A Poem

... by Danielle Coffyn

If Adam Picked The Apple

There would be a parade,

a celebration,

a holiday to commemorate

the day he sought enlightenment.

We would not speak of temptation

by the devil, rather,

we would laud Adam's curiosity,

his desire for adventure

and knowing.

We would feast

on apple-inspired fare -

tortes, chutneys, pancakes, pies.

There would be plays and songs

reenacting his courage.

But it was Eve who grew bored,

weary of her captivity in Eden.

And a woman's desire

for freedom is rarely a cause

for celebration.

Overheard

I'm trying to get everything ready for when I go to the clinic for my vasectomy. So I've made a few calls, and I'm happy to report that I don't have to get any invasive scans, and I don't have to worry about being accosted by a mob of "Pro-Lifers" who loudly insist that I need to change my mind, and there's no waiting period, and they won't refer me to a Crisis Center for a lecture on - something.

It's like they trust me to make my own decisions on what I do with my own reproductive system.

Kind of a shocker, right?

Equal Pay

Dear Mr Butker

The Yankee Farm Wife would like a word

Today's Today

"Bloody Sunday"

On March 7, 1965, an estimated 525 to 600 civil rights marchers headed southeast out of Selma on U.S. Highway 80. The march was led by John Lewis of SNCC and the Reverend Hosea Williams of SCLC, followed by Bob Mants of SNCC and Albert Turner of SCLC. The protest went according to plan until the marchers crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge, where they encountered a wall of state troopers and county posse waiting for them on the other side.

County sheriff Jim Clark had issued an order for all white men in Dallas County over the age of twenty-one to report to the courthouse that morning to be deputized. Commanding officer John Cloud told the demonstrators to disband at once and go home. Rev. Hosea Williams tried to speak to the officer, but Cloud curtly informed him there was nothing to discuss. Seconds later, the troopers began shoving the demonstrators, knocking many to the ground and beating them with nightsticks. Another detachment of troopers fired tear gas, and mounted troopers charged the crowd on horseback.

Televised images of the brutal attack presented Americans and international audiences with horrifying images of marchers left bloodied and severely injured, and roused support for the Selma Voting Rights Campaign. Amelia Boynton, who had helped organize the march as well as marching in it, was beaten unconscious. A photograph of her lying on the road of the Edmund Pettus Bridge appeared on the front page of newspapers and news magazines around the world. Another marcher, Lynda Blackmon Lowery, age 14, was brutally beaten by a police officer during the march, and needed seven stitches for a cut above her right eye and 28 stitches on the back of her head. John Lewis suffered a skull fracture and bore scars on his head from the incident for the rest of his life. In all, 17 marchers were hospitalized and 50 treated for lesser injuries; the day soon became known as "Bloody Sunday" within the black community.

Leave People Be

Progress

I wonder if this'll show up in some MAGAdick's timeline as 'too woke'.

All-terrain wheelchairs arrive at U.S. parks: ‘This is life-changing’

Georgia and South Dakota are the latest states to provide off-road wheelchairs on public trails

Cory Lee has visited 40 countries on seven continents, and yet the Georgia native has never explored Cloudland Canyon State Park, about 20 minutes from his home. His wheelchair was tough enough for the trip to Antarctica but not for the rugged terrain in his backyard.

Lee’s circumstances changed Friday, when Georgia’s Department of Natural Resources and the Aimee Copeland Foundation unveiled a fleet of all-terrain power wheelchairs for rent at 11 state parks and outdoorsy destinations, including Cloudland Canyon. The Action Trackchair models are equipped with tank-like tracks capable of traversing rocks, roots, streams and sand; clearing fallen trees; plowing through tall grass; and tackling uphill climbs.

“I’ll finally be able to go on these trails for the first time in my life,” said the 32-year-old travel blogger, who shares his adventures on Curb Free With Cory Lee. “The trails are off-limits in my regular wheelchair.”

Georgia is one of the latest states to provide the Land Rover of wheelchairs to outdoor enthusiasts with mobility issues.

In 2017, Colorado Parks and Wildlife launched its Staunton State Park Track-Chair Program, which provides free adaptive equipment, though guests must pay the $10 entrance fee. Michigan’s Department of Natural Resources has placed off-road track chairs in nearly a dozen parks, including Muskegon State Park. In 2018, Lee reserved a chair at the park that boasts three miles of shoreline on Lake Michigan and Muskegon Lake. “It allowed me to have so much independence on the sand,” he said.

In 2019, Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore in Michigan became the first national park to offer a track chair, said superintendent Scott Tucker. This year, Friends of Sleeping Bear Dunes, the nonprofit that oversees the program, added a third.

“We want to create an unforgettable outdoor experience for everyone, not just for people who can walk.”
— Jamie McBride, Minnesota Department of Natural Resources

South Dakota is also expanding its squadron: On Tuesday, the South Dakota Parks and Wildlife Foundation unveils its second all-terrain chair. South Dakota resident Michael M. Samp is leading a fundraising campaign to purchase up to 30 chairs. Last year, Samp’s father packed up his fishing pole and piloted a track chair to Center Lake in Custer State Park. He reeled in trout, just as he had before he was diagnosed with spinal cerebral ataxia.

“The plan is to have the chairs spread throughout the state and available for various outdoor activities including, but not limited to, park and trail enjoyment, hunting and fishing,” said Kristina Coby, the foundation’s director.

This month, the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources will wrap up its months-long pilot program that tested out the chairs in five parks. On Nov. 16, the agency will evaluate the success of the amenity. Early indications are positive.

“We want to create an unforgettable outdoor experience for everyone, not just for people who can walk,” said Jamie McBride, a state parks and recreation area program consultant with the Parks and Trails division of the Minnesota DNR. “People have told us this is life-changing.”

The Georgia initiative was spearheaded by Aimee Copeland Mercier, who suffered a zip-lining accident in 2012 and lost both hands, her right foot and her left leg to a flesh-eating bacterial infection. Copeland Mercier, a psychotherapist and licensed clinical social worker, tested several types of all-terrain chairs before committing to the Action Trackchair, which several other state programs also use.

The Minnesota-based company was founded by Tim and Donna Swenson, whose son, Jeff, was paralyzed in a car accident. The original design resembled a Frankenstein of sporting goods parts, with snow bike tracks and a busted boat seat. Today’s model could be an opening act at a monster truck rally.

“I was floored by what it could do,” said Copeland Mercier, whose foundation raised $200,000 to purchase the chairs at $12,500 each. “Oh my gosh! I can go over a whole tree trunk, up a steep incline and through snow, swamps and wetlands. If I took my regular wheelchair, I’d get stuck in five minutes.”

Each program has its own reservations system and requirements. For Georgia’s service, visitors must provide proof of their disability and a photo ID, plus complete an online training course available through All Terrain Georgia. Once certified, the organization will forward the rental request to the park. Copeland Mercier urges visitors to plan ahead: The certification course takes about an hour, the foundation needs 72-hour advance notice and the park requires a 48-hour head’s up.

“These are 500-pound chairs,” she said. “There are some risks involved.”

The Minnesota DNR, which owns and maintains its five chairs, advises visitors to call the park to reserve a chair.

“We have a few screening questions,” McBride said, “but we leave the eligibility up to the user.”

Since launching the program in June, McBride said, the chairs are booked three to four days a week, with heavier interest on weekends. “We haven’t turned too many people away at this point,” he said.

Track chairs can conquer a range of obstacles, but they do not work in all environments.

“You need the width. If two trees are too close together, the wheelchair can’t pass between them,” Copeland Mercier said. “And some inclines are too steep. The chair also can’t go down staircases.”

To steer visitors in the right direction, parks have created maps highlighting the trails designated for the track chairs, such as Staunton State Park’s trio of routes that range from roughly three to four miles. Visitors center staff members are also ready with recommendations. (To transfer from chair to chair, visitors will need a companion to assist.)

McBride said one goal is to erect markers that would provide detailed information about the hike, such the extent of accessibility. “We want to let people know if they can get all the way to the waterfall or halfway,” he said, using a hypothetical example.

Copeland Mercier also has a wish list. She hopes to expand the network of chairs to other parts of Georgia, such as the coastal, southern and central regions. Once the foundation acquires several vans (another aspiration), the staff could move the 30 to 40 chairs (ditto) around the state to fill fluctuating demand. She is also eyeing other states.

“North Carolina is next,” said Copeland Mercier, who divides her time between Atlanta and Asheville, N.C. But the grand plan is even bigger. “The goal is to alter the U.S.A.,” she said.

Not Pulling Punches

And not mincing words.

Janelle Monae - BET Awards

Widening Diversity

Axios:

A record number of LGBTQ candidates are running for Congress

A record number of LGBTQ candidates are running for all levels of office this year, motivated in part by red states passing scores of laws targeting LGBTQ people.

Why it matters:

• LGBTQ voters are among the fastest-growing parts of the electorate, and also have higher turnout than other voters. Yet there are only 11 out LGBTQ lawmakers serving in Congress.

What we're watching:

• At least 104 LGBTQ candidates have mounted campaigns for House or Senate seats this year. Some of those campaigns have already ended, but as of last week, 57 candidates are still actively running, according to data provided to Axios by the Victory Fund, which supports and tracks LGBTQ leaders.That's a nearly 20% increase in LGBTQ congressional candidates compared to the 2020 election cycle, when 87 people ran.

"People know that their rights and their livelihoods are on the ballot and that who is [in office] helps influence the decision," Sean Meloy, Victory Fund's vice president of political programs, told Axios.

What we're watching:

• A handful of congressional candidates have the potential to shatter the rainbow ceiling in multiple ways.Robert Garcia, the mayor of Long Beach, California, could become the first out immigrant LGBTQ elected to Congress, after winning the Democratic nomination for California's 42nd District.
• Rev. Jasmine Beach-Ferrara, who won the Democratic primary for North Carolina's 11th District, would be the first out LGBTQ person elected to any federal position from the state.

At the state level, candidates say discriminatory laws have motivated them to seek a seat in their legislatures."It was really just the realization that my experience fighting for marriage really did have a profound impact on me, and just this need to continue doing what's right," Jim Obergefell, whose lawsuit led to the nationwide legalization of same-sex marriage, told Axios of his decision to run for Ohio state house.

What they're saying:

• Will Rollins, the Democratic nominee looking to unseat Rep. Ken Calvert in California's 41st District, frames LGBTQ rights as a matter of national security."The United States cannot out compete other countries unless we establish equality under our laws so that people can achieve their human potential and we can attract immigrants and LGBTQ folks from all over the world who want to come here and invent and contribute to our economy and our military," Rollins said.
• As a high school junior, Rollins watched the Twin Towers crumble on 9/11 and immediately wished to enlist, but was turned off by the 'Don't Ask Don't Tell' policy. Now, Rollins is on the cusp of being just the second gay man from California to serve in Congress.

Between the lines:

• LGBTQ candidates face unique challenges on the campaign trail."In so many places, there hasn't been an LGBTQ candidate who's stepped forward before, so there's misgiving and apprehension and sometimes there's an animus," Meloy said.

"That representation, you know, I didn't have that growing up," Erick Russell, who's running for state treasurer in Connecticut, told Axios. Russell would be the first LGBTQ person of color to be elected to statewide office there."I dealt with this professionally as well, where I wasn't always sure that I would be able to be out and comfortable in a lot of these spaces that I was navigating," Russell said. "It's really important that we have that representation."

check 'em out

What's Wrong With Conservatives?

And of course the short answer can go a coupla different ways:

1. Who the fuck knows? But it's pretty fuckin' scary.
2. How much time you got? This could take a while.

As is usually the case, it's complex, and we need to be constantly working at understanding the problem, so we can develop countermoves and workarounds.

Houston Press:

Things Conservatives Get Wrong About 1984

Conservatives love to miss the point of popular literature. I’ve lost count of the number of conservatives who didn’t get that the bad guys in Atlas Shrugged were crony capitalists, not the mean old government, and let’s not even get into the ones who think Jesus wanted people to be rich. A popular book to bring up to denounce leftism is George Orwell’s dystopian science fiction novel 1984, where Britain is placed under a permanent authoritarian surveillance state. Usually, they get things completely wrong.

Newspeak is Not About Adding New Words

In 1984, Newspeak is the evolving fictional language of the Oceania government meant to alter the way people think and thus limit subversion. Conservatives love to claim any new descriptor of a social phenomenon is Newspeak, especially if it involves trans people.
Newspeak didn’t work by giving people vocabulary to describe evolving understanding of the gender spectrum or any other concept. The purpose of Newspeak was to eliminate words. It’s literally described in the book as the only language that gets smaller every year rather than bigger, reducing the nuance of thought so that everything could be described only vaguely. The more conservatives try and shoehorn people into fewer boxes, the more like Newspeak they actually are because insisting “there are only two genders” is by definition eliminating the progress of scientific understanding.

The Big Brother Government Was Not Communist

The fictional Big Brother government has become shorthand for any government that is totalitarian and brooks no challenge from the people. This has often been translated into communism by people who do not understand the concept or the person who wrote the book.
It should go without saying that George Orwell was virulently leftwing his entire life. He fought during the Spanish Civil War and went over there specifically to kill right-wing fascists. While he was deeply critical of authoritarian communist governments like the Soviet Union (Stalinists forced him to flee the war), his Big Brother government was neither communist nor capitalist, and drew heavily on the right-wing government in Nazi Germany. It was a condemnation of what happens when a government has no checks and balances, something modern American Republicans seem to be working toward with their voter suppression bills.

Orwell went to his grave as an avowed socialist who believed that such a system was the only thing that could truly liberate a people. Anything else, communist or capitalist, he felt was destined to end up oppressive. The problem with the Big Brother government is not that it’s big, but that it is ruled from the inside by a tiny group of elites waging a class war.

Regulation is Not Equivalent to Big Brother Watching You

The phrase “Big Brother is watching you” appears frequently in the novel as a reminder that the state wishes total control over the people’s lives. It’s fitting for a story set in Britain, being that London is one of the most surveilled cities in the world. Conservatives tend to equate being watched at all with 1984.

Throughout the novel, we never get a glimpse of the Big Brother government engaged in actual beneficial regulation. Their entire focus is to squash any sort of unapproved artistic expression and to keep the proles on the edge of subsistence so that they are engaged only with surviving. There’s never a mention about, say, an equivalent of the FDA or enforcement of labor protections. There’s no welfare state either, apparently. At least, not for the average person. Forcing people to wear a mask during a pandemic is not something the Big Brother government would ever be likely to do because no matter how many people with eagles in their profile pics say it, that is not actually a matter of control. Authoritarian government do not do things that empower and protect their general populations as a rule.

Orwell believed with all his heart that what stopped brutal dictatorships was having the average worker in a position of power. He wanted people organized, voting, able to express themselves, and not controlled by either the government or corporations. He wanted a world of “free AND equal human beings.” Conservatives often conveniently miss the equal part in his writings.

I think the main point is that the conservatives' approach continues to affirm my Daddy State Awareness Rules. (eg: they change history, and the meaning of words, and they deny reality in order to dictate an alternate reality to us)

In the case of 1984, they can rely on Americans being ignorant of the details, but somewhat familiar with the story's basic concept: that it's about an evil government. Which of course they think fits perfectly with their campaign to vilify all things governmental. And they don't have to worry that anyone will get hip to their trick of saying one thing now and the opposite of that thing later (just like what happens in the book), because outright contradiction is their stock-in-trade (just like it is for The Ministries in the book).

So, conservatives do that thing they do - they say 1984 is about something it's not really about, and then proceed to take everything bad that they're doing, liken it to what goes on in the story, and then project it all onto their opposition.

Basic Daddy State shit.

The Daddy State lies as a means of demonstrating their power.

The lies have practically nothing to do with the subject of the lies.

Lying about everything is a way to condition us - to make us accept their premise that they can do anything they want.

THE GOAL IS

TO DICTATE REALITY TO US

Out With A Whimper

For a while the "right" made a big noise about the removal of statues that honored the racist traitorous assholes of the Confederacy, but now that they're actually being taken down, the outrage seems to have faded rather abruptly.

And this one's the big one - the biggest baddest Confederacy-est general of 'em all being taken down and cut in half - removed from the snootiest street in the snootiest capital city in the snooty south.

But it didn't draw that much of a crowd, and if there was a presence of an outraged populace, it went unnoticed - most likely because it is now, and always was, all but nonexistent.

It's almost as if all that anger was kinda phony - another Astro-Turf movement pimped by shadowy forces that want us to squabble amongst ourselves so we'll be less inclined to see how we're being manipulated by people working on behalf of those shadowy forces who continue to fuck us with our pants on.

And just in case you think I'm being as weird and foil-hat-ey as I know I'm sounding here, please remember: I may be paranoid, but that don't mean nobody's out to get me.

The Daily Progress (Charlottesville):

A statue of Gen. Robert E. Lee that towered over Richmond for generations was taken down, cut into pieces and hauled away Wednesday, as the former capital of the Confederacy erased the last of the Civil War figures that once defined its most prominent thoroughfare.

Hundreds of onlookers erupted in cheers and song as the 21-foot-tall bronze figure was lifted off a pedestal and lowered to the ground. The removal marked a major victory for civil rights activists, whose previous calls to dismantle the statues had been steadfastly rebuked by city and state officials alike.

“It’s very difficult to imagine, certainly, even two years ago that the statues on Monument Avenue would actually be removed,” said Ana Edwards, a community activist and founding member of the Virginia Defenders for Freedom Justice & Equality. “It’s representative of the fact that we’re sort of peeling back the layers of injustice that Black people and people of color have experienced when governed by white supremacist policies for so long.”
Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam ordered the statue’s removal last summer amid the nationwide protest movement that erupted after the murder of George Floyd by a police officer in Minneapolis. But litigation tied up his plans until the state Supreme Court cleared the way last week.

Northam, who watched the work, called it “hopefully a new day, a new era in Virginia.”

“Any remnant like this that glorifies the lost cause of the Civil War, it needs to come down,” he said.

The 21-foot (6-meter) bronze sculpture was installed in 1890 atop a granite pedestal about twice that tall. The sculpture was perched in the middle of a state-owned traffic circle, and it stood among four other massive Confederate statues that were removed by the city last summer.

A construction worker who strapped harnesses around Lee and his horse lifted his arms in the air and counted, “Three, two, one!” to jubilant shouts from the crowd as the crane prepared to wrest the statue away.

Some chanted “Whose streets? Our streets!” and sang, “Hey, hey, hey, goodbye.”

Once the statue was on the ground, the crew used a power saw to cut it in two along the general’s waist, so that it could be hauled under highway overpasses to an undisclosed state-owned facility until a decision is made about its future.

The job was overseen by Team Henry Enterprises, led by Devon Henry, a Black executive who faced death threats after his company’s role in removing Richmond’s other Confederate statues was made public last year. He said the Lee statue posed their most complex challenge.

Within hours, the pieces were gone. They were hauled away on a flatbed truck to cheers from the remaining crowd and claps of thunder from a midday storm. The pedestal is to remain for now, although workers are expected to remove a time capsule from the structure on Thursday.

The work proceeded under a heavy police presence, with streets closed for blocks around the area, but no arrests were reported, and no counter protesters emerged.

Those who opposed the statue’s removal often noted its artistic significance and Virginia’s centrality to the Civil War. They argued that taking the statues down would amount to erasing a key part of the commonwealth’s history. As recently as several years ago, key government officials argued for keeping it in place.

After a rally of white supremacists in the city of Charlottesville erupted into violence in 2017, other Confederate monuments started falling around the country. But at the time, local governments in Virginia were hamstrung by a state law protecting memorials to war veterans. That law was amended by the new Democratic majority at the Statehouse and signed by Northam, allowing localities to decide the monuments’ fate as of July 1, 2020.

Del. Delores McQuinn, a Democrat whose district includes Richmond and who sponsored the 2020 war memorial legislation, said she used to avoid driving on Monument Avenue because she found the statues so offensive. Seeing Lee come down Wednesday was “surreal,” she said.

“The fight, the struggle ... hopefully some of the ancestors feel vindicated,” said McQuinn, who is Black and has been an outspoken advocate for a better telling of Richmond’s Black history in public spaces.

State Sen. Jennifer McClellan, who represents Richmond and lives in the neighborhood, said the idea of the removal had long felt “impossible,” though that began to shift after Floyd’s murder, when the area around the statute became a hub for the growing protest movement and saw occasional clashes between police and demonstrators. The pedestal has been covered by constantly evolving, colorful graffiti, with many of the hand-painted messages denouncing police and demanding an end to systemic racism and inequality.

“I physically felt in the air hope, if that makes sense, because I saw multigenerational, multiracial people chanting to take it down and demanding change,” said McClellan, who is Black.

The changes to Monument Avenue have remade the prestigious boulevard, which is lined with mansions and tony apartments and is partly preserved as a National Historic Landmark district.

Northam, who after a 2019 scandal involving a racist photo in his medical school yearbook pledged to spend the rest of his term addressing Virginia’s racial inequalities, has tapped the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts to lead a community-driven redesign for the whole avenue.

Christy S. Coleman, executive director of the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation and the former president and chief operating officer of the American Civil War Museum in Richmond, said she saw Wednesday’s removal as a historical moment in the city’s long-running struggle with how to tell its history.

That effort "is perfectly normal for communities to do — question who and what they are, what they value and how they want those values to be reflected, not only in the landscape, but in its laws,” she said.

Understand Something

It wasn't a buncha workin' slobs who got together to lobby congress in order to insert 60,000 pages of shelters, loopholes, write-downs and exceptions into the IRS Tax Code.

Rich people hold an out-sized share of power over government, and they use their wealth very effectively to feed us a steady stream of propaganda, convincing us that they're no different from the rest of us, that they're just being smart, and that everything they do comes from a place in their hearts that's the very essence of purity, love, and charity.

It's bullshit and we know it, but we walk around acting like it's god's own truth - we eat it up like it's one of Grandma's fresh-baked mulberry pies with homemade ice cream.

If any of it were true, then guys like Branson and Bezos and Musk wouldn't be in a race to space - they'd be trying to end the cycle of poverty ignorance and crime.

"Never be deceived that the rich will let you

vote away their wealth."

-- Lucy Parsons

Can You See Her Now?

Women were often subjugated and marginalized to the point of invisibility.
Stop wondering why they might be a little pissed off.

Less Than Deep

A kid named Kalief Browder was denied bail and sent to Rikers Island for stealing a backpack - a crime he didn't commit.

Capitol rioters posted pictures and videos of themselves committing their crimes on social media during an insurrection that resulted in the death of a police officer - they're being transferred to jails where they get organic food, and granted  leave to go on vacation in Mexico.

Two Americas

Here Comes Trouble

There's a kind of really stoopid shit that swirls around Qult45 - and swirls around all of us because of Qult45.

And like the Salem Witch Trials, it ends when somebody finally says "enough" and sues the fuck outa the fuckups.

Deadline Hollywood:

Fox Business host Lou Dobbs aired a segment on Friday that amounted to a fact-checking refutation of claims that he and guests have made about an election tech company Smartmatic and its role in the 2020 presidential election, after the company threatened legal action.

Other similar segments will be shown on Justice with Judge Jeanine on Saturday and Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo, a Fox News spokesperson said. Lisa Boothe will host Judge Jeanine, as Jeanine Pirro is off for the holidays

Earlier this week, Smartmatic announced that it had threatened legal action against Fox News, Newsmax and One America News Network “for publishing false and defamatory statements,” after talking heads on the outlets have pushed claims of election fraud, including unfounded conspiracy theories of rigged voting machine companies.

Smartmatic sent legal demand letters to the networks, arguing that “these organizations could have easily discovered the falsity of the statements and implications made about Smartmatic by investigating their statements before publishing them to millions of viewers and readers.” The company said that its role in the 2020 election was limited to working on Los Angeles County’s publicly owned voting system, even though anchors and guests have advanced claims that it had a much greater role.

On Friday, Dobbs opened a segment by saying that there were “lots of opinions about the integrity of the elections, the irregularities of mail-in voting, of election voting machines and software.” He then went to Eddie Perez, global director of technology development and open standard for the Open Source Election Technology Institute.

In the segment, an unidentified off-camera voice asks Perez, “Have you seen any evidence that Smartmatic software was used to flip votes anywhere in the U.S. in this election?”

Perez responded, “I have not seen any evidence that Smartmatic software was used to delete, change, alter anything related to vote tabulation.” He also said that he was not aware of them having any other direct customers with election officials beyond Los Angeles this cycle. He also said that Smartmatic and another company that has been targeted by President Donald Trump, Dominion Voting Systems, are “two completely separate companies.”

- the piece goes on, but you get the picture.

Here's the segment DumFux news aired rebutting their own assertions:

And then - CNN:

President Donald Trump convened a heated meeting in the Oval Office on Friday, including lawyer Sidney Powell and her client, former national security adviser Michael Flynn, two people familiar with the matter said, describing a session that began as an impromptu gathering but devolved and eventually broke out into screaming matches at certain points as some of Trump's aides pushed back on Powell and Flynn's more outrageous suggestions about overturning the election.

Flynn had suggested earlier this week that Trump could invoke martial law as part of his efforts to overturn the election that he lost to President-elect Joe Biden -- an idea that arose again during the meeting in the Oval Office, one of the people said. It wasn't clear whether Trump endorsed the idea, but others in the room forcefully pushed back and shot it down.
The meeting was first reported by the New York Times.

White House aides who participated in the meeting, including White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and counsel Pat Cipollone, also pushed back intensely on the suggestion of naming Powell as a special counsel to investigate voter fraud allegations Trump's own administration has dismissed (or, as seems more feasible, hiring her in the administration for some kind of investigatory role). Powell has focused her conspiracies on voting machines and has floated the notion of having a special counsel inspect the machines for flaws.

- snip -

Shortly after that meeting, Trump's campaign staff received a memo from the campaign legal team on Saturday instructing them to preserve all documents related to Dominion Voting Systems and Powell in anticipation of potential litigation by the company against the pro-Trump attorney.

The memo, viewed by CNN, references a letter Dominion sent to Powell this week demanding she publicly retract her accusations and instructs campaign staff not to alter, destroy or discard records that could be relevant.

A serious internal divide has formed within Trump's campaign following the election with tensions at their highest between the campaign's general counsel, Matt Morgan, who sent the memo Saturday, and Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani. Though the campaign once distanced itself from Powell, Trump has been urging other people to fight like she has, according to multiple people familiar with his remarks. He has asked for more people making her arguments, which are often baseless and filled with conspiracy theories, on television.

So hey there, USAmerica Inc - maybe you shouldn't be trying so hard to strip away the 1st amendment right that guarantees us all access to the courts - the right to petition the government for redress.

And maybe the general citizenry should be paying a bit more attention as the Corporation-Owned Coin-Operated Politicians continue to blame us as they try fuck us out of that right.

No Matter What Else

... we'll always have Baldwin.

In the midst of "getting back to normal", we need to be mindful of the fact that "normal" wasn't all that great for an awful lot of people.

And I'm not talking about "just the black folks".

The big reminder is that lifting up others is how we get lifted up ourselves.

On Qualified Immunity

Cops have to be held accountable, but cops also have to have some leeway so as to operate as freely as necessary. And there's the rub.

Ruth Marcus at WaPo:

U.S. District Court Judge Carlton Reeves couldn’t do justice for the plaintiff in his court, who had sued over police abuse. The Supreme Court won’t let him. So Reeves issued an opinion that dutifully followed the law — and blistered the justices for the all-but-insurmountable barrier they have constructed to shield police officers from being held to account.

Reeves, a Barack Obama nominee who sits in Jackson, Miss., and is the second Black federal judge in the history of the state, produced one of the most powerful pieces of legal writing I have encountered. His opinion is a 72-page cri de coeur directed at the Supreme Court, arguing that it must do away with the doctrine of “qualified immunity” for law enforcement officials.

Reeves begins with the larger context. “Clarence Jamison wasn’t jaywalking.” Footnote: “That was Michael Brown,” shot by police in Ferguson, Mo. “He wasn’t outside playing with a toy gun.” Footnote: “That was 12-year-old Tamir Rice,” shot in a park by a Cleveland police officer. “He wasn’t suspected of ‘selling loose, untaxed cigarettes.’ ” Footnote: “That was Eric Garner,” the Staten Island man who died after an officer put him in a chokehold.

Clarence Jamison was a Black man driving a Mercedes convertible.” In 2013, in Pelahatchie, Miss., an hour south of Philadelphia, Miss., where Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner and James Chaney were killed in 1964. Because his temporary tag — he had just purchased the car — was allegedly folded over.

As Reeves recounts, Jamison’s fate was less dire than that of many others: “As he made his way home to South Carolina from a vacation in Arizona, Jamison was pulled over and subjected to one hundred and ten minutes of an armed police officer badgering him, pressuring him, lying to him and then searching his car top to bottom for drugs. Nothing was found. Jamison isn’t a drug courier. He’s a welder.”

Jamison wasn’t shot. He wasn’t killed. But he was frightened and humiliated, and his car suffered several thousand dollars in damage to its seats and convertible top. And, as Reeves found, his constitutional rights were violated: Officer Nick McClendon’s search of Jamison’s car violated the Fourth Amendment, and Jamison’s supposed “consent” to the search could hardly be deemed voluntary.

“In an America where Black people ‘are considered dangerous even when they are in their living rooms eating ice cream, asleep in their beds, playing in the park, standing in the pulpit of their church, birdwatching, exercising in public, or walking home from a trip to the store to purchase a bag of Skittles,’ ” Reeves wrote, “who can say that Jamison felt free that night on the side of Interstate 20? Who can say that he felt free to say no to an armed Officer McClendon?”

But none of that mattered, which brings us to the larger context that Reeves explores: the purpose of the federal civil rights law under which Jamison sued McClendon. Its popular name tells the story: the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871, a Reconstruction era-effort to respond to what a later court described as the “reign of terror imposed by the Klan upon black citizens and their white sympathizers in the Southern States.” The law, now commonly known as Section 1983, provides for damages against state officials who deprive individuals of their constitutional rights.

All good, but for the fact that the Supreme Court began to eviscerate the law more than 50 years ago. As Reeves explains, “Judges have invented a legal doctrine to protect law enforcement officers from having to face any consequences for wrongdoing. The doctrine is called ‘qualified immunity.’ In real life it operates like absolute immunity.”

We keep seeing an elasticity in the steady progress towards equality, as we take our small steps towards that "more perfect union".

Whenever black folks (eg) have made significant strides, there's come a stretch of years that have seen white people push back, trying to make it the way it was - trying to Make America Great Again - trying to undermine the progress.

Every fucking time.

We have to do better. We have to raise people up, and we have to make it stick.

The Point

Jon Stewart makes the point that the spirit of the thing matters - not just the letter.

If what you're trying to do is make the whole thing better, then you have to work at fixing the mechanism itself.

We continue to have problems in a larger sense because too many people get hung up on the symbols instead of addressing their concerns to the ideals those symbols are supposed to stand for.

This seems particularly important on a day like the 4th of July.

On Monuments

NYT - Charles Blow:

Washington would free his slaves in his will, when he no longer had use for them.

Let me be clear: Those black people enslaved by George Washington and others, including other founders, were just as much human as I am today. They love, laugh, cry and hurt just like I do.

When I hear people excuse their enslavement and torture as an artifact of the times, I’m forced to consider that if slavery were the prevailing normalcy of this time, my own enslavement would also be a shrug of the shoulders.

I say that we need to reconsider public monuments in public spaces. No person’s honorifics can erase the horror he or she has inflicted on others.

Slave owners should not be honored with monuments in public spaces. We have museums for that, which also provide better context. This is not an erasure of history, but rather a better appreciation of the horrible truth of it.

The Full Rant

John Oliver excerpted from this at the end of his show last night - it's good to hear the whole thing.

Kimberly Jones: