Happy Twosday

(at 2:22 PM EST)

Same kinda thing's gonna happen every eleven years for about 70 years.

So much weird and important shit going on, and this is what I've chosen to blog about. Go figure.

Today's Post

SCOTUS does not have formal ethics rules it must follow. We rely on the justices to police themselves. The lesson of Trump's abuses, is that we must move beyond soft norms to preserve the integrity of institutions. This is another example of that need. https://t.co/EALp3VTdTG

— Joyce Alene (@JoyceWhiteVance) February 22, 2022

COVID-19 Update

World:

• 7-Day Average for Daily New Cases peaked 1-27-22 at 3.363M
• Today, the world shows a 62% drop in that 7-Day Average Daily New Cases

• 7-Day Average for Daily New Deaths peaked 2-22-22 at 10.7K
• Today, the world shows a 40% drop in the 7-Day Average Daily New Deaths

It looks pretty decent right now, and I guess we'll see what we see, but some of the decisions to throw it all open again seem pretty iffy.

WaPo: (freebie)

U.K. ends all restrictions, Australia reopens borders after nearly two years

England ended all remaining covid restrictions Monday amid falling cases, and Australia reopened its borders to overseas travelers, as countries around the world seek a way to “live with the virus.”

Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s message of a return to normalcy was partially blunted since Queen Elizabeth II tested positive for the coronavirus over the weekend and was experiencing “mild cold like symptoms.” Lawmakers from the opposition Labour Party and some public health experts have also criticized Johnson’s move as premature — and even reckless — as the country reported more than 1,000 deaths in the past week.

Australia was expected to receive more than 50 international flights within the first 24 hours of reopening, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said Sunday. The country had earned the nickname “Hermit Kingdom” after barring nearly all visitors for the first 18 months of the pandemic. Coronavirus cases there fell nearly 20 percent in the past week and are far lower than their January peak.

Here’s what to know

• Canada’s legislature on Monday affirmed the use of the special emergency powers invoked last week by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who has warned that the self-styled “Freedom Convoy” protesters who mostly left Ottawa this weekend may reposition and organize new blockades elsewhere.
• As crucial parts of the U.S. workforce continue to be strained by the omicron variant, National Guard members in some states are now filling in as health-care workers, teachers, janitors and more.
• Parents of children younger than 5 say they feel forgotten and left behind, as the wait for a coronavirus vaccine for their children drags on. Federal health agencies this month delayed authorizing and recommending the shot until more data on the vaccine’s efficacy is collected.

The Bugle Effect

A very Trumpy leftover at the Justice Department, John Durham, put out a report that got picked up on as some kind of new Big Bad Hillary thing. (And the Press Poodles kinda ran with it for a day or so, BTW)

Somewhat to their credit, the Poodles looked into it; debunked it fairly quickly, and shit-canned it.

But of course DumFux News jumped into it up to their smelly armpits, and they've been flashing it in their chyron for days.

Now Mr Durham is out in public telling people his report says nothing that most of us didn't already know, and that the reaction to it has been overblown.

(per NYT): “What Trump and some news outlets are saying is wrong. The cybersecurity researchers were investigating malware in the White House, not spying on the Trump campaign, and to our knowledge all of the data they used was ... from before Trump took office.”

Even though it doesn't have any staying power in the real world where people have living thinking brains, it still sticks in part and in places - even here in the real world - because that's how this propaganda shit works.

The New Republic:

...

And now, John Durham is walking it back. The special prosecutor appointed by Trump Attorney General Bill Barr to investigate the “deep state” “conspiracy” “against” “Donald Trump” (yes, all of those phrases deserve ironic quote marks) released a court filing Thursday that included this sentence: “If third parties or members of the media have overstated, understated, or otherwise misinterpreted facts contained in the Government’s Motion, that does not in any way undermine the valid reasons for the Government’s inclusion of this information.”

Translation: Fox News and the rest of the right-wing media, not to mention Trump himself and his Republican cultists, are out of their minds.

- more -

And remember, the rubes eat it up when it splashes into view, and then conveniently ignore the corrections and retractions - which the wingnut media folks bury in the Metro Section next to the ads for minority-owned businesses.

 You just have to get it out there and it'll be in the air - like smog - for a very long time.

New From JAMA

We know gun violence and guns kinda go together.

And now we know that when you expand the rationale for using a gun, you increase the motivation to use a gun, and that leads to more gun violence.

When certain shit happens, some other shit's gonna happen as a result.

Funny how that works, ain't it?

JAMA:

Analysis of “Stand Your Ground” Self-defense Laws and Statewide Rates of Homicides and Firearm Homicides

Key Points

Question: Are “stand your ground” (SYG) laws associated with increases in violent deaths, and does this vary by US state?

Findings: In this cohort study assessing 41 US states, SYG laws were associated with an 8% to 11% national increase in monthly rates of homicide and firearm homicide. State-level increases in homicide and firearm homicide rates reached 10% or higher for many Southern states, including Alabama, Florida, Georgia, and Louisiana.

Meaning: These findings suggest that SYG laws were associated with increased homicides each year and that the laws should be reconsidered to prevent unnecessary violent deaths.
Abstract

Importance: Most US states have amended self-defense laws to enhance legal immunities for individuals using deadly force in public. Despite concerns that “stand your ground” (SYG) laws unnecessarily encourage the use of deadly violence, their impact on violent deaths and how this varies across states and demographic groups remains unclear.

ObjectiveL  To evaluate the association of SYG laws with homicide and firearm homicide, nationally and by state, while considering variation by the race, age, and sex of individuals who died by homicide.

Design, Setting, and Participants: This cohort study used a controlled, multiple-baseline and -location interrupted time series design, using natural variation in the timings and locations of SYG laws to assess associations. Changes in homicide and firearm homicide were modeled using Poisson regression analyses within a generalized additive model framework. Analyses included all US states that enacted SYG laws between 2000 and 2016 and states that did not have SYG laws enacted during the full study period, 1999 to 2017. Data were analyzed from November 2019 to December 2020.

Exposures: SYG self-defense laws enacted by statute between January 1, 2000, to December 31, 2016.

Main Outcomes and Measures:  The main outcomes were statewide monthly rates of homicide and firearm-related homicide (per 100 000 persons) from January 1, 1999, to December 31, 2017, grouped by characteristics (ie, race, age, sex) of individuals who died by homicide.

Results: Forty-one states were analyzed, including 23 states that enacted SYG laws during the study period and 18 states that did not have SYG laws, with 248 358 homicides (43.7% individuals aged 20-34 years; 77.9% men and 22.1% women), including 170 659 firearm homicides. SYG laws were associated with a mean national increase of 7.8% in monthly homicide rates (incidence rate ratio [IRR],1.08; 95% CI, 1.04-1.12; P < .001) and 8.0% in monthly firearm homicide rates (IRR, 1.08; 95% CI, 1.03-1.13; P = .002). SYG laws were not associated with changes in the negative controls of suicide (IRR, 0.99; 95% CI, 0.98-1.01) or firearm suicide (IRR, 1.00; 95% CI, 0.98-1.02). Increases in violent deaths varied across states, with the largest increases (16.2% to 33.5%) clustering in the South (eg, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana). There were no differential associations of SYG laws by demographic group.

Conclusions and Relevance: These findings suggest that adoption of SYG laws across the US was associated with increases in violent deaths, deaths that could potentially have been avoided.

Dear Ammosexuals,

Fuck you.

Your pal,

Mike

On That "Truth" Thing

Trump's new venture - Truth Social - crashed. Because most new software thingies crash when first released, and...

No, actually they fucking don't. Not when they're developed and managed by professionals who know what the fuck they're doing.

Yes, there's always a glitch or two. And yes, the Beta Version is always kind of a wreck at first, which is why you do the Beta thing in a very limited environment. You don't just put the thing out there in wide release and let it crap out in public so everybody can see what a fucking disaster it is.

Of course, this is Trump, so - yeah.

A tech product that doesn't work as if by magic is not ready for the market.

BTW - all the hyperbolic attacks on "big tech" are being orchestrated (IMO) as pretext to the "conservative" plan to turn around and seize control of the platforms for information distribution, and of the info itself.

They make a big noise...

"All you faithful hard-working Americans are being victimized by Big Tech, and you need the strength of a strong leader to strongly show those weak-but-somehow-amazingly-powerful nerds who the strongest and strongly strengthiest boss really is."

...which makes it easier to convince people you're doing all this really nasty shit for all the right reasons.

Ukraine Stuff

So, here I am patting myself on the back, because it looks like Putin is doing what I've said Putin is doing.

ie: Uncle Walt is getting what he wants by encroachment instead of invasion.

Yay me - where's my fucking prize?

Putin sent his little rat fuckers into Ukraine's eastern provinces years ago, and they did their little rat-fuckery thing, and over time, "the people decided" they wanted to be Russian, so how could the great and noble Walter deny his protection for what is so obviously truly Russian real estate, with truly Russian people living under the oppressive and cruel thumb of Kiev and blah blah blah.

We can call this The Sudetenland Maneuver. Wally runs around beating his chest and throwing dirt in the air, knowing there's a fair chance that someone will decide it's easier just to hand over what he wants.

So, meanwhile, at WaPo: (pay wall)

White House wrestles with whether Russia has ‘invaded’ Ukraine
Putin announced he is sending troops into Russian-backed separatist regions within Ukraine. Opinions differ on whether that is an invasion of the country.

The White House on Monday confronted the reality that its months-long effort to avert a Russian invasion of Ukraine would likely be futile, as officials grasped for last-ditch ways to head off what one called “military action that could take place in the coming hours or days.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin spent the holiday weekend effectively closing off one diplomatic path after another, suggesting ever more clearly that he would not be swayed by diplomacy or deterred by sanctions. And by announcing that he was recognizing two pro-Russian separatist regions of Ukraine and ordering troops into them, he forced the United States into an uneasy dilemma about whether that constituted an invasion.

The Biden administration sought to hit back at Russia’s aggressive action while stopping short of declaring that it had officially invaded Ukraine, which would have triggered the array of hard-hitting sanctions President Biden has been warning about for months.

Instead, amid meetings Monday with his national security advisers and calls with several foreign leaders, Biden and his team reiterated their grim assessment of the crisis and imposed a smaller set of sanctions prohibiting U.S. investment and trade specifically in the breakaway regions.

Administration officials said additional measures — including more sanctions — would be announced Tuesday, and emphasized that the newly announced sanctions are different from the much larger ones Biden has been threatening should Putin invade Ukraine.

Ian Bremmer, president of the Eurasia Group, a global security consultancy, said Putin’s actions followed a certain logic, enabling him to make a move against Ukraine while throwing the West into uncertainty about whether it was serious enough to merit a full-blown response. Western diplomats have been predicting for days that Putin would, initially at least, take actions short of a full-scale invasion and capture of Kyiv, such as a cyberattack or a limited incursion.

“If I were advising Putin, I would tell him to do this because we have a problem now,” Bremmer said. Putin has deliberately “not gone all in” yet, Bremmer said, because “the entire point is, don’t make it easy on the West to respond.”

Earlier in the day, Putin delivered a televised address saying he had little choice but to recognize the pro-Russian separatist regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, enclaves within Ukraine that have been a source of bitter Russia-Ukraine tensions. Russia has increasingly suggested, with little evidence, that residents of those regions are under threat from the Ukrainian military.

Black American History #22

Dr Clint Smith - Crash Course - Booker T Washington and WEB DuBois

WEB Du Bois quote: 

It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness,—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder. The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife – this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self. In this merging he wishes neither of the older selves to be lost. He does not wish to Africanize America, for America has too much to teach the world and Africa. He wouldn't bleach his Negro blood in a flood of white Americanism, for he knows that Negro blood has a message for the world. He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without having the doors of opportunity closed roughly in his face.

Jan6 Stuff

I'm in the camp with the folks who say Ford's pardon of Nixon helped set up Iran-Contra, and Bill Barr's work to get Poppy Bush to pardon Reagan's Iran-Contra Gang helped set things up for Jan6.

There's justice for all or there's justice for no one.

WaPo: (pay wall)

Prosecuting Trump would set a risky precedent.

Not prosecuting would be worse.
Are we afraid to test the principle that no one is above the law?

When President Richard Nixon resigned in disgrace, the odds of his standing trial for obstruction of justice seemed high: His actions undermining the Watergate investigation had been tape-recorded, and his part in the coverup led to pressure on the legal system to hold him accountable. In September 1974, however, one month after Nixon left office, his successor, Gerald Ford, pardoned him. Ford later told a congressional subcommittee that the pardon was designed to “shift our attentions from the pursuit of a fallen President to the pursuit of the urgent needs of a rising nation.”

It didn’t — not in the immediate aftermath and, in some ways, not ever. Although views later softened, many Americans at the time saw the pardon as a mistake. Some were livid. One powerful man had essentially condoned the criminality of another. The get-out-of-jail-free card exacerbated public cynicism and deepened the nation’s social fractures. The White House switchboard lit up with calls that ran 8 to 1 against Ford’s action. The New York Times captured some of the liberal rage when it described the pardon as an affront to “the American system of justice.” A president who thought he was doing the right thing had taken justice into his own hands, casting doubt on a bedrock idea: Justice is blind; no one is above the law.

Nearly five decades later, Joe Biden is president, and a pardon for Donald Trump isn’t happening. But whether Trump will eventually be prosecuted for his conduct in the White House is more of a conundrum: If the country crosses this inviolate threshold, all hell will break loose. If we don’t cross it, all hell will break loose. There will be no “shifting our attentions” by advocates of either course. And whichever path the nation follows will have lasting repercussions. One thing is increasingly clear — fear will play a greater role than facts in determining it.

If Trump were indicted, he would become the first former president to stand criminal trial. Prosecutorial threats are multiplying: Bank and tax fraud charges are under consideration in Manhattan. In Fulton County, Ga., a special grand jury is investigating Trump’s interference in the 2020 election. In a Washington courtroom, U.S. District Judge Amit P. Mehta told a convicted Jan. 6 Capitol rioter that he was a pawn in a scheme by more powerful people, and the legal community is debating whether Trump’s seeming incitement of the insurrection has opened him up to criminal charges. The National Archives requested that the Justice Department open an investigation into Trump’s mishandling of top-secret documents that the government recently retrieved from his Florida estate. Trump still faces legal jeopardy for obstructing justice during Robert Mueller’s probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election (remember that one?). During the 2016 campaign, Trump allegedly orchestrated hush-money payments to Stormy Daniels (the charges that landed his handler Michael Cohen in prison referred to Trump as Individual #1). This list is hardly exhaustive and omits the dozen-plus civil lawsuits and civil investigations Trump faces.

Jan. 6 wasn’t an insurrection. It was vigilantism. And more is coming.

In some cases, prosecutors would need to prove “intent” — a high bar. But it isn’t insurmountable; Trump’s words and deeds have demonstrated that his actions tend to be intentional. If an ordinary citizen had pressured Georgia’s secretary of state to “find” votes to overturn the 2020 election; systematically misrepresented the value of his assets to the IRS and banks; funneled money to silence a paramour; or put government documents down a toilet, this person would almost certainly be facing an array of criminal charges. More than a year after he left office, Trump isn’t facing any such thing yet.

The stakes are enormous. The rule of law, the notion that we are all equal under our criminal justice system, is among the noblest of principles but also the ugliest of myths. The question of putting Trump on trial before a jury of his peers is a test for a principle of democracy that has often proved out of reach for most Americans.

Historically, White and wealthy citizens have sometimes managed to avoid the consequences of their criminality. For decades, White mobs lynched and terrorized African Americans with impunity, and this legacy of a racist justice system, separate and unequal, looms over the debate about charging Trump. The system remains deeply unfair, biased against Black people and favoring the wealthy who are able to afford the best lawyers. Nonviolent drug offenses for the poor have resulted in decades-long prison sentences, while hardly any bankers stood trial for reckless and probably illegal activities that helped trigger the 2008 financial crisis.

With Trump in the White House, his friends and allies already had their own system of justice: Trump-loving Dinesh D’Souza (campaign finance violations), Trump-whisperer Roger Stone (witness tampering), Trump’s first national security adviser Michael Flynn (lying to the FBI), Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort (tax fraud) and Trump son-in-law’s father Charles Kushner (tax evasion and witness tampering) are all convicted felons who received pardons from Trump or had their sentences commuted by him. Three of those convictions occurred during Trump’s presidency.

Now this unequal system of justice faces a crossroads. Any decision about prosecuting the former president centers on two conflicting fears: Inaction mocks the nation’s professed ideal that no one sits above the law — and Americans might wonder whether our democracy can survive what amounts to the explicit approval of lawlessness. But prosecuting deposed leaders is the stuff of banana republics.

The fear of the banana republic is hardly an idle one — and here Trump is a central figure, too. He has boasted of his willingness to go that route: In 2016, he ran by pledging that he intended to use the power of federal law enforcement to help his friends and pay back his enemies. His rallies routinely erupted with chants of “lock her up,” directed at his opponent, Hillary Clinton. When as president he told then-FBI Director James Comey that he should be “letting Flynn go,” he was doing as he had promised, using the presidency to try to save an ally from criminal investigation. Trump sees the law and law enforcement as a weapon: He wielded it to protect himself and rout his foes, as when his attorney general William P. Barr ordered the violent breakup of peaceful Black Lives Matter demonstrations near Lafayette Square. Trump has said that if he gets a second term, he would pardon hundreds of violent insurrectionists charged in the attack on the Capitol. More recently, his remarks about the investigation his administration began under special counsel John Durham suggest that he is still game to go after foes by wildly accusing them of crimes. Trump continually mischaracterizes the Durham investigation as having shown that Clinton’s aides “spied” on his campaign and his presidency, and he issued a statement saying that “in a stronger period of time in our country, this crime would have been punishable by death.” This was “treason at the highest level,” he said.

Of course, there’s also an appearance of impropriety when a Democratic elected official investigates Trump, lending a whiff of credence to the notion that politics sway prosecution decisions regardless of which side is doing it. Biden himself, before he was elected (and before Trump committed some of his most egregious misdeeds), said that prosecuting him would be a “very unusual thing and probably not very … good for democracy,” although he also promised to leave any decisions in the hands of the Justice Department. Indicting could trigger violence, spark a cycle of retribution once Republicans take back power, and erode yet another democratic norm.

But the far graver peril in this situation is inaction, a paralyzing refusal to hold Trump criminally liable for his behavior. The country has seen what happens when lawlessness triumphs; when some citizens feel they can do pretty much what they want with impunity. As historian Eric Foner has pointed out, in 1873, in reaction to the election of a biracial government in Colfax, La., a White mob assaulted the county courthouse, murdered a group of African Americans and seized control of the town government without substantial consequences. In 1874, in New Orleans, a white supremacist organization known as the White League tried to topple the state government (U.S. troops at least suppressed this riot). In 1898, long after Reconstruction, armed Whites overturned a duly elected biracial government in Wilmington, N.C. Because there was no law enforcement, no accountability and no consequences, such violence was condoned, sanctioned by the state and some leaders — which thus empowered anti-democratic forces for decades across the Deep South and elsewhere. (One of the impeachment charges against Andrew Johnson said he had fomented post-Civil War white supremacist violence in New Orleans and Memphis.)

Lessons from overseas also paint a bracing picture: Refusing to hold officials accountable for crimes emboldens them. Putting someone above the law is simply unsustainable for any mature democratic system. In the 20th century, Mexico’s long-time ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party refused to prosecute senior officials for corruption, choosing what three political scientists called “stability” in the political system over “accountability” in the legal one, and corruption became endemic. These scholars argue that nations transitioning toward democracy sometimes do better when they don’t prosecute former leaders and instead allow “democracy to take root.”

But the United States claims to be an advanced democracy. The costs of not prosecuting Trump have already been significant — and they’re already grounds for fear. Trump continues to stir up violence; he acts as if he remains untouchable. He praised the anti-public-health trucker convoy that shut down a key bridge linking Detroit to Ontario and has wreaked havoc in Ottawa: “I see they have Trump signs all over the place and I’m proud that they do,” Trump bragged to “Fox & Friends,” before suggesting that the truckers do the same in the United States, an even greater “tinderbox.” Trump’s acolytes take his cue. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) expressed his hope that the truckers would bring their mayhem inside America’s borders, while the Republican National Committee defended the police-beating armed rioters at the Capitol who sought to block Biden’s electoral certification by Congress as engaged in “legitimate political discourse.”

Although Trump has long sanctioned violence among his supporters — calling white supremacists in Charlottesville “fine people”; ordering the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by”; urging a crowd to “march” on the Capitol and “fight like hell” to overturn the allegedly stolen election; tweeting “liberate Michigan” to followers a few months before a plot to kidnap and murder the state’s Democratic governor, Gretchen Whitmer, was discovered — the failure to prosecute Trump for any crimes he himself commits empowers him to do it louder.

Writing in the Atlantic, David Frum asked: “Will the politics of violence be accepted in the United States — or will it be punished and discredited?” Trump’s supporters are watching. After years of his burn-it-all-down oratory and above-the-law governance, they are emboldened. Like him, they see themselves as answering to an ideology, not to the laws. Like him, they claim to be fighting for freedom, even if their acts intimidate, harm and harass.

Not prosecuting Trump has already signaled to his supporters that accountability is for suckers. “The warning signs of instability that we have identified in other places are the same signs that, over the past decade, I’ve begun to see on our own soil,” political scientist Barbara Walter wrote in “How Civil Wars Start.” The signs include a hollowing out of institutions, “manipulated to serve the interests of some over others.” Trump’s continued ability to manipulate institutions to serve his interests and his supporters’ interests has eroded yet another democratic norm. “I have an Article II, where I have the right to do whatever I want as president,” Trump told the conservative organization Turning Point USA when he held the office. Until the criminal justice system stops him, he will continue to believe that.

Ford’s pardon of Nixon was noble in its intentions: He was trying to unite the country, and he expended political capital to issue it, ultimately losing his 1976 campaign largely as a result. And in fact the pardon never rehabilitated Nixon. Unlike Trump, Nixon left office severely weakened. His approval rating stood at 24 percent; comparatively few Americans were clamoring for him to make a comeback bid in 1976, and most Republican officials had abandoned him. He was never invited to another Republican convention. The “big lie” — that Democrats stole the election from Trump — has far more traction now than any Nixon-was-robbed sentiment had then. But Ford’s pardon still did damage: Nixon never had to face a jury, never had to pay for his crimes. In his post-presidency, he published books, made television appearances and consulted with other presidents.

These days, it’s fashionable to say the system worked after Watergate. But that’s not quite right. The system forced the president to resign his office, but it also protected the disgraced ex-president from criminal punishment. In 1974, Americans viewed the pardon as a blow to the rule of law. It’s not too late to learn from Ford’s mistake.

A Glimmer

It can be hard for me not to stick with a notion I expressed 10 or 15 years ago one night out drinking with my buds.

"This country's damned near dead, and all we're doing is wrangling over who gets to do what with the corpse once it tips into the abyss."

But when I watch and listen, I can pick up a few signals - inadvertent or otherwise - from the people out there in cyberspace, which seem to be kinda hopeful.

To wit:

There's something oddly hopeful in speaking about "going down in history".

If we're to have any chance to look back at this chapter of our history, and see the Trump family for the shit-birds they are, then we have to be thinking democracy will win and we'll still be here - or our kids will be, or their kids.

Sometimes, all it takes is a glimmer.