Thursday, May 07, 2020

"We Need to Put This Partisanship Behind Us And Move On"




And if something is not done by this time next year to repudiate this kind of action with the full force of law, then we will forever after be a government of men, not of laws.
Remember when "Poppy" pardoned everyone who could incriminate him in Iran/Contra on the way out the door? Poppy was a Sunday school teacher asking the children to play quietly.

(I am left wondering, since Flynn already entered a guilty plea, what power the court has in this to commit Flynn to prison with or without the cooperation of the DOJ.  It's a court order now, not a request to prosecute, or a withdrawal of that request.)


I know non-lawyers think this is very persuasive:

But to real lawyers and federal judges, it's utter bullshit.  What has been disclosed establishes nothing that benefits Michael Flynn or obviates his guilty plea.

I'm still wondering how much power the court has to say:  "Nope.  It's over.  I'm gonna proceed with sentencing."
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And if the Moon People Don't Invade


But nearly all GOP senators running for reelection have decided there’s little utility in breaking with the president, particularly after seeing some fellow Republicans collapse at the ballot box with such a strategy. And if the economy recovers and the virus dissipates by the fall, Republicans could benefit by sticking with Trump.
And the skies across the country uniformly darken when Joe Biden finally comes out of his basement, and blue states are stricken with plagues of frogs and locusts and rains of blood that don't let up until Election Da, then maybe it will be taken as a sign that Trump must be re-elected!

It could work!

“We’ll be doing million and millions of tests, we’ll do the antibody tests, we’ll have good reports, I think, on the beginnings of economic progress,” [Sen. Thom] Tillis said. “And I think all those things will benefit the president and they’ll benefit me.”

Millions and millions of tests!  Someday soon.  Sometime in the sweet bye-and-bye.  Before you know it.  Hell, if you're lucky, you'll get one for Christmas, okay? Go ask Santa Claus.  Oh, and on that "economic progress":

“This is going to be a slog,” he said. “I really don’t think the economy kicks into gear until we get a vaccine or some kind of therapy that everybody feels comfortable about. And even then it is going to take several years to get jobs back. Businesses will have to reform because a lot of businesses fail between now and then.”

That's a much more realistic prediction, especially since the vast majority of people in America are still staying home, despite stay-at-home orders being lifted in some states.

Ask a Republican about Trump’s response to the outbreak, instead of edging away from the president, you’ll likely hear cheers that he shut down travel to China early and praise for his focus on the disease.

“Generally, I feel [Trump’s] done a very good job,” said GOP Sen. Joni Ernst, who faces a tough reelection race in Iowa. “He was right on it from day one prohibiting travel from certain countries and so forth. I think it was the right thing to do.”
Yeah, that'll work until this becomes common knowledge:

Or if everybody magically erases the images of Trump's daily briefings for the month of the lockdown, or Joe Biden and the Lincoln Project never again mention Clorox, Lysol, or black lights.  Right?

“He exhibited tremendous leadership in this whole process, looking to people who are the experts and acting accordingly,” added Sen. David Perdue (R-Ga.), whose state is constantly eyed by Democrats as fertile ground.
Yeah, this strategy is electoral genius!

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"We Coulda Had FIVE Million Dead!"


Yeah.  This'll work.

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"You Go First"


Is that in his house?  Or his office?  And why isn't he volunteering in a hospital somewhere?  Or a nursing home?  No courage?  Not so sure about that "herd immunity" that Sweden has counted on?

One country in Europe is not seeing a decline in coronavirus cases.  Guess who?

Besides, how bad can it be?

Act now!  Before it's too late!
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"No Shoes, No Shirt, No Service"


There's a John Updike story about a young grocery store clerk who witnesses his manager shame a young girl who enters the store in a swimsuit.  The clerk does the gallant thing and quits his job, but when he gets outside, the damsel in distress, ignorant of his actions, has left.

The clerk should have threatened to file a class-action suit because the young girl had a Constitutional right to wear a swimsuit in the grocery store.  Or something.

Wonder if this guy ever tries to enter the store barefoot and shirtless.....
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Bad Fictional Analogy Theater


Is Trump Darth Vader in this scenario? Or the evil emperor?  Either way, the Death Star gets destroyed in two different movies.

Does the architect of the Death Star get away with "a $2.4 million waterfront house in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, a pair of million-dollar condos, a brand new $400,000 boat, and another half-million dollars in luxury cars, including a Range Rover and a Ferrari" for his troubles?  I dunno, I haven't kept up with the Star Wars fan-fic.
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Everybody Poops.


It's sorta like in the movies.  Or TV shows, or ANY fiction at all.  The one thing you NEVER see (and if you do, you never forget it, because it's so rare) a character do is the one thing we all do several times a day:  go to the bathroom.

And we do it in public, too.  Except now we're supposed to do it with "social distancing."  But except for the rare public places (I know most Starbucks are like this, for some reason) with a single occupancy bathroom, how do you enforce "social distancing" in bathrooms?  Shut down every other stall?  Urinal?  Those things aren't six feet apart to begin with.  Sinks? Entry and exit?  And what about the people refusing to wear a mask?  I'm not exposing myself to them.

I had a guy come to my house yesterday, to talk about doing some minor home improvement projects.  I've had him at my house several times.  He rebuilt a room of my house, and has done other light and major tasks.  He made sure to stand politely away from me, and when my wife took him inside to show him some work we needed done there (some of the work is outside), I stayed outside so as not to crowd them.  He knows the score, and so do I, and neither of us wants to get sick.

The return to "normal" will not be paved by government officials "opening" businesses, or even schools, or firing all teachers over 60.  It will begin when people are comfortable with going to the bathroom in a restaurant or a movie theater or at the mall.  And there's nothing Trump or any governor can do to mandate that.
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But Trump Shut Down Travel from China!

Everything you know is wrong. Usually.
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There Really Is No Bottom

No one at the top, either.
No one at all.
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The People Who Couldn’t...

...make a reliable test or just take one from WHO came up with a 17 page plan for the country, and even that will never see daylight.

A 17 page plan wouldn’t re-open a community college in times like this.

We have no federal government. We have a pack of grifters and people so incompetent they don’t understand how incompetent they are.
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Wednesday, May 06, 2020

Memento Mori, or: You always have to pay the piper


So yesterday 5 Republican governors wrote a paean to Donald Trump and "Midwestern" values, even though only Iowa and Missouri are really in the Midwest.  Still, almost nobody talks about "Plains states" values, and while Wyoming qualifies there (I guess?), Utah is in the desert West and Arkansas is mostly the empty space somewhere east of Oklahoma and north of Louisiana.

But they're all doin' great, thank you very much!  Why:

Arkansas has announced conditions to restart elective surgeries. Iowa has deployed strike teams to conduct proactive surveillance testing of essential employees in areas where virus activity is high. Nebraska has drawn on its world-renowned infectious disease experts to create safety standards for meat-processing facilities.

Get that!  Arkansas will let you have elective surgeries again!  By the way:  the entire population of Arkansas is just over 3 million.  There are almost twice that many people in the Houston area alone.  And the biggest city in Arkansas is Little Rock, with less than 200,000 people in it.  Not exactly the population density of Dallas/Fort Worth, or Atlanta, for that matter.  Or Miami, Chicago, Philadelphia, most of New Jersey....need I go on?

The "miracle" is the geography of Arkansas and the low population.  I drove through the state once.  Little Rock is in the middle, coming from Texas, and there's bugger all between Texarkana and the the capitol, or the capitol and the eastern border.

Two meatpacking plants in Nebraska announced closures the day this op-ed was published.  Embarassing!  As for those "safety standards:"

As many as 18% of workers in meat and poultry plants are infected with the coronavirus in Iowa and South Dakota, while Pennsylvania and Nebraska account for one quarter of the COVID-19 cases nationwide, said CDC scientists and state public health officials. 
Nebraska shares a dubious honor with Pennsylvania.  How 'bout that?  Iowa has had over 10,000 cases and over 200 deaths.  Iowa is just slightly more populous than Arkansas.  To put that in rough perspective, Harris County has a population just under 5 million, and has had over 32,000 cases and just under 890 deaths.  Nothing to brag about, believe me.  Harris County also has a far greater population density than Iowa, so Iowa's not doing that well, either.

Yeah, these guys are sounding like Trump mini-me's.

I wouldn't hang this albatross around the neck of any governor in America.  But bragging about how "well" you've done in your low population states when the rest of the country is just starting to crank up is rude, when it's not completely inaccurate.


Of the five states under consideration, Wyoming and Arkansas are getting better (good for them!) and Utah seems to be holding steady; but Missouri and Iowa are still climbing to the plateau; they haven't reached it yet.  They may find they bragged too soon (not that it would please me; we're talking about illness and death here, not football teams).  The others should show a bit more of that "Plains state"  or Midwest reserve, and remember that when you start celebrating how clever you were, is the moment just before you faceplant; or the weather turns and the crops you were so proud of are destroyed by hail; the cattle you were counting on start dying of disease.

Let me pick up from another WaPo op-ed, by a physician:

More than 40 states have announced plans to lift restrictions, even though only a handful have met the minimum criteria for reopening as outlined by the White House coronavirus task force. The consequences of this are all too predictable, because the science around covid-19 has not changed: Without a vaccine or cure, the only thing keeping the disease in check has been keeping people separated from one another. Once social distancing is relaxed, covid-19 will again spread with explosive speed.

There's evidence now that coronavirus was in New York for months before it was recognized.  The sick in those 5 states may be ill already, and not yet know it.  God forbid but pride, as the Good Book says, goeth before a fall.  Even the ancient Greeks understood that.

But, of course, that might not be apparent for weeks or even months. That’s because of the lag between new exposures to the virus and the subsequent increase in infections, hospitalizations and deaths. As everyone knows by now, the incubation period — the time between exposure and symptoms — is up to 14 days. It could take another week or two before people become ill enough to seek medical care, and another week or more for those who are severely ill to succumb to the virus.

The danger here is that policymakers and the public will jump to the wrong conclusions if they don’t immediately see the numbers increasing. Instead of breathing a sigh of relief, they should prepare for the surge that will inevitably arrive a month or so from now: What New York went through at its peak will happen in communities across the country. Hospitals will become overwhelmed with ill patients. Staff will be forced to ration personal protective equipment. There will be shortages of intensive care unit beds and ventilators.
This is already happening in Georgia.  Take heed.

Also worrisome is that many of these outbreaks will occur in rural communities that already struggle with lack of hospitals and health-care workers.

All of the states we are talking about here are mostly "rural communities."  I'm sure there are hospital beds in Little Rock, Arkansas.  I'm also sure they would fill up rather quickly in a crisis.

These five governors are like the bowler who thought he was going to score a perfect game.  He got so excited, he blew the second frame.  This is a catastrophe looming on the horizon, and this time we can't blame China for not warning us (as if that makes any difference):

We are knowingly going back to where we were in mid-March, before the first exponential surge in infections and deaths. That surge will come again, but this time no one can say they didn’t see it coming.

You may try, but who will believe you?.
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Also possible frogs will grow wings....


Especially if people keep dying, and Trump keeps claiming the death statistics are "fake news"!

It's coming.

a)   As long as it's not 2 million, it's still a "success!"

b)   Or it's "fake news!"

c)   Or it's the governors' fault.

No, I don't think the majority of voteres in any state is this stupid.  I also don't think death/economic destruction/healthcare collapse is a great motivator to re-elect the guy in charge when all this happened.

So the rest of us should get back to work, and meat packers get back to work ASAP after being tested ("Even if it's meaningless an hour later?"  "Shaddup!")  Same for the staff of nursing homes, right?  They need to ready to lay down their lives for minimum wage and the American Way of Life!
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The More Things Change....


I keep thinking of a scene I remember from "All In The Family," where Archie Bunker is talking to the young adult son of the Jeffersons (before their spinoff show, probably).  They're talking about jogging (it was the '70's) and Archie asks Lionel (?) why he doesn't do that near his home.  Lionel looks at him archly and says something like "A black man running in this neighborhood?"  And Archie knowingly nods in agreement.

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Nurses Should Be Seen and Not Heard

It's National Nurse's Day.

It's a full time job just keeping the story straight! Oh, and it's the "blue" states that waste gummint money:

And remember this (I'm old enough to!)?

This is what followed:



If you can get that from Trump's comments, you're a better man than I am, Gungha Din.
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"The numbers I like are right!"


Behind the scenes: The official said Trump has vented that the numbers seem inflated and has brought up New York's addition of more than 3,000 unconfirmed but suspected COVID-19 cases to its death toll.

Some members of the president's team believe the government has created a distorting financial incentive for hospitals to identify coronavirus cases, the official also said.

A second senior official said they shared this concern.

Medicare is giving hospitals a 20% bonus for their treatment of coronavirus patients as a way to help them make up for the money they’re losing because they’ve had to postpone a lot of non-coronavirus care.

Intentionally misdiagnosing patients with coronavirus would be fraud, and so far no one in the administration has publicly leveled such an accusation.

The other side: A senior White House official pushed back, saying this of the president's thinking:

"Skepticism isn't the right way to frame it. The numbers have been revised up to include presumptive cases — meaning deaths that are believed to be related to COVID but not known for sure."

"So he's expressed the need to properly convey that to American people so they're not startled by why numbers ticked up."

Sure; his only concern is with accuracy.

Another senior administration official said this concern about the death count was not confined to Trump and was in fact shared by a number of his senior staff and has been a subject of discussion for weeks.

"With something like this virus, where you've got this weird coagulation in the lungs ... we need more autopsies," the official said.

"America's out of practice of how to deal with something like this and to report it accurately. ... We don't have uniform reporting standards in the United States or internationally. And we're not getting good data."

The number of people dying over the past few weeks, in many parts of the country, is a lot higher than average, suggesting that the official count of coronavirus-related deaths is still missing tens of thousands of people.

We can't help ourselves; we're just over-reporting the number of dead in America!  Why, some of them probably aren't even dead!

Between the lines: Until mid-April, a person was only identified as having died from the coronavirus if they had tested positive for the coronavirus and then died.

Wait for it!

But testing in the U.S. has been inadequate. Many people who have the virus weren’t able to get tested; those patients weren’t recorded as official coronavirus cases, and therefore weren’t counted as coronavirus deaths if they died.
....

What they're saying: Experts believe the formal death count is inaccurately low because:
Testing problems persisted for so long and still persist.

Some states don’t count probable deaths.

There are still thousands of “excess deaths” even after accounting for probable coronavirus cases.

Yeah, the death count is wrong, but the tests number indicates discrete individuals.  It doesn't work like that.
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That Didn't Take Long


What could go wrong?
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Teachers Over 60 Still Vote, Ya Know?


Because children don't get this disease?

Or carry it, or give it to their parents and grandparents and siblings?  He doesn't really understand what a disease is, does he?

Or how we treat diseases; or how must people get their insurance coverage (hint:  you don't have it if you aren't employed, or can't pay for it because you're unemployed.)  And we're gonna replace it before November?  With the House in recess and both Houses in recess in August and then again in October?  Yeah, sure, that'll happen.

D'ya hear that, 30 million people?!  You're just "paper losses."  You don't really count as losses!  Enjoy your "paper" unemployment!

Well, he got that much right.

And how often are we gonna have to say this?

Because pretty much what we're hearing now is:  "Ignore that incoming tidal wave!  Keep dancing!  It's good for the economy!"  And no, I'm not exaggerating:




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And your point is?


The risk is not merely death, but hospitalization and long-term damage, damage you would have to live with.  Polio, as a comparative, didn't kill so many people as it crippled for life.  I knew a number of adults who had been childhood polio victims.  We will have similar adults from coronavirus, though the damage won't be as visible as people who have to walk with crutches for the rest of their life.

I suppose that's the "risk" we have to take in order to serve the god of the marketplace.

Besides, this is going to be the problem:

Local radio station WABE reports that [Georgia Gov. Brian] Kemp on Tuesday said that the medical system in the city of Gainesville was facing significant strain under the weight of an expanding outbreak that has hammered workers at local poultry processing plants.
Harris County (Houston, basically) shut down a "tent hospital" after local TV news reported the "scandal" of how much it cost to set up, and how much use it had gotten (none).  Meanwhile, cases in Texas are increasing, not decreasing or even holding steady.

We are still more likely to run out of hospital beds than to have too many, especially with stores re-opening.

I know coronavirus is supposed to "change" everything.  But what changed after the Spanish flu?  What changed after polio, except now people think they don't need a polio vaccine?  Tell me, what are we going to learn from this?  That risk is good, especially if you're the one taking it, and not me?

[Harris] then challenged Caitlin Rivers, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, with pro-choice rhetoric after she said customers may not feel safe returning to reopened businesses in his mostly rural district.

“That’s their choice, isn’t it?” the lawmaker said.

And my choice to live in a society that isn't so stupid about communicable diseases and pandemics and the risk they all force on me?
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Bang The Drum Slowly...but bang it


Try to follow this argument:

Joe Biden was already talking about the past. “April was Sexual Assault Awareness Month,” the former vice president and presumptive Democratic presidential nominee wrote on Friday, May 1. That was how he opened his first direct public statement about his former staffer Tara Reade’s claim that he had sexually assaulted her in 1993. It took him nearly 400 words to get to the allegation itself, and to deny that it ever happened—nearly 400 words in which he framed himself as an ally, as a crusader even, for women, based on his work on the Violence Against Women Act as a senator, on the “It’s On Us” campaign as vice president, and on his diligence, apparently, each April, to think about victims of sexual assault.

He went on Morning Joe that same day, to have a conversation with Mika Brzezinski where he offered his first spoken remarks on the now-month-old allegation. Brzezinski started with the obvious question—did this happen? Biden denied it unequivocally. His most repeated phrase during the interview was “it never happened,” but they also spent a good amount of time talking about access to files that seem extraordinarily unlikely to prove anything about whether Joe Biden put his fingers up Tara Reade’s skirt and penetrated her in a Senate hallway in 1993.

And then, far more than 400 words later:

These arguments have no relationship to the claims they are meant to disprove—claims that are notoriously resistant to proof either way. We are stuck, once again, in a battle between what he said and what she said (never mind that she has reliable corroborating witnesses and he continues to prop up witnesses who weren’t there). We are now engaged in a hunt for documents that will not confirm whether Joe Biden put his fingers inside of Tara Reade. They might confirm that Tara Reade filed a complaint of sexual harassment against Joe Biden. Somehow the outcome of finding even that seems like it will make her less credible rather than more—if she was complaining about harassment, why didn’t she complain about the assault, we will ask. In America, victims need to present perfectly coherent story lines, complaining in the right ways and at the right times. Any understanding of why this might be difficult still seems lost on us.

There is simply no good way to vet this claim. A presidential candidate is voted on by the people, not confirmed by a body of senators with the powers to compel testimony on matters of fact. Still, the Democratic National Committee could convene to figure out some way to investigate this allegation—as the New York Times’ editorial board suggested they do, an indication that even the paper of record recognizes that journalism faces severe limitations when asked to serve as an investigative body in this sense. It seems unlikely this will happen, though. Nancy Pelosi thinks the case is closed, and no one else seems to be taking charge, save one heartfelt statement from Rep. Ayanna Pressley. Kirsten Gillibrand has decided to sit this one out, because she trusts Joe Biden.

It is only May. There is time to figure this out, were there any will to do so. But there is not, not by most of the Democratic leadership, and certainly not by Biden, who could do the right thing and step out of the race—not even because this absolutely happened, but because it is extraordinarily complicated and not everyone gets to run for president. But there is no way Joe Biden will do that. He was already willing to run for president in a very less-than-ideal state. He has surrounded himself with a team that is willing to enable him to do so. One in 4 Democrats may see this as a reason to replace him instead of letting him lead the top of the ticket, but the majority of voters don’t want to. The imperative for Democrats has long been beating Trump, and somehow they’ve decided Joe Biden is the guy to do it.
So, to begin with, the burden of proof is on Joe Biden.  He is guilty until he proves himself innocent.  Had he simply said "No, it didn't happen" (which was the soundbite from the Mika interview), he would have been too dismissive?  Since he took 400 words to refute the claims, he's too wordy?  He tried to couch it in terms of respect for the accuser, but denial of the accusation, so we can't trust him?  But if he just brushed it off with a flat "Never happened," he'd be guilty of indifference and insensivitivy and clearly trying to stop an "investigation" before it started?  No wonder he's not persuasive.

And what investigation?  There's a foregone conclusion built into this argument: "(never mind that she has reliable corroborating witnesses and he continues to prop up witnesses who weren't there)." Would the DNC have to do it in less than 400 words in order to be "persuasive"?

1) Is Reade herself a reliable witness?

Even so, it is reasonable to consider a 27-year reporting delay when assessing the believability of any criminal allegation. More significant perhaps, is Reade’s decision to sit down with a newspaper last year and accuse Biden of touching her in a sexual way that made her uncomfortable — but neglect to mention her claim that he forcibly penetrated her with his fingers.
....
When Reade went public with her sexual assault allegation in March, she said she wanted to do it in an interview with The Union newspaper in California last April. She said the reporter’s tone made her feel uncomfortable and "I just really got shut down” and didn't tell the whole story.

It is hard to believe a reporter would discourage this kind of scoop. Regardless, it's also hard to accept that it took Reade 12 months to find another reporter eager to break that bombshell story. This unlikely explanation damages her credibility.
2) Are Reade's witnesses reliable?

After the alleged assault, Reade said she complained about Biden's harassment to Marianne Baker, Biden’s executive assistant, as well as to top aides Dennis Toner and Ted Kaufman. All three Biden staffers recently told The New York Times that she made no complaint to them.

And they did not offer the standard, noncommittal “I don’t remember any such complaint.” The denials were firm. “She did not come to me. If she had, I would have remembered her,” Kaufman said. Toner made a similar statement. And from Baker: “I never once witnessed, or heard of, or received, any reports of inappropriate conduct (by Biden), period." Baker said such a complaint, had Reade made it, "would have left a searing impression on me as a woman professional, and as a manager.”
Here is some of what that New York Times article reported:

Last year, Ms. Reade and seven other women came forward to accuse Mr. Biden of kissing, hugging or touching them in ways that made them feel uncomfortable. Ms. Reade told The Times then that Mr. Biden had publicly stroked her neck, wrapped his fingers in her hair and touched her in ways that made her uncomfortable.

Soon after Ms. Reade made the new allegation, in a podcast interview released on March 25, The Times began reporting on her account and seeking corroboration through interviews, documents and other sources. The Times interviewed Ms. Reade on multiple days over hours, as well as those she told about Mr. Biden’s behavior and other friends. The Times has also interviewed lawyers who spoke to Ms. Reade about her allegation; nearly two dozen people who worked with Mr. Biden during the early 1990s, including many who worked with Ms. Reade; and the other seven women who criticized Mr. Biden last year, to discuss their experiences with him.

No other allegation about sexual assault surfaced in the course of reporting, nor did any former Biden staff members corroborate any details of Ms. Reade’s allegation. The Times found no pattern of sexual misconduct by Mr. Biden.

On Thursday, Ms. Reade filed a report with the Washington, D.C., police, saying she was the victim of a sexual assault in 1993; the public incident report, provided to The Times by Ms. Reade and the police, does not mention Mr. Biden by name, but she said the complaint was about him. Ms. Reade said she filed the report to give herself an additional degree of safety from potential threats. Filing a false police report may be punishable by a fine and imprisonment.

Ms. Reade, who worked as a staff assistant helping manage the office interns, said she also filed a complaint with the Senate in 1993 about Mr. Biden; she said she did not have a copy of it, and such paperwork has not been located. The Biden campaign said it did not have a complaint. The Times reviewed an official copy of her employment history from the Senate that she provided showing she was hired in December 1992 and paid by Mr. Biden’s office until August 1993. 

The complaint she says she filed with the Senate she now says didn't allege assault in any form.  Which, again, undermines her credibility.  And she kept a copy of her employment records from the Senate, but not of this complaint?  Is that why it hasn't been found?

3)  Other credible witnesses?

Reade’s brother, Collin Moulton, told The Post recently that he remembers Reade telling him Biden inappropriately touched her neck and shoulders. He said nothing about a sexual assault until a few days later, when he texted The Post that he remembered Reade saying Biden put his hand "under her clothes.”

That Reade’s brother neglected to remember the most important part of her allegation initially could lead people to believe he recounted his Post interview to Reade, was told he left out the most important part, and texted it to The Post to avoid a discussion about why he failed to mention it in the first place.

In interviews with The Times, one friend of Reade’s said Reade told her she was sexually assaulted by Biden. Another friend said Reade told her that Biden touched her inappropriately. Both friends insisted that The Times maintain their anonymity.  

The bad part here is the digital penetration.  Why did Reade's brother forget that part?

On Monday, Business Insider published an interview with a friend of Reade’s who said that in 1995 or 1996, Reade told her she was assaulted by Biden. Insider called this friend, Lynda LaCasse, the “first person to independently corroborate, in detail and on the record, that Reade had told others about her assault allegations contemporaneously.”

But Reade alleged she was assaulted in 1993. Telling a friend two or three years later is not contemporaneous. Legal references to a contemporaneous recounting typically refer to hours or days — the point being that facts are still fresh in a person's mind and the statement is more likely to be accurate.

The Insider also quoted a colleague of Reade’s in the mid-1990s, Lorraine Sanchez, who said Reade told her she had been sexually harassed by a former boss. Reade did not mention Biden by name and did not provide details of the alleged harassment.

In prior interviews, Reade gave what appeared be an exhaustive list of people she told of the alleged assault. Neither of the women who talked to Business Insider were on that list.

The problem with statements from friends is that the information they recount is only as good as the information given to them. Let’s say Reade left her job because she was angry about being asked to serve drinks or because she was fired for a legitimate reason. If she tried to save face by telling friends that she left because she was sexually assaulted, that’s all her friends would know and all they could repeat.

Prior statements made by a sexual assault victim can carry some weight, but only if the accuser is credible. In Reade’s case, the statements coming from her friends are only of value if people believe Reade can be relied on to tell the truth, regardless of the light in which it paints her.  
And the call-in to Larry King in 1993?

Last week, new "evidence" surfaced: a recorded call by an anonymous woman to CNN's "Larry King Live" show in 1993. Reade says the caller was her mother, who's now deceased. Assuming Reade is correct, her mother said: "I’m wondering what a staffer would do besides go to the press in Washington? My daughter has just left there after working for a prominent senator, and could not get through with her problems at all, and the only thing she could have done was go to the press, and she chose not to do it out of respect for him."

As a prosecutor, this would not make me happy. Given that the call was anonymous, Reade’s mother should have felt comfortable relaying the worst version of events. When trying to obtain someone’s assistance, people typically do not downplay the seriousness of an incident. They exaggerate it. That Reade’s mother said nothing about her daughter being sexually assaulted would lead many reasonable people to conclude that sexual assault was not the problem that prompted the call to King.

Reade’s mother also said her daughter did not go to the press with her problem “out of respect” for the senator. I’ve never met a woman who stayed silent out of “respect” for the man who sexually assaulted her. And it is inconceivable that a mother would learn of her daughter’s sexual assault and suggest that respect for the assailant is what stands between a life of painful silence and justice.

The "out of respect" explanation sounds more like an office squabble with staff that resulted in leaving the job. Indeed, in last year's interview with The Washington Post, Reade laid the blame on Biden’s staff for “bullying” her. She also said, “I want to emphasize: It’s not him. It’s the people around him.”
Which, of course, raises another question of Ms. Reade's credibility:  when did it stop being about "the people around him"?  And why?

4) "There is simply no good way to vet this claim."  Aye, there's the rub; even if it does directly contradict the claim that "...she has reliable corroborating witnesses and he continues to prop up witnesses who weren't there."

There are no third-party eyewitnesses or videos to support Tara Reade’s allegation that she was assaulted by Joe Biden. No one but Reade and Biden know whether an assault occurred. This is typical of sexual assault allegations. Jurors, in this case the voting public, have to consider the facts and circumstances to assess whether Reade’s allegation is credible. To do that, they have to determine whether Reade herself is believable.  
The question is not:  is Biden persuasive?  The question is:  is Tara Reade believable?
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"And It's 1-2-3, what are we fightin' for?"


“What did you do when you became president to restock those cupboards that you say are bare?” he asked.

“Well, I’ll be honest, uh, I have a lot of things going on,” Trump began, in a soundbite tailor-made for an attack ad. “We had a lot of, uh, people, that refused to allow the country to be successful. They wasted a lot of time on ‘Russia, Russia, Russia’ — that turned out to be a total hoax. Then they did ‘Ukraine, Ukraine,’ and that was a total hoax. Then they impeached the president for absolutely no reason.”

Country = GDP, not the people who inhabit it:

“It’s possible there will be some, because you won’t be locked into an apartment or a house or whatever it is,” he said. “But at the same time, we’re going to practice social distancing. We’re gonna be washing hands, we’re gonna be doing a lot of the things that we’ve learned to do over the last period of time. And — we have to get our country back.”

...

“I’m viewing our great citizens of this country to a certain extent and to a large extent as warriors. They’re warriors. We can’t keep our country closed. We have to open our country,” Trump said. “Will some people be badly affected? Yes.”

What are we fighting for?  The health and welfare of each other?  Or the DJIA?  Or just Trump's hope of re-election?
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Wake Me Up When Things "Change" After This


People in blue states?  Fuck 'em!  Automobile manufacturers!  SOMETHING MUST BE DONE!
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This very simply means we don't know anything



It's way worse than that. Many people are getting tested multiple times (we know several people who have multiple tests, many positives are confirmed with a second test.) So 7 million tests is no way near 7 million people.
So 7 million tests have been analyzed.  That doesn't mean 7 million discrete people have been tested. It could mean 3.5 million have been tested.  It could mean more than that, but less than 7 million.  It could mean half of that half.  It could mean anything.

We don't know, and we probably have no way of knowing.  7 million is just a number, just an empty set of figures; just a great deal of zeroes.  It's meaningless.  Rather like the leadership in Washington.
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Adult Trayvon Martin


NPR reported this morning the Georgia courts are basically shutdown right now, and that includes grand juries.  No telling, IOW, when a grand jury could be convened to hear this case, but it won't be soon.

So why wait for a grand jury?  Because the odds of a jury convicting two white police officers of shooting an unarmed black man jogging through a neighborhood are:  zip and none.

Dese are de conditions dat prevail.
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We Have A Constitutional Right to Infect Our Children

What fresh hell is this?
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Tuesday, May 05, 2020

"I am become Death, the Destroyer of Worlds"




Well, he loves them.  And he has lots of money for them; provided he can kill the payroll tax and Obamacare and a few dozen other things he's demanding first.  And besides, there'll still be a few people left to vote for him, right?  All he needs is the electoral college votes.
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Especially if he eats a taco on Taco Tuesday!


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Walk A Mile in My Mask


If we limit this analysis to just people at protests refusing to wear masks, I might agree with it.  People refusing to wear masks period:  I agree with it.

I was just at a local restaurant which ran a Taco Tuesday promotion that got way out of hand.  Diners are supposed to order on-line, pull up, text the store, and wait in their cars.  Too many people for that, so a crowd had formed around the patio outside, a fenced off area where, it turned out, staff were coming out with sacks of food orders and shouting names.  The worst part was the people without masks who would crowd me, trying to get their food, to get attention, to get served.  Most of the crowd was not observing "social distancing" at all.

But they weren't rowdy and they weren't crabby and they weren't mean.  They were just trying to get what they had already paid for.  Eventually I did, and left, feeling I'd won the lottery.  But still bugged by people who felt their only concern was getting someone's attention so they could get their food, and distancing and masks and public health be damned.

On the other hand, nobody shot anybody in the head or wiped their nose on someone else's sleeve.  So there's that.

Even in those cases:  what were those people going through?  In the shooting case, three people have been charged with intentional murder (or 1st degree, or whatever Michigan calls it).  The woman went home, enraged her husband, who enraged his adult son (I'm guessing), and they came back armed and ready to shoot.  What the hell?  But what pressure were they under?  Shopping at a Dollar Store, I'm guessing they weren't salaried employees working from home.  Maybe their jobs had gone south and the landlord wanted the rent (statewide orders don't always mean much to individuals.  Same reason some people won't wear masks.).  Who knows?  Does it justify the murder?  Hardly.  But are they to be demeaned as "children"?  Hardly.

Yes, citizens are adults and we have to get through this.  But I remember when Bill deBlasio wanted to shut down NYC and Andrew Cuomo made it clear only Cuomo had that power, and he wasn't ready to do it yet.  And yet now who's the "adult" in New York state?  Those categories slide back and forth so easily, based entirely on our convenience.  "Make me whole" is not necessarily an unreasonable demand if you're late on the rent or the mortgage and the checks are bouncing and the kids are hungry and you need toilet paper.  Sure, those camouflaged armed-up bearded yahoos shouting in each other's faces in Michigan (what IS it about Michigan?) were little boys playing "tough guys," but some people are afraid of losing their livelihoods.  This woman was arrested in Texas because she and her friends thought they were lawyers and could buy booze and carry guns on property that wasn't technically the parking lot or back porch of the bar, though it was the bar owner's property.  You can carry guns into the Texas State Capitol (idiots), but you can't carry 'em into a bar, or onto property adjacent to the bar owned by the bar owner (idiots).  I read that story before she got arrested.  All the bar owners wanted to do was save her bar.  She was about to go under, and some of the patrons wanted to help her out.  They deserved to be arrested for the guns (they were protecting "their 1st Amendment rights."  Idiots.); but not for selling the beer (I'm not sure Abbott's order on that would stand up to the least legal scrutiny). Then again, she couldn't afford the lawyer or the lawsuit to test that theory (a depressing amount of law flies well under the radar of "constitutional").

Tell me again just how "childish" she was, and just how "adult" the rest of us are, who created that situation?  Yes, we created it, especially if we aren't going broke and about to lose everything through no fault of our own; because we benefit from this system, and it's high damned time we gave something back to the people who barely get by in this system.  It's a pretty much zero-sum game:  poor bar owners, even restaurateurs of fine establishments, live on the cusp so we can drink and dine, and people like poor bar owners are especially invisible to us.  They are the easiest to call "children" because, face it, they are NOK.  They are not Us; they are Them.  And them are children who deserve what their whinging gets them.

Nope.  I'm not buying that.  I'm not going that far.  It's Us v. Them that got us into this national mess. Trump is the Team Captain of Us v. Them.  If he was any more evil, he'd be Satan's right hand man, playing us off against each other.  He's not; but we're as much to blame as he is for the current situation.  And looking for someone else to blame it on doesn't make us better than Trump; it makes us sound just like him.

And I sure as hell ain't doin' that!
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All those tweets to write

All those rallies to attend.

All those mourners to insult.

It's not like Trump can do anything about it.

Fuck the dead.  Probably Biden voters anyway, amirite?

At least the grift is good:


Trump's parting words on January 20, 2021 (as he refuses to attend the inaugural.  You can't make him!):  "So long, suckers!"

And we leave the day's news with Maggie Haberman, reporter extraordinaire:

And her absolute gift for stating the obvious:

Well, unless Fauci and Birx find their way in front of microphones anywhere in D.C.

Much older than I actually am.
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Anybody who didn't see this coming?

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The Real Trolley Problem


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"Dulce et decorum est pro Marketplace America mori!"


And what are a few lives lost, as long as Trump doesn't know any of them, and none of them are him?

This is gonna drive Trump's popularity through the roof!

Logic!  You can't argue with that!  The fall of 2020 might as well be 5 years away!  Trump has been in the White House for months!  Time passes slowly inside the bubble.  He's so visionary the smallest unit of time to him is a half-decade!

Because they are weak and we are strong!   Mammon demands a sacrifice!  It is good to die for your economy!  "It's money that matters/In the U.S.A.!"*

(*Is this going to change?  No.)
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State Governance in the Time of Coronavirus


Texas has 1,227 independent school districts. (No, I'm not kidding; I looked it up and everything.)  Each district sets its own date for graduation.  Almost all graduation ceremonies in every district have been cancelled due to the coronavirus.  Most districts are struggling to set up "virtual" graduations in May, with possibly some sort of "real" graduation ceremony in July; if that's possible.

Today the Governor announced that graduations can take place in June.  This, of course, will inflame parents who will demand their precious scholars be allowed to graduate high school (!) (honestly, who remembers their high school graduation?) "for real," and that it be done in June.  It also throws a frantic month or so of planning right in the crapper for 1,227 school districts.

And then when the number of cases explodes, and school districts want to cancel June graduations because of the danger?  And no, none of the 1,227 districts had any prior notice that the Governor was going to make this announcement today.

And you think things are fucked up in the White House....
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Ignorance is Strength


A)  way to keep patrons away, dude.

B)  Let me introduce you to the 10th Amendment.  Pretty clear you have no idea what's in the Constitution, or how it's been interpreted.


It was always a fungible term.  And, as ever, Trump can't insult unless he projects.  Guilty dog barks loudest, and all that.  Besides, the rising ignorance pretty much stems from Reagan's success.  Welcome to consequences.

He's expecting the rallies to resume any minute now.  He's been in the White House for months, ya know!

Trump will blame the governors; and the Chinese.

Not to the House of Representatives, however; and only when Trump doesn't get antsy to get to the microphone.  So, basically, never.

Not if Gionino's Pizzeria's version of the Constitution has anything to say about it!

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"I do not know much about gods;


"but I think that the market/Is a strong green god—"

We who are about to die for the shareholders salute you!

Just to reinforce the idea that we are living in Rome; and pretty much in its last days.  And no, I don't expect the coronavirus experience to change this cultural attitude very much at all.

A coin of Julius Caesar shows his spirit descending cometlike to takes it place among the eternal deities. A coin of Augustus Caesar calls him divi filius, son of a divine one, son of a god, son of the aforesaid comet. A coin of Tiberius Caesar hails him as pontifex maximuis, supreme bridge builder between earth and heaven, high priest of an imperial people. A silver denarius was a day's pay for a laborer and, if a day laborer meant somebody who worked every day rather than somebody who looked for work every day, it would have been a very good salary. Imagine this situation: If, after three days of hard work, a day laborer held those silver denarii in his hand, how would he, could he, should he distinguish between politics and religion in the Roman Empire?....

Rome, and Rome alone, had built a kingdom and only it could approve how to build an underkingdom, a minrealm, a subordinate rule.
Jon Dominic Cross and Jonathan Reed, Excavating Jesus, revised & updated (HarperSanFrancisco, 2001), pp. 178-79

Our coins depict dead Presidents; but they are secular deities.  Look at the outrage when Trump violated the "holy space" of the Lincoln Memorial recently, to hold is "town hall" on FoxNews.  Trump tells his followers to join him virtually in the Mass led by Cardinal Dolan. Republicans from Chris Christie to Dan Patrick tell us some must sacrifice for the good of others, just as everyone in the Roman Empire was meant to sacrifice to the power and authority of Rome.  The proudly foolish statement "Land of the Free Because of the Brave" would be right at home in the Rome of the Caesars, because it was the Caesars who brought security, prosperity, and the Pax Romana, to the Empire for the benefit of all; and without it?  How do we distinguish betweent politics and religion in the American empire?  Not much better than the Roman  Empire did; and for much the same reasons.

At the same time, Trump supporters in Arizona; all three of them.

And what's important now is the number of judges Trump has appointed, and George Conway's connection to Project Lincoln:
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