Fighting Back Against The Viral

Around the US and here in Kentucky, the first doses of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine are arriving in hospitals and in senior care facilities to help those on the front lines and those most vulnerable to the virus.

The first vaccines against COVID-19 arrived Sunday in Kentucky, and Gov. Andy Beshear said that some Kentuckians may be vaccinated as early as Monday morning.

A “significant” shipment of the two-dose Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine landed at the UPS Worldport in Louisville on Sunday. The vaccine was the first to be approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and is believed to be 95 percent effective.

“Kentucky is going to play a major role in getting this vaccine to people all over the eastern United States through UPS’ Worldport,” Beshear said in his announcement Sunday. “We in the commonwealth are excited to be a big part of defeating this virus all over this country. We now believe that the first individuals will be vaccinated here in the commonwealth tomorrow morning. We are less than 24 hours away from the beginning of the end of this virus.”

The fight against COVID-19 will continue for months, but in his release Beshear said this development was a historic milestone to be celebrated.

Shipments made to Kentucky are expected to include 12,675 vials of the vaccine that will be sent to 11 hospitals in Lexington, Louisville, Pikeville, Corbin, Bowling Green, Paducah and Edgewood, according to the announcement Sunday by Beshear’s office. An additional 25,350 vials will be sent to CVS and Walgreens, and those vaccines will go to long-term care facilities in the state.

With the expected approval of another effective vaccine from Moderna, Beshear’s office expects Kentucky could get as many as 150,000 doses of vaccine in December.

The initial rounds of vaccinations will include hospitals and long-term care facilities, and the specifics will be announced based on guidelines from the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, according to Beshear’s office. Health care staff are being prioritized.

With 66 percent of COVID-19 deaths coming from long-term care facilities, vaccines to such facilities are expected to help reduce Kentucky’s COVID-19 death toll significantly, according to Beshear’s office.

The vaccination plan and phases are still being determined, but local health departments have been working with the state to prepare for the distribution of the vaccines, according to Beshear’s office.

“Our community doctors and nurses, as well as long-term care residents and staff, are preparing to do their part first,” Beshear said in Sunday’s release. “We will all get a turn. When it is your turn, I strongly encourage you to get vaccinated so you can do your part to protect yourself, your family and our entire state.”

 

It's been a long time coming, and it's important that the vaccine go to the people who need it the most. I don't foresee problems with that, I foresee problems with 35-40% of Americans still refusing the vaccine at this point. I hope they will change their minds, but frankly I expect the rest of the world is going to move quickly over the months ahead on "get vaccinated or else".

Among all the tools that health agencies have developed over the years to fight epidemics, at least one has remained a constant for more than a century: paper vaccination certificates.

In the 1880s, in response to smallpox outbreaks, some public schools began requiring students and teachers to show vaccination cards. In the 1960s, amid yellow fever epidemics, the World Health Organization introduced an international travel document, known informally as the yellow card. Even now, travelers from certain regions are required to show a version of the card at airports.

But now, just as the United States is preparing to distribute the first vaccines for the virus, the entry ticket to the nation’s reopening is set to come largely in the form of a digital health credential.

In the coming weeks, major airlines including United, JetBlue and Lufthansa plan to introduce a health passport app, called CommonPass, that aims to verify passengers’ virus test results — and soon, vaccinations. The app will then issue confirmation codes enabling passengers to board certain international flights. It is just the start of a push for digital Covid-19 credentials that could soon be embraced by employers, schools, summer camps and entertainment venues.

“This is likely to be a new normal need that we’re going to have to deal with to control and contain this pandemic,” said Dr. Brad Perkins, the chief medical officer at the Commons Project Foundation, a nonprofit in Geneva that developed the CommonPass app.

The advent of electronic vaccination credentials could have a profound effect on efforts to control the coronavirus and restore the economy. They could prompt more employers and college campuses to reopen. They may also give some consumers peace of mind, developers say, by creating an easy way for movie theaters, cruise ships and sports arenas to admit only those with documented coronavirus vaccinations.

But the digital passes also raise the specter of a society split into health pass haves and have-nots, particularly if venues begin requiring the apps as entry tickets. The apps could make it difficult for people with limited access to vaccines or online verification tools to work or visit popular destinations. Civil liberties experts also warn that the technology could create an invasive system of social control, akin to the heightened surveillance that China adopted during the pandemic — only instead of federal or state governments, private actors like employers and restaurants would determine who can and cannot access services.

“Protecting public health has historically been used as a proxy for discrimination,” said Professor Michele Goodwin, a law professor who directs the Center for Biotechnology and Global Health Policy at the University of California, Irvine. “That is the real concern — the potential to use these apps as proxies for keeping certain people away and out."

 

There are legitimate civil liberties and racial justice concerns here, and we're going to need to deal with them now. That's the next big fight in American society, and it will define 2021 as much as the virus defined 2020. 

We have a long road to travel here. As I've said constantly, electing Joe Biden, keeping the House and (hopefully) winning back the Senate are just the start of years of grueling work ahead of us as a country, as a people, and as a planet.

 

Another #MeToo Moment, Con't

And this one is big: NY Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo is publicly being accused of years of sexual harassment by his former economic adviser Lindsey Boylan.

 

Lindsey Boylan, a Democratic candidate for Manhattan Borough president, accused New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, of sexual harassment during the time she worked as an adviser to him.

Boylan served as Deputy Secretary for Economic Development and Special Advisor in the Cuomo administration from March 2015 until October 2018. She then unsuccessfully challenged New York Representative Jerrold Nadler in the 2020 Democratic primary.

Last Saturday, Boylan posted a series of tweets alleging that the work environment in Cuomo's administration was "toxic." Then on Sunday, she alleged that she'd been sexually harassed by the governor.

"Yes, @NYGovCuomo sexually harassed me for years. Many saw it, and watched," the former Cuomo administration official tweeted Sunday. "I could never anticipate what to expect: would I be grilled on my work (which was very good) or harassed about my looks. Or would it be both in the same conversation? This was the way for years."

Boylan alleged that she was not the only woman to experience harassment: "Not knowing what to expect what's the most upsetting part aside from knowing that no one would do a damn thing even when they saw it. No one."

"I'm angry to be put in this situation at all. That because I am a woman, I can work hard my whole life to better myself and help others and yet still fall victim as countless women over generations have. Mostly silently," she wrote. "I hate that some men, like @NYGovCuomo abuse their power."

 

Cuomo's name came up late last week as a possibly candidate for US Attorney General in the Biden administration, something that was floated before the election back in October. Needless to say, Cuomo's name was removed from this list just before these accusations were made on Sunday, as Biden's list by Friday night was down to Doug Jones and Sally Yates, with former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick as the long shot, with Biden no longer considering Cuomo or DC Chief Justice and former Supreme Court pick Merrick Garland.

In other words, Cuomo's goose got cooked right fast, and now we know why. 

Tish James should have a little conversation I think with him.

StupidiNews!

• Celebrated spy novel author John Le Carre is dead at age 89, the British Cold War author, born David Cornwell, wrote more than two dozen novels translated into 40 languages.
• Germany will shut down most businesses and shops well into January as COVID-19 continues to ravage EU countries.
• Donald Trump, Mike Pence and White House staffers will be given top priority for the COVID-19 vaccine, no word on if the Biden transition team will be given any doses at this time.
• Donald Trump says he will veto a military spending bill over renaming Confederate military bases and social media legal protections, forcing the House and Senate to vote to override it.
• Oracle founder Larry Ellison is following Elon Musk's lead and is moving the company's headquarters from California to Texas for lower employee cost-of-living -- and lower wages.
  

Last Call For Our Little White Domestic Terrorism Problem, Con't

Here in Kentucky, another hate crime happened last night as a Jewish Student Center in Lexington was attacked during a Menorah lighting.

A member of Chabad of the Bluegrass was injured Saturday night when a driver shouting antisemitic slurs dragged and ran over him outside the Jewish Student Center near the University of Kentucky, according to the center and police.

The incident happened as people were gathered at the center to prepare for the lighting of a menorah for the third night of Chanukah. The driver pulled up and nearly hit a volunteer camera crew outside the center before dragging and injuring another member of the community, Chabad of the Bluegrass announced on its Facebook page.

“A community member who was assisting in the lighting heroically stepped between the assailant and the Chabad house as several children were in the front room,” the center said in its Facebook announcement. “The attacker grabbed the man and held his arm, dragging him for a block, and running over his leg. The car then sped off ... Before he left for the hospital, the newest hero of Chanukah insisted we light the Menorah, and not allow darkness to quench our light.”

The incident is still under investigation. The suspect was described as a man in his mid to late twenties driving a black SUV, Lexington Police Lt. Daniel Truex said Sunday.

The victim was taken to a local hospital for treatment Saturday night with injuries that were not life threatening, Truex said.

The center praised the Lexington Police Department and the ambulance crew that helped Saturday night.

Multiple state and local officials took to social media on Sunday to condemn the attack at the Jewish Student Center, including Lexington Mayor Linda Gorton.

“Racism and religious persecution have no place here,” Gorton said on Twitter Sunday. “Police have started an investigation into the criminal incident at Chabad of the Bluegrass on Saturday. Those who violated the law will be prosecuted. Let’s join in the spirit of Chanukah, a celebration of good over evil.”

 

But remember, the vast majority of white Americans believe white Christians are the most persecuted group in America, by far. 

I'm glad that nobody was killed, and yeah, I hope they nail this bastard.

The Coup-Coup Birds Take Flight, Con't

Trump cultists are turning their long knives on each other, blaming everyone else for failing their Dear Master, as the final days of the Trump Regime wane.

Thousands of maskless rallygoers who refuse to accept the results of the election turned downtown Washington into a falsehood-filled spectacle Saturday, two days before the electoral college will make the president’s loss official.

In smaller numbers than their gathering last month, they roamed from the Capitol to the Mall and back again, seeking inspiration from speakers who railed against the Supreme Court, Fox News and President-elect Joe Biden. The crowds cheered for recently pardoned former national security adviser Michael Flynn, marched with conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and stood in awe of a flyover from what appeared to be Marine One.

“There he is! There is our guy!” a woman exclaimed, reaching toward the sky.

After railing on Twitter about the failure of his most recent attempt to overturn the election results, President Trump praised the crowd that gathered in his honor, tweeting “Wow! Thousands of people forming in Washington (D.C.) for Stop the Steal. Didn’t know about this, but I’ll be seeing them! #MAGA,” he wrote.

Later in the day, attention was focused not on the president but on a group he once told to “stand back and stand by”: the Proud Boys, a male-chauvinist organization with ties to white nationalism. In helmets and bulletproof vests, hundreds of men in their ranks marched through downtown in militarylike rows, shouting “move out” and “1776!”

They seemed intent on intimidating onlookers and adopted a chant popular with counterprotesters: “Whose streets? Our streets.”

After the sun went down, the evening became violent. At least two people were stabbed as Proud Boys and pro-Trump demonstrators clashed near 11th and F streets NW.

Doug Buchanan, a D.C. fire department spokesman, said the victims were taken to a hospital, but details about their conditions weren’t available.

The attacks were an escalation after an evening of faceoffs that took place near Black Lives Matter Plaza, Franklin Square, Harry’s Bar — a hangout popular with Trump supporters — and other spots around downtown.

At first, officers in riot gear successfully kept the two sides apart, even as the groups splintered and roamed.

The Proud Boys became increasingly angry as they wove through streets and alleys, only to find police continuously blocking their course with lines of bikes.

“Both sides of the aisle hate you now. Congratulations,” a Proud Boy shouted at the officers.

But before long, the agitators determined to find each other were successful — and posturing quickly turned into punching, kicking and wrestling.

Again and again, officers swarmed, pulling the instigators apart, firing chemical irritants and forming lines between the sides. At Harry’s Bar, an ambulance arrived, but the extent of injuries was unknown.

Each time a fight was de-escalated, another soon began in a different part of town.

D.C. Police Chief Peter Newsham made a brief appearance in the chaos, telling protesters: “We’re doing the best we can.”

 

After Monday's electoral vote makes it official, I expect the Trump cultists to do something appropriately stupid and possibly lethal in order to try to provoke some sort of action from Trump himself.  Trump meanwhile is too busy going to college football games to care. 

But the vultures and revenants circling the corpse of the GOP want blood.

Speaking at a pro-Trump demonstration from the steps of the Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., Flynn — who briefly served as Trump's national security adviser in 2017 before pleading guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russia's ambassador — echoed other Trump allies who have been pushing unfounded allegations that the president lost the November's election to President-elect Joe Biden because of widespread voter fraud. Like the others, including the president himself, Flynn didn't produce any actual evidence of fraud, but said "in this crucible moment of our time, we have to pray that truth triumphs over lies, justice triumphs over abuse and fraud, honesty triumphs over corruption. Our sacred honor triumphs over infamy."

He added that there are "avenues" to keep challenging the results and that "courts aren't going to decide who the next president of the United States is going to be. We the people decide." He did not, however, elaborate on how that would work now that polls have been closed for more than a month.

 

If there is actual lethal violence, everyone seems to be waiting on Trump to give them permission, but I still think there will be lone cases of real tragedy in the weeks ahead, not that it should distract or detract from the 3,000 dead we're seeing from COVID right now.  The polls make it clear that Trump's voters now want a coup.

With the Electoral College poised to elect Joe Biden on Monday, a sizable 62% majority of the nation's voters feel the election is "over and settled" and it's "time to move on." Large majorities feel their own votes were counted correctly, and a majority acknowledge Mr. Biden as the "legitimate winner."

But the president's backers feel very differently: 82% of Trump voters say they do not consider Mr. Biden legitimate and — perhaps most notably for the coming transition month — almost half of President Trump's voters say Mr. Trump should refuse to concede after that Electoral College vote happens, and instead do all he can to stay in power.

As a rationale, the Trump voters who do not see Mr. Biden as legitimate widely accept Mr. Trump's premise for overturning the election results, and — even as states have certified results and courts have ruled against challenges — echo the president's assertions of fraud.

And before the Electoral College votes head to Congress to be read, we find similar sentiments and splits regarding what the president's party should do now: two thirds of voters say congressional Republicans should acknowledge Mr. Biden and move on to other legislative matters, but most Trump voters instead say congressional Republicans should do all they can to help Mr. Trump stay in power.

 

In fact, 49% of Trump voters want him to refuse to concede after the Electoral College votes on Monday, and 75% say Republicans in Congress should do everything they can to help him stay in power.  Almost all of them, 93%, say "millions of ballots were cast illegally."

 

They want a coup, period.

My fear is at some point very soon Trump is going to float that option.

Sunday Long Read: Fathers Burying Their Sons

GQ's Mosi Secret talks to the fathers and uncles of those Black men lost to police brutality and how they dealt with burying their sons, and what it means to raise a Black son in America in the age of Black Lives Matter, in a country that violently hates us, and wants us dead every day.

Six months have passed since a Minneapolis police officer killed George Perry Floyd Jr., and already the subsequent storm of fury and hope that spawned so many anti-racist dreams seems to have lost its charge. A recent Pew survey points to a decrease in support for the Black Lives Matter movement among all racial groups except Black people since June, a reflection of the American, and perhaps human, tendency to return to life as normal, even if today's normal is very weird. One hopes, at least, that a new awareness has been brought to daily life.

For a dedicated few, though, Floyd and the other Black people killed and wounded by police will forever remain front of mind—for those activists and civil rights lawyers and family members with a heroic, if sometimes tragic, resolve. Notable among the steadfast are the men who raised the injured and slain, who tend to be Black and are themselves more likely to have been battered by the forces that undid their kin. It is not possible for them to quit imagining a more just future for the United States.

Yet as the movement lulls, they are an easy group to overlook. One could be forgiven, for example, for thinking that no man helped raise George Floyd. Postmortem profiles in the press took us back to Floyd's youth in the public-housing projects of Houston's Third Ward, where his single mother, Larcenia Floyd, did her level best to help raise him and his siblings. Some accounts, searching even deeper for the causes of Floyd's demise, went further back, to his family's roots in the sharecropping South, where his mother grew up as one of 14 children in a small house in the tobacco fields of eastern North Carolina. There was a way in which Floyd's story seemed to adhere to a very old myth, hardly questioned now, of the fatherless and thus doomed Black child. That Floyd in his final moments on earth cried out for his mother, already deceased, was a kind of heartbreaking capstone to this tale. The big man that Floyd was—six feet four inches, 223 pounds—without a big man in his life. This was rendered an implicit part of his tragedy.

But Floyd's mother had a brother, Selwyn Jones—or Unc, as Floyd called him—a man large in stature and spirit, and a fixture in Floyd's life. Jones is remarkable in the family for having evaded the traps awaiting poor Black men, through pro sports and later a career in sales and hospitality, and he tried to lay a path for Floyd. “I talked to his ass often,” Jones told me. “ ‘Yo, man, you know you need to get your butt right.’ ” Jones, who lives in central South Dakota, a six-hour drive west of Minneapolis, visited Floyd frequently when his nephew moved north from Houston. “It breaks my heart to know that happened to one of mine,” he said. “And I just… I cannot stop.”

So here we explore Jones's role as a father figure, alongside the stories of five biological fathers of police-brutality victims—men who have persisted in the face of harrowing loss, fueled in part by memories of the times that were. The Reverend Joey Crutcher smiled as he reminisced about singing gospel in church with his son Terence. “You always wanted the best in your choir,” Reverend Crutcher told me. “So I just nurtured him into being a great male soloist.” Terence was unarmed when a police officer in Tulsa killed him in 2016, at age 40.

Larry Barbine, a maintenance man who has survived three open-heart surgeries, regained his health just in time to meet the 26-year-old son he'd never known, Rayshard Brooks, who had come from Atlanta to Toledo to see him. Soon they were living together, and their love was as intense and youthful as it was short. “I felt that he was still a little kid at heart,” Barbine said. They had known each other for just 14 months when an Atlanta police officer shot and killed Brooks in a Wendy's parking lot in June; protesters would burn down the restaurant one night later.

Joe Louis Cole, whose son Daniel Prude was killed in March by police in Rochester, New York, thinks about the two years when he and his son lived together in Atlanta, working side by side at a UPS warehouse. “The old man and the young guy,” Cole recalled.

The son of Jacob Blake III, who shares his name, still lives. The younger Blake was paralyzed after a police officer in Kenosha, Wisconsin, shot him seven times in the back. So the elder Blake's sacrifice is different. “My option,” he said, “was to stand for my son that cannot stand.”

Michael Brown Sr. often reflects on the promise he made when his son was born—that he would never let tragedy befall his namesake. In the six years since Michael Brown Jr. was shot and killed by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, Brown senior has emerged as a kind of patriarch for all grieving parents. Giving speeches around the country, running a foundation for families who have lost loved ones to police and community violence, traveling to memorials for Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, he is driven by the belief that he has been called on to prevent more bloodshed however he can.

Each of these men, like all Black father figures, fights against the still pervasive stereotype of the absent Black father. It's a notion that gained currency in the 1960s as the political advancements of the civil rights movement failed to translate into economic and social progress for everyday Black Americans, and social science research turned away from structural explanations for inequality toward a search for behavioral causes. In 1965, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, then an assistant secretary of labor, delivered a report to the Johnson White House, The Negro Family: The Case for National Action, arguing that the plight of Black American communities was in decline due to a simple factor: the crumbling of the family unit and, in particular, children being raised in fatherless homes.

Just weeks after the study's release, riots broke out across the Watts neighborhood in Los Angeles and critics latched onto the report to blame the ensuing violence on what Moynihan called “the deterioration of the Negro family.” The number of fatherless families, Black and otherwise, would rapidly grow in the following decades—a trend partly driven by the nation's primary welfare program, in which for a period some states considered families ineligible for benefits if an adult male was a member of the household. The legacy of that policy and Moynihan's report continues, and the notion of troubled, fatherless Black men has resurfaced after each national reckoning with racial injustice, including in the aftermath of George Floyd's killing. In August conservative commentator Larry Elder, in an op-ed for Fox News, wrote of the unrest in Minneapolis and around the country: “Many of the protesters decry income and net worth ‘inequality.’ But the most serious ‘inequality’ is the unequal percentage of fathers in Black households.”

Such sentiments mostly assign blame to Black men and serve to deny the headwinds they face as they advance toward self-fulfillment in the United States—gusts that sweep a disproportionate number into jails and prisons, into ghettos, into the criminal justice morass, or off the face of the earth altogether. These myths obscure the deep and enduring roles these Black fathers and sons played and continue to play in each other's lives. There is a bond there, among Black men surviving in the United States, which crosses generations and even the boundaries between life and death.

If those bonds weren't convincing enough, a 2013 study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that among fathers living with children under the age of five, Black fathers were more likely than Hispanic and white fathers to have bathed, dressed, diapered, or helped their children use the toilet every day, and that among fathers who live with their children, a greater percentage of Black fathers than white fathers took their children to or from daily activities and assisted their kids with homework.

It's true that such data coexists with other, more sobering statistics: More than half of all Black children live in homes headed by one parent, and Black children are more likely than white and Hispanic children to be born to unwed parents. But most Black Americans are aware of the myriad factors shaping these demographics. I'm reminded of something the late Toni Morrison said in an interview, about Ralph Ellison's great novel Invisible Man, which distilled the Black urban experience for 1950s America. “The title of Ralph Ellison's book was Invisible Man,” Morrison said. “And the question for me was ‘Invisible to whom?’ Not to me.” Not to these men, either. They already see one another.

So we asked them to tell us what they know: Joe Louis Cole, Larry Barbine, Rev. Joey Crutcher, Selwyn Jones, Jacob Blake III, and Michael Brown Sr. What a strange experience they share.

This made me tear up, and I had to stop at least twice to get through this, but I thought how lucky I was to have a father that chose me to be his son when he did not have to, and did not hesitate to do so when offered the opportunity.

You did good, Zandardad. It's a bright light and a long shadow you cast, but I strive to be worthy daily.

45 years ago, he knew that Black Lives Matter. And he did something about it and continues to do so to this day, and I won't let myself forget that fact.

A Veteran Disappointment

VA Secretary Robert Wilkie is under withering fire from veterans' advocacy groups over a recent government watchdog report that accuses him of botching an investigation into sexual assault allegations at the department.

Four of the nation’s biggest veterans groups on Friday called for the immediate dismissal of Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert Wilkie following a scathing government audit that found he had acted unprofessionally if not unethically in the handling of a congressional aide’s allegation of sexual assault at a VA hospital.

Veterans of Foreign Wars joined Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, Disabled American Veterans and AMVETS in saying Wilkie had breached the trust of veterans. In the final weeks of the Trump administration, they said they had lost all confidence that he can effectively lead the department, which is responsible for the care of nine million veterans.

“The accountability, professionalism and respect that our veterans have earned, and quite frankly deserve, is completely lost in this current VA leadership team,” said B.J. Lawrence, executive director of VFW, the nation’s oldest veterans group.

“Our veterans cannot wait until Jan. 20, 2021, for a leadership change,” he said. “Secretary Wilkie must resign now.”

An investigation by the Veterans Affairs’ inspector general on Thursday concluded that Wilkie repeatedly sought to discredit Andrea Goldstein, a senior policy adviser to Democratic Rep. Mark Takano, who is chair of the House Veterans Affairs Committee, after she alleged in September 2019 that a man at the VA medical center in Washington, D.C., had physically assaulted her.

The inspector general found that Wilkie’s disparaging comments about Goldstein, a Navy veteran, as a repeat complainer as well as the overall “tone” he set influenced his staff to spread negative information about her while ignoring known problems of harassment at the facility.

Wilkie and other senior officials had declined to fully cooperate with the investigation by VA Inspector General Michael Missal. For that reason, Missal said he could not conclude whether Wilkie had violated government policies or laws, allegedly by personally digging into the woman’s past. Wilkie denied wrongdoing.

“We’ve had our concerns about Wilkie’s leadership throughout the pandemic and this IG report really cements the fact that the VA is not being led with integrity,” said Jeremy Butler, chief executive of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. “That calls for an immediate change.”

The report on Thursday drew widespread concern from lawmakers from both parties about VA’s leadership, with Takano the first to call for Wilkie’s resignation. Concerned Veterans for America, a conservative group who supported Wilkie when he became VA secretary in 2018, chided Wilkie and his team, stressing that “VA leaders should always put the veteran and the integrity of the institution ahead of themselves.”

 

But of course the report finds that Wilkie's campaign to discredit Andrea Goldstein was also helped by Republicans, in particular, Texas Republican Dan Crenshaw, also under pressure to resign.

 

Rep. Dan Crenshaw, R-Tx., told Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert Wilkie that a Navy veteran who reported a sexual assault at a VA hospital had filed frivolous allegations when they served in the same unit, according to multiple senior officials in an internal investigation report released yesterday.

The report outlines a number of "troubling" issues with the department's handling of the assault investigation, including testimony that Wilkie had disparaged the woman after looking into her background himself. Pressure from the top of the agency also allegedly prompted VA police to investigate the victim.

However, the report, issued by the office of VA Inspector General (OIG) Michael Missal, could not corroborate any wrongdoing because the secretary and top staff would not cooperate with investigators, and neither would Crenshaw. Missal concluded that Wilkie and senior officials showed "a lack of genuine commitment" that jeopardized a "safe and welcoming environment" for accusers.

It would not be the first time Wilkie withheld inconvenient information: In 2019, CNN reported that, in violation of Senate rules, Wilkie had failed to disclose a speech he gave in 2009 to a chapter of the Sons of Confederate Veterans and a 1995 address in which he praised former Confederate President Jefferson Davis at the U.S. Capitol.

"The tone set by Secretary Wilkie was at minimum unprofessional and at worst provided the basis for senior officials to put out information to national reporters to question the credibility and background of the veteran who filed the sexual assault complaint," Missal wrote, adding that the conduct would "appear to undermine V.A.'s stated goals of providing a safe and welcoming environment for all veterans and to treat complainants of sexual assault with respect."

The woman, Andrea Goldstein, claimed in 2019 that while she waited in a VA hospital, a contractor "bumped his entire body against mine and told me I looked like I needed a smile and a good time." Following a request from House Veterans Affairs Committee chair Mike Takano, D-Calif., for whom Goldstein had once staffed, Wilkie ordered the OIG to investigate.

After the investigation, Wilkie sent Takano a letter saying that the investigation concluded that the claims were "unsubstantiated," counter to the OIG's explicit directions to VA staff not to comment on the merits of the accusation. Wilkie also highlighted the statement in an email to press outlets.

Missal reminded Wilkie he had not reached that conclusion.

"Neither I nor my staff told you or anyone else at the Department that the allegations were unsubstantiated," Missal wrote in an email, adding: "Reaching a decision to close the investigation with no criminal charges does not mean the underlying allegation is unsubstantiated."

Following press requests, the secretary retracted the description, calling it "a poor choice of words."

Missal cites an email Wilkie sent to two top aides after the fundraiser he attended with Crenshaw: "Ask me in the morning what Congressman Crenshaw said about the Takano staffer whose glamor (sic) shot was in the New York Times," it said.

In other words, Crenshaw and Wilkie worked together to bury Goldstein's accusations, and to force VA Committee Chair Mark Takano off the committee.  It's a horrible situation, and while Wiklie's head is definitely rolling when Biden comes in, Crenshaw will be around for some time, having easily won his 2020 ridiculously gerrymandered Houston suburb district against Democrat Sima Ladjevadrian by 13 points last month.

We'll see. Crenshaw may have survived his election, but he'll face other problems down the road over this, and he won't have Wiklie protecting him any longer once Denis McDonough comes in as VA Secretary.

That is, if Biden can get anyone confirmed, which the way the GOP is going right now, is not a sure thing at all.

Last Call For Retribution Execution, Con't

Donald Trump is going to do everything he can to put Joe Biden in the position of having to pardon his son to save him from a Bill Barr/Rudy Giuliani-constructed frame job and a long prison stretch, because he wants the Bidens to suffer. He figures it'll be leverage to get Biden to force New York AG Tish James and Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance into dropping their investigations into the Trump Organization, too. After all, if they are going after Trump's kids, Trump will make sure Hunter Biden rots in jail.

 

A subpoena seeking documents from Hunter Biden asked for information related to more than two dozen entities, including Ukraine gas company Burisma, according to a person familiar with a Justice Department tax investigation of President-elect Joe Biden’s son.

The breadth of the subpoena, issued Tuesday, underscores the wide-angle lens prosecutors are taking as they examine the younger Biden’s finances and international business ventures.

Hunter Biden’s ties to Burisma in particular have long dogged the policy work and political aspirations of his father, Joe Biden, now the president-elect of the United States. It’s unclear whether Hunter Biden’s work at the Ukrainian company is a central part of the federal investigation or whether prosecutors are simply seeking information about all his sources of income in recent years.

The person was not authorized to discuss an ongoing investigation publicly and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.

A lawyer for the younger Biden, George Mesires, did not immediately return a phone message seeking comment for this story and a spokesman for the Biden transition team declined to comment.

Hunter Biden confirmed Wednesday that his taxes are under federal investigation. The revelation comes at a delicate time for the president-elect, who is building out his Cabinet and will soon decide on his nominee to run the Justice Department, the same department overseeing the investigation into his son.

In addition to the Burisma-related request, the subpoena issued last week also seeks information on Hunter Biden’s Chinese business dealings and other financial transactions.

The probe was launched in 2018, the year before his father announced his candidacy for president. At one point in the investigation, federal prosecutors were also examining potential money laundering offenses, two people familiar with the matter told the AP.

Hunter Biden said he only learned of the investigation on Tuesday.

The younger Biden joined the board of Burisma in 2014, around the time his father, then vice president, was helping conduct the Obama administration’s foreign policy with Ukraine. President Donald Trump and his allies have long argued, without evidence, that Hunter Biden’s work in Ukraine influenced the Obama administration’s policies toward the Eastern European nation.

Senate Republicans said in a report earlier this year that the appointment may have posed a conflict of interest but did not provide evidence that any policies were directly affected by Hunter Biden’s work.

 

Part of me wants to say that Biden should clean house at the DoJ, and definitely replace as many US Attorneys as he can, and get rid of any Special Counsels that Trump appoints. The problem is, he's actually bound by the rules, whereas Trump is not. Actually doing that would prompt howls of BOTH SIDES ARE CORRUPT by the Village, and Biden won't do it anyway.

But Trump thinks he will 1) succeed in convicting Hunter Biden and 2) force Biden into an agonizing choice that "proves" he's either corrupt or willing to "sacrifice his family for political gain" and he's counting on Biden to let Ivanka and Junior (maybe even Eric, maybe) skate as a result.

Anything they find to use against Joe Biden himself is gravy, frankly. That's how they work, you see.

The Maine Event, Explained

Nathan Bernard over at The Mainer (support your independent state news blogs, folks!) gives us the rundown on how Sara Gideon lost to Susan Collins basically the day after she declared her candidacy in summer of 2019, 18 months ago. And apparently, the only person who didn't know Gideon was cooked like a Bar Harbor lobster in 2019 was Sara Gideon in 2020.

Democrat Sara Gideon’s bid to unseat Sen. Susan Collins was doomed the day after she announced she was running.

Gideon, a state legislator from Freeport who was then Maine’s Speaker of the House, formally announced her candidacy on Monday, June 24, 2019. The next day, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC), a powerful political organization controlled by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and other top members of the party establishment, announced it was backing her campaign.

At the time, the DSCC’s endorsement was perceived as a huge boost for Gideon. It would ensure her campaign would be well funded and guided by the brightest political minds in the business.

In retrospect, it was the kiss of death — a guarantee her campaign would be ugly, uninspiring, obscenely expensive, and out of touch with local concerns. Despite spending nearly $60 million, twice as much as Collins’ campaign did, Gideon lost by over 8 percentage points, more than 70,000 votes, in a state where Joe Biden beat Donald Trump by over 74,000.

The DSCC and likeminded political action committees flooded Maine’s modest media market and stuffed our mailboxes with ads and junk mail slamming Collins. Among them were so-called “dark money” groups that don’t disclose their donors, like Maine Momentum, an ad hoc operation run by Willy Ritch, a former spokesman for Democratic Maine Congresswoman Chellie Pingree, and Chris Glynn, a former Gideon staffer and spokesman for the Maine Democratic Party. In August of 2019, Maine Momentum dropped nearly three-quarters of a million dollars, all from secret sources, to run over 4,000 commercials attacking Collins, the Lewiston Sun Journal reported.

Incessant negative advertising by outside groups helped make this race the most expensive in Maine’s history. It also made a mockery of Gideon’s oft-repeated pledge to “limit the influence of big money in politics.” Republicans were quick to call the DSCC’s endorsement proof that Gideon was a puppet of Beltway powerbrokers, and her two Democratic primary challengers were equally critical. “The DC elite is trying to tell Mainers who our candidate should be,” Betsy Sweet, one of those challengers, tweeted that summer.

But, crucially, the DSCC’s endorsement also limited the impact of Gideon’s positive messages, the campaign promises she made to improve the lives of everyday Mainers.

It’s an axiomatic fact that Schumer and other top party officials will not back candidates who openly disagree with their policies or are likely to challenge their leadership. Adherence to the party line on big issues like health care and the climate crisis are unspoken prerequisites for a DSCC endorsement. So, unsurprisingly, Gideon did not support popular ideas championed by fellow Democrats, like a Green New Deal or universal health care. Even Democrat Jared Golden, who represents Maine’s conservative 2nd Congressional district, supports “Medicare for All;” he was reelected this fall in a district that once again voted for Trump. Instead, Gideon spoke of lowering prescription-drug prices and made vague vows to “create an economy that works for all Mainers.”

In the aftermath of Election Day, some top Democrats sought to blame progressives for the party’s poor showing in Senate and House races, but the DSCC’s record speaks for itself. Of the 18 Senate candidates endorsed by the committee, only four were victorious last month (two contenders, both in Georgia, failed to win on Nov. 3 but qualified for runoff elections next month).

As the campaign gained speed, the pandemic and the national uprising against police brutality gave Gideon two big opportunities to break from the moderate pack and distinguish herself from Collins, who denied that “systemic racism” is a “problem” in Maine, and whose Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) was a fraud-riddled failure. But Gideon’s position on racial justice was limited to training-manual adjustments like banning chokeholds and racial profiling, as well as further study of the problems that have plagued Black Americans since Reconstruction. Her credibility to criticize the PPP was compromised by the million or more dollars her husband’s law firm got from the program. And Republican critics took to social media daily to point out that, as far as anyone could tell, the House Speaker was doing practically nothing to help Mainers crushed by COVID-19.

While her constituents worried about keeping their jobs and homes, Gideon’s campaign bombarded them with tens of millions of dollars’ worth of ads, including pleas for them to give her money. The fundraising juggernaut engineered by her highly paid political consultants badgered Mainers for more cash till the bitter end.

On the afternoon and evening of Election Day, the Gideon campaign sent multiple e-mails urging supporters “to rush one final contribution right now to help us keep our digital ads on the air until the polls close.” It was subsequently revealed that her campaign still had about $15 million left in its war chest at the time.

Let's keep in mind that Sara Gideon, Amy McGrath, and Jaime Harrison combined blew through $200 million and none of them came closer than Gideon's nearly 9-point loss. McGrath lost by almost 20 points, guys.

The problem is in 2020, the only Republican enablers that the Dems could beat were the Republicans who beat themselves and retired because they thought they were going to lose. The exceptions were the two worst GOP candidates in the country: Cory Gardner and Martha McSally. Republicans meanwhile picked up 100% of the Dems seats rates as toss-ups by Cook Political and Sabato's Crystal Ball.

One-hundred percent of them.

I appreciate Schumer and Pelosi when it comes to legislative combat, but their national campaign arms keep losing to people who sign onto actual acts of sedition.

Republicans should be relegated to the dustbin of history by now, and yet there's a very good chance they will be America's present and future if Dems don't get their shit together.

And I've been saying this for more than ten years now, and I'm tired of it.

Bone weary.

Do better.

A Taxing Situation, Con't

Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance's state tax case against Donald Trump has reached the grand jury stage, complete with evidence, interviews with Deutsche Bank officials, and depositions, and I remind everyone again that Donald Trump is currently conducting an open coup to stay in power because he is 100% sure that he is going to spend the rest of his life in prison.

State prosecutors in Manhattan have interviewed several employees of President Trump’s bank and insurance broker in recent weeks, according to people with knowledge of the matter, significantly escalating an investigation into the president that he is powerless to stop.

The interviews with people who work for the lender, Deutsche Bank, and the insurance brokerage, Aon, are the latest indication that once Mr. Trump leaves office, he still faces the potential threat of criminal charges that would be beyond the reach of federal pardons.

It remains unclear whether the office of the Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., will ultimately bring charges. The prosecutors have been fighting in court for more than a year to obtain Mr. Trump’s personal and corporate tax returns, which they have called central to their investigation. The issue now rests with the Supreme Court.

But lately, Mr. Vance’s office has stepped up its efforts, issuing new subpoenas and questioning witnesses, including some before a grand jury, according to the people with knowledge of the matter, who requested anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the investigation.

The grand jury appears to be serving an investigative function, allowing prosecutors to authenticate documents and pursue other leads, rather than considering any charges.

When Mr. Trump returns to private life in January, he will lose the protection from criminal prosecution that his office has afforded him. While The New York Times has reported that he discussed granting pre-emptive pardons to his eldest children before leaving office — and has claimed that he has the power to pardon himself — that authority applies only to federal crimes, and not to state or local investigations like the one being conducted by Mr. Vance’s office.

Mr. Trump, who has maintained he did nothing improper, has railed against the inquiry, calling it a politically motivated “witch hunt.”

The investigation by Mr. Vance, a Democrat, has focused on Mr. Trump’s conduct as a private business owner and whether he or employees at his family business, the Trump Organization, committed financial crimes. It is the only known criminal inquiry into the president.

 

Now whether Vance ultimately brings charges isn't up to Trump either, and Trump knows this. The political and frankly domestic terrorism issues that charging Trump will create for Vance, his team, his family, and for Manhattan itself will be overwhelming and he will absolutely need the full, open support of the Biden administration before he does, and this goes for any charges that NY state AG Tish James may bring as well.

I'm 99% sure the Biden administration will support them, and I'm also 100% sure that the Biden administration will have long conversations about doing this in January because all the "We can't comment on an ongoing investigation" stuff we will hear is a nicety we can't afford. Should Vance try putting Trump in prison, there's a decent chance that domestic terrorists will descend like locusts upon NYC and a non-zero chance that some of those terrorists plotting to harm or kill prosecutors are, you know, NYPD.

I've said before that Biden and Vance/James have to be ready to deal with a cold civil war going hot if they try to prosecute Trump, and that is absolutely the reality we're in given Republican state AGs and scores of Republicans in Congress are openly asking the Supreme Court to hand the election to Trump anyway.

Folks, you might not think we're in a civil war right now, but the Trumpies sure as hell do.

Shutdown Countdown: The Shutdownening

It wouldn't be December without Rand Paul's usual idiotic grandstanding against funding the government, with the added bonus of being during a lethal pandemic that has already killed almost 300,000 Americans. And even though the Senate passed the Defense Bill on Friday, Rand Paul is still a jackass.

Rand Paul is at it again. And his moves could force another brief government shutdown.

The Kentucky Republican is objecting to swift passage of the annual defense policy bill, effectively forcing senators to remain in Washington for an extra day as he filibusters the $740 billion legislation. But the government needs to be funded past Friday — and the short one-week spending bill can't be passed before then without agreement from all 100 senators to vote.

Paul, no stranger to filibusters, said in an interview Thursday that he opposes a provision in the bill that would hamstring the president’s ability to draw down American troops from Afghanistan.

“That amendment alone is enough to make me object to it, as well as the amount of spending,” he said. Removing a provision from a conference report would destroy a massive agreement on defense spending.

Paul said he would drop his objection if GOP leaders allowed a final vote on the National Defense Authorization Act on Monday, which would require the Senate to go through the procedural motions. But Republicans are eager to finish work on it this week, in addition to a one-week government funding bill to avoid a shutdown. Paul offered to allow swift passage of the stopgap funding bill if GOP leaders punt a final NDAA vote to Monday.

“It’s really just a function at this point of letting the clock run and seeing if we can get cooperation. Some of it’s our side, some of it’s their side,” said Senate Majority Whip John Thune (R-S.D.). “If people come together we could probably wrap a couple of things up this week and then work on the big stuff — the spending bill and Covid package — next week.”

Drama on the floor ahead of a deadline is nothing new to Paul, who exerts major leverage over the Senate by seizing on imminent deadlines and pushing his priorities. Paul forced a brief shutdown in 2018 over his moves to cut spending, and using the shutdown deadline to try and get extra concessions on the defense bill is vintage Paul.

Republicans are hopeful that Paul will, at most, stretch things out right up to the Friday shutdown deadline. Asked how the Senate will deal with the logjam, Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) replied: "I don't know the answer to that but I'm hopeful that it's just a short-term thing. We'll probably be here tomorrow. But I don't know how much longer. I can't imagine anybody wants [a shutdown]."

Other senators are also seeking to use the shutdown deadline to push their priorities. Conservatives want votes on legislation to prevent government shutdowns and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) wants a vote on new stimulus checks, Thune told reporters on Thursday afternoon.

"It is absolutely imperative that we provide $1,200 for every working-class adult and $500 for each of their children. This is what we did, unanimously, in the CARES package passed in March. This is what we must do now. Congress cannot go home until we address this crisis," Sanders said in a statement to POLITICO, before threatening to hold up the funding bill over his demand for stimulus checks.

The defense bill, which Trump has threatened to veto, passed on a veto-proof majority in the House earlier this week and is expected to win similar support in the Senate, though some Republicans may ultimately side with the president on a veto-override question.

 

Just ridiculous nonsense, but it's what Rand Paul does,folks. If he can't scuttle the entire Defense bill, he'll force a shutdown right at Christmastime to just remind people how broken Rand Paul can make government,and he'll easily win reelection for his stupidity in a few years.

I wonder how many Kentuckians here realize how much damage he's doing to them personally along with Mitch, but it's clear voters here are going to reelect them for as long as they want.

BREAKING: A Supreme Smackdown

The Supremes just dropkicked the Texas case into the sun.

The US Supreme Court on Friday rejected Texas’s unprecedented last-ditch effort to challenge President-elect Joe Biden’s win in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Georgia, and Wisconsin by suing those four states in the high court.

At least a majority of the justices concluded that Texas lacked standing to bring the case at all, a threshold bar that the state had to clear before the case could go any further.

I'm calling it a night early, so consider this Last Call too.

It's over over over over now, one over being the election, two overs being the recounts actually expanding Biden's lead, three being the certification by all 50 states of the vote, and four being this.

Think I'll go watch The Mandalorian, a fictional show about a fictional galaxy with fictional alien races and space magic, which is ar more realistic and coherent than the Texas lawsuit brought by Ken Paxton.

Trump Goes Viral, Con't

As we hit 300,000 dead under his watch from COVID-19, Trump has decided he will get his vaccine approval press conference now or the FDA head will be publicly crucified on the South Lawn.

White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows on Friday told Stephen Hahn, the commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, to submit his resignation if the agency does not clear the nation’s first coronavirus vaccine by day’s end, according to people familiar with the situation who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss what happened.

The threat came on the same day that President Trump tweeted that the FDA is “a big, old, slow turtle” in its handling of vaccines, while exhorting Commissioner Stephen Hahn to “get the dam vaccines out NOW.” He added: “Stop playing games and start saving lives!!!” 

The warning led the FDA to accelerate its timetable for clearing America’s first vaccine from Saturday morning to later Friday.

A White House official declined to comment, saying “we don’t comment on private conversations, but the Chief regularly requests updates on progress toward a vaccine.”

The warning, combined with the tweets, constituted the latest attack by Trump, who has complained vociferously that the vaccine wasn’t authorized before Election Day, blaming it on the ‘Deep State’ inside the agency that he accused of working against his reelection. Trump was also said to be upset that Britain cleared the vaccine before the United States, although the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine has been developed and reviewed in record time.

With the timetable apparently accelerated from Saturday morning, the FDA and Pfizer were rushing to complete the paperwork needed for the authorization, according to another individual who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he didn’t have authority to discuss the plans

An FDA statement issued early Friday morning said the FDA had informed Pfizer that it would “rapidly work toward finalization and issuance of an emergency use authorization” following Thursday’s endorsement of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine by an agency advisory committee.

 

It's fun to joke that this is a third-world dumpster fire, but America is currently a third-world dumpster fire, and it was by choice of the American people in 2016 across the board, and in the Senate in 2018, and still may be in the Senate in 2020, and 77% of Republicans still believe Biden's win was fraudulent.

There has to come the point very soon where Trump either chooses to leave, or chooses to have to be forced out, and that will decide the path this country takes for the rest of my lifetime.

 

A Supreme Approach To Justice

The Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the Trump regime cannot choose to apply the Religious Freedom Act to just Christians, as in an 8-0 decision from Justice Clarence Thomas(!!!) the Court handed down a scathing ruling that Muslim men put on the no-fly list by the FBI after refusing to act as federal informants can indeed sue the pants off the US government.

 

The U.S. Supreme Court, in a unanimous opinion, ruled Thursday that Muslims put on the no-fly list after refusing to act as informants can sue federal officials for money damages under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

The case – Tanzin v Tanvir — involved three Muslim men who said their religious-freedom rights were violated when FBI agents tried to use the no-fly list to force them into becoming informants. None of the men was suspected of illegal activity themselves, and indeed, the Trump administration tried to head-off the suit by removing their names from the no-fly list just days before the case first went to court. It didn't work. The men refused to drop their case, and on Thursday the Supreme Court ruled unanimously in their favor.

"I feel extremely happy and content. All praise belongs to Allah. This is a great victory for every voiceless Muslim and non-Muslim against hate and oppression and ... I hope that this is a warning to FBI and other agencies that they will be held responsible for ... traumatizing people and ruining their lives," said Naveed Shinwari, one of the three men involved in the case.

Shinwari, a manufacturing contractor who came to the U.S. with his father from Afghanistan when he was 14, is a legal permanent resident. His presence on the no-fly list, he said, meant he could not do his contracting job because it required travel within the U.S. Nor could he visit his wife in Afghanistan. She is, however, now is in U.S. and the couple have three young children, two of them born in the United States.

Writing for the court, Justice Clarence Thomas noted that money damages have long been authorized in American law, dating back to the founding of the republic. And he pointed specifically to a post-Civil War statute that provides for damages against government officials who act "under color of state law" to deprive people of their constitutional rights. The Religious Freedom Restoration Act, enacted in 1993, is in that tradition and uses the same terminology, he observed.

Thomas acknowledged that Congress is free to shield government agents from suit, but, "[w]e cannot manufacture" such a presumption 27 years later.

This is not the end of the line in the case. The three men now have the right to sue, but the government may wish to settle the case out of court, or in the alternative, it could invoke the doctrine of qualified immunity, and assert that the agents are immune from suit because they had no way of knowing their conduct would be illegal at the time.

 

It's that latter qualified immunity scenario that I'm worried about, but SCOTUS siding unanimously with Muslims is a big deal. It's still codifying religion as theocracy, but it least it's being applied where there is actual religious bigotry and discrimination.

StupidiNews!

•  Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have been named Time's Persons of the Year for 2020 "for changing the American story" by winning the 2020 presidential contest.
  
•  Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is facing an FBI subpoena related to bribery and corruption charges as he continues to push for the Supreme Court to invalidate Joe Biden's win.
• The FDA's advisory panel has voted 17-4 to authorize Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine for use in the US, the vote paves the way for full authorization of the vaccine this month.
• US Attorney General Bill Barr says he will remain in the position through the end of Donald Trump's term, Barr had threatened to leave the post earlier this month.
• Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox are among the web browsers being hit hard by ad-based malware attacks in a botnet scheme ongoing since at least May.