Tweet Of The Day- HRC

Please, someone, give Bob Dole a cookie.

Where are media calls for Trump to go away Maggie? https://t.co/3ulgpFX3rm

— Jacqueline Zavala (@sweetnfreee43) July 22, 2021

Haberman is impressed by how blunt Dole is when the the self-described "Trumper" stated "He lost the election and I regret they did, but they did." After six months of the Biden presidency, what could possibly have been his first clue?

There is no law that says that Donald Trump- or any losing presidential nominee- must go away. None, that is, unless the loser is Hillary Rodham Clinton (below in November, 2018 but it could have been at any time).

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Tweet Of The Day- Open Carry

And also the ability of people to show up in public places with them. That way, when we do see one, we know to run. https://t.co/mh3iruL8qp

— Rachel Bitecofer 📈🔭🍌 (@RachelBitecofer) July 21, 2021

The Washington Post reported in late June

After a gunman ambushed and killed a police officer last week in a midday attack in a Denver suburb, most witnesses scattered, ducking behind cars as they ran for safety. But 40-year-old John Hurley moved toward the shooter, pulling out his concealed handgun and firing at the attacker.

After the gunman fell, Hurley picked up the rifle the shooter had been carrying. Moments later, police pulled up to the scene and one of the responding officers shot and killed Hurley with the rifle still in hand.

“The threat to our officers and our community was stopped by a hero named Johnny Hurley,” Arvada Police Chief Link Strate said in a Friday statement, releasing more details of the June 21 shooting that left three people dead. “Johnny’s actions can only be described as decisive, courageous and effective in stopping further loss of life.”

That's debatable, probably motivated to be comforting to the family and friends of the deceased, and promoted by the pro-gun groups which would be sought after by the media in such an incident.

Hurley was a hero- a hero who probably would not have been killed on a summer afternoon in that open carry state if his open possession were prohibited.

Philando Castille possessed a firearm, legally, in June 2017 and therefore was killed in his car by an evidently panicked police officer in suburban Minnesota.  In March of 2020 in Kentucky, Kenneth Walker opened fire with a legally registered firearm on police officers, whom he believed were intruders, serving a no-knock warrant. Returning fire, one of the cops shot and killed Walker's girlfriend, Breonna Taylor.

These three incidents had something in common. It isn't race- and usually isn't- because Taylor and Castille were black and Hurley was white. Hurley, acting unselfishly, was a hero and innocent victim while Taylor and Castille simply were tragic victims.

Here is the dirty little secret, completely ignored by news media, politicians, activists, and pundits: as far as we can tell, if there were no weapon possessed that day by civilians, these three innocent people still would be alive.

Open carry was not an issue in the incident which led to the killing of Breonna Taylor because Taylor and her boyfriend, the latter exonerated of criminal charges, were in Walker's home.  However, Castille was in his automobile and Hurley had transported his weapon, legally carried it out of his car, and was shot dead by a police officer.

Not coincidentally, all three episodes occurred in open carry states. We are often reminded that in most states in this most exceptional country of all time, people of any racial background have the freedom to be accidentally shot dead.

Update: It now appears that Good Samaritan Hurley killed with a concealed handgun Ronald Troyke, who had semi-automatic shotgun in the open. That would validate Terry McAuliffe's concern about assault weapons.

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That Brady Boy

Besides being the winningest quarterback in NFL history, Tom Brady, ex- (probably "ex") supporter of Donald Trump, knows how to deliver a great comedic line:

President Biden welcomed Super Bowl Champions Tampa Bay Buccaneers to the White House today. Tom Brady related to Biden by cracking a few jokes about election denial and the time he was called "Sleepy Tom." pic.twitter.com/8DSVwjM9Ha

— Ana Cabrera (@AnaCabrera) July 20, 2021

However, NBC News reported in January of 2019

Ace Davis, a fifth-grader at Millcreek Elementary School in Lexington, engineered a winning science fair project by answering the question that fans of 31 NFL teams already know the answer to: "Is Tom Brady a cheater?"

Davis and his family inflated footballs at various levels of pressure per square inch (PSI) and found that they threw them with greater accuracy at lower measures....

“The Patriots were found guilty of doctoring football [sic], thus losing $1,000,000 and future draft picks. Tom Brady is indeed a cheater,” Davis scrawled at the end of his three-panel science fair project, complete with graphs and charts.

Brady, the five-time Super Bowl champion quarterback for the New England Patriots, was suspended for four games in the 2016 season after the league concluded he and team employees had arranged to use footballs at PSI levels below the NFL rules.

The accusations came after the Patriots' 45-7 victory in the AFC title game over Indianapolis in January 2015, when Colts linebacker D'Qwell Jackson intercepted a Brady pass and noticed the ball seemed underinflated.

That led to an NFL probe that uncovered two Patriots employees regularly discussing how Brady likes footballs to be underinflated so he can get a better grip and throw them more accurately.

Brady was nevertheless permitted to play in the Super Bowl, won by his New England Patriots. The "greatest of all time" quarterback was suspended for the first four games of the following season, three of them somehow won by the Patriots.

NBC added "the "Deflategate" scandal hasn't done much to sidetrack Brady's career."

Truer words may never have been spoken. Since then, Brady's teams, the Patriots and now the Buccaneers, have won two more Super Bowls, the latter one in part because, as we learned (then forgot) in June of 2020

Ignoring the recently issued advice of the NFL Players Association that its members discontinue private workouts because of “the increase in Covid-19 cases in certain states” — of which Florida is one — Brady and other members of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers were seen practicing together Tuesday morning.

The novel coronavirus pandemic has resulted in a completely virtual offseason for NFL teams, which have had to conduct training sessions remotely. The Buccaneers began allowing their coaches to return to the team’s facility last week, but players are still ordered to stay away unless they are receiving medical treatment.

After ending his decorated, 20-year career with the New England Patriots in March, Brady signed as a free agent with the Bucs, replacing the turnover-prone Jameis Winston. As soon as Florida began lifting stay-at-home orders in May, he started organizing informal practices, at least some of which have been held at Tampa-area high school fields.

That was the case Tuesday, as the soon-to-be-43-year-old quarterback and other Tampa Bay players were spotted at Berkeley Preparatory School, which is about a 20-minute drive away from where Brady is renting a home from Derek Jeter.

According to the Tampa Bay Times, Brady’s favorite pass-catcher while with the Patriots, new Bucs tight end Rob Gronkowksi, was also on hand, as was Pro Bowl wide receiver Chris Godwin and several other players who have been regulars at the practices. In fact, the newspaper reported, attendance Tuesday appeared to be swelled by the participation of some Tampa Bay defensive backs.

When asked for comment, an NFL spokesman pointed The Washington Post to a statement the league made in May: “Everyone associated with the NFL should follow the recommendations and guidelines of state and local authorities and medical experts, including the NFLPA.”

On Saturday, the NFLPA posted a message from its medical director, Thom Mayer, who said, “Please be advised that it is our consensus medical opinion that in light of the increase in COVID-19 cases in certain states that no players should be engaged in practicing together in private workouts. Our goal is to have all players and your families as healthy as possible in the coming months.

“We are working on the best mitigation procedures at team facilities for both training camps and the upcoming season, and believe that this is in the best interest of all players that we advise against any voluntary joint practices before training camp commences.”

This is the National Football League, consciously moving ever closer to full parity among all teams, in which any little advantage is likely to be decisive. Never stupid, Brady took advantage of the novel coronavirus in the most effective way possible and reaped the rewards.

The late, great Brooklyn Dodgers manager Leo Durocher is credited with popularizing the expression "nice guys finish last." If that's valid, probably the ones without integrity finish first, and Tom Brady, winner of seven Super Bowls, demonstrates the wisdom of the phrase better than anyone.

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Tweet Of The Day- Vaccination

Until all hospitals require employees and any clinician walking thru the doors to be fully vaccinated it'd be hard to apply such a standard. Hospitals need to get their own house in order before they can make the safety argument.https://t.co/Vy9ww0HUZQ

— Jill (@TheRealJill_S) July 18, 2021

Well, tweet of yesterday, anyway.

On Saturday, The New York Times reported

Overall, Arkansas ranks near the bottom of states in the share of population that is vaccinated. Only 44 percent of residents have received at least one shot.

“Boy, we’ve tried just about everything we can think of,” a retired National Guard colonel, Robert Ator, who runs the state’s vaccination effort, said in an interview. For about one in three residents, he said, “I don’t think there’s a thing in the world we could do to get them to get vaccinated.”

For that, the state is paying a price. Hospitalizations have quadrupled since mid-May. More than a third of patients are in intensive care. Deaths, a lagging indicator, are also expected to rise, health officials said....

Even health care workers have balked. Statewide, only about 40 percent are vaccinated, Dr. Romero said.

In April, the state legislature added yet another roadblock, making it essentially illegal for any state or local entity, including public hospitals, to require coronavirus vaccination as a condition of education or employment until two years after the Food and Drug Administration fully licenses a shot. That almost certainly means no such requirements can be issued until late in 2023.

It's extraordinary when health care workers are not vaccinated, especially in what we hear constantly is an "exceptional" country.

As tweeter "Jill" argues, failure to be vaccinated cannot be used as a rationale for not treating an individual as long as hospitals permit their employees to work without vaccination. Of course, even if they impose a mandate, denying treatment to a patient raises very obvious and serious ethical issues.

Admittedly, many hospitals may be in a situation in which the demand for health care workers outstrips supply of qualified workers, thus preventing the institutions from mandating vaccines.(although not everywhere).

Maybe. But there is one industry which has no excuse: health insurance.

This gang of thieves remains in private hands. As private entities, they're permitted to exercise considerable discretion, usually to the detriment of the consumer, which discretion is restricted only by specific anti-discrimination laws pertaining to protected classes.

So most health insurance companies in most markets discriminate- as, for example, against smokers. Similarly, they could charge non-vaccinated individuals more than they charge the vaccinated. As a plus, it would be easier to confirm vaccination status than tobacco usage because everyone receives proof of vaccination upon getting the shot(s).  All that would be necessary is for a vaccinated consumer to present her company a copy or a screenshot of vaccination confirmation.

"We're all in this together" goes the popular coronavirus advertising slogan of 2020. It's less common now, perhaps because it is clearer that it is an inaccurate portrayal of the sentiment of Republican politicians and the men and women who love them. It's understandable, though possibly unfortunate, that hospitals are not requiring employees to be vaccinated and denial of treatment to patients who are not vaccinated would be extremely controversial. But health insurance companies have no such excuse, and their irresponsibility here is one more symptom of an industry which is too important to leave (primarily) to the private sector.

 

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Tweet Of The Day- IRS Enforcement

Remember when the US made fun of what a failed state Greece was bc they couldn't collect taxes? https://t.co/OJJgnhgcdU

— emptywheel (@emptywheel) July 18, 2021

The Administration hopes the $80 billion for the Internal Revenue Service in the Democrats' bill would raise $700 billion over the next decades because it is intended 

to toughen IRS enforcement efforts as part of its "American Families Plan" proposal earlier this spring, as well as specific policy changes such as hiring agents to tackle complex returns, forcing firms to disclose more information and overhauling outdated technology. 

But the ghost of Johnny Paycheck hangs over the body politic. If the bill passes, it will be with very few if any GOP votes. Republicans would try to hang Democrats with the charge that the latter have imposed a massive middle class tax increase.

When Republicans cut IRS allocations during the Obama Administration, the agency responded as expected, going after the middle and working classes because their returns were low-hanging fruit. If the Internal Revenue Service gets more money from legislation supported exclusively (or almost so) by Democrats, the latter can't attack Republicans for merely protecting the rich (or even more impotently, for refusing to pay for spending).

They would have to name names. Attack the GOP for being the servile statements of this industry and that, this company and that. It would strike corporations which contribute to both parties as mean, and Democrats might recoil from their responsibility to call Republicans out. But unless they can convince voters that the GOP is representing their donors, those voters will believe Democrats are coming after them.

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Not As A Bat Or Otherwise

Linking to a great video, the tweeter asks a legitimate question, one which in slightly different terms many people have asked:

I alone can fix it
Is he batshit crazy? pic.twitter.com/yeCRkcR5Gn

— Katie Johnson2020 (@KatieJohnson214) July 15, 2021

 

In the last few weeks of Donald Trump's presidency

As Trump ceaselessly pushed false claims about the 2020 presidential election, Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, grew more and more nervous, telling aides he feared that the president and his acolytes might attempt to use the military to stay in office, Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker report in “I Alone Can Fix It: Donald J. Trump’s Catastrophic Final Year.”

Milley described “a stomach-churning” feeling as he listened to Trump’s untrue complaints of election fraud, drawing a comparison to the 1933 attack on Germany’s parliament building that Hitler used as a pretext to establish a Nazi dictatorship.

“This is a Reichstag moment,” Milley told aides, according to the book. “The gospel of the Führer.”

A spokesman for Milley declined to comment.

Portions of the book related to Milley — first reported Wednesday night by CNN ahead of the book’s July 20 release — offer a remarkable window into the thinking of America’s highest-ranking military officer, who saw himself as one of the last empowered defenders of democracy during some of the darkest days in the country’s recent history.

General Milley believed Trump might instigate a military coup to stay in office. 

Yet, though Donald Trump was impeached twice, he was acquitted twice. Several GOP members of the Senate and most GOP members of the House voted against certification of the electoral tally ratifying Trump's defeat for re-election. Nearly every Republican member of the House and Senate voted against establishing a bipartisan commission to investigate the attempted overthrow of the USA government, which was inspired and possibly instigated by President Trump  Seventy percent of the ballots in an anonymous straw poll at last weekend's Conservative Political Action Conference were cast for the former President..

Trump made more than $1.6 billion in outside income and revenue while in office. In the first five-and-a-half months since he left office, he billed the Secret Service more than $50,000 for lodging at Mar-a-Lago and Trump Bedminster (NJ).

He swindled the nation's taxpayers royally while he was President. He has not been indicted for anything (yet, anyway) and more than a third of those taxpayers want him to be President again, where he could again leverage his office, power, and influence to fleece those taxpayers. And there he'd be free from the hangman's noose because of the ludicrous legal opinion(s) that a sitting President cannot be charged with a criminal offense.

The ex-President remains far and away the most popular politician among rank-and-file Republicans and GOP members of Congress bow to his every whim. Moreover, in the unlikely circumstance in which he'd be elected President again, Trump would put into effect that "Fuhrer gospel" far more than he did in the previous four years.

The rhetoric and actions of Donald Trump are so far removed from human decency that some individuals in the left or the center cannot imagine that he could not be at least slightly deranged. But he understands learned behavior and knows what he can and cannot get away with to satisfy his every desire. That is not a mentally unwell man. That is an evil man.

 

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Would Be Game Over

"Have you no sense of decency, sir?" Rebecca Onion has written

During the televised Army-McCarthy hearings in June 1954 Army counsel Joseph Welch famously asked that question of Sen. Joseph McCarthy after McCarthy brought up the details of a young lawyer’s past membership in a left-wing professional association accused of communism. We tend to recall the query as a narrative coup de grâce coming out of nowhere. But the “no sense of decency” line worked because most of McCarthy’s party, at that point, was finally done with him. The Army-McCarthy hearings were a product of President Eisenhower’s decision to try to curb McCarthy’s power. Bringing McCarthy down required the leveraging of moderate Republican distaste for McCarthy’s personality and methods, the novelty of the televised hearings, and a little bit of sexual panic.... 

The end of McCarthy, which we remember as so satisfyingly final, did not actually mean the end of McCarthyism. Anti-Communist crusading began before McCarthy took it up, and it persisted in various forms, perpetrated by politicians of both parties, long after he was censured in December 1954 and died in 1957. And if you look at some of McCarthy’s other populist political tools—his twisting of the truth, his hatred for “elitist” intellectualism, his insider-outsider “true American” rhetoric—it becomes clear that we’ve still got plenty of McCarthyism with us today.

Onion wrote those words, and that passage, in Slate in July, 2018. Almost exactly three years ago to the day, it is clearer still that we still have plenty of McCarthyism with us, after the Joe McCarthy+ of today has been beaten, thrown out of office, exposed as a full-time criminal grifter, and still controls his Party.

So when Joe Biden gave his voting rights speech yesterday at perhaps the safest spot in nearly the most Democratic city in the USA, National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, he knocked the Republican Party by name a few times. However, he was unable or unwilling to name names, ostentatiously avoiding the words "Donald Trump" or "President Trump" or "Trump."

He did, however, promise “We’ll be asking my Republican friends in Congress, in the states and cities and counties, to stand up, for God’s sake, and help prevent this concerted effort to undermine our election and the sacred right to vote. Have you no shame?”

"No, in fact, they don’t. And he knows it," writes Charlie Pierce, who is right about the first and, evidence suggests, wrong about the second.  After all these years, Democrats still don't completely understand that Republicans, hard at work in states across the USA denying the right to vote and undermining democracy, do not work in the context of shame or guilt.  It's not in their DNA, figuratively. Asking them for shame is akin to asking Calvinist Protestants about the Assumption of Mary or Roman Catholics about Limited atonement. It doesn't compute.

Seemingly unaware, Joe Biden asserts he will "be asking my Republican friends in Congress" and across the country to stand up for "the sacred right to vote."  He demands they do it "for God's sake," which comes across to those "friends" only as a pitiful plea from a faux tough guy. He begs in the name of the Almighty for cooperation from a Party which (like he) recognizes only one god, but in its case a Queens millionaire.

Nor would Joe Biden utter the four-syllable word "filibuster," this a tactic which chokes off legislation which would ensure that sacred right to vote. He meanwhile remains committed to infrastructure reform, calculating that no one can be opposed to infrastructure and that Democrats in competitive states could use a win. However

You can’t declare that we’re facing the worst threat to democracy since the civil war, then go back to working your heart out for infrastructure instead of democracy. Please, somebody — 𝒂𝒏𝒚𝒃𝒐𝒅𝒚 — tell the president it’s 2021 and not 1991.

— Walter Shaub (@waltshaub) July 14, 2021

To President Biden, it's 1991 (or 1954).  If he gets infrastructure legislation, there will be plaudits from the left and the center, traditional and non-traditional media, politicians and pundits alike. But if the Democratic Party fails to reform the filibuster and gain passage of the John Lewis Voting Rights Act and the We the People Act, Joe Biden and the country win the battle and lose the war.

 

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