"criminal solicitation to commit election fraud; interference w/ performance of election duties..."

Opinion: A single district attorney in Georgia has the best case against Trump
By Jennifer Rubin | Washington Post.com
1/11/22

The Associated Press reports: “The prosecutor weighing whether Donald Trump and others committed crimes by trying to pressure Georgia officials to overturn Joe Biden’s presidential election victory said a decision on whether to bring charges could come as early as the first half of this year.” Fani Willis, district attorney for Fulton County, Ga., says she is “making solid progress, and she’s leaning toward asking for a special grand jury with subpoena power to aid the investigation.”

Her potential case focuses on Trump’s attempt to pressure Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” 11,780 votes — just enough to change the outcome of the election in the state. The investigation also examines, the AP reports, “a November 2020 phone call between U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham and Raffensperger, the abrupt resignation of the U.S. attorney in Atlanta on Jan. 4, 2021, and comments made during December 2020 Georgia legislative committee hearings on the election.” And it includes Trump’s statements at a campaign rally calling on Gov. Brian Kemp (R) to change the outcome and his various calls to Georgia officials in December.

{...}

The prosecutor has Trump on tape implicitly threatening the secretary of state, saying that failure to find extra votes would be “a criminal offense” and “a big risk” to Raffensberger and his lawyer. Moreover, then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, who was on the call, was likely present for any discussion leading up to it, as were Trump’s lawyers, who would not be able to invoke attorney-client privilege if the court determines it was a criminal conspiracy.

The prosecutor can also question Graham about any conversation he had with Trump or Trump aides in advance of his call. (Why did Graham pick Georgia? Did he have any factual basis to question the outcome?) Moreover, the prosecutor can speak to Byung J. Pak, the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Georgia who quit days after the Trump-Raffensperger call. Frankly, it is rare for any criminal case to have this much direct evidence available.

{...}

The trickiest issue for the DA is determining which if any state laws Trump may have violated. The possible charges, according to a group of legal scholars writing for the Brookings Institution, include “criminal solicitation to commit election fraud; intentional interference with performance of election duties; conspiracy to commit election fraud; criminal solicitation; and state RICO violations.” Each of these crimes contains elements that the prosecutor would have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt. The prosecutor will also have to overcome a possible immunity defense and demonstrate that Trump’s arm-twisting "were well outside the scope of his responsibilities.”

Are you up to the Pierce Brosnan challenge?

This is your annual reminder that Pierce Brosnan can't sing

BJay Pak is an old school Republican

He finds out there's a coup being planned to overturn an election and install a fellow Republican into the White House illegally... and that he personally could stand in the way of the plot against the Republic.

What's he do? Washes his hands, quits without an explanation, and gets out of the coup's way. He won't get his hands dirty, which covers his ass, but fails his oath to uphold and protect the Constitution.

You know that quote about what it takes for evil to prevail in the world is good men doing nothing? BJay Pak is that good man.

Apparently I had Covid 9 weeks ago and didn't even know it

I got a sore throat and some congestion in the first week of November. So I called in subs, expecting the worse, and on Thursday went to a Walgreens after work to get tested. They do it through the drive thru pharmacy at that location, so the testees and their testes don't have to get out of the car. This was on a Thursday.

I've participating in a Johnson & Johnson vaccine study (I was in the placebo group from Dec 2020 till May 2021, when they de-blinded me and let me get a real vaccine). We're in the follow-up segment of the study, so I'm supposed to report any symptoms I might get. I reported in to them on Thursday about the sore throat. I rated it and the congestion as a 1 on a scale of 1-10 for severity, no other symptoms. I was expecting it to get worse, but it never did. I got the Walgreen's results back late Friday morning: Negative. Immediate relief; I could go back to work on Monday.

Then that afternoon the lab conducting the study for J&J called me and asked me to come on down to be tested. Now, I hate driving down there. Houston is a spread out city with traffic issues. Travel down there to NASA Road One is 35 minutes in best-condition traffic; it's halfway to Galveston. I get out at 4:15. Their offices shut down at 5pm sharp & sometimes they shut down a little early. I told them I'm good cause the Walgreen's test came back negatory. They said I should come down after work anyway and that they'd stay a little longer for me.

So after work Monday, I slide out as fast as I can, but of course that means I'm dealing with student exiting traffic and parent pick-up traffic, even if I take the backroute through the neighborhood across the bayou. It's 4:30 before I'm free of the congestion. I'm desperate to not make the drive all the way out there for nothing... only they promised they'd wait for me. Still, I called to double check. It went straight to voice mail, which happens sometimes. So I pulled over and texted them too. But soon I was on the freeway hauling out toward Nasa Road One. Traffic was too stop-and-go to call. They weren't called me back. Finally I pulled over a 3rd time and called around 4:50, just about 15 minutes away from the lab. There was still no answer. Fuck it, they'd left early. I still support science in principle, but honestly scientists are inconsiderate assholes.

I called and reamed them during lunch Tuesday and they promised to stay late that second day. When I got there Tuesday afternoon, they got revenge on me by stuffing the biggest damn Q-tip so far up my nose--essential a cotton swab lobotomy--that I ended up with a sharp headache for the next two days. I was otherwise feeling okay by then, relieved that I hadn't got the killer virus. After they didn't call me I was certain it was just a brief head cold.

Life went on.

Then last week, the day before New Year's Eve, they called me back. "Hey, we just wanted to see how you're doing. We got your Nov 9th test results back and we don't have a record of your acknowledgment."

"Acknowledgment of what?"

"The confirmation that you got your results back and are doing okay."

That seemed an odd way of saying it. "I'm okay. How are you?"

"No, that your symptoms didn't get worse. You know you tested positive." I was stunned.

"I didn't know I tested positive. I assumed you would have called and made a point of telling me that I tested positive for a potentially lethal disease. I teach in a school."

"Well, it wasn't me personally. I don't know who didn't contact you about this." Yes, that's an actual quote. I was livid. I wish I'd had the presence of mind to tell them "Fucking everybody there didn't contact me." But I wasn't focused enough to be sarcastic at that moment. I just repeated that I was a teacher in a high volume school and that they seriously HAVE to tell people immediately that they're sick... especially when they've just reported that they got a false negative result and were already back at work, spreading death and disability to all their students and colleagues.

I mean, fortunately, I practice super safe precautions in my classroom. But it's a crowded classroom. And I've got a 67 year old roommate in very bad health who I kind of have to help take care of. She didn't get sick. My parents, 86 & 84, are in a retirement community and I visited them that following weekend. But I don't know how many of my kids I might've infected. I distance where I can. I don't go out much. But I'm not perfect. I am, it turns out, not as imperfect as the Johnson & Johnson contractor in Houston. I rage quit the study at that point.

I'm not entirely sure I've done the right thing. Maybe I should go back. They already have plenty of follow up data from me. I think my case (1st week of November) was too early to be the omicron variant. Maybe not. I understand it probably started in Europe and only got caught when it swept through South Africa. But if it's not, then the vaccines from May & June did a fine job in November protecting me from having a bad infection. Hopefully my viral load stayed behind the mask.


I'm just tired of dealing with this pandemic business. I'm tired of thinking about the Americans whose irresponsibility is giving legs to the virus and dragging out the crisis into an unnecessary 3rd year. I'm tired of reading about crowded ERs. I'm tired of telling students to cover their noses too; I'm frustrated that as an educator I'm too professional to tell them that wearing a mask only over their mouths is like using a donut for a condom.

This virus and this pandemic have beaten me. I'm tired of the fight. Fuck it; I surrender. Let the little coronavirus soldiers point their bayonets at my back and march me off to a POW camp for the duration of the war. I'll gladly live in their petty viral dictatorship after they conquer us. Democracy's falling apart anyway; freedom’s just an empty chant grunted by the people who killed it. I welcome our new virus overlords. Just let the stupidity end.

Fess up. With Dr. Oz running in Oh.. um... Pennsylvania

Do you want to see him lose the nomination because if Republicans start to break out of their enthrallment with charlatans it would be good for the country, or do you kinda want to see him get the nomination because his record is an embarrassment and that might swing a few more votes to the Democratic nominee?

Martin Luther King's Christmas 1967 sermon (27 minutes)

(you can safely skip the 50 second intro to go straight to the speech)

How Capitalists (Koch brothers) Destroyed Our Pandemic Response

Do you believe in Ancient Rome? You're a sucker!!

Alcoholics DO get liver transplants.

via https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6876525/

Abstract

Most candidates for liver transplantation have irreversible cirrhosis caused by years of heavy alcohol consumption. Arguments against liver transplantation for alcoholics include the presumption of relapse to heavy drinking, which might damage the new liver or lead to its rejection. Corresponding ethical arguments focus on the presumption that alcoholics brought their condition upon themselves and should not compete with nonalcoholics for scarce donor livers. However, experimental data demonstrate that carefully selected alcoholics can survive liver transplantation and return to the workplace as productive citizens. Moreover, it has never been considered ethical for clinicians to refuse treatment to patients for diseases that are partly or wholly preventable.

There'll be a test on this later