TYB!
Isn't the "tell" the fact that Harris is speaking right before Joe on Thursday at the end of the convention?
Hush-hush preparations are underway at a hotel ballroom in Delaware.
WILMINGTON, Del. — Just before midnight on Monday, workers darted in and out a side door of the grand old Hotel du Pont, pausing for brief cigarette breaks or a chat, then getting back to setting up for an unspecified event. The effort had been underway for hours, at least.
“Can’t tell you,” one man said when asked why everyone was working so late.
The setup in an ornate ballroom — soft purple and blue lighting, screens, possibly a sound system — could be for anything, or anyone.
But as Mr. Biden’s advisers prepare for an imminent vice-presidential announcement and Mr. Biden plans to accept the presidential nomination from Delaware next week, it is worth noting that the Hotel du Pont was where he announced his 1972 Senate candidacy. It is also where he has made major political appearances in the decades since — including, in March, the last in-person event he held before the coronavirus shuttered the campaign trail for months.
Workers who were seen setting up for the event at the hotel appeared to be from BNY Production, a company that has been a frequent vendor for the Biden campaign, according to Federal Election Commission records. A truck from Wizard Studios, another event-production company that has worked for the campaign, was also parked outside the hotel on Monday.
By Tuesday morning, the doors to the street were closed, but an open door leading from the hotel lobby revealed large screens set up under the room’s chandeliers.
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2020/08/11/us/biden-vs-trump
Sheila Nix to be senior adviser to Joe Biden vice presidential pick
Nix, co-chair of the Illinois Biden team, served as Dr. Jill Biden’s chief of staff during the Obama administration.
By Lynn Sweet Aug 11, 2020, 1:18pm CDT
Former Jill Biden chief of staff Sheila Nix, an Oak Park resident, will be a senior adviser to the team the Joe Biden campaign put together to staff his soon-to-be-announced vice presidential pick.
Nix, along with Democratic activist Chris Dunn, has been a leader in the Illinois Biden campaign.
Nix has long ties to Joe and Jill Biden. Nix was Dr. Jill Biden’s chief of staff from April 2013 to the last day of the Obama/Biden administrations, Jan. 20, 2017.
In the 2012 Obama reelection campaign, with headquarters in Chicago, Nix was chief of staff for then-Vice President Biden.
She is the president of Tusk Philanthropies where she has overseen the development of its Mobile Voting Project, designed to boost voter turnout.
Nix and Brad Tusk, who founded the nonprofit, served together in the Blagojevich administration; Nix was a deputy governor. She went on become the U.S. executive director of the ONE Campaign.
Nix will also serve as a senior adviser to the spouse of Biden’s running mate.
Biden’s v.p. pick will be immediately thrust into the campaign with a staff that has been built up over the past weeks. Most of those staffers are veterans of Biden’s vice presidential operation or had roles in the Obama campaigns or administration.
https://chicago.suntimes.com/elections/2020/8/11/21363698/illinois-sheila-nix-senior-adviser-joe-biden-vice-presidential-pick
Nix was an associate at Arnold & Porter LLP from 1989 to 1991.
Arnold & Porter Kaye Scholer LLP, operating as Arnold & Porter, is a white-shoe international law firm. It is one of the largest law firms in the world, by both revenue and by its number of lawyers.
white shoe? Isn't that raycist?
A white-shoe firm is a leading professional services firm in the United States, particularly firms that have either been in existence for more than a century and represent Fortune 500 companies, or a professional services firm that serves clients that have been in existence for more than a century and represent Fortune 500 companies.
The Russian vaccine is terrifying
11/08/2020, 20:05
Vladimir Putin announced that Russia is releasing a rushed COVID-19 vaccine, but the treatment has not undergone typical safety trials.
https://www.businessinsider.fr/us/russia-rushed-coronavirus-vaccine-is-terrifying-may-hurt-public-trust-2020-8
(CN) — Tens of thousands of Russians will be given a vaccine against the coronavirus after President Vladimir Putin announced approval Tuesday for a drug that has not undergone the most critical phase of its clinical trials.
In a cabinet meeting where he revealed that the vaccine has been dubbed Sputnik V, after the first Soviet satellite, Putin asserted that one of his two adult daughters has already received a dose.
“It works effectively enough, forms a stable immunity, and, I repeat, it has gone through all the necessary tests,” Putin said Tuesday morning.
https://www.courthousenews.com/with-data-from-dozens-russia-hastily-approves-covid-19-vaccine/
Georgia Voters Lose Fight for Free Stamps on Absentee Ballots
August 11, 2020
ATLANTA (CN) — A federal judge on Tuesday denied a voting rights group’s request for an order barring Georgia election officials from requiring voters to pay for their own postage to submit absentee ballots and ballot applications.
In a class action filed in April against Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and DeKalb County election officials, the nonprofit Black Voters Matter and two Peach State voters claimed that requiring voters to pay for postage to submit their absentee applications and ballots is tantamount to a poll tax outlawed by the 24th Amendment and also violates the First and 14th Amendments.
The plaintiffs claimed that the state not providing free postage for mail-in voting places an “unconstitutional burden” on the right to vote during a time when voting by mail is the only option for many who wish to cast ballots during the Covid-19 pandemic.
During a virtual hearing in April, the plaintiffs urged the court to require election officials to provide voters with prepaid, returnable envelopes for mail-in ballots and applications.
On April 30, U.S. District Judge Amy Totenberg in Atlanta denied the plaintiffs’ motion for a preliminary injunction seeking new absentee ballot envelopes with free postage for Georgia’s June 9 primary election and later issued a similar denial as to the Aug. 11 runoff election.
Although Totenberg admitted that Tuesday’s ruling is “by no means the final word on Georgia’s absentee balloting procedures, election procedures or Georgia’s response in the electoral sphere to the challenges posed by the pandemic,” she found that no constitutional violation has taken place because voters can still cast their ballot in person in the Peach State.
“The fact that any registered voter may vote in Georgia on election day without purchasing a stamp, and without undertaking any “extra steps” besides showing up at the voting precinct and complying with generally applicable election regulations, necessitates a conclusion that stamps are not poll taxes under the Twenty-Fourth Amendment prism,” Totenberg, a Barack Obama appointee, wrote.
The judge held that in-person voting “theoretically remains an option for voters in Georgia” even despite the pandemic.
Although more than 1.2 million Georgians voted in person in the June primary election, a record-breaking 1.1 million voted by mail.
“The court recognizes that voting in person is materially burdensome for a sizable segment of the population, both due to the Covid-19 pandemic and for the elderly, disabled, or those out-of-town. But these concerns — while completely justifiable and pragmatically solvable — are not the specific evils the Twenty-Fourth Amendment was meant to address,” the ruling states.
https://www.courthousenews.com/georgia-voters-lose-fight-for-free-stamps-on-absentee-ballots/
Eyes on… and gold had all the steam taken out of it earlier.
But this is the reported reason:
Big 10 officially pulled the plug on the 2020 college football season.
I'm sure it's because POTUS tweeted about the market today.
Tuesday Live Blog: Big Ten to Cancel Fall Football Season, Planning to Play in Spring
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. — The Big Ten has officially cancelled its 2020 fall football season.
The Big Ten is reportedly hoping to play its season in the spring. The Big Ten is the first Power 5 conference to make a decision about football.
The latest: Big Ten expected to announce season is postponed
UPDATED 2:45 p.m. — Bruce Feldman tweeted that the Big Ten's presidents have voted to postpone the 2020 college football season with hopes of playing in the spring.
https://www.si.com/college/indiana/football/updates-on-big-ten-decision-regarding-college-football
Uhhuh, and doesn't that girl in the back look like a Susan Rice child?
Previously, she served as a Deputy Assistant to President Obama, was Chief of Staff to Vice President Biden on the 2012 re-election campaign, helped develop policies as Deputy Governor of Illinois and Chief of Staff to two U.S. Senators, and coordinated resources to fight poverty and disease in Sub-Saharan Africa as the U.S. Executive Director of Bono’s ONE Campaign.
https://tuskstrategies.com/team-member/sheila-nix/
Interesting here:
Did you go to the Trump inauguration?
Yes, I sat right behind Rudy Giuliani. It was kind of surreal. I started the day in Jill’s office. We walked in, turned in our IDs, and that was it. You know that change is coming, but it still feels really abrupt. I flew back that night to Chicago to go to the Women’s March the next morning. I took my younger daughter to that.
https://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/Felsenthal-Files/June-2017/Sheila-Nix/
Appeals court seems wary of ordering dismissal of Flynn case
By ERIC TUCKER | August 11, 2020 at 2:56 PM EDT - Updated August 11 at 2:56 PM
WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal appeals court in Washington appeared inclined Tuesday to let a judge decide on his own whether to grant the Justice Department's request to dismiss the criminal case against former Trump administration national security adviser Michael Flynn.
The court expressed skepticism at arguments from the Justice Department and Flynn's attorneys that a judge was not empowered to probe the motives behind the government's decision to abandon the prosecution of Flynn, who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI as part of the special counsel's investigation into the Trump campaign and Russia.
The more than three hours of arguments were the latest step in a long-running legal saga that has prompted an extraordinary power struggle between the executive and judicial branches. The case will almost certainly persist for months if the court rejects Flynn's efforts to get a speedy dismissal and returns it to U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan, who refused to immediately grant the department's request to drop the prosecution.
The court is not deciding whether the case should be dismissed or whether the Justice Department had good reason to move to drop it in May despite Flynn's own guilty plea. Instead, the question before the court is a more procedural one: whether Flynn's attorney is entitled to leapfrog Sullivan and get an order from the appeals court forcing him to dismiss the prosecution before Sullivan himself has had the chance to rule.
A ruling against Flynn would not undo his guilty plea or end the case but simply return it to Sullivan for a hearing on the government's request to dismiss.
The entire court took up the matter after a three-judge panel, in a 2-1 ruling, ordered Sullivan to dismiss the case. Several of the judges made clear through their questioning that they were deeply skeptical of arguments that Sullivan was not entitled to scrutinize the department's decision and second-guess the motives behind it.
Judge Thomas Griffith, an appointee of President George W. Bush, bristled when Flynn’s lawyer, Sidney Powell, characterized as “pretty ministerial” the role of a judge when the government and the defendant both agree that a case should be dismissed.
“It’s not ministerial and you know it’s not,” Griffith said. “So it’s not ministerial, so that means the judge has to do some thinking about it, right?”
Judge Cornelia Pillard, an appointee of President Barack Obama, said that though the Justice Department is entitled to deference, “the integrity and the independence of the court” must also be respected.
She told Jeffrey Wall, the acting solicitor general, that by urging Sullivan to dismiss the case, it was asking him to contradict an order he had already given when he accepted Flynn's guilty plea nearly two years ago.
“What self-respecting Article III judge would simply jump and enter an order without doing what he could to understand both sides?” Pillard asked, referring to the section of the Constitution that created the judiciary branch.
Flynn was the only White House official charged in special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation. He pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about having discussed sanctions during the presidential transition period with the then-Russian ambassador to the United States. Those concerns prompted alarm within the FBI because White House officials had stating publicly that Flynn and the ambassador had not discussed sanctions.
Flynn was awaiting sentencing when the Justice Department announced in May that it was abandoning the case following an internal review. That review concluded that the FBI had insufficient basis to question Flynn about his conversations with the diplomat, which Attorney General William Barr says were appropriate.
https://www.wwnytv.com/2020/08/11/appeals-court-seems-wary-ordering-dismissal-flynn-case/
It's unbelievable (sick) how long something like this can be dragged out. No doubt they are taking their orders from the Sabotage Field Manual from the Office of Strategic Services:
(d) Employees
(1) Work slowly. Think out ways to increase the number of movements necessary on your job: use a light hammer instead of a heavy one, try to make a small wrench do when a big one is necessary, use little force where considerable force is needed, and so on.
Yea, and the Tusk founder she works for calls himself "The Fixer" lol, you can't make this stuff up.
Exactly. He didn't want to dismiss the case and therefore he found a way not to. But it has to come back to him for a decision eventually, as far as I can make out. The rest is just political theatre and so unfair to Flynn, who was railroaded from the beginning.
I watched "Richard Jewel" recently (Clint Eastwood directed) and it clearly shows how horrible the FBI can be when they want to. Power corrupts absolutely.
One of these three things turned the markets around today:
POTUS tweets look at the stock market.
McConnell said stimulus talks are at a stalemate.
Big 10 calls off the 2020 college football season.
Who owned the chemicals that blew up Beirut? No one will say
MOSCOW/DUBAI/LONDON (Reuters) - In the murky story of how a cache of highly explosive ammonium nitrate ended up on the Beirut waterfront, one thing is clear — no one has ever publicly come forward to claim it.
There are many unanswered questions surrounding last week’s huge, deadly blast in the Lebanese capital, but ownership should be among the easiest to resolve.
Clear identification of ownership, especially of a cargo as dangerous as that carried by the Moldovan-flagged Rhosus when it sailed into Beirut seven years ago, is fundamental to shipping, the key to insuring it and settling disputes that often arise.
But Reuters interviews and trawls for documents across 10 countries in search of the original ownership of this 2,750-tonne consignment instead revealed an intricate tale of missing documentation, secrecy and a web of small, obscure companies that span the globe.
“Goods were being transported from one country to another, and they ended up in a third country with nobody owning the goods. Why did they end up here?” said Ghassan Hasbani, a former Lebanese deputy prime minister and opposition figure.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-lebanon-security-blast-ship-insight/who-owned-the-chemicals-that-blew-up-beirut-no-one-will-say-idUSKCN2571CP
Her Senate account did, which means she is giving up her Senate seat to run for VP.