[guest post by JVW]

Here’s a heartwarming story starring two bona fide California progressives, one of whom has a strong chance of becoming the Democrat nominee for President in 2020:

A longtime top staff member of U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris resigned Wednesday after The Sacramento Bee inquired about a $400,000 harassment and retaliation settlement resulting from his time working for Harris at the California Department of Justice.

Larry Wallace, who served as the director of the Division of Law Enforcement under then-Attorney General Harris, was accused by his former executive assistant in December 2016 of “gender harassment” and other demeaning behavior, including frequently asking her to crawl under his desk to change the paper in his printer.

The lawsuit was filed on Dec. 30, 2016, when Harris was still attorney general but preparing to be sworn in as California’s newly elected Democratic senator. It was settled less than five months later, in May 2017, by Xavier Becerra, who was appointed to replace her as attorney general.

By that time, Wallace had transitioned to work for Harris as a senior advisor in her Sacramento office.

How do you think Senator Harris is going to respond to this development? Will she say that she took her staffer’s word that these charges were untrue? Will she insist that she allowed him to have due process while these allegations were being investigated, because that’s how the law ought to work? Or will she claim that she had no idea any of this was going on?

“We were unaware of this issue and take accusations of harassment extremely seriously. This evening, Mr. Wallace offered his resignation to the senator and she accepted it,” Harris spokeswoman Lily Adams wrote in an email.

Yeah, because no one in the California Attorney General’s office — the office Kamala Harris helmed for six fucking years — ever mentioned to the Senator or to anyone else in her office that a lawsuit had been filed naming Wallace as a harasser about a week before Attorney General Harris was sworn in as California’s newest Senator, and her Senatorial office spent nearly two fucking years in the dark about the fact that one of her staffers had this lawsuit hanging over his head, even as the Senator herself was pompously grilling Brett Kavanaugh over comparatively frivolous charges. Perhaps there’s no inter-office gossip within the malodorous and corrupt Democrat party establishment of the Golden State. Or maybe the real answer is that a politician who had her path to power greased by — ahem, ahem — “dating” a ridiculously corrupt married powerbroker who was twice her age might have a huge blind spot when it comes to entitled progressive men treating young women like transient objects of sexual gratification.

And what of the proud and flamboyant Trump antagonist who replaced Ms. Harris as California Attorney General, the unexceptionable Xavier Becerra? Surely he rose about rank partisanship and waxed indigently against the awful behavior of his fellow Democrat, Mr. Wallace, right? There can be no doubt that he believes all women and was supportive and helpful as Ms. Hartley worked through the legal system in an attempt to be heard and recognized, right?

Becerra, who by then had been appointed to succeed Harris, and two of this deputies said the department took “reasonable steps to prevent and correct workplace harassment” by instituting procedures for harassment and training Hartley on the policy.

Hartley “unreasonably failed to utilize the procedures during the period of time, and after, the alleged harassment or discrimination was occurring,” Becerra wrote. “Had Plaintiff taken reasonable effort to utilize these procedures Plaintiff’s alleged harm, injury or damages would have been avoided, in whole or in part.”

When progressive Democrats aren’t involved, that’s usually called blaming the victim. Regardless of what Mr. Becerra thinks about the deficiencies of Ms. Hartley’s claims, his office settled with her to the tune of $400,000 of taxpayer money.

This is yet another data point in the hypothesis that progressive Democrats don’t really care about sexual harassment all that much, except for as a way to bash their political opponents. They unleashed the wave far too carelessly in the hopes of tripping up Donald Trump, only to watch in horror as it consumed Bill Clinton, Al Franken, John Conyers, Eric Schneiderman, and several of their own allies. Now, despite all of the hashtags, all of the pussy hats, all of the marches, they are acknowledging that they only address it in their own camp when they are absolutely forced to. And where they can not magically make it go away, they simply shrug their shoulders and say that they had no idea it was going on, a lame excuse that they certainly wouldn’t accept from their political adversaries.

Sexual harassment is real, many women (and some men) unfairly suffer from it, and people of good faith need to do what they can to eradicate it from our society. But I’m to the point where I think that only a fool falls for this MeToo garbage, which was always just a left-wing political movement disguised as a social concern.

– JVW

[guest post by JVW]

I forgot how much I like former Canadian PM Brian Mulroney. I remember his excellent eulogy at Ronald Reagan’s funeral, and he’s doing a bang-up job right now. He even had a very gracious shout-out to President Trump when he mentioned that NAFTA had been improved upon by subsequent administrations.

Jenna Hager Bush is just a lovely and graceful woman. There was a nice moment when she was doing her reading and the camera focused on her father, who had a look of tremendous pride on his face.

Please feel free to add your observations.

UPDATE: Here is the great eulogy from 43.

– JVW