The Commentariat -- July 20, 2020

Late Morning/Afternoon Update:

Axios: "St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner announced on Monday that she has charged Mark and Patricia McCloskey with felony unlawful use of a weapon after the couple pulled guns on anti-racism protesters outside of their mansion.... Photos of the McCloskeys, both personal injury attorneys in their 60s, went viral last month and have stirred a fiery partisan debate on social media. Missouri's Republican Gov. Mike Parson has said he would likely pardon the couple if they were charged, and Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) has called on the Justice Department to open a civil rights investigation into Gardner." ~~~

     ~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: As to why Hawley might be siccing DOJ on Gardner, this from the Guardian: "Gardner, the first African-American top prosecutor in St. Louis' history, was elected in 2016 as one of the country's new wave of progressive prosecutors, who aimed to reduce mass incarceration and address the stark racial disparities within America's criminal justice system. Since she announced her investigation into the McCloskeys, powerful white Republicans, including the president, Missouri's governor, and Republican Sen. Josh Hawley, have rallied behind the wealthy white couple, and made clear that they would oppose any attempt to charge them." ~~~

     ~~~ Update. Jim Salter of the AP: "St. Louis' top prosecutor on Monday charged a white husband and wife with felony unlawful use of a weapon for displaying guns during a racial injustice protest outside their mansion. Mark and Patricia McCloskey are both personal injury attorneys in their 60s. Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner told The Associated Press that their actions risked creating a violent situation during an otherwise nonviolent protest last month. 'It is illegal to wave weapons in a threatening manner -- that is unlawful in the city of St. Louis,' Gardner said."

Evan Perez, et al., of CNN: "The man suspected of shooting the husband and son of US District Judge Esther Salas on Sunday at her North Brunswick, New Jersey, home has been identified as Roy Den Hollander, the US Attorney's Office in New Jersey announced Monday afternoon. Den Hollander was a lawyer who once argued a case before Salas, according to court records. The FBI has called Den Hollander the 'primary subject,' and he is dead, the statement reads. Earlier, two law enforcement sources told CNN that the suspect died of what is believed to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound.... A FedEx package addressed to Salas was found by officials investigating a vehicle associated with the suspect..." Mrs. McC: TV reports identify Den Hollander as a "men's rights advocate."

Brett Samuels of the Hill: "President Trump on Monday signaled he may order federal agents to be deployed to Chicago, New York City, Philadelphia and other major cities as he threatens to crack down further on unrest across the country.... 'I'm going to do something -- that, I can tell you,' Trump said. 'Because we're not going to let New York and Chicago and Philadelphia and Detroit and Baltimore and all of these -- Oakland is a mess. We're not going to let this happen in our country. All run by liberal Democrats.'" ~~~

~~~ Gregory Pratt & Jeremy Gorner of the Chicago Tribune: "The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is crafting plans to deploy about 150 federal agents to Chicago this week, the Chicago Tribune has learned, a move that would come amid growing controversy nationally about federal force being used in American cities."

John Wagner of the Washington Post: "Georgia Democrats on Monday chose Nikema Williams, a state senator and chairwoman of the state party, to replace the late representative John Lewis (D) on the November ballot. Lewis, who died Friday at the age of 80 after a battle with pancreatic cancer, had won the June primary for the 5th Congressional District seat. Under state law, the Georgia Democratic Party was required to choose a replacement nominee on Monday, the first business day since Lewis's death.... The Democrat will face Republican Angela Stanton-King, an author and television personality. In February, President Trump pardoned Stanton-King for her role in a stolen vehicle ring in 2007, for which she served six months in home confinement.In 2016, Democrat Hillary Clinton carried the district with 85 percent of the vote over Trump." The Hill's story is here.

The New York Times' live updates of coronavirus developments Monday are here: "Teachers unions sued Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida on Monday over his emergency order pushing schools to fully reopen next month even as coronavirus cases in the state are surging. The suit, which appears to be the first of its kind across the country, sets up a confrontation between unions and politicians that could change the trajectory of school reopening over the coming weeks. In other parts of the country, including California and parts of Texas, many large school districts have concluded in recent days that it is not safe to hold in-person classes. But Mr. DeSantis, a Republican, has been pushing for things to be different in Florida, which is home to five of the country's 10 largest districts." ~~~

~~~ The Washington Post's live updates for Monday are here.

John Kruzel of the Hill: "The Supreme Court on Monday denied a request by House Democrats to accelerate the timeline of remaining court battles over congressional subpoenas for President Trump's tax returns. The bid by lawmakers came in response to the court's landmark 7-2 ruling earlier this month to shield a trove of Trump's financial records from several Democratic-led House committees and return the dispute to lower courts for further litigation."

AP: "Former Ohio Gov. John Kasich, a Republican and frequent Trump critic, has been approached and is expected to speak at the Democratic National Convention on [Joe] Biden's behalf next month, according to a person with direct knowledge of the plans who insisted on anonymity to discuss strategy. Kasich is among a handful of high-profile Republicans likely to become more active in supporting Biden in the fall. Trump, meanwhile, is doing virtually nothing to expand his appeal beyond his most loyal supporters. Some GOP operatives believe the suburbs are lost while a contingent of high-profile Republicans are openly questioning the president's reelection message."

Marissa Lang of the Washington Post: "Christopher David..., [a] 53-year-old Portland resident..., a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy and former member of the Navy's Civil Engineer Corps..., came to the [Portland, Oregon,] protest ... [to ask] what the [federal] officers involved thought of the oath they had sworn to protect and defend the Constitution.... The federal officers ... rushed a line of protesters nearby, knocking them to the ground. David walked toward a gap in the line, calling out to the officers. 'Why are you not honoring your oath?' he bellowed.... An officer trained his weapon on David's chest as several agents pushed him, sending David stumbling backward. But he regained his center and tried again. Another agent raised his baton and began to beat David, who stood unwavering with his arms at his sides. Then another officer unloaded a canister of chemical irritant spray into David's face.... Unable to see from the chemicals burning his eyes and blurring his vision, David said, he stumbled into a cloud of gas that made him cough and retch. He found his way to a bench in the park, where a street medic aided him and eventually pulled him away from the advancing officers. At the hospital, he said, he learned his right hand had been broken in two places." The story also is available in the Seattle Times. ~~~

Wallace Trumps Trump. Aaron Blake of the Washington Post: "Trump's interview with Fox's Chris Wallace was a painful affair from start to finish. Wallace is always a good and tough interviewer, unlike the Fox opinion hosts Trump frequents, and he is always prepared, but this was on another level. The interview wasn't overly adversarial; Wallace was perfectly willing to talk about the things Trump was interested in and to play ball when Trump responded in relatively good faith. It wasn't slanted; instead it merely raised the very factual counterpoints dealt with frequently in coverage of Trump. And it wasn't rushed, which meant that Wallace could dig into the points Trump was making without fear of neglecting other topics he wanted to touch on.... These were the kinds of things that have been pointed out ad nauseam outside the audience of the president; Wallace just had the venue and the wherewithal to actually press him on them. And the result was something unlike we’ve seen thus far in Trump's presidency."

~~~~~~~~~~

What happens when an interviewer challenges Trump's hoo-hah:

Katie Rogers of the New York Times: "An agitated President Trump offered a string of combative and often dubious assertions in an interview aired Sunday, defending his handling of the coronavirus with misleading evidence, attacking his own health experts, disputing polls showing him trailing in his re-election race and defending people who display the Confederate flag as victims of 'cancel culture.' The president's remarks, delivered in an interview on 'Fox News Sunday,' amounted to a contentious potpourri more commonly found on his Twitter feed and at his political rallies. The difference this time was a vigorous attempt by the host, Chris Wallace, to fact-check him, leading to several clashes between the two on matters ranging from the coronavirus response to whether Mr. Trump would accept the results of the election should he lose.... ~~~

~~~ "When told that Mr. Biden was chosen in the Fox poll as the more mentally sound candidate, Mr. Trump disputed that finding and defended his cognitive test results to Mr. Wallace, who said he had taken the same test that the president had bragged about acing this month. Mr. Wallace pointed out that one of the questions asked to identify an elephant. 'It's all misrepresentation,' Mr. Trump said. 'Because, yes, the first few questions are easy, but I'll bet you couldn't even answer the last five questions. I'll bet you couldn't. They get very hard, the last five questions.'" (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ~~~

~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: In case you're convinced the last five questions are so hard that Chris Wallace could not answer a one of them, the Las Vegas Sun has printed one version of the test (they're all similar). Here's one: "Repeat: 'The cat always hid under the couch when dogs were in the room.'" Earlier this month, Trump told Sean Hannity that Joe Biden could not pass the test, either. He also told Hannity, "I took it at Walter Reed Medical Center in front of doctors. And they were very surprised. They said, that's an unbelievable thing. Rarely does anybody do what you just did." IOW, Trump's cognitive abilities are so limited that he thinks that repeating a simple sentence is a task so difficult that only rarely can adults do it. ~~~

~~~ In fairness to Trump, it is possible he took some different test: "And I answered all 35 questions correctly." The MoCA test, by a layperson's generous count, has only 20 or so tasks. However, Wallace said, "...it's not the hardest test. They have a picture and it says 'what's that' and it's an elephant." Maybe after he did poorly on the first set of tasks, doctors gave him additional tasks, and that tuckered him out to the point that later questions seemed hard. We'll never know.

~~~ From the New York Times' live updates of coronavirus developments Sunday, which are here and linked below. "Mr. Trump said during [an] interview with Chris Wallace ... that Dr. Fauci had been against his decision to close the borders to travelers from China in January. That is not true.... Mr. Trump also said that Dr. Fauci had been against Americans wearing masks. Dr. Fauci has said that he does not regret urging Americans not to wear masks in the early days of the pandemic, referencing a severe shortage of protective gear for medical professionals.... Mr. Trump falsely claimed that the coronavirus rate in other countries was lower than in the United States because those nations did not engage in testing.... Mr. Trump said that he doubted whether Dr. Robert R. Redfield, the director of the C.D.C., was correct in predicting that the pandemic would be worse this fall.... He ... reiterated his earlier claim, unsupported by science, that the virus would suddenly cease one day. 'It's going to disappear and I'll be right,' Mr. Trump said. 'Because I've been right probably more than anybody else.'"

Derek Hawkins & Felicia Sonmez of the Washington Post: "With coronavirus cases rising across the country and the U.S. death toll topping 137,000, President Trump on Sunday dismissed concerns about the spike in infections, telling Fox News that 'many of those cases shouldn't even be cases.... Many of those cases are young people that would heal in a day,' the president told Fox News host Chris Wallace in an interview. 'They have the sniffles and we put it down as a test.'... Trump's remarks came after another week of grim data highlighting the uncontrolled spread of the virus. Infections rose in states from every region of the country, with more than a dozen states on Saturday reaching record highs in their seven-day averages for new daily cases."(Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Morgan Chalfant of the Hill: "President Trump in a testy interview with Fox News's Chris Wallace downplayed recent surges in coronavirus cases, defended his stance on Confederate-named bases and sought to attack ... Joe Biden. Trump disputed polls showing him trailing Biden, eviscerating his Democratic opponent as 'not competent to be president' and controlled by the 'radical' progressive wing of the party. He also complained about his inability to hold rallies in some areas of the country due to the coronavirus, accusing 'Democrat-run states' of not allowing him to do so.... Trump also described Dr. Anthony Fauci ... as 'a little bit of an alarmist' while denying that the White House is involved in an effort to discredit him." The Guardian's report, by Martin Pengelly, is here. Mrs. McC: It's impossible for fact-checkers to keep up with this Big Fat Liar. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

A transcript of the interview is here.

The Trumpidemic, Ctd.

The New York Times' live updates of coronavirus developments Sunday are here. The Washington Post's report, by Felicia Sonmez, is here.

Joel Achenbach, et al., of the Washington Post: "Six months after the coronavirus appeared in America, the nation has failed spectacularly to contain it. The country's ineffective response has shocked observers around the planet. Many countries have rigorously driven infection rates nearly to zero. In the United States, coronavirus transmission is out of control. The national response is fragmented, shot through with political rancor and culture-war divisiveness. Testing shortcomings that revealed themselves in March have become acute in July, with week-long waits for results leaving the country blind to real-time virus spread and rendering contact tracing nearly irrelevant.... The American coronavirus fiasco has exposed the country's incoherent leadership, self-defeating political polarization, a lack of investment in public health, and persistent socioeconomic and racial inequities that have left millions of people vulnerable to disease and death." ~~~

~~~ In case you missed it yesterday, New York Times reporters took a deep dive into how Trump administration officials made decisions that screwed up the nation's coronavirus response.

Alexander Burns, et al., of the New York Times: "President Trump's failure to contain the coronavirus outbreak and his refusal to promote clear public-health guidelines have left many senior Republicans despairing that he will ever play a constructive role in addressing the crisis, with some concluding they must work around Mr. Trump and ignore or even contradict his pronouncements. In recent days, some of the most prominent figures in the G.O.P. outside the White House have broken with Mr. Trump over issues like the value of wearing a mask in public and heeding the advice of health experts.... They appear to be spurred by several overlapping forces, including deteriorating conditions in their own states, Mr. Trump's seeming indifference to the problem and the approach of a presidential election in which Mr. Trump is badly lagging his Democratic challenger, Joseph R. Biden Jr., in the polls."

Florida. Ye Shall Know Them by Their Masks. Kimiko de Freytas-Tamura of the New York Times: "... as cases [of the coronavirus] spike across Florida, the virus appears to have caught up with the residents of the Villages..., one of America's biggest retirement communities.... The Villages is a sprawling palm-tree-lined complex so big it has three ZIP codes, 12 golf courses and multiple libraries and movie theaters, drawing affluent retirees from all over the country.... Some steps have been taken to help slow infections. Crowds around the faux Spanish colonial buildings and fountains are smaller, theaters are closed and the bands have stopped playing. Yet, residents still congregate every day without wearing masks. They turn up the volume on a radio and dance in the squares. They crowd bars where songs by Elvis Presley and Bobby Sherman play. There are picnics and water aerobics classes.... About two-thirds of the residents are Republicans, according to local party chairs.... 'You can tell who is a Democrat, who is a Republican by their masks,' said Chris Stanley, the leader of the Villages Democratic Club."

Georgia. Governor Asks Court to Shut Up Atlanta Mayor. Michael King of WXIA Atlanta News: "Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms reacted strongly on social media late Sunday morning to Gov. Brian Kemp's request for an emergency injunction against the mayor. The injunction is part of a lawsuit filed last Thursday which seeks to block the mayor from enacting or enforcing any orders that are 'more or less restrictive' than his executive orders. 'In addition to being sued over a mask mandate and voluntary advisory guidelines on COVID-19, Gov. Kemp has asked for an emergency injunction to "restrain" me from issuing press statements and speaking to the press,' Bottoms said Sunday morning. 'Far more have sacrificed too much for me to be silent.'"

Bill Barr's Diabolical Long Game. Ryan Goodman & Danielle Schulkin of Just Security: "Attorney General Barr has been building his playbook for using federal forces against an unwilling state for decades. In an interview with the Miller Center in 2001, Barr explained his strategy for deploying federal troops to address unrest in the Virgin Islands after a major hurricane in 1989. At the time of the incident, Barr was an assistant attorney general and head of the Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel. He boasted that during this time he found a way to deploy federal forces based on a legal justification that appears to now being played out in Portland: '... we finally decided that without Presidential authority we could send down law enforcement people to defend the federal function. That is, we said, "People are interfering with the operation of our courts" and so on. I said, "We can send people down to ... keep our courts open, and if they see any crime being committed in front of them, then..., they can make the arrest."...'... The White House's true concern in 1989 was not to defend the federal function of courts -- but to quell widespread looting and disorder across the Virgin Islands. Barr bragged in his 2001 interview that he had found a way to get the federal forces down there and then play it by ear' without having to declare martial law."

Alayna Treene & Stef Kight of Axios: "President Trump and top White House officials are privately considering a controversial strategy to act without legal authority to enact new federal policies -- starting with immigration, administration officials tell Axios.... The White House thinking is being heavily influenced by John Yoo, the lawyer who wrote the Bush administration's justification for waterboarding after 9/11. Yoo detailed the theory in a National Review article, spotted atop Trump's desk in the Oval Office, which argues that the Supreme Court's 5-4 DACA ruling last month 'makes it easy for presidents to violate the law.'"

Elections 2020

Florida. A Poll Tax for the Penniless. Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post: "On the day before John Lewis died, the Supreme Court made clear that the life's work [link fixed] of the Democratic congressman from Georgia remained unfinished.... That cruel fact was brought home Thursday, when the justices rebuffed an effort to restore voting rights to nearly a million felons in Florida who have served their sentences and, under an amendment to the state constitution adopted in 2018, should have had their franchise restored.... Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Elena Kagan, stated the consequences clearly in the first sentence of their dissent: 'This Court's order prevents thousands of otherwise eligible voters from participating in Florida's primary election simply because they are poor.' This is even worse than it sounds. First, not only can most of those affected not afford to pay the required amount, the Florida system is so messed up that the state can't even tell people what they owe and won't even be able to begin to do so until 2026.?

Scott Neuman of NPR: "The son of U.S. District Court Judge Esther Salas was fatally shot and her husband critically wounded when a gunman dressed as a FedEx driver entered her home near North Brunswick, N.J., Sunday afternoon, according to local media. Salas herself was reportedly unharmed in the attack, the New Jersey Globe reports. Daniel Anderl, Salas' 20-year-old son, was killed. Her husband, Mark Anderl, a criminal defense attorney and former assistant Essex County prosecutor, reportedly underwent surgery at Robert Wood Johnson Hospital in New Brunswick, and is listed in critical but stable condition."

Comments

[Akhilleus]

The wages of NPD

As the nation tumbles and stumbles its way through the worst health emergency in a century, the infant in the White House sits in his high chair and pounds his tiny fists at how unfair the universe has been to him.

He has been handed everything in life anyone could possibly hope for, and he didn’t have to work a single day for it. He’s rich, famous, he’s been a (half assed) TV star (of sorts—sort of on the level of a...Chuck Woolley, let’s say), millions think he’s just grand, he was “elected” president*. But it’s not enough.

He demands that everyone love him, bow down before him, acknowledge his greatness, and never have the temerity to question him. Superior people like himself aren’t questioned, they aren’t criticized, they just walk down the street and soak in the adulation.

So he believes.

But he demands all of this without working for it. Without earning it, or, more importantly, deserving it. His qualifications for his current job are the exact opposite of what the position requires. To start with, he’s not a leader. He’s a follower. He follows any path that will lead to quick and easy—and unearned—approbation. If thugs and idiots think wearing a mask during an outbreak of a contagious disease makes them look like wussies, then, by jing, the Donald won’t wear a mask either! Of course some of his “qualifications” come naturally, virulent racism, unchecked boorishness, indifference to the pain and suffering of others, and crippling self love.

It’s his NPD. Our old friend Dr. Marvin, hit it right on the head. He recognized immediately the signs of a hopeless narcissist who lives in his own fantasy world where he is king and all live to praise, honor, and serve him, as the Baltimore Catechism used to inform young Catholics about our role vis a vis the almighty.

But for Trump (and us) this condition is fatal. He’s never learned how to deal with misfortune and difficulty in life. Even with all his colossal failures, his West Side “deal”, the Park Plaza fuck up, the casino crashes, the airline, the bankruptcies, he’s never learned anything useful about the world the rest of us inhabit.

What he learned was Daddy would bail him out. Any other problem he could bully, bribe, buy, or lie his way out of. But not anymore. Now he has to produce. But he can’t. He doesn’t know how. He’s about as poorly equipped to lead a nation a six year old.

Instead, like many six year olds, he puts his fingers in his ears and shouts “La, la, la, I can’t hear you!!” when told something he doesn’t like. Or he blames someone else, or runs to his room, slams the door, and takes refuge with his stuffed animals. Except, for this child, his stuffed animals are all on TV.

This six year old narcissist can’t help it. He’s never going to change. The truly sick thing is all the others who follow this dolt as he careens from one disaster to the next.

But they can’t help it either, I suppose.

They’re republicans.

And we’re fucked. Even if he loses in November, there’s a looong time until the next inauguration. A lot of people are going to die between now and then. There’s so much to clean up that it could be years before any hint of normalcy returns.

In the meantime, we’ll be treated to screams of how unfair it all is that the infant has not been handed yet another unearned reward just for being the Donald.

[Akhilleus]

Oops. That’s Chuck Woolery. Small screen, fat fingers. Wouldn’t want some Wooley guy getting credit for being a half assed ignorant TV goober.

[Ken Winkes]

I don't see that slimeball Yoo's natterings in the "The National Review" about how a president can skirt the law offer much that is new about either the law or his own personality defects.

Yoo has long been a fan of (dare I say, torturous) legal arguments that justify the president as dictator, and this one, already touted by a confused Pretender in the Chris Wallace interview, was right up his one-way authoritarian alley, the one marked "I can do anything I want."

Yoo's argument is hardly elegant. What it comes down to is the simple assertion that a president can do pretty much anything he wants, even if it runs against the will of Congress, because the mechanisms for checking his (or her) abuse of the power move so slowly that little can be done about the actions taken as long as he holds office.

Pretty much like saying that because a fleet-footed robber can outrun a slow cop, robbery is legal.

Last time I heard Yoo taught law at Bolt Hall, U. C. Berkeley's esteemed law school.

Shame on them.

Maybe an on-line MBA program, sanctioned by the DeVos Dept. of Miseducation, would have him.

[PD Pepe]

Just finished reading the Wallace/Trump interview transcript: I had to stop at intervals–-just to get up and move around in order not to scream out loud––I can't even describe how utterly incoherent and psychically sick Trump's replies were because to do so would be repetitive and unsurprising; suffice it to say there was an inordinate amount of transference going on. Once again I feel spent–- feel the frustration and anger welling up again with the knowledge of what this country is going through because of this pathetic imbecile.

And I was going to talk about corn today–-the "I'm as corny as Kansas in August..." kind of fun stuff about this amazing product. I was going to tell you that the average number of kernels in a single ear of corn usually in sixteen rows of the cob are 800. Each ear has one strand of corn silk for each kernel. I was also going to write about what it was like growing up in Wisconsin while when traveling out of the city or towns you passed hundreds of dairy farms and acres and acres of fields of corn. But I'm too spent to talk about corn–-I'll do that another day.

[Marie Burns]

@PD Pepe: Yeah, I tried to watch Wallace's interview on Fox last evening, and I am proud to say I lasted about 7 minutes before I had to switch channels. Melanie may belong to a mercenary second third wives' club, but she deserves every penny she gets. I would go stark, staring mad after one "conversation" with Donald. Everything is about him, everything he says is what he thinks at the moment makes him look good -- even if it's the opposite of what he's said recently -- facts are what he says they are, you're wrong and you can't get a word in edgewise anyway. He's an oppressive sadist.

[Bobby Lee]

as @AK noted it's a long time from 3 November to 20 January and that long night isn't going to be pretty. The transition discussions might even happen as current placeholders make themselves unavailable to the incoming administration. Mitch will see that every vacant judges seat is filled. This includes SCOTUS. Iowa senator Ernst has already said she's fine with confirming a SCOTUS seat during the transition.

He's going to try his little best to pull the whole thing down with him.

[citizen625]

How some people, bright and other wise use Covid contrary-ism: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/19/business/media/coronavirus-contrarians-lockdowns-masks.html?action=click&module=Spotlight&pgtype=Homepage#commentsContainer.
I do the math on one of these highlighted guys and he sold 100,000 self published screeds. Pretty healthy little income stream there. You'd think that his wife the psychiatrist, who worked with the criminally insane, could put some rails on unsafe advocacy by her husband but....Money. Kind of reminds me of what the dynamic must be between Representative Jim Jordan and his wife. Not too much difference between "tony Hudson Valley" and Ohio when money is available to be swept up.

[Bobby Lee]

Oops! That second sentence should read: "The transition discussions might even not happen..."

[Ken Winkes]

The Pretender, who said he will be right eventually, echoes his favorite economist whom I'm sure he assiduously studied at Wharton, J. M. Keynes, who was himself undoubtedly right when he said "In the long run, we'll all be dead."

May we live to see both.

[unwashed]

Strange that a wall of angry mothers in Portland can't stop the Feds from gassing them but that a lone Naked Athena turns them into scaredy-pants.

[Marie Burns]

@unwashed: Ha! Athena is wonderful! And Christopher David should get a presidential medal. Oh wait, the beatings were the president*'s fault.

[Ken Winkes]

Finally, the lady with the scarf makes some sense, or Digby makes some sense of her.

Buried toward the bottom, but Christianity strikes again.

https://www.salon.com/2020/07/20/donald-trumps-virus-whisperer-the-tragic-downfall-of-dr-deborah-birx/

And good to know the Dept. of Homeland Security is now charged with keeping us safer from a few protesters, mostly peaceful, than from foreign threats to our troops and citizens like, say, Russia.

[Hattie]

Ken W. -

Excellent piece from Salon / Digby. Thank you.

Was repulsed by Birx from the get-go: a bobble-head nodding affirmatively to Piggy’s every word. Until his light rays & bleach epiphany. (Birx, then seated, and no longer looking camera-ready.) Her “presentation” - carefully coifed and couture-ed - expressed (in my mind) her pride-of-place (near the podium). Not that I don’t admire or find interest fashion. I do. But I saw this as costuming for a performance. And, as I may have posted here, I observed - as the questioning became louder - a gradual diminishing of concern for her appearance.

I regard her as a sycophant. Not a scientist. And feel zero sympathy.

(I’m especially pissed-off today, learning of another Covid-45 victim who lives in Maryland.)

[Hattie]

unwashed -

Brava, Athena! I might have missed this had you not posted.
Thank you.

If I still looked like that when naked (and wasn’t covid-distancing),
perhaps . . . ?

[Ken Winkes]

Honoring an American hero.

Something else to make the Pretender seethe.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/anthony-fauci-to-throw-first-pitch-at-washington-nationals-season-opener