February 13, 2021

Florida man arrested after exposing himself to cars claiming he was "protesting for civil rights"

Police in Palm Harbor, Florida received several calls last Monday afternoon about a man potentially exposing himself to passersby on a road filled with heavy-traffic. When they arrived at the scene in question, they found just that.

Police found 23-year-old Riley Cushman who, according to The Smoking Gun, was bottomless and exposing himself to traffic. When police questioned him, Cushman said he "protesting for civil rights by showing his penis to traffic, but was now finished and wanted to go home." ......(more)

https://www.radio.com/kluv/latest/florida-man-arrested-after-exposing-himself-to-cars

February 13, 2021

Melania 'bitter and chilly' with Trump and spending 'hours' in the spa, report says

Has she ever not been 'bitter and chilly' with him?


(Independent UK) Melania Trump has been “bitter and chilly” towards her husband, Donald Trump, since leaving the White House and has spent most of her time relaxing in Mar-A- Lago’s spa, CNN has reported.

Ms Trump, who appeared cheerful when leaving Washington behind on Inauguration Day last month, is apparently making the most of civilian life and has left much of the politics of the presidency behind.

"She goes to the spa, has lunch, goes to the spa (again) and has dinner with Donald on the patio," a person familiar with her schedule told CNN. "Rinse and repeat. Every day."

"She almost always does dinner," another source who has seen Ms Trump outside the spa said, adding that she is sometimes joined by her parents and often chooses fish for an entrée. ..............(more)

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/melania-trump-donald-mar-a-lago-spa-b1801828.html

February 13, 2021

Regardless of the outcome, once this trial is over....

.... I don't want to talk about him. I don't want to hear about him. I don't want to think about him.
He's already sucked too much mental, emotional and physical energy from this country over the last 4+ years.
Time the close chapter 45 and move forward with all the work we need to do.

February 13, 2021

President Joe Biden to visit west Michigan vaccine facility on Thursday

(Detroit Free Press) President Joe Biden will visit Pfizer's facility where it makes vaccines for COVID-19 in west Michigan next week, marking his first visit to the state as chief executive.

Biden will make the visit to Kalamazoo County on Thursday, the White House confirmed Friday evening. A source with knowledge of the visit had confirmed the trip earlier for the Free Press on Friday afternoon but did not speak on the record because the White House hadn't formally announced details. .......(more)

https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2021/02/12/president-joe-biden-pfizer-covid-19-vaccine-facility/6744481002/

February 13, 2021

Dr. Justin Frank on the trial: For Trump, Capitol riot was a source of "incredible pleasure"

Dr. Justin Frank on the trial: For Trump, Capitol riot was a source of "incredible pleasure"
Author and psychoanalyst says Trump's followers are suffering a "psychiatric emergency" fueled by delusional rage

By CHAUNCEY DEVEGA
FEBRUARY 12, 2021 11:00AM


(Salon) On Thursday, House impeachment managers finished their presentation of the case against Donald Trump, arguing that he should be convicted for the crime of inciting an insurrectionist attack against the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.

The video, photographic and other documentary evidence of Trump's responsibility for the attack on the Capitol is overwhelming. He has no reasonable defense for his crimes, and his attorneys have not offered one. Instead they will lie, obfuscate, change the topic and present Trump and his followers as being the "real victims" of a dark plot centered on "political correctness" and denying "free speech" to "conservatives" (read: white, Christian and male).

....(snip)....

Dr. Justin Frank is a former clinical professor of psychiatry at the George Washington University Medical Center and a physician with more than 40 years of experience in psychoanalysis. He is the author of the bestselling books "Bush on the Couch" and "Obama on the Couch." His most recent book is "Trump on the Couch: Inside the Mind of the President."

....(snip)....

Trump's aides have been telling the news media that he is watching the impeachment trial and really doesn't care. Trump does not believe that he did anything wrong. One of the aides reportedly told reporters that Trump loves seeing his followers in action and doing things for him as in the Capitol attack.

It is actually erotic for him. It turns him on. Trump's supporters make him feel powerful. They are like an unconscious extension of himself. They're doing the things that Trump was always afraid to do. For example, the one thing that he was always afraid to do was to stand up to his father. He never could do it. Then he was afraid to stand up to Robert Mueller and he got Bill Barr to do it. Trump is afraid to directly stand up to people. He can do it through tweets. He can do it by menacing people. He can do it in front of a large audience, but not face to face. He is afraid of Adam Schiff. He is afraid of the Democrats who are managing his impeachment. Donald Trump is a frightened man, which is the same person who had "bone spurs" to avoid going to Vietnam — because he was scared, not because he had principles. ...........(more)

https://www.salon.com/2021/02/12/dr-justin-frank-on-the-trial-for-trump-capitol-riot-was-a-source-of-incredible-pleasure/

February 13, 2021

Why bother? Trump's lawyers don't even offer an impeachment defense because Republicans don't care

Why bother? Trump's lawyers don't even offer an impeachment defense because Republicans don't care
Trump's lawyers know they're not there to persuade — just to give GOP senators cheap rationalizations to acquit

By AMANDA MARCOTTE
FEBRUARY 12, 2021 10:01PM


(Salon) Going into Friday, the fourth day of Donald Trump's second impeachment trial, Trump's legal team announced that their defense would be short. In one sense, that was an understatement.

While the House managers who prosecuted Trump took nearly all of their 16-hour allotment to present evidence and carefully lay out a convincing case for Trump's guilt in inciting an insurrection on Jan. 6, Trump's lawyers wrapped their defense in less than half of that time. However, in proof of time's curious relativity, the defense arguments felt many times as long as those offered by the House managers on Wednesday and Thursday. Low on reason or evidence and high on whining, every moment Trump's lawyers spoke felt like an eternity — at least for viewers who don't share the right-wing enthusiasm for Fox News-style self-pity and bad faith.

The contrast between the House managers and Trump's defense team was starkest during Friday's closing arguments.

House managers were there to persuade; laying out the evidence, connecting the facts together in a rational manner, and building their case — which they did quite successfully — that Trump's actions prior to and during the riot proved that he intentionally incited the insurrection.

Trump's legal team, however, was there to rationalize. ............(more)

https://www.salon.com/2021/02/12/why-bother-trumps-lawyers-dont-even-offer-an-impeachment-defense-because-republicans-dont-care/

February 12, 2021

What Happens When a City's Largest Employer Goes 'Work From Anywhere'

(Bloomberg) It’s fitting that the building that most symbolizes San Francisco’s recent relationship with the tech industry is owned neither by a tech company, nor even a company in San Francisco. Salesforce Tower, the second-tallest skyscraper west of the Mississippi at 1,070 feet, is owned by Boston Properties. Yet ever since the skyline-altering tower opened in 2018, it has served as a projection screen for critiques of big tech’s place in San Francisco, however exaggerated some of those may be.

Now that metaphorical stature takes on a new dimension, with Salesforce.com Inc. — the anchor tenant of the 61-story building’s Class A office space — announcing a permanent “work from anywhere” policy that lets employees remain on remote or flexible schedules after the pandemic ends. As San Francisco’s largest private employer, the customer-management software giant is a heavy hitter on the list of companies with similar plans set to affect downtown office spaces, including Twitter, Facebook and Square, prompting tough questions about the vitality of the city’s core and overall economy.

“This is a much bigger urban workforce shift. It’s saying, tech doesn’t need to be anywhere,” said John King, the San Francisco Chronicle’s urban design critic. That shift applies to cities beyond the San Francisco Bay Area — including in Salesforce’s other offices worldwide — but it may hit America’s tech center especially hard. In the heart of the city that’s in the heart of the region sits a behemoth tower and adjacent transit center where the namesake company will now de-emphasize commutes. A structure that had taken on outsized presence in the urban landscape — literally and metaphorically — will shape-shift again. ............(more)

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-02-12/what-will-remote-work-do-to-salesforce-tower?srnd=premium

February 12, 2021

Josh Hawley's schooldays: 'He made popcorn to watch the Iraq invasion'

(Guardian UK) Before Josh Hawley became known as a leader of the attempt to overturn the 2020 election in the US Congress, he was remembered by former students and staff at St Paul’s, the elite British school for boys where he spent a year teaching, as an aloof, rightwing political obsessive who had made himself popcorn to watch the US invasion of Iraq.

The Republican senator from Missouri has been the target of ire of millions of Americans after he became the first senator to say he would object to election results. Ultimately, 146 congressional Republicans joined the rightwing lawmaker in seeking to block votes from Pennsylvania and Arizona from being counted, an extraordinary move that was seen as stoking the flames of a pro-Trump mob who attacked the US Capitol.

Before the assault, Hawley was photographed walking past the crowd and raising his fist in salute to them.

While Hawley has painted himself as a man of the “American heartland”, and has expressed contempt for what he says is the US’s liberal “elite”, the graduate of Stanford and Yale Law School, who once clerked for the supreme court chief justice, John Roberts, spent a year in suburban London in 2002, at the top all-boys private school St Paul’s that dates back to 1509. ...........(more)

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/feb/12/josh-hawley-st-pauls-british-school

February 12, 2021

Republicans employ new 'extremely aggressive' tactics to ban abortion

(Guardian UK) At a church-style rally in Arizona, the state Republican lawmaker Walter Blackman described his “perfect” legislative proposal: to prosecute women who have abortions for homicide alongside the doctors who provide them.

Such a bill would be patently unconstitutional in the US – but for anti-abortion rights activists like Blackman that’s the point.

“We are not going to amend this bill,” Blackman said in January. “This is a perfect bill. I just want to tell you that now.” Nine of Blackman’s colleagues signed on to the bill.

The bill was just one of nine more Arizona bills designed to ban, restrict or undermine abortion rights – ranging from funding religious crisis pregnancy clinics which oppose abortion to banning abortion at six weeks, before most women know they are pregnant.

“It’s nothing less than appalling,” said Dr Julia Kwatra, an obstetrician and gynecologist who has practiced in Scottsdale for 20 years. “This is just representing a full frontal assault on women’s healthcare in Arizona this legislative session.” ............(more)

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/feb/12/anti-abortion-activists-womens-rights

February 12, 2021

Trump's costly impeachment defense strategy: Success comes at the price of the Senate GOP -- at least

Trump's costly impeachment defense strategy: Success comes at the price of the Senate GOP — at least
No matter how hard Republican senators defend and deflect for Donald Trump, he will still sic his MAGA mob on them

By HEATHER DIGBY PARTON
FEBRUARY 12, 2021 1:46PM


(Salon) Day three of former President Donald Trump's impeachment trial was not quite as harrowing as day two, with its never before seen security footage of officials and staff being evacuated just steps away from a frothing mob, but it was startling nonetheless. Having meticulously laid out the case that Trump spent months stoking the fury of his voters the day before, Thursday's arguments took a look further back into his long history of violent rhetoric and drove home the point that if Trump is not held accountable and barred from running for office he will do it again.

Lead House Manager Jamie Raskin, D-Md, rested the case with encouraging words from Thomas Paine:



If he was listening, no doubt Trump's ears perked up at the words "glorious" and "triumph" and, in a way, you couldn't blame him. The Impeachment managers delivered an irrefutable argument that proved the former president incited an insurrection which came horrifyingly close to causing death or injury to members of Congress, the Senate and the Vice President — and yet he is almost certain to be acquitted. A glorious triumph indeed.

....(snip)....

Texas Senator John Cornyn told CNN's Manu Raju, "I have to compliment the impeachment managers just in terms of their presentation preparation. I thought it was excellent. I don't agree with everything. But I think they set the standard pretty high." Of course he went on to say that the biggest concern he has is the moot constitutional question and "what that means to exact retribution on political opponents." That's pretty rich coming from the man who enthusiastically supported the president who led "lock her up" chants for four years and said "you'd be in jail" to his presidential opponent's face in a televised presidential debate.

....(snip)....

Whatever "strategy" they decide to go with, they know that it really doesn't matter because their client has threatened and intimidated the jury and they will vote to acquit regardless of what they say. We already know how this ends and it's profoundly depressing. After all, if what happened on Jan. 6th does not result in any consequences for the man who incited it, then it's hard to imagine what would. ...............(more)

https://www.salon.com/2021/02/12/trumps-costly-impeachment-defense-strategy-success-comes-at-the-price-of-the-senate-gop/