"Biden pardons Anthony Fauci, Mark Milley and the Jan. 6 committee in an extraordinary use of presidential power against potential Trump 'revenge.'"

AP reports.

“The issuance of these pardons should not be mistaken as an acknowledgment that any individual engaged in any wrongdoing, nor should acceptance be misconstrued as an admission of guilt for any offense,” Biden said in a statement. “Our nation owes these public servants a debt of gratitude for their tireless commitment to our country.”

It’s customary for a president to grant clemency at the end of his term, but those acts of mercy are usually offered to everyday Americans who have been convicted of crimes. But Biden has used the power in the broadest and most untested way possible: to pardon those who have not even been investigated yet.... 

Among the pardoned is Liz Cheney.

ADDED: Here's Biden's statement.

"Those who could face exposure include such members of Congress’ Jan. 6 Committee as Sen.-elect Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and former GOP Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming."

"Trump has previously said Cheney 'should go to Jail along with the rest of the Unselect Committee!' Also mentioned by Biden’s aides for a pardon is Anthony Fauci, the former head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases who became a lightning rod for criticism from the right during the Covid-19 pandemic.... The president himself, who was intensely focused on his son’s pardon, has not been brought into the broader pardon discussions yet, according to people familiar with the deliberations. The conversations were spurred by Trump’s repeated threats and quiet lobbying by congressional Democrats, though not by those seeking pardons themselves. 'The beneficiaries know nothing,' one well-connected Democrat told me about those who could receive pardons...."

From "Biden White House Is Discussing Preemptive Pardons for Those in Trump’s Crosshairs/The nomination of Kash Patel, who has vowed to pursue Trump’s critics, as FBI director has heightened concerns within the president’s inner circle" (Politico).

"In a chapter entitled 'He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not,' Dr. Fauci described how Mr. Trump repeatedly told him he 'loved' him while at the same time..."

"... excoriating him with tirades flecked with four-letter words. 'The president was irate, saying that I could not keep doing this to him,' Dr. Fauci wrote. 'He said he loved me, but the country was in trouble, and I was making it worse. He added that the stock market went up only 600 points in response to the positive Phase 1 vaccine news, and it should have gone up 1,000 points, and so I cost the country "one trillion dollars."' (The president added an expletive.)..."

From "Fauci Speaks His Mind on Trump’s Rages and Their ‘Complicated’ Relationship/In a new book, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci recounts a career advising seven presidents. The chapter about Donald J. Trump is titled 'He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not'" (NYT).

"During the coronavirus hearing this week, [Marjorie Taylor] Greene attacked [Anthony] Fauci as she held up a photo of two sedated puppies, their heads placed in mesh cages..."

"... as they lie on a table while being swarmed by sand flies.... [I]t’s silly to personally blame Fauci for the design of research studies... endorsed many levels below the director..... Female sand flies carry a parasite that produces zoonotic visceral leishmaniasis (ZVL), an often-neglected tropical disease in humans. Domestic dogs are the main reservoir host and sand flies are the main vector.... [T]here is something about using dogs... that make many people squeamish.... [N]early 16,000 dogs in 2019 were subjected to pain in the United States during research experiments — and nearly 400 received no pain medication. The White Coat Waste Project hit a nerve when it publicized the Tunisia sand fly study in 2021, emphasizing the dramatic photo that Greene waved at Fauci. The Post reported that Fauci’s office got 3,600 phone calls in 36 hours.... The emails show that NIH was not fully transparent as it tried to handle a public-relations nightmare...."

Writes Glenn Kessler, the WaPo "fact checker," in "Unpacking the story of Fauci and painful experiments involving dogs/Documents obtained by an animal rights group show that NIH was not fully transparent when the controversy erupted in 2021."

"Do the American people deserve to be abused like that, Mr. Fauci, because you’re not ‘Dr.,’ you’re ‘Mr. Fauci’ in my few minutes...."

"... in my time, that man does not deserve to have a license. As a matter of fact, it should be revoked, and he belongs in jail."

Said Marjorie Taylor Greene, quoted in "GOP chair reprimands Greene for refusing to call Fauci 'doctor'" (The Hill).

Contemplate the power that flows from the embrace of negative attention. It has worked for Trump, and Marjorie Taylor Greene has apparently decided to excel in this mode.

The givers of negative attention might want to rethink what they are doing. I will, once again, quote my mother on this subject: You'll only encourage them.

Also, I'm reminded of Barbara Boxer in her "I worked so hard" mode:

"Republicans... pressed Fauci on [his statement] that the federal government’s recommendation for six-foot social distancing 'sort of just appeared'... 'wasn’t based on data.'"

"Fauci said Monday he meant there was no clinical trial to settle on the distance of six feet, and that officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who crafted the recommendation were basing the distance on early expectations of how the virus spread. The answer did not satisfy Republicans.... 'This six-foot rule crippled businesses, it allowed students to stay at home and not learn,' Rep. John Joyce (R-Pa.) said. Other countries and the World Health Organization recommended a distance of about three feet of social distance, and experts said a similar measure in the United States would have allowed schools to reopen more quickly...."

From "Fauci dismisses ‘preposterous’ allegations that he led covid coverup/The infectious-disease expert said Republicans have distorted emails between scientists as they discussed whether a lab leak of the coronavirus was possible" (WaPo).

RFK Jr.: "Now it becomes clear: 'trust the science' really means 'obey authority.'"

More made-up science. If you doubted it back then, you were ridiculed as anti-science, censored, silenced. Now it becomes clear: “trust the science” really means “obey authority.” https://t.co/pMETn98T4R

— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) January 11, 2024

What exactly did Fauci say? The NY Post has this: "COVID ‘6-feet’ social distancing ‘sort of just appeared,’ likely lacked scientific basis, Fauci admits."

"The Nobel Prize in medicine was awarded Monday to two scientists whose research laid the groundwork for messenger RNA vaccines that transformed the threat of the coronavirus pandemic."

From "Nobel Prize in medicine awarded to scientists who laid foundation for messenger RNA vaccines" (WaPo).

Early in her career, Katalin Kariko, 68, a Hungarian-born scientist, saw mRNA’s medical potential and pursued it with ferocious and single-minded tenacity that exiled her to the outskirts of science. After a chance meeting over the photocopier at the University of Pennsylvania 25 years ago, she worked closely with Drew Weissman, 64, an immunologist who saw the potential for the technology to create a new kind of vaccine.... Together, Kariko and Weissman’s complementary knowledge helped to unravel a way to chemically tweak messenger RNA, turning basic biology into a useful medical technology ready to change the world when the pandemic struck.

"The Branch Covidians."

Screen shot of the top of Musk's feed, taken just now.

"The Branch Covidians" is quite an epithet. Do you think it's like Trump's namecalling? Or is something very different going on here? The analogy to the Branch Davidians is hinky. They were a sect that cut themselves off from reality, but they were not exercising governmental power and they were the victims of a shocking overreach of governmental power. But the Branch Davidians were said to have abused children, and I suspect that Musk intends to say that Fauci, et al., were abusing children.

Elon Musk defends his tweet that just said "My pronouns are Prosecute/Fauci."

My reaction, yesterday, was just "Yikes" — the post title — and, in the comments: "I'm more shocked that he made a casual 'pronouns' joke than that he expressed a desire to see F prosecuted (and without naming the crime or citing any evidence)."

Today, I'm seeing:

I strongly disagree. Forcing your pronouns upon others when they didn’t ask, and implicitly ostracizing those who don’t, is neither good nor kind to anyone.

As for Fauci, he lied to Congress and funded gain-of-function research that killed millions of people. Not awesome imo.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 12, 2022

Now, it's getting complicated. Musk started the conversation — on 2 topics — with something so short it was flippant and seemed mean.

Yikes.

My pronouns are Prosecute/Fauci

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 11, 2022

"I’m just sick of seeing him! I know he says he’s gonna retire—someone needs to grab that little elf and chuck him across the Potomac."

Said Ron DeSantis, quoted in "DeSantis Rages About ‘Little Elf’ Fauci: ‘Grab Him and Chuck Him Across the Potomac’/A man was recently sentenced to three years in prison for threatening to hunt down Fauci and break every bone in his 'disgusting elf skull'" (Daily Beast).

DeSantis, who recently debuted a performative tough-guy “Top Gov” campaign ad with himself as “Maverick,” has long taken aim at Fauci to burnish his MAGA credentials.

Last year, for instance, he began hawking “Don’t Fauci My Florida” merch as coronavirus cases spiked in his state. Fauci, meanwhile, has been the target of countless death threats. A man who said he wanted to break every bone in Fauci’s “disgusting elf skull” was recently sentenced to three years in prison.

I'll just do a poll:

 

Should DeSantis be calling Fauci a "little elf" and envisioning a violent action against him?

Yes, it's colorful speech, Fauci is small, and the "violence" is metaphorical.

Yes, it's a sly cultural reference to the late-lamented sport of "dwarf tossing."

No, DeSantis needs to go for a better quality of vivid speech and he's smart enough to do it.

No, he's embarrassing himself with ill-conceived, pseudo macho bullshit.

Yes, it's fun to make fun of short people and clever to do it without punching down.

No, it's never good to make fun of a condition a person can't change.

 

pollcode.com free polls

Background on the second option, from the Wikipedia article "Dwarf Tossing":

In October 2011, Ritch Workman, a Republican member of the Florida House of Representatives, introduced legislation that would overturn the ban on dwarf-tossing, claiming such a ban to be an "unnecessary burden on the freedom and liberties of people" and "an example of Big Brother government." Although not a personal advocate of the activity, Workman stated "if a little person wants to make a fool out of themselves for money, they should have the same right to do so as any average sized person."

ADDED: Poll results:

"Has political satire lost its power? Or has reality become so absurd that it’s now beyond parody?"

That's from the intro to "Why Are People So Mad About Don’t Look Up? Climate change is a tough subject for any film, let alone a satire."

It's a podcast — audio and transcript at the link — with various Atlantic staff people (Kevin Townsend, Sophie Gilbert, David Sims, and Spencer Kornhaber). I have seen the movie, by the way.

I think the quote I put in the post title is trite and foolish. The difference between the present and the past is the present is where you're living now. It's self-involved to believe that in the past, you could do parody and satire, but now — now! — things are already so absurd that there's nothing to add, no way to exaggerate, and we're suffering in some extreme new way that makes comedy impossible.

But let's see what these people have to say:

"But if you think about it, I really did pretty much the opposite of whatever he said."

Said Trump, about Anthony Fauci, quoted at The Hill, in a piece with a headline about Trump's answer to the question what would stop him from running for President. 

In case you're itching to know his answer to the somewhat creatively phrased question, it was: "I guess a bad call from a doctor or something, right? Things happen, through God, they happen. But I feel so good."

The BBC "Reality Check" team examines whether U.S. money funded "gain-of-function" research in China.

That is, who's right, Rand Paul or Anthony Fauci?

There's no decisive answer at the link, but room to argue that either or both are right. I can't do an excerpt, because I can't figure out what to leave out, so read the whole thing. Personally, I don't side with either man or care about designating one and not the other as a liar.

Scott Adams deploys his 4-point test for lying.

I don't know who is right, but one of these people checked four boxes for lying:

1. Word-thinking ("not gain of function")
2. Attack the critic personally
3. Change the topic
4. Anger when trapped https://t.co/AhR8vgoJjw

— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) July 21, 2021

ADDED: If you click through to Weinstein's series of tweets, you'll read a very sensible interpretation that seems right to me:

"'Don’t Fauci My Florida,' read drink koozies and T-shirts that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s campaign team rolled out just as his state sees some of the highest coronavirus hospitalizations..."

"... new infections and deaths per capita in the country. It’s the latest example of Republicans running on their opposition to virus-fueled shutdowns and mask mandates. A pandemic hero to some and villain to others, Fauci has become a high-profile target.... While discussing the Florida budget this summer, DeSantis said his state’s rosy financial outlook would not have been possible 'if we had followed Fauci.' 'Instead we followed freedom,' he said. His campaign’s 'Team DeSantis' Twitter account announced the new merchandise Monday. The Fauci items are listed alongside 'Keep Florida Free' hats and red koozies that take aim at face coverings with a DeSantis quote: 'How the hell am I going to be able to drink a beer with a mask on?'"

From "DeSantis sells ‘Don’t Fauci My Florida’ merch as new coronavirus cases near highest in nation" (WaPo).

This campaign merchandise is viral — viral 2 ways. 1. It's about coronavirus, 2. It gets DeSantis haters to carry his message for him. Those haters may think they're attacking him, but try as they might, they're helping him more than they're hurting him.

As for beer koozies, I think I can count on one hand the number of times I've drunk anything straight from a can in my entire life. I'll drink from a bottle, but not a can. I follow freedom, and I choose not to challenge my face with sharp edges of aluminum. I'll put a mask on my face if it's genuinely necessary, but I expect care to be taken in dictating when that is. 

Anyway, I'm not the market for any koozie, let alone a beer-specific koozie with a political slogan. I don't drink from cans, I almost never drink beer, I never wear or wield items emblazoned with politicized writing, and I would never casually expose the general public — which includes children — to aggressive words like "How the hell...?" 

But I did get a little interested in the word "koozie," which to my ear sounds dirty or insulting. Is it some combination of "cool" and "cozy"? I was interested in the etymology! Now, I'm reading Wikipedia. But it doesn't give the origin of the word, so I will maintain my belief — graphically stated at Urban Dictionary (definition #3) — that it started with a vagina metaphor.

"Remember, dear readers, you and I are lab-leak-theory hipsters. We were into it before it was cool."

"Now, no less a figure than Dr. Anthony Fauci is no longer willing to say it’s too farfetched to be plausible: 'PolitiFact’s Katie Sanders... asked Fauci if he is “still confident that it developed naturally,” according to footage of the event which was resurfaced by Fox News on Sunday. “No actually,” Fauci said... “I am not convinced about that... I think we should continue to investigate what went on in China until we continue to find out to the best of our ability what happened."'"

Writes Jim Geraghty in "The Circumstantial Evidence at Wuhan Lab Keeps Growing" (National Review)(reacting to the big Wall Street Journal scoop "Intelligence on Sick Staff at Wuhan Lab Fuels Debate on Covid-19 Origin/Report says researchers went to hospital in November 2019, shortly before confirmed outbreak; adds to calls for probe of whether virus escaped lab").

UPDATE: Here's Jonathan Chait in NY Magazine: "How the Liberal Media Dismissed the Lab-Leak Theory and Smeared Its Supporters": 

Many mainstream journalists, though not all, dismissed the lab-leak hypothesis out of hand as a conspiracy theory....  The confusion surrounding this issue was sown in no small measure by Trump, who used China as a transparent gambit to distract from his failure to respond to the pandemic....

Obviously, the idea China would intentionally start a deadly pandemic inside of China, just so the virus would eventually spread around the globe and kill Americans, is preposterous.... However, the charge that the virus began in a lab and China was covering it up was never clearly false. Yet many media reports treated this aspect with the same skepticism as Trump’s other lies on the subject, often blending different aspects of these claims together....

The masks/condoms analogy might cut the other way.

Public health officials get kind of attached to the power they get in epidemics. They don’t want to lose it.

— Andrew Sullivan (@sullydish) February 23, 2021

"Due to shortfalls in the vaccine supply we received from the state this week, your COVID-19 vaccine appointment has been rescheduled to a different date."

Unsurprising email received this morning. This is the second time my scheduled appointment has been changed. Originally, I had a February 14th appointment. I had to reschedule and got March 1st, and now, today, I see I am bumped to March 29th.

I don't like this, but I do think I'm in a better position to weather the delay than a lot of other people. I only have priority because of age, and I'm not that old. I'm 70. I don't have any conditions that are causing me to worry, and I'm retired and easily able to avoid contact with other people. I want us all to get vaccinated, and my getting the vaccination is important to me, but it's also important to me that other people get vaccinated. 

I'd like to see the world get going again, and that has more to do with people other than me getting their protection.

ADDED: Here's Anthony Fauci: "It may take until June, July and August to finally get everybody vaccinated. So when you hear about how long it’s going to take to get the overwhelming proportion of the population vaccinated, I don’t think anybody disagrees that that’s going to be well to the end of the summer and we get into the early fall."

They're managing our expectations with something approaching double talk. It may take until June... but everyone agrees that it won't be until the end of the summer and let me just float the phrase early fall.