I've no problem with a gymnast who owes us nothing walking away from a sporting event that doesn't affect us. I have a problem with a President, who owes us everything, walking away from voting rights without even trying because the fight seemed hard and he cares about potholes.
I had intended to say nothing about Simone Biles other than
roughly what Shaub did. She is not a villain and she is not a hero. She is
merely a great young athlete who did what she believed she had to do. The end.
But unlike Shaub, who understands Biles should not consume
our thoughts, some people cannot let go. Naveed Jamali, though possessing an admirable professional biography, fails to understand that Simone Biles' world is sports, not real life, and that
her actions affect only her teammates, her family, and herself.
I’m going to say the quiet part out loud: All of this is based on the fear that brown and black people will take white entitlement away. From 1/6 to Simone Biles, it’s all about race.
It must be comforting neither to think hard not to evaluate
news events in the context of their circumstances. Reducing all of them to race would save us the effort of considering anything objectively and allow us to stereotype and stigmatize individuals critical of Biles.
Sincere feelings and beliefs need not be suppressed in a misguided effort to avoid further alienating individuals we're convinced are insufficiently tolerant of blacks or other minorities. Canceling ourselves is not a worthy option.
It's simply that Jamali is flat-out wrong. It's not
"all about race." Some people form their opinions of other people or issues based upon race, an affliction affecting right, left, and center. Thankfully, they constitute a minority.
Individuals should be permitted their views about Biles
without a strong inference that they are racist. An individual who is racially
biased or hostile should be called out with the action or statement cited. However, people should be permitted their views about Simone Biles without an assumption that it is determined by race. Condemning as biased, prejudiced, or racist everyone on one side of an issue
is, well, plainly ignorant.
I am boycotting Ben and Jerry's ice cream. Given a small bowl at a
friend's house decades ago, I realized the product it was overpriced and have been
able to avoid it ever since. So I will never eat it again.
But only for that reason. Philadelphia Inquirer foreign
affairs columnist Trudy Rubin notes
The ice cream maker, famous for social consciousness and
iconic flavors like Chubby Hubby, announced Monday it was ending sales in
“Occupied Palestinian Territory,” meaning Jewish settlements in the West Bank
and East Jerusalem. But the announcement stipulated it would still sell ice
cream inside Israel (meaning within the pre-1967 borders before Israel captured
the West Bank and Gaza in the Six Days War)...
Critics have linked it to the Palestinian-led Boycott,
Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which calls for countries, businesses,
and universities to sever all ties with Israel, unless it withdraws from all
land captured in 1967. The movement is based on the boycott of South Africa
under apartheid. But its demands, if fulfilled, would rule out a Jewish
homeland....
Ben & Jerry’s wasn’t calling for a boycott of Israel
proper. It was focused on Jewish settlements in the mostly Palestinian West
Bank, which the U.S. State Department regards as “occupied” territory. U.S.
policy for decades, before the Trump administration, sought to curb growth of
settlements lest they rule out any future political accord between Israel and
the Palestinians.
Ironically
by insisting that a boycott of West Bank settlements is the
same as one of Israel – in other words that settlements are an official part of
Israel -- Israeli officials only strengthen the BDS line.
West Bank settlements have not yet been formally annexed to
Israel (although former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was willing).
However, the continued expansion of Jewish settlements and special settler
roads on the West Bank leaves the Palestinians divided into unconnected chunks
of territory that make any future Palestinian statelet unviable....
By equating West Bank settlers with citizens in Tel Aviv, the
Israeli attack on Ben & Jerry’s effectively concedes there is only one
Israeli state between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean. This brings
international attention back to BDS demands for rights for disenfranchised West
Bank Palestinians in such a binational state.
In a case of irony+
If Israel treats West Bank settlers as part of the Jewish
state, then it must confront the question of Palestinian rights within a
“one-state reality.” Unless it distinguishes between the West Bank and Israel
proper, and regenerates some kind of Israel-Palestinian negotiations, it will
encourage the claim it is an apartheid state.
Rubin notes that Israeli officials across the political
spectrum are united in decrying the Ben and Jerry decision, with Israeli president Herzog even labeling it "a new form of terrorism."
This is not terrorism, which (along with "terror"
and "terrorist") is a word (similar to "racist") in recent
years stretched far beyond its original meaning. There are many officials at
the United Nations eager to minimize terrorism; it's disquieting to see an Israeli politician doing so.
Rubin acknowledges, as we all should, that
the angst stems from fear that the Ben & Jerry move
marks the beginning of a slippery slope, a prelude to adoption by major
international companies of the BDS call to boycott Israel entirely because it
maintains an apartheid system over Palestinians.
The move by Ben and Jerry's, a division of Unilever, is
not the end of the world, though if it does
slip into approval of BDS, hostility to a loyal American ally and most
democratic state in the Middle East will be on full display. (Closing the plant in Jerusalem is slimy, but whatever.) Unfortunately, Israeli overreaction to
cessation of sales in the West Bank and East Jerusalem makes that a little more
likely.
Imagine not being charged with a crime yet receiving a
letter (beginning "Greetings" and continuing
We are pleased to inform you that you have been selected to
participate in a Prolific Offender Program run by the Pasco Sheriff's Office in
cooperation with the Department of Justice Strategies for Policing Innovation
Initiative. This program provides you with an opportunity to receive assistance
from the Pasco Sheriff's Office and several community partners who will work
with you to identify and overcome barriers that have hindered you in your
life's journey. Ultimately, the goal of this program is to empower you to live
a lawful, productive and fulfilled life.
Research indicates that barriers to successful living may
involve struggles with mental health, substance abuse, domestic violence,
homelessness, finding a job, or several other challenges many people face on a
daily basis. It is possible you have struggled with some of these issues. If
so, please know the Pasco Sheriff's Office is committed to support you in
overcoming these challenges through this program.
You may wonder why you were enrolled in this program. You
were selected as a result of an evaluation of your recent criminal behavior
using an unbiased, evidence-based risk assessment designed to identify prolific
offenders in our community. As a result of this designation, we will go to
great efforts to encourage change in your life through enhanced support and
increased accountability.
The Justice Department's Justice Strategies for Policing
Innovation Initiative is a grant-based program begun in 2009 (great job,
Barack!).. An investigative report in the Tampa Bay Times, which recently
published the letter above, found last September that
First the Sheriff's Office generates lists of people it
considers likely to break the law, based on arrest histories, unspecified
intelligence and arbitrary decisions by police analysts.
Then it sends deputies to find and interrogate anyone whose
name appears, often without probable cause, a search warrant or evidence of a
specific crime.
They swarm homes in the middle of the night, waking families
and embarrassing people in front of their neighbors. They write tickets for
missing mailbox numbers and overgrown grass, saddling residents with court
dates and fines. They come again and again, making arrests for any reason they
can.
The list of problems with this program is a long one,
including use of police officers as enforcers of the zoning code, tying up
courts for minor infractions, violation of due process, and beyond. But, hey,
that's a local jurisdiction (county) in Florida perverting a program intended
by the Justice Department in Washington to encourage innovation. Surely nothing
untoward is currently happening in that department, now headed by former President
Obama's nominee for the US Supreme Court. It was no doubt in error that The
Washington Post reported n late May that lawyers for the Department had asked
a federal judge
to dismiss lawsuits against former president Donald Trump,
former attorney general William P. Barr and other officials for last June’s violent
clearing of demonstrators from Lafayette Square by U.S. military and police.
Trump and other U.S. officials are immune from civil
lawsuits over police actions taken to protect a president and to secure his
movements, government lawyers said of the actions taken ahead of a photo op of
Trump holding a Bible in front of the historic St. John’s Church. A crowd of
more than 1,000 largely peaceful demonstrators were protesting the police
killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis before the park was cleared.
A year to the week after Floyd’s death, Justice Department
lawyers argued that the lawsuits should also be tossed because last November’s
presidential election made future violations unlikely. The government said the
square has been reopened, and President Biden’s administration does not share
Trump’s stated hostility toward Floyd and the racial justice movement.
Evidently, we can let bygones be bygones as long as we decry
"white privilege" long and hard enough. The Post continued
The American Civil Liberties Union of D.C., Black Lives
Matter, other civil liberties groups and individual protesters accuse Trump and
senior officials of driving the June 1 events. Military, federal and local
police forcibly cleared the square using batons, clubs, horses, pepper spray,
smoke and fired projectiles 30 minutes before a citywide curfew began. Images
of violence drew a national backlash against Trump’s calls for “overwhelming
force” to put down those he called “THUGS” and domestic terrorists. The
nation’s top military official later apologized for walking with Trump before
television cameras that day.
Lawyers for the ACLU said that despite legal precedents, the
government’s defense would “authorize brutality with impunity” in the heart of
Washington at one of the most symbolic spaces within the seat of the federal
government.
If their defense was upheld, U.S. authorities “could have
used live ammunition to clear the park, and nobody would have a claim against
that as an assault on their constitutional rights,” said Scott Michelman, legal
director for ACLU-D.C.
Of course the authorities could have done so. As that famous
civil libertarian Richard M. Nixon remarked a few years after leaving office,
"Well, when the president does it … that means that it is not
illegal."
That spirit still prevails as
In response, Justice Department attorneys for current and
former U.S. officials and Park Police officers in their official and individual
capacities, called presidential security a “paramount” government interest.
Police acted lawfully to protect the president while he
moved a block from the White House through an unscreened crowd at a time of
civil unrest, Justice Department trial attorney David G. Cutler said....
U.S. District Judge Dabney L. Friedrich of Washington held
nearly three hours of joint oral arguments over several motions to dismiss four
overlapping lawsuits on behalf of more than 100 U.S., D.C. and Arlington County
defendants. She promised rulings “in the near future.”
In questioning, Friedrich appeared open to the government’s
request.
“How do I get over the clear national security concern over
the president’s safety?” the judge asked the plaintiffs at one point. Earlier
she asked, “It seems to me you have to clear the square before he [Trump] walks
to the church. Why is that not reasonable?”
Common sense would suggest a) clearing the park was unnecessary to protect the President; b) the
President's stroll was taken entirely as a photo-op and obviously served no
policy purpose but only a political one; c) even as a political event, the
President's act, including awkwardly holding and ostentatiously displaying a
Bible outside a church whose leaders were unaware of his plans, was
particularly egregious.
Lafayette Park was cleared not to prevent violence, but to
provoke violence. With abuses by Pasco County Sheriff's Department, other local
police agencies, and the federal Department of Justice, this country clearly
needs massive demonstrations protesting overreaction by police departments and
policies abusive of civil liberties. Maybe thousands, even millions of protestors
should pack the streets.
Oh, yea. That was done already.... truly a rousing success.
Alexander Sammons in The American Prospect explains that
progressive groups have been startlingly willing not to pressure President Joe
Biden on their priorities, and have been rewarded with very few wins. However
In rare moments and on fairly niche issues, progressive
groups have called out Biden publicly, and it’s worked. When news leaked that
the president had chosen to go back on a campaign promise and would not raise
the refugee limit from its Trump-era lows of 15,000 people per year, there was
broad outcry from progressive and humanitarian groups. Biden quickly reversed
course.
When "progressive groups have called out Biden
publicly.... it has worked." One of
those issues- the most important one- on which the left has failed to twist the President's arm is voting rights, which Biden was asked about in his recent
town hall meeting with CNN's Don Lemon. New York Times columnist Charles Blow
noted the President stated
“What I don’t want to do is get wrapped up, right now, in
the argument of whether or not this is all about the filibuster or — look, the
American public, you can’t stop them from voting. You tried last time. More
people voted last time than at any time in American history, in the middle of
the worst pandemic in American history. More people did.”
This is patently false. You absolutely can stop people from
voting. We have seen this over and over again throughout American history. And,
these laws won’t harm all Americans. They’ll harm minorities in America. They
are aimed at liberal cities where the populations are often heavily Black and
Latino.
Biden is basically saying here what Black America has heard
forever: No matter how high they make the hill, your only choice is to climb
it. I applaud your ascension. My God, aren’t your legs strong.
As Blow noted also, President Biden has been emphasizing
other elements of his agenda far more than voting rights, notwithstanding that "Black people gave all to save Joe Biden’s candidacy, but Joe
Biden refused to give all to protect their right to vote. Reciprocity is not
compulsory."
After three states- Iowa, New Hampshire, and Nevada- held
their primary or caucus, Biden was gasping for air, nearly dead in the water. But as was oft-repeated, we had not heard from African-Americans.
Then Jim Clyburn unqualifiedly endorsed the former vice president and with more blacks than
whites voting in the South Carolina primary, Biden creamed Bernie Sanders and was off
to the races.
"Black people gave all to save Joe Biden's
candidacy" is a short and sweet recap of Democratic primary season and the
winner cannot be so dense as not to realize it. Yet, there are ways to respond to the President going all out to get a bipartisan infrastructure
bill and giving little more than lip service to voter rights.
Most effective probably would be the Congressional Black
Caucus explaining that the John Lewis Voting Rights Act andHR 1 are
their highest- not high, but highest- legislative priorities. The CBC could
imply a little political blackmail, noting that the GOP is favored to win back
the House (also, the Senate) and that if it does, it will move to impeach the
President. And oh, by the way- if that happens, the first black vice president
will be waiting in the wings and black members of the House may be conflicted.
A little intimidation from immigration rights activists persuaded Joe Biden
earlier this year. Clarence Thomas knows how that works.
Implying they would not have the President's back
if Articles of Impeachment were introduced in the next Congress might seem like an idle threat. Alternatively, the
members of the Congressional Black Caucus merely can remind Biden "we made
you, we can break you." Of the
larger black community: they did, and they can.
Sarah Huckabee Sanders, press secretary to President Donald
Trump and now GOP candidate for governor of Arkansas, has written an op-ed
explaining why she decided to get vaccinated against Covid-19. Expert opinion
and the experience of millions of other Americans be damned, she took the
shot(s) on the advice of her doctor. And she argued
When the Trump administration initiated Operation Warp Speed
in May 2020, the president stated that a vaccine would become available by
December of that year at the very latest. From the moment he made his
announcement, the "expert" class tried to undermine those statements
with baseless fear-mongering.
The New York Times ran an opinion piece claiming that
whatever the Trump administration released would likely be a dangerous
political stunt. CNN did the same. But no one did more to undercut public
confidence in the vaccine than Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. Biden doubted that
the vaccine would be "real," while Harris said in a
nationally-televised debate that she would not take any vaccine the Trump
administration had a hand in creating.
Sanders has conveniently forgotten that in early October of
2020 Trump asserted
“no president’s ever
pushed” the Food and Drug Administration like he has as concerns mount that the
administration is pressuring the agency to quickly authorize a vaccine for the
coronavirus.
The FDA on Tuesday published new guidance for vaccine
manufacturers that said they need to provide at least two months of follow-up
safety data after vaccinating trial participants to apply for emergency use
authorization. That makes the authorization of a vaccine before the Nov. 3
presidential election highly unlikely.
“We’re going to have a great vaccine very, very shortly. I
think we should have it before the election, but frankly the politics gets
involved and that’s OK. They want to play their games,” Trump said in a video
posted on Twitter. “The FDA has acted as quickly as they’ve ever acted in
history. ... No president’s ever pushed them like I’ve pushed them either, to
be honest with you.”
Trump wanted to make the vaccine available before the election.
If he couldn't he could at least make voters believe that if they stuck with
him, it would be here very shortly.
In her piece, Huckabee Sanders twice referred to the
"Trump vaccine" and once to the "Trump vaccine plan."
That's three times more than the ever-modest Trump has referred to a
"Trump vaccine."
That's not by accident.
It has been widely reported that nationally the vast majority of
individuals who have chosen to avoid the vaccine are Trump supporters. Sanders
claims
If President Biden, Vice President Harris, and others on the
left truly care about increasing the vaccination rate and saving lives, they
should admit they were wrong to cast doubt on Operation Warp Speed and give
President Trump and his team the credit they are due for the development of a
safe and effective vaccine in record time.
But of course, that's ridiculous. It's widely speculated
that many people refusing the vaccine are doing so precisely because Democrats-
especially the incumbent President- are vigorously encouraging them to do otherwise. If Biden, Harris, and "others on the left" gave more credit to
Trump for Operation Warp Speed, they actually might sow doubt in the latter's supporters
that the former President is responsible for development of the vaccine.
There is no reason Biden, Harris et al. should bend over backwards to
give Donald Trump credit for something he himself doesn't want to take credit
for. Moreover, Trump's actions over the
past eighteen months and statements over the course of his adult life suggest the
most likely reason he doesn't want to be closely associated with the vaccine.
If he boasted in it, a lot of his supporters currently resistant probably would
change their mind and get the vaccine.
Additional people would be saved from contracting Covid-19
and its variant. Fewer people would be hospitalized and fewer would die. That
would undermine President Trump's objective of culling the herd. Can't let that
happen.
Leave it to a New York comedian to recognize, and encapsulate in forty words or fewer, American government:
USA was basically set up like an honor system farm stand. The kind where u leave a couple bucks in a jar and take some apples. Except Trump took the jar, all the apples and burned down the farm stand.
The only slight- very slight- inaccuracy is that Donald Trump tried to burn down the farm stand. It was only a split-second, righteous decision by an officer of the Capitol Police Department in shooting Ashli Babbitt that prevented an incursion by insurrectionists which probably would have resulted in the murder of a whole lot of people in the Capitol on January 6. It was an act so bold that the name of the officer hasn't been released, no doubt in part to spare him and his family many of the death threats that will come his way once his name is revealed.
President Trump tried to burn down the farm stand that day and but for one police officer may have done so. Of course, if Casler had said all that, the tweet would have been far less pithy and memorable and would have little impact. Instead, he captured perfectly (or nearly perfectly) not only what has transpired in the federal government the past four-and-a-half years but the fragility of our representative democracy.
It all can be brought down by one thoroughly evil and remarkably charismatic individual. Throw away conventional American history as traditionally taught. Throw away also the 1619 Project and critical race theory as a vehicle for teaching American history. Start with " the USA was- no, is- set up like an honor system farm stand in which you leave a couple of bucks in a jar and take some apples." That captures the essence of our political system. Take it from there and our country's past and future would be fairly, honestly, and comprehensively taught.
Something is rotten in Washington, D.C., something including, but extending beyond, the stench Donald J. Trump and his henchmen left behind.
In June, 2018 The New York Times' Jim Dwyer recalled "two weeks before the 2016 election, Mr. Comey disclosed that
the F.B.I. discovered a laptop that had not been examined in the original
investigation of Mrs. Clinton’s emails."
After most of the damage was done, FBI director Jim Comey
announced that those were among the emails already reviewed. Amid speculation
that Comey announced discovery of the emails because he feared that
anti-Clinton agents in the NY office would have leaked them otherwise. Dwyer
noted
On Oct. 25, 2016, three days before Mr. Comey’s stunning
announcement, Mr. Giuliani appeared on a Fox morning television show.
“We got a couple of surprises left,” Mr. Giuliani said.
He chortled, and when asked to expand on the subject,
replied, “And I think it’ll be enormously effective.”
On Thursday, Oct. 27, Mr. Giuliani appeared on another Fox
show and said he was talking about “pretty big surprises.” He added, “We’ve got
a couple of things up our sleeve that should turn this thing around.”
The news of the reactivated email inspection arrived the
following day and may have helped propel Mr. Trump closer to the presidency.
It probably was the determining factor in the election. Nate
Silver, then of FiveThirtyEight, would explain
Hillary Clinton would probably be president if FBI Director
James Comey had not sent a letter to Congress on Oct. 28. The letter, which
said the FBI had “learned of the existence of emails that appear to be
pertinent to the investigation” into the private email server that Clinton used
as secretary of state, upended the news cycle and soon halved Clinton’s lead in
the polls, imperiling her position in the Electoral College.
The letter isn’t the only reason that Clinton lost. It does
not excuse every decision the Clinton campaign made. Other factors may have
played a larger role in her defeat, and it’s up to Democrats to examine those
as they choose their strategy for 2018 and 2020.
But the effect of those factors — say, Clinton’s decision to
give paid speeches to investment banks, or her messaging on pocket-book issues,
or the role that her gender played in the campaign — is hard to measure. The
impact of Comey’s letter is comparatively easy to quantify, by contrast. At a
maximum, it might have shifted the race by 3 or 4 percentage points toward
Donald Trump, swinging Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Florida to him,
perhaps along with North Carolina and Arizona. At a minimum, its impact might
have been only a percentage point or so. Still, because Clinton lost Michigan,
Pennsylvania and Wisconsin by less than 1 point, the letter was probably enough
to change the outcome of the Electoral College.
The Senate Judiciary Committee has long been curious about the "investigation," first suggested by then-GOP
Senator Jeff Flake, into the allegations against President Trump's nominee for
the US Supreme Court, Brett Kavanaugh. The New York Times has found
In a letter dated June 30 to two Democratic senators,
Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island and Chris Coons of Delaware, an F.B.I.
assistant director, Jill C. Tyson, said that the most “relevant” of the 4,500
tips the agency received during an investigation into Mr. Kavanaugh’s past were
referred to White House lawyers in the Trump administration, whose handling of
them remains unclear.
The letter left uncertain whether the F.B.I. itself followed
up on the most compelling leads. The agency was conducting a background check
rather than a criminal investigation, meaning that “the authorities, policies,
and procedures used to investigate criminal matters did not apply,” the letter
said.
Ms. Tyson’s letter was a response to a 2019 letter from Mr.
Whitehouse and Mr. Coons to the F.B.I. director, Christopher A. Wray, posing
questions about how the F.B.I.’s review of Mr. Kavanaugh was handled.
So the Federal Bureau of (non-) Investigation received tips
in their (non-) investigation and instead of looking into them, turned them
over to the White House, which the FBI knew wanted to whitewash the case. Tyson's letter can only be generously labeled a response to the Whitehouse-Coons letter, given that the agency ignored it during the Trump Administration. The Justice Department and the White House no longer are under corrupt leadership.
Trump followers have for years bleated about the "deep
state." Maybe the Administration
was the party overwhelmingly responsible for the Kavanaugh sham. However, the
FBI certainly was a willing partner, running interference for a guy who
probably wouldn't have gotten to the White House without its help.
