Sunday Morning Male Beauty

 

The Insurrection Was Just Part of the Plot

If there is any lesson from the 2020 election and the Trump attempt to launch a coup, it is that an immoral malignant narcissist should never ever be allowed near the White House again.  Additional lessons are that Trump coup attempt failed because there remained moral individuals loyal to the U.S. Constitution who refused to do Trump's bidding and/or took actions to prevent Trump's plot from coming to fruition.  These individuals range from General Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to Attorney General Bill Barr (hardly my favorite individual), Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen, to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and Arizona Governor Doug Ducey.  A  piece in The Atlantic sketches out an overview of what seems to have been Trump's strategy to overthrow a legitimate election driven no doubt by (i) his fear of criminal prosecution once out of office, and (ii) his narcissism that could not accept that a majority of moral Americans - which excludes evangelicals and white supremacists - found him disgusting.  Here are article highlights:

For raw emotional content, [last] Tuesday’s hearing of the new House select committee to investigate the January 6 insurrection was nonpareil. Four police officers who fought to hold back armed hordes seeking to disrupt Congress told stories of physical injury, racist abuse, and post-traumatic distress. Even for Americans who paid close attention to the crisis, these stories added new texture and horror.

But the House Oversight Committee shed more light this week on just how and why January 6 happened, releasing handwritten notes by Richard Donoghue, a top Justice Department official in the waning days of the Trump administration. The violence of the day has taken center stage, but these notes help put it in context: The angry crowd was just one part of President Donald Trump’s long-running effort to overturn the results of the election in the House of Representatives.

Trump’s effort to call the election results into doubt began long before the votes were cast, but it accelerated immediately after the election. As I wrote on January 26, Trump’s coup attempt started not on January 6 but in the wee hours of November 4, when Trump said at the White House, “This is a fraud on the American public. This is an embarrassment to our country. We were getting ready to win this election.” He added: “Frankly, we did win this election.” (He did not, and was not being frank.)

In November and early December, the focus of Trump’s efforts was pressuring state officials in places such as Arizona and Georgia to decline to certify results in favor of Biden, and pressing Attorney General William Barr to cast doubt on the results. But Barr declined, breaking with Trump, and so did pivotal Republicans including Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and Arizona Governor Doug Ducey. Once Barr was pushed aside, The Washington Post reported this week, Trump began a daily campaign to pressure Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen into doing what Barr would not . . . . Unbeknownst to Rosen, Trump was also orchestrating a plan to topple him.

What Trump hoped to achieve from these efforts has always been a little hazy. The Justice Department doesn’t certify elections, and at most could have pursued fraud claims in court—had there been any credible ones, which there were not. The new releases by the House Oversight Committee, first reported by The New York Times, connect the dots. Donoghue explained to Trump that the DOJ couldn’t overturn the result, but the president was unruffled.

“Don’t expect you to do that, just say that the election was corrupt + leave the rest to me and the R[epublican] Congressmen” is how Donoghue recorded Trump’s response in handwritten notes.

All Trump wanted was some semi-independent arbiter to declare the election fraudulent—whether that was the governor of Arizona, the Georgia secretary of state, or the U.S. Justice Department. This much was clear even then, but Trump’s endgame was not. . . . . he didn’t need any of these officials to set aside the results on their own. He just needed enough ammunition, no matter how tenuous, that he could derail certification of the election in Congress.

If the election couldn’t be decided based on the results, then it would go to the House of Representatives. Though Democrats held a majority there, the presidency would have been decided by state delegations, of which Republicans controlled more.

The Justice Department refused to say the election was stolen, of course. Ahead of January 6, Trump tried his last two options. First, he pressured Vice President Mike Pence, both publicly and privately, to refuse to certify the results, but Pence concluded that he had no constitutional authority to do so. Trump also summoned a crowd to Washington and demanded they fight. They did, but it didn’t work. Despite the assault on the Capitol, the election was certified, and Biden was inaugurated 14 days later.

The violence has taken center stage recently. General Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, reportedly feared that Trump was contemplating a military coup, and took measures to ensure he couldn’t misuse troops.

What is becoming clear is that the violence, though abhorrent, was simply a part of the bigger and more dangerous plot, not the culmination of it. Although Trump clearly had no problem with the riot, there is no evidence that Trump envisioned a violent coup, and as the attack on the Capitol unfolded, he watched, bemused, from the White House, neither calling off the attackers nor doing anything more to spur them on.

Could Trump’s plan to toss the election to the House have worked, if only Barr or Raffensperger or Rosen or Donoghue or Pence had been willing to go along? The answer is ultimately unknowable, but depends in part on how you define success.

Yet even if the House gambit had failed, a public decree of a corrupt election by the Justice Department or the vice president would have been catastrophic in its own right. Trump had his finger on the pulse of his backers. (“You guys may not be following the internet the way I do,” the extremely online president told DOJ officials, and he was almost certainly right.) Despite the lack of evidence of fraud tainting the 2020 results, huge numbers of Republicans tell pollsters they don’t trust the election system. If Trump had managed to twist some other authority into giving the claims of fraud its imprimatur, the damage to faith in elections would be deeper.

If the country is to reckon with what happened on January 6, the focus will need to be less on the tactical movements—whether by police or by Oath Keepers—around the Capitol, and more on the strategic choices that Trump was making further up Pennsylvania Avenue throughout the postelection period.

What is frightening is that Republicans across the country are working to replace moral individuals who refused to yield to Trump's pressure with either Trump cultists and/or spineless individuals who will do the bidding of a would be autocrat.  

Saturday Morning Male Beauty

 

It’s Time to Stop Coddling the Vaccine Refusers

I, like I suspect many, have reached the point utter disgust with those have refused to get vaccinated against Covid-19.  Unless one has a legitimate medical reason to not get vaccinated - I'd make zero exceptions for "religious beliefs" - getting vaccinated needs to be mandatory.  All employers, universities, restaurants and other business need to require their employees (the ones who refuse should be fired and be treated as have been fired for cause, thus depriving them unemployment payments) and customer be vaccinated and refuse entry to the unvaccinated.  Life needs to become very difficult and unpleasant for these individuals who are putting themselves and all of the rest of us at risk. They need to become pariahs and no sympathy afforded to their ignorant, self-centered, and/or delusional beliefs.  A column in the Washington Post makes this case (I'd delete the religious exemption) and even firmer actions need to be taken to force vaccinations. Here are column excerpts:

P­­­ay people to get vaccinated, no matter whether that is unfair to those who didn’t receive checks for jabs. Require them to do so as a condition of going to work or enrolling in school. Do whatever it takes — and, recent weeks have shown, it is going to take steps like these — to get the pandemic under control.

Those of us who have behaved responsibly — wearing masks and, since the vaccines became available, getting our shots — cannot be held hostage by those who can’t be bothered to do the same, or who are too deluded by misinformation to understand what is so clearly in their own interest.

The more inconvenient we make life for the unvaccinated, the better our own lives will be. More important, the fewer who will needlessly die. We cannot ignore the emerging evidence that the delta variant is transmissible even by those who have been fully vaccinated. “The war has changed,” as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention concluded.

President Biden recognized this new reality with his actions Thursday. He announced that federal employees must be vaccinated or mask up and submit continuing proof that they are not infected; he urged private employers to do the same; and he encouraged the use of federal funds to prod — okay, bribe — the unvaccinated to step up.

If anything, Biden didn’t go far enough. He should have imposed a tighter mandate on federal workers and contractors — no frequent testing option as an alternative. He should have required vaccines for airline and railroad travel. He should have mandated vaccines for members of the military rather than kicking that can a few weeks down the road.

If I sound exasperated, I am, and I don’t think I’m alone. I have been looking forward to going back to my office — or backish, since it likely won’t be full-time — in a few weeks. Now, with D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) having wisely reimposed a mask mandate in the city, it’s hard to see how we’re going to actually pull that off.

It’s reasonable, it’s fair, and it’s legal to step up the pressure on the reckless noncompliant. By reckless, I mean to exclude some people: If you have a medical condition that counsels against vaccination, you are excused.

If you have a good-faith religious objection, same — although I have a hard time imagining what that might be beyond adherents of Christian Science, or what religion does not advocate some version of the Golden Rule. Yes, some fetal cell lines were used in the development or testing of the vaccines, but the Vatican has declared that it is “morally acceptable” to take the vaccines, and that reasoning seems solid.

And speaking of morally acceptable: How galling is it that some labor unions are resisting the vaccine mandate? The Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association, the American Postal Workers Union and the American Federation of Teachers, which also represents health-care workers, are insisting that any mandate be the subject of bargaining. No. Show some leadership. Just tell your members to get the damned shot — for the sake of their colleagues if not themselves.

Federal judges have already rejected challenges to vaccine mandates by hospitals and public universities. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has made it clear that federal anti-discrimination laws don’t prevent private employers from requiring proof of vaccination. The Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel concluded that federal law “does not prohibit public or private entities from imposing vaccination requirements” for vaccines even at the emergency-use stage.

A century ago, balancing the tension between individual liberties and public safety, the Supreme Court upheld the ability of state and local governments to enforce mandatory vaccination laws. “In every well-ordered society charged with the duty of conserving the safety of its members,” wrote Justice John Marshall Harlan, “the rights of the individual … may at times, under the pressure of great dangers, be subjected to such restraint, to be enforced by reasonable regulations, as the safety of the general public may demand.” . . . The “safety of the general public” demands a “reasonable” response today, just as it did in 1905.

Friday Morning Male Beauty

 

DOJ Increases the Odds Trump Will Be Held Accountable

Several lawsuits are pending against Donald Trump, a/k/a Der Trumpfuhrer and his acolytes in Congress who participated in the "rally" that preceded the assault on the U.S. Capitol by Trump cultists.  One such is the cretin GOP Rep. Mo Brooks of Alabama who has admitted he wore body armor to the event thereby dispelling any claim that a peaceful, lawful event was what was anticipated.  Brooks and Trump are both claiming that they are protected from the lawsuits since they were performing  duties as the incited a riot and an insurrection that sought to block the certification of Trump's loss in the 2020 election.   Indeed, Trump has argued through his sleazy attorneys that none of his actions as president can be subjected to legal constraint, underscoring that he has always viewed himself as a would be dictator. The U.S. Department of Justice has filed a brief that politely calls those arguments out for what they are: utter bullshit.  A column in the Washington Post looks at how the DOJ action is very bad news for Trump, Brooks and others.  Here are highlights:

Donald Trump managed to evade legal accountability throughout his presidency. That might be about to change — and the newest sign comes in a brief filed by the Justice Department. It doesn’t directly address the former president, yet has ominous implications for his ability to avoid responsibility for his role in the Jan. 6 insurrection.

The Justice filing came in a lawsuit in which Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) and a number of Capitol Police officers have sued Trump and others for their roles in the insurrection. One of those named in the suit, Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.), claimed that he is immune from personal liability under a law known as the Westfall Act, which shields federal officials acting within the scope of their employment.

U.S. District Judge Amit P. Mehta asked for the Justice Department’s position, and, in a filing Tuesday, the department resoundingly rejected Brooks’s view. This is a correct — indeed, an unavoidable — interpretation of the law. It is a view that is directly relevant to Trump’s potential liability in the Swalwell lawsuit and other pending litigation, and a welcome departure from the position endorsed by the Justice Department in the defamation lawsuit filed against Trump by writer E. Jean Carroll.

In the Carroll case, the department accepted Trump’s argument that his disparaging comments about Carroll while he was president were within the broad scope of his responsibilities. . . . . I strongly disagreed with that decision: Accusing someone of lying about your actions before you became president, as Trump did with Carroll’s rape accusation, cannot automatically fall within the scope of your presidential employment.

In the Swalwell suit, the department adopted a narrower and, I believe, more legally defensible, stance about when federal employees are immune from suit.

The department first invoked Brooks’s own “defense” that his appearance at Trump’s Jan. 6 rally before the insurrection was “campaign activity,” not part of his official position: He was trying to get Trump declared the winner of the 2020 election and to promote GOP wins in 2022 and 2024. That was, the department properly concluded, political activity, not remotely covered by any immunity.

Even if Brooks’s appearance was not deemed campaign-related, the department added, he still is not entitled to immunity because he was accused of violating federal law — by definition, not part of his job. “Instigat[ing] a violent attack on the U.S. Capitol … plainly could not be within the scope of federal employment,” the brief said.

Where does that leave Trump, who is also a defendant in the lawsuit and has also asked that it be dismissed? Not in great legal shape, in my view.

[T]he department’s forceful conclusion was that Brooks’s alleged actions — conspiring to “injure members of Congress and Vice President Pence,” “disrupt the peaceful transfer of power,” or otherwise ensure Trump’s installation as the next president — cannot qualify as part of Brooks’s official job. That irrefutable logic is equally applicable to Trump.

Tellingly, the department’s brief said, “Inciting or conspiring to foment a violent attack on the United States Congress is not within the scope of employment of a Representative — or any federal employee,” a category manifestly including the president himself.

Trump, in asking the judge to dismiss the case against him, referred to the Westfall Act in a footnote, arguing that “the allegations arose out of his [exercise] of political speech, clearly within the scope of his employment (i.e., ensuring the faithful execution of the laws and carrying out his other Constitutional duties).” Then he made an even more jaw-dropping claim: “The Constitution Forecloses This Court from Exercising Jurisdiction Over President Trump for Actions Taken During His Presidency.”

But, as Swalwell and other plaintiffs argue, Trump went far beyond giving a controversial speech. He insisted that he had won reelection regardless of what anyone said and stirred up a violent, partly armed and visibly angry mob and aimed it at the Capitol to disrupt the official counting of electoral votes. He stood by and even praised the mob as it grew violent, rejecting requests to help those under assault.

Inciting an attack on Congress “is not within the scope of employment of … any federal employee,” the department reminded us, and Trump, in its brief. That single word, “any,” marks the difference between a president and a dictator.

Thursday Morning Male Beauty

 

The Right Is Rooting Against America’s Olympic Athletes

The moral sickness of the American political right - especially among Trump cultists and acolytes - is only increasing as many on the right root against and denigrate America's Olympic athletes.  Black and LGBT athletes draw particular fire, especially Simone Biles who is black and, therefore, viewed as not a "true American" by these repulsive people.  Also drawing attacks are athletes who sided with calls for racial justice/equality.  Indeed, unless one is a flag waving neo-Nazi and look like a candidate for a Hitler youth program, one could suddenly find themselves targeted.  A piece in Vanity Fair looks at this latest hate mongering from the right.  Not surprisingly, Der Trumpenfuhrer is leading the hate fest.  Here are excerpts:

As American athletes compete on the world stage in the Tokyo Olympics, many on the right aren’t cheering them on. “The collection of whiny, overpaid social justice warriors are very hard to root for,” said Newsmax host Grant Stinchfield, adding that he took “pleasure” in Team USA’s basketball loss this month because of its players’ “woke” politics. “The team is filled with anthem kneelers, and I find it ironic they are willing to put USA across their chests, but in the not-so-distant past, they would kneel for the anthem.” In addition to taking pleasure in the men’s basketball team’s loss, Stinchfield also noted that he found himself “rooting against…Megan Rapinoe and her merry band of America-hating female soccer players.”

Stinchfield’s comments come on the heels of Donald Trump suggesting at a Phoenix rally last weekend that Team USA’s recent loss to Sweden was caused by the progressive politics of its athletes. “Wokeism makes you lose, ruins your mind, and ruins you as a person,” he said. “You become warped. You become demented.” Trump, who goaded the crowd into booing the U.S. women’s soccer team, went on to say that “Americans were happy” about the team’s defeat.

Politics certainly isn’t stopping at water’s edge, as the Olympics, traditionally a moment of national unity, has become the latest front in the culture wars. Right-wing politicians and pundits, apparently incensed that some athletes have spoken out against racial injustice and on other social issues, are now seizing on setbacks as evidence that American athletes on the court and field aren’t fit to represent the United States. Star Olympian Simone Biles was branded a public enemy by conservative talkers for dropping out of her role in the gymnastics team finals.

Among those criticizing Biles was right-wing sports radio host Clay Travis, who appeared on Fox News on Tuesday. “I think this is a massive issue for the United States women’s Olympics gymnastics team that she’s decided to quit in the middle of competition. We’ve never seen this happen,” he said, adding that Biles should not “be praised” for her decision and should never have “started the competition” in the first place.

Charlie Kirk, the founder of the right-wing youth group Turning Point USA, went even further in denigrating Biles, calling her a “selfish sociopath” on his podcast. “You know who has the gold medal? Russia! I have to go look at these four-foot-11 Russian Olympians chewing on their gold medals smirking at the Americans,” Kirk seethed, before claiming that America is “raising a generation of weak people like Simone Biles.”

The Atlantic’s Adam Serwer, responding to Kirk’s comments about Biles, suggested “that every Trumpist pundit understands the ravenous appetite their audiences have for belittling the tremendously successful black people they see on television, and rushes to meet every opportunity to do it.”

Biles, who was a survivor of sexual assault at the hands of former USA Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar, further explained her decision to pull out of the Tokyo Games by sharing an Instagram post penned by former gymnast Andrea Orris. “It makes me so frustrated to see comments about Simone not being mentally tough enough or quitting on her team,” Orris wrote in a message, which Biles reposted to her Instagram story. “We are talking about the same girl who was molested by her team doctor throughout her entire childhood and teen years, won the World All-Around Championship title while passing a kidney stone, put her body through an extra year of training through the pandemic, [and] added so much difficulty to her routines that the judges literally do not know how to properly rate her skills because they are so ahead of her time.” 

Disgusting.

Wednesday Morning Male Beauty

 

Pelosi Outmaneuvers McCarthy on Jan. 6 Commission

As noted in a post yesterday, as the House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol commenced yesterday, Republicans - save Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger - made it clear that they (i) sided with the insurrectionists, and (ii) under no circumstances wanted a fair and in depth of the events of January 6th and their causation, knowing full well that blame would trace back to both Donald Trump, his cultists and members of the Republican sedition caucus.  Minority leader Kevin McCarthy's ploy to undermine the investigation by pulling all five of the Republican members of Congress he named to act as saboteurs, however, may well backfire based on yesterday's testimony and video clips that went a long, long way to expose the violence of the seditionist who attacked the Capitol and their loyalty to Der Trumpenfuhrer.  A piece in Salon looks at how Nancy Pelosi seemingly has out maneuvered McCarthy.   Here are excerpts:

Earlier this month, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., made the entirely sensible decision that the select committee to investigate the insurrection of January 6 should not include pro-insurrectionists. So she declined two nominations made by House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., of Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio and Rep. Jim Banks of Indiana, two Republicans who did not even bother to hide the fact that they planned to sabotage the important work of the committee. McCarthy, who has for months resisted this effort to investigate the attack that targeted members of Congress, including himself, responded by feigning outrage that Pelosi was denying him his god-given right to make a mockery of the committee and pulled all of his nominees. 

McCarthy's tantrum initially worked. Pelosi's "no assclowns" rule, reasonable to any person whose basic sense of decency hasn't been hobbled by years of hack punditry, actually angered a number of people in the press. . . . Never mind, of course, that it was McCarthy who was playing games.

On Tuesday, we had the first hearing of what will hopefully be many into the events of January 6. Four police officers, two from the Capitol Police and two from the D.C. Metropolitan police, offered bracing and frequently heart-breaking testimony about what it was like to spend hours fighting both for their lives and to keep members of Congress safe from the rampaging mob intent on overthrowing democracy. 

"I was electrocuted again and again and again with a Taser," D.C. police officer Michael Fanone, who suffered a heart attack and a traumatic brain injury from the attack, testified. "I'm sure I was screaming, but I don't think I could even hear my own voice."

Capitol police officer Harry Dunn spoke movingly about the racist abuse he received from the rioters, who called him the N-word repeatedly. He testified about sobbing after the attack and asking, "Is this America?"

Needless to say, the day proved Pelosi's critics wrong. 

The proceedings did not, in fact, lack gravitas due to the lack of a coatless Rep. Jordan rolling up his sleeves and screaming incomprehensible conspiracy theories about "antifa" at the officers. The day would have not have been improved by having McCarthy's other saboteurs insult the officers or imply that they were lying under oath. No one's life was negatively affected by denying Republicans an opportunity to retraumatize these four men, who were incredibly brave to step forward, despite the ongoing threats from the followers of the fascist orange gaslighter the GOP is still in the thrall of. 

The notion that the committee is not bipartisan, of course, is a joke. There are two Republicans on the committee — Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois — who were chosen because they met the baseline requirement of believing fascist insurrections are very bad. The idea that these two don't "count" is inseparable from believing that to be a Republican necessarily means supporting Trump and his insurrection. And neither of them, who are both incredibly conservative despite their anti-insurrection views, are conceding that as of yet. 

[U]ltimately, it doesn't matter how "bipartisan" the committee is. As Tuesday's hearing showed, the facts are sturdy enough to stand up even under the relentless partisanship of Republicans who would rather support a seditious ex-president than admit that Democrats are right about something. The videos showing the violence, the righteous anger of the officers who are sick of being told they didn't experience what they clearly went through, and the raw emotions as these men spoke of the terrors of that day: It all speaks for itself. 

That people who continue to support Trump after January 6 should be ashamed of themselves is a given. But so should any journalist or pundit who thinks that "bipartisanship" matters more than the blunt facts of what happened on January 6 and who is responsible. (That would be Trump.) And it's clear that the committee does not need to cater to the Beltway media's fetish for bipartisanship to do its job. All they need to do is continue to uncover the ugly truth about the attack on our democracy.