Responsible prosecutors would never ignore so much evidence

I had to run my furnace today. The high was 59F. We should be back to 70F tomorrow. Over the last few days there has been news of the various options the vice nasty considered using to disrupt the Electoral College vote last January 6th. One of those bits of news was when vice nasty called former Vice President Dan Quayle and the former VP told him his job during the count was strictly ceremonial. The law didn’t allow him to do anything else. Mark Sumner of Daily Kos reports on a scenario devised by John Eastman, an attorney who represented the nasty guy in some of those failed lawsuits in the states. Eastman also claimed Kamala Harris was not an American citizen and thus ineligible to run for vice president. Eastman’s plan: * When the vice nasty got to Arizona he was to claim the state had submitted multiple slates of electors (a lie) and their count would be deferred. * He would repeat that false claim for seven other states. * He would declare that only 454 of the 538 electors had been recognized. Of those the nasty guy got 232 and thus won. Of course, Democrats would howl. * In response he would declare no candidate won and turn to the 12th Amendment. That says each state delegation gets a vote, not each elector nor each member of Congress. Since more delegations – 26 – are Republican majority (though overall more members are Democrats) again he would declare the nasty guy won. That scenario ignores the Elector Count Act of 1887. Eastman had an answer for that – the law was unconstitutional because naming electors is a state duty, though there has been no court ruling on the law. The goal was, of course, to generate enough chaos (and there would have been chaos) that Republicans could claim the nasty guy won. And allowed to stay in the White House until the various cases were trotted through the courts, leaving us to wonder how democracy died. Thankfully the vice nasty didn’t try it. Sumner also reported that the New York Times obtained a memo from the nasty guy election communication team. A few days after the 2020 election the team discussed the claims that were circulating. These were claims about all aspects of the voting machines made by Dominion and Smartmatic, such as programmed in Venezuela, and connected to George Soros and antifa. The memo listed – and thoroughly debunked – every claim. Perhaps a week later, on November 19, 2020, Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell held a press conference to claim the election was rigged and that they had proof. During that presser they repeated every claim the memo had debunked. They were repeating things they knew were lies. Dominion is suing Giuliani and the nasty guy campaign for defamation. The trial is ongoing. This memo is now a part of court papers for the trial. And that doesn’t look good for the defendants. Which is good for us. Chitown Kev, in his pundit roundup for Kos, quoted Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post. She wrote the Republican Party has no interest in actually governing. She added this:

But the constant stream of revelations makes it all the more difficult for the Justice Department to avoid prosecution of the former president or his cronies. Responsible prosecutors would never ignore so much evidence revealing an insurrectionist instigator’s intent (critical in proving serious crimes), nor would prosecutors upholding their oaths miss the seriousness of the plot to overthrow a government. Refusal to prosecute would amount to an invitation to repeat the coup in 2024 and beyond.

The nasty guy is still working to remove his perceived enemies. One of them is Moscow Mitch. Kerry Eleveld of Kos reported the nasty is trying to depose the party’s leader in the Senate as that leader is trying to bring his party back into the majority. This is more than a party in “disarray” – a term frequently used against Democrats when the media sees even a glimmer of disagreement. This is more like the TV show Survivor. Mary Trump wrote a book about her uncle the nasty guy. She tweeted that we’re living on the edge and the current system is rigged against democracy. The prompted Leah McElrath to tweet:

If we were to compare our political system to a house, our house is teetering on the edge of a cliff with an eroded foundation. Many are expending tremendous effort trying to hold it up and keep it from falling while others are trying to push it off. But the foundation is gone. Assuming we aren’t right-wingers trying to push it off the cliff or accelerationists trying to do so from the left, we need to ask ourselves how best to allocate our resources in terms of reactivity (keeping the house from falling) and proactivity (rebuilding its foundation). Of course, there are also those of us who have reached a point of realizing the house is likely going to fall eventually and, as a result, are considering allocating our resources toward preparing for that eventuality.

A few days ago I said I would write about the “Justice for J6” rally held at the Capitol last Saturday. And now I am. Sumner posted a report on the rally that same afternoon. The rally was to demand justice for those who participated in the January 6 Capitol attack. By “justice” they mean release of the attackers from whatever prison they’re in. In preparation for the rally the Capitol Police put up fences and increased their presence. They even asked the National Guard to stand by. The rally organizers spread the word and expected about 700 people to come. They got maybe half that. Darrell Lucus of the Kos community reported that one reason for the low turnout was many on the right were claiming the event was a “false flag” or “honeypot.” Instead of a true rally by nasty guy loyalists the claim was it was really put on by antifa (the false flag) for the purpose of entrapping (the honeypot) attendees into committing violent acts. One of the things Martin Luther King said was the moral arc of the universe bends towards justice. Professor Fleming, a critical race sociologist, tweeted a rebuttal.

Sometimes I wonder if the “moral arc of the universe” language is actually harmful Enlightenment dogma that encourages magical thinking and civic laziness. In reality, the universe has no moral arc. Gains can be forever lost. Rights can be undone. Progress can be crushed.. Everything around us, everywhere on this planet is showing that there is nothing inevitable about our survival, much less about progress. The belief that things will somehow “work out” despite all evidence to the contrary helps ensure that things will not, in fact, work out..

Yes, some white liberals do believe in that magical thinking and have used the phrase. Commenter Stephen Robinson added:

MLK also spoke of the “fierce urgency of now." He never shrugged off current day issues as something that would magically resolve themselves decades later.

I’ve been avoiding writing about the Haitian refugees living under the bridge in Del Rio, Texas. It is hard to deal with such abuse happening under the Biden administration. I’ll let you read about it elsewhere – there are plenty of sources. However, here is a good new story, a tweet from Nate Mook of the World Central Kitchen (of course, they would arrive):

Things I never imagined I’d be doing on a Tuesday morning: Buying 2,000 packets of baby food to make sure the most fragile Haitians living under the bridge in Del Rio, Texas have something to eat. Sorry for cleaning out your shelves today, HEB. See you again tomorrow.

HEB is a grocery chain in Texas with a reputation of giving back to the community. Commenters rightly note the WCK would do better working to get wholesale prices from a supplier and not disrupt the local HEB customers. But if they’re just getting started on the venture this may be what they have to do now. McElrath tweeted:

We need a new, specific word to describe the unique stress of watching as systems of power fail to act in proportion to urgency. Suggestions?

Some of the words proposed: ElMolino: Armagedimpotence VanessaSax2k: Exasperage Rabid Badger: Caligulabotomy Katz: Annihilanxiety Tobi: Thursday Jules: Electile Dysfunction StaceyCeeJay: Ostriching The book of Genesis in the Bible talks of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. Yeah, Sodom is how we got the word sodomites to describe gay men, but a close read of chapter 19 shows the story was about rape, not about same-sex love. Because strangers in town were not treated well (as Genesis 19:24 puts it):

Then the LORD rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the LORD out of heaven.

skralyx of the Kos community, working from a story published in Nature Scientific Reports, wrote that evidence is mounting it really happened. Perhaps it isn’t just an allegorical story. Maybe not by a vengeful deity, but by a meteor impact around 1650 BCE. The ruined city of Tall el-Hammam, which might have been Sodom, has some shocked quartz, which only shows up around meteor impact sites, even if the meteor explodes before it hits the ground. The Bible also says that Lot’s wife looked back on the destruction and was turned into a pillar of salt. An explosion of this magnitude near the Dead Sea would have thrown salt water over the surrounding countryside, rendering the usually fertile land unusable for a few hundred years – and archaeologists have noted the villages in the area were abandoned for about 600 years.