Reason For Hope Amid the Wreckage

If you woke up this morning with the vague sense that you were missing a goodly portion of your brain cells, it’s likely that you watched Pam Bondi’s performance yesterday before a Senate committee.

Rick Wilson compares her stuttering evasions, insults, and faux bursts of performative outrage to a fake orgasm — “loud, theatrical, sweaty, and meant to trick just one man into keeping her around by flattering his ego.” Unfortunately, this makes her performance seem far more entertaining than it actually was; and is unfair to orgasms.

On this sunny, crisp October morning, I promise not to inflict a lengthy exegesis of that embarrassing fiasco on you (although we’ll get to the story later).

So, before wallowing in the tide pools of daily outrage, how about a story of human decency and kindness? And, because we are doing something different, it’s about a cat.

Happy Wednesday.

Last night I heard from one of our loyal subscribers:

Charlie,

I was listening to your podcast with Olivia Troye today and, like both of you, I have been reflecting on the passing of Jane Goodall, and how important it is for us to remain hopeful in these dark times.

Here’s a story that has brought a lot of joy to Richmond this week -- it’s amazing how animals can rally a community. We were all talking about it at work on Monday, and one of my fellow servers -- an immigrant from Serbia whose husband is a veteran -- told me how happy Francine’s return had made him, reminding him that there are good people in this world and to keep having hope. He’s worried about his status, both as an immigrant and if the administration comes after his marriage. Awful stuff for a guy who came to America because he loves this country….

Holli

Naturally, I would prefer that this was a dog story. But the adventure of Francine, the calico cat, is the bright spot we need today. A beloved mascot at a Richmond, Virginia Lowe’s store, Francine disappeared and was missing for several weeks. She’d evidently been seized with the spirit of adventure, and hopped onto a truck for a joy ride to North Carolina.

The search began immediately and was both intense and thorough, because Francine had friends.

Francine was a stray when she started living at the Lowe’s store more than eight years ago. Cats are common sightings around feed stores and garden centers, which contain large amounts of grain and seed that can be attractive to mice and rats. In New York City, cats are beloved fixtures of the city’s bodegas and delis.

At the Lowe’s store, Francine “just showed up,” Sida said. “We had a bit of a mice problem. So, of course, I’m like, wow. I like this cat a lot because it’s helping me.”

Lowe’s doesn’t have an official policy about cats in stores. Asked why Francine wasn’t taken to someone’s residence after showing up, Sida said she is loved by employees and the community.

“Francine picked us. We didn’t pick her,” Sida said. “Later, we would embrace her being our store cat. But at the end of the day, she came to us. Where she’s at is where she wants to be. She does whatever she wants.”

Searchers found surveillance camera footage of her leaping into a delivery truck which took her to a Lowe’s distribution center in Garysburg, North Carolina. There, she successfully evaded capture for several days, despite elaborate efforts to find and return her home.

An animal control office set up humane traps at the distribution center, where photos of Francine were posted throughout. The center had dozens of monitoring cameras, and Lowe’s brought in thermal drones to survey the area. An Instagram account unaffiliated with Lowe’s dedicated to finding Francine grew to more than 34,000 followers.

On Saturday, Francine was spotted on camera near the distribution center. After more humane traps were installed, a volunteer checked each trap throughout the night. Finally, one of the traps triggered and Francine’s meows could be heard.

Early Monday morning, two employees from the Richmond store made the 90-minute drive to pick up Francine. She returned to a hero’s welcome.

She was back on the job Tuesday, playing with customers, posing for photos and soaking in affection.

“Francine is one of us,” store supervisor Wayne Schneider said in a telephone interview. “She’s just amazing. What she means here to the store and the employees, you really can’t imagine the outpouring that the employees and also the customers give her daily.”

This story tells me three things: First, people really needed this story. Second, kindness is not extinct. And, finally, people like Pam Bondi, Stephen Miler, and Puppy-Killer Kristi Noem do not reflect the country or its people. And it’s good to be reminded of that.

The Bondi embarrassment

I’m sure that there have been more embarrassing moments for the Department of Justice. It’s impossible to imagine a more embarrassing moment for the Department of Justice, which has already been through a lot this year.

“Pam Bondi walked into today’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing.” writes Dean Blundell, “like she was heading into a reality show reunion episode—belligerent, combative, and completely uninterested in answering questions from lawmakers tasked with overseeing the Justice Department she now leads.”

If her mission was to reassure a nervous nation about the rule of law, or clarify the status of the Epstein files, she failed miserably. She substituted personal insults for answers, and smarmy invective for anything like transparency. Undoubtedly MAGA will say that she OWNED the libs. But it was a fiasco soaked in a debacle.

However, let’s not be too hard on Pam Bondi. She is exactly what Donald Trump wants, and what the US Senate let him have. What you saw yesterday was precisely what the audience of one demands. And he was surely delighted.

But I defer to Rick Wilson’s description:

Bondi strutted in, dialed the volume to eleven, and delivered the full martyrdom package: a sneering, venomous performance laced with sanctimony and shamelessness, larded with constant personal attacks against every Democratic Senator in the room, replete with wild accusations and wilder denials.

MAGA will think she won today, but on the biggest question in Trump’s cobwebbed brain, she blew it. On Jeffrey Epstein, she failed to exonerate Trump, defend the coverup with anything even vaguely logical, and made the stench of her ongoing coverup even more rancid.

Other than that, it went well.

**

UPDATE: Pam’s apparently having another lousy day. As former FBI director James Comey was being arraigned this morning, this bombshell story dropped: “Central witness undermines case against James Comey, prosecutors concluded: Sources” - ABC News

Federal prosecutors investigating former FBI Director James Comey for allegedly making false statements to Congress determined that a central witness in their probe would prove “problematic” and likely prevent them from establishing their case to a jury, sources familiar with their findings told ABC News.

Daniel Richman -- a law professor who prosecutors allege Comey authorized to leak information to the press -- told investigators that the former FBI director instructed him not to engage with the media on at least two occasions and unequivocally said Comey never authorized him to provide information to a reporter anonymously ahead of the 2016 election, the sources said.

Notes former prosecutor Andrew Weissmann: “If this is true, it’s a complete miscarriage of justice. Attorney bar tickets to be pulled, sanctions, etc...”

“Anti-fascism ain’t for the faint hearted”

[Remember, I never promised you a safe space.)

I spoke with British pundit Nick Cohen last week, and he has an interesting take:

Islam demands death for apostates for a reason fanatics everywhere understand. Pagans can be dismissed as lost souls who know no better. Apostates are far more dangerous.

They have learned the true faith and rejected it. They know its hypocrisies and failings….

For all that, most Never Trumpers did not become the candid friends Democrats needed.

I interviewed Charlie Sykes for the Lowdown (you can listen to us here). He… said to me “I think it was a major mistake for much of the Never Trump movement to basically become liberal Democrats.”

They should have spent the Biden years warning American progressives of the dangers of provoking a backlash.

In retrospect (and indeed at the time) there was a clear case for friends of American liberals to say that Biden was far too old to even think about running again – and it was pure folly for Democrats to pretend otherwise. Meanwhile as her shallow and thoughtless memoir shows, Kamala Harris lacked the political ability to take on Trump and had no clear policy agenda beyond the debatable claim that she was a nice person.

Never Trump conservatives might have warned that much of the woke agenda was crazed, that immigration was for a while out of control, and that inflation wasn’t a “blip” but a real hit to living standards….

Leaving aside personal motivations, however, the question remains whether appeasing conservatives so that you can peel them away from Trump or Farage or Orban is the best policy, as Sykes suggests.

You can read the whole thing here.

Finally

Wednesday dog

Via A Dog A Day with Cindy Sykes —Early evening autumn light with Zok the glowing dog.