THE ROAD TO HELPFUL: Charles Blow does get one thing right!

TUESDAY, JANUARY 31, 2023

Stormy Daniels 33, Tyre Nichols 6: As a general matter, it seems to us that Charles Blow's reactions tend to be unhelpful.

That said, there's no ultimate way to measure such things. Our instincts concerning Blow's work may not be right.

At any rate, we'd have to say that Blow pretty much got something right in yesterday's New York Times column. He opened with his standard fury—but he did seem to get something right:

Tyre Nichols’s Death Is America’s Shame

The spectacle of a televised countdown to the showing of the video in which Tyre Nichols was savagely beaten by Memphis police officers doesn’t just theatricalize Black death; it is a damning indictment of American perversion.

It was horrific, as promised, but unfortunately not singularly so. It was instead yet another data point in a long line of videos showing the torturing of Black bodies by the police. It was more snuff porn with Black victims, in a country becoming desensitized to the violence because of its sheer volume.

As we noted yesterday, that's the way the column started. Are such declamations helpful? We're inclined to think they aren't.

Briefly, let's review:

On the day he entered the White House, Donald J. Trump described a (vastly overwrought) state of "American carnage." In yesterday's column, Blow went the former president one better:

He started with "American perversion," then continued on from there.

We could always be wrong! But we'll guess that such sweeping denunciations don't help us get anywhere. We'll guess they aren't real helpful.

As he continued, Blow indicted the nation's whole population, except perhaps himself. As he continued, he started calling the roll of those who simply don't care:

BLOW (continuing directly): America—and the world—had the realization that police violence was a problem, and then it simply walked away before the work was done and the war was won.

After the killing of George Floyd in 2020 and the historic summer of protest that followed, police killings of American citizens didn’t decrease; they increased. What fell away were the evanescent allies, poll-chasing politicians and cooped-up Covid kids who had used the protests as an opportunity to congregate.

A bunch of "cooped up Covid kids" had walked away from the fight. So had the "poll-chasing politicians"—but then, so had pretty much everyone else:

BLOW (continuing directly): Even Black people’s support for the Black Lives Matter movement eventually began to fall.

And as Americans shifted to other priorities like politics and the economy, the broader public became desensitized to police killings, or it callously started to see the police killings as unfortunate but ultimately acceptable byproducts of much-needed increased policing at a time of rising crime.

Even black people seemed to be part of the problem as the broader public callously shifted its view.

As a general matter, we'd have to guess that such approaches may not be especially helpful. Especially at times of vast tribal division, we'd have to guess that such declamations may tend to harden the tribal lines defining the tribal war.

In fairness, though, we'd have to say that Blow got one thing pretty much right in yesterday's angry column. As he begged for greater attention to "police killings of American citizens"—also, to what he called "the torturing of Black bodies by the police"—there plainly was one part of the American public who didn't much seem to care.

For us, the heads of this group first popped out of their hole at 4 o'clock yesterday afternoon. Even as Blow was begging for more attention to the killing of Tyre Nichols, Nicolle Wallace introduced some of "our favorite reporters and friends"—and they spent the next 37 minutes discussing Stormy Daniels!

Eventually, the reporters and friends got around to the killing of Nichols. But that one segment was rather brief, and after the two-hour program returned was back to our tribe's favorite cable news product:

Trump Trump Trump Trump jail!

Was this reaction unique to Wallace's program? Actually, no, it wasn't.

Last evening, at 9 P.M., Rachel Maddow showed up on our TV screen for her now-weekly appearance. From 9 o'clock straight through to 9:37, with only a four-minute break for commercials, she talked about Stormy Daniels and Donald J. Trump and about nothing and no one else.

Starting at 9:41, she offered a six (6) minute segment about the killing of Tyre Nichols. This included an amazingly perfunctory pseudo-interview with the head of the Memphis NAACP.

By that time, it was Stormy 33, Memphis 6 on the Maddow Show! On the brighter side, we got to see some of Rachel's most widely loved clowning techniques as she pretended to be embarrassed by such things as the deeply embarrassing way she was forced to say the word "affair."

(This gong show never stops.)

Stormy Daniels is doing fine, Rachel oddly assured us right at the start of the program. Soon, she introduced us to some new fun—for example, to the difference between "bimbos" and "himbos."

The beloved TV star played the fool in the way our blue tribe loves. As she did, she ran up the score, which stood at 33-6 by her program's end.

This morning, the same thing happened! On Morning Joe, Mika and her collection of sidekicks opened the program with—who else?—Stormy Daniels! They offered a 16-minute discussion of Daniels, followed by an 8-minute discussion of the Memphis police and the death of Tyre Nichols.

As it turned out, that eight minutes was pretty much all she wrote. At 7 o'clock sharp, Mika kicked off a second discussion of Stormy. This discussion ran 11 minutes. By that time, the score on Morning Joe stood like this:

 Stormy Daniels 27, Tyre Nichols / Memphis 8

Make no mistake! This represents a business decision by our tribe's cable news network. They're serving us the cable news product they feel, and most likely know, that we want to consume.

They seem to feel that we don't really care all that much about Memphis and the like. We want a chance to amuse ourselves with talk about Trump's "affair," and with sugarplums of Donald J. Trump being frog-marched to jail.

For the record, what inspired all the new talk about Daniels, the "feminist icon" who blackmailed Trump into giving her $130,000 in hush money in the fall of 2016? 

(Otherwise, she said she would blab about the one (fully consensual) sexual experience she says she had with the overweight mogul back in 2006?)

What inspired all the talk? It was a report in this morning's New York Times—a major newspaper whose news judgment vastly differs today from that of our cable news tribe.

In this morning's New York Times, Memphis appears at the very top of page A1. In the online edition of the Times, the report's twin headlines say this:

Initial Police Report on Tyre Nichols Arrest Is Contradicted by Videos
The police report was the latest instance in which video evidence offered a starkly different account of police violence than what officers had reported themselves.

In print editions, that report tops the Times' front page. 

Inside the paper, the National section starts on page A11. Starting on that very page, three other news reports about Memphis appear today:

Page A11: In 13 Minutes, 71 Clashing Commands and Escalating Brutality.

Page A11: Nichols Pulled Over for Police, But It Quickly Turned Violent

Page A12:  Two More From Force Face Scrutiny After Death

Memphis appears at the top of page A1. Inside the paper, Memphis consumes the whole of page A11, plus the vast bulk of page A12.

Where does Stormy Daniels turn up? She turns up in the single news report which launched a thousand cable news ships. 

That report appears on page A16, near the end of the National section. Concerning the matter devoutly to be wished, it includes such buzzkill as this:

RASHBAUM ET AL (1/31/23): The prosecutors have also begun contacting officials from Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign, one of the people said. And in a sign that they want to corroborate these witness accounts, the prosecutors recently subpoenaed phone records and other documents that might shed light on the episode.

A conviction is not a sure thing, in part because a case could hinge on showing that Mr. Trump and his company falsified records to hide the payout from voters days before the 2016 election, a low-level felony charge that would be based on a largely untested legal theory. The case would also rely on the testimony of Michael D. Cohen, Mr. Trump’s former fixer who made the payment and who himself pleaded guilty to federal charges related to the hush money in 2018.

Still, the developments compound Mr. Trump’s legal woes as he mounts a third presidential campaign...

Could the newly revived Daniels matter perhaps send Trump to jail? Even if a charge is brought, a conviction is no sure thing, the Times report reported. According to the Times, an indictment would be "a low-level felony charge that would be based on a largely untested legal theory."

Could Donald J. Trump end up getting indicted because of the payments to Daniels? That topic appeared on page A18 of the New York Times—and all over blue tribe cable! 

As Maddow mugged and clowned and played the embarrassed little girl, the exciting Stormy Daniels "affair" ran up the score on the death of Nichols, much as Blow had suggested. On Maddow's clowncar of a broadcast, the score at the end stood like this:

Stormy Daniels 33, Tyre Nichols 6

We've tried to tell you something down through the many long years:

Despite our blue tribe's endless performances, some of our constituent groups may not always seem to care all that much about matters of racial justice and fairness.

That doesn't make them bad people, we've said. It makes them people people. But it often seems that we don't really care, though we're often quite good at performing.

You can't blame Blow for being angry about such manifestations. A person could fairly judge that such anger is fully justified.

Still and all, a question remains about Blow's declamation concerning American perversion:

Even if Blow's anger is understandable, are such presentations helpful?

Tomorrow: So many roads to unhelpful


31 comments:

  1. Here is the Stormy Daniels case without the sex:

    "Former President Donald Trump's effort to keep details of a settlement related to a past nondisclosure agreement lawsuit were dealt a setback on Monday.

    Bloomberg News reports that US District Judge Paul Gardephe has ruled that Trump must disclose the amount of money he's paying to former staffer Jessica Denson, who had filed a legal challenge to Trump's mandate that all campaign staffers sign NDAs as a precondition to working for him."

    If Trump was having campaign staffers routinely sign NDA's then it seems unlikely Stormy Daniels approached Trump begging for an NDA as a grift (Somerby's version of her lawsuit).

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  2. "Roseanne Barr will make her return to stand up comedy after nearly 20 years away from the microphone as part of a new special that will stream on Fox Nation, Fox News’ streaming service.

    The hourlong special, titled “Cancel This!” will be available to stream on Feb. 13, the Monday after the Super Bowl, after it was filmed in front of a live studio audience in Houston, Texas at the Cullen Theatre.

    Barr, a controversial personality in comedy and noted supporter of former President Trump, had her popular sitcom “Roseanne” canceled and rebranded “The Conners” in 2018 after she tweeted racist comments about former Obama administration adviser Valerie Jarrett."

    Yes, this is the same Roseanne Barr who Somerby was positively name-dropping here back when she got in trouble for her statements, the person Somerby defended when she was called out in 2018.

    http://dailyhowler.blogspot.com/2018/04/breaking-before-she-was-famous.html

    http://dailyhowler.blogspot.com/2018/04/breaking-from-donald-j-trump-to.html

    Somerby said he liked her a lot back in 1985-6, but since then she had expressed some crazy ideas -- but Somerby claimed it was liberal derangement that put Trump into the White House. Somerby excused Barr by calling her beliefs and statements crazy, while attacking the black woman who complained about Barr's racism and objected to the slant of her new show. It is the journalists who are to blame, not Barr, who Somerby said over and over that he "liked a lot" back in the day, hinting that he was partially responsible for her later success.

    Way to show spine on behalf of a friend! He liked her a lot back when she was presumably different (except she was probably the same racist person back in 1985, but with a better filter). Barr can be considered someone caught in Trump's trap. She may have thought that if Trump could get away with his blatant racism as president, she could do it too. Then she found out that she couldn't. Somerby blames the liberals who objected, not Barr, who he liked a whole lot.

    Bill Maher is being given a second discussion format show on CNN too. That makes me wonder if Somerby will see a revival himself on these right wing comedy programs. Even the hope of such a thing (realistic or not) may be a motive for his shilling. Or maybe he just likes these right wing comics a whole lot.

    Note that an actual liberal would be made sick to their stomach by the garbage mouths of these racist and sexist comics, including Maher and Barr. But not Somerby, who likes these guys a lot, he says repeatedly.

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  3. If Somerby were a liberal, this is what he might write. If you read this, try going back and reading Somerby's post and note the differences between the two.

    "You are here: Home / Crime and Punishment / If Not for Stopping Evil, Then What?
    If Not for Stopping Evil, Then What?
    January 31, 2023 at 10:08 am EST By Taegan Goddard 12 Comments

    I couldn’t bring myself to watch the video of Tyre Nichols being bludgeoned to near death by Memphis police officers.

    I have a very high tolerance for terrible news, but the description of the beating alone was enough to break me. Knowing that Nichols later died from his injuries was just too much.

    Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) spoke for nearly everyone when he said on Meet the Press it was “just difficult to watch.”

    He added: “What strikes me is just the lack of respect for human life… You know, they, this man was handcuffed. They continue to beat him.”

    But then Jordan said something that struck me as just terribly wrong: “I don’t know that there’s any law that can stop that evil that we saw.”

    If there’s any use for government at all, shouldn’t it be to stop behavior that everyone agrees is wrong? Shouldn’t we at least try?

    Martin Luther King Jr. said it best in 1967: “It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can stop him from lynching me, and I think that’s pretty important.”

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    1. That's interesting because Stormy Daniels is marketing a new line of creams and ointments for pornstars that helps them recover from the extensive vaginal and anal tearing they endure during their hours long work days and I think she puts that very quote from MLK on the label. The world is so small!

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    2. Stormy Daniels is open and honest about her career. That is more than anyone can say for Trump or Somerby.

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    3. There is no grand jury investigating Daniels today. Interesting that @12:06 doesn't mind insulting MLK either. Misogyny goes hand in hand with white supremacism and other bigotry. Who was involved in Daniels porn scenes, back when she did movies herself before becoming a producer? Men. And who did Stormy Daniels have sex with? Trump, whose wife had just given birth to their son. But he's the one who was so ashamed of his deeds that he coerced Daniels into an NDA and paid her off, which is illegal. Daniels doesn't care about anyone knowing about her sex, because that is how she makes her living. Trump obviously cares -- he is still denying it. That makes him the hypocritical liar and criminal, not Daniels. If you think you can embarrass a porn star, you are seriously deluded.

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    4. I'm like you. I admire the anal bleeding she had to endure after her gang bangs. It shows initiative and commitment to liberal values.

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    5. Like I said, Daniels isn't the one on trial. Trump may have need of her cream if he winds up in jail.

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    6. There's a difference between real anal rape and the kind one finds in the porn films of Stormy Daniels where women are tortured, beaten, degraded, and sexually violated, often by numerous men and then discarded after a few weeks or months with severe trauma, along with sexually transmitted diseases and vaginal and anal tears that must be repaired surgically.

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    7. “If you think you can embarrass a porn star, you are seriously deluded.”

      Anonymouse 12:19pm, you got him there.

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    8. Cecelia, you voted for Donald J Chickensht. Without shame. Get off your high horse.

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    9. Meh.
      DeSantis shows his ass in public pretty much everyday.

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    10. Only time I’ve seen a right winger seem to feel embarrassed was when that YouTuber was at an anti abortion rally and approached a guy holding a sign saying god loves life, and the YouTuber pointed out that there was that time god killed everyone on the planet except Noah and some animals, and the right winger looked bewildered and just stared off into space.

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    11. What MLK said is important. Right now, anyone with a badge and a gun can extra-judicially kill a black person and most often get away with it by claiming fear or that he/she was going for the officer's gun. They know the right words to put in their reports. Extra-judicial killing = lynching without a rope.

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  4. "As a general matter, it seems to us that Charles Blow's reactions tend to be unhelpful.

    That said, there's no ultimate way to measure such things."

    Of course there is a way to measure such things. You implement an intervention and then you look at the result. For example, BLM protests did succeed in instigating changes the reduced police killings of unarmed people. We saw what BLM did. We saw what happened locally as a result, the actual changes in policing. We have the statistics that show the decrease in deaths at the hands of police.

    When Somerby says that one cannot know anything, he is saying something unhelpful. Such comments undermine the faith in change and that is a cruddy thing to do, especially in the face of the heinous beating we are all concerned about (except Somerby, judging by his words).

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  5. tl;dr
    "...tend to be unhelpful"..."...such approaches may not be especially helpful."

    There's a whole bunch of pronouncements with 'helpful'/'unhelpful' in your post, dear Bob.

    Helpful/unhelpful to whom, dear?

    Dembottery that you, dear Bob, attempt (or pretend?) to analyze is helpful to your tribal chiefs; otherwise it would not be present in your tribal publications. 'nuff said.

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  6. "As a general matter, we'd have to guess that such approaches may not be especially helpful. Especially at times of vast tribal division, we'd have to guess that such declamations may tend to harden the tribal lines defining the tribal war."

    Somerby is being (1) hypocritical, (2) unhelpful, (3) factually incorrect. Blow has made exactly the same kind of accusatory argument aimed at BLM supporters, as Somerby himself pretends to make toward liberals when he supposedly speaks to blue tribe members here at his own blog. But when Blow does it, it is wrong, unhelpful. What then does Somerby hope to accomplish as he chides his own readers daily?

    Blow is trying to remind supporters of police reform that the fight is not over. I see nothing wrong with that. In fact, I think Blow is right about the falling off of interest and I doubt it will hurt to remind people that more needs to be done.

    I think Somerby is wrong to call Blow's column "unhelpful." Somerby has no idea what the effect might be on liberal readers -- he is not one himself. There is no chance Somerby will be positively affected by what Blow says, given his attitude toward Blow (long preceding this article). When Somerby judges Blow's impact on others using his own reaction as his guide, he will come to a misleading conclusion because he has never liked Blow (or any black commentator on race issues).

    That makes Somerby kind of a concern troll on this issue. He has no good advice to offer, but his negative comments must undermine liberal hope that things can change, that something can be done to prevent future police killings of unarmed civilians, especially during small incidents such as traffic stops. This is a sign of abuse of power (tyranny and oppression) and cannot be tolerated by a free society. Blow, if anything, understates the problem. Meanwhile Somerby tells everyone to give up and sit down and shut up and stop annoying people with chiding, while black men continue to die in our streets.

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  7. Bob doesn't think we should hurt the feelings of the "Fuck your feelings" crowd.

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  8. "On Maddow's clowncar of a broadcast, the score at the end stood like this:

    Stormy Daniels 33, Tyre Nichols 6"

    Somerby has the nerve to imply that Maddows is racist because she talked about Daniels instead of Nichols. As if Blow is demanding that cable news focus on Nichols 24/7 forever and never move on to newer news, for fear of seeming insufficiently caring about black lives. But Blow didn't demand that. He demanded support for police reform, not 24/7 coverage of Nichols' death.

    Meanwhile, the Stormy Daniels grand jury (at the end of the hard news section, because it is an update to an old story) just happened. Police lying in Memphis was reported yesterday and over the weekend. The Daniels story affects the former president and a current candidate for the Republican nomination for president in 2024. That makes it arguably more important than focusing on Memphis again.

    That doesn't mean that Maddow doesn't care about racist killings. It means she cannot do a new show about news that has been reported over and over, if she does not have anything new to contribute to that story. Cable news hosts strive for new angles, interpretations, new details and a different perspective. That is their job, not reporting what is already known, every hour on the hour, as CNN used to do.

    Somerby today is once again blaming Maddow for doing her job. What else is new about that?

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    1. Here is the source of Somerby's pique:

      "Stormy Daniels is doing fine, Rachel oddly assured us right at the start of the program. Soon, she introduced us to some new fun—for example, to the difference between "bimbos" and "himbos."

      How dare a woman like Maddow (who recently gave away the job that Somerby has coveted) make fun of unintelligent men? Women are supposed to show respect and subservience to all men, even the attractive but stupid ones. Because any man is better than the smartest woman and Maddow just doesn't know her place.

      In Somerby's view, it is bad enough that a grifter and con artist like Daniels, who Somerby says extorted money from Trump, should have her claims taken seriously, without Maddow gloating about it.

      Trump is a very bad person. Somerby has never acknowledged that. Somerby calls him crazy, but his own good friend Roseanne Barr, who he says repeatedly he likes a lot, is crazy in the same ways. Calling Trump crazy doesn't acknowledge the damage he has done to real people, such as the 27 women accusing him of sexual assault (including rape). Daniels is one of Trump's victims, not because of the sex, but because his goons strong-armed her in a parking lot, threatened her if she did not sign an NDA, which she later sought release from. And then Trump paid her for the NDA out of campaign funds (according to Cohen) in the days right before the 2016 election. Somerby doesn't care about any of that. He sees Daniels as the bad guy and Trump as the victim.

      How can Somerby's view of this situation be so distorted? I suspect that his dislike of women is behind both of Somerby's mistakes. He sees Daniels as bad and Trump good because Somerby thinks women prey on men. Similarly, he sees Maddow as bad because she is profiting by doing a bad job in the position he should hold, getting that opportunity only because she is a female lesbian and that is trendy on the left, and not because her studies in political science, including a Fulbright at Oxford make her more qualified than himself with his gentlemen's C- grades in philosophy classes at Harvard, where he most likely skipped classes more than he showed up. So Maddow unfairly gets the big bucks, which she "stuffs in her pants" according to Somerby.

      Not a good look, Somerby. Especially for someone pretending to be liberal.

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  10. "Despite our blue tribe's endless performances, some of our constituent groups may not always seem to care all that much about matters of racial justice and fairness."

    The subtext here is that liberals don't actually care about civil rights (any more than the right wing does) and is just pretending (being performative, virtue signaling, and other right wing accusations about liberal sanctimony).

    Is Blow really making accusations (like Somerby does today)? Or is he trying to rally the troops at a time when the outrage is fresh in everyone's minds? Is he perhaps urging us to strike while the iron is hot? Remember that Blow is urging black people who previously supported BLM and police reform, not solely white liberals.

    Somerby seems to be distoring Blow's message to address his own beef -- that liberals are not truly liberal but are pretending, striking a pose when we oppose book banning, trying to make ourselves feel good about being good decent people (as Somerby ironically calls those he dislikes before savaging them).

    Somerby's column today advances right wing memes about liberals, right wing talking points about how stuck up and snotty liberals are as they pretend to like black people, when everyone knows that isn't possible. So when liberals and everyone else cools off on BLM issues, it must be because they never supported in the first place, because that's what liberals do -- performative virtue signaling. So Somerby forgives Blow for his anger.

    Oddly, Somerby never says what he thinks would be a more helpful way of addressing police reform. Personally, I think Somerby has no interest in such reform. He has never sided with any victim of police abuse, always defended the cops, even the ones later convicted of murder. And who defends the status quo against change? Conservatives do that, just as Somerby has been doing this week.

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  11. From The Root:

    "Lawyers Ask Why the One White Cop in the Tyre Nichols Case Escaped Termination
    The Memphis Police Department is rounding up everyone involved.
    By Kalyn Womack
    Published2 hours ago

    Five Black officers were “relieved of duty,” and fired almost immediately thereafter as the investigation into Tyre Nichols’ death progressed. And thanks to the body camera footage, even more officers involved have been identified—including Preston Hemphill (pictured above) [Hemphill is white], who was heard saying, “I hope they stomp his ass” after Nichols ran away, per Insider.

    The department says Hemphill was seen on that footage firing a Taser at Nichols during the first police encounter. However, attorneys for Nichols’ family allege he did more than just fire the stun gun; he also dragged Nichols out of his vehicle and hit him repeatedly with the non-lethal weapon. The department announced on Monday that Hemphill was relieved from duty and put on paid administrative leave."

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  12. From No More Mister Nice Blog, Steve M. says:

    "What a coincidence that we're learning about the newly impaneled grand jury one week before the publication date of a book by Mark Pomerantz, a prosecutor who resigned last February, a day after DA Bragg informed him and another prosecutor (who also resigned) that he was not prepared to move forward with an indictment of Trump. In November, Bragg revived the seemingly dormant criminal investigation of Trump -- possibly in anticipation of the Pomerantz book, which I assume he knew was in the works -- and now we have the grand jury, just as the book is about to go on sale...

    ...In his resignation letter, which was made public last March, Mark Pomerantz said,

    'I believe that Donald Trump is guilty of numerous felony violations of the Penal Law in connection with the preparation and use of his annual Statements of Financial Condition.... The team that has been investigating Mr. Trump harbors no doubt about whether he committed crimes — he did.'

    Bragg was afraid he couldn't make the charges stick -- and he still might be. In this Trump-hating, book-loving city, it would be nice if Pomerantz's decision to go public with his certainty about Trump's guilt shamed Bragg into a more serious pursuit of an indictment. But it's possible that he motivated Bragg to create the appearance of a more vigorous pursuit of Trump, particularly around the time that the book is in the news, even though the end result could be just another criminal case or two aimed close to Trump but not at him. The Journal also says,

    'Mr. Bragg’s office also is pursuing a separate line of inquiry related to potential insurance fraud by the Trump Organization, according to people familiar with that investigation. The status of that part of the probe couldn’t be learned.'

    That's good. Maybe Bragg is closing in on Trump. Or maybe not."

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    1. A real fear in prosecuting Trump is that it only takes one juror that is a Trump fan to secure a not guilty, even though the evidence makes it plain Trump is guilty beyond any doubt.

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    2. That is no reason to skip prosecuting criminals for their crimes. If you do voir dire and someone lies about their support for Trump, they can be subject to perjury. Informing them of that possibility may help (as occurs in most trials). Also, the case is going to be tried in the New York area -- people there know who and what Trump was before he ran for office.

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  13. Rachel Maddow showed how Trump committed a crime then had everyone bend over backward to protect him from prosecution, and the damage he has done to the DOJ and the rule of law.
    https://www.politicususa.com/2023/01/30/rachel-maddow-trump-stormy-daniels.html

    That is what Maddow did with those 37 minutes that have TDH's panties in a bunch.

    ***
    Maddow said:

    So this is a crime that was committed in 2016. The last time it was in court was in 2018. The last time someone went to jail for this crime was in 2019. Federal prosecutors bobbled it and they simultaneously blocked state prosecutors from pursuing it themselves for a long time. There was also a weird interlude where one Manhattan D.A., one New York state prosecutor started an investigation into this matter, and then a new prosecutor came into office and stopped that investigation and then the new prosecutor restarted it a few months later after some of the lawyers who had been working on Trump-related investigations quit in protest and did so loudly.
    ***

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  14. I found Maddow's too cute impulse was pretty over the top on the show last night. Bob's grotesque belittling of anyone who would suggest his boy Trump be held accountable is always grotesque. Who knows what endeared Trump to Bob so deeply? Probably his suggestion the Central Park Five should remain in jail after they were found innocent.

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    1. Somerby’s life has included episodes where he felt intimated by young black males, and other episodes where he felt rejected by young women. He’s a sad lost soul.

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    2. you surely mean "intimidated"

      intimated means something else, illegal for adults attracted to youth under 18 (unless their mamas approve and are willing to give permission for them to be married young)

      Somerby should visit some of the men-stalking-teens websites so he will know which arguments to avoid using (such as the one about preteen-lovers not being pedophiles since that word applies only to younger children, or the one claiming that the young girls love it and what's the beef since they'll be older soon and their adult special friend has a good job, or the one about how preteen lovers were normal back in the days of Romeo and Juliet or the neanderthals, and besides young actresses are raped in the movies (cf Brooke Shields, Olivia Hussey, Mariel Hemingway) so that must mean it is OK in real life, or how it is so sad that Anne Frank didn't get to have sex with a much older man before she died so young and beautiful). You can find his other arguments in the discussion about how the press was treating Roy Moore.

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  15. BLOW (continuing directly): America—and the world—had the realization that police violence was a problem, and then it simply walked away before the work was done and the war was won.

    After the killing of George Floyd in 2020 and the historic summer of protest that followed, police killings of American citizens didn’t decrease; they increased.

    According to https://mappingpoliceviolence.org/ police killed 1144 citizens in 2020 and 1123 citizens in 2022. Looks like Blow is lying. None of the reforms proposed in the wake of the Floyd death would have done anything to prevent what happened in Memphis. Blow didn't suggest any.

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