The plot plainly detailed. Beware 2024..... 

  THERE WAS A MEMO! The tale is a combination of “King Lear,” “Dr. Strangelove” and “A Confederacy of Dunces.” TCinLA Sep 21 19 

“Peril,” the new book from Bob Woodward and Robert Costa (which just landed on the front porch here at Le Chateau du Chat) is the gift that keeps on giving. 

Their story of the attempts Trump made to overthrow the government and remain in office are both terrifying and laugh-provoking. The tale is a combination of “King Lear,” “Dr. Strangelove” and “A Confederacy of Dunces.” 

 Other people are also taking note of this memo from former Chapman University law professor John Chapman - where he lays out the “roadmap” to the January 6 coup, had Mike Pence not discovered at the last minute what those things hanging between his legs are: 

 

This is what was proposed: 

 1. VP Pence, presiding over the joint session (or Senate President Pro Tempore Grassley if Pence recuses himself), begins to open the envelopes and count the ballots, starting with Alabama (without conceding that the procedure, specified by the Electoral Count Act, of going through the States alphabetically, is required). 

 

2. When he gets to Arizona, he announces that he has multiple slates of electors, and so is going to defer decision on that until finishing the other states. This would be the first break with the procedure set out in the Act. 

 3. At t he end, he announces that because of the ongoing disputes in the 7 States, there are no electors that can be deemed validly appointed in those States. That means “the total number of electors appointed” - the language of the 12th Amendment - is 454.Ths reading of the 12th Amendment has also been advanced by Harvard Law Professor L:awrence Tribe. A “majority of the electors appointed” would then be 228. There are at this point 232 votes for Trump, 222 votes for Biden. Pence then gavels President Trump as re-elected. 

 

4. Howls, of course, from the Democrats, who then claim, contrary to Tribe’s prior position, that 270 are required. Then Pence says fine. Pursuant to the 12th Amendment, no candidate has achieved the necessary majority. That sends the matter to the House, where “the votes shall be taken by the states, the representation from each state having one vote...” Republicans currently control 26 of the state delegations, the bare majority needed to win that vote. President Trump is re-elected there as well. 

 

5. One last piece. Assuming the Electoral Count Act process is followed, and after getting the objections to the Arizona slates, the two houses break to their separate chambers, we should not allow the Electoral Count Act constraint on debate to control. That would mean a prior legislature was determining the rules of the present one - a constitutional no-no (as Tribe has forcefully argued). So someone - Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, etc. - should demand normal rules (which includes the filibuster). That would create a stalemate that would allow the state legislatures more time to weigh in to formally support the alternate slate of electors, if they had not already done so. 

6. The main thing here is that Pence should do this without asking for permission - either from a vote of the joint session or from the Court. Let the other side challenge his actions in court, where Tribe (who conceded in 2001 that the President of the Senate might be in charge of counting the votes) and others who would press a suit would have their past position - that these are non-justiciable political questions - thrown back at them, to get the lawsuit dismissed. The fact is that the Constitution assigns this power to the vice President as the ultimate arbiter. We should take all of our actions with that in mind. 

 

Fortunately, the fact is that the Constitution DOES NOT assign this power to the Vice President. Also, the “alternative electors” from the seven states were self-appointed Republican supporters of Trump, none of whose delegations had been “deemed validly appointed” by any of the state legislatures. 

 Since far right wingers are incapable of original thought, Eastman’s reliance on Professor Tribe’s argument deserves to be commented on by Professor Tribe, who has done so: 

 “Ludicrous but scary as hell. Think 2024. Those guys mean business - even though their “law” is totally fake.” 

 The important sentence there is “Think 2024.” The changes in voting rules in the crucial Republican swing states that have been or are being put in place give the Republican-controlled state legislatures the power to overturn the popular vote result in the state, allowing them to “validly appoint electors” who would vote against the expressed will of the people in the popular vote. Provide a Republican majority in the House in 2022, and in 2024, they can find a way to try and run this, regardless of Vice President Harris being there rather than Pence. 

 The plan was perfectly, exquisitely Trumpian: 

 1.Pence should lie. 

 2. Then he should leverage his lie in order to take the election out of the hands of American voters through the exercise of an authority he doesn’t have under the Constitution. 

 The plan was first proposed to Pence on January 4 in a meeting where Eastman was present with Trump, while Trump attempted to convince Pence he had the authority to stop the certification of the election. According to Woodward and Costa, he said, "You really need to listen to John. He's a respected constitutional scholar. Hear him out." 

 Eastman already got himself in trouble, speaking at the Stop The Steal rally on January 6, with the result that he is no longer Dean of the Chapman University Law School, having “retired” at the request of the school in lieu of being forcefully separated from all his benefits from his time there. 

 He’s not a newcomer to Far Right Crazy World, where the sky is green and the grass is blue. He’s a long-time resident. Bill Kristol points out that, even though he’s been dropped at Chapman, he is still the chair of the Federalist Society’s “Federalism & Separation of Powers Practice Group.” But of course he would be a member of the traitorous Federalist Society. All lawyers, when they take their oath to join the bar, swear that they will “defend the U.S. Constitution, in all ways, at all times.” Federalist Society lawyers take that oath with the fingers of one hand crossed behind their back. Despite his removal as dean, Eastman still heads the Claremont Institute’s Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence 

 Eastman co-authored with Stephen Balch an article titled “How States Could Constitutionally Assume Abandoned Responsibilities of the National Government.” Balch is, if possible, even more extreme than Eastman. A former professor at Texas Tech and organizer of the National Association of Scholars, he wrote after the election: “... an audacity is now called for, a willingness to stretch institutional bonds to a degree that genuinely alarms our conniving subverters...” and made clear that there should be no restraint on actions to overturn the election, writing, “So damn the COVID, the president must now lead his followers into America’s streets and squares. They must especially flock to the capitol complexes of all the critical states and register indignant protest..” 

 They begin the article by introducing a legal “doctrine” of their own design called “protective resumption.” What they mean by this is “a resumption of the states’ reserved police powers in the face of abdication by the federal government of its own primary responsibilities.” They take quarantines and mask orders as a useful precedent for an even greater expansion of state police powers, asking “what such robust assertions of police powers could achieve, constitutionally and politically, if put to different and more legitimate ends.” 

 Helpfully, the authors make an explicit nod to the white nationalist “Great Replacement theory,” asserting that the Biden administration has “thrown open” the southern border as “part and parcel of a larger project to transform our civic order through demographic change.” 

 Embracing the audacity and divisiveness of their scheme as virtues, they write, “As in the case of any deliberately thrown gauntlet, the bolder these policies, the better.” Specifically, they think the governors of border states should declare the federal government has abandoned enforcement of the border and put their own national guard units in place, then dare the federal government to come remove them. These units would be backed up by the civilian paramilitary “militias” the Right has organized, writing,”... where they would demonstrate and provide cheer and comforts to the police and guardsmen. Demonstrations would also be mounted in major cities, making this a high intensity, media saturating, citizen-involved campaign.” 

 Make no mistake, what they are calling for is a Second Civil War. They want it. And no one in Conservative World is pushing back against this kind of thinking. If anything, the “usual suspects” are all in with this insanity. 

 While trying to understand what Trump was thinking about anything ever is next to impossible - since it’s so obvious that it’s not an activity that he engages in with sufficient practice to do it - what’s in “Peril” pretty much makes it clear that he woke up on the morning of January 6 believing that he would, in fact, be reinstated as president, that day. After Pence had told him the night before that he did not have the power to do what Trump wanted, and made El Blobbo del Mar A Lardo mad enough to come up with a 6-year old’s solution - “If you won’t do this, I won’t be your friend any more” - Trump green-lit the coup at the rally where he thought that he and his mob might pressure both the Vice President and congressional Republicans into going along. 

 The violent attack on the Capitol that followed was both part of Trump’s conspiracy to hold onto power, and an outburst of anger when he failed to hector Pence into going along with this crazy scheme. 

 Fortunately, like most other Trump ventures, it was a spectacular failure. 

 But remember: Trump is in the process of creating and reshaping a GOP that just might go along with this in 2024. All it takes is a GOP majority in the House after next year’s mid-term election. 

 I feel like my old friend, the late Hollywood Legend, who saw the Nazis for what they were, and “became a crank” on the subject of waking up to the existential threat they were. 

 Like Professor Tribe says: “These guys mean business.”

 

SGTF update for @UWVirology 12/23

We're now at ~95% likely Omicron for samples collected on 12/21, i.e. just 23 days from the collection date of the first Omicron sample detected in our lab.

The pace of this variant has been staggering. pic.twitter.com/wRPJNn3VhL

— Pavitra Roychoudhury (@pavitrarc) December 24, 2021

 July 8th...   

Morning reads...

Heather Cox-Richardson     on the anniversary, history of the 14th amendment to the Constitution.

Equal Rights & Citizenship 

https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/fourteenth_amendment_0

The Fourteenth Amendment contains a number of important concepts, most famously state action, privileges & immunities, citizenship, due process, and equal protection—all of which are contained in Section One. However, the Fourteenth Amendment contains four other sections. Section Two deals with the apportionment of representatives to Congress. Section Three forbids anyone who participates in “insurrection or rebellion” against the United States from holding federal office. Section Four addresses federal debt and repudiates debts accrued by the Confederacy. Section Five expressly authorizes Congress to enforce the Fourteenth Amendment “by appropriate legislation.” The states ratified the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868 in the immediate aftermath of the American Civil War, along with the other Reconstruction Amendments—the Thirteenth and Fifteenth.

Then over to Jesse's Cafe for a booster shot of anger and dismay over the grift and greed of our oligarchy... "Greed is a bottomless pit which exhausts the person in an endless effort to satisfy the need without ever reaching satisfaction." Erich Fromm

And from there, leaping over to Covid-19 "miracle cures" and conspiracies from Orac at https://respectfulinsolence.com/   As the drip-drip-drip of negative evidence for ivermectin against COVID-19 continues to roll in, conspiracy theorists are doubling down. Why? It’s always about the grift.

The CA heat wave beckons..  so out to water the tiny garden spot and perhaps go down to the boat for a moment....  

And now, thanks to GOP extremists in state legislatures, the anti-abortion laws tightening and threaten

Let’s get info from the people who do this for a living. Sena Garven, an Ultrasound Technician says:

“So here’s the thing:

This Alabama-abortion-ban is a big deal, in a very bad way. Ohio, Missouri, Georgia, Mississippi, Arkansas, Kentucky… I’m looking at you too, but we’re going to focus on Alabama. If you’ve been living under a rock, let me catch you up. Alabama Governor, Kay Ivey, just signed a total abortion ban into law, the most restrictive law in the United States. The law will ban abortion at every stage of pregnancy for every reason.

This is not okay, not reasonable, and definitely not acceptable.

If you don’t know me well, maybe you don’t know what I do for a living. I’m an ultrasound technologist. My colleagues and I look at babies in every stage of pregnancy every day. I also work in a high risk unit. My unit and I look at babies and mothers in varying states of mental and physical health. If you think an abortion ban sounds good, then I am a good person to ask about why it isn’t.

So let me tell you:

About the woman whose baby developed with no skull, and the brain just floating around. Her baby still had a heartbeat, and she would not be able to access abortion.

About the woman whose baby has a rare chromosomal condition called T13. Her baby’s organs grew outside its body, and had a cleft palate so bad that there was no nose. She would not be able to access abortion.

About the woman whose blood pressure is spiking so high that she passes out and is likely to stroke out before her baby is born. She would not be able to access abortion.

About the woman with such a severe form of hemophilia that giving birth will probably be fatal to both her and the baby. She would not be able to access abortion.

About the 13 year old whose school isn’t allowed to teach her science-based sex-education, so she didn’t know how to prevent pregnancy or STIs, but whose body is not developed enough to carry to term without being damaged. She would not be able to access abortion.

About the woman who was raped by a friend who wanted to “make sure she got home safely”. She would not be able to access abortion.

About the woman who has PCOS so only has periods every 3-4 months and can’t find a birth control that works for her. She would not be able to access abortion.

About the woman whose abusive partner removed the condom without telling her (it’s called stealthing, and it happens more frequently than you’d think). She would not be able to access abortion.

About the woman with the cornual ectopic pregnancy that isn’t reliably in the uterus, and could grow to a size that will kill her. She would not be able to access abortion.

About the woman who has two kids she can barely feed already, and whose birth control just increased in price. She would not be able to access abortion.

About the 18 year old who just started college and is going to be the first graduate of the family if she can just stay in school. She would not be able to access abortion.

About the woman whose IUD slipped slightly and is now endangering both her and the pregnancy it was designed to prevent. She would not be able to access abortion.

About the many, many, many women who just don’t want to be pregnant for reasons that are their own. Health issues, abusive relationships, financial issues, social issues. They would not be able to access abortion.

Some of these might sound like reasonable exceptions to you. And you would be correct. But no one should get to decide what happens with another person’s body, not even to save a life. You need written permission from a corpse before life saving organs can be taken from them. You cannot be forced to donate blood, no matter how dire the situation. And no one else should get to decide what a woman does with her body, end of story.

But it’s not the end of the story, is it? Because here’s the kicker: if you consider abortion to be a murder (and some people genuinely believe that!) then miscarriage can be second degree murder. And this is already happening all over the world - El Salvador, Ecuador, and the US of A. Women are being jailed for miscarriages and stillbirths because they might have done something to cause it. If you start down this path of jailing women and doctors for making healthcare decisions that affect no one but themselves, then you get women who don’t go to a doctor for a safe procedure and instead order pills online or use whatever metal instruments they can find to end their own pregnancies. Women who are honestly experiencing a miscarriage (which is medically called a spontaneous abortion, just fyi) will not go to their doctor for help. They will bleed out on their bathroom floors or die of septic shock. And I haven’t even talked about how this will disproportionately affect women of color, LGBTQA+ women, or trans men. This isn’t about the “sanctity of life” anymore. It’s about controlling women.”

Sena Garven

Noam Chomsky - 10 media manipulation strategies

Noam Chomsky, one of the most important intellectuals in life today, has drawn up the list of 10 media manipulation strategies.

1-The strategy of distraction

The primordial element of social control is the distraction strategy which consists of diverting the public's attention from major problems and the changes decided by political and economic elites, through the flooding technique or flooding continuous distractions and insignificant information.

Distraction strategy is also essential to prevent the public from becoming interested in essential knowledge in the area of science, economics, psychology, neurobiology and cybernetics. Keeping the audience's attention deviated from real social problems, imprisoned by themes without real importance.

Keeping the public busy, busy, busy, with no time to think, back to the farm like other animals (quoted in the text ′′ Silent weapons for quiet wars ′′).

2-Creating problems and then offering the solutions.

This method is also called a ′′ problem-reaction-solution ". It creates a problem, a ′′ situation ′′ planned to cause a certain reaction from the public, with the aim that this is the source of the measures they want to accept. For example: letting urban violence intensify or intensify, or organize bloody attacks, with the aim of the public being those requiring security laws and policies to the detriment of freedom. Also: create an economic crisis to make social rights demotion and dismantle public services accept as a necessary evil.

3-The Strategy of Graduation.

To make an unacceptable measure accepted, you only need to apply it gradually, to dropper, for consecutive years. This is how radically new socioeconomic conditions (neoliberism) were imposed during the decades of the 80 s and 90 s: minimum state, privatisation, precariousness, flexibility, mass unemployment, wages that no longer guarantee dignified incomes , so many changes that would have brought about a revolution if they were implemented at once.

4-The Strategy of Deferring.

Another way to get an unpopular decision accepted is to present it as ′′ painful and necessary ", gaining public acceptance, in the moment, for future application. It is easier to accept a future sacrifice than an immediate sacrifice. First, because effort isn't that taken immediately. Second, because the public, the mass, always tends to naively hope that ′′ everything will be better tomorrow ′′ and that the required sacrifice could be avoided. This gives the audience more time to get used to the idea of change and accept it resigned when the time comes.

5-Reach to the public like children.

Most advertisements directed at the large audience use speeches, arguments, characters and a particularly childish intonation, many times close to weakness, as if the viewer was a few years old creature or a mental moron. When you try to deceive the viewer the more you tend to use a childish tone. Why? Why? ′′ If someone addresses a person as if they are 12 or under, then based on suggestionability, they will probably tend to a response or reaction even without a critical sense like that of a 12 person. years or less ′′ (see ′′ Silent Weapons for quiet wars ′′).

6-Using emotional aspect much more than reflection.

Take advantage of emotion it's a classic technique to provoke a short circuit on a rational analysis and finally the critical sense of the individual. Additionally, the use of emotional register allows the unconscious access door to implant or inject ideas, desires, fears and fears, compulsions, or induce behaviors.

7-Keeping the public in ignorance and mediocrity.

Making the public incapable of understanding the technologies and methods used for their control and slavery.

′′ The quality of education given to lower social classes must be as poor and mediocre as possible, so that the distance of ignorance that plans between lower classes and upper classes is and remains impossible to fill from the lower classes ".

8-Stimulating the public to be complacent with mediocrity.

Pushing the audience to think it's fashionable to be stupid, vulgar and ignorant...

9-Strengthening self-guilt.

Making the individual believe that he is only the culprit of his disgrace, because of his insufficient intelligence, skills or efforts. So, instead of rebelling against the economic system, the individual devalues himself and blames himself, which in turn creates a depressive state, one of whose effects is the inhibition of his action. And without action there is no revolution!

10-Knowing individuals better than they know themselves.

Over the past 50 years, science's rapid progress has generated a growing gap between public knowledge and those possessed and used by dominant elites. Thanks to biology, neurobiology, and applied psychology, the ′′ system ′′ has enjoyed advanced knowledge of the human being, both in its physical and psychological form. The system has managed to learn better about the common individual than he knows himself. This means that, in most cases, the system exercises greater control and greater power over individuals, greater than that which the same individual exercises over himself.

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What matters?

Today it feels like we're on the cusp of world wide upheaval with the US about to really experience much of the pain that other parts of the world endure.  We (the US) have been involved and instrumental in other countries governance, change, war, etc... with the consequences of our actions out of mind for the majority of our population.   

My struggle is how to live a 'good' life, and what issues can my energy and focus influence in a manner that would best serve future humanity and future life on this world.

Environmental ... Educational ... Justice ... Financial ... Political ... Local ... Peace ... Equality ... Kindness ... Fairness ... Spirituality ... Family ... Friends ... Art & Beauty ... Food and Shelter ... and ????

Guess this is why many people turn to organized religion, pundits, dictators or cult leaders to give them direction and orders.  To give up the quest and give in to the will of the 'leaders' say so would make everything easier and simple. Gain a feeling of peace when all you need is 'Love'.  

Today's read - focus is on Justice.   Our massive incarceration of citizens is big business and predatory against the weak.  The BLM and 'defund the police' movement struggles with causes, arguments, answers and possibilities.   Politicians want to make more laws.  Activists want more demonstrations, commissions, actions. Educators want more programs, classes, courses.  There's a call for more security, social intervention, parenting, coaching, consequences, regulations, shaming, blocking, censuring, etc. 

I feel that there should be a LOT more introspection.   Checking our own before we try to change the other.

Today's links:

https://lyz.substack.com/    District Attorneys Are the First Line of Defense Between the Police and the Public

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/08/us/what-does-defund-police-mean.html

Square One Project:  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeMuxyz4AeuKYaFXudzEd_Q