Category Archives: muttering to myself

You Like the Idea of The Fourth Reich?

I wake up almost every morning, the grandchild of two people who had their entire families massacred one August night in 1943, to the banging of drums and the caterwauling of drunken Ukrainians (all relatives of my other two grandparents disappeared, with no trace at all, into the fog of Nazi genocide), slightly sick to my stomach at the latest news of how heartily homegrown fascism is growing in our promising democracy. The antidemocratic insurrection that came to an ugly head the day a Jew and a Black tipped the balance of a closely fought Senate is still openly in progress as feckless liberals ring their hands and vow to get to “the truth”.

It is a supremely sickening subject, one detail more vomit inducing than the next, so we must not speak about it, it is too upsetting, plus we are utterly helpless to do anything about it but watch in horror, let’s talk about anything but what is taking place right in front of us! So I sit to write every day, and try to clear my head a little bit, lessen the sick feeling in my gut. Some days it works better than others.

We live in a country that, as a culture, does not believe in history. Six months back might as well be fifty years ago, two hundred years. Since nothing happened to really refute the lies Trump told about the effect his explosive lies had on the followers he incited to storm the Capitol to stop certification of the election he lost, well, who’s to judge him? Nobody has ever held him accountable for anything, why start now? In additional, there are important institutional questions to be debated before we act hastily, about the administration of justice, the Supreme Court, prosecuting the organizers and inciters of the MAGA riot.

Who among us has not wanted to have people who hated us shot to death by riot police, the military? What his fans love about him is that he does exactly what they would do if they were in charge. Even when he lies, he’s telling a larger truth anyone who is really angry can instantly identify with. Enemies? Fucking kill them, what’s the problem? They’d do the same to you, if they could.

In every new book about the previous regime, led by a giant two-year old in a perpetual temper tantrum, we learn more details about how destructive a giant angry “populist” baby can be when in charge of a country with violently emotional divisions.

Russia, we learned the other day, again, made a calculation in 2016 based on the usefulness of a vain, insecure, easily flattered and manipulated American president of strong opinions and limited intellect, an “impulsive, mentally unstable and unbalanced individual who suffers from an inferiority complex” according to a leak of Russian documents reported by The Guardian[1].

This claim by a super-liberal British fake news rag is pure propaganda to tens of millions of Americans who may not agree with everything their leader does, but who know that he has their best interests at heart, even as he weaponizes vaccination (he himself quietly took the vaccine, and softly admitted on FOX that everyone should get it), exacts revenge on everyone on his long, ever-expanding enemies list, humiliating even those most loyal to him once he feels they failed him, and continues to fan the flames of the audacious, violence-stoking lie that, but for the grace of God and some Capitol police who fought against overwhelming odds, would have cost his supremely loyal Vice President his life (along with others). He plays to rage, his particular “genius” is inspiring greater and greater bonfires of rage in his followers. He will say literally anything to keep them mad as hell, fired up, ready to take names and kick disloyal, unAmerican commie ass.

At least 40% of America is in denial about their destructive champion, no matter how much evidence of his destructiveness is revealed by people close to him who remained fatally silent when it mattered most to reveal these alarming details (“just shoot the protesters” “I need a favor, though” “support my self-serving lie or I’ll end your fucking career”). This man, aided by the able, and morally supple Bagpiper Bill Barr, sent a death squad to execute an unresisting American citizen they believe had murdered a Trump supporter in a street brawl in Portland.

Forget the Three Percenters (their name is based on the myth that only 3% of British colonists in the New World actively supported the American Revolution, and that was enough to start it), 40% of the electorate, angry and motivated, in a country whose electoral system was designed to protect the minority power of slaveholders, can decide the destiny of our experiment in democracy.

This group is glad to believe that it’s irrationally angry Blacks who are the racists, not White Christians. The teaching of history, they believe, must not be political, it must be patriotic. They are happy to renounce the vaccine that their leader once touted among his greatest accomplishments, the result of his brilliant and history making Operation Warp Speed. They are willing to die en masse for the freedom to ignore the best advice of infectious disease scientists. They belong to a death cult they fervently believe is a cult of freedom.

My friends, in a way, are right. There is very little any of us, as individuals, can do to change any of this supremely depressing stuff. If one million people a day read this blahg, where I attempt to make sound arguments based on actual facts, it would make little difference, would change almost no minds that didn’t already agree with my point of view. The price for my success would probably be dozens, if not hundreds, of trolls telling me every day that I need to take a fictional red pill to really understand the seriousness of the Satanist cannibal pedophile ring that runs the world (speaking in a heavy Yiddish accent, of course).

On the other hand, things looked hopeless for flipping the Senate as the Georgia run-off approached. It seemed unbelievable that after all of the clear fuck-ups of the giant peevish baby’s disastrous (except to the rich and religiously extreme) administration so many of his most ardent supporters easily won reelection. Why the Democrats didn’t take a dozen seats, including Lindsey Graham’s, McConnell’s, was a perplexing mystery to people like me.

As the Georgia run-off approached, Sekhnet and I attended Zoom meetings and did everything possible to get Georgia Democrats to the polls. On January 6th a Jewish journalist and a Black reverend made history, becoming the first of their kinds to be voted in as Georgia senators. That victory was quickly swallowed up in an outburst of organized rage that the Party of Patriots is defending, counter-factually, as a lawful protest, based on a patriotic reaction to an infuriating allegation advertised to the tune of $50,000,000 plus dozens of influential, free, presidential tweets and speeches in the weeks leading up to the deadly siege. Democrat (sic) determination to investigate the MAGA riot is just another example of a child-blood drinking radical leftist witch-hunt against a man whose only crime is trying to make America great again, and rid us of the rule of murderous pedophiles.

No facts can really enter this existential debate. Facts are malleable, subject to definitive refutation by allegations of alternative facts, as we’ve learned. Here is a nice quote from a powerful, ambitious Republican who never tired of the taste of his leader’s crusty nether sphincter:

Here are a few other quotes that jumped out at me, wound up flapping around in my stomach acid:

General Mark Milley, who’d accompanied Trump on his triumphant walk through used tear gas canisters to awkwardly and defiantly hold up a Bible for a photo op of a Strong president who showed cowardly governors how to dominate the protesters, distanced himself from the stunt, regretting his involvement. A few months after that he, a student of history, referred to these very fine Nazis by name. He at the time had

See also the Lyin’ Ted quotes above. The Leader has the right to say anything, no matter how much it might rile up some very fine Nazis, even who he would or would not Do a coup with.

The most loyal asslicker in US presidential history, Mike “No Homo” Pence, was unable to convince his master that he lacked the power to stop the certification of votes on January 6. He lacked the courage or the character to speak to him frankly, suggesting that perhaps the lawyers could have the final word, but not Rudy or Sidney Powell, nor Flynn or the My Pillow Guy. Never mind. He proved himself an unworthy coward, and such a person, in the eyes of a lynch mob, is richly deserving of kicking at the end of a rope.

Not a problem. The guy was a coward, you kick his ass to the curb, like that guy who married a dog (the only woman who would have him) and whose father was involved in the Kennedy assassination. We’ll leave colossal piece of shit Bill Barr with the last supremely aggravating word:

That, and the fact that he ran against the second most hated politician in America in 2016 (fuck Barr and his fucking last word).

[1]

The second big story came this morning in the form of an article from The Guardian, which purported to reveal leaked documents from the Kremlin in which Putin and Russian leaders agreed in January 2016 to make Trump president to sow discord in the United States in order to get U.S. sanctions against Russia for its invasion of Crimea overturned. The documents described Trump as an “impulsive, mentally unstable and unbalanced individual who suffers from an inferiority complex.”

There are many reasons to be skeptical of this “leak,” but, in the end, whether true or not, it doesn’t tell us much that we don’t already know. There is ample evidence, articulated most clearly in the Senate Intelligence Report on Russian interference in the 2016 election, that Russia worked hard to get Trump elected in 2016.

source

Nazi talking point: there is no systemic racism in American law

A favorite technique of abusers, and their admirers, is to blame the victim. This happens literally all the time. Nobody wants to feel they’re doing something for a shitty reason, we need to feel justified in our actions. So if I beat you to a pulp I have to believe, and convince everybody else, that you richly deserved your beating. My story will include a host of provocations that would have tried the equanimity of Buddha. Sure, you got hit, but look what you did to me over and over leading up to it.

We hear this in defense of deadly police shootings and chokings — “the video doesn’t show what happened right before the officer justifiably reacted with deadly force!” Part of this syndrome is claiming the other party has no right to feel upset or angry about how things are — that they are, in fact, ungrateful fucks who deserve whatever punishment they provoke.

It is easiest to make the argument that there is no systemic racism in America (and therefor it is the fault of angry Blacks when they are met with deadly force) by attacking a theory that lays out how racism is not only an individual belief system, but has long been embedded in American law and law enforcement. A theory making the case that racism in American institutions is not an aberration, it’s the norm.

If you look at disparate results by race (street stops, arrests, police killings of unarmed civilians, long prison sentences, death sentences) you will not win many arguments on this score, based on data, based on the facts.

So it is much better, before the largely uninformed (or deliberately misinformed) jury of public opinion, to attack a law school theory that says our institutions are, to a largely unacknowledged extent, marred by racist assumptions and practices (see, e.g., bloviating Bagpiper Bill Barr‘s asinine ‘argument’ to refute this self-evident truth — a “small handful” of unarmed Blacks are killed by police every year, what’s the big deal?).

The theory’s name plays into the talking point that this theory critiquing racism in American law is itself racist. Critical (mean, carping, negative, often unfair, nobody likes a critic) Race (mentioning race is itself an indication of racism, we’re colorblind!) Theory (an argument supported by facts, a very unfair way to make a point!).

Here is a capsule description of the controversial graduate school theory:

As Nazi piece of shit, pardoned immaterial perjurer Mike “Lock Her UP!” Flynn, caller for martial law to overturn the presidential election, follower of the rabid QAnon conspiracy “theory”, urges his people “where we go one, we go all” — take over all local school boards and stop this BLM/antifa/Commie bullshit in its goddamn tracks before it poisons more of our white Christian youth !!!! The problem is the goddamned colored people who hate us for no reason! They are the racists, not us! That’s why they must not be allowed to vote, and if they do vote, why their votes should not be counted! USA! USA!!!

Makes me wanna holler, it really does.

Why do they keep attacking the guy?

Unscrupulous prosecutors are now going after the small family business of the former president, the Orange Polyp, for allegedly cutting corners (and keeping two sets of books) the way any hugely successful business does to pay less tax. The man is out of office, out of power, all he does now is appear at rallies to continue insisting that the 2020 election was stolen from him and that he will ruin anyone in his party who says otherwise.

He is still immensely popular among his solid 39% base, he works closely with the RNC (who supported him in him in his literally hundreds of fruitless anti-voting suits) and his party leaders and foot soldiers obey him unconditionally, but otherwise, it’s not like he’s an active threat to democracy, unless the laws passed in many states based on his transparent but galvanizing lie about rigged elections work as designed and his candidates win majorities in both houses in 2022. Of course, that scenario is about as likely to happen as thousands descending on, and hundreds overrunning, the US Capitol building in the belief that they’ve been deputized to stop an injustice in progress by their lawful president.

Look, to be honest, the only thing they actually have on him are that his “university” was a fraud, though he didn’t have to admit it when he shut it down and paid only $25,000,000 to settle the case. They also have the fraudulent charity he ran, a charitable foundation that gave almost no money to charitable causes and was shut down after negotiations with vengeful NY State authorities.

Paying off a porn star for silence about having sex with her right after your wife gives birth? Nothing, at worst a technical violation of some kind of campaign finance law nobody ever heard of. Hundreds of pious Christian pastors defend him for that bit of prudent adultery, not nearly as bad as what God’s other flawed vessel, Kind David, did when he sent Bathsheba’s husband off to die in battle so he could possess the woman he coveted. And the union between King David and Queen Bathsheba gave us King Solomon, so, God indeed works in mysterious ways!

The rest of the accusations agains the Orange Polyp are all just allegations: his perfect call to Ukrainian president Zelensky asking for a political favor, arguably a tiny bit imperfect, his call to Georgia Secretary of State Raffensberger to get him to “find” 11,780 votes, that might have crossed a line, even violated a local Georgia law that makes it a crime to try to influence an election outcome. The fact is, they have nothing really concrete and airtight on the guy. Sure he’s on tape doing everything possible to get Raffensberger to change electoral results that have already been recounted and certified, but why wouldn’t he do that?

Sure, some “evidence”-based court may find differently at some point, after other indictments begin rolling out (hello, Fania Willis in Fulton County, GA!) but at least 74,000,000 of our fellow Americans believe that these cases will all be witch hunts, like the toothless witch hunt Mueller headed (he found nothing, less than 140 points of collusion with Russia, no collusion!), and the second so-called impeachment over simply making a speech that supposedly set off an “insurrection”, because when you’re a big star they let you get away with all these nickel and dime “offenses” they are trying to throw at the former celebrity pussy-grabber.

The rule of law is crucial to the administration of justice. Which is why these partisans have no business trying to come up with supposedly legal ways to get this guy. His trial, if any, should only be in the court of public opinion. If the public repudiates him, his ratings will go down and he will have less influence, that’s the way Free Market democracy is supposed to work, after all.

It’s not like he actually did shoot somebody in the face on Fifth Avenue (which, by the way, the law would have allowed him to do, without consequences, had Pence done his fucking job and made him president for life). People are always so brutally unfair to the true prophets of their age! They crucified Jesus, just for speaking God’s truth, and they’re trying to crucify this guy, just because he may have lied a few thousand times. Sheesh.

What don’t you understand about our boiling climate crisis?

Robert Reich nailed it very succinctly the other day:

Understandably, those who extract billions in profit from the earth in a way that is destroying it do not want any radical change to some commie regenerative, “sustainable” forms of energy production. Fortunately for them, they are served by very able lobbyists and lobbyist/legislators (and a 6-3 corporatist Supreme Court) who will make sure this dreaded Marxist plan for “sustainable energy” is thwarted at every turn.

“We have the fossil fuels you all love, the infrastructure all in place to search for more, suck it out of the earth, pipe, refine and distribute it — the occasional heat-wave or five hundred year storm be damned — and we’re going to extract every last drop from under the earth and the seas, and the remaining polar ice caps, and you’re going to love it. Fossil fuel is what makes this country the greatest on earth. USA! USA!!! Live free or die!”

And, truly, what argument do any of us have against that?

Barr, we didn’t forget

As corrupt, partisan, untruthful culture warrior William Pelham Barr embarks on his rehabilitation tour, I heard a great capsule summary of Barr’s career as Trump’s penultimate Attorney General. It was delivered by this guy:

“This is the Attorney General who interfered with the deployment of the Mueller Report, he interfered with the whistleblower in the Ukraine case, he interfered in the Mike Flynn prosecutorial decisions, in the decisions around Roger Stone, he interfered with the events of Lafayette Square, he interfered with the firing of the SDNY top prosecutor. All of those things Bill Barr was happy to do. Bill Barr was also happy to go tell Wolf Blitzer that there were reasons to question the integrity of the mail ballot. He was happy to cross all those lines, so the suggestion that he wasn’t willing to cross one final line to kneecap and topple our democracy by undermining the election, look, give the guy credit for that, but I mean… it’s not much credit in terms of his career at the Department of Justice”

source

The quote is from the video below, which is worth checking out. Former federal prosecutor Glenn Kirschner points out that from the moment Barr, head of the DOJ, told Trump that his department had fully investigated and Trump’s claim of voter fraud was “bullshit”, Trump had clear knowledge that he was lying about the election. This would establish the criminal intent, mens rea, behind his actions when he continued to falsely insist (as he does to this day) that there was massive bipartisan election fraud (Republicans like the disloyal, runt governor of Georgia and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger were in on it!!!) that stole his landslide victory from him and when he organized and provoked a crowd to storm the Capitol to stop a joint session of Congress from certifying his loss.

How does Trump reward over-the-top loyalty? By calling for his devoted poodle, Mike Pence, who finally refused to break the law in an ill-planned attempt to usher in a Trump dictatorship, to be hanged by the traitorous neck until dead. Trump had done no less to the loyal Jeff Sessions, he mocked him and gloated after supporting Tommy Tuberville’s successful ouster of Sessions in the Republican primary. What kind of schmuck listens to frigging “ethics” advice in business or government?

Sheesh.

Worst Case Scenarist

If you are a pessimist, given to worry, and you have any kind of imagination, you have the tools to be a certain kind of novelist. As the disheartening plot turns, everything that can go wrong does go wrong, everything that could easily have been avoided is painfully collided with, every accident is for the worst, complications are always infinite. In the worst case scenario, luck turns inexorably against the doomed protagonist until the reader can read no more, or the reader simply dies, as we all eventually do.

And so it was with your recent medical diagnosis, shocking, suddenly skyrocketing numbers that often indicate cancer. Your own fault! Why was it a year and a half, maybe even two years, all crucial months in catching tumors early, since your last blood test?

Sure there had been a pandemic, but you attempted to get your annual physical on time only to learn, by a form letter from a corporation, that your doctor was no longer participating in your medical insurance plan. Not a problem losing your long time PC, you just pick a new doctor from a list, have an annual check-up, get a blood test, pandemic or no pandemic. Meantime, there were distractions, the pandemic was raging again and a crazed idiot was fomenting an armed insurrection that failed, in its first attempt, to impose a dictatorship in the country you live in.

Later, as people in your city get vaccinated in high numbers and society begins returning to normal, seeking medical records from your former doctor’s office, you learn your longtime doctor is back on the insurance plan, his earliest appointment a few weeks away. You get the blood test.

But, ominously in hindsight, it is now seven crucial months after you originally tried to get your annual physical.

Is the number really so terrifying? It is PSA, prostate specific antigen, a number that roughly correlates with a healthy prostate (yours has been bleeding on and off for months, the urologist told you not to worry about it, just flush the system — and piss out the soft blood clots — by drinking more water). If your PSA is under 4 it is generally considered normal and nothing to worry about. PSA level is roughly correlated with prostate cancer, what they look for is a sudden increase, which sometimes is an early (or late) indication of cancer. The rise in your PSA is what the doctors watch out for, a steady four that is suddenly a five can sometimes indicate the presence of cancer. Your PSA almost tripled in the last year and a half, a long stretch for a tumor to grow undisturbed, the 300% upward leap gets your attention.

Your doctor says “go see your urologist” because it is not his call to tell you “this is something to be very worried about, get to a specialist as fast as you can”. He may feel that way, but he’d rather have a specialist who knows how to treat it break the bad news.

The only problem with seeing the urologist right away is that you will have to provide current insurance information to make an appointment. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act ends, with two weeks’ notice, at the end of the month you turn 65. Should have expected that, shouldn’t you have? Your window to enroll in Medicare suddenly shrinks from three months after your 65th birthday to two weeks after. If you’re about to turn 65 you find yourself, suddenly, with days to navigate a complex and unwieldy bureaucracy to avoid a gap in health insurance.

Naturally, the best way to apply for Medicare is online. It turns out to be quite simple to do. You log into your Social Security account (ssa.gov, medicare.gov cannot help you apply) and within ten minutes your application is done and begins to be processed. The only problem you will encounter is if you have not been on ssa.gov since you last logged in five years ago when you created the account. Personal ID? No idea. assword-pay? Not the foggiest.

Eventually a receptionist at Social Security, after you answer a few questions, tells you your Personal ID, which turns out to be the full name of your girlfriend’s beloved cat — of course. Now they can email you a PIN to reset your password, which they do. Now just answer three simple questions and you’re in. Street you grew up on, favorite teacher, make of first car. Easy.

Except that the computer needs an EXACT match to verify your identity. Did you write Miss Richert, Mary Richert, Miss Mary Richert, Richert? Did you include make and model of the car or just the model? Did you write your street number with or without the “th” at the end of the number? You will never know. At least one of your guesses was wrong and you were locked out after the third try, unable to log in that day back in May, when you could have had Medicare in place before the Patient Protection Act stopped protecting you.

No worries, the kind receptionist tells you, they will send you a new PIN, by US Mail, within ten business days. They do, it arrives the second week in June. Only a few weeks after your previous thwarted attempt you are able to log in. Ten minutes later your application is submitted and being processed. Ten days later it is 2/3 complete, pending final assessments of some kind. There are millions of people applying, there is nothing that can be done to expedite any individual application. The pandemic means that anything that once worked a certain way no longer does, because, the pandemic.

There is also the matter of your kidneys, since you had a sometimes fatal (not in your case) kidney disease, you need to track certain things. Your last appointment with the nephrologist showed no sign of the disease, you breathed a sigh of relief and the doctor bid you goodbye. But you should still continue to track certain things.

One of those things is Vitamin D level, since excessively high Vitamin D levels can damage the kidneys, apparently. Sunshine and dairy products provide most people with enough Vitamin D, but if you’ve had five cancer cells removed from your nose, and avoid dairy, you may also avoid walking in the sunshine. Doctor gives you a prescription Vitamin D supplement, a mega-dose, once a week. The nephrologist, who had been tracking your Vitamin D, noted that it was a bit high when he tested it two or three years ago (the private, third-party lab, for whatever reason, didn’t follow his order and test it in the most recent, pandemic blood test…). He advised you to take it only twice a month. Latest blood test shows your Vitamin D level is excessively high, which is bad for the kidneys and other tissues and most commonly causes hypercalcemia [1] — none of which you are aware of.

Doctor tells you your recent blood work shows your blood calcium level is also high (hypercalcemia, which you learn about the next day). When you ask what could cause that he tells you it may sometimes indicate a benign pituitary tumor.

Five minutes on the internet tells you the six most common side effects of excessive levels of Vitamin D — elevated blood calcium levels checks in at the top of the list. Look, nobody is blaming you for not knowing any of this shit, it just is what it is.

Why was your Vitamin D level not tested during your last physical in November 2019, by the private third-party lab (ignoring the nephrologist’s request, which was always done at the hospital lab) in 2020? Anybody’s guess. The pandemic, it was probably at least partly because of the pandemic.

Best case scenario, Medicare is in place in time to make the appointments you need to make and you learn, to your great relief, that you have neither cancer nor the return of that sometimes deadly idiopathic (“cause unknown” from Greek ἴδιος idios “one’s own” and πάθος pathos “suffering”) kidney disease you underwent chemo for a few years back.

Of course, doctors go on vacation this time of year. Plus, the pandemic. Could be a few months before you can see the busy urologist, the busy nephrologist, a competent dermatologist, etc. Nobody’s fault that you didn’t get everything in order months ago, pandemic or no, just in case the worst case scenario was the one that was going to unfold, especially during a pandemic, which messed so many things up, was itself a worst case scenario.

And, seriously, why wouldn’t the worst case scenario be the one that is already unfolding? Hope is good, unless it’s dumb hope. Look at the signs and you will understand that you are most likely fucked. It’s been a good ride, bumpy but good. No complaints, no regrets. Try not to think of your prostate every time you urinate, ignore that slight stinging, it can be anything. Do NOT google warning signs of prostate cancer. Check your Medicare progress bar every other day, maybe it will move from 2/3 done to complete. Try to get some rest and forget those nightmares, things are never as bad as in your worst fears, until they are — which might not happen, except, of course, in the worst case scenario.

[1]

source

My man, Don McGahn

Don McGahn, Trump’s first White House lawyer, is a dedicated conservative who was largely responsible for the selection and lifetime appointments of Messrs Gorsuch and Kavanaugh. After Trump fired FBI director Comey, for refusing to commit to personal loyalty to the president and for not dropping the “Flynn Thing” (Mike Flynn’s illegal contacts with Russia that he lied about), the DOJ appointed a Special Counsel to investigate numerous connections between the Trump campaign and Russia and Trump’s suspicious loyalty to Vladimir Putin, a foreign leader who had openly (and secretly) helped Trump win the “close” election of 2016.

During his famous Oval Office reaction to the news of Robert Mueller’s appointment as Special Counsel, Trump said “this is the end of my presidency, I’m fucked!” according to sworn witnesses. You can look it up. Trump was outraged at this intrusion on to his unlimited executive powers. Partisan witch hunt was a common cry, conducted by “sick and dangerous individuals” who he would punish when the time was right. After a moment of self-pity Trump exploded at his team for letting this witch hunt start in the first place, and his vendetta against the loyal, but not loyal enough, Jeff Sessions began in earnest.

Members of Trump’s inner circle lied to Mueller’s investigators, in exchange for the promise of a pardon from the big guy, which they got. Mueller found 140 instances of coordination, working together, direct communication, collusion, between members of Trump’s campaign and the Russian government, a foreign actor who worked tirelessly to swing the election to Trump. Mueller found there was no doubt of the ongoing collusion, which is not a legal term, but that there was “insufficient evidence” of a criminal conspiracy. Mueller also noted evidence had been withheld and numerous witnesses had lied to him. Hence Barr’s finding of “no collusion” and the announcement that Mueller had “exonerated” Trump of all wrong-doing.

When Mueller started digging he encountered so much lying from Trump’s people, the president’s refusal to answer even written questions his lawyers had agreed to have him answer, defiance of every subpoena and numerous other maneuvers to avoid production of evidence that he began to investigate Trump’s apparent obstruction of justice. One of the ten instances Mueller gave to illustrate what appeared to have been a consistent pattern of obstruction (a substantial pattern that did not allow Mueller to exonerate Trump, even if he also couldn’t directly accuse him of — per DOJ memo about accusing a sitting president of a crime — Mueller took that extra step– if he can’t be prosecuted, it’s unfair to accuse him) involved White House counsel Don McGahn.

At one point Trump asked McGahn to fire Mueller. McGahn advised the president that firing the Special Counsel investigating obstruction of justice would look bad, could bite him hard. As McGahn told Mueller’s investigators, he’d refused to fire Mueller, consulted his own lawyer, packed up his office and wrote a letter of resignation to Trump. Trump didn’t accept McGahn’s resignation, instead asking him to write a memo stating that they had never discussed firing Mueller. McGahn revealed all this, under oath, to Mueller’s investigators.

When Congress sent McGahn a subpoena to appear before a committee looking into impeaching Trump, McGahn filed a federal suit seeking a ruling on whether Congress had the right to subpoena him, whether such a subpoena would violate attorney-client privilege and any other defense to giving testimony that he could think of. The suit dragged on for a couple of years, long past both Trump impeachments. The predictable delay prevented McGahn from giving public testimony that could have seriously hurt his demanding, sometimes lawless, former client. While nothing McGahn did was illegal, it certainly fits into Trump’s pattern of doing everything possible to obstruct any investigation into anything he has ever done.

Recently McGahn agreed to testify in Congress, behind closed doors, with his own lawyer, and Trump’s lawyer, in the room. According to the deal he struck with those who had subpoenaed him years earlier he would not answer anything outside of the scope of what he had revealed to Mueller under oath. I started reading the transcript of his testimony, which was released in its 240 page entirety the other day. I made it to page 8 where I read:

In a nation of angry, divided, freaked out citizens, this McGahn shit is a dead letter, ancient history, irrelevant, Trump already got away with obstruction of justice, and nobody is going to do anything about his incitement to riot, we’ve seen it a hundred times over now — he publicly did many things far worse than asking his lawyer to lie for him and make a written record of the lie.

Moderate Merrick Garland’s DOJ is so far following up on all of Barr’s objections to investigations into Trump’s monkeyshines. No public disclosure of Barr’s lying, falsely classified memo, we appeal the judge’s ruling, no prosecution of Trump and Barr for using teargas, horses and batons against a peaceful protest for Trump’s photo op, we move to dismiss the lawsuit, no penalty for a president defaming a private citizen “during the scope of his duties,” we appeal the denial of our right to substitute ourselves for the former president in this lawsuit according to federal law.

I may be the only person, certain the only poor bastard I know, who is wondering “what the fuck?!” as I read the words from the McGahn transcript “although this interview is not under oath” you’re still not allowed to lie, you know.

My only hope, I think, is that my head will explode before too much longer. We live in Berlin 1932 and we are watching the principled, decent, reasonable, elected Weimar government let the angry right call all the shots, many of them based on outright, easily demonstrable lies. Alternative facts, driving new laws that could help Trump loyalists overturn the next election, if Americans turn out in large numbers to vote the wrong way again, next time. What could fucking go wrong?

You can say “seig heil!” can’t you you? I know you can.

Right Wing Billionaire At Work

A guy like Rupert Murdoch doesn’t even have to try. You just put it out there under the banner of the newspaper you own, the one with the fourth largest circulation of any US newspaper (as of 2019, anyway) et, voila, millions influenced! Tulsa “massacre” a hundred years ago? BULLSHIT. Biden’s a liar like the rest of them, trying to divide us with hate.

This one you have to see to believe, the clip is less than two minutes long. It is not remarkable because the claims of the Post are incendiary, or because of clever editing of the president’s remarks or the heavy laying on of editorial spin. It is amazing because they don’t even bother, the title does all the work — read the headline and you’ve digested the story. Case closed, fucking Biden’s a divisive liar.

What is divisive, according to Murdoch, is presumably the president’s assertion that politicians in most states are trying to restrict the right to vote. He’s presumably lying when he falsely claims that voting is an essential right of democracy. Maybe Biden was lying when he called the orgy of racially motivated mass-murder in Tulsa a “massacre”, rather than the more popular, race-neutral “riot” usually applied to uprisings (real or imagined) of Black people.

Biden’s divisive and false Tulsa speech

I know it gets tedious, me constantly trying to bring facts and reason into a conversation where hot-blooded patriots are ready to kill as many fellow citizens as it takes to avoid their worst nightmares, where a single lie does the work of all of your so-called libraries, all your maddening so-called facts. A violent mob doesn’t need the truth, they need the fuse lit.

In Tulsa, one hundred years ago, a false accusation against 19 year-old Black man Dick Rowland lit the fuse. Rowland’s crime? He’d gone to use the only colored bathroom in segregated downtown Tulsa, and in the elevator, he supposedly made a seventeen year-old white girl, Sarah Page, who was operating the elevator, shriek.

What happened next remains murky, according to historians and reports about one of the worst episodes of racial violence in U.S. history. Rowland may have accidentally stepped on Page’s foot, prompting her to shriek. Or tripped and bumped into her.

When the elevator doors reopened, Dick Rowland ran, and a clerk in Renberg’s called police.

Rowland was arrested and accused of assaulting a White girl. Though the charges were eventually dropped and Page later wrote a letter exonerating him, the accusation was enough to infuriate White Tulsa.

Three hours after the Tulsa Tribune hit the street with the headline “Nab Negro for Attacking Girl in Elevator,” hundreds of White men gathered at the Tulsa courthouse, where Rowland was being held.

Black World War I veterans who wanted to protect Rowland from being lynched rushed to the courthouse to defend him. A shot was fired and “all hell broke loose,” a massacre survivor recalled later.

“As the whites moved north, they set fire to practically every building in the African American community, including a dozen churches, five hotels, 31 restaurants, four drug stores, eight doctor’s offices, more than two dozen grocery stores, and the Black public library,” according to a 2001 report by the Oklahoma Commission to Study the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921. “By the time the violence ended, the city had been placed under martial law, thousands of Tulsans were being held under armed guard, and the state’s second-largest African American community had been burned to the ground.”

source

All hell broke loose, indeed.

The white lynch mob went on an eighteen-hour rampage, a pogrom, during which, with the assistance of law enforcement, they murdered a few hundred blacks while burning down a 35 block black neighborhood in Tulsa. The mob employed airplanes to drop incendiary devices on buildings and American citizens. Whites were deputized to join the free-for-all arrest and murder of hundreds of Black citizens, people not even accused of any crime, outside of being “n-words” with no rights a white mob was bound to respect. Virtually every home in Greenwood was destroyed, along with dozens of prosperous black-owned businesses. Thousands were left homeless, the area, reduced to smoldering rubble, looked like a city ravaged by American fire bombs in World War Two. The thousands of Tulsans detained under armed guard after the massacre were all, coincidentally, Black. The brutality of the attack is sickening to read about. The exact number of dead is impossible to reckon, bodies were dumped in the river, the sites of mass graves are still being searched for, a hundred years later. No member of the murderous mob was ever arrested, tried or convicted of anything [1].

Black men in Tulsa are marched under armed guard during the race massacre on June 1, 1921. (Department of Special Collections/McFarlin Library/University of Tulsa/AP)

Dick Rowland, the intended victim of the original lynch mob, was not among the murdered Blacks.

While smoke still rose from the ashes of Greenwood, Tulsa’s sheriff, Willard McCullough, and his deputy, Barney Cleaver, one of the first Black lawmen in Oklahoma, hustled Dick Rowland out of town.

source

Though witnesses and memory can be unreliable, particularly years after the fact, we have this:

Ellouise Cochrane-Price, the daughter of massacre survivor Clarence Rowland and a cousin of Dick Rowland, claims Dick and Sarah not only knew each other before he stepped on the elevator but were in love and were planning to defy Oklahoma’s ban on interracial marriage.

“They were planning on getting married,” she told an audience at the Oklahoma Black Caucus gala last month. “They had spent many Sundays over my grandma’s house, at family dinners.”

When the White mob gathered outside the Tulsa courthouse, she said, “the mayor, the sheriff and the marshal were aware that Dick had not attacked Sarah. There had been no attempted rape of any kind. However, that information was not given up or not received by the mob that was gathered to hang Dick Rowland.”

In September 1921, the charges against Dick Rowland were dropped, according to records.

Charles Franklin Barrett, the Oklahoma National Guard adjutant general whose troops were called into Tulsa during the rampage, concluded the massacre was caused by “an impudent Negro, a hysterical girl and a yellow journal.”

source

Now as Rupert Murdoch and his fellow yellow journalists and right-wing entertainers claim — we have that deranged, violent demagogue Biden, digging up this ancient filth, dividing and lying to this great nation, and smearing our good name with feces and calling our finest white citizens the descendants of murderous racists. How are we supposed to heal when insane, doddering, “woke”, “politically correct” old men like that are divisively and lyingly picking at long closed scabs? The past is called the past because it’s in the fucking past. Jesus… what don’t you pathetic history-citing eggheads not understand about how the world actually works?

[1]

Outside of the corrupt Tulsa chief of police, who lost his job for “negligence” in not stopping the massacre, often called the “riot”:

[John A.] Gustafson was found to have a long history of fraud pre-dating his membership of the Tulsa Police Department. His previous partner in his detective agency, Phil Kirk, had been convicted of blackmail.[123] Gustafson’s fake detective agency ran up high billings on the police account. Investigators noted that many blackmail letters had been sent to members of the community from the agency. One particularly disturbing case involved the frequent rape, by her father, of an 11-year-old girl who had since become pregnant. Instead of prosecuting, they sent a “Blackhand letter.”[124] On July 30, 1921, out of five counts of an indictment, Gustafson was found guilty of two counts: negligence for failing to stop the riot (which resulted in dismissal from police force), and conspiracy for freeing automobile thieves and collecting rewards (which resulted in a jail sentence).[125]

source

No skin off my nose, pal

As the narrator of this tale, or the plaintiff in a related medical malpractice nuisance suit, I have the great advantage that you won’t need to squint or strain to see the fingernail sized permanent divot on the bridge of my nose. You can see what I’m peeved about at a glance, even in low light.

This lifetime scar gives me instant credibility as the teller of this particular story, and a bit of pathos too. Juries like pathos, if they shudder to imagine having been subjected to the same thing the plaintiff was forced to undergo.

It’s always a mistake, of course, to believe that a gratuitous scar on one’s face, inflicted by a doctor who has not performed the medical procedure he prescribed, the one authorized by insurance, is a legally cognizable injury.

Let the lawyers fight it out, I say.

“Is this scar going to fill in?” I asked the confident doctor three weeks after the surgery, a single gouge deep into the bridge of my nose, to remove a basal cell invisible to the naked eye, a large round wound which was then cauterized instead of stitched.

“No, that’s about as good as it’s going to look,” he said, with admirable candor.

My next question was based on the four or five previous Mohs surgeries I’d had to remove much more visible, deeper, more advanced basal cells (the most benign form of skin cancer). Each of these surgeries had taken several hours, as opposed to the 30 minute procedure his surgeon had done on my nose.

“I was supposed to have Mohs surgery, which removes one thin layer at a time to preserve as much healthy tissue as possible and minimize scarring. Your surgeon basically took a small, sharp ice cream scoop and scooped out all the surrounding tissue in one pass, down to the cartilage,” I said.

“Yes,” said the doctor. In that moment I didn’t have the presence of mind to say anything more. I suppose my psychic efforts were focused on not cauterizing the good doctor’s nose right then.

The doctor’s attitude about the prominent scar in the middle of my face was a slightly impatient “no skin off my nose, pal.” His body language said “are we done here? Any more rhetorical questions?” He thought for a moment then told me about a powerful prescription cream that reduces scarring.

“But your insurance won’t pay for it,” he told me a moment later. The kindly doc then sent his nurse off to find a few of the free sample tubes the pharmaceutical company rep had left him a case of. The cream, which came with no instructions except his nurse’s “apply in a very thin layer”, seemed to irritate the scar which became increasingly uncomfortable until I stopped using the stuff.

In the debate over “socialized” medicine we often hear the critique about the “rationing” of medical care not provided on a competitive, profit-driven “free market” basis. Healthcare, in Communist nations like Great Britain, Canada, Japan, France, etc. is rationed, we are told, because everyone is presumed to be equal when it comes to health care and so there is often a line for some procedures. While it’s true that the wealthy can skip the lines, even in those countries, by going to a private doctor, health care for most is still “rationed”. Here, under our system, the level of care you are “entitled” to is rationed by your ability to pay a monthly health insurance premium. The more you pay, the higher the quality of care you are entitled to, the less rationing you will be subject to.

Here in America every doctor, even the kind orthopedist I’ve visited a couple of times for the arthritis in my knees, knows exactly the level of your insurance coverage as you sit discussing medical options. “Unfortunately, your insurance won’t pay for it, though it works very well to keep the knee pain-free for six months or so while you strengthen the surrounding muscles,” she said of an injection she proposed. She nodded when I told her I’d be on Medicare soon, hopefully. Medicare will absolutely pay for the shot, she told me with a smile.

A cardiologist, who revealed himself as a mask-shunning Trumpist during the pandemic, billed almost $12,000 for each of the four procedures I had on veins in my calves. He’d told me confidently “your insurance will cover it.” My insurance paid him almost half. Not a bad hour’s work for those first three veins. I had a mirthless laugh when I got my “Explanation of Benefits” for the fourth and final venous ablation. He’d billed $12,000 and received zero. His office, apparently, had failed to renew the authorization to be paid. I guess their lawyers will have to fight it out, and good for them both.

A doctor working for a patient with low-cost health insurance (dictated under the ACA according to your declared income, the only choice a low-income patient has is to accept the offered insurance or reject it — and have none), knows exactly how much of the amount his office bills will be paid by the insurance company. This dermatologist motherfucker had every incentive, based on the small fraction of his billed Mohs surgery fee he’d receive, to get me in and out of his office as quickly as possible. Thus incentivized, I was in and out quickly. Even though the surgeon couldn’t see the tiny spot he was supposed to remove.

He called in the dermatologist for a quick consultation, they looked at the photos of the two biopsies (the second had been necessary because the first was done in haste) and concluded it was there, just next to that broken blood vessel. I had a strong reflex to hesitate, as if in a moment of precognition.

“If you can’t see it clearly, I’d rather wait a few months until it’s visible,” I said with mild panic, knowing that these slowly growing cells can be there for a long time with no terrible effect. The confident dermatologist told me that they concurred, knew exactly where the basal cell was and that there was no need to put off the surgery. Like a schmuck, I sat back and let the surgeon hurry to gouge out the entire surrounding area, taking out a circle of healthy tissue to ensure he got the basal cell.

I was in and out of the office in just over a half hour, less time than even the first phase of Mohs surgery usually takes, as I know from experience, having had the procedure now five times out of six. Cah-ching.

As for Dr. “No Skin off My Nose”, what are the odds that a patient with a scarred face, given one more small scar for good measure (and to maximize the good doctor’s billable hours) will have the ability to coherently make a case that a doctor who prescribed surgery A, had that surgery (as well as a skin graft to minimize the scar) authorized by the patient’s insurance and then provides surgery B, including the burning of the flesh around the unnecessarily large wound, deserves a little shit, from his medical ethics board and a payment from his malpractice insurance carrier for the nuisance he inflicted (I have pain at the site of the surgery months later, in addition to the small crater) to the guy whose nose he brutalized?

It may take me a little while longer, but this slick, confident operator needs his smug fucking face cauterized too, just a little. No? After all, it is really no skin off my nose.

On the other hand, WTF?

At 11 pm last night, in the last hour to do so, Merrick Garland’s DOJ appealed a federal judge’s order to produce the full nine page memo that Bill Barr “disingenuously” classified as a protected, deliberative memo he used to make his decision to dismiss the findings of the Mueller Report. The judge, who’d read the memo, ruled that it had been produced as a mere a rationale, for the decision Barr was determined to make regarding the Mueller Report since auditioning for the Attorney General job. Curiously, and shedding doubt on Barr’s story, it was dated the same day Barr wrote his immediate, misleading letter to Congress about Mueller’s findings.

Think back through the intense shit storm that was Trump’s term as president. After Mr. Trump’s cruel disappointment with Attorney General Jeff Sessions, his first mainstream supporter, who, with complete disregard for his duty of loyalty to the president, honored an DOJ ethics ruling and recused himself from supervising the investigation into a matter he’d lied about his involvement in, the president got a beautiful audition memo from William Pelham Barr.

Barr’s position in the legal memo was that Mueller’s witch hunt was basically illegal from the git-go and that the AG, under current law, could therefore dismiss its findings. Trump loved it and hired Barr (who had both gravitas and experience in creatively covering up likely presidential crimes, as he had at the end of the George HW Bush administration) to take over from Sessions’s interim replacement, an angry weight lifter in over his head.

Barr distorted the findings of the Mueller Investigation (which concluded they could not exonerate Trump on ten counts of Obstruction of Justice), essentially carrying out his promise to Mr. Trump (quid pro… never mind). Recently a federal judge found that the memo he’d classified, a supposedly “deliberative” memo (again, prepared the same day as Barr’s misleading letter to Congress announcing that Mueller had basically exonerated Trump) was, in fact, a legal fig leaf to give the illusion of deliberation to a decision Barr had made before Trump hired him. “Disingenuous,” wrote Judge Amy Berman Jackson, ruling that the DOJ must produce the full memo — or appeal it by midnight May 25 (George Floyd Day).

In the last hour available to do so, Merrick Garland’s DOJ appealed the judge’s decision that the DOJ must produce the un-redacted memo. The DOJ released the first one and a half pages of the nine page memo, followed by seven and a half black pages.

Scroll to the bottom of the black pages of the memo and you are rewarded with this, the top of the un-readacted final page:

What the fuck?

Take it, Grey Lady:

“Although the special counsel recognized the unfairness of levying an accusation against the president without bringing criminal charges, the report’s failure to take a position on the matters described therein might be read to imply such an accusation if the confidential report were released to the public,” wrote Steven A. Engel and Edward C. O’Callaghan, two senior Trump-era Justice Department officials [in the last paragraph of the un-redacted section of the Barr DOJ’s controversial memo — ed]

The Mueller report itself — which Mr. Barr permitted to become public [1] weeks after his letter to Congress had created an impression that the fruits of Mr. Mueller’s inquiry cleared Mr. Trump of obstruction — detailed multiple actions by Mr. Trump that many legal specialists say were clearly sufficient to ask a grand jury to consider indicting him for obstruction of justice.

Those actions included attempting to bully his White House counsel, Donald F. McGahn II, into falsifying a record to cover up an earlier attempt by Mr. Trump to fire Mr. Mueller, and dangling a potential pardon at Mr. Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, to encourage him not to cooperate with investigators.

The new Justice Department filing also apologized for and defended its Barr-era court filings about the memo, which Judge Amy Berman Jackson had labeled “disingenuous,” saying that they could have been written more clearly but were nevertheless accurate….

…“The government acknowledges that its briefs could have been clearer, and it deeply regrets the confusion that caused,” the Justice Department said. “But the government’s counsel and declarants did not intend to mislead the court, and the government respectfully submits” that any missteps still did not warrant releasing the entire memo.

Mr. Barr’s claim — which he made weeks before releasing the Mueller public [sic] — that the evidence gathered showed that Mr. Trump did not commit a chargeable offense of obstruction has been widely criticized as deeply misleading.

source

What the bloody hell?

See? Completely partisan witch hunt!

[1]

Would it not have been more accurate, NY Times, rather than this:

which Mr. Barr permitted to become public weeks after his letter to Congress had created an impression that the fruits of Mr. Mueller’s inquiry cleared Mr. Trump of obstruction

to state:

that Mr. Barr prevented publication of, including Mueller’s executive summaries, for weeks after he misleadingly dismissed the findings?