”

Ferro may not have even realized it, but she was parroting elements of the QAnon conspiracy theory, a pro-Trump viral delusion that began in 2017 and has spread widely over recent months, migrating from far-right corners of the Internet to infect ordinary voters in the suburbs. Its followers believe President Trump is a hero safeguarding the world from a “deep state” cabal of Satan-worshipping pedophiles, Democratic politicians and Hollywood celebrities who run a global sex-trafficking ring, harvesting the blood of children for life-sustaining chemicals.

None of this is even remotely true. But an alarming number of Americans have been exposed to these wild ideas. There are thousands of QAnon groups and pages on Facebook, with millions of members, according to an internal company document reviewed by NBC News. Dozens of QAnon-friendly candidates have run for Congress, and at least three have won GOP primaries. Trump has called its adherents “people that love our country.”

In more than seven dozen interviews conducted in Wisconsin in early September, from the suburbs around Milwaukee to the scarred streets of Kenosha in the aftermath of the Jacob Blake shooting, about 1 in 5 voters volunteered ideas that veered into the realm of conspiracy theory, ranging from QAnon to the notion that COVID-19 is a hoax. Two women in Ozaukee County calmly informed me that an evil cabal operates tunnels under the U.S. in order to rape and torture children and drink their blood. A Joe Biden supporter near a Kenosha church told me votes don’t matter, because “the elites” will decide the outcome of the election anyway. A woman on a Kenosha street corner explained that Democrats were planning to bring in U.N. troops before the election to prevent a Trump win.

It’s hard to know exactly why people believe what they believe. Some had clearly been exposed to QAnon conspiracy theorists online. Others seemed to be repeating false ideas espoused in Plandemic, a pair of conspiracy videos featuring a discredited former medical researcher that went viral, spreading the notion that COVID-19 is a hoax across social media. (COVID-19 is not a hoax.) When asked where they found their information, almost all these voters were cryptic: “Go online,” one woman said. “Dig deep,” added another. They seemed to share a collective disdain for the mainstream media–a skepticism that has only gotten stronger and deeper since 2016. The truth wasn’t reported, they said, and what was reported wasn’t true.

This matters not just because of what these voters believe but also because of what they don’t. The facts that should anchor a sense of shared reality are meaningless to them; the news developments that might ordinarily inform their vote fall on deaf ears. They will not be swayed by data on coronavirus deaths, they won’t be persuaded by job losses or stock market gains, and they won’t care if Trump called America’s fallen soldiers “losers” or “suckers,” as the Atlantic reported, because they won’t believe it. They are impervious to messaging, advertising or data. They aren’t just infected with conspiracy; they appear to be inoculated against reality.

Sinna NasseriA man in a QAnon shirt appears outside a Trump rally in Tulsa, Okla., on June 20

Democracy relies on an informed and engaged public responding in rational ways to the real-life facts and challenges before us. But a growing number of Americans are untethered from that. “They’re not on the same epistemological grounding, they’re not living in the same worlds,” says Whitney Phillips, a professor at Syracuse who studies online disinformation. “You cannot have a functioning democracy when people are not at the very least occupying the same solar system.”

American politics has always been prone to spasms of conspiracy. The historian Richard Hofstadter famously called it “an arena for angry minds.” In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, Americans were convinced that the Masons were an antigovernment conspiracy; populists in the 1890s warned of the “secret cabals” controlling the price of gold; in the 20th century, McCarthyism and the John Birch Society fueled a wave of anti-Communist delusions that animated the right. More recently, Trump helped seed a racist lie that President Barack Obama was not born in the U.S.

As a candidate in 2016, Trump seemed to promote a new wild conspiracy every week, from linking Ted Cruz’s father to the Kennedy assassination to suggesting Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was murdered. In interviews at Trump rallies that year, I heard voters espouse all manner of delusions: that the government was run by drug cartels; that Obama was a foreign-born Muslim running for a third term; that Hillary Clinton had Vince Foster killed. But after four years of a Trump presidency, the paranoia is no longer relegated to the margins of society. According to the Pew Research Center, 25% of Americans say there is some truth to the conspiracy theory that the COVID-19 pandemic was intentionally planned. (Virologists, global health officials and U.S. intelligence and national-security officials have all dismissed the idea that the pandemic was human-engineered, although Trump Administration officials have said they have not ruled out the possibility that it was the result of an accident in a lab.) In a recent poll of nearly 1,400 people by left-leaning Civiqs/Daily Kos, more than half of Republican respondents believed some part of QAnon: 33% said they believed the conspiracy was “mostly true,” while 26% said “some parts” are true.

Over a week of interviews in early September, I heard baseless conspiracies from ordinary Americans in parking lots and boutiques and strip malls from Racine to Cedarburg to Wauwatosa, Wis. Shaletha Mayfield, a Biden supporter from Racine, says she thinks Trump created COVID-19 and will bring it back again in the fall. Courtney Bjorn, a Kenosha resident who voted for Clinton in 2016 and plans to vote for Biden, lowered her voice as she speculated about the forces behind the destruction in her city. “No rich people lost their buildings,” she says. “Who benefits when neighborhoods burn down?”

But by far the greatest delusions I heard came from voters on the right. More than a third of the Trump supporters I spoke with voiced some kind of conspiratorial thinking. “COVID could have been released by communist China to bring down our economy,” says John Poulos, loading groceries into his car outside Sendik’s grocery store in the Milwaukee suburb of Wauwatosa. “COVID was manufactured,” says Maureen Bloedorn, walking into a Dollar Tree in Kenosha. She did not vote for Trump in 2016 but plans to support him in November, in part because “he sent Obama a bill for all of his vacations he took on the American dime.” This idea was popularized by a fake news story that originated on a satirical website and went viral.

On a cigarette break outside their small business in Ozaukee County, Tina Arthur and Marcella Frank told me they plan to vote for Trump again because they are deeply alarmed by “the cabal.” They’ve heard “numerous reports” that the COVID-19 tents set up in New York and California were actually for children who had been rescued from underground sex-trafficking tunnels.

Arthur and Frank explained they’re not followers of QAnon. Frank says she spends most of her free time researching child sex trafficking, while Arthur adds that she often finds this information on the Russian-owned search engine Yandex. Frank’s eyes fill with tears as she describes what she’s found: children who are being raped and tortured so that “the cabal” can “extract their blood and drink it.” She says Trump has seized the blood on the black market as part of his fight against the cabal. “I think if Biden wins, the world is over, basically,” adds Arthur. “I would honestly try to leave the country. And if that wasn’t an option, I would probably take my children and sit in the garage and turn my car on and it would be over.”

The rise in conspiratorial thinking is the product of several interrelated trends: declining trust in institutions; demise of local news; a social-media environment that makes rumor easy to spread and difficult to debunk; a President who latches onto anything and anyone he thinks will help his political fortunes. It’s also a part of our wiring. “The brain likes crazy,” says Nicco Mele, the former director of Harvard’s Shorenstein Center, who studies the spread of online disinformation and conspiracies. Because of this, experts say, algorithms on platforms like Facebook and YouTube are designed to serve up content that reinforces existing beliefs–learning what users search for and feeding them more and more extreme content in an attempt to keep them on their sites.

All this madness contributes to a political imbalance. On the right, conspiracy theories make Trump voters even more loyal to the President, whom many see as a warrior against enemies in the “deep state.” It also protects him against an October surprise, as no matter what news emerges about Trump, a growing group of U.S. voters simply won’t believe it. On the left, however, conspiracy theories often weaken voters’ allegiance to Biden by making them less likely to trust the voting process. If they believe their votes won’t matter because shadowy elites are pulling the country’s strings, why bother going through the trouble of casting a ballot?

Experts who follow disinformation say nothing will change until Facebook and YouTube shift their business model away from the algorithms that reward conspiracies. “We are not anywhere near peak crazy,” says Mele. Phillips, the professor from Syracuse, agrees that things will get weirder. “We’re in trouble,” she adds. “Words sort of fail to capture what a nightmare scenario this is.”

But to voters like Kelly Ferro, the mass delusion seems more like a mass awakening. Trump “is revealing these things,” she says serenely, gesturing with her turquoise-tipped fingernails. Americans’ “eyes are being opened to the darkness that was once hidden.”

After yoga in the morning, Ferro says, she often spends hours watching videos, immersing herself in a world she believes is bringing her ever closer to the truth. “You can’t stop, because it’s so addicting to have this knowledge of what kind of world we’re living in,” she says. “We’re living in an alternate reality.”

With reporting by Leslie Dickstein and Simmone Shah

[day0one]

Owner of destroyed Kenosha shop speaks out after Trump gets photo op with former owner. The owner of a camera shop that was destroyed in Kenosha and highlighted during Donald Trump’s visit on Tuesday said the president used his store for political gain by appearing with a former owner of the business – as Joe Biden announced he and his wife Jill will visit the Wisconsin city on Thursday. Tom Gram said he bought the Rode’s Camera Shop business from the Rode family eight years ago, though John Rode still owns the property. Gram’s four decades of work at the store came to an end 24 August, when the building was destroyed by fire during protests over the police shooting of Jacob Blake. Gram said he declined an invitation from the White House to join the president on a tour to review damage in the neighborhood in a bout of unrest after Blake, an African American, was shot by a white officer just over a week ago. He said Trump’s references to Rode as the owner of the business were deceptive. “I think everything he [Trump] does turns into a circus and I just didn’t want to be involved in it,” Gram told Milwaukee TV station WTMJ-TV. The White House, however, noted on Wednesday that Rode and his family founded and built Rode’s Camera Shop before the second world war and still own the building that houses the shop. Trump didn’t visit the site of the shop, but Rode met with him a few blocks away and participated in a roundtable with the president. The president did not mention Jacob Blake during his visit and has not spoken to or met with the family. Blake’s father and uncle have indicated they were not interested in meeting Trump. Biden and his vice-presidential nominee, Kamala Harris, have spoken with the Blake family by telephone. It was unclear on Wednesday afternoon whether the Bidens will meet with relatives during their visit, but the Democratic presidential nominee, Joe Biden, clearly wants his visit to stand in sharp contrast to Trump’s, even though it could be seen as risky to be following in Trump’s footsteps on the campaign trail. According to his campaign, Biden will “hold a community meeting in Kenosha to bring together Americans to heal and address the challenges we face”. Biden will then make a “local stop” in the city, with details not yet provided. This will mark Biden’s first campaign stop in Wisconsin as the presidential nominee and his first in the state since October 2018. During Trump’s trip to Kenosha, he refused to acknowledge systemic racism in the country and blamed recent acts of police violence on a few “bad apples”. Trump’s visit came over the objections of state and local leaders, who feared he could inflame tensions in the small city with divisive talk or actions as part of his “law-and-order” election agenda. Kenosha saw unrest straight after the shooting, which splintered on the fringes into violence then spiraled into chaos last Tuesday night when armed white agitators appeared on the streets and confronted protesters. Daily rallies or protests were entirely peaceful from last Wednesday until Trump’s visit a day ago, when brief scuffles broke out late afternoon between some of his supporters and some protesters downtown. On Monday, Trump defended a 17-year-old supporter, Kyle Rittenhouse, who was one of the agitators who turned up last Tuesday and ended up accused of murder and other felonies after allegedly shooting dead two demonstrators and severely wounding a third. Rittenhouse’s attorney John Pierce tweeted a video of him speaking by phone with the teen who is in Illinois, where he is from. Rightwingers have publicly praised Rittenhouse. “I just want to thank every single one of you from the bottom of my heart for the …support, it’s just amazing,” Rittenhouse said from the phone held up by Pierce. “I want to thank all of you for the mail I’ve been receiving. It’s been really helpful. I just want to let you all know that I’m going to be out of here soon and stay strong. And I hope to see you guys soon.” Pierce argues that Rittenhouse was acting in self defense. Four people arrested during demonstrations in Kenosha filed a federal civil rights lawsuit, alleging that local law enforcement only arrested those who were protesting against police brutality, not “pro-police protesters and militia” who were freely roaming the streets. “In Kenosha, there are two sets of laws – one that applies to those who protest police brutality and racism, and another for those who support the police,” the lawsuit said. Attorneys for the city of Kenosha and Kenosha county, which were named as defendants, did not immediately return messages seeking comment on Wednesday. The lawsuit includes video from the night of 25 August showing law enforcement officers in armored vehicles handing bottles of water to civilians armed with rifles and thanking them, among them Rittenhouse. Meanwhile, Rode praised Trump. “I just appreciate President Trump coming today, everybody here does,” Rode said. “We’re so thankful we got the federal troops here. Once they got here things did calm down quite a bit.” “A day earlier would have saved his store,” Trump responded. Wisconsin’s Democratic governor, Tony Evers, deployed the national guard to quell demonstrations following the shooting. Trump’s demand that the troops be used came a day after Evers had activated them.

[sinrau]

In front of a brick building northwest of downtown, on a day when the nation’s gaze again fixed on this once-strong factory city, Justin Blake declared that President Trump must be defeated as he stood over the spot where a police officer shot his nephew in the back seven times.

“We don’t have any words for the orange man,” Blake said of Trump as he spoke to a crowd of more than 100 people — most of them Black — who had come for a block party complete with barbecue and bounce house. “All I ask is he keep his disrespect, his foul language far away…. Our president hasn’t been a unifier.”

Two and a half miles away, a different scene unfolded in uptown Kenosha, as the president’s supporters lined up behind barricades in anticipation of his arrival, waving American flags and hoping to catch a glimpse of his motorcade.

Sue Wells, a 57-year-old retired cleaner and factory worker, came with her daughter and her 5-year-old grandson. She signed a petition to recall the state’s Democratic governor and disparaged the racial justice movement as she stood by the historic Danish Brotherhood Lodge, which had burned to rubble during recent protests.

“If you’re so for Black Lives Matter, why are you destroying their community?” said Wells, a white Kenosha resident. The protesters, she said, don’t “understand how it is dividing us.”

Trump’s visit to Kenosha on Tuesday, where he toured downtown and met with business owners, law enforcement and elected representatives, lasted all but two hours. Yet it drew out the raw passions and divides of this town — and the nation — where debates over racism, policing and protest are colliding ahead of an election many fear will only bring more rancor.

“Reckless far-left politicians continue to push the destructive message that our nation and law enforcement are oppressive or racist,” Trump said after he landed here. “They’ll throw out any word that comes to them. Actually, we should show far greater support for our law enforcement.”

Conflicting images played out across Kenosha, which like Minneapolis and Portland, Ore., before it, bore the burden of a nation’s multiplying troubles in a narrative that featured a polarizing president, parents fearful of more bloodshed and members of right-wing groups, including the Proud Boys.

Police stand near a burning Department of Corrections building during protests Aug. 24 in Kenosha, Wis.

In Blake’s neighborhood, stereos blasted the “Cupid Shuffle” as groups danced in the street, some wearing shirts that said “BLAK: Black Lives Activists of Kenosha” and others calling for justice for Blake’s nephew, Jacob, who was left paralyzed. Volunteers lined up to register voters and offered free COVID-19 testing.

A few blocks northwest, dozens in red Make America Great Again hats cheered for the president’s motorcade before he spoke with local officials at Mary D. Bradford High School. Trump did not mention the Blake name, and when a reporter asked about protesters’ concerns about racism, the president said that was “the opposite subject” of what he wanted to discuss. He wanted to talk about the violence that has struck cities and left buildings torched.

“I keep hearing about peaceful protests. I hear it about everything, and then I come into an area like this, and I see the town is burned down,” Trump said. He said protests were really “acts of domestic terror” and “anti-American riots.” While much of Kenosha is on alert with boarded-up stores visible well into the suburbs, actual damage is limited to a small stretch of its urban core.

The president said he rejected a chance to speak with Jacob Blake’s mother, Julia Jackson, after learning she wanted lawyers present.

Benjamin Crump, a family lawyer, confirmed the account. “If the call had occurred, Ms. Jackson was prepared to ask President Trump to watch the video of Mr. Blake’s shooting and to do what she has asked all of America to do — examine your heart,” he said.

The police shooting of Jacob Blake and subsequent shootings in which 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse now faces murder charges in the deaths of two protesters have further split this crucial swing state. Trump won by a small margin four years ago in both Kenosha County and Wisconsin. Democrats hope this year that former Vice President Joe Biden will instead make gains.

Trump is pushing a “law and order” theme and is against the Black Lives Matter movement. Biden, who has spoken to the Blake family, has blamed the president for stoking violence among far-right and militia groups that have increasingly clashed with those protesting against police brutality.

Trump said Kenosha “would have been burned to the ground by now” if not for the intervention of the National Guard, which he claimed was his doing. The Wisconsin National Guard, however, has been in the city for more than a week at the request of Democratic Gov. Tony Evers, and federal law enforcement and National Guard troops from several other states joined later last week.

In a statement Tuesday, Biden called Trump’s time in Wisconsin “self-centered divisiveness accompanied by zero solutions.”

“Trump failed once again to meet the moment, refusing to utter the words that Wisconsinites and Americans across the country needed to hear today from the president: a condemnation of violence of all kinds, no matter who commits it,” a reference to Trump’s defense earlier this week of Rittenhouse, who he said was defending himself.

If plans went as some locals, including the governor, mayor and county executive had hoped, Trump would not have landed in this city of 100,000, halfway between Milwaukee and Chicago. The Democratic mayor, John Antaramian, said it would “be better had [Trump] waited.” Seven of the county’s 23 supervisors, however, wrote a letter saying they wanted the president’s “leadership in this time of crisis.”

David Swartz, 56, protests President Trump’s visit to Kenosha, Wis., on Tuesday.

At the Danish Brotherhood Lodge, several members spent Tuesday combing the ruins for relics, including their 110-year-old registry. They were glad to hear the president was touring damaged areas of their historic neighborhood, which has undergone gentrification over the years and is now dotted with small businesses.

“He’s drawing attention to this area instead of sweeping it under the rug and saying ‘Oh, poor protesters,’” said Joe Vaughn, 58, a retired ironworker who serves as the lodge’s treasurer.

Among those scouring the wreckage were Bryan Bernhardt, 52, and his 27-year-old son. Bernhardt’s grandfather helped found the lodge, where he and Bernhardt’s late father later served as presidents. Bernhardt said he was glad to see Trump and the National Guard in Kenosha, but was worried violence would rise again.

“Minneapolis is still going through it, Seattle, Portland,” he said. “Everyone feels for the family. Does change need to be made? Probably. Let’s get all the facts first.”

A few streets away, David Swartz, 56, said he turned out to protest Trump’s use of his town as a campaign stop. Swartz, a union electrician laid off during the COVID-19 pandemic, attended recent demonstrations in support of the Black Lives Matter movement, “because nobody deserves seven bullets in the back.” But he said he has brothers in the local electricians union who support Trump.

“He’s dividing the country, dividing people, pitting them against each other,” said Swartz, wearing his IBEW Local 127 jacket as he carried his sign on a street corner.

Kenosha has been under curfew since last week because of protests and riots after police shot Blake, 29, on Aug. 23 after officers showed up to a northwestern neighborhood in response to a 911 call about a domestic dispute.

Rittenhouse, the teen from Illinois, is charged with two murders on the night of Aug. 25 near protest sites. Rittenhouse, who carried a semiautomatic rifle and said he was protecting local businesses, fled the scene — in plain sight of police — and was arrested the next day in Lake County, Ill. Like Trump, his lawyers said he acted in self-defense.

For Porche Bennett, a 31-year-old native Kenoshian who attended the block party on the street where police shot Jacob Blake, not enough is being done to bring police to justice.

“We want the officer charged and fired,” said Bennett, who is Black and co-founded the group Black Lives Activists of Kenosha that has helped organize recent protests. “We do not want violence. What we want is justice for Jacob Blake and his family.”

U.S. Rep. Gwen Moore (D-Wis.) joins Justin Blake, uncle of Jacob Blake, during a community gathering at the site of Jacob’s shooting Tuesday.

As the party wound down, a few hundred protesters marched around the Kenosha County Courthouse. National Guard troops stood watch over the fenced-in site. In this open-carry state, a handful of armed protesters, both those in support of and against the president, appeared. Small groups with members of right-wing movements, including the Proud Boys, were also present.

Protest leaders urged crowds to disperse before the 7 p.m. curfew, fearing things could quickly go wrong.

“Jacob Blake’s family really doesn’t want people out,” said KeJuan Goldsmith, 19, a University of Wisconsin-Green Bay sophomore from nearby Racine. “All it takes is one cop triggered.”

Times staff writer Eli Stokols in Washington contributed to this report.

Trump’s Kenosha visit exposes U.S. divides over race and policing ahead of November vote

[frustratedcastingdirector]

This article is a perfect example of the kind of expectations those of us who were blown away by Mark Ruffalo’s performance in “You Can Count on Me” had for him and his career.  Those expectations are still there for many of us, waiting to be fulfilled by directors willing to take a chance on Ruffalo, and willing to push him to his limits. - Jamaica (FrustratedCastingDirector)

Becoming a Thoughtful Woman's Idea of A Leading Man Part 1

By CATHY HORYN NOV. 9, 2003

On a cloudless day between the rains this summer, Mark Ruffalo, the 35-year-old actor, took his John Deere tractor out of the barn and began to clear brush on his 50 acres in Sullivan County, not far from where the Delaware River runs between New York and Pennsylvania. He had on jeans and a faded blue shirt that flapped around his thin torso, and his hair was still damp from a swim in the pond that lies at the foot of a grassy hill and a short walk from his two-story Swiss chalet-style house. A patio umbrella and several weathered lawn chairs were set up along the edge, and there was a dock with a wooden diving board that Ruffalo and his younger brother, Scott, a hairdresser in Beverly Hills, built last summer. When the brothers were growing up in Kenosha, Wis., they built many tree houses in the woods near their family's house -- Scott guesses they built one every 10 feet -- and they called themselves the Foresters. Two years ago, when Mark was recovering from surgery to remove a benign tumor in his brain, and thinking that his film career had ended just as it was taking off with his widely praised performance in ''You Can Count on Me,'' he designed the large sleeping porch at the back of the house. Constructed from hemlock, with open beams, it has double-high screened windows, many comfortable old chairs and beds and a closeness with the outdoors.

As Ruffalo positioned the tractor on the far end of the pond, his wife of four years, Sunrise Coigney, a lithe, attractive French woman in a bikini and a straw hat, sat on a blanket near the dock with their 2-year-old son, Keen. Her father, Joel Coigney, who was visiting from Los Angeles, had spent the morning policing the grounds with a chain saw and now joined Ruffalo on the hill. In a moment of perception that took in their voices, the water and the valley below, you couldn't help thinking that Ruffalo had everything he needed here and that there was no place he'd rather be than here.

It was also the perfect place to observe Mark Ruffalo the actor, for few performers possess their characters with more natural grace. Not only does Ruffalo make it look easy, he also manages to access emotions with a freedom unavailable to many of his better-known contemporaries, making him closer to the older generation of actors -- especially the young Brando -- for whom anger or sexual tension could often be registered with astonishing stillness. That Ruffalo has appeared in only a handful of big-budget films, usually in supporting roles that have limited him to playing the same type of emotionally conflicted men -- and thus kept his real powers under wraps -- has not prevented him from being noticed by first-rate directors like Jane Campion. But after the release of Campion's heated sexual drama, ''In the Cut,'' co-starring Meg Ryan, followed soon by films in which he stars with Jim Carrey and Tom Cruise, Ruffalo is certain to find a wider audience.

''In the Cut'' is based on the novel by Susanna Moore, and despite its problems as a film, Ruffalo, as a New York City homicide detective named Malloy, stands out. On every level his performance is a major turn-on, and maybe because, for the first time, we are seeing him as a man -- without conflicts, without boyish tics. In a bedroom scene early in the movie (slightly altered by the censors from the director's version), Ruffalo takes Ryan's character, Frannie, on such a bend, using every word and orifice available to him, that many female moviegoers will most likely regard their own mates with mild disappointment.

Given Ruffalo's previous screen roles, Campion admits he wasn't an obvious choice to play Malloy, who looks at every woman as a potential score. But, she says, ''the thing that interested me about his character in 'You Can Count on Me' was that he was such a flake-off, a loser, yet he was riveting. You couldn't stop watching him.'' In ''In the Cut,'' which takes its name from street slang for sexual intercourse, his presence is so commanding that it can make you forget the film's flaws, notably its jarring end. ''I think it's incontestable now that he has brought to life a different quality of performance,'' Campion says. ''And not like Pacino, or De Niro or Keitel, who have each opened up a new way to think about performance. Mark is a visionary with his work.''

Ruffalo seems genuinely surprised by her comments when I see him in Sullivan County. By then, we are fairly along in our conversation, so I am used to his way of speaking. He does more than look you in the eye. He quickly establishes intimacy by allowing himself to lower his guard. Many actors will let you know, directly or indirectly, that they have nothing riding on the outcome of a situation. But Ruffalo has no such obstructions. He is lightning present in the conversation. And though he has little in common with the characters he has played, if he is close to one of them, it is Malloy. Like him, Ruffalo doesn't hide his manliness under a bushel.

''I don't know what to say about that, babe,'' he says when I tell him what Campion said. He laughs, and his eyes glow with warmth. ''That's flattering. I mean, what do you say? Thank you, thank you, Jane Campion.''

While Ruffalo readily cites Brando as one of his two greatest influences (the other is Marcello Mastroianni, of whom he says, ''It's the whole package of Marcello -- the great life in an art form''), he seems uncomfortable being compared with a legend. Kenneth Lonergan, who directed Ruffalo in ''You Can Count on Me,'' says he should relax. ''First of all, he looks a teeny bit like Brando,'' Lonergan says. ''And I'm sure he can't mind too much if people compare him to one of the greatest American actors of the last 50 years.'' Ruffalo does bear a resemblance to the young Brando, especially around the mouth, but the real point of reference, Lonergan says, is how specific Ruffalo's performances are and how freely he enters and remains in the moment. ''He's sort of an open channel to his characters,'' he says.

The question is why we haven't seen more of Ruffalo before. He began acting in 1989 in small theater productions in Los Angeles. His parents, a painting contractor and a beautician, had moved Mark and his three siblings (he has two younger sisters) from Kenosha to Virginia Beach, Va., where Mark would become a state wrestling champion in high school, and then to San Diego, where his parents separated. After an aimless period spent mostly surfing, Ruffalo enrolled in the Stella Adler Academy, where Benicio Del Toro was a star pupil. He remembers Del Toro giving a monologue based on the song ''Light My Fire'': ''He was so sexy and had so much charisma, I thought, I'll never be that.''

In those years, Ruffalo says, ''it was all about urban for me.'' He lived in rough neighborhoods like Alvarado and Sixth, in downtown Los Angeles. But as much as he hankered for that kind of experience, and brings a similar instinct to his work, he is no fan of Method. ''Two things have happened to acting in America,'' he says. ''One is that actors think they have to live the character, which is a huge mistake. Because what they do is put the character on top of themselves and thereby kill anything spontaneous. The other is that someone introduced the idea that less is more, so that actors stopped doing anything at all. They just say the words.''

By the mid-90's, Ruffalo had appeared in some 30 plays, earning good notices. But Los Angeles theater, at its best, is not Broadway, or even Off Broadway, as Ruffalo discovered when he arrived in New York for the first time. ''I thought, I'm a swan, not a duck,'' he says. ''What am I doing in Los Angeles? I don't belong there.'' In 1996, after a decade in California, Ruffalo made his New York stage debut in Lonergan's ''This Is Our Youth.'' ''He did one play in New York,'' says his friend the actor Christopher Thornton, ''and it changed his life.'' It wasn't the only change. On a Monday during the play's run, he took his savings, about $10,000, and made a down payment on a house in Sullivan County.

Another explanation for Ruffalo's belated recognition involves the vagaries of Hollywood casting. Ruffalo estimates that before he landed the part of Terry in ''You Can Count on Me,'' opposite Laura Linney, he went on 800 film and television auditions. This is probably not a Hollywood record for rejection, though Ruffalo gives it some comic perspective when I observe that George Clooney remained under the noses of casting directors for years before someone realized what a leading man he was. ''If George Clooney was under their noses, then I was, like, under their knees,'' he says with a laugh. For all his dead-ending, Ruffalo sounds remarkably unembittered when he adds, ''In Hollywood, none of those people can make a decision. They can only say no. I'd go to casting directors, and they'd say, 'You are the best actor of your generation, but -- you just haven't grown into your face yet, your face hasn't grown into your soul.' I had insane things like that said to me all the time. 'You are one of the greatest actors I have ever seen, but -- .' I'd get this great feedback, but I could never get a job.''

Still another explanation is that, in the summer of 2001, as he was finishing ''The Last Castle,'' a prison movie starring Robert Redford, the brain tumor was diagnosed. He underwent a 10-hour operation, complicated by an allergic reaction to the anesthesia, and spent the rest of the year recovering in New York and Sullivan County. His wife, whom he met in 1997 when she was an actress, had just given birth to their son, and as Coigney told me, ''You don't expect a year into a marriage -- through sickness and health -- for sickness to come upon you so quickly. It's been quite a journey.'' He experienced facial paralysis, memory lapses and, perhaps worst of all, a complete loss of confidence. ''I had stopped worrying -- I just believed that my career was over,'' he says. ''No one would take a meeting with me or anything. I was damaged goods, babe. That's what was in the back of my mind, damaged goods. Can't fit the American-male leading hero. A hero does not have a brain tumor.''

It was in this vulnerable, if fully recovered, state that Ruffalo first met Jane Campion in Los Angeles to discuss the part of Detective Malloy.

Anyone who has read Susanna Moore's 1995 novel has no trouble recognizing its difficulties as a movie. For one thing, ''In the Cut'' deals with female grief and loneliness -- specifically, that of a smart, emotionally walled-off writing teacher whose obsession with language serves as a rendering of her engulfed spirit; she's so aware of the shape of her consciousness that she could diagram it like a sentence. And for another, you don't really buy the sexual liaison with the cop, which develops as he investigates a gruesome murder in her neighborhood. As Moore herself says: ''The book is a little cold, a little nasty, a little flippant. It's about language and ideas. And it's not about love. It's about violence. But Jane found a way to make it about love.''

Ruffalo says he had serious doubts going into his meeting with Campion about his ability to play Malloy. ''I had read the script a couple of days before, and I thought, I don't even know where to begin with this guy,'' he says. ''I know he's just a man, he's such a man. But I had never played that kind of guy, and it just terrified me. I thought, I'm the wrong actor for this part.'' Who did he think was right? ''Sean Penn or Russell Crowe -- tough guys, you know. Guys who were really closer to Malloy than me.'' Indeed, as Moore conceived him, Malloy is actually a composite of four or five New York policemen she met while writing her book. She says: ''They were worldly, tough, a little bit over the hill. Much less pure than Mark. They were corrupt emotionally and, in some cases, corrupt professionally.'' In her mind, she saw ''an older Tommy Lee Jones, puffy eyes, a little flabby. Mark was quite an unexpected choice.''

At the end of the three-hour meeting, Campion, who had seen several big-name actors, offered the part to Ruffalo. ''We just clicked,'' he says. ''Jane's ideas about the script were well formed, but she was confident and experienced enough as a director to allow a discussion to take place. A lot of our differences about the character were just semantics.'' Despite his trepidations, he says, ''I had never come to a part so consciously aware of what we were after, down to specifics like what Malloy did when he woke up in the morning.''

One thing that may have allowed Ruffalo to reach Malloy is his penchant for severe self-criticism. Christopher Thornton says: ''He attacks himself harder than anyone. In 'In the Cut,' he used those worries and fears. Everything that Mark was going through I'm sure in some way fueled that performance.'' During rehearsals, when he was still unused to Campion's intensity -- ''She's out there, man,'' he says. ''It's a contained chaos'' -- Ruffalo went home and got drunk. ''Jane and I had some bristling experiences in the beginning,'' he says. ''There's an enormous allowance for people to be wrong in her presence, even her. But the great thing about her is she's not invested with being right.

''So I was wasted drunk, really depressed, and I set up the video camera,'' he continues. ''I was, like, I don't know what I'm doing, I'm totally lost. . . . A couple of days later I was logging something from the tape and I saw it -- I saw Malloy, a shadow of Malloy. My tearing apart and hitting rock bottom was kind of like the birth of him.''

In the genre of police movies, Ruffalo's portrayal of Malloy seems startlingly realistic -- how you imagine detectives to stand and smoke and put their hands in their pockets but rarely do in the movies. There is a scene quite early in the film, when Frannie encounters Malloy and his partner, Rodriguez (Nick Damici), in a bar, that is almost unbearable to watch for its vulgarity. Ruffalo doesn't just talk in the unholy language of cops; he projects the psychological dynamic in keeping emotions at a distance. Campion, ever alert to the tiniest sign of weakness in Malloy, occasionally caught him, he says, reverting to old habits. ''She would say: 'You see that thing you're doing right there? Don't do that in this movie. Don't nod your head. No apologies, Mark. This character does not apologize. Straightforward stillness.' She made me aware of things. Who calls you on your stuff?''

The film's reviews have been mixed (though Ruffalo has been held out as its strongest element), but critics and box-office results aside, no one knows better than Ruffalo what the film -- and Campion -- have done for him. ''What I do in the next 5, 10 years will be mostly based on my choices,'' he told me. ''And it starts now. It wasn't after 'You Can Count on Me.' '' He's at work this fall as an undercover agent in Michael Mann's thriller ''Collateral,'' with Tom Cruise and Jamie Foxx, about a killer who lures a cabby on a shooting spree. Next year, he'll appear in ''Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,'' a comedy written by Charlie Kaufman and starring Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet, in which Ruffalo plays a lab technician operating a memory-erasing machine. ''It was sort of a chance to play light and stupid,'' he says with a laugh, adding, ''Jane'll kill me when she sees it.'' On Campion's advice, he also did John Curran's drama ''We Don't Live Here Anymore,'' with Naomi Watts and Laura Dern, about the divisive nature of marriage. And sometime next spring, he'll direct Thornton in a dark comedy called ''Sympathy for Delicious,'' from a screenplay Thornton wrote, about a self-centered paraplegic who acquires the gift of healing but can't heal himself. ''He basically starts Healapalooza, where he's healing people in the mosh pit,'' Ruffalo says. ''It's kind of an allegory about fame.''

You sense that Ruffalo has used his craft profitably enough over the last decade not to feel he has to make up for lost time. He turned down the role of Brick in the current Broadway revival of ''Cat on a Hot Tin Roof'' in order to return to L.A., where his wife has opened a store with a friend to sell jewelry and decorative objects. And Scott Ruffalo notes with pride and dismay that his movie-star brother still drives around in a white 1974 Volkswagen camper. ''He loves that thing,'' Scott says, adding, ''There's almost this essence of obliviousness going on around him.''

I know what he means. During my visit to Sullivan County, I casually mention that Ruffalo is probably not yet in a position to think about massive fame. He looks at me critically and smiles. ''When will I ever think about that?'' he says. ''What will my thoughts possibly be?''

Still, the rest of us can't help watching. Susanna Moore told me recently that female friends of hers are already having dreams about him. ''Isn't it interesting,'' she muses, ''to be witness to someone who is absolutely on the edge of being hurtled into a greater and, in some ways, less lovely world? He's going to be a very important actor. He's just now tipping into fame and riches and women chasing him. I think he'll be O.K.''

[gunsportsradio]

When Does A Citizen Have A Duty To Act?

John Dillon talks about the 2nd Amendment fight in Hawaii, filing an amicus brief to protect butterfly knives. Find out how it’s related to firearms.

Jim DeBello, candidate for Congress joins the show to talk about his campaign.

Jason Stevens talks up the Shooting Socials at the Gun Range San Diego.

Latest from the SDCGO Blog: When Does A Citizen Have A Duty To Act? – Kyle Rittenhouse and Kenosha. https://sandiegocountygunowners.com/when-does-a-citizen-have-a-duty-to-act-kyle-rittenhouse-and-kenosha/

David Chong brings up a disturbing practice where predatory investment groups purchase firearms companies and run them into the ground.

ASK SAM THE GUNMAN: What country invented and used the Famas?

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Check out this episode!

[womenofcolor15]

Jacob Blake Is Now Paralyzed From The Waist Down + Police Use Force Against Continuing Riots, LeBron James Speaks Out About Shooting

Jacob Blake’s father gives an update on his son's condition, revealing he's now paralyzed from the waist down. Meanwhile, another night of protests went down in Kenosha and police used forced to try and dismantle the groups of protesters. Also, LeBron James spoke out about the shooting and how scared the Black community is of the police. Get it all inside….

  Before 29-year-old Jacob Blake was shot by police in front of his children last Sunday (August 23rd), he was gearing up to celebrate one of his kids’ 8th birthday. Tragically, that Sunday changed Jacob and his family’s life forever.

That evening, his father – also named Jacob Blake - received word that his unarmed son had been shot eight times by police office officers. Eighteen minutes later, he saw the now-viral video of his son being gunned down.

Daddy Blake told the Chicago Sun-Times that his son is paralyzed from the waist down as a result of the horrific shooting. Jacob’s father said there are “eight holes” in his son’s body and doctors don’t know yet if the paralysis is permanent.

Anger and frustration has been growing in Kenosha since the shooting. On the night of the shooting, riots broke out. And they’re continuing.

For the second consecutive night, protestors hit the streets demanding justice for Jacob Blake. Police reportedly responded with force as demonstrators burned cars and set buildings on fire.

Kenosha put an 8pm (9pm EST) curfew in place, but protesters didn’t abide by the new rule. Folks were face-to-face with police – dressed in riot gear - outside of the Kenosha County Courthouse where they threw water bottles and set off fireworks. Also, two city trucks were among the vehicles burned.

Police released tear gas, flash bangs and rubber bullets in response.

Check it:

  "F*** you, you ain't with us" woman yells at armed man who is attempting to stop the mob from looting and vandalizing #Kenosha businesses pic.twitter.com/FkDlqz9w4N

— Jorge Ventura Media (@VenturaReport) August 25, 2020

    Police in riot gear fired tear gas, rubber bullets and smoke bombs at hundreds of demonstrators gathered outside a Kenosha courthouse, protesting the police shooting of #JacobBlake.

More than 100 members of the National Guard were also called out. pic.twitter.com/mSZGZq5vdu

— AJ+ (@ajplus) August 25, 2020

  Earlier yesterday, tensions boiled over during a news conference with Kenosha Mayor John Antarmian. The conference was originally set to be held in a park, but it was moved inside the city’s public safety building. According to reports, hundreds of protesters rushed to the building and a door was snapped off its hinges before police in riot gear pepper-sprayed the crowd.

During Sunday’s riots, a Kenosha police officer was reportedly hit with a brick and knocked out. Video from the scene shows the officer walking next to a police vehicle when the officer suddenly falls to the ground, and multiple other officers run to his aide. Check it:

  Footage of officer getting knocked out with a brick in Kenosha. pic.twitter.com/zZYypCgyja

— Nick (@BotchlaUS) August 24, 2020

  The two officers involved in the shooting of Jacob Blake were recently put on administrative leave.

Meanwhile…

  And y’all wonder why we say what we say about the Police!! Someone please tell me WTF is this???!!! Exactly another black man being targeted. This shit is so wrong and so sad!! Feel so sorry for him, his family and OUR PEOPLE!! We want JUSTICE https://t.co/cJxOj1EZ3H

— LeBron James (@KingJames) August 24, 2020

  When news broke about Jacob Blake’s shooting, LeBron James hopped on Twitter to air out his frustrations and to point out to people who act so obtuse WHY we say “Black Lives Matter.”

"And y’all wonder why we say what we say about the Police!! Someone please tell me WTF is this???!!! Exactly another black man being targeted. This shit is so wrong and so sad!! Feel so sorry for him, his family and OUR PEOPLE!! We want JUSTICE," he tweeted.

Following the Lakers’ 135-115 win over the Portland Trail Blazers on “Mamba Day,” King James shared his thoughts about the tragic shooting and also honoring the late Kobe Bryant. Peep the clip below:

During the post-game interview, King James opened up more about the shooting, police brutality and why the Black community is scared of the police.

"If you watch the video, there (were) multiple moments where if they wanted to they could have tackled him, they could have grabbed him,” said LeBron. “They could have done that. Why does it always have to get to a point where we see the guns firing?

"And his family is there. The kids are there. It's in broad daylight ... It's just, quite frankly, it's just f*cked up in our community."

He continued:

"I know people get tired of hearing me say it but we are scared as Black people in America. Black men, Black women, Black kids, we are terrified. Because you don't know, you have no idea. You have no idea how that cop that day left the house. You don't know if he woke up on the good side of the bed, you don't know if he woke up on the wrong side of the bed."

Peep his interview below:

No lies told.

Prayers to Jacob Blake and his family! Vote early or on November 3rd, especially in your state and local elections for those who will have a direct affect on your police departments and state laws.

Photos: AP Photo/David Goldman/Jacob’s Family

[Read More ...] source http://theybf.com/2020/08/25/jacob-blake%E2%80%99s-dad-says-son-is-paralyzed-from-the-waist-down-police-use-force-against-ragi

[theconservativebrief]

Donald Trump shocked election watchers on November 8, 2016, by winning states across the Midwest — states that were supposed to be part of Hillary Clinton’s “blue wall.” This year, Democrats have an enormous opportunity to start regaining ground in those same states.

Political pundits have wondered if Trump’s wins in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Ohio represented a realignment of American politics for good. Republicans in some of those states dreamed of turning them permanently red with big wins in the 2018 midterms.

But in the weeks before Election Day 2018, Democrats are poised for huge wins across the Midwest, a resurgence that seemed unimaginable just two years ago.

Incumbent senators in Ohio, Michigan, and Pennsylvania seem assured of reelection. Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin, a coveted target for Republicans, is leading by 10 points in Wisconsin, where Republican Gov. Scott Walker could finally lose a reelection campaign. And in Ohio and Iowa, states Trump won handily, Democratic candidates for governor have a narrow advantage in the polls.

Voters cast their ballots on August 7, 2018, in Dublin, Ohio. An AP analysis found Democrats with a consistent enthusiasm advantage with nearly a dozen federal special elections now concluded ahead of the November midterms. John Minchillo/AP

Of course, polls do not guarantee election victories. After all, Democrats were polling well in the Midwest in 2016, too, before an undetected Trump wave won him the White House. All it would take is a small polling error, which happens all the time, to swing many of these races to Republicans once the votes are counted.

Still, no one factor explains this apparent Democratic strength. The minority party typically performs well in midterm elections. Democrats have particularly strong incumbents in Ohio and Pennsylvania. The Republican brand is tarnished in Michigan and Ohio over some state-specific scandals. But those variables only explain so much. Run-of-the-mill Democrats have big leads in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan.

Rather, these states have the right ingredients for a blue wave in 2018. Suburban, mostly white women seem to be drifting toward Democrats. Working-class whites, historically Democratic voters who broke for Trump, show signs of returning to their economically left-leaning roots. Strong black turnout would deepen the Democratic advantage.

The omens are good, and Democrats have reason to hope that 2016 was just an aberration. But, until the election returns come in, it is still only a hope.

It is a fact of American politics that voters seem to strive for balance: One party wins the White House in presidential years, and then the other party makes gains in the midterms two years later.

To some extent, the apparent swing in the Midwest simply follows that history. Wisconsin elected Walker governor two years after voting for Barack Obama. Ohio elected Democrat Dick Celeste governor two years after voting for Ronald Reagan. Voters do seem to like a partisan equilibrium.

President Trump and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker in Kenosha, Wisconsin, on April 18, 2017. Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images

“The Midwest is the most consistently competitive region of the United States, and it oscillates between the two parties,” Kyle Kondik, who follows elections at the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics and wrote a book on Ohio politics, told me. “Trump’s election may suggest a longer-term realignment toward Republicans given how white the Midwest is, but for the time being it remains hard to classify as being solidly in either camp.”

But there seems to be more happening than history repeating, according to Democratic and Republican operatives across these states.

The path to a big Democratic wave in the Midwest in 2018 runs through three voting blocs: Suburban Republican-leaning women who don’t like Trump, the white working-class Democrats who voted for the president, and black voters who are less likely to vote in off-year elections.

The difficulty of the Democratic task can’t be overstated.

Take Ohio. In 46 of Ohio’s 88 counties, Barack Obama got at least 40 percent of the vote. Hillary Clinton hit that floor of 40 percent in just 13 counties. Or look at it this way: Obama lost the 50 smallest counties by 180,000 votes; Clinton lost them by 400,000 votes.

The rural white Democratic vote was never going to carry Democrats to victory in the Buckeye State or any of these states, but it was still important that Obama performed well enough in those areas to avoid an insurmountable deficit. In 2016, however, the bottom fell out. Clinton just couldn’t make up enough of the difference in Ohio’s major metropolitan areas of Columbus, Cleveland, and Cincinnati.

For the Democrats, winning in 2018 starts with a respectable showing in those rural, white areas.

“In Ohio, you have to do it all,” Ohio Democratic Party chair David Pepper told me. “There are not enough Democrats in our biggest cities to overcome a 73-27 loss in the rest of Ohio.”

In 2018, the party should be boosted by the presence of Sen. Sherrod Brown, a throwback Democratic populist, on the ballot. Cordray, an economic progressive in the Elizabeth Warren mold, is campaigning on a similar platform even if he doesn’t enjoy quite the same popularity or familiarity with the Ohio electorate as Brown does.

Former President Barack Obama speaks during a campaign rally for Ohio governor candidate Richard Cordray on September 13, 2018, in Cleveland. Angelo Merendino/Getty Images

In a September Marist poll, Brown was winning 56 percent of independents, 70 percent of moderates and even 17 percent of conservatives. Education is maybe the most telling indicator of voter preference in the Trump era and Brown performed respectably with white non-college voters, with 42 percent of the vote.

“We’re not going to win every one of those voters back, but Sherrod Brown will win counties that Donald Trump won,” Pepper said.

In Wisconsin, it’s estimated there are 75,000 Trump Democrats. Yet according to Marist, Baldwin, the incumbent Democratic senator, is outpacing Republican Leah Vukmir in rural parts of the state. Even in the Fox River Valley, an industrial center in the Badger State, the Democrat holds a slim 2-point lead over the Republican, even though those voters still have a positive view of Trump, who has 55 percent approval rating there. Evers isn’t quite beating Walker in the same region, but he is trailing the Republican by just two points.

Trump’s brand of populism somewhat mixed up the usual economic breakdown between Democrats and Republicans, and that has made it more difficult for other Republicans to build off his success with Trump Democrats. Walker criticized the Trump administration’s tariffs on steel and aluminum and he distanced himself from the president’s immigration policies.

On tariffs particularly, Trump crossed ideological boundaries and appealed to white working-class voters. But other Republicans can’t seem to replicate his playbook, perhaps because it is so contrary to the usual business-accommodating GOP agenda.

“The Republican Party in Wisconsin didn’t do a thing to reach out to Trump voters for two years,” one GOP operative in the Midwest told me.

On the suburban front, Democrats felt buoyed by Danny O’Connor’s narrow loss to Republican Troy Balderson in the Ohio 12th special election in August. That district covers most of the northern Columbus suburbs and Trump won it by 12 points. The previous GOP Congress member won by 35 points. But O’Connor lost by just a single point, and he could beat Balderson in November.

“We have to make a run at some of these swing voters. Some are still Republicans. Some would say they’re independent. They would say, ‘The party left me,’” Peppers said. “These are not automatic votes for us. We have to have good candidates. But they seem to be open to our candidates in a way they wouldn’t have been six or eight years ago when they would have been perfectly content to vote for Mitt Romney.”

The same playbook applies in Wisconsin. There are roughly 75,000 Never Trump Republican voters, the GOP operative told me, using 2012 versus 2016 election results to calculate. Those cohorts will be critical in the governor’s race between Scott Walker and Democratic challenger Tony Evers, as well as the Senate election.

Suburban woman could be decisive across the Midwest: Marist found them breaking for Brown in the Ohio Senate race, 58 percent to 27 percent. In the Wisconsin governor’s race, women in the suburbs and small cities back the Democrat by a 56-42 margin.

Gretchen Whitmer takes a picture with campaign volunteers in Detroit, Michigan on July 28, 2018. Kainaz Amaria/Vox

In Michigan, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Gretchen Whitmer has consolidated an impressive 10-point lead over Republican Bill Schuette. She is pulling 10 percent of Republicans, according to a recent poll commissioned by the state chamber of commerce, while edging Schuette in the Detroit suburbs and the industrial western region of the state. She has a 14-point advantage with women.

The Midwestern GOP operative described a defining paradox for Republicans across these states: How do they appeal to those Trump Democrats, who might be less enthused without the big guy on the ballot, without alienating the suburban women who probably voted for Romney with no hesitation but abhor Trump?

“You see Republicans struggle with this: What do I give Trump supporters while showing independents and moderates I’m unique, I’m not responsible for the Trump circus,” the GOP operative told me.

The last piece of the Democratic puzzle is motivating African-American voters, who overwhelmingly back Democrats when they do vote but don’t historically turn out with the same numbers in midterm elections as they do in presidential years.

Democrats already saw their support erode in 2016 where those voters live. In three of the biggest Midwest urban centers — Wayne County, Michigan; Milwaukee County, Wisconsin; and Cuyahoga County, Ohio — Hillary Clinton lost tens of thousands of voters compared to Obama.

She got 76,000 fewer votes than Obama in the Detroit area, 49,000 fewer votes in Cleveland, and 43,000 fewer votes in Milwaukee, according to 2016 voter data compiled by The Atlantic.

“That’s where Hillary lost the election,” the GOP operative told me. “Obama put up such crazy numbers in Milwaukee, but Hillary depressed voter turnout in those areas.”

In 2008 and 2012, black voters actually outpaced whites in the number of eligible voters who voted. But for years, in midterm elections, the pattern has been that white voters turn out more consistently than black voters.

Census Bureau

Democrats know they need to close that gap as much as possible, or even winning back white working-class voters and winning over suburban Republican-leaning women might not be enough to win in the 2018 midterm elections.

“There is that historic concern. Those voters fall off during the midterms,” Peppers said. “They need to feel inspired to vote as well.”

Of course, while our politics are increasingly nationalized, state-level concerns have also given Democrats an advantage in 2018. Sherrod Brown has built a unique populist brand in Ohio. Bob Casey’s family is the stuff of Pennsylvania legends.

Republicans have also damaged their own standing in some of these states after nearly a decade of total control. In Michigan particularly, Republican Gov. Rick Snyder’s botching of the Flint water crisis led to his approval ratings plummeting. Snyder is so toxic that he isn’t even endorsing Bill Schuette, the GOP attorney general running to replace him. Whitmer is in good shape to win the governor’s race and her party could also take back the Michigan House, once thought out of reach.

Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette enters with the Flint Water Investigative Team to announce criminal charges resulting from the Attorney General’s ongoing Flint Water Investigation on April 20, 2016 at the Riverfront Banquet Center in downtown Flint, Mich. Ryan Garza/Detroit Free Press/TNS via Getty Images

The Ohio House GOP Speaker was forced to resign and now faces an FBI corruption investigation and a charter schools controversy also haunts the GOP majority. The state Republican party is quietly enduring something of an identity crisis: Its current leader, term-limited Gov. John Kasich, is Trump’s fiercest Republican critic, but the president clearly has a lot of fans in the state after beating Hillary Clinton here by nearly 10 points.

“There may be an ethical problem — not with the governor but with the Republican brand,” Kondik told me earlier this year. “Democrats have sometimes been aided in big elections in Ohio by GOP ethical and corruption problems.”

Walker has towered over Wisconsin politics for eight years. His union-busting crusade brought a recall election in 2012, but Walker beat back the Democratic anger and won again in 2014. He now wants a third term as he seeks to institute Medicaid work requirements and warns the state could become dangerous if Democrats win. But Trump’s approval rating is down here, and a tech development drive pursued by the Walker and Trump administrations has been divisive.

In Iowa, Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds looks vulnerable to a well-funded, business-minded Democrat in Fred Hubble. The Hawkeye State has soured on Trump, and the president’s trade war isn’t helping matters. But Iowa’s privatization of Medicaid under Reynolds is a big issue hobbling her reelection bid and right now, Hubble is polling a few points ahead of her.

The biggest fear for Democrats in the Midwest in 2018 is that the polls are just wrong.

Hillary Clinton appeared to hold a solid lead in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan, but then an undiscovered batch of Trump voters showed up at the polls. The polls missed by nearly 7 points in Wisconsin, compared to the final tally, and by 5 points in Ohio. Trump’s support was underestimated by roughly 4 points in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Minnesota, a post-election autopsy published by the American Association for Public Opinion Research found.

The reasons for that polling miss are varied, but one underlying consistency is that pollsters didn’t identify the white, less educated voters whom Trump won overwhelmingly.

The polls “clearly underestimated Trump’s support in the Upper Midwest,” the autopsy’s authors concluded.

Among the causes, they named an underrepresentation of less educated voters. “In 2016 there was a strong correlation between education and presidential vote in key states,” the autopsy read. “Many polls — especially at the state level — did not adjust their weights to correct for the overrepresentation of college graduates in their surveys, and the result was overestimation of support for Clinton.”

Polls miss all the time. There is nothing Democrats can do to avoid that fact. But by pursuing a multi-pronged strategy to win back Trump Democrats, win over suburban Republicans, and turn out black voters, they can give themselves a chance again in the Midwest.

A group of supporters of the Democratic Party in Elk Rapids, Michigan waving political signs with the hopes of spreading name recognition before the November election on September 24, 2018. Mandi Wright/Detroit Free Press/TNS via Getty Images

Original Source -> Democrats suddenly look strong again in the Midwest

via The Conservative Brief

[thehomewarranty-blog]

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[day0one]

Tucker Carlson draws backlash after saying 17-year-old Kenosha shooting suspect "maintain[ed] order when no one else would"

"Fire Tucker Carlson Now" was trending on Twitter Wednesday night and into Thursday after the Fox News host offered excuses for the actions of Kenosha shooting suspect Kyle Rittenhouse, the teenager who is accused of killing two people during a protest on Tuesday night.

"Are we really surprised that looting and arson accelerated to murder?" Carlson said during his show on Wednesday night. "How shocked are we that 17-year-olds with rifles decided they had to maintain order when no one else would?"

Carlson's words, seeming to rationalize or excuse Rittenhouse's alleged actions, received widespread backlash on social media, with many calling for Fox to fire Carlson.

"He just justified murder," tweeted Nikole Hannah-Jones, creator of The New York Times' "1619 Project," sharing a clip from Carlson's broadcast.

Fred Guttenberg, whose daughter Jamie Guttenberg died in the Parkland school shooting in 2018, responded to Carlson on Twitter.

"My daughter was killed by an 18 year with an AR 15. Just walked into her school. Tucker, you are a f***ing lunatic who will get people killed. I hope advertisers drop [sic] you immediately today. You should be removed for the safety of our kids," tweeted Guttenberg.

Others also called for advertisers to pull ads from Carlson's Fox News show, "Tucker Carlson Tonight."

"If they don't take action after this, every one of Fox News's executives, directors, and advertisers is complicit in Tucker Carlson's racist, murderous rants," tweeted Robert Reich, who served as Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration and is currently a professor at Berkeley.

Political podcast host Brian Tyler Cohen tweeted a list of Carlson's advertisers, tagging companies like SurePayroll, Gabi Insurance, My Pillow, and Grayscale. "You all just paid for Tucker Carlson to defend a murderer on air," Cohen wrote in the tweet.

Earlier this year, companies including T-Mobile and Papa John's Pizza pulled out of ad placements on Carlson's show after the host made dismissive comments about the Black Lives Matters movement and ominously warned his viewers that "they" will "come for you."

Companies have canceled ads after controversial remarks by other Fox News shows in the past. Laura Ingraham lost about 50% of her show's on-air advertising time in 2018 when nearly 20 companies yanked their commercials in response to protests led by David Hogg, a 17-year old Parkland student and anti-gun-violence activist she mocked.

In a tweet on Wednesday, Gabi Insurance said it intended to pull its ads. The company said it had "indefinitely stopped months ago with Tucker but it seems we were still airing recently. This will NOT happen again. We will make a stand with you."

Grayscale, a digital currency management company, said in a tweet Thursday: "It came to our attention that one of our ads erroneously ran during a TV program last night that is absolutely not aligned with our values or what we stand for. We're investigating how this aired outside of our media buyer's guidelines to ensure this does not happen again."

It is unclear if the program they were referring to was "Tucker Carlson Tonight." CBS News has reached out to those and other companies that advertise during the show for more information.

A spokesperson from SurePayroll told CBS News, "As of this morning, we have halted our remnant bidding [for open commercial time] during the Tucker Carlson timeslot as we continue to evaluate our advertising strategy."

"We support different points of view and encourage open dialogue," SurePayroll also said. "We do not support commentary that condones or encourages violence of any kind. We are actively working to ensure that our ad placements align to our mission and the values that we live every day."

On his show Wednesday, Carlson played a clip of the gunman firing at protesters, saying a court will decide whether he was acting in self-defense. "We do know why it all happened though," he continued. "Kenosha has devolved into anarchy because the authorities in charge of the city abandoned it. People in charge, from the governor of Wisconsin on down, refused to enforce the law. They stood back and watched Kenosha burn."

In response to CBS News' request for comment, Fox News pointed to a tweet by Carlson which quoted that portion of his comments and provided the full transcript of the segment.

The protesters were demonstrating in the wake of the police shooting of Jacob Blake, a 29-year-old Black man who was shot several times in the back by Kenosha police and is now paralyzed.

Cellphone video taken during the protests showed what appeared to be a White man with a semi-automatic rifle opening fire on a group.

Kenosha police identified the two people killed only as a 26-year-old from Silver Lake, Wisconsin, and a 36-year-old from Kenosha. Police said one person was wounded, a 36-year-old from West Allis, Wisconsin who was expected to survive.

Police in Antioch, Illinois, announced Thursday that Kyle Rittenhouse was taken into custody there on a warrant out of Kenosha County, Wisconsin, charging the teen with first-degree intentional homicide.

He is due back in court for an extradition hearing on Friday.