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MARCH 6,  2021

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – OVERNIGHT: 

AMERICA'S GOVERNOR – FROM FOX:    New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s "rage & vindictiveness" have made former staffers "fearful to speak" about him as more accusations of sexual misconduct piled up against the Democrat, a reporter claimed Saturday night.  Shortly after two new bombshell stories about Cuomo appeared Saturday evening, a reporter who helped write one of them posted on Twitter that in a 10-year career she has never seen sources as frightened of potential retribution as former staffers of Cuomo appeared to be.  "I’ve been a reporter for a decade now, and I don’t think I have ever heard people as fearful to speak about someone as they are about Gov. Andrew Cuomo," Amy Brittain of The Washington Post wrote as she tweeted out the newspaper’s latest story on the embattled governor.  "Former staffers described his rage & vindictiveness & said they feared he would destroy their careers," she added.  In the Post story – for which Brittain shares a byline with journalists Josh Dawsey, Hannah Knowles and Tracy Jan (and three other contributors) – a former Cuomo press aide named Karen Hinton describes having been invited into a hotel room and embraced by the governor before she pulled away from him and left.  The same article adds that two male aides claimed Cuomo frequently berated them with harsh language and questioned their manhood.
All of the allegations in the article were denied by current Cuomo aides, with one referring to Hinton as a "known antagonist of the Governor’s" and the other saying he had "never" heard Cuomo use "coarse language."  The Post article also says former staffers contend Cuomo has a "Jekyll-and-Hyde" personality – charming at times and raging with anger at others.  And we're expected to believe that no liberal journalist knew anything about this man before women started coming forward.  But they naturally knew everything about Donald Trump.  Freedom of the press means nothing if we cannot trust the press.

SOME COURAGE MAYBE? – FROM COLLEGE FIX:   Theodor Geisel’s works as Dr. Seuss are going down the memory hole, scorned by his own descendants, after a relatively short pressure campaign branding them racist.  But at least the otherwise progressive author hasn’t suffered the ultimate insult from an institution of higher education.  Dartmouth College has “no plans to revisit the use of the Geisel name on campus,” Diana Lawrence, associate vice president for communications, wrote in a campuswide email cited by Inside Higher Ed. “We continue to explore opportunities to contextualize and educate from this chapter of the Geisel legacy.”  Its Geisel School of Medicine is named for Geisel and his wife Audrey and will remain that way, at least for now. Lawrence shows the common sense that’s often missing in higher education – that a few views deemed objectionable decades later shouldn’t cancel a person’s lasting accomplishment.  Of course not.  And if Dartmouth caved and removed Geisel's name?  How would that help the education of one black child?  And why don't we hear that question asked more often?

March 6, 2021       Permalink

THE TRAGIC DIVIDE – AT 11:30 P.M. ET:  The trial of the police officer accused of murdering George Floyd in Minneapolis starts Monday.  The Floyd death sparked the series of riots and "demonstrations" that we saw last year, and triggered the "national discussion on race" that accompanied it, a discussion in which almost everyone who is white was assumed to be a racist.  Not a great starting point.

Has the discussion led to greater racial understanding?  Are you kidding?  From USA Today:

Americans' trust in the Black Lives Matter movement has fallen and their faith in local law enforcement has risen since protests demanding social justice swept the nation last year, according to an exclusive USA TODAY/Ipsos Poll.

The debate over the intersection of racism and policing will be in the spotlight again as jury selection opens Monday in the Minneapolis trial of former police officer Derek Chauvin in the death of George Floyd, which sparked nationwide marches last year.

The survey finds complicated and shifting views about Chauvin's actions and broader questions of race. On many issues, there is a chasm in the perspective between Black people and white people.

Last June, 60% in a USA TODAY/Ipsos Poll described Floyd's death as murder; that percentage has now dropped by double digits to 36%. Uncertainty has grown about how to characterize the incident, caught on video, when Chauvin held his knee on Floyd's neck and ignored his protests that he couldn't breathe. Last year, 4% said they didn't know how to describe it; that number has climbed to 17%.

"There were eight minutes that the officer could have made a different decision, and he willfully held a man," said Valda Pugh, a 67-year-old retiree from Louisville who is Black. She was among those surveyed. "It was a murder. It was willful – maybe not premeditated. Nonetheless, the young man died."

Kevin Hayworth, 66, of Garner, Iowa, who is white, disagreed. "I think it was a police officer doing his job," he said in a follow-up phone interview. "It was just a tragedy, but I think he was within the limits of his duty of jurisdiction." 

Reckless disregard for human life or tragic accident? Derek Chauvin goes on trial, charged with murder of George Floyd.

Primer:George Floyd's brutal death sparked a racial justice reckoning. One officer involved goes on trial this month. What you should know.

Nearly two-thirds of Black Americans, 64%, view Floyd's death as murder; fewer than one-third of white people, 28%, feel that way. White Americans are more likely to describe it instead as the police officer's "negligence," 33% compared with 16% of Black respondents.

That said, Americans who have heard at least something about Chauvin's trial say 4 to 1, or 60%-15%, that they hope Chauvin is convicted. That included 54% of white Americans and 76% of Black Americans.

The online poll of 1,165 adults, taken Monday and Tuesday, has a credibility interval of plus or minus 3.3 percentage points.

COMMENT:  Now, through a trial, we may actually get some facts.  We certainly want a full autopsy report.  We certainly want to know why the officer's knee stayed where it was...and was it actually on the deceased man's neck?

There is police misconduct.  No one seriously denies that.  That's why police departments have internal affairs divisions.  But there are also false charges, rushes to judgment, and overheated "news" reports.

March 6, 2021       Permalink

MARCH 5,  2021

SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – OVERNIGHT: 

THE READING PUBLIC SPEAKS – FROM FOX:    Dr. Seuss’s books seem more popular than ever amid the controversy over a small selection of titles that will no longer be sold because they were deemed to have "insensitive and racist imagery."  Copies of the beloved children’s author’s most popular books were virtually flying out of Amazon and Barnes and Noble’s warehouses, with his most popular books making up 9 out of the top 10 bestsellers on both companies' lists as of Thursday evening.  "The Cat in The Hat," "Oh, The Places You'll Go" and "Green Eggs and Ham," three of Seuss’s best-known works, were all out of stock on Amazon but still available at a higher price on Barnes and Noble’s website as of Thursday evening.  Dr. Seuss Enterprises, which preserves the author’s legacy, announced this week six books - "And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street," "If I Ran the Zoo," "McElligot’s Pool," "On Beyond Zebra!," "Scrambled Eggs Super!," and "The Cat’s Quizzer" – would no longer be printed.  This is modern McCarthyism.  Michelle Obama read Dr. Seuss to the nation's children while first lady.  You'd think she'd have the courage to speak out against the current madness, but she doesn't.

MINNEAPOLIS TRIAL OF POLICE OFFICER TO BEGIN – FROM FOX:    As the Derek Chauvin trial is set to begin with jury selection on Monday, some Minneapolis business owners are cautiously bracing for potentially another round of unrest and mayhem after recently getting back on their feet from the criminal rioting last June that resulted in an estimated $500 million in damage in Minneapolis alone.   "The word I use is opportunist," business manager Jay Chau told Fox News. "They just found opportunity and they just took what they want."  Chau is a manager of a family-owned hair salon across the street from Minneapolis’ fifth police precinct. The salon was looted and flooded during the George Floyd riots and over the course of several months was replaced with all new materials. It just reopened in recent weeks.   The death of George Floyd, allegedly at the hands of Chauvin, was used as the torch to ignite nationwide riots and the tearing down of historic statues.  And yet, no one has been convicted in Floyd's demise.

March 5, 2021       Permalink

HANDICAPPING THE FUTURE OF THE GOP – OVERNIGHT:  Already the pundits and pundits-in-training are assessing the possible Republican candidates for president in 2024.  We have a depth of talent in the party.  The Dems may have to go to Central Casting.  From Fox:

To state the obvious: Former President Trump remains the dominant force in the GOP and the most popular figure among Republican voters.

As Trump flirts with a 2024 presidential run to regain the White House, the early data clearly shows that if the nomination race were held today, the former president would be the overwhelming favorite.

Without Trump in the race, a new survey conducted by a GOP pollster who worked on Trump’s 2016 campaign and the then-president’s 2020 reelection campaign, points to former Vice President Mike Pence and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis as the early favorites in what may end up being a large field of GOP White House hopefuls.

But with no formal 2024 announcement from Trump expected anytime soon, the former president will continue to dominate all 2024 discussions going forward.

"I think the elephant in the room is obviously Donald Trump," veteran GOP pollster Neil Newhouse told Fox News. "If the election were held today and if he wants the nomination, he’d be the odds on favorite."

Last weekend at the Conservative Political Action Conference – the biggest and oldest annual gathering of conservative activists and leaders which is better known by its acronym CPAC – Trump returned to the spotlight for the first time since he left the White House on Jan. 20.

He predicted that in 2024 "a Republican president will make a triumphant return to the White House." And teasing a potential run, he asked "I wonder who that will be?"

 Later in his speech, Trump once again falsely claimed he won last November’s presidential election and triggered an explosion of applause and cheers when he said of the Democrats, "Who knows … I may even decide to beat them for a third time."

Following his speech, Trump touted his showing in the CPAC secret ballot straw poll. Asked during an interview on Fox News’s "The Next Revolution with Steve Hilton" on Sunday night on the chances he’ll run again for the White House in 2024, the former president said, "If you look at the kind of numbers, the support is tremendous. But we'll have to see."

Ninety-seven percent of those voting in the straw poll said they approved of the job Trump had done as president, and 95% said they wanted the Republican Party to continue to advance Trump’s agenda. That’s no surprise, given that CPAC has turned into a Trump lovefest over the past five years. But only 68% said they wanted the former president to run again in 2024, and his support dropped to 55% in the 2024 horserace question.

A national survey conducted the past two weeks among Republican voters by veteran GOP pollster Tony Fabrizio indicated that slightly more than half would support Trump if the 2024 primary were held today.

COMMENT:  These polls, so early in the game, are mostly meaningless, but they're great fun.  And I would agree that Pence and DeSantis are the two strongest contenders in the field, as of today, should Trump not run.

Also, I'm not all that sure that Trump's popularity will hold up.  People forget, history fades, and Trump has not lost his ability to antagonize the immediate world. Further, he is facing investigations in New York State that could bite.

And the world can change.  The Congressional elections next year might produce new Republican stars.

March 5, 2021       Permalink