How has the court not thrown out Georgia governor Brian Kemp’s strategically political lawsuit trying to stop Atlanta mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms from mandating mask wearing in public during the pandemic?
Kemp brought the emergency lawsuit to enforce his arguably rational executive order, which reads in part:
“Any state, county, or municipal law, order, ordinance, rule, or regulation that requires persons to wear face coverings, masks, or shields, or any other Personal Protective Equipment while in places of public accommodation or public property are suspended to the extent that they are more restrictive than this Executive Order.”
How is it that the court didn’t throw out this nakedly political lawsuit, selectively brought against a black, female Democratic mayor, when Kemp did not sue the mayors of Georgia cities “such as Savannah, Athens, East Point, College Park, and Brookhaven” who also issued mask mandates?
"Democrats seek to deny Americans their healthcare freedom, but President Trump is working hard to save your healthcare." pic.twitter.com/2u236r1RLF
— The White House 45 Archived (@WhiteHouse45) August 4, 2020
And this beauty for seniors, the vulnerable old bastards (I’m 64, yo) who Mr. Trump is doing everything possible to prevent from voting by mail during a pandemic that disproportionately kills us (and this demographic overwhelming supported Mr. T in 2016– SAD!) :
— The White House 45 Archived (@WhiteHouse45) August 4, 2020
It’s all being done in good clean fun, folks!
Seriously, can’t y’all take a joke? ROTFLMAO!
Bonus — Billionaires for Trump:
#10 Kelcy & Amy Warren
Net worth: $2.5 billion Source of wealth: Pipelines Contributions: $721,200 Gave to 2016 Trump campaign? Yes, $100,000
Kelcy Warren cofounded pipeline company Energy Transfer with Ray C. Davis (now also a billionaire) in 1995. Warren’s fortune stems from publicly traded company Energy Transfer LP, of which he is CEO and chairman. In 2017, following protests, Energy Transfer finished building the $3.8 billion Dakota Access Pipeline after an executive order from President Trump. Energy Transfer says the 1,172-mile pipeline can transport almost 500,000 barrels of oil daily.
A characteristic of all authoritarian movements is framing life in terms of an existential struggle (kampf in German). Life is seen as an eternal violent contest between good and evil, pure and simple; the good side, absent violent struggle, is always the victim of the implacable evil side. You band together with other good people in a kampfbund, an organization to courageously struggle together against evil outsiders and, ultimately, destroy them.
The essence of this worldview, which requires militant readiness to fight an evil and determined Other, is that we are under constant threat of subjugation and death from dangerous forces and must continually strike the enemy in the heart, until they are destroyed. Authoritarian leaders, and their ultra-conservative ilk, always inflame terror and rage by insisting that our cherished way of life is under attack, that we (even the most powerful among us) are the victims of a vicious and powerful enemy who will stop at nothing to enslave us in their fiendish new order. The right-wing’s view of life as an eternal struggle keeps them mobilized to fight, and able to justify any tactic to defeat an infernal enemy.
This is how conservative Culture Warriors like the pugnacious Bill Barr have always seen the world. As Barry Goldwater famously put it (before losing all but five former Confederate states and his home state of Arizona in the 1964 presidential election [1]) “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And…moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!”[126] Charles Koch, who inherited a fortune from his father Fred (after fighting his brothers in court for years over the lion’s share of it) is another one of these, he put millions of tax-deductible dollars where his mouth was. Through the increasingly effective strategic efforts of Koch and his fellow-victim allies (Bannon-patron Robert Mercer, Betsey DeVos family — and her mercenary brother, Erik Prince, several other billionaire victims) the vision of Fred Koch, co-founder of the once fringe anti-communist, anti-immigration, anti-integration, anti-government, anti-union, anti-majoritarian John Birch Society, is now the unquestioned, united vision of the mainstream Republican party of Donald J. Trump.
It is a war waged by the self-perceived victims of a left-wing fever dream of equal justice under the law, voting rights for all, affordable health care for everyone, a fair tax system, government maintenance of infrastructure, protection for children and the aged, regulation of harmful pollution, federal intervention in disasters of all kinds, including the (debatable) climate catastrophe (that is well under way) and other equally outlandish liberal/socialist/communist notions of that sort.
It was the intolerable threat of “mongrelization” (a racist’s most visceral fear) that the activist Supreme Court ushered in with its 1954 Brown v. Board of Education (of Topeka, where the Kochs are from) decision, ruling segregation in public schools unconstitutional, that mobilized powerful, threatened white men to create institutions and orders to fight back. Among other efforts, Fred Koch and the wildly conspiratorial co-founders of the John Birch Society (1958) got busy defending The Lost Cause — the romantic vision of America as it used to be when powerful white men of vision, daring and great wealth could do as they saw fit without an activist government exercising undue coercion. With the unalienable right to choose whether their children had to sit in school next to their genetic inferiors.
Racism, of one kind or another, is an essential building block of a fascistic state. It is hard to rule a one-party state embracing, or even tolerating, difference in your society. Racism might as well be an explicit part of the party platform. If done openly, you know, and continually justified in the mass media, where opponents of racism are always cast as insane, violent terrorists, how can anyone complain?
Hitler’s original title for Mein Kampf was a bit more ranty: Viereinhalb Jahre (des Kampfes) gegen Lüge, Dummheit und Feigheit, [Four and a Half Years (of Struggle) Against Lies, Stupidity and Cowardice.] [7] Dummheit, indeed.
As for the inventive, if unprincipled, illegal, sometimes obscene, tactics that authoritarian partisans engaged in a struggle to the death (for a one-party state) are prepared to use in their life and death kampf, Gary Kasparov nailed the essence of it the other day (pardon me for the 15 seconds of infernal youTube monetization you’ll be forced to mute before the clip — Kasparov’s response is cued up and worth hearing — ah, here it is:)
“You know, what scares me the most isn’t that I know what people like Trump and his cronies can do, it’s that authoritarians always come up with things that we cannot imagine, cannot even predict. And it’s a special talent of people who think only about themselves, only about their money, their power. And you very often hear ‘oh, doesn’t he know how bad that looks?’ or ‘surely he could never do that’– they don’t care.
They will do anything because they have too much to lose. The way authoritarians think is that anything they do to stay in power is fine as long as it works. Because with power they can avoid consequences, they can avoid prosecution, they can cover their tracks and they pardon their friends and allies. So breaking traditions, breaking the rules, even breaking the law, they think it won’t matter if they win. So they’re capable of absolutely anything.”
Trump’s kamfbund is energetically laying the groundwork now for a way to win, or even if realistically claiming a win is impossible, to contest the election as “rigged,” unfair, as everything always is to Mr. Trump and his fellow fighters. Deliberately slowing down the mail in advance of the election, with a major Trump campaign donor ($360,000 to Trump 2020 in recent months), Louis DeJoy, as the experience-free new postmaster general; allowing a pandemic to rage unchecked, devastating the nation, creating death, mass homelessness, hunger, chaos, eventual crimes of desperation and a need to bring federal riot squads into majority Democratic cities in crucial swing states to “monitor” elections; anything you can imagine, and many things you cannot imagine, are in the playbook of those who see “winning” as the only virtue in an eternal war of each against all — in which many are marshaled to violently fight the rest of us in the name of the privileged “each” who benefit most from the war.
John Lewis spoke of the “beloved community,” neighbors, friends and strangers who share our care for each other, and cherish the value of social justice, the kind of concern that causes some to lay their lives on the line for the sake of their beloved community. The authoritarian sees no beloved community, no shared social obligations, no value great enough to die for — though killing is never a problem. The authoritarian sees each against all, an obligation of citizens only to loyally obey power, an inviolable duty, among the followers, to die en masse, if necessary, to preserve the State and the privileges it is dedicated to protecting.
In the street battle between true believers ready to kill on command and those ready to die for their beloved community, the killers always have the advantage. In the larger battle, the battle for the soul of mankind, we like to believe the values of the beloved community triumph.
Be vigilant, this perilous moment is too important to lose focus in.
UPDATE: right after I posted this yesterday I heard an excellent, detailed historically contextualized discussion of this very subject, jumping off from Goldwater’s famous quote about extremism being no vice among the righteous and focusing on the extreme rightwing mobilization following the Brown v. Board of Education decision. I recommend the fascinating conversation between national treasure Bill Moyers (now 86) and historian Heather Cox Richardson on Bill’s recent podcast to anyone interested in this subject. They discuss her latest book “How The South Won the Civil War.”34 minutes very well-spent, or even less if you’re in a hurry and read the transcript.
[1] Wikipedia:
On Election Day, Goldwater lost the election to Johnson by what was then the largest margin in history.[2] Goldwater accumulated 52 electoral votes to Johnson’s 486 and 39% of the popular vote (27,178,188) to Johnson’s 61% (43,129,566).[141] Goldwater carried six states: Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, South Carolina and his home state of Arizona.[141] Goldwater’s strong showing in the south is largely due to his support of the white southern view on civil rights: that states should be able to control their own laws without federal intervention.[142]
In just the last few days there have been a string of small news items that directly contradict the narrative that our country has already descended into totalitarianism. It’s worth a moment to consider a few of Mr. Trump’s recent legal setbacks. Mr. Trump clearly would like to be a dictator, and his third Attorney General seemingly has no problem with that desire, but there are some safeguards here in the US that are still intact. The rule of law is one.
I mentioned that the full DC federal appeals court vacated the unusual 2-1 order in the Michael Flynn matter, a case the majority wrote was “not the unusual case that merited special scrutiny” before automatically dismissing it. There will be a new hearing, on August 11, before the full court, where Flynn’s lawyers and the DOJ have been asked to make the case that Mr. Flynn has no other remedy at law (he does, an appeal, like anyone else).
Trump’s (and the always independent Barr’s) theory, of course, is that if Flynn’s prosecution is dropped as baseless, it proves the entire Mueller investigation was an illegal witch hunt, predicated only on lies, spying and irrational hatred of the new president-elect who did nothing wrong.
This theory would be stronger without the several close associates of Trump’s who were successfully prosecuted for actual federal felonies, without the finding of “sweeping and systematic” Russian electoral intervention on behalf of the Trump campaign, the many contacts his campaign had with Russia, the numerous instances of perjury (for example Roger Stone’s and Paul Manafort’s) intended to hide disclosure of these connections, the several detailed instances of active presidential obstruction of justice that Mueller was unable to exonerate him for. Aside from that, Mrs. Lincoln, total political hit job!
A.G. Barr said, under oath on Tuesday, that he knew nothing about the re-imprisonment of former Trump fixer Michael Cohen (which a court found was in retaliation for Cohen refusing to give up his first amendment rights regarding his upcoming tell-all book). Barr claimed no knowledge of what the “Probation Department” had done. Then, within two days, the United States (when that party is mentioned in a legal case it means the Department of Justice) quietly dropped its suit to block Michael Cohen from making public comments about his upcoming book. Perjury, Mr. Barr?
The federal reign of terror in anti-Trump cities seems to be shutting down. Trump’s threatened “surge” of overwhelming federal force in “Democrat” cities supposedly overwhelmed by American Carnage, rioting and lawlessness, had a set-back when the Department of Justice negotiated to remove unmarked, unwanted federal troops from Portland.
Unmarked federal troops in unmarked rented cars cannot legally abduct non-violent citizens off the streets of American cities, particularly if they are not making an arrest — especially blocks from the federal site they are supposedly defending. Camo-clad Federal Border Patrol, Homeland Security and Bureau of Prisons agents were snatching nonviolent protesters off the street, into unmarked rent-a-cars, off the streets of Portland. Although a federal judge threw out the Oregon Attorney General’s request for a temporary restraining order (for her “lack of standing”) as a legal matter, defending unconstitutional practices could not have ended well for Trump, as much as he would love to violently clamp down nationwide in the run up to his “law and order” second term.
That the president is generally incoherent has not deterred his diehard base, that solid thirty-something percent. In fact, they love his rage against those who stand against “making America great again” by turning the clock back to 1953, before the hated anti-segregation ruling by that activist court in Brown v. Board of Education. Rage is one thing, coherence is another, and actually making good on his enraged, incoherent threats is another. Here’s a short recent list:
POSTPONING THE 2020 ELECTION???
One of the nation’s top ultra-conservative ideologues, co-founder of the ultra-conservative legal fraternity The Federalist Society, a man who supported Trump, railed against Mueller, defended Trump against impeachment, wrote (in the hated New York Times, no less) that this attempt (???? remember the mainly exculpatory question marks in the president’s hortatory tweet) to postpone the election is an impeachable offense that merits Trump’s removal from office.
ASSIGNMENTS FOR AG BARR:
Shut the Flynn case down (ongoing, not so easy, apparently), stop Michael Cohen’s fucking book (the book will come out, Cohen may talk, tweet, facebook about it as much as he likes), defend use of federal force against protesters (a draw at the moment), argue that in some cases a presidential campaign may accept foreign help (a few seconds later Barr was forced to admit this is illegal in every instance), defend the commutation of Roger Stone’s sentence after what Barr called a “righteous prosecution” (fairly weak job, Bill), defend why the president is not being investigated for the quid pro quo of rewarding the silence of a convicted perjurer who protected Trump with his lies and a pugnacious refusal to talk, something you told the Senate at your confirmation hearing would be a criminal act (eh… “why should I?”)
COVID-19 HOAX:
Disclaim federal responsibility and blame governors for not controlling covid-19 pandemic (many did much, much better than the president on this, Trump loyalist governors consistently do the worst).
The Red Zone, where the virus is raging out of control, is comprised of mostly Red States, oddly enough. US number one worldwide, by a wide margin, in covid-19 infections, rate of spread and deaths.
Anti-maskers (like our president) are winning political arguments among Trump’s base (they can’t lose arguing among their base), but are also spreading the pandemic. Co-founder of Blacks for Trump, Herman Cain, died of covid-19 almost certainly contracted at Trump’s maskless indoor Tulsa Rally. See also, Louie Gohmert. See also Georgia governor Brian Kemp’s lawsuit against Atlanta’s female, black mayor for mandating the wearing of masks in the city she’s responsible for.
Trump, while touting victory over the virus and calling for defunding any schools that do not reopen, recently cancelled planned maskless Republican National Convention.
He also made a sheepish pronouncement that maybe wearing masks is patriotic, who knows???
CONDEMNING LAWLESSNESS and the “radical left”:
Ignore the actual reason for the nationwide protests, longtime police murder of unarmed civilians, mainly “nonwhite” citizens, pretend they’re riots, the work of violent outside agitators. Claim that “if the governors won’t control antifa, anarchists and violent left-wing fascist mobs the federal government will!” Give some illegal orders, threaten much worse, claim victory, then back down.
The only people we know of prosecuted for fomenting violence at protests seem to be White Nationalists intent on spreading Trump’s message that angry, scary Negroes and their insane radical leftist supporters are OUT OF CONTROL! Where are the arrests and prosecutions of all these left-wing agitators we keep hearing about?
VOTE BY MAIL
The position that mail-in voting results in massive fraud is a Trump talking point only, debunked by every actual study of voter fraud (extremely rare by any voting method). Trump’s active suppression of mail-in votes is a real concern, and there’s no way to paint it otherwise.
I decided to take a break and learn a bit more about jazz guitar. Here’s what I got.
I have only one question. WHY THE HELL HASN’T SHE BEEN LOCKED UP YET????!!!!
As General Michael Flynn chanted from the stage at the 2016 Republican National Convention: “LOCK HER UP! LOCK HER UP!!!” What are we waiting for, America?!!!
Now for some basic math to refute one small bit of Bill Barr’s typical, deliberately misleading, in this case racist, sophistry. Bill Barr shot back the other day, while brazening his way through questioning by members of the House Judiciary Committee, that more unarmed “whites” than unarmed “blacks” have been killed by police this year. 11 “whites” versus 8 “blacks”. Fair enough, if those numbers are true, unless you weigh them by proportion of each group in the population. Basic fairness requires this extra step.
Let’s grab our calculators and do the basic math. “Blacks,” google tells us, comprise 13.4% of the US population. “Whites” make up 60.4%. If you divide 60.4 by 13.4 you get 4.507– there are 4.5 “whites” to every “black” in the country.
For an accurate picture of which unarmed group is more frequently killed by police, multiply white fatalities by that number. A proportionally equivalent number of “white” deaths, you will see, is 49.57. Add one, to make Barr’s statement true, and you get 50 “white” deaths at the hands of police, to be strictly accurate about who gets killed more often by our law enforcement officers. If more than fifty unarmed “whites” had been killed by police this year, then proportionally, more “whites” than “blacks” would have been killed by police so far this year.
Another way of putting it — if “blacks” were 60.4% of the population, instead of 13.4%, the number of unarmed “blacks” killed by police would be over 30, quite a bit more than 11.
We can easily see, without our adding machines, that “blacks” are about four times more likely than “whites” to be killed by the police in this country, according to Barr’s numbers. Barr also stated that police killings of unarmed civilians was declining.
Dig, first, this buried gem, and then read the rest of the Times’s fearless, yet acrobatically evenhanded, partial rebuttal of Mr. Barr’s claim.
Research has also shown that in the United States, on average, the probability of being shot by a police office for someone who is Black and unarmed is higher than for someone who is white and armed.
As for the rest of Barr’s sworn comment, which echoed Trump’s “technically accurate but misleading claim”
This is misleading.
Mr. Barr accurately cited a database of police shootings compiled by The Washington Post. But the raw numbers obscure the pronounced racial disparity in such shootings. (The statement was also an echo of Mr. Trump’s technically accurate, but misleading claim that “more white” Americans are killed by the police than Black Americans.)
When factoring in population size, Black Americans are killed by the police at more than twice the rate as white Americans, according to the database. Research has also shown that in the United States, on average, the probability of being shot by a police officer for someone who is Black and unarmed is higher than for someone who is white and armed.
Nationwide, the number of police shootings has remained steady since independent researchers began tracking them — declining in major cities, but increasing in suburbs and rural areas.
When Representative Cedric L. Richmond, Democrat of Louisiana, took issue with Mr. Barr’s presentation of the data, Mr. Barr responded, “You have to adjust it by, you know, the race of the criminal.” But some research has shown that even when controlling for the demographics of those arrested, there are still racial disparities in the use of police force.
[1] Who Is Better: Trump or Obama
We’re Conducting a National Opinion Poll & Asking You:
“Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love.”
― Martin Luther King Jr. [1]
A friend told me the other day that he’d had a realistic anxiety dream that woke him in horror after a few hours of sleep. A true nightmare that left him sitting bolt upright, breathing hard. I empathized. Shit, even in sleep, when you’re supposed to be relaxed, getting rest from all this, letting your body regenerate itself and regathering your strength, the daily horror all around us intrudes to rob you of that needed relief. We talked about the dream for a moment then I expressed thankfulness that I rarely have such dreams (inviting Murphy, of course, to invoke his law).
Naturally, this morning, after maybe four hours of sleep, I woke up from a disturbing dream, not a nightmare, exactly, but disturbing enough to keep me from falling back asleep. In the dream I’d been urged by an old friend to stop being such a hermit, to become friends with neighbors, people he’d met, who he touted as very nice people.
These neighbors seemed friendly enough, until they began expressing their great admiration for Mr. Hitler, which was active and ongoing. They considered Mr. Hitler a genius philosopher and benefactor of mankind and enthusiastically believed in the ideals of Nazism. We eventually got into a violent confrontation over Mr. Hitler’s arguably one-sided view of human history. It was several of them against me, and the facts we were disputing made no difference at all.
“Motherfuckers,” I thought as I sat up and realized that was going to be the end of my night’s sleep, “they got me too.”
I checked my phone. Herman Cain, wealthy black Trump supporter and former contestant for the Republican presidential nomination, had died of covid-19, contracted a month ago at Trump’s mask-free Tulsa rally.
Louie Gohmert, vocal Representative from Texas, who proposed recently in Congress that the “Democrat” party be banned from the House of Representatives because they are the party of the KKK, a fiercely defiant “anti-Masker,” tested positive for covid-19 yesterday. Gohmert does not allow his staff to work from home, social distance or wear masks in the office. They were not wearing masks when he addressed them all personally in his office today, not wearing a mask himself (why would he?) to tell them he had covid-19. They already knew, from this article on Politico.com.
Louie Gohmert said today that he probably got the disease from his mask, which he wears Texas-style, off his face around his neck, as he did at the recent Bill Barr hearing. Some virus must have gotten on the mask, he said, and he must have breathed it in. See, masks can kill you! He said he’s taking the hydroxy now, like Mr. Trump claimed he was, like the dictatorial former military junta member leading Brazil to disaster, and the world’s second highest covid-19 infection and death rates, claimed he was when he became infected.
It’s a death cult, this science-denying, reasonable precaution-defying, mouth-breathing pandemic spreaders. SO? They love freedom and hate tyranny! You got a fucking problem with that, puny earthling?
I’ve been trying to reassure worried friends that this idiotic death cult will not sweep all the same heedless criminals back into office in 2020. I tell them that, after being pushed to accept increasingly unacceptable government by force, we have actually reached a national moment of conscience, a moral tipping point, that the margin of victory by the forces of ordinary human decency will be too big to rig.
I point out that the military has not gone along with the would-be authoritarian’s command to forcefully clamp down on peaceful protesters. Defense department leaders have distanced themselves from their Commander-in-Chief on this issue. The courts still regularly uphold the laws that the president and his loyalists routinely violate. They violate these laws still, true, (think of countless little Hispanic kids still in cages) and every norm of democracy, and the courts are now stacked with ideological rightwing zealots chosen for their loyalty, but still — we are a nation of laws.
I emphasize to them that this is not a replay of 2016. I point out that Biden, doddering, shit, sell-out, compromise candidate that he is, is not nearly as hated, or as awkward a politician, as Hillary “Benghazi” Clinton was — there won’t be the same reluctance by tens of millions to vote for him (as there was among millions who could not bring themselves to vote for Ms. Clinton) if it means getting rid of Mr. Trump, who has now proven what he is capable of, over and over. And over. And then doubled down on his bad bets, his cruel, divisive strategies.
Then, in my dream, I find myself fighting with friendly Nazis who insist they would be my friends, if only I’d accept Mr. Hitler’s worldview. I am suddenly stuck to the glue trap that is this present, perilous moment of human history. With no clear way to band together in realtime with the millions of my countrymen and countrywomen who feel exactly as I do, I sit sweatily in front of a fan blowing hot air on me, fearing the worst again as the corporate Democrats continue to run the show, as they always do in the land where money talks and power walks.
I think of the power of the irrational in human affairs, how every atrocity in history was committed by mobs whose blood was violently stirred by their masters. I start recalling past Democratic presidential campaigns, particularly ones running weak, compromise candidates, where huge projected leads were squandered, and I begin to shudder too. The fear in our United States of Fear is palpable and pervasive.
I found myself thinking about epigenetics again, the messages of despair deep in my DNA, or at least on approximately the same genetic level as my DNA. After all, when my mother was a fifteen year-old girl, any of her twelve aunts and uncles who were sill alive, along with their families, and any of my mother’s surviving grandparents (and several were alive and corresponding with my young mother, until the letters stopped one day) were marched to a ravine on the northwestern edge of their Ukrainian town, shot and buried in layers in the soft dirt. Shoot, that August, 1943 massacre was only of a few thousand souls, it’s not even recorded anywhere in the books, there were so many similar slaughters in those dark days of 1943.
My grandmother, by then an American citizen twenty years in the Bronx, was the only survivor from her large family. My grandfather was the only survivor from his large family. My mother was an only child. When she was fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, was a word mentioned about all of these murdered relatives who suddenly stopped writing back to her? I don’t know, but I’d wager not. I myself rarely heard so much as a mention of any of them, even when I was old enough to start asking about them.
My grandmother drank more and more vodka as the years went by. She was generally cheerful when she’d had enough vodka, with only flashes of weepiness and other wild emotions. I never knew my grandfather drank vodka, but I once saw him down a good quantity like he was drinking cold water on a hot day. It seems likely he did it more than that one time. They were both silent about their painful losses, except for the fear they conveyed to me about the world. Their fear was not passed on in any conscious way, but it wound up in how my genes allow me to organize myself to fight.
I assemble as many facts as I can. I approach a position I find hateful and oppose it with arguments based on all the facts I can use. I organize my thoughts, try to comb out excess emotion and express my ideas as clearly as possible. I have achieved a reasonable degree of clarity in my writing.
I do this in a world that has no use for this kind of argument, this kind of unpaid, involuntary writing. Sure, everybody I respect pretty much operates somewhat this way, you know, show me convincing evidence that I’m wrong, I’ll change my behavior. The fear creeps in looking around at the world beyond my close circle, a world not ruled this way. A world where irrationality is King.
The graph of coronavirus infection is shaped like a pyramid in most countries. Infections spread, authorities started to act, figured out what worked and what didn’t, as rates continued to climb, at the peak the “curve” was eventually flattened and began to decline. The US graph, like Brazil’s, like Russia’s, is shaped like a ski jump. It goes up, levels off, goes up again and continues to climb. It is the highest ski jump in the world right now, like jumping off the edge of the Grand Canyon into the end of the natural world.
Sure, the president is a very nasty man, his few remaining loyal henchmen/sycophants are likeminded, unprincipled men on a mission. Their mission is power and domination, on behalf of a tiny percentage of citizens, our few greatest citizens, people who increasingly enjoy most of the country’s vast wealth and a more merciful system of justice and health care than the rest of us. Their mission is aided on the ground by millions of angry white men with grievances and guns, men willing to believe anything but what is actually coughed into their faces.
The president and his very fine people care as much about these common, angry, fearful men as the wealthy Planters of the antebellum south who formed the Confederacy cared about the so-called White Trash they sent to fight their own country in a bloody war to preserve their privileged way of life.
A way of life, based on proud, open and often grotesque inequality they call “liberty,” a thing worth dying for, the thing that most of the very wealthiest among us are still fighting like the Devil to preserve.
I know that many people hate the combative, lawyerly, always smugly confident partisan Attorney General. I know that I hate this brazen master of double talk who justifies every abuse of power that seems to favor his side in the “Culture War.” Barr is a pugnacious zealot who seemingly has always welcomed a brawl. Like his boss, whose favor he courted while auditioning for the job, Barr will always insist he is right, no matter what the facts might have to say about his side of the argument. I watched about half of his performance in front of the House Judiciary Committee yesterday. I have to say, it made me hate him no less.
A note about the unartfully produced 6:38 video montage of the violent, lawless, dangerously insane rioters that was shown as part of Representative Jim Jordan’s (R- Ohio) opening statement. The portrait of terrifying American carnage featured a collage of lying liberal talking heads calling the protests peaceful (as rioters screamed, looted and set things on fire in the background). A long memorial statement by a tearful police widow served as the narration for scenes of looting, disrespect for police, fires, gleeful anger, destruction of property and flag burning (they were miniature flags, but still!). The video was designed to frame Trump and Barr as saviors of a nation threatened by masses of indigenous terrorists, a situation justifying a violent clampdown on all disloyal, lawless cities by federal anti-riot forces. All necessary to preserve American freedom, by the only ones who can protect us from the mayhem of those who hate our freedom.
The repetition of this same clip (less than a minute later) reminded me of Rumsfeld’s claim that there was no widespread looting of Iraqi antiquities after the US imposed chaos on Iraq in “Operation Shock and Awe.”
“They keep showing that one guy carrying out the same vase, over and over, it’s kind of funny…” Rumsfeld chuckled, in more innocent times…
Back to Mr. Barr, who, among other things, after initial misgivings, is now leading the latest attack (in the Supreme Court) on The Affordable Care Act, attacking one of the American laws he is sworn to uphold. He had the DOJ submit an argument on the unconstitutionality of the law that protects health care for millions of otherwise uninsured Americans during a pandemic. Fair is fair. Law is law.
Representative Eric Swalwell, (D- California) cited Barr’s response in his 2019 confirmation hearing that a presidential pardon for someone who was convicted of lying to protect the president would be a crime. Barr confirmed that he said that. Swalwell then turned to the facts of Trump’s commutation of Roger Stone’s sentence, swapping Stone’s promise of silence about the president’s likely perjury for a pardon (Stone communicated to Trump that he didn’t want a pardon, and that he’d dummied up real good for Trump, in spite of great pressure to talk, and now wanted his prison sentence commuted). Swalwell then asked Barr if he was investigating the president.
Barr said “Why should I?” a more succinct and mature way of answering “I know you are, but what am I? You stupid idiot!”
A more universal and democracy-threatening example of Mr. Barr’s unethical behavior involves the upcoming election. Voter fraud, for example, is a myth used by those who want to stay in power by disenfranchising as many of their political opponents as possible. Every study, even the tireless work of Trump’s own election fraud committee (headed by Trump diehards Mike Pence and Chris Koback), finds that such fraud is extremely rare and statistically insignificant. The kind of voter fraud Trump complains of has certainly never been a factor in any modern American election (unlike, say, sweeping and systematic efforts by Russia to influence a US presidential election).
Yet Barr repeatedly insists, as he did yesterday after taking an oath to be truthful before the House Judiciary Committee, that it’s simply common sense that millions of fraudulent mail-in votes will be cast in 2020. Asked to give evidence for the unfounded assertion, also repeatedly made by Trump, Barr again shook his head at the stupidity of the request and gave a variation on what he dismissively told a CBS reporter in a televised interview a few weeks ago “it’s obvious…”
The results of an MIT study were introduced to refute this plain lie — incidents of fraud in votes by mail were .0006 percent. 6/10,000ths of a percent.
“Says the Chinese Communist Party…” Barr might have muttered, by way of conclusive refutation, if he’d been given a chance to respond.
When confronted with his “get it done!” order to violently clear Lafayette Square of peaceful protesters on June 1, less than an hour before the president’s photo op with the borrowed Bible, Barr snarled that tear gas had never been used. Huh? He then proceeded to argue that pepper spray and pepper balls, that admittedly were used by the heavily armed riot squads to clear the square, are not “chemical irritants.” Leaving aside that at least one empty tear gas canister was photographed at the scene on the day in question, Barr then tried to start an argument that his distinguishing between weaponized chemical irritants was not “semantics”.
As for the documented peacefulness of the protest in front of the White House that he ordered dispersed by force in June, Barr insisted there were rioters threatening the massed riot control forces Barr had assembled to “dominate the streets” after Trump “activated” him. “They started it!!” is a common trope among users of violence. Barr’s claim of threatening violence from the crowd that justified his use of force against peaceful protesters that day has been widely disproved.
When Representative Primila Jayapal (D-Washington) raised Monday’s testimony by National Guard Major Adam DeMarco that the violently dispersed protest had been peaceful, Barr shot back that DeMarco was not “involved in any of the decision making.” Huh?
I was a little dismayed that her follow up was not “Irrelevant response. To be clear, are you claiming that Major DeMarco was not present to witness the events he testified to?” On the other hand, and to her great credit, Representative Jayapal did not allow herself to be distracted for a second by Barr’s feint.
With someone who constantly bobs, weaves, reframes, selectively answers, distorts, misleads, misstates, claims to have no knowledge of things it is highly unlikely he didn’t know about, who snarls and dismissively imposes his will by bullying, punctuating his performance with bursts of sardonic laughter, it is hard not to get distracted while trying to get a straight answer. He is a very muscular and agile Giant Squid, Mr. Barr, not particularly graceful, perhaps, but someone with his power doesn’t need to be.
To save you having to wade through much of yesterday’s disgusting show, I offer this one exchange, with Washington’s Primila Jayapal, to stand in for the rest. I salute Ms. Jayapal for her excellent use of her five minutes.
The discrepancy in Barr’s reactions that Jayapal highlighted was his armed response to the June 1 peaceful protest in D.C. (the photo op fifty minutes later, Mr. Barr ridiculously claimed, was a “coincidence”) and lack of any response to (or even statement about) the protest of armed Trump supporters in Michigan who, two hours after the president’s tweet to “Liberate Michigan” stormed the state capitol guns in hand to demand freedom from the tyranny of quarantine.
The Attorney General claimed to have no knowledge of the violent threats made against the Michigan governor, by an armed and angry group of right-wing, Trump-inspired protesters (complete with Confederate flags and swastikas) demanding freedom from tyranny, the right to do whatever they want during a pandemic.
Sound about right, Bill?
“Yeah, but only the one in DC was federal, you arrogant, smart-ass, culture warrior bitch,” insisted Barr in a quote I just made up, based on his body language, facial expression and dismissive tone in selectively answering Ms. Jayapal’s questions.
It’s not like anyone can reasonably accuse the totally independent Barr of doing everything Mr. Trump wants in every situation. COINCIDENCE. Great minds think alike, prove otherwise, Social Justice Warrior CUCKS.
By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered as follows:
Section1. Purpose. The first duty of government is to ensure domestic tranquility and defend the life, property, and rights of its citizens. Over the last 5 weeks, there has been a sustained assault on the life and property of civilians, law enforcement officers, government property, and revered American monuments such as the Lincoln Memorial. Many of the rioters, arsonists, and left-wing extremists who have carried out and supported these acts have explicitly identified themselves with ideologies — such as Marxism — that call for the destruction of the United States system of government.
Anarchists and left-wing extremists have sought to advance a fringe ideology that paints the United States of America as fundamentally unjust and have sought to impose that ideology on Americans through violence and mob intimidation. They have led riots in the streets, burned police vehicles, killed and assaulted government officers as well as business owners defending their property, and even seized an area within one city where law and order gave way to anarchy. During the unrest, innocent citizens also have been harmed and killed.
These criminal acts are frequently planned and supported by agitators who have traveled across State lines to promote their own violent agenda. These radicals shamelessly attack the legitimacy of our institutions and the very rule of law itself.
Key targets in the violent extremists’ campaign against our country are public monuments, memorials, and statues. Their selection of targets reveals a deep ignorance of our history, and is indicative of a desire to indiscriminately destroy anything that honors our past and to erase from the public mind any suggestion that our past may be worth honoring, cherishing, remembering, or understanding…
If the Fire Devil can provoke enough violent mayhem in godless American cities, he can have Bill Barr write up a fiery legal-sounding declaration of martial law. History, folks, written in the blood of those without the immediate power not to be bled.
William Barr, a professional who confidently misleads, will be testifying tomorrow in Congress. I was thinking about this diehard monarchist the other day, and read up a bit on his criminal investigation into the origins of the Mueller Investigation and Obama’s illegal “spying” on the Trump campaign. The “oringes” as our president said. Very suspicious oringes, by a man who was not even constitutionally eligible to be president!
Heather Cox Richardson sent a great Letter to Americans last night, reminding everyone that she wrote her first nightly letter following the story of the July 25, 2019 call between Trump and Ukrainian President Vlodymyr Zelensky when Trump asked for a favor in return for already approved US military aid to Ukraine. The famous “perfect call,” the complete non-quid pro quo the Democrats tried to impeach the president over in the first public federal trial in US history without witnesses or evidence presented [1].
The timeline the historian provides, with Barr urging the acting Director of National Security to disregard the law by covering up the “credible”, “urgent” whistleblower complaint about the call, reminded me of another heavy criminal count against Bill Barr that should be part of his impeachment.
Barr, who auditioned for Trump by writing an unsolicited memo explaining how he’d do much better than Jeff “Recuse me,” Sessions in protecting the president, how he’d make the Mueller Report go away, no matter how damaging the findings might be. He was then as good as his word. Only Barr’s smooth, brazen lying account of the findings of the investigation kept a lid on the damning report (Mueller showed sweeping and systematic Russian interference in the 2016 election on behalf of Trump, with many contacts with the Trump campaign, and led to successful prosecutions of Trump operatives who lied to the FBI, Mueller and Congress about them, and established a triable case that Trump was guilty of a long pattern of criminal obstruction of justice, something he and Barr continue to practice every day).
A little less than a year ago, when the new acting Director of National Intelligence got the report on Trump’s phone shakedown of Zelensky, a complaint determined to be “credible” and “urgent,” instead of forwarding it to Congress, as required by law, he ran it by Trump’s new Attorney General Bill Barr. Under the law, the DNI had to forward a credible, urgent whistleblower complaint to Congress within a certain short time frame. Barr told him to forget about it. The complaint that led to Trump’s impeachment only came out because the Inspector General (Michael Atkinson, recently fired by Trump) informed Schiff and other, eh… “sick, dangerous traitors” of the whistleblower’s complaint that was being illegally withheld from Congress at Barr’s advice to keep the complaint to himself, no need to send it to Congress.
Recently Barr lied about ordering unmarked federal troops (from the Bureau of Prisons, Border Control, Homeland Security etc.) to unlawfully clear Lafayette Park for Trump’s bible photo op— there’s video of him talking to the commanders right before the violent assault on peaceful protesters. Barr stated recently that Roger Stone had been “righteously” prosecuted and convicted of those seven felony counts and that the DOJ was never influenced by political considerations of any kind (even though Barr, seemingly in response to Trump tweets, infamously reduced the sentencing recommendations right before Stone was sentenced). A day or two after making his comments about the “righteous prosecution” of self-proclaimed dirty trickster Roger Stone, when Trump commuted Stone’s sentence, Barr acknowledged that Stone was perhaps a victim of an illegally started partisan scheme to topple the president.
Same deal with General Michael Flynn — in spite of his two guilty pleas, Barr decided that the man was an innocent victim of Trump’s enemies — someone who fell into a treacherous “perjury trap” set by vicious Deep State haters of America! He twisted the meaning of “material” to mean that the lies Flynn had admitted to telling were, essentially harmless white lies he’d been tricked into telling, certainly not a criminal matter. The real criminals, according to Trump and Barr — many of whom are now under a searching criminal investigation by Barr’s most zealous prosecutor, are unAmerican traitors like Robert Mueller III, James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Peter Stzrok, Lisa Page, John Brennan, James Clapper etc.
Last winter Inspector General Michael Horowitz, who investigated the same thing, released a report of his office’s investigation into the legal predicates for an investigation into the Trump campaign’s now known to be extensive ties to the Russian efforts to get Trump elected. His report concluded that the Crossfire Hurricane investigation was adequately authorized and predicated under existingJustice Department andFBI policy. Not without its problems, and partly due to problems with those policies, but adequately predicated in reasonable suspicions of wrongdoing.
Barr and Durham immediately, publicly, shot back:
Barr: “The Inspector General’s report now makes clear that the FBI launched an intrusive investigation of a U.S. presidential campaign on the thinnest of suspicions that, in my view, were insufficient to justify the steps taken.” About thirty minutes later, Durham offered his ownstatement that “[l]ast month, we advised the inspector general that we do not agree with some of the report’s conclusions as to predication and how the FBI case was opened.” Durham added that, unlike the inspector general, his team had access to “developing information from other persons and entities, both in the U.S. and outside of the U.S.”
In April 2020 Barr spoke with FOX opinion host Laura Ingraham and said:
My own view is that the evidence [gathered by Durham] shows that we’re not dealing with just mistakes or sloppiness. There is something far more troubling here, and we’re going to get to the bottom of it. And if people broke the law, and we can establish that with the evidence, they will be prosecuted.”
and
I think what happened to [Trump] was one of the greatest travesties in American history. Without any basis they started this investigation of his campaign, and even more concerning, actually is what happened after the campaign, a whole pattern of events while he was president. So I—to sabotage the presidency, and I think that— or at least have the effect of sabotaging the presidency.
OK, you will say (if only to shut me up), Barr’s a fat, ruthless, unprincipled Nazi fuck — but he is also, literally, an authoritarian enabler and the biggest reason Trump is still in office. He has spent his life fighting a culture war, to the death, to destroy once and for all those who do not hate Communists as much as all Americans should hate those godless bastards. He believes Christ tells him what to do, like Torquemada did as the head of the Spanish Inquisition when they interrogated non-believers by tying them to a stake and setting them on fire.
“My lawyers, the Jesuits, Protectors of the Faith, say the auto de fe is exactly what Jesus most dearly loves, the screaming of heretics dying in agony purifies us all in our devotion to the Prince of Peace and his vision of God’s infinite mercy…”
Barr, by the way, like Scalia and Kavanaugh, is in the intellectual line of those defenders of the faith, the Jesuits, geniuses at using their interpretation of God’s law (and man’s) to fully justify the worst things imaginable as Christ’s will.
Without Barr, Trump’s new Roy Cohn, Trump would already be gone. Barr has been a criminal AG, as corrupt an AG as Trump is a corrupt president. Speaker Pelosi, who squashed a Criminal Obstruction of Judgment count (well-supported by Mueller’s findings and in evidence continually since Mueller’s report came out) in Trump’s impeachment, won’t let talk of Barr’s impeachment be a distraction to Biden being elected, to maintaining the current power structure of the Democratic Party, whatever the unwashed protesting masses may think about it.
Maybe all the polls are right this time and Biden will win. We have to hope he does, if Barr doesn’t pull out all the federal stops to block voting in major cities, round up “agitators”, bring in violent riot squads, mobilize ICE and the US Marshals and goons from the Bureau of Prisons to close voting sites. These same squads of unmarked riot police will defend Trump in his White House bunker (POTUS’ll only be inspecting it– not hiding in it!) in the event Trump loses the rigged election, the election Barr and Trump both insist will be stolen by millions of fake mail-in ballots.
In the event the election goes against Mr. Trump, Barr will be there next to him in the bunker, barking orders until the last protester is safely out of commission or in a privatized detention/death camp — or until POTUS puts a gun in his mouth. Bet your last Confederate dollar on it, boys and girls.
[1] Historian Heather Cox Richardson:
A year ago today, Trump had a phone call with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky and promised to deliver the money Congress had appropriated for Ukraine’s protection against Russian military incursions. Then he added: “I would like you to do us a favor, though….”
While Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman, who was on the call, told his superiors what he had heard, someone else filed a whistleblower complaint. That complaint went to Trump’s own appointee at the Intelligence Community’s Inspector General’s office, Michael Atkinson. Atkinson agreed that the matter was both “credible” and “urgent” and that House and Senate Intelligence Committees must be informed, as required by law.
Atkinson followed the law, passing the information to the acting Director of National Intelligence, Joseph Maguire, on August 26. Maguire had only taken office ten days before, on August 16, after Trump’s first DNI, Dan Coats, and Coates’s second-in-command, Sue Gordon, both resigned. As an acting director, rather than a Senate-confirmed leader, Maguire served at the pleasure of the president.
Maguire was supposed to scour the whistleblower complaint of all classified information before forwarding to Congress by September 2, as the law required. But, instead, Maguire took the complaint to the Department of Justice, headed by Trump loyalist Attorney General William Barr. On his advice, Maguire decided not to turn over the information to Congress.
When that happened, Atkinson told the relevant congresspeople that the DNI was illegally withholding the complaint. On September 10, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Adam Schiff (D-CA) demanded that acting DNI Maguire produce it. Maguire refused, saying that the complaint was about someone not in the Intelligence Community, and therefore not covered by the whistleblower law. (The law does not give him the authority to refuse to deliver a complaint his IG considers credible and urgent. It says he MUST deliver it.)
On Friday, September 13, Schiff wrote a scathing letter to Maguire that brought this whole issue to public attention, noting that it sure seemed like Maguire might be protecting the president, and demanding Maguire follow the law and hand over the whistleblower complaint.
I happened to be scrolling through Twitter when Schiff’s letter dropped, and I recognized it for what it was: a powerful member of Congress accusing a specific member of the Executive Branch of breaking a specific law… the sort of moment on which American history turns.
And that, my friends, is how these Letters began.
Since then, the House impeached Trump but the Senate exonerated him; Vindman is gone; Atkinson is gone; Maguire is gone. But as Trump has increasingly consolidated his power, Americans have woken up and taken to heart that democracy is not a spectator sport.
It has been a year by the calendar, but an eternity in the history of this nation.
Still, for all that I yearn for a time when we can go for days without worrying about what’s going on in the White House, I am profoundly grateful to have discovered so many other people who care as deeply as I do about this country.
There is plenty of news today, but none of it breaking, so I am going to let it go for a night.
The fruits of the Durham investigation will reportedly be disclosed later this summer, or in the fall. This post does a deep dive into what has been publicly reported about the Durham investigation, and then offers analysis. We include Barr’s commentary on the investigation, but not the president’s. The bottom line is that (1) the probe as it developed is not one that should have been conducted by a federal prosecutor conducting a criminal investigation, and (2) Barr’s tendentious running commentary on the investigation violates Justice Department rules, politicized the investigation and damaged the credibility of whatever Durham uncovers. (The post is long. If you want to skip the lengthy factual recitation and jump to the analysis, click here.)
from that analysis section:
No contemporary attorney general has, like Barr in the Durham investigation, offered such extended, opinionated, factually unsupported and damning public commentary, naming names and drawing conclusions, about an ongoing investigation that is at least in part a criminal investigation.
Our president, the son of a corrupt sociopath, is a corrupt sociopath. I say that in a nonjudgmental way, based solely on his compulsive lying, uncontrollable bragging, greed, constant anger, vengefulness and absolute lack of empathy.
Congress passed a more than two trillion dollar ($2,400,000,000,000.00) “stimulus” bill in late March, providing $1,200 for every American householder with an income of less than $75,000, expanded unemployment benefits for the more than 20,000,000 Americans who lost their jobs during the pandemic and many, many hundreds of billions for businesses and industries hurt by the coronavirus.
Oversight and transparency were going to be big problems in an administration that hates both of those things, with a Senate that rubber stamps whatever the president demands and a president who makes his will known by tweet.
The president, believing himself to be the smartest and most ethical (and unfairly persecuted) man in the world, chafes at the idea of anyone investigating anything to do with him and his cronies. He condemns all such attempts at oversight as illegal, politically motivated witch hunts. His current Attorney General backs him up: the president is being unfairly targeted by unscrupulous enemies, constantly, with unprecedented ferocity, possibly with criminal motives, motives that are currently under DOJ criminal investigation.
On April 1, 2020, Bill Moyers interviewed Neil Barofsky, thespecial investigator general appointed by George W. Bush in 2008 to track the $750,000,000,000 in TARP bailout money as it was being spent. You will recall that the financial industry, the guys who engineered the massive falsely triple A-rated toxic asset-based fraud that smashed the world economy for a few years, were “made whole” by the bailouts — getting their huge personal bonuses, the industry emerging from the crisis of their making more profitable and more powerful than before. None of that was special inspector general Barofsky’s fault — he fought every corrupt maneuver as it was happening, possibly thwarted a few.
Moyers and Barofsky spoke of the need for strict oversight and complete transparency for distribution of this vast stimulus/bailout package. Much of the oversight, it appeared, was to be done by Trump’s Secretary of the Treasury, Steve Mnuchin. As for transparency, the money was to be distributed by Mnuchin, to those most worthy to get it, with no public accountability as it was handed out. Moyers:
They wanted the Secretary of the Treasury, Steven Mnuchin, to be free to choose who gets the money and who doesn’t. And to keep his choices from the public for six months. McConnell then tried to weaken a strong oversight proposal. Finally, as we saw, both sides compromised, and the bill was passed with, you know, amazing bipartisan support.
Yet, when the president signed the bill last week, the only people he had in the Oval Office with him were Republican members of Congress and the Secretary of the Treasury. Now, what do you take from that? As a moment of bipartisan triumph, the first time in years this happened in Washington, the only people who get invited to celebrate with the president in the Oval Office are Republicans?
The compromise included this provision:
Bill Moyers: I’m sure you noticed that Congress actually borrowed ideas and even language concerning the inspector general’s office from the first bailout bill, to include it in the bailout bill we’re talking about.
The language about the new inspector general is supposed to monitor how the Treasury Department extends loans and loan guarantees to businesses. And the new legislation requires the new inspector general to notify Congress immediately if the White House doesn’t cooperate fully with an audit or investigation.
At one point, Moyers described Mnuchin’s many untruthful responses and non-responses during his Senate confirmation:
But at the same time, Neil, the new law gives the Treasury Department broad discretion over how to disperse these billions upon billions of dollars. And the fellow running Treasury, Steven Mnuchin, has been implicated in so many scandals, I wouldn’t want him in the same room with my kid’s piggy bank.
During his confirmation he failed to disclose to the Senate Finance Committee nearly $100 million in assets. He didn’t tell them about his role as a director of an investment fund in the Cayman Islands, where very rich people send their money to be laundered. He lied to Congress about foreclosure misconduct activity by a bank he managed. He reportedly misled Congress about a deal the Treasury Department struck with a Russian oligarch close to Vladimir Putin.
This is the man President Trump wants to hand out billions of dollars to corporations and to Wall Street, a guy up to his neck in various conflicts of interest, self-dealing, and ethics lapses.All you have to do is read David Dayen’s book Chain of Title— to see how he chronicles the way Mnuchin got fabulously rich while hundreds of thousands lost their homes. What does that do to your optimism about the potential success of this bailout?
And they spoke about the crying need for real, professional, dispassionate, nonpartisan oversight, beyond the president’s promise that he would provide the oversight, make sure everything was done fair and square. What could go wrong with a greedy, corrupt, compulsively lying, secretive, justice obstructing, increasingly desperate, litigious man hiding his own taxes, financial records, school transcripts and everything else being in charge of oversight and transparency?
As Moyers and Barofsky spoke about the need for oversight, and their relief that a special inspector general had been agreed to in a bipartisan compromise, I kept thinking: didn’t Trump fire a bunch of inspectors general? Google was quick with the answer.
During a pandemic, Mr. Trump took the opportunity to rid himself of five pesky, disloyal inspectors general. Inspectors general:
are appointed by the president and are supposed to be confirmed by the Senate, although many current IGs are in an acting capacity and have not been confirmed by the Senate.[13] The president may dismiss an inspector general, but is supposed to give Congress 30 days’ notice and an explanation of the reason for removing them.[14] The 30 days’ notice requirement was added to the 1978 law in 2008; its purpose was to re-emphasize the role of the IG as an independent watchdog and to dissuade presidents from retaliatory firings.[12]
The first to get the ax, on Friday night, April 7, was Michael Atkinson, the Intelligence Community IG, the man who determined the whistleblower complaint about Trump’s perfect July 2019 call to Zelensky, (the famous NOT quid pro quo for which Trump was totally exonerated by McConnell, Lindsey Graham and Alan Dershowitz) was credible and urgent. Atkinson got the Alexander Vindman treatment.
Also fired on Friday, April 7 was Glenn Fine, Defense Department IG, the man selected to head the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee (PRAC) team of IGs tasked with overseeing the spending of $2.4 trillion in CARE Act funds. His crime, apparently, was being selected head IG for overseeing distribution of the $2.4 trillion covid relief package.
When Trump signed the coronavirus funding bill, he had issued a signing statement challenging the required oversight committee, and said that he personally would take the oversight role and would be in control of what information was sent to Congress about the use of the $2 trillion in relief funds authorized by the bill.
The next three IG firings and demotions followed within a few weeks, while the country struggled to conduct its uncoordinated, failed covid-19 response.
IG of the Transportation Department (run by McConnell’s wife, heir to a Chinese shipping fortune), Mitch Behm, who among other duties (all quotes are from this piece from lying CBS):
is listed as a member of the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee (PRAC), which is tasked with overseeing implementation of the $2.4 trillion coronavirus relief packages passed by Congress in response to the coronavirus pandemic and composed of 20 inspectors general.
Christi Grimm, acting IG of Health and Human Services, was replaced after she:
released a report detailing testing and supply shortages in hospitals responding to the coronavirus pandemic. Grimm found “severe” shortages of testing supplies, “widespread shortages of PPE,” difficulties in maintaining adequate staffing levels and in expanding hospital capacity.
The president called the report “just wrong” in a briefing with reporters and demanded to know when Grimm was appointed to the position. On Twitter, Mr. Trump questioned whether she scrutinized the H1N1 pandemic that occurred during the Obama administration and accused her of falling to speak with top military officials and Vice President Mike Pence about the response to the coronavirus.
Steve Linick, IG of the State Department, who had the temerity (stupidity, really… from a short-term career standpoint) to open a corruption investigation into Trump’s current loyal Secretary of State, pious Christian anti-communist Mike Pompeo. Linick had apparently been begging for it, daring Trump to fire him:
The White House said Trump had dismissed Linick at the request of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Linick had been investigating whether Pompeo had used government employees to run personal errands for him.[7] In a separate, almost completed investigation, Linick was reportedly looking into whether Pompeo had evaded Congressional limitations on arms sales to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates by declaring an emergency, even though none existed.[31] A third line of inquiry into Pompeo was his regular hosting of several dozen lavish, taxpayer-funded “Madison Dinners” at the State Department for hundreds of attendees, including many influential business and media figures; there were concerns that Pompeo had been using the dinners to further his own political career (assembling the names and contact information of possible future contributors and fundraisers), rather than for official diplomatic purposes, potentially violating the Hatch Act.[32][33][34]
So disloyal, SAD!
Eliot Engel, a New York congressman who chairs the House Foreign Affairs panel, said in a statement Linick’s office was investigating Pompeo and said his “firing amid such a probe strongly suggests that this is an unlawful act of retaliation.”
Senator Chuck Grassley, a Republican from Iowa who led the call for a more thorough reasoning from Mr. Trump for his removal of Atkinson, again reiterated the president’s responsibility to provide justification to Congress when firing an inspector general.
“A general lack of confidence simply is not sufficient detail to satisfy Congress,” Grassley said Saturday.
“No reason to get excited,” the thief he kindly spoke.
“Nothing to see here, you vicious, dangerous, sick, disloyal pricks,” muttered the innocent president to nobody in particular, as he made preparations to deploy more riot-geared federal goon squads to violently protect anything within ten square blocks of American historical statues in America’s most openly disloyal cities.
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