Opinion
By Jeff Childers
08-15-23
Good morning, intelligent C&C readers, it’s Tuesday! Your roundup today includes: woke Georgia DA indicts president Trump in what is now the FOURTH criminal case filed during campaign season against the former President; man wins Canadian women’s world powerlifting tournament; Biden announces generous aid package for displaced Hawaiians; Southwest lawyers ordered to religious freedom re-education camp; and you’ll never guess who’s petitioning the Washington Commanders to change their name back.
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🪖 After reviewing several strong candidates yesterday, and consulting local Hawaiians, I selected the Maui Strong Fund for a reliable place to give donations to help displaced Lahainians and other affected citizens.
Here’s the link: https://www.hawaiicommunityfoundation.org/maui-strong
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🔥 The New York Times ran a repetitive story yesterday headlined, “Trump Indictment, Part IV: A Spectacle That Has Become Surreally Routine.”
Fulton County DA Fani Willis, who cracked jokes while announcing the indictment
Another day, another Trump indictment. The Nation’s Newspaper explained that, this time, a carefully-selected Georgia jury has returned an indictment against the former President. This time, Trump has been charged with very serious felony counts of: illegally disposing of hazardous waste (batteries), falsely omitting a house guest in the 2013 census, tampering with a home radon detection device, and removing fire rating tags from six throw pillows.
Haha, I’m just kidding. Actually, President Trump was charged with the much, much more serious counts of: interfering with protected wildlife at a national park (feeding squirrels), doctor shopping (ivermectin prescription), transporting black-market tungsten light bulbs across state lines, and lying to a member of Congress (he told Adam Schiff to “go f** yourself,” which is physically impossible and Trump knew it).
Oh, fine. The actual indictment is no less silly, charging President Trump and 18 “co-conspirators” with FORTY ONE different crimes related to the 2020 presidential election and Trump’s public allegations of elections irregularities. The 41 new crimes are now piled on top of all the other crimes Trump allegedly committed in the three previous state and federal indictments. All four filed during campaign season. All four filed since Trump filed to run for president.
According to the story, Trump and his co-defendants — mostly his former lawyers (and where is the American Bar Association when lawyers need them?) — all have until “no later than noon to voluntarily surrender to authorities in Fulton County.”
Or what?
The heart of the new indictments spring from Georgia’s RICO, or racketeering, laws, which were invented to help address organized crime. Ironically, one of the named co-conspirators, Rudi Giuliani, famously used RICO to rid New York of its historic five mafia crime families. Now it’s being used against him for posting a tweet.
Despite all the alleged wrongdoing in all these magnificent, pure-as-snow cases, Trump is polling as highly as ever. For some reason, apparently half the country disbelieves these indictment are fair, unbiased, and non-political. Many liberal experts see this as a vexing problem, apocalyptically suggesting, and I hate to even put this in print, that some people might even be willing to vote for a convicted criminal as president of the United States of America.
The horror!
For this devilish destruction of democracy, the New York Times blamed one person: master malefactor and organized crime boss Donald J. Trump:
Multiple prosecutors have now cumulatively laid out an alleged presidential crime spree of epic proportions, complete with tangled intrigues, mysterious co-conspirators and intersecting subplots… The notion that a rap sheet with multiple felonies would not be automatically disqualifying would have stunned the 44 presidents who came before him, including the Republicans.
“It’s just another norm he’s smashed,” said Jennifer Palmieri, a longtime Democratic strategist who worked for Hillary Clinton’s campaign against Mr. Trump in 2016. “The indictments have failed to upset the fundamental dynamic that keeps Trump strong — his supporters’ rock-solid belief that he is on their side.”
That last quote sort of gave away the game: “the indictments failed to upset the dynamic that keeps Trump strong.” They “failed”? Does that mean the indictments were intended to upset that dynamic?
I can’t help but joke about this latest indictment because the entire “get Trump” charade has become a travesty of a pasquinade. Even African warlords are taking notes from U.S. Democrats on the best practices for purging unwanted electoral competition. For instance, from Reuters yesterday:
Nice! But the Nigerians have only filed one criminal case against their former president. So far.
Or how about in Pakistan? From the Khaleej Times, last week, about its former conservative prime minister Imran Khan, now rotting in jail:
Or … how about Brazil? In June, its former conservative president Jair Bolsonaro was tried for “election fraud claims.”
Haha, look at the corrupt second and third worlds! They don’t know what they’re doing. Pikers. Novices. In America, we don’t just file one case against the former president. We file four cases. At least!
But Trump’s marvelous new Georgia indictment has some irregular fleas on it. A copy of the indictment was accidentally filed on Monday morning, well before the grand jury had finished deliberating, and then it was quickly withdrawn. Reuters even jumped the gun and ran a story saying Trump had been charged.
Woke DA Willis has claimed the leaked version was a fake, even though the charges were virtually identical to the ones filed after the grand jury’s decision had been reached.
Now don’t start. Any allegations that the fix was in and the jury’s decision was just a rubber-stamp of already-determined charges are completely baseless and without evidence. Probably. Don’t believe your lying eyes.
🔥 Yesterday, Reduxx ran a similarly insane story headlined, “Male Powerlifter Sets New Women’s Record During 2023 Western Canadian Championship.”
According to Reduxx, over the weekend “Anne” Andres, a biological male, blasted out a total powerlifting score that was a record-shattering +440 pounds more than the next best female in the same class – 1,317 pounds for Andres versus SuJan Gil’s 854 pounds total — immediately setting both a Canadian women’s national record and an unofficial women’s world powerlifting record. (A “total” in powerlifting is the combined sum of the heaviest weights lifted for three events: squat, bench press, and deadlift.)
He barely even had to try that hard.
Anne’s total would have even placed him with the top-performing male powerlifters in the championship, had he participated in the men’s category. Back in February, the Canadian Powerlifting Union released its “Trans Inclusion Policy,” allowing transgender powerlifters to participate in the sex category of their choosing, regardless of hormone treatment, because inclusiveness.
Don’t argue. It’s science. I mean Science™, which is more like political science.
Anyway Reduxx reported that, before the CPU’s new gender self-identification policy, Andres had already gained significant attention after posting a video where he mocked female athletes, rhetorically asking why female powerlifters were “so bad” at bench press. Great question.
So Anne obviously decided to show the ladies how it’s done properly. Good luck, ladies! This will be good for you. You gals will now have to stop coasting, and get back to real training in order to catch up. Playtime is over.
🔥 Good news! Joe Biden just authorized $700 in aid for the displaced residents of Lahaina, Maui, which will buy them one hotel night, without tax, and nothing left for the mini-bar.
Some observers found Biden’s use of the phrase “laser-focused” discordant, given the swirling rumors of space weapons being used to start the fires. Was Biden trolling the conspiracy theorists? I report, you decide.
Meanwhile, in totally unrelated news from the Hill on the same day:
Biden’s generous aid package to displaced Hawaiians is expected to cost $2 million. It’s true that, if we’d sat out this current round of Ukraine funding and sent it to Hawaii instead, the Lahainians would be all taken care of. But don’t complain. We have to keep our priorities straight.
🔥 The Hill ran a very encouraging story last week headlined, “Southwest to appeal judge’s ‘religious freedom training’ order.”
Last Monday, Texas U.S. District Judge Brantley Starr entered an order sanctioning Southwest for violating a previous order. The case revolved around the illegal firing of a Southwest flight attendant, who was laid off because she posted a pro-life tweet on her social media. A jury found Southwest and the flight attendant union were guilty of violating the attendant’s free speech rights and religious liberties, and awarded her $5.1 million dollars, which was later reduced by the judge to $800,000.
As part of the original decision, the judge ordered Southwest to notify all its employees, to make sure they know about their religious freedom rights under Title VII. But Southwest and its lawyers tried to circumvent that order, and instead of following the judge’s instructions, sent a watered-down note to employees implying Southwest had been found innocent, and failed to mention their religious liberty rights or Title VII.
So the judge sanctioned Southwest and included two interesting provisions. First, the judge ordered Southwest’s three lawyers to attend “religious freedom education” training provided by the Alliance Defending Freedom. The Hill described the ADF as “a Christian conservative legal advocacy group,” a sign of how upset that part of the order has made liberals.
Liberals are the ones who force conservatives to go to reeducation training, not the other way around, silly.
The judge also wrote out an exact notice that he ordered Southwest to send to its employees, to make sure they get the correct instructions this time.
So of course, instead of complying with a little training and a one-paragraph notice that could be emailed to employees at zero cost, Southwest is spending tens of thousands of dollars on appealing the sanctions order and the underlying judgment. “We plan to appeal the recent court order and are in the process of appealing the underlying judgment to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals,” Southwest said in a statement Wednesday.
Good luck. The Fifth Circuit was reliably pro-freedom during the pandemic, issuing some of the best anti-mandate orders in the country. District judges have a lot of freedom to sanction parties that violate orders. It could have been much worse, including jail time for contempt. A little training and a note to employees seems like the minimum a judge could do when a company refuses to follow its orders.
As to Southwest’s appeal of the underlying judgment, it is well known that appeals of jury verdicts are the most difficult types of appeals to win. Appellate judges hate disturbing all the work that a jury invested in listening to witnesses and reviewing evidence and so forth. So I don’t predict the appeal will be well taken. I predict that the flight attendant’s lawyers will soon be getting even more of their fees paid by Southwest. But we’ll see!
Judge Starr was a Trump appointee. So.
🔥 Finally, the New York Post ran a heartwarming story yesterday headlined, “Native American group demands Commanders reinstate ‘Redskins’ name.”
The former Washington Redskins changed their name to the Washington Commanders, because cultural appropriation. But now, over 90,000 petitioners organized by the Native American Guardian’s Association have demanded that the team’s name be changed back to the culturally-appropriating original.
The petition described NAGA as a group “which strives to stop the further cancel culture against the Native American population and erase our steadfast role in American history, including serving as counselors to the Founding Fathers in their creation of the U.S. Constitution.”
The petition’s demand was simple:
At this moment in history, we are formally requesting that the team revitalize its relationship with the American Indian community by (i) changing the name back to “The Redskins” which recognizes America’s original inhabitants and (ii) using the team’s historic name and legacy to encourage Americans to learn about, not cancel, the history of
America’s tribes and our role in the founding of this Great Nation.
Personally, I found the movement to change all the teams’ names with Native American references to be the dumbest example of woke silliness ever. Great work to the NAGA Warriors who are leading the charge toward sanity, inclusivity, and American tradition.
Have a terrific Tuesday! Coffee & Covid shall return tomorrow with another roundup bursting with optimistic news and snarkiness.
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© 2022, Jeff Childers, all rights reserved
The views expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official position of Citizens Journal Florida.
