Comment Requested

"Oh, that's a great question," replies Kamala Harris near the close of an appearance on Wednesday's Today Show. Industry standards probably required a puff question from Savannah Guthrie to ease the vice-president's discomfort lest she refuse to return for an appearance on NBC.. Shortly before that, Guthrie had asked (in a segment beginning at 10:34 of the video below)

I have to ask, on the subject of impeachment, the President was acquitted in the Senate trial. Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, though, had harsh words, saying he didn't get away with anything, yet, and that civil and criminal liability was still a possibility. I ask you, do you think that President Trump should be criminally charged?

Harris responded

You know, right now, Savannah, I'm focused on what we need to do to get relief to American families, and that is our highest priority. It is our Administration's, it is our job, it is the job we were elected to do, and that's my focus.

You were elected to do more than one thing, Madame Vice-President. Of course, the pandemic is your focus but the questions about that came earlier in the segment. Thus, Guthrie continued "You're a former prosecutor, so I have to ask you, is that a strong case against the President, a criminal case that Mitch McConnell raised as a possibility?"

McConnell's sincerity is questionable. However, he is the GOP's leader in the Senate, head of the non-insurrectionist wing of the Republican Party and he did imply the former President should be prosecuted.  Nonetheless, Harris replied

I haven't reviewed the case through the lens of being a prosecutor. I'm reviewing the case through the lens of being the Vice President of America.

That's the United States of America, an ironic omission from a member of an Administration which believes the border between the USA and Mexico should be somewhat, euphemistically speaking, permeable.

More on-topic: the Vice President needs to do a better job, politically and otherwise. She owes the country a more complete answer as to whether the ex-President should be prosecuted than "I haven't thought about it." Harris is an ex-prosecutor and can presumably use her experience with, and knowledge of, the justice system to formulate a coherent answer to a reasonable question.

Alternatively, she can answer the question in the capacity of vice-president, to which she clings here as an excuse for avoiding a response. The answer should be something along the lines of 

That's a decision for the Justice Department. Unlike the last president, this Administration believes that the Attorney General of the United States of America doesn't serve the political interests of the President but serves the American people.  The Justice Department will take all appropriate factors into consideration and make a decision the American people can be proud of.

There. That shouldn't be so hard. Not only does it answer the question, it makes clear there is a new sheriff in town, one who believes in the independence of the Justice Department and will work for the people and not himself.  If Vice President Harris can't pull that off, President Biden should have send to the media someone who will. That is, unless it's not accurate.

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Wrong And Wrong

Condemning the two-time impeachment and trial of Donald J. Trump, Lindsay Graham has charged

And we've opened Pandora's Box to future Presidents and if you use this model, I don't know how Kamala Harris doesn't get impeached if the Republicans take over the House because she actually bailed out rioters and one of the rioters went back to the streets and broke somebody's head open.

Republicans will try to impeach a Democratic president for anything. They've already done so for the commission of consensual sex, of which Graham should be aware because he was a vocal advocate of convicting the impeached Bill Clinton in the Senate in 1999. Moreover, this will not open a Pandora's Box for Democratic legislators because they now fully realize that no more than a handful of Republicans ever will vote to impeach a Republican President. Or at least they won't unless witnesses are called, which Democrats won't because they live to be intimidated.

The Minnesota Freedom Fund puts up the bail for many individuals, and it raised copious amounts of money after the protests which followed the murder of George Floyd. One of the defendants benefiting was Jaleel Stallings, arrested on May 30, 2020 in Minneapolis. According to the Hennepin District Court, there is a jury trial scheduled for March 27, 2021 for two counts of Attempted Second Degree Murder, one count of Assault, and other charges, which appear to be three felonies carrying a lesser maximum sentence. 

However, more likely Graham was referring to

A 32-year-old Minneapolis man, who was bailed out of jail by the Minnesota Freedom Fund in July after an alleged assault, is accused in another assault that left the victim with a traumatic brain injury.

According to the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office, Lionel Timms faces one felony count of third-degree assault — causing substantial bodily harm — in connection to the Aug. 14 incident.

Yet, in neither case was Timms arrested for an incident arising from the racial  justice protests. Further

all but three of the 170 people arrested during the protests between May 26 and June 2 were released from jail within a week. Of the 167 released, only 10 had to put up a monetary bond to be released; in most cases, the amounts were nominal, such as $78 or $100. In fact, 92 percent of those arrested had to pay no bail — and 29 percent of those arrested did not face charges. (The American Bail Coalition is a trade group of insurance companies who profit from underwriting bail bonds.

Without an investigation, it cannot be determined what donations from whom went to which offenders. However, the vast majority of the money collected by the MFF, including a sum contributed by then-vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris, was not used to bail out Lindsay Graham's "rioters" but to gain the release of other alleged offenders.

Lindsay Graham, ideologically-charged political opportunist: meet Kamala Harris, judgment-impaired Vice President.

The South Carolina senator has chosen to distort wildly a controversial issue as his rationale for defending a President who instigated a riot for the purpose of overturning a free and fair election. Senator Harris gave to a fund which was used overwhelmingly not to free (before trial) protestors or rioters but individuals with motives completely unconnected to any ideas of racial justice or police reform.

On June 1, 2020, Harris (apparently successfully) encouraged a torrent of contributions to the Minnesota Freedom Fund by tweeting "If you’re able to, chip in now to the @MNFreedomFund to help post bail for those protesting on the ground in Minnesota.”

She was hired twice as a prosecutor, later was elected as District Attorney of San Francisco, and thereafter as Attorney General of the State of California. Yet as far as we know, she assumed the contributions to this organization would bail out peaceful protestors.

It turns out that most of that money was not applied to peaceful protestors, as Harris implied, nor to rioters, as implied by Lindsey Graham and many other Republicans.

If conservatives had a problem with the Black Lives Matter protests, they had a duty to specify their disagreement with the policies or perspective of the movement. Instead, intimidated by the slogan "black lives matter," most of them hid behind baseless accusations. On the other side of the partisan aisle, if an ex-prosecutor (let alone ex-state Attorney General) wants to support an organization helping peaceful protestors, she should know to find out a little about the organization first.

 

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Lie And Be Rewarded

Down is up, up is down and

Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the veteran director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the public face of the battle against the pandemic in the United States, was the recipient of a $1 million Dan David Prize, an award headquartered at Tel Aviv University and dedicated this year to outstanding contributions in public health.

The Dan Davis Prize is awarded annually, for a total of $3 million, in three categories- the Future, the Past and the Present. Dr.

Fauci, 80, won in the “Present” category for his scientific contributions, including his research and his efforts to inform the public about the pandemic. He “leveraged his considerable communication skills to address people gripped by fear and anxiety and worked relentlessly to inform individuals in the United States and elsewhere about the public health measures essential for containing the pandemic’s spread,” the organizers of the Dan David Prize said in a statement.

Dr. Fauci certainly has "considerable communication skills," as does his former boss, Donald J. Trump, who probably kept Fauci on for two reasons:  a) the latter is excellent on television, a major priority of the former President; and b) for each, candor is negotiable.

Forgotten, it appears is the time in early spring, as Americans were unsure of the value of face masks, that Fauci stated they were not necessary. He did so, he later claimed, because there was an insufficient number of N95 masks and surgical masks  and "we" wanted to make sure that health care workers received them.

The earlier advice is what is generally referred to as a "lie." A conservative Republican, State Senator Tom Davis of South Carolina, has argued "timely dissemination of the truth on the efficacy of masks would have led to a reallocation of productive capital so the supply of masks could meet demand." Alternatively, the President could have invoked the Defense Production Act, as explained here,  "to direct the production and distribution of materials that are deemed essential to national defense."

The federal government could have gone right with the free market, to the left with critical government action, or have its mouthpiece lie to the American public.

Early in the pandemic, Dr. Fauci indicated that 60-70 percent of the public would have to be vaccinated for herd immunity to be reached.  In November, it was "70, 75 percent," and a few weeks later, "75,80,85 percent" and "75 to 8-plus percent." It's tough keeping numbers straight when truth is optional so

Dr. Fauci acknowledged that he had slowly but deliberately been moving the goal posts. He is doing so, he said, partly based on new science, and partly on his gut feeling that the country is finally ready to hear what he really thinks.

He has treated the American people as children, unable to handle the truth. Evidently, he found nothing in the past four years sufficiently unacceptable to be worth sacrificing the position he has held for over 36 years.

The Dan Davis Prize claims Fauci "has been widely praised for his courage in speaking truth to power in a highly charged environment." If Fauci had talked truth to power, he would have been fired long ago by President Trump, and he probably wouldn't have endeared himself to President Biden. If courage in government officials working in the public health or national security field were so highly prized, it's not hard to find:

 

 

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Unserious Senator

I don't subscribe to the modern instinct, especially popular on the left, to demand everyone with whom there is a disagreement to "resign." However, if I did, my nominee would be Delaware senator Chris Coons, closely allied with Joe Biden. He appeared Valentine's Day on 'This Week" with George Stephanopoulos, at which time

"So you don't believe that a full trial, more witnesses, more documents giving us a sense of what was going on in the inside the White House, would have better served the cause of justice and accountability?" Stephanopoulos asked Coons.

Coons said he was impressed with the 57 votes that Democrats managed to get, the most bipartisan impeachment in the history of the country.

"They could have had 500 more witnesses, it wasn't going to change the outcome. Once Mitch McConnell made it clear he intended to acquit even despite the compelling evidence, what the House managers needed wasn't more witnesses or more evidence, what we all needed was more Republican courage," Coons said. "I, frankly, at that time did not think that spending months fighting over additional witnesses would have changed the outcome of this trial one bit."

Sen. Chris Coons defends decision to not have more witness testimony at Trump's impeachment trial: "What we needed was more Republican courage." pic.twitter.com/MdWwSivkNe

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) February 14, 2021

Senators need not have spent months fighting over additional witnesses.  Even if Republicans had demanded a hundred or more to slow the process, Democrats could have balked. That's what control of the Senate means- or at least does when Republicans control it, as they did when Mitch McConnell decided at President Trump's first impeachment that there would be no witnesses.

Moreover, the rough consensus going into Saturday morning was that there would be five (though possibly even fewer) Republicans voting to convict Trump. Instead, there were seven, suggesting that Democratic senators could not be certain that with the personal, passionate and emotional testimony of witnesses there would have been an acquittal. (That's apart from any other reasons to call witnesses.)

However, that was Coons' explanation for the decision of Democrats to unfurl the white flag of surrender. Or at least it was on Sunday morning after he got his lines straight because on Saturday morning

Frustrations rose among Senate Democrats. One Democrat familiar with the internal discussions said “it was clear the managers had no plan” and “didn’t know what their next step was.”

Sen. Christopher A. Coons (D-Del.), a close ally of President Biden’s, visited the managers’ room off the Senate floor, according to a House aide. He told the managers any delay would cost Republican votes to convict — and potentially Democratic votes, too.

“The jury is ready to vote,” he told them. “People want to get home for Valentine’s Day.”

The Senate could have put off trial-related work till Tuesday, especially because Valentine's Day, 2021 is a Sunday, a fortuitous fact which seems to have escaped Coon's attention.

Valentine's Day is a swell day for an elite group- a mere 100 individuals entrusted with the work of governing the nation- to be home with their "significant others." So, too, would the wife of Howard Liebengood, of Jeffrey Smith, or of Brian Sicknick prefer to be with her husband on this occasion. However, due to the deaths of those law enforcement officers, closely related to the insurrection of January 6, they will be denied the privilege enjoyed by United States Senators.

 

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Adverse Inference

Asked by Bill Maher two weeks ago on Real Time whether there is a 50-50 chance that SARS-CoV-2 originated in a lab, evolutionary biologist Brad Weinstein, appearing with wife and colleague Heather Heyer, remarked

it’s far more likely than that. I think I said last June that the chances it came from a lab were about 90%. This was never a conspiracy theory. In fact that term was used to simply make it go away. It’s an obvious hypothesis that is in need of testing, and we are only now, a year [into the pandemic], getting to the point where we can discuss it out loud without being stigmatized.

However stigmatized or not, when a scientist or a comedian questions the virtue of the mainland Chinese regime (3:17 of the video), the race card is always not far behind. And if Twitter is the land of bad takes, this guy is king:

Like a lot of the other racist assholes, Bill Maher secretly wants to be a comedian. https://t.co/dL2CdFeKO8

— Guy Endore-Kaiser (@GuyEndoreKaiser) February 13, 2021

Timing can be so unfortunate. This fact-free defense of the Beijing regime ironically appeared less than a day after we learned

Chinese scientists refused to share raw data that might bring the world closer to understanding the origins of the coronavirus pandemic, independent investigators for the W.H.O. said on Friday.

The investigators, who recently returned from a fact-finding trip to the Chinese city of Wuhan, said disagreements over patient records and other issues were so tense that they sometimes erupted into shouts among the typically mild-mannered scientists on both sides.

China’s continued resistance to revealing information about the early days of the coronavirus outbreak, the scientists say, makes it difficult for them to uncover important clues that could help stop future outbreaks of such dangerous diseases.

“If you are data focused, and if you are a professional,” said Thea Kølsen Fischer, a Danish epidemiologist on the team, then obtaining data is “like for a clinical doctor looking at the patient and seeing them by your own eyes.”

Following this second impeachment of President Donald Trump, Lead Impeachment Manager Jamie Raskin invited Trump to testify in the impending trial. He wrote "if you decline this invitation, we reserve any and all rights, including the right to establish at trial your refusal supports a strong adverse inference regarding your actions (and inaction) on January 6, 2001."

Failure to cooperate supports a strong adverse inference regarding your actions. The company line throughout has been that SARS-CoV-2 originated at a wet market in Wuhan. However, despite- or because of- mounting evidence that it instead came out of a laboratory in that city, Chinese authorities have denied investigators from the World Health Organization access to patient records, access to vital lab employees, and other "issues" necessary to prove or disprove the official line of the totalitarian regime in Beijing. 

It's time to take a strong adverse inference regarding claims from mainland China, meanwhile rebuffing charges of racism for questioning a modern fascist state.

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When Stereotyping Is Promoted

The New York Times reports

Now, Aunt Jemima has a new name: the Pearl Milling Company.

In an announcement on Tuesday by PepsiCo, which owns Aunt Jemima’s parent company Quaker Oats, the pancake-mix and syrup line formally began rebranding itself and moved one step closer to permanently abandoning its 131-year-old name.

The new name comes from the milling company in St. Joseph, Mo., that pioneered the self-rising pancake mix that became known as Aunt Jemima, according to PepsiCo, which said the rebranded products would arrive in stores in June.

The change has been in the works since last June after the killing of George Floyd catalyzed widespread protests over racial injustice and a nationwide reckoning over symbols of the Old South and their meaning. Several large food companies came under fire for using racial stereotypes, including Quaker Oats, which said it would drop the Aunt Jemima name, redesign its packaging and pledge $5 million to support the Black community.

"Several large food companies" indeed, but not insurance companies.  Given that arguably the most prominent of stereotypes about African-Americans is their dancing skill, GEICO seems not to have gotten (or maybe it has) the message:

The Aunt Jemima brand was a bad one, just as GEICO's dancing blacks fosters a stereotype, entertaining and pleasing whites from coast to coast. One has been removed, the other, not.

Double standards abound. Washington "Redskins" nickname was offensive and, under fire, ownership officially changed the team's name to "Football Team," at least until a permanent name is determined. (My personal favorite is "FT" because if the franchise continues its losing ways, the abbreviation could become embarrassing.) In this instance, it's the Kansas City Chiefs who haven't gotten the memo:

Of course, primary blame should fall not on the fans but rather on team ownership, which could put an end to this if it wished. However, they do not, and that's because there is little if any criticism of this disgraceful chant, popular at every Chiefs' home game.

It's not clear why. Perhaps it is because over the last six seasons, Washington's won-lost record is a cumulative -4 as the team has lost 4 more games in the regular season than it has won, with no playoff victories. Over the same period, Kansas City is an extraordinary combined +44, with one Super Bowl victory.  The Chiefs have delighted their fans, the Redskins have not, and attacking (however justifiably) a  losing team is much safer than criticism of a winning team. 

Or there may be an alternative factor, one owing to the parallel between Redskins-Chiefs and Aunt Jemima-GEICO. 

The Redskins image had existed for 88 years, Aunt Jemima for 131 years. That's a very long time. While the Chiefs' tomahawk chant has been in effect for decades, the GEICO commercial has played for far less than one year.  The insurance company could easily pull its commercial and the Kansas City franchise could issue an edict that anyone seen aping the chant would lose his or her season ticket privileges. Done.

Limited evidence indicates that if a practice was begun, or a symbol founded, in a less enlightened era when few people would have thought it offensive, it must now be expunged. But if in our more enlightened age the offensive practice or symbol emerges, it may continue. If this doesn't make sense to you, you're catching on.

 

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Better A Scumbag Than A Convicted Scumbag

It's just a hunch, but this guy may not be fond of Donald Trump:

And of course he incited them and then completely threw them under the bus because he thought they were tacky dirtbags.

Idiots thought they’d get pardons. https://t.co/eOibvPZ3s8

— Joshua Holland (@JoshuaHol) February 10, 2021

But while Donald Trump is a "ridiculous, obvious grifter," and weasel, he's no nincompoop.

Texas real estate agent Jenna Ryan, arrested for her participation in the Capitol riot, told a home-state reporter on January 15

I think we all deserve a pardon. I’m facing a prison sentence. I think I do not deserve that and from what I understand, every person is going to be arrested that was there, so I think everyone deserves a pardon, so I would ask the President of the United States to give me a pardon

Four days later, President Trump would issue 73 pardons and 70 commutations, for both the infamous and the relatively unknown.

Because a Senate vote for conviction would have been reached otherwise, those pardons were not extended to anyone arrested for the January 6 uprising against his/her own government. Unlike so many Republicans in the Senate, Donald Trump is not stupid, an unintended lesson from this tweet:

The footage the House managers have shown is sickening. Many GOP Senators who will ultimately vote not to convict Trump were making frantic calls to the White House to get him to say something. He didn’t and they will still vote against impeachment. How can they sleep at night?

— Mike Walker (@New_Narrative) February 10, 2021

Any criminal defense lawyer will tell her client to keep his mouth shut unless testifying under oath. Trump understood that anything he might have said could have (and should have) been used against him. He did not speak out against what was happening and, unless he acts out again before the Senate vote, will not be convicted.

He was given a heads up by the then-Senate Majority Leader. Mitch McConnell, who joined 43 of his GOP colleagues in voting to hold the proceedings unconstitutional, artfully warned Trump a week before the inauguration "I have not made a final decision on how I will vote and I intend to listen to the legal arguments when they are presented to the Senate.”

It isn't only being thrown off Twitter and Facebook that is keeping the ex-Presient from making a foolish remark. He can still call in to Fox News, let alone OANN or Newsmax, to put on record anything he wishes. However, the ridiculous, scumbag grifter (or is it a ridiculous, grifter scumbag?) knows most of those senators who called into the White House will ultimately vote to acquit him while he holds on to his base. Not a bad strategy if you're Donald J. Trump.

 

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