Obstruction and Justice

And Really Bad Takes

Prospect and Retrospect

The Senate will likely vote on the Build Back Better bill recently passed in the House. It will be interesting to see what new destructive ways Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema choose to use their leverage.*

David Horsey | Copyright 2021 Tribune Content Agency

Yet we still don’t know what’s motivating them to undermine their party, hurt the American people, and potentially derail Joe Biden’s presidency. Or do we? A recent article in The Guardian suggests the reason for their obstruction is quite simple—it’s lucrative.

Manchin, for example, opposed popular provisions such as paid family leave and a clean electricity programme that would boost wind and solar power while phasing out coal and gas, while Sinema rejected an increase of personal and corporate income tax rates. Their stances have not gone unnoticed by Wall Street and wealthy conservatives.

The $3.3m raised by Manchin’s campaign in the first nine months of this year was more than 14 times his haul at the equivalent stage last year, the New York Times added, while the $2.6m taken in by Sinema’s campaign was two and a half times what she netted over the same period in 2020.* “America is not a democracy, part 7,422:” The mainstream media continue to get this wrong, making the story one of Democratic infighting while entirely ignoring the fact that it’s only two Democrats—with a major assist from the entirety of the Republican Party--who are standing in the way of major progress in infrastructure, combating climate change, etc. As I’ve mentioned they focus on the price tag without discussing what is actually being paid for and without, as Robert Reich points out, discussing “the mammoth cost of doing nothing or too little.”

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* “America is not a democracy, part 7,422:” The mainstream media continue to get this wrong, making the story one of Democratic infighting while entirely ignoring the fact that it’s only two Democrats—with a major assist from the entirety of the Republican Party--who are standing in the way of major progress in infrastructure, combating climate change, etc. As I’ve mentioned they focus on the price tag without discussing what is actually being paid for and without, as Robert Reich points out, discussing “the mammoth cost of doing nothing or too little.”

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I don’t have much to say about Rittenhouse that hasn’t already been said, (although I wish the prosecution had pointed out to the jury that if the defendant had stayed home nobody would be dead). One thing that strikes me, though, is whatever we might think the reason is, whatever the verdict, one person is directly responsible for the deaths of two human beings. Forget about the sociopathy of the right wing valorization of the killer.  Why does he want to be valorized even if he thinks the killings were justified or accidental? If I accidentally killed two people with my car, for example, I’d never get over the grief. Maybe that isn’t the most important thing, but it haunts me.

The past few weeks, with the trials of Rittenhouse, McMichael and Bryan, and the Charlottesville trial, has got me thinking about American justice--and its absence. Shortly after the Rittenhouse verdict I tweeted this:

A man on Twitter who shall remain nameless, responded, "Knock it off. This is cruel, foolish and dismissive.”

To a man, who had exactly the same reaction to the verdict that I did, he merely said, “Quit it.” Anyone care to speculate why there was a difference in tone here?

​​ ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I wasn’t, of course, just thinking about the Rittenhouse trial (the egregiousness of which—from beginning to end—felt like a throwback to Jim Crow.) I was also thinking about other recent court cases such as the one in which another white man, who recently confessed to the rape of four girls, was sentenced to only eight years probation because the judge thought prison would be “inappropriate.” At least Brock Turner got three months in jail for raping Chanel Miller while she was unconscious but that wasn’t justice either.

I was thinking about the 21-year-old Oklahoma woman who was convicted of manslaughter after miscarrying and sentenced to four years in prison. And a Texas woman who was sentenced to five years in prison for voting while still on probation even though she voted provisionally, her ballot was never counted, and she didn’t know she was ineligible.

Meanwhile, a man went to his ex-wife’s house to pick up his children. When he realized they weren’t there he and his ex-wife’s boyfriend got into a shouting match. The boyfriend walked into his house, emerged with a shotgun, and shot the ex-husband. While the ex-husband lay there—dying or already dead we don’t know—nobody even tried to help him. If the video is anything to go by, it looked like murder in cold-blood but the man is not in custody and he hasn’t been charged with anything. He is, of course, claiming self-defense, although he was the only person holding a weapon.

It is through this lens that I look at Rittenhouse’s triumphant post-verdict tour during which he is claiming he isn’t a racist even though he’s hanging out with some of the worst racists in America like the Proud Boys, Sean Hannity, and Donald. This development is more troubling than the trial. The message they’re promulgating is Rittenhouse never should have been arrested, let alone tried, because not only did he not commit a crime, his killing of two innocent, unarmed men was righteous.

 We are headed down a very dark road.

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Under (and Off) the Radar

1. Remember when the execrable Matt Gaetz, contender for worst member of Congress (and the competition is so stiff) was going to be indicted any second for crimes? We’re repeatedly being told about the wheels of justice, they grind slow but fine, etc. Shouldn’t the process be fast-tracked for a member of Congress who by virtue of being a member of Congress, has influence, at least among a certain group of people, and power in our government. Either Joel Greenberg, Gaetz’s associate and fellow Venmo customer, has a lot of extraordinary information to share or we’ve once again misplaced our trust in the American justice system.

2. Does anybody have any idea what’s going on in Texas after SB8?

3. I know we shouldn’t care that somebody like Ted Cruz is targeting a beloved six-year old giant yellow (and fictional) bird from one of the greatest children’s shows ever produced, but   Cruz is a United States senator and insurrectionist. Even though we can expect nothing from these people, his posting of this cartoon is beyond the pale:

   

   But it does perfectly encapsulate the entire party’s embrace of the vile, the sophomoric, and the cruel. I bet Rafael’s kids loved Big Bird when they were young.

4. The anti-Islamic gun fetishist and congresswoman from Colorado offered a non-apology [link] for a racist (and fictional) story she told about her colleague, Ilhan Omar.  The backlash led her to release a statement which took the classic “I’m sorry if you  were offended (snowflake)” of most non-apologies. She actually referred to her own bigotry as an “unnecessary distraction!”  The media covered it as an actual apology. And then, totally proving her sincerity, she liked this tweet:

   

   I don’t know who Kurt Schlicter is but he must be psychic because he posted this while I was writing the above paragraph:

   

5. Greg Abbott is Governor of Texas, which helps makes some twisted sense of the news coming out of Texas. Yesterday he got some attention not because he’s ginning up racist fears about the omicron variant of COVID-19 discovered in South Africa. No, he’s concerned the variant is going to make its way over the non-existent border between the United States and . . . South Africa? Somebody generously explained he must have confused South Africa with South America. Last I checked we don’t share a border with South America either. It should come as no surprise that Texas ranks 34 in education. Here’s the tweet—and he still hasn’t taken it down!

   

   This is all bad but what goes unmentioned is that Abbott and fellow Republican governor Ron DeSantis continue to kill their constituents apace—not just by failing to protect them from COVID but by actively putting them in harm’s way.

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What’s Catching Sebastian’s Eye 

• The trial of Ghislaine Maxwell, alleged child predator and partner to actual child predator Jeffrey Epstein, started this morning in New York.

• Jack Dorsey stepped down as Twitter CEO. Will it matter?

• W.H.O. says the omicron variant poses a very high risk.

• And yet, in the U.S. the political will for new COVID restrictions is waning. 

OK then.