Thursday, May 07, 2020
This Ad Hasn't Been Replayed Enough
This is the one minute that got Twitterman's full attention. Thank you, @TheRickWilson and the other members of The Lincoln Project.
Wednesday, May 06, 2020
The People Trump Sees as Expendable
“It’s not safe,” James, the Tyson worker, said. “They tell us ‘Wear your mask you’ll be OK. You’re more likely to get it at the grocery store than here.’ I feel like they’re treating us as if we’re expendable.” (James is not his real name.)
According to Sexton's reporting, "Workers from the Wilkes County Health Department went Monday to three shifts at the Tyson complex to collect samples from 200 workers for testing. The remainder of the plant’s workers will be tested today through Saturday by Matrix Medical, a company hired by Tyson."
Suck it up, James. Donald Trump has ordered meat factories to stay open. You're a cog in his wheel.
Update on Not-From-Boone Ashley Smith, Leader of ReOpenNC
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| Ashley Smith Capitol Police mug shot from her arrest last week |
Yesterday in Raleigh, about 200 people, led by a grandstanding Ashley Smith, gathered at the legislative building to protest the governor's stay-at-home order (which, in fact, he's beginning to relax as of this Friday, 5 p.m., which is another bone of contention for the rest of us). About 30 of those marched to the governor's mansion. Few were wearing masks. In fact, Smith is promoting a boycott of CostCo and Whole Foods because those two businesses are requiring shoppers to wear masks.
Membership in Smith's ReOpenNC group appears to be dwindling, especially with the defection last week of a co-organizer who disagreed with Smith's version of civil disobedience. She accused Smith of "nearly inciting a riot."
Yesterday outside the General Assembly, "Speakers took turns at the microphone for nearly an hour. They prayed, recited the Pledge of Allegiance and made references to those killed at Waco and Ruby Ridge." Their minds just naturally go to bloody violence because the governor -- a jack-booted thug if there ever was one! -- wants them to wear masks and stand six feet apart.
According to the News and Observer, "ReOpenNC leader Ashley Smith said the group will become a nonprofit and begin a fundraising campaign. She said upcoming legal fights require funds. The group had wanted to file a class-action writ of habeas corpus, but doing so required a filing fee of $200 a person." "A class-action writ of habeas corpus"? Jeffrey Billman: "I’m fairly certain that’s not a real thing."
Smith doesn't like Governor Cooper's phased reopening plan. She proclaimed that it "will change little and lead to economic downfall." “It’s time to make a stand,” she said. “I think I’ve shown willingness to put skin in the game in a tactile way.”
Smith doesn't like Governor Cooper's phased reopening plan. She proclaimed that it "will change little and lead to economic downfall." “It’s time to make a stand,” she said. “I think I’ve shown willingness to put skin in the game in a tactile way.”
Indeed, yes. She's caused a good stink.
Tuesday, May 05, 2020
Sunday, May 03, 2020
The Founder of ReopenNC Is From Morganton, Not Boone
Guest Blogging: Boone Nonnymouse
Special to WataugaWatch:
I keep seeing reports that Ashley Smith of ReopenNC is identifying herself as a small business owner in Boone. Does anyone in Boone actually know her? Boone is still a small town, and you’d think somebody would know her.
I’ve Googled extensively. There’s an Ashley Smith who is involved in management at Greystone Eye, but they actually issued a statement and posted it on their website stating the Smith involved with ReopenNC is not the same.
There’s an Ashley Smith who is an Allen Tate Insurance Agent. She’s affiliated with the Blowing Rock offices of Allen Tate, but she is in Charlotte. Also photo doesn’t match mug shot of the Smith arrested in Raleigh last Tuesday (see above).
And then there’s the Facebook page for the Smith of ReopenNC. No likes, friends, or photographs of anyone related to Boone or the High Country. Here it is: https://www.facebook.com/AshleyESmith77
I guess a copy of the police report of her arrest by Capitol Police would have her information, including address, employer, etc.
This is she in Morganton yesterday:
https://spectrumlocalnews.com/nc/charlotte/news/2020/05/02/dozens-of-protestors-were-in-downtown-morganton-saturday
This story says Morganton is her hometown. She says she and her husband run a business called Blue Ridge Merchants, a credit card processor. No mention of Boone at all.
https://www.morganton.com/news/local/political-protest-group-gaining-statewide-attention-has-local-ties/article_d3197d7d-efaf-5e97-87c4-4443215d8f73.html
And this is the business’s website. Nothing about Boone here either.
https://www.facebook.com/Blueridgemerchants/
So wherefore did it get started that Ashley Smith of ReopenNC was from Boone?
Saturday, May 02, 2020
The Body County -- Christi A. Grimm
A Reoccurring Feature on Who's
WASHINGTON [NYTimes] — President Trump moved on Friday night to replace a top official at the Department of Health and Human Services who angered him with a report last month highlighting supply shortages and testing delays at hospitals during the coronavirus pandemic.
The White House waited until after business hours to announce the nomination of a new inspector general for the department who, if confirmed, would take over for Christi A. Grimm, the principal deputy inspector general who was publicly assailed by the president at a news briefing three weeks ago.
The nomination was the latest effort by Mr. Trump against watchdog offices around his administration that have defied him. In recent weeks, he fired an inspector general involved in the inquiry that led to the president’s impeachment, nominated a White House aide to another key inspector general post overseeing virus relief spending and moved to block still another inspector general from taking over as chairman of a pandemic spending oversight panel.
Mr. Trump has sought to assert more authority over his administration and clear out officials deemed insufficiently loyal in the three months since his Senate impeachment trial on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress ended in acquittallargely along party lines. While inspectors general are appointed by the president, they are meant to be semiautonomous watchdogs ferreting out waste, fraud and corruption in executive agencies.
Friday, May 01, 2020
Joe Biden's Problem
I try not to out-right steal other people's writing, but Jeffrey Billman is making it hard for me. I get his daily Indy Week email, which has become indispensable for keeping up with any number of North Carolina and national storylines.
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| "Joe Biden's Self Quarantine" Kevin Siers, Charlotte Observer, April 30, 2020 |
→ TARA READE IS BECOMING A PROBLEM FOR JOE BIDEN.
And absorbed a long, long piece that turned over every piece of evidence with just the right mixture of skepticism and open-mindedness:
For a month or so, Joe Biden’s campaign acted as though Tara Reade’s allegation that he had—how to put this politely—digitally penetrated her against her will in 1993 would go away on its own....
Then, in mid-April, the major national newspapers dug in, including The New York Times and The Washington Post.
A former intern for another lawmaker told both papers that Reade had told her about the assault at the time, but she declined to go on the record.
Reade said she told her mother about the assault, but her mother was dead.
Another friend told the NYT that Reade had told her in 2008 that Biden touched her inappropriately and that she’s had a traumatic experience working in his office.
Reade’s brother had this curious exchange with WaPo: “In another recent interview, Reade’s brother, Collin Moulton, said she told him in 1993 that Biden had behaved inappropriately by touching her neck and shoulders. … Several days after that interview, he said in a text message that he recalled her telling him that Biden had put his hand ‘under her clothes.’ ”
All in all: Not good for Biden, but not fatal. So long as another shoe didn’t drop.
Then a shoe dropped. Not, like, a size-12 Doc Martin. More like a size-4 slipper. Reade had said that, after she told her mother about the assault, her mother had called in to Larry King’s CNN show. Last weekend, someone dug up a recording.
“In a Larry King Live segment that aired on August 11, 1993, on CNN, an unnamed woman calls in to the show with her location identified on the screen as San Luis Obispo, California. The show was about the cutthroat nature of Washington, DC, politics and media. ‘Yes, hello. I'm wondering what a staffer would do besides go to the press in Washington?’ she asks. ‘My daughter has just left there after working for a prominent senator, and could not get through with her problems at all, and the only thing she could have done was go to the press, and she chose not to do it out of respect for him.’ ”
“The woman does not mention sexual assault or harassment, nor does she describe in any detail what ‘problems’ she might be referring to. Her daughter’s name and Biden's are also not mentioned. In a phone interview with CNN Friday night, Reade told CNN that she is certain the voice in the video belongs to her mother, Jeanette Altimus, who died a few years ago.”
And then another shoe, this one a little more impactful. A former neighbor of Reade’s told Business Insider that in the mid-1990s Reade had told her about the assault, and another former coworker said that Reade told her that she’d been sexually harassed and then fired when she complained about it....
Billman also spends a good deal of space on Republican charges that Democrats are hypocrites. I get that. I certainly do. And don't relish the charge. Uncannily, Billman exactly captures the mental gymnastics many of us fall back on when accused of hypocrisy:
DEVIL’S ADVOCATE: Assume Biden is innocent. (If you want to read a former federal prosecutor throwing shade on Reade’s allegations, here you go.) What can Biden possibly say? Reade’s allegation is unprovable; it’s also unfalsifiable. She can’t give a date or location where this happened—things that would allow Biden to show he was somewhere else.
So you say, “These allegations aren’t true.” Then what? If you attack Reade, you’ll be accused of doing what Republicans did to Christine Blasey-Ford. You’re stuck with “believe all women, just not this one.”
It’s a no-win scenario for even the deftest and most innocent politician. Biden certainly isn’t the former; the latter … well, continue reading.
HYPOCRITE: There are dueling thoughts I’ve been wrestling with this week: 1) Instinctively, I don’t think Biden did it. 2) I know that I think that because I don’t want to think that he did it.
It’s not because I’m a Biden fanboy; he wasn’t my choice in the primary (Warren). It’s not because he’s on my “team”; my “team” is thinking Donald Trump poses a threat to American democracy. If Biden got replaced between now and November, pretty much anyone (ahem, Warren) would be fine.
It’s because, as boringly generic and sometimes infuriatingly terrible as his politics are, Biden always struck me as an earnest, genuinely decent guy. OK, so, the Anita Hill hearing was not his finest hour. And his habit of invading women’s personal space is gross, but even that didn’t seem ill-intentioned so much as geezer-is-out-of-touch. I’ve known men like that—empathetic, affectionate, maybe a first-rate bullshitter, but not a predator.
My gut didn’t give Kavanaugh the same benefit of the doubt, not for a second. I’ve known men like him, too—children of privilege, self-important and self-righteous, feigning indignancy and projecting rage. It’s not hard to imagine the worst.
Does that make me a hypocrite? Perhaps. More likely, it makes me human....
I don't feel defensive about Biden's embarrassment in this matter. He wasn't my first choice in the primary either, nor my second choice. If there's a swelling movement to replace him with another candidate at the Democratic National Convention, well ... throw me in that briar patch!
Here's Billman's conclusion:
LONG STORY SHORT: Politically, Biden needs to do just enough today to keep the women’s groups on board and (best case) get the media to move on—in other words, deny, don’t be defensive, sound credible, don’t say anything dumb, don’t attack Reade, and apologize to the women you’ve made uncomfortable. He can’t do much else.
Republicans are still going to make Reade a prop to distract from Trump and paint Biden and his female VP nominee and Democrats in general as hypocrites, and the left’s Never Bidens will use her to justify voting third party (“the lesser of two rapists,” etc.). All that’s baked in already.
If Biden doesn’t screw up, the only thing that changes the equation is a second credible accuser.Billman's entire take on the scandal seems well considered and wholly logical and caused me to contribute to the "Indy Press Club" to KeepItIndy.com. We need honest opinion brokers like Jeffrey Billman. He's a crucial part of my information universe.
Thursday, April 30, 2020
Trumpism Finds a Willing Host in Gaston County
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| Commissioner Philbeck in white |
But not so fast, Ralph. The county issued a clarifying statement, perhaps written by its county attorney, who's obviously less "Trumpy" than his bosses: “From a function standpoint, Gaston County Government will continue to follow all state laws, including Gov. Cooper’s executive order,” it said. “At no point would county leadership ask its staff or county residents to break the law.”
From a function standpoint.
From a different "function standpoint," Commish Chair Tracey Philbeck obviously likes grandstanding for the cameras as much as Trump does. And he intends to have the last word: “Legally they [the mayors of Gaston Co. municipalities] can’t and we can’t tell someone to break the law in an official government document,” Philbeck said in an interview. “But that’s why we wanted to also make clear that we support your right to work. We’re not going to stand in the way of people who want to work.”
Philbeck told reporters Wednesday that the commissioners’ reopening order position was based on relatively low coronavirus numbers in the county [140 infections with 3 deaths] and the availability of hospital capacity. Reopening, he said, would help save local businesses that have been decimated by Cooper’s “one-size-fits-all” restrictions.
“If we continue the stay-at-home order, it will not have a good effect for Gaston County and we will maybe not have anything to come back to,” he told reporters Wednesday morning during a virtual press conference....
Philbeck told reporters the order he signed allows any business to reopen if they follow social distancing and hygiene protocols.
“We’re giving citizens an opportunity to make a choice,” he said. “The government denied them the opportunity to make a choice.”
Philbeck's "ill-conceived, comically executed and ultimately spineless political stunt" drew condemnation in a Charlotte Observer editorial: "It’s political theater with real consequences. Businesses could endanger public health or risk penalty, all of which doesn’t appear to bother a commission chair who thought he was making a statement, but was really just making a spectacle of himself."
An Important Reason We Need Our Research Universities
Remdesivir, the drug that has shown early positive results for reducing the recovery time for patients with COVID-19, originated in the labs at the Gillings School of Public Health at UNC-Chapel Hill. The drug does not cure COVID-19 nor does it prevent infection, but it does seem to accelerate recovery.
“This is a game changer for the treatment of patients with COVID-19 and provides hope to many infected,” UNC epidemiologist Ralph Baric said.
About 20 coronavirus patients at Duke University Hospital participated in the first national tests. The patients were randomized to receive either the drug or a placebo, and both the doctor and patient were not allowed to know who received the therapy. They were all adults who had serious symptoms, such as breathing difficulties that require supplemental oxygen or a ventilator. The study was run by the National Institutes of Health and involved 1,063 hospitalized coronavirus patients around the world.
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