Greetings, Peter Navarro! The Bureau of Prisons welcomes you

I can’t get over this business of Trump’s “associates” going off to prison. Yesterday, Peter Navarro checked in to the Federal Correctional Institute in Miami.

This is a low-security prison, with a camp addition (really low security but presumably no tents). I mention the camp because Navarro’s lawyer said he’d try to get his client into it.

I took a look at the orientation guidebook (my specialty), and right away I saw a section called Cultural Diversity. Uh-oh, said I, and read this short paragraph:

The correctional environment is a multi-cultural environment that may cause some to experience discomfort. Your attitude about diversity, along with respect for others, is important if you want to live harmoniously in this setting.

Do you think Peter Navarro will experience discomfort among the culturally diverse population of his prison? It’s something to think about as I continue to help orient him to the prison system.

As to the food services, there are a couple of unusual descriptions for cuisine choices I don’t recognize — and I live in a city with restaurants presenting every single international cuisine in the entire universe. But what about these exotics, which I’ve bolded:

The Food Service Department provides meals which are nutritionally adequate, properly prepared, and attractively served. All meals are served cafeteria style which includes features such as heat healthy options and flesh alterative.

Then, while Navarro is eating his flesh alteratives, he is not allowed to whistle or be boisterous. Now, I haven’t paid a lot of attention to Navarro but the few times I’ve seen videos of him on the news, he’s been yelling. So…

Under “Grooming,” I see this, the reason for which I don’t understand:

All FCI inmates will wear a black belt with the exception of the inmates in the ICAN program, and Spanish RDAP who have color designated belts.

High on the list of discipline problems which will incur serious penalties is “Encouraging others to riot.” Seems pertinent.

And the commissary sells croissants for $1.60.

Oh, and the low-lying prison buildings are topped with red roofs:

Could this be a Florida motel?

Posted in Crime & Punishment, DOJ, Jan 6, Judiciary, Politics, The Facts of Life, Trumpism | Tagged , , | Comments Off on Greetings, Peter Navarro! The Bureau of Prisons welcomes you

I’m still mad as hell so…I give you Comeyfy, the dictionary entry

Comeyfy (co-me-fie) a verb, as in, to Comeyfy. Past tense: Comeyfied. The gerund form: Comeyfying. Comeyfyer, male.

Description of Comeyfy: 1. A pompous man with limited authority publicly announces and pursues an investigation into the private aspects of a woman’s* professional life, despite protocols requiring such investigations be kept quiet.

2. When the investigation turns up no prosecutable act or impropriety, the authoritative man makes a public announcement — again despite protocols — granting exoneration but layering on suggestive, gratuitous and unpleasant nouns modified by exaggerated yet undefined adjectives and adverbs, i.e., “extremely careless;” “tremendous lapse in judgment;” “a significant appearance of impropriety;” “unprofessional manner;” “an odor of mendacity.” [Emphasis added by me. Because I’m still fucking mad as hell.]

3. Throughout, the authoritative man displays an attitude of intellectual and moral superiority, misplaced condescension and a patriarchal zeal for punishment — despite his own grudging admission he couldn’t find anything to punish.

Notable recent Comeyfiers include the eponymous James Comey, Scott McGhee and Robert Hur.*

*Sometimes the target is male. In such a case, the Comeyfyer primarily resorts to sneering condescension. After his statement has been published, this Comeyfyer gets publicly exposed for his distortions and dishonesty.

Posted in Indicting Trump, Judiciary, Lawyers, political campaigns, Politics, Racism, The Facts of Life, War on women | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on I’m still mad as hell so…I give you Comeyfy, the dictionary entry

MAGA v Fani Willis: I am incensed!

I wrote this before Judge McAfee’s decision — “appearance of impropriety”? His decision states there was no impropriety, no conflict of interests, so WTF! McAfee only serves to make my furious point below.

McAfee has Comey-fied Fani Wallis.

Rumors, smears, knee-jerkery, lies, misogyny, upside-down-ism, racism, slavery and unadulterated stupidity: this story has it all.

What it doesn’t have is facts and logic. But that’s not entirely why I’m steaming mad.

Out of a hole in the Georgia earth came slithering an accusation of…what was it again? Conflict of interest? A, gulp, man friend? A romantic relationship? Was that it?

Before I digested the actual story, I was myself guilty of knee-jerkery — for which I am deeply sorry and deeply grateful, since it pushed me to…what do we call it? Gather facts  and think about them. Yeah, that’s what we call it.

My knee-jerkery was easy-peasy, which pretty much defines knee-jerkery. When I first picked up on the oozing surface slime, I gasped, “Oh no! Not Fani!” Before I really knew anything, I found myself thinking, “Not good judgment, Fani.”

“Not good judgment” was what I later heard from others, too. But by that time, I found myself in passionate objection mode. “Not good judgment”? About what? That she was seeing, dating, involved with — whatever you want to call it — a man?

Gee whiz. “You know, she does get to have a boyfriend,” I said. I mean, unless there is some secret warped moral code in the South that says female district attorneys must take the veil during prosecutions?

But oh, wait. This is not just about “female district attorneys,” but a Black female district attorney.

Soon I quickly dispensed with the “conflict of interest” nonsense. Fani Willis has been seeing a man who was…one of Trump’s defense attorneys? No. One of Trump’s co-defendants? Uh-uh. So maybe she was dating the judge? (Who, by the way, once worked under Fani Willis in the DA’s office. So murmur that phrase again, “conflict of interest.”)

Not. She was involved with a man who was…part of her prosecution team.

Where’s the conflict?

(Seems I must remind everyone how we hard-working humans often meet our future mates. We meet where we spend most of our days, i.e., at the office. Once upon a time [and maybe even today, although I fervently hope not], businesses frowned upon romantic connections between their employees. Yet quite a number of my friends and relatives defied those employers by falling in love and marrying mates they met in their working world.)

Once I learned that the lawyers for Michael Roman — the actual indicted alleged criminal here, one of the ones who is not Fani Willis — tried to bring into court apparently illegally acquired cell phone location data to suggest that Willis’s man friend had been around Willis’s house, at night…well. Let’s all throw up, in concert.

Now look at what Wikipedia says about this indicted Michael Roman and his glorious career:

Michael Roman is an American political operative and opposition researcher.[1][2] Roman was a staffer for President Donald Trump from 2017 to 2018.[1][3] He subsequently worked for the Trump 2020 campaign as director of election day operations.[4] Prior to working for Trump, Roman ran an in-house intelligence unit for the Koch brothers.[4]

Roman has a history of making misleading and unsubstantiated claims about voter fraud.[4][5] On Election Day in 2020, he posted baseless and deceptive claims of voter fraud.[6] He delivered the list of false electors for Michigan and Wisconsin to US Representative Mike Kelly who provided them to US Senator Ron Johnson. Staff of Ron Johnson tried to get these lists to Vice President Mike Pence before the count of the electoral votes on January 6, 2021.[7]

They call it “oppo research.” I call it dirty tricks. Usually it involves distorting or inventing facts to smear an opponent. Here, though, Roman and his lawyers didn’t bother with distortion. They formed a Peeping Tom Club, peering obscenely into Fani Willis’s private life and accusing her of…having a private life — which in no way interfered with her work as prosecutor and was, therefore, none of their business.

So what were they doing?

Here’s a short relevant tale about a specific kind of racism I’ve encountered in my own private life.

I once knew a man who had worked in Democratic presidential politics. White Jewish guy with a Harvard law degree. Was born and had lived his entire life in the suburbs, cloistered in all-white suburbs often gated and guarded by armed moonlighting cops. (It’s important to understand that, while his work was in cities, he traveled into them via car or suburban trains.)

On day we were driving through a Black neighborhood in D.C. where a few elderly men were gathered on the sidewalk outside a store, chatting. He glanced at them and muttered, “Drug dealers.” I told him bluntly that was racist and explained specifically why it was racist.

He was offended, argued he couldn’t be racist: he had worked on historic civil rights legislation when he was employed at the White House.

Yes. He said that.

Is that when Martin Luther King came up in the conversation? For me, MLK, Jr was and is a towering American visionary and a political genius. But this dude had some deep secret knowledge about MLK which, he was sure, would bring down my hero.

“He’s not such a good character,” he sneered. As evidence, he told me he’d seen the FBI secret files (compiled by J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI) on MLK containing details about MLK’s sex life. Sometimes with white women.

I was appalled — but not the way this guy wanted me to be. I had had an epiphany about the underpinnings of white racism: prurience. These white guys (and some of their handmaidens) have a sick and fearful focus on the sex lives of Black people. It’s atavism, a slave-owner mentality. Black people’s freedom exists only if the white masters allow it.

And that means that their private lives can be watched through the spy holes they’ve drilled. Don’t like it? Too bad. They’ll purse their lips and mutter you’ve got a “conflict of interests.”

Stupid, irrational and utterly repulsive.

 

 

Posted in Judiciary, Law, suits and order, political campaigns, Politics, Racism, The Facts of Life, Trumpism, voting rights, War on women | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on MAGA v Fani Willis: I am incensed!