Los Angeles is being hammered the way New York was last spring.

LA county has faced an onslaught of terrifying Covid developments in recent days, including a surge in deaths, dire shortages of hospital resources, and fears that doctors will have to make agonizing choices to ration care.

…

Heading into the darkest holiday season some have ever endured, there were grim reminders across the LA region that the virus is spreading uncontrolled. The city’s mayor briefed the public while in quarantine after his daughter became infected. Hospitals were setting up triage tents. Residents waited in line for hours for Covid tests at Dodger stadium. The region recently ordered more body bags.

Outbreaks were afflicting grocery

And justify the ways of God to men…

Fuz Rana wrote, “The COVID-19 outbreak happened precisely at the time that advances in mRNA vaccines would allow for a rapid response” & that this is “a reflection of God’s providential timing and faithful provision to humanity.” You can read more here: https://t.co/MtwHdwc3hJ

— Hugh Ross (@RTB_HRoss) December 26, 2020

Ah yes, very excellent integration of science and faith. What a kind and careful and scientifically alert god it is, to wait to inflict a new virus on us until…um…there were plenty of ICUs to handle the cases? No. There were enough hospitals everywhere in the world to handle the cases? No. There were responsible governments everywhere in the world that knew … Read the rest

Hey about that whole pardons thing.

On this day in 1992, President George H. W. Bush issued pardons for six men. Arguably, these pardons did more to enable future criminal presidencies even than Gerald Ford’s pardon of Richard Nixon.

— Eric Rauchway (@rauchway) December 24, 2020

Funny how it’s always Republicans. Clinton’s pardon of Marc Rich was disgusting, but it didn’t open all the doors to criminality the way Ford’s and Bush’s did, let alone the way Trump’s are.

The administration of Ronald Reagan had lent secret military aid to the Nicaraguan guerrillas known as Contras who sought to overthrow the Sandinista government.

— Eric Rauchway (@rauchway) December 24, 2020

Upon discovering this secret aid, Congress outlawed it, in amendments

Interesting.

Donald Trump’s longtime banker at Deutsche Bank AG will be stepping down from the German lender, with the move coming as the bank looks for ways to cut its relations with the U.S. president.

Cut its relations and maybe get its money back? He’s stiffed them for millions.

Rosemary Vrablic, a managing director and senior banker in the lender’s wealth management division, recently handed in her resignation, which the bank accepted effective as of year-end, Deutsche Bank spokesman Dan Hunter said in an emailed statement.

According to the New York Times, which first reported Vrablic’s resignation, she arranged for the lender to grant hundreds of millions of dollars of loans to Trump’s company.

Well you can see why … Read the rest

Maya makes an important point about all this.

There is so much wrong with this article by Grace Lavery.

Jesse Singal gets at much of the detail

The biggest point for me though is captured in the framing by @ForeignPolicy

Their headline: https://t.co/ly9SSsgYXy pic.twitter.com/SGjbstvGps

— Maya Forstater (@MForstater) December 18, 2020

The case of Bell v Tavistock is a judicial review about the welfare and rights of children under 18 with gender dysphoria in England

– is it right that they can consent to take puberty blockers?

(I.e. the Q of Gillick competence)

— Maya Forstater (@MForstater) December 18, 2020

I’ll just quote the rest (with Twitter shortcuts and formatting removed).

You could argue that the court got it wrong;

A bit of good news.

This is honestly a miracle. Stopping Covid-19 in the confines of Dharavi is literally one of the most difficult things in the world. Salute to all the doctors, health workers & administration. And most importantly, the people of Dharavi! https://t.co/KnbdfYZdHU

— Joy Bhattacharjya (@joybhattacharj) December 25, 2020

The Times of India:

Dharavi slum colony in Mumbai did not report a single Covid-19 case in the last 24 hours.

This is the first time since April 1, when the first coronavirus case was reported in Dharavi, that Asia’s largest slum has reported no new case in a single day.

According to Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) data, so far Dharavi has reported 3,788 cases of which

If you've never seen a reindeer posing under an aurora before, today is your day. https://t.co/QGzgIW34oi pic.twitter.com/XxAtvAQHG0

— Meredith Frost (@MeredithFrost) December 24, 2020

… Read the rest

I see I’m not the only one.

How predictably tacky.

Posting your own promo of doing charity work is really gross.

"Look daddy, I'm charitying."

— BrooklynDad_Defiant! (@mmpadellan) December 24, 2020

She’s shared it like 5 different times between yesterday and today. Truly an inspiration!

— Andrew Kimmel (@andrewkimmel) December 24, 2020

One that is posturing for ron desantis' job and a 2024 run at the whitehouse

— DmMartin (@DmMarti00585674) December 24, 2020

There are a lot more like that. A lot more.… Read the rest

Remember: Pence thinks, and says, that it’s a bad thing that Democrats (or the left more broadly) “want to make poverty comfortable.”

Meanwhile…

Pence’s Colorado vacation — defying the national pandemic he was assigned to help thwart — is your tax dollars at work.

— Michael Beschloss (@BeschlossDC) December 24, 2020

Uncomfortable poverty for them, publicly funded flights to Vail for him. Lockdown for them, vacations in Vail for him.

54,000,000 Americans are going hungry right now and Mike Pence is scandalized by the very concept of "making poor people more comfortable." https://t.co/Ej1sCjAgC6

— Public Citizen (@Public_Citizen) December 22, 2020

… Read the rest

The cops are waiting at the exit.

Come noon on 20 January 2021, Trump and his inner circle will be private citizens again. Devoid of legal immunity, stripped of the air of invincibility, they become fair game for federal and local law enforcement alike. The potential for prison hovers over them like the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come.

Cyrus Vance, Manhattan’s district attorney, is circling Trump and his business. Eric Trump has testified at a court-ordered deposition conducted by New York’s attorney general. As for federal prosecutors in the southern district of New York, they labeled Trump an unindicted co-conspirator in the case of Michael Cohen. The statute of limitations has not expired.

So the Trumps have to … Read the rest

The princess wants us to know that she really really cares about poor people.

https://t.co/0Bco2gxIcw

— Ivanka Trump (@IvankaTrump) December 24, 2020

.@IvankaTrump helps load food into cars of drivers in need https://t.co/EaHaUeFohY

— CBS 58 News (@CBS58) December 23, 2020

https://twitter.com/IvankaTrump/status/1341769710480871425

Ivanka Trump Takes Part in South Florida Food Distribution Ahead of Christmas – NBC 6 South Florida https://t.co/MZlVemnU5g

— Ivanka Trump (@IvankaTrump) December 23, 2020

Remember that story her friend from school told about her (cough) lack of interest in poor people?

In the most scathing passage, Ohrstrom claimed that in their mid-20s she recommended to her friend the book Empire Falls, a Pulitzer prize-winning novel by Richard Russo about working-class characters in a small town in

The latest gotcha – ooooooh Obama pardoned lots more.

The issue isn’t quantity – although lots of a bad thing is worse than a little, so quantity is part of the issue in that sense. But in the rest of the senses it isn’t.

What a Maroon directed us to Politifact from last February.

The latest round of clemency grants from President Donald Trump sparked new criticism that he was abusing his expansive pardon powers by skirting the normal review process and favoring white-collar criminals who were prominent and well-connected.

But two days after the Feb. 18 announcements, a Facebook post implied that it was Barack Obama, not Trump, who had abused the largely unchecked pardon power.

The post

In today’s round of disgusting pardons –

President Donald Trump on Wednesday evening announced 26 new pardons, including ones for longtime ally Roger Stone, former campaign chairman Paul Manafort and White House senior adviser Jared Kushner’s father, Charles.

The pardons extend Trump’s streak of wielding his clemency powers for criminals who are loyalists, well-connected or adjacent to his family. While all presidents issue controversial pardons at the end of their terms, Trump appears to be moving at a faster pace than his predecessors, demonstrating little inhibition at rewarding his friends and allies using one of the most unrestricted powers of his office.

Appears to be? He either is or isn’t. It’s a matter of fact, not speculation. He’s already … Read the rest

Business advice: don’t insure the Catholic church. Really, don’t do that.

The Catholic Church’s private insurer spent more than $58 million paying out the victims of sexual abuse last year and the company is being forced to raise fresh capital and liquidate investments to cover a future compensation bill worth at least another $238 million.

Not profitable.

Catholic Church Insurance (CCI) has posted nearly a $250 million loss as it struggles to meet a wave of new claims in the wake of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

More business advice: don’t invest in their stock.

CCI, which insures Catholic parishes, religious institutions, welfare groups, aged care facilities and schools across Australia for incidents of

Trump has been casually ruining the lives of people who administer elections. One guy is suing.

An election systems worker driven into hiding by death threats has filed a defamation lawsuit against “President” Donald Trump’s campaign, two of its lawyers and some conservative media figures and outlets.

Eric Coomer, security director at the Colorado-based Dominion Voting Systems, said he wants his life back after being named in false charges as a key actor in “rigging” the election for President-elect Joe Biden. There has been no evidence that the election was rigged.

His lawsuit, filed Tuesday in district court in Denver County, Colorado, names the Trump campaign, lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, conservative columnist Michelle Malkin, the website Gateway

The Ego-Pardons:

Every president’s pardon list contains some self-serving or controversial picks—think of Clinton’s pardon for Marc Rich, or Barack Obama’s commutation of Chelsea Manning’s sentence to time served.

But every other president in American history has chosen some worthy recipients of executive clemency as well, some reformed souls whose cases sang out for pardons. That’s because every other American president has been a more or less normal human being. And normal human beings have some concept of justice.

I don’t think that’s true about the more or less normal human being, actually. Nixon wasn’t normal. Teddy Roosevelt wasn’t all that normal. Lincoln wasn’t. Coolidge wasn’t. Andrew Johnson wasn’t. Kennedy wasn’t. Most are, probably, but there are definitely some … Read the rest

Originally a comment by Screechy Monkey on Law and order.

Even if you got rid of the pardon power, there are still a host of ways that a sitting president can effectively immunize his supporters and lackeys from federal criminal consequences. He can simply order his Attorney General to order the U.S. Attorneys not to bring any such charges or to dismiss ones that have been brought. This is essentially what Trump first attempted with Flynn — of course, being Trump he arguably botched it by waiting until Flynn had already pled guilty, so Judge Sullivan was at least entertaining the possibility that the dismissal might not be legally effective. In fact, the “unitary executive” theorists would say that … Read the rest

Trump’s pardon of the Blackwater murderers is not universally popular.

The UN Human Rights Office warned that the pardons would serve to embolden others to commit similar crimes.

The father of a nine-year boy who died said Mr Trump “broke my life again”.

It was an example of following that awful slogan “Do it to them before they do it to you.”

The story told to me by eyewitnesses followed a familiar pattern: in the heavy traffic a frightened and inexperienced driver ignored warnings to stop, and carried on towards a convoy of American officials protected by Blackwater agents.

Several witnesses insisted that the contractors had panicked and opened fire indiscriminately. Among those who died was a nine-year-old boy

It’s dear “Sophie-Grace” again, philosopher and trans laydee. Remember the bright blue strappy shoes?

In her Harry Potter series J K Rowling skilfully creates communities of frightened, marginalised, demonised outsiders with special gifts, living in the shadows on the edge of society.
She still does this today. Just not in fiction.

— Sophie Grace (@SophieGraceCha1) December 21, 2020

What “special gifts” do trans people have?

While you’re researching that, I’ll point out that Sophie-Grace formerly Timothy is marginalizing and demonizing JK Rowling, who is actually a woman as opposed to notionally one, so more vulnerable to violence than Sophie-Grace is. I get increasingly tired of men claiming to be marginalized and demonized and tragically vulnerable while in the very act … Read the rest

James Kirkup at the Spectator dissects that reckless BBC article, starting by quoting the Samaritans’ advice on how to report on suicide:

Steer clear of presenting suicidal behaviour as an understandable response to a crisis or adversity. This can contribute to unhelpful and risky normalising of suicide as an appropriate response to distress.’

And:

‘Speculation about the ‘trigger’ or cause of a suicide can oversimplify the issue and should be avoided. Suicide is extremely complex and most of the time there is no single event or factor that leads someone to take their own life.’

Yet the BBC quoted people doing exactly those things.

Then he points out that the Tavistock itself says suicidality in its clients is the same … Read the rest