The zapping of Fakhrizadeh

 First off, it's important to state that as of this writing, we do not know who is responsible. All signs point to Israel and a green light from the US, but we must not get ahead of ourselves. In tense situations like this, it's important to deal in facts.

Who was he? Why would he be targeted?

Fakhrizadeh was a senior Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) officer and headed Iran’s nuclear weapons project. He was a professor of physics at the Imam Hussein University in Tehran and was former head of Iran’s Physics Research Center (PHRC). He was the only Iranian scientist named in the IAEA’s 2015 “final assessment” of open questions about Iran’s nuclear program. It said he oversaw activities “in support of a possible military dimension to (Iran’s) nuclear program.”

In other words, he was definitely on board with Iran's foreign policy and its general outlook on the world, and he was also an expert in atomic-level matters. He was a very valuable asset for the regime. 

 

Fakhrizadeh has been a target of interest for Israeli intelligence agencies for the last 15 years.

In 2018, at the unveiling of Iran’s secret nuclear archive acquired by the Mossad, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu mentioned Fakhrizadeh and said: “remember that name, Fakhrizadeh.”

The files retrieved by the Mossad focused on Iran’s weapons program known as “Project Amad,” which was led by Fakhrizadeh. When Iran entered the 2015 nuclear deal, it denied that such a program existed.

In 2003, Iran was forced to shelve Project Amad, but not its nuclear ambitions. It split its program into an overt program and a covert one that continued the nuclear work under the title of scientific knowhow development, Netanyahu said at the time.

It continued this work in a series of organizations, which in 2018 were led by SPND, an organization inside Iran’s Defense Ministry led by the same person who led Project Amad – Dr. Fakhrizadeh, Netanyahu said.

Now, consider the timing of some recent events. 

In January of this year, the US took out Qasem Soleimani in a drone strike. Soleimani was, like Fakhrizadeh, an officer in the IRGC - in fact, a major general - and, since 1998, had been commander of its Quds Force. He was the prime architect of Iran's misdeeds in the Middle East.

Then came the September peace agreements between Israel and the UAE and Bahrain. These had the effect of confirming that Palestinian animosity toward Israel was no longer the centerpiece of the region's dynamics. An Israeli-Sunni Arab bloc was shaping up to form a counter-force to Iran's designs. 

Then came last weekend's clandestine meeting between Netanyahu, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. 

These events don't look unrelated. Just sayin'.

Now, there had been speculation that the incoming Biden administration would go to work trying to revive the JCPOA. That looks less likely now. 

The JCPOA was a bad "agreement" from the get-go. John Kerry and Wendy Sherman allowed themselves to be humiliated and yelled at by Iranian foreign minister Zarif at an interminable string of meetings as it was cobbled together. Much hay was made over a very narrow presumption of achievement: that Iran would not try to build a nuclear arsenal for at least ten years. It did nothing to change the Iranian regime's fundamental stance toward the West - and I'm including Israel in that formulation. Shortily after the deal was inked, on the day of Obama's State of the Union address that year, Iran stopped two US Navy patrol boats, took their crews captive and broadcast to the world photographs of the crew members on their knees with their hands behind their heads. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini, as well as top IRGC officers, continue their very public characterizations of the US as Iran's enemy. Iran continued to foment trouble in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and elsewhere. 

So whoever executed Fakhrizadeh seems to have done the world a favor. He was the point man for Iran's determination to become a nuclear power, something that must not happen. 

 

This is great

 He was looking for results. None were forthcoming. Now he wants his money back:

A pro-Trump group that promised to challenge the Nov. 3 election results and expose fraud was sued by a North Carolina money manager who donated $2.5 million to the cause but says he didn’t get his money’s worth.

Fred Eshelman, founder of Eshelman Ventures LLC, wants his money back, saying he “regularly and repeatedly” asked for updates on the project but his “requests were consistently met with vague responses, platitudes, and empty promises,” according to the lawsuit filed Wednesday in Houston federal court.

Houston-based True the Vote Inc. had promised a multi-pronged plan to “investigate, litigate, and expose suspected illegal balloting and fraud in the 2020 general election,” according to the lawsuit.

In the weeks after the election, True the Vote filed four lawsuits, but it dropped them all last week. 

The group's statement attempting top make excuses didn't cut it with Eshelman:

The money manager said he agreed to support the plan and wired the group $2 million on Nov. 5 and $500,000 a week later after the group’s president told him that more money might be needed to achieve their goals, according to the suit.

When True the Vote failed to provide any reports on its progress and with certification deadlines approaching, Eshelman said it became obvious the group wouldn’t be able to execute the plan he agreed to support. So, he asked for his money back.

Maybe this will put a dent in the cascade of email grift coming from the remaining cult followers. 

The world has moved on, you guys. People are concluding that your chasing after a hallucination is a poor use of their money.

 

 

 

Biden cabinet picks - initial thoughts

 I don't have anything like exhaustive familiarity with the backgrounds and positions of most of these people, but after doing some research, I tend to concur with the view I'm seeing from a spectrum of folks that they look like what one would expect for Biden Cabinet picks. It's clear he and his team of advisors are being driven to a considerable degree by diversity. That's what a Democrat administration in 2020 / 2021 is going to prioritize. Most of them seem to be serious people with impressive credentials. From what I can tell, they're not wild-eyed radicals.

Anthony Blinken comes across as earnest. He says he's going to put humility among the foremost values driving his work if he's confirmed as secretary of state. I get the sense he wants to see the US be a consensus-builder and facilitator on the world stage, which is fine as far as it goes - in fact, a refreshing change from the bull-in-a-china-shop "American First" stance of the era now concluding.  Let's see how it's fleshed out in such matters as alliances and shoring up a sense of the West as a crucial player among the world's spheres of influence. There's also the unsettling matter of the Biden administration serving notice that the global climate is going to be a top priority. More about that later.

Janet Yellen is a Keynesian and I think she tends to look at economic matters through a largely macro lens, but from what I can tell she's regarded as pretty level-headed. She ought to make an interesting treasury secretary. Hey, Elizabeth Warren didn't get the gig, which brings a sigh of relief.

Alejandro Mayorkas has an impressive resume. He has some experience in dealing with cyber-crime. I can't find much that would indicate where he stands on terrorism or the military machinations of America's enemies, which are key areas of focus for a Homeland Security secretary. 

Linda Thomas-Greenfield likewise doesn't have the kind of trail of demonstrations of outspokenness on the kinds of matters that come before either the UN Security Council of General Assembly. Will she be a dig-in-your-heels-and-demand-Western-principles-get-defended firebrand like Jeane Kirkpatrick, John Bolton and Nikki Haley? I wouldn't bet on it. I think she's more of a bureaucrat who will fit well with Blinken's style. 

Avril Haines, the DNI Director-designate, is an interesting figure. In 1992, she dropped out of a doctoral program at Johns Hopkins to join her husband in purchasing a Baltimore bar that had been seized in a drug raid. They turned it into a cafe-bookstore, which held, among other things, erotica reading nights. She later went back to academia and got a Georgetown law degree. In 2018, she ardently supported Trump's pick of Gina Haspel to be CIA director, praising her credentials forthrightly.

And then there's John Kerry, who is going to be climate czar. I guess in a Dem cabinet, you have to have one hardcore leftist. Stop rolling your eyes. We all remember his leadership of Vietnam Veterans Against the War and the way he lied about he US committing atrocities in a congressional hearing. He went to Nicaragua as a first-term Senator in the 1980s and met with Daniel Ortega to tell him that not all elements of the US government were on the same page with that awful Ronald Reagan. He's called Israel an apartheid state. As Secretary of State, he and Wendy Sherman allowed themselves to be humiliated and yelled at by Iranian foreign minister Zarif during the interminable negotiations that led to that shameful piece of appeasement with one of the West's most threatening enemies, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. And, of course, he thinks the global climate is in some kind of trouble that requires humankind to urgently put the brakes on its advancement, and that is the area that is going to be his portfolio on this cabinet. 

So there are no real surprises here. Much to follow and observe with an open mind, and some things to oppose right off the bat. 

One thing we can say for sure is that it will be a whole different ballgame from what we've seen under the Very Stable Genius.

The terrifying spectacle of late-stage Trumpism

 We're now at the stage where Sidney Powell is claiming to have red-hot scoops of "biblical" proportions up her sleeve. She's now claiming that Brad Raffensperger and Brian Kemp are in cahoots with Dominion Voting Systems to rig the tallies in Georgia. 

Liz Cheney and some other House Republicans who have their heads on straight are telling Trump and his battery of batshit crazy lawyers to put up or shut up, their wild claims having gotten tossed out of thirty-plus courts around the nation. Chris Christie says it's time for the Trump cult to knock this off.  

Dallas pastor Robert Jeffress, who had been one of the most drool-besotted cult followers of the Very Stable Genius, has said that, though it's a "bitter pill to swallow," it's time for Squirrel-Hair to face reality. 

It's quite clear that all the Townhall.com, Gateway Pundit, Bookworm Room, OANN, Newsmax TV, Dan Bongino, Roger Kimball, Kayleigh McAneney types are harming the chances for Georgia's Senate seats to remain in Republican hands and nothing more. 

What the past week has confirmed is that the solipsism, obnoxiousness, complete absence of empathy, complete lack of interest in history and the underpinnings of Western civilization, and determination to be glorified above any other consideration that has driven Donald J. Trump not only since he seriously acted upon political aspirations, but throughout his entire pathetic life was destined to seriously jeopardize the United States of America.

"But Gorsuch" doesn't cut it anymore. 

This has been a colossal mistake. 

Let the free market work its magic and get us coronavirus vaccines

 Sally Pipes of the Pacific Research Institute has an excellent op-ed at the Fox News website right now. It's about how wrongheaded the Very Stable Genius's approach to drug pricing is, and the implications for keeping America the most innovative nation in the world with regard to new life-saving pharmaceutical products. 

President Trump announced Friday that he will proceed with his plans to peg the prices of certain drugs prescribed largely at doctors’ offices under Medicare Part B to the lower prices that other developed nations pay for those drugs. That may sound good at first glance, but in reality, the move will slow the development of new drugs, consigning countless patients to needless suffering and premature death.

The president said he's trying to secure the best deal for American patients. But his move will deprive drug companies of billions of dollars in revenue, making it impossible for them to spend the money they no longer earn to develop new drugs

As Stephen J. Ubl, president of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, correctly pointed out in a statement after President Trump’s announcement: “It defies logic that the administration is blindly proceeding with a ‘most favored nation’ policy that gives foreign governments the upper hand in deciding the value of medicines in the United States. History proves that when governments take unilateral action to set prices, it disrupts patient access to treatments, discourages investment in new medicines and threatens jobs and economic growth.” 

And while the VSG is ostensibly doing this to burnish his populist bona fides, his touchy ego is definitely a factor. He thinks Big Pharma deliberately dissed him:

President Trump appears to have an ulterior motive regarding his move against drug companies. He claims — without providing any evidence— that the drug manufacturers working on coronavirus vaccines deliberately withheld the good news of vaccine progress to harm his chances of reelection.

“Pfizer and others even decided to not assess the results of their vaccine, in other words not come out with a vaccine, until just after the election,” the president told reporters Friday at the White House. “That’s because of what I did with ‘favored nations’ and these other elements — instead of their original plan to assess the data in October. So they waited and waited and waited, and they thought they’d come out with it a few days after the election.”

Pfizer Chairman and CEO Albert Bourla has denied that the election had any impact on his company’s announcement of a promising coronavirus vaccine. In an Oct. 16 open letter he wrote that his company was “operating at the speed of science.”

Accusing drug companies of delaying a vaccine to protect us from a disease that has killed more than 254,000 Americans and infected more than 11.9 million is an extraordinarily serious charge, and denigrates the work of everyone involved in development of experimental coronavirus vaccines that we all hope will become available in December.

Pipes then gives a ringing defense of the free market that ought to be shouted from the rooftops:

This ecosystem is the reason the United States creates more drugs than the rest of the world. It's defined by two key features.

The first is strong protections for intellectual property. Without patents and other intellectual safeguards, it would be beyond irrational to invest the nearly $3 billion required, on average, to develop just one successful drug.

It’s important to understand that for every drug that successfully comes to market, many more prove to be unsafe or ineffective — meaning the drug companies can never sell these drugs and never recover their substantial research and development costs. But without conducting expensive research, it’s impossible to know which drugs will be safe and effective. 

Robust intellectual property protections ensure that when a drug does make it to market competing firms can't steal a company's research and manufacture knock-off products with impunity.

The second feature is that the pharmaceutical sector is governed by market principles, for the most part. Unlike in many other developed countries, the U.S. government generally doesn't impose price controls on medicines. Drug firms have relative freedom to charge a price that the market will bear. So they have a better chance of recouping their substantial upfront research and development costs.

The relatively free market in the U.S. gives investors the confidence they need to take big risks funding a promising new cancer therapy, a potential Alzheimer's breakthrough, or, in the current case, a vaccine for COVID-19.

These basic components — property rights and free markets — are the two pillars of our capitalist system that has proven repeatedly to provide greater benefit to ordinary citizens than socialism or communism in countries around the world.

Preach it!

. . . a profit motive isn't incidental to America's superiority in drug innovation. It's an essential component — one that can't be abandoned without undermining progress towards much-needed treatments and cures.

Without the capitalist system that underpins America's drug industry, the world would have to wait much longer for the medical breakthroughs that will ultimately win the war against COVID-19 and help the millions of us stricken with other diseases every year.

This is what we need more of, not some attempt to keep Trumpism alive after its namesake standard-bearer's inevitable demise by saying that conservatism ought to abandon "free-market fundamentalism" and tailor itself to appeal to some notion of a "working class" that doesn't really clamor for protection.  

The world is going to keep changing, as will the definition of "working class." What conservatism brings to the table is a set of eternal verities - like free-market principles - that serve societies well at any time.

 

 

 

 

 

The Krebs firing

 One more conclusive example of how the Very Stable Genius prioritizes his fragile ego over national security:

President Trump took to Twitter late Tuesday to fire his top cybersecurity official via tweet for not toeing the line on his “rigged” election narrative.

“The recent statement by Chris Krebs on the security of the 2020 Election was highly inaccurate, in that there were massive improprieties and fraud - including dead people voting, Poll Watchers not allowed into polling locations, ‘glitches’ in the voting machines which changed votes from Trump to Biden, late voting, and many more. Therefore, effective immediately, Chris Krebs has been terminated as Director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency,” Trump declared.

Krebs, who had set up a web page to counter disinformation about the security of the election, had reportedly been expecting to be fired after becoming one of the few in Trump’s administration to dispute his claims.

He reacted to his termination with a brief statement on his personal Twitter account: “Honored to serve. We did it right. Defend Today, Secure Tomorrow.”

His firing comes as more and more of the president’s allegations of voting discrepancies fall apart in court. Just hours before Krebs’ ouster on Tuesday, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled against the Trump campaign’s claims that observers were not able to properly monitor absentee vote-counting.

GOP Throws More Crap at the Wall as Trump Legal Losses Pile Up

While the president has repeatedly tried to sound the alarm over supposed voting discrepancies that he claims robbed him of victory in the Nov. 3 election, officials have said there is no evidence to back up his assertions. Even the Trump campaign’s own lawyers, in their legal blitz to prevent the certification of Joe Biden’s victory, have struggled to present evidence of a “rigged” election in court; many of their legal challenges alleging voter fraud have collapsed when judges grilled them on their claims. In some cases, the evidence was deemed to be hearsay gathered via a “voter fraud” website. In others, Trump campaign lawyers admitted under questioning that observers were not blocked from monitoring the vote count as the complaint alleged.

Lawmakers responded to news of Krebs’ termination with praise for his work in protecting the election.

“Chris Krebs is a dedicated public servant who has done a remarkable job during a challenging time,” Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC) said in a statement. He went on to say the work of Krebs and his CISA team “should serve as a model for other government agencies” and was “essential in protecting the 2020 U.S. presidential election against threats of foreign interference.”

Reps. Bennie G. Thompson (D-MS) and Lauren Underwood (D-IL) issued a joint statement calling Trump’s firing of Krebs “disturbing” and “antidemocratic.”

“The fact is that, since Election Day, President Trump has sought to delegitimize the election results by engaging in a disinformation campaign that could shatter public confidence in our elections for generations. Director Krebs put national security ahead of politics and refused to use his position to do the President’s bidding, so the President fired him,” they said.

“In firing Director Krebs for refusing to lend credibility to his baseless claims and conspiracy theories about voter fraud, the President is telling officials throughout the Administration to put his political interests ahead of their responsibilities to the American people.”

This, of course, comes on the heels of Trump's firing of Defense Secretary Mark Esper, a move during what should be a transition period, characteristically a time of relative wobbliness. This vulnerability does not go unnoticed in the world:

Even under the best of circumstances, a presidential transition "is a period when we aren't necessarily firing on all cylinders in terms of the people and processes that manage national security issues for the nation, which creates that sense of heightened vulnerability," Nick Rasmussen, a former head of the National Counterterrorism Center, told NBC News.

"This particular move today creates concern and uncertainty because there are already concerns about the president's decision-making style and what he might do in the remaining days of his presidency," he said.

We also must include as part of the context for the Krebs termination the abrupt drawdown of US troops in Afghanistan. The manner in which that is being proposed has raised concerns:

In a rare rebuke of Donald Trump, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has warned that the outgoing administration’s planned drawdown of troops in Afghanistan would “hand a weakened and scattered al-Qaeda a big, big propaganda victory and a renewed safe haven for plotting attacks against America.”

Mr McConnell couched his warnings about the hazards of an Afghanistan troop withdrawal in a speech on the Senate floor on Monday in more general praise for Mr Trump’s foreign policy achievements over the last four years. But the recently re-elected majority leader’s comments fit a larger pattern of pushing back — gently — against the president’s most anti-interventionist instincts in the Middle East.

“A disorganized retreat would jeopardize the track record of major successes this administration has worked hard to compile” in the region, Mr McConnell said on Monday.

Still, at this late date, this dangerously unfit buffoon has slavish devotees who are perpetuating his delusions and indulging his impulses. Townhall, American Greatness, The Federalist, OANN, Newsmax TV and the wilds of after-8 PM FNC are determined to ride the Trump Train all the way over the cliff.

It's time for actual conservatives to turn around and step back onto solid ground. There's not a moment to lose in beginning the process of rebuilding an understanding among thoughtful Americans as to what the immutable principles informing our positions are.

We'll just have to hope for the best during eight more weeks of winging it in place of coherent policy.  

 

 

 

Hoover puts distance between itself and Scott Atlas

 Recall that the reason Dr. Atlas is on the pandemic task force at all is because the VSG was impressed with the way he'd shoot off his mouth on television. 

Well, he's kept at it:

Dr. Scott Atlas, a controversial member of President Donald Trump's coronavirus task force, is facing heavy criticism after telling Michiganders to "rise up" against Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's new COVID-19 restrictions imposed as new cases surge in the state.

Whitmer has denounced Atlas' call to action, in a call with Michigan Capitol reporters Monday morning, slamming it as "incredibly reckless, considering everything that has happened, everything that is going on."

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's top expert on infectious diseases, told NBC's "Today" program Monday he "totally disagrees" with Atlas, and Dr. Ashish Jha, the dean of Brown University's School of Public Health, called the comment "particularly irresponsible," noting the death threats officials say Whitmer has faced.

His employer, the Hoover Institution, based on the Stanford University campus, determined that it was time to speak up:

The university has been asked to comment on recent statements made by Dr. Scott Atlas, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution who is on leave of absence from that position.

Stanford’s position on managing the pandemic in our community is clear.  We support using masks, social distancing, and conducting surveillance and diagnostic testing.  We also believe in the importance of strictly following the guidance of local and state health authorities.

Dr. Atlas has expressed views that are inconsistent with the university’s approach in response to the pandemic. Dr. Atlas’s statements reflect his personal views, not those of the Hoover Institution or the university.

 

The cringe-worthy moments are going to continue right up to noon on January 20. 

The GOP is actually positioned fairly well at the moment, but the remaining Trumpists decide to act suicidally

 Look, you knuckleheads, the makeup of the Senate depends on the two runoff races in Georgia. This is no time to be harassing that state's secretary of state based on your desperate delusions of the VSG still having a chance:

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said Monday that he has come under increasing pressure in recent days from fellow Republicans, including Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, to question the validity of legally cast absentee ballots in an effort to reverse President Donald Trump's narrow loss in the state.

In a wide-ranging interview about the election, Raffensperger expressed exasperation over a string of baseless allegations coming from Trump and his allies about the integrity of the Georgia results, including claims that Dominion Voting Systems, the Colorado-based manufacturer of Georgia's voting machines, is a "leftist" company with ties to Venezuela that engineered thousands of Trump votes to be left out of the count.

The atmosphere has grown so contentious, Raffensperger said, that both he and his wife, Tricia, have received death threats in recent days, including a text to him that read: "You better not botch this recount. Your life depends on it."

"Other than getting you angry, it's also very disillusioning," Raffensperger said of the threats, "particularly when it comes from people on my side of the aisle. Everyone that is working on this needs to elevate their speech. We need to be thoughtful and careful about what we say." He said he reported the threats to state authorities.

Answer this honestly, leg-humpers: Is this about shoring up the prospects for the advance of conservative principles and policies, or going to any lengths to demonstrate your devotion to the most unfit president in US history?

 

 

Saturday roundup

 I had a bit of a notion when I got up today to write a post about the inevitable tradeoff between whacking the coronavirus once and for all and how the price is too steep for society to undertake what would be required. Alas, G. Patrick Lynch at Law & Liberty has handled the matter impeccably:

Back in March, before the world got weird, the argument for lockdowns and restrictions was simple and powerful. In the wake of the Italian healthcare system’s catastrophic failure to handle its first major Covid outbreak, public health officials and political leaders across the globe almost unanimously decided to pursue a lockdown for what they claimed would be a few weeks in order to “flatten the curve” and avoid overwhelming hospital systems. Trust me on this, you didn’t dream it.

Now more than eight months into those “few weeks,” the Great Barrington Declaration is forcing us in the developed West to answer a question that we have needed to discuss honestly and publicly for a while: what’s the goal now? What are we trying to accomplish with the myriad of frequently changing collections of Covid policies that are still in place in some locales and may be reimposed on others?

We don’t hear about curve bending, let alone flattening anymore. Instead, we hear about “public safety,” “protecting Grandma and Grandpa,” mask wearing, and social distancing. There have been recent threats of more “targeted” lockdowns because of increasing cases. None of these are goals—they are practices without a clear end in sight. No one in the White House, Congress, state legislatures, or governors’ mansions is articulating a clear goal or timeline. What’s more, the trade-offs associated with this messy collection of policies have been significant and deadly.

Public health experts talk about “excess deaths,” which are essentially additional deaths in a place over a time period above what you would have predicted under normal conditions. Since the beginning of the year, the US has experienced about 300,000 excess deaths, which is a lot. The number directly attributable to Covid is “only” about 200,000. So Covid has killed 200,000, but another 100,000 Americans have died while these policies have been in place. Health officials widely point to higher rates of serious health problems that aren’t being treated because of fear associated with Covid. For example, the heart attack death rate has doubled since the pandemic began. Many of those other excess deaths might be attributable to our Covid policies, not the virus. That’s a failure on both counts. We haven’t prevented 200,000 deaths from Covid, and our lockdowns and draconian approaches lasting for months have at the very least contributed to another 100,000. Individuals who cannot afford to do so are forgoing basic health services. Heart attacks, strokes, and many other significant health problems are occurring and not being treated because of fears related to the pandemic. And perhaps most dangerously, these extra deaths not directly attributable to Covid are occurring among younger Americans between 30 and 60 who are not at high risk of dying from the virus, but are foregoing treatment because of misplaced fear.

This is to say nothing of the suffering the virus and the containment policies have caused in the developing world where millions of people live from day to day. They aren’t rich enough to stay at home, watch Netflix, and chill. There are no virtual classes in poor public schools in Latin America, Africa, and Asia. We in the US are rich enough to temporarily get away with this odd, bifurcated world where many of the wealthy work from home and their children receive private tutoring online, while other “essential” workers continue to work in their jobs and accept more risks.

Constructing public policy takes not only expertise, but a proper balance between risk and reward. Aaron Wildavsky’s work on this topic points out two reasons why public officials, in conjunction with citizens, must accept tradeoffs in the creation of safety policy. As Wildavsky argues, and the discussion of excess deaths clearly illustrates, seeking safety will inevitably increase danger in other areas. For instance, Wildavsky discusses attempts by the city of Los Angeles to promote the demolition of many older buildings throughout its metropolitan area because they were deemed unsafe in the event of an earthquake. City officials were trying to be proactive against possible deaths from older buildings collapsing. But as he notes, displacing 17,000 residents from those buildings and disrupting the commercial activity in many of them had consequences for health and safety. The same is true when new drugs are placed on the market. Many citizens benefit from the drugs, but a few can have severe side-effects.

Conversely, Wildavsky argues, somewhat paradoxically, that accepting risks can promote safety. Take any standard table or floor lamp. At the time that electric lamps were invented, people were somewhat concerned about running electric current right to their fingertips, but compared to burning gas and candles, it turned out to be much safer. The tradeoff was worth it and only through risk-taking experimentation did we discover that it was safe.

The problem with our current regulatory environment, as Wildavsky sees it, is twofold: resilience is not valued, and regulators and policymakers seek what he calls “perfect safety.” Our policymakers today are rejecting resiliency, making us poorer, less socially stable, less well-educated, and more divided. The second problem is that our health experts also seek some sort of ideal or perfect safety when it comes to Covid mitigation. When policymakers compete in a race to the bottom for draconian measures that fight Covid outbreaks only with brute force, they are lauded as being proactive without careful consideration of the harm these policies inflict.

More fundamentally, what have all of these Covid mitigation policies done for human flourishing? If we could reach the perfectly safe Covid life, would it be worth it? Aristotle reminds us of the problems that arise when individuals do not live socially. As he notes in the Politics, our natural state is in a social order like the city, the center of the ancient Greek world. He famously noted that the man not suited to social life in the city was either “a beast or a god.” But what often gets left out is the next sentence, where he writes, “There is then in all persons a natural impetus to associate with each other in this manner, and he who first founded civil society was the cause of the greatest good.” Our end goal should be the promotion of human flourishing, which requires the maintenance of civil society—the social world where we practice politics, associate freely, and achieve justice through the rules that evolve from our regular interactions. This process is halted in the Covid world.

But it’s not merely our rules and sense of justice that come from social life. Our friendships, described by Aristotle in book 8 of the Nicomachean Ethics, are profoundly important not only because of the good they do for us and our friends, but also because friendship is a substitute for state-enforced justice. When friendship is rich and deep in a political system, leaders do not need to resort to coercion and force. By instilling fear among all of us, politicians are fracturing friendship and subjecting us to lives that are not natural. We can easily see the roots of our recent civil unrest, rioting, and lawlessness during this pandemic in the isolation and breakdown of social and economic life.

None of these forced and consciously chosen disruptions were done in bad faith. However, isolation and separation from our friends, loved ones, and social life is not natural and not without cost. It can fracture our social fabric irreparably. Waiting for months without a clear set of goals decreases cohesion and trust among the governed. At the regime level, this opens up the possibility for a growing chasm between the governed and governors. Such a situation invites potential abuses of power. 

Seth Chalmer at Quillette offers a thought-provoking perspective on our society's ever-ratcheting polarization:

 

When Napoleon invaded Russia in 1812, many Jews in the Russian Empire hoped for a French victory. Napoleon had eliminated barriers to Jewish integration and advancement in France; the Russian regime and its policies, by contrast, were thoroughly infused with anti-Jewish discrimination and hostility. But one prominent Hasidic leader disagreed with those cheering Bonaparte. Schneur Zalman of Liadi, founding Rebbe of the Chabad-Lubavitch sect, fervently supported Russia’s Tsar Alexander I. Publicly, Schneur Zalman argued that the Tsar served God while Napoleon served only himself. Privately, however, the rabbi had another reason. Writing to a friend, he explained that if Napoleon were victorious, conditions would greatly improve for the Jews and this would weaken their commitment to God, whereas if the Tsar prevailed, Jews would suffer but remain religiously committed as a result. Closing his letter, he quoted Psalm 119: “‘Princes have persecuted me without cause; But my heart stands in awe of Your words.’ And for God’s sake: Burn this letter.”

I thought of Rabbi Schneur Zalman’s secret reasoning while reading Ezra Klein’s 2019 book, Why We’re Polarized. There’s a parallel between the Hasidic master’s conviction that repression of Jews strengthens Jewish commitment and some of the social science Klein discusses. Schneur Zalman’s focus was piety, not identity, yet in a way he seems to have known a truth that research later confirmed, and that all sides of today’s culture wars would be wise to remember: when you attack an identity, you make it stronger. Klein synthesizes decades of social science research about how people relate to group identities. Summarizing these findings, he writes: “The human mind is exquisitely tuned to group affiliation and group difference. It takes almost nothing for us to form a group identity, and once that happens, we naturally assume ourselves in competition with other groups.” Furthermore, “The simplest way to activate someone’s identity is to threaten it.” Threat is such a strong force that it can awaken seemingly dormant identities; for example, Klein paraphrases Professor Ashley Jardina, who studies racial identity: “White political identity is conditional. It emerges in periods of threat and challenges.”

Note the asymmetry of ease between nurturing an identity and weakening one: it takes “almost nothing” for us to form an identity, whereas when someone threatens an identity we hold, that only activates us to claim and defend it, even if it hadn’t felt relevant to us before. Klein is interested in this subject for what it tells us about the two political “mega-identities” that consume America today, how the alignment of political identities with social identities inflames our divisions, and why so many arguments that seem to be about ideology and policy are really about politics as identity. But Klein’s observations lead me to ask a question he doesn’t address: What is the most effective way to uproot an identity?

Ed Morrissey at Hot Air discusses how two law firms pursuing these Hail-Mary efforts of the Trump campaign to find funny business withdrawing their services has unsettling long-term implications. If law firms can be cowed by the forces of wokeness to stand down, an important resource of participants in our democratic process takes a hit:

the timing on Porter Wright’s move seems curious, if so. That exchange in court took place a week ago. Yesterday, however, the New York Times highlighted internal divisions and external pressures on Porter Wright and Jones Day, another storied Ohio legal firm retained by Team Trump, over their participation in election challenges.

Doing business with Mr. Trump — with his history of inflammatory rhetoric, meritless lawsuits and refusal to pay what he owes — has long induced heartburn among lawyers, contractors, suppliers and lenders. But the concerns are taking on new urgency as the president seeks to raise doubts about the election results.

Some senior lawyers at Jones Day, one of the country’s largest law firms, are worried that it is advancing arguments that lack evidence and may be helping Mr. Trump and his allies undermine the integrity of American elections, according to interviews with nine partners and associates, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect their jobs.

At another large firm, Porter Wright Morris & Arthur, based in Columbus, Ohio, lawyers have held internal meetings to voice similar concerns about their firm’s election-related work for Mr. Trump and the Republican Party, according to people at the firm. At least one lawyer quit in protest.

Jones Day has earned more than $20 million doing business with Trump, his campaigns, and the RNC over the last five years, $4 million in this year alone. That’s a lot of income, and it pays more than a few salaries. Yet this seems to be the bigger concern among some of its attorneys:

In recent days, two Jones Day lawyers said they had faced heckling from friends and others on social media about working at a firm that is supporting Mr. Trump’s efforts.

A lawyer in Jones Day’s Washington office felt that the firm risked hurting itself by taking on work that undermined the rule of law. “To me, it seems extremely shortsighted,” the lawyer said.

That in itself is nonsense. Pursuing election challenges is not “undermining the rule of law,” but an exercise in law, as attorneys should especially know. I quoted Fordham Law professor Jed Shugerman in my earlier post, but he’s worth quoting again here:

The lawsuits may prove to be the best way to legitimize President-elect Joe Biden’s victory and draw to a close years of bogus complaints about voter fraud. The lack of merit in the legal complaints means they will be dead on arrival in the courts, and while the resounding rejection of Trump’s fantasies by judges will not persuade his fiercest loyalists, it will prevent conspiracy theories from spreading.

It is also a bad idea, as a general matter, to object to election law litigation: In two years, or four years — and possibly in two months in Georgia — the shoe may be on the other foot. It would look hypocritical to condemn the very idea of challenging an election result now, only to turn around and do so in different (albeit more legitimate) circumstances.

Does it undermine the rule of law to appeal a conviction of a murder defendant one knows to be guilty on technical grounds? Should attorneys only take on clients who are popular and whose causes they agree with? The true undermining of the rule of law is the hounding of lawyers based on the clients they accept. Trump can always find law firms that will take him on as a client, but if these social-media mobs and examples of law-firm wokery set these kinds of precedents, unpopular defendants, plaintiffs, and respondents will eventually find themselves locked out of the legal system.

That will undermine the rule of law, not representing a client in futile efforts in legal challenges to election results.

When people criticize attorneys for the clients they have represented, especially in a political campaign, the standard lawyer response is also the correct and true one: every client deserves representation in the legal process. If that ceases to be the standard and the value of the legal profession, then heaven help the lawyers to come, and heaven help us all when we need representation. That matters a lot more than Trump’s futile fights in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin.

Update: I edited the headline for greater precision shortly after publishing.

Update: I missed this earlier, but it’s an important part of the context:

On Tuesday, The Lincoln Project, a group of anti-Trump Republicans, said it will spend $500,000 on ads targeting Jones Day and a smaller law firm working for Trump, following a Monday New York Times report citing dissent among Jones Day’s senior attorneys over its election work for Republicans.

In tweets online, the group, co-founded by conservative lawyer George Conway, who is the husband of former Trump counselor Kellyanne Conway, has encouraged lawyers and clients to abandon Jones Day.

Online critics of Jones Day also tweeted at its clients, including Verizon VZ.N and General Motors GM.N, urging them to drop the law firm.

A Twitter post by General Motors on Monday recognizing women leaders at the auto company has garnered more than 40 responses, including “sever ties with @JonesDay or be prepared for a #BoycottGM” and “Are you a Jones Day client? Do you really want your name associated with them?”

That said, the effort to find a sufficient amount of funny business to get the Very Stable Genius a victory is clearly an exercise in futility at this late date. More substantiation here. And here. 

Pfizer's decision to stay out from under Operation Warp Speed's purview allowed the free market to work its wonders:

In a time when capitalism is under attack from the left and the right, this highly promising vaccine is a reminder of what profit-driven markets are capable of. Pfizer chose to go it alone and the company’s reasoning is worth consideration. In an interview, the CEO of Pfizer emphasized that he wanted to liberate his scientists from bureaucracy, that he didn’t want to deal with the strings that money would come with, and that he wanted to keep Pfizer out of politics. In his approach we glean two insights: the importance of forward-thinking corporate leadership and the critical difference between government as a customer and government as an investor.

John Loftus at National Review on the hurl-worthy degree of moral preening and self-congratulation exemplified by “IN THIS HOUSE, WE BELIEVE: BLACK LIVES MATTER / WOMEN’S RIGHTS ARE HUMAN RIGHTS / NO HUMAN IS ILLEGAL / SCIENCE IS REAL / LOVE IS LOVE / KINDNESS IS EVERYTHING” yard signs.  

 

 

The deep and lasting damage Donald Trump has done to the Republican Party

 Ever since he entered the political fray in 2015, Donald Trump has amassed a cult following whose loyalty has been rewarded with lavish praise. At the same time, via tweet, bluster at rallies, and in interviews, he has, like a schoolyard bully who bends the knuckles of others backward to find the point at which they drop to their knees and resign themselves to beta-male status, humiliated anyone who dares to consider himself Republican, conservative, or in the service of the nation rather than a person without expressing total loyalty to him.

We saw it when his cult following heaped opprobrium on Ted Cruz at the 2016 GOP convention for telling the crowd to vote its conscience and quite conspicuously refraining from mention Trump's by name. During primary season, Trump had orchestrated a mockery of Cruz's wife's Heidi's looks, and had floated an outrageous conspiracy theory tying Cruz's father to the JFK assassination. But after the reaction to his convention speech, Cruz fell in line. 

Jeff Sessions was humiliated via tweet for months during his attorney-general stint and finally fired. Still, he came back for more abuse, making a pathetic lap-dog commercial in which he donned a MAGA hat when he made a feeble attempt to reclaim his old Alabama Senate seat earlier this year. 

The manner in which Rex Tillerson and John Kelly were fired from their positions in the administration was emblematic of the Trump management style. And now Mark Esper joins that list.

The Very Stable Genius, through the crudest means possible, has made either cowards or sycophants of 90 percent of Republicans. 

And even in his hour of supremely public humiliation, in which he has to assume the role for which he has always had the ultimate contempt - loser - he still has the party's knuckles bent backwards.

Lots of Republicans would like to speak out about his mortifying I-won-by-a-lot schtick of the last eight days, but they dare not, because the nation's political landscape of the next two years depends on one last race over which the VSG has. great deal of influence:

There are two reasons why most Senate Republicans refuse to acknowledge Joe Biden as president-elect: Georgia and Georgia. 

Simply put, the party needs President Donald Trump’s help to clinch two runoff elections in Georgia on Jan. 5 that will determine the fate of the Senate GOP’s majority. And accepting the presidential results ahead of Trump, a politician driven by loyalty, could put Republicans at odds with the president and his core supporters amid the must-win elections down South.

On Tuesday, most GOP senators continued to support Trump’s legal fights against his electoral losses, despite no evidence of the widespread voting malfeasance that Trump claims has swung tens of thousands of votes to Biden in multiple states. That’s because when the presidential election is finally certified, Republicans hope that Trump will put on his red jersey this winter and help deliver his conservative base for Georgia’s Republican senators, David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler.“We need his voters. And he has a tremendous following out there,” said Senate Majority Whip John Thune of South Dakota. “Right now, he’s trying to get through the final stages of his election and determine the outcome there. But when that’s all said and done, however it comes out, we want him helping in Georgia.”

And now comes a series of Pentagon firings that has produced the same effect:

There is widespread alarm among congressional Republicans at how President Donald Trump this week abruptly replaced Pentagon leaders with political allies, and sent signals he might do the same in the intelligence community, but for now lawmakers are refraining from overtly criticizing the moves for fear doing so could harm the party's chances of holding onto its two Senate seats in Georgia.

Republicans' response to the ouster of Mark Esper as defense secretary has been noticeably circumspect, especially when compared to the explosion of criticism hurled at Trump when he fired Esper's predecessor, Jim Mattis, two years ago. To date, Republican lawmakers have offered praise for Esper's tenure and little else.

Congressional aides say the anodyne public expressions represent a concerted attempt to self-muzzle, as the political party that prides itself on being strong on national security grapples with its fear of antagonizing an erratic and impulsive lame-duck president while battling to keep control of the Senate.

"They see the extraordinarily high stakes in the Georgia Senate runoffs," American Enterprise Institute congressional expert Norm Ornstein said Wednesday. "Creating a deep internal division in the party right now could jeopardize those seats, and the calculus they've made is that sticking with Trump is a better course of action at this stage."

GOP leaders have set an "unspoken standard," as it was put by one of several congressional Republican aides who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal conversations, not to "rock the boat too much before Georgia."

But the president's decision to replace Defense Department leaders with Trump loyalists - including one person previously deemed too controversial for Senate confirmation - nonetheless has grievously upset most Republican members, the aides explained, particularly as it appears clear that Trump fired Esper in retribution for their policy differences.

Look, the hour is late and those Senate seats are crucial. My last few posts here at LITD have been about  that. And Trump enthusiasts are going to be key to securing those victories. And for once, my answer to the question, "Is it worth the price that must be paid to halt the advance of leftism?" my answer is yes. As I say, it's the first time. I never bought the it's-a-binary-choice-so-you-have-to-get-behind-Trump argument. I wrote somebody in on the president line of my ballot in 2016 and again this year. But I understand what Republican legislators have to do here and would not want to see them do otherwise. And it is a matter of standing on principle. 

But it makes me want to vomit. Donald Trump has made post-American politics considerably uglier than it had been. He has spent the last five years forcing unpalatable choices on decent people, all in the service of his insatiable thirst for self-glorification.

My message to the Republican Party: After January 5, you don't have to drop to your knees for this grotesque figure anymore. If you do, it's because you have hopelessly abandoned anything you ever claimed to stand for.

 

 

 

How crucial are Georgia's January runoffs?

 They are not just about abstract numbers. 

Consider Kelly Loeffler's opponent's position on Israel:

The Reverend Raphael Warnock, 2020 Democratic candidate for Senate from Georgia, goes off on a false and slanderous anti-Israel tirade in a 2018 sermon (video clip below, full video here). He accused Israel of shooting Palestinian like “birds of prey,” compared violent Palestinian riots to peaceful African-American civil rights protests, and claimed that Palestinians are “struggling for water and for their lives.”

As Uri Pilichowski states in a comment on the video, either Warnock is an anti-Semitic liar, giving it up to demonize the Jewish state, or ignorant of the realities. Either way, he shouldn’t be a major party candidate for a seat in the United States Senate.

Warnock is a Jeremiah Wright revisited sort of character, but Wright was straightforward about it. He resented Obama’s opportunistic distancing act. Running for office, Warnock is doing his own distancing act. Jewish Insider’s Jacob Kornbluh captures Warnock trying to gull the gullible in “In 2018 sermon, Warnock blasted Israel. He now says, ‘I Stand with Israel.'” Query whether he understands it’s a sin to lie. Warnock also signed off on the sickening 2019 National Council of Churches statement. The NCC statement likens Israeli control of the West Bank to “previous oppressive regimes” and calling the “heavy militarization of the West Bank, reminiscent of the military occupation of Namibia by apartheid South Africa.” The statement also suggested the “ever-present physical walls that wall in Palestinians” are “reminiscent of the Berlin Wall.”

This meeds to be front and center in the nation's conversation about this race over the next seven weeks. 

Memo to Perdue and Loeffler: knock it off with the calls for Raffensperger to resign

 For cryin' out loud, you two, the last thing either of you ought to be doing facing runoffs in January is projecting the tone of the yay-hoo Trumpist crowd. 

Do you understand that this is not just about your personal political careers? Republican control of the Senate is going to be the only bulwark the country is going to have against the imposition of a hard-left vision.

Your call to Georgia attorney general Brad Raffensperger, a fellow Republican, is about as boneheaded a move as you could make. He comes off looking like the clear-eyed adult and you come off looking like Kurt Schlichter clones:

In Georgia, a new level of intraparty hostility burst into view between Republicans who have questioned the election's integrity and those who have publicly defended it.

Trump allies seized on the news that a small number of ballots had not been rescanned over the weekend in Fulton County, home of Atlanta. The news prompted a story from the conservative website Breitbart News - and a tweet from the president - suggesting that the additional ballots might alter the outcome. Critics also falsely accused Fulton County election officials of not allowing Republicans to watch the process.

In fact, only 342 ballots were affected, and the county invited members of both political parties to Atlanta's State Farm Arena, the elections headquarters, to observe. Raffensperger, the secretary of state, also attended.

A Raffensperger adviser also rejected broader claims of voter fraud.

Gabriel Sterling, the voting system implementation manager at the Georgia secretary of state's office, said claims of widespread illegal activity were false, declaring Election Day "an amazing success" and chastising those "trying to undermine the system that was put together" by state and county officials.

Later in the day, Georgia's two Republican senators, both headed to runoff elections Jan. 5, demanded that Raffensperger resign.

"There have been too many failures in Georgia elections this year and the most recent election has shined a national light on the problems," Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue said in the statement, which did not list a single example of a problem. "The Secretary of State has failed to deliver honest and transparent elections."

In a fiery response, Raffensperger said he would not step down and defended the election process as orderly and transparent.

"I know emotions are running high," Raffensperger said. "Politics are involved in everything right now. If I was Senator Perdue, I'd be irritated I was in a runoff. And both Senators and I are all unhappy with the potential outcome for our President."

Biden's 11,595-vote lead in Georgia means the race is eligible for a recount, but Raffensperger emphasized that it was unlikely to change the outcome of the election.

It likewise makes it easy for your opponents to come off like the level-headed ones in this:

“This just demonstrates the total lack of competence, coherence, and momentum among GOP politicians in Georgia right now,” says Jon Ossoff. “They felt entitled to a cake walk, and instead they’re getting the fights of their lives. They’re not liking it, and they’re taking out their rage on one another.”

Think strategically, you knuckleheads. Disassociate yourselves from the stop-the-steal crowd. Talk about conservative solutions to Georgia issues. 

You have about seven weeks to make the most compelling cases of your lives. History will not look kindly on you if you squander it.