Here’s a link to the May 18 Guardian (support it if you can!) coronavirus world liveblog.
From their summary:
India has suffered its deadliest day of the pandemic so far, with 4,329 deaths in 24 hours. The devastating toll comes as India’s case total passes 25 million, according to the health ministry.
…
The Pfizer/BioNTech coronavirus vaccine can be stored at fridge temperature for much longer than previously recommended, according to the European Medicines Agency (EMA).
Israeli airstrikes have destroyed the only Covid-19 testing laboratory in Gaza and damaged the office of Qatar’s Red Crescent.
A top medical organisation has thrown its weight behind calls to cancel the Tokyo Olympics, saying hospitals are already overwhelmed as the country battles a sharp rise in coronavirus infections less than three months from the start of the Games.
George Eustice, the UK’s environment secretary, confirmed that local lockdowns might be needed if the situation were to deteriorate in some areas of England. Bedford’s director of public health said she was “really worried” about the local increase in Covid-19 cases linked to the Indian variant. There were strong words for the UK government from Dr Zubaida Haque, who said ministers should have “stalled” the lifting of restrictions on Monday.
…
Tax documents released by his office show that New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s contract with publishers for his book about dealing with the coronavirus pandemic was worth $5 million.
Germany will scrap its Covid vaccine priority list and start offering jabs to all adults from 7 June, the country’s health minister Jens Spahn said.
blfsays
Apropos of nothing per se, and not political, I’d mentioned earlier that here in the village, a longstanding “orientalist” / hippy shop had closed (presumably due to the pandemic), to be replaced a vin shop. That vin shop is now open — they are an “essential” business in France and so not closed by the semi-lockdown (which will be lifted to some extent tomorrow) — and so I wandered around. And found something I’d never seen before, which also turns out to be unique: A French Zinfandel, Domaine de l’Arjolle (PDF). Zinfandel is the California grape, albeit its origins seem to be from Croatia. Zinfandel wines not made in California are unusual, and Domaine de l’Arjolle is apparently the only wineyard in all of France allowed to grow the grape. (Zinfandel is also a wine people tend to have strong opinions about, they either cannot stand the stuff or adore it — I originally couldn’t stand it, but after tasting some high quality Zinfandels, switched to the other side — but you almost never see Zinfandel (or indeed any Californian) wines in France, in my experience.)
As Israel and Hamas have pressed closer to all-out war, a new battle for the narrative is being fought among Arab states. For the first time in the many clashes between the two foes, regional unity over who is to blame and what should be done to stop the fighting has splintered.
While some states with Muslim majorities, such as Turkey and Iran, have accused Israel of incitement at the al-Aqsa mosque and committing atrocities in Gaza, other countries that had followed suit during previous flare-ups have this time been more restrained.
The relative silence has been led by states that made peace with Israel in the last year of the Trump administration and are now standard bearers of the so-called Abraham Accords.
The United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan, which all recently normalised ties with Israel, now find themselves balancing their new relationships against citizens who have been vocal in their anger at Israel’s violence.
Long-time observers of Israel and Palestine say the divergent reactions to this round of fighting have put some regional powers in a difficult position with their own populations.
“It is extraordinary, in this denial position of the Emiratis in particular, that they have not uttered hardly a single criticism of what is happening in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories,” said Chris Doyle, director of the Council for Arab-British Understanding (CAABU).
…
In what appeared to be a state-backed response, the hashtag “Palestine is not my cause” circulated in the UAE, Bahrain and Kuwait over the weekend. It made little dent in region-wide support for Twitter accounts from Gaza and East Jerusalem decrying scenes of violence and the Israeli leadership.
“[These governments] are on the wrong side of public opinion in how they’re seen and received by the populations of the Arab region,” said Mohanad Hage Ali, research fellow at Carnegie Middle East Centre. “They’re trying to pursue an active foreign policy holding positions that they’ve never had before. They could be seen as synonymous with the Israeli occupation and the Israeli policy in the region. This will have an impact on not only Israel, but their new Arab allies. And this will tarnish their reputation.”…
Chile’s established political elite has been roundly rejected at the polls six months ahead of a pivotal presidential election, as the country turned to a progressive new generation to write the next chapter in its history.
Resounding victories for leftist and independent candidates saw rightwing politicians crash to a dismal electoral defeats alongside those with links to Chile’s transition to democracy.
Across two days of voting, Chileans cast votes for the 155 delegates who will write a new constitution to replace Augusto Pinochet’s 1980 document and the neoliberal model it enshrined.
People also voted for regional governors for the first time ever, as well as for councillors and mayors – with candidates backed by president Sebastián Piñera’s Chile Vamos coalition faring poorly in each case.
Crucially, with the government coalition’s list securing only 37 seats in the assembly, Chile’s traditional right-wing fell well short of the one-third bloc it had targeted to obstruct the inclusion of progressive articles the constitution.
Each bill must be approved by two-thirds of the assembly to be included in the document.
“Many people are saying that yesterday was the day that the transition to democracy finally reached its conclusion,” said Verónica Figueroa Huencho, an academic at the University of Chile’s school of public affairs.
“The participation of indigenous peoples and independent candidates in a gender-equal constitutional assembly is a launchpad for a new Chile.”
The 155-member assembly will include 47 independent candidates and 17 representing the country’s 10 indigenous groups, whose participation was guaranteed for the first time in Chile.
Gender parity had been assured before the vote took place – for the first time ever in a national constitutional project – yet female candidates performed so well that the eventual adjustment ended up favouring men.
…
In an address from the presidential palace last night, Piñera recognised that Chile’s “traditional political forces” were “not in tune with people’s demands”.
“This is the triumph of social and political unity,” declared Santiago’s mayor-elect, Irací Hassler, in the city’s Plaza de Armas, flanked by several of the women who won their elections.
“This is the beginning of a significant change in the way we do politics. The protest movement, feminist strikes and socio-environmental movements are here to stay.”
…
Chileans will vote in presidential and congressional elections in November this year.
Meanwhile, the constitutional assembly will have a maximum of 12 months to draft a new constitution, which will be ratified at the conclusion of the process by a plebiscite in which voting will be compulsory.
Until the vote takes place, the 1980 constitution will remain in force.
Rachel Maddow reviews some of the blunders by the Secret Service as reported in the new book, “Zero Fail,” by Washington Post reporter Carol Leonnig, and wonders how the Biden administration can have confidence in the competence of their protection and safety.
Carol Leonnig, Washington Post reporter and author of “Zero Fail,” talks with Rachel Maddow about the compromised state of the Secret Service and the problem of agents openly advocating for Donald Trump and sympathizing with the January 6th insurrection being tasked with protecting President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.
As the Palestinian death toll in Gaza nears 200, the leading Israeli human rights group B’Tselem is accusing Israel of committing war crimes by killing blockaded civilians and destroying infrastructure on a massive scale. We are joined in Jerusalem by Hagai El-Ad, executive director of B’Tselem, which is the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories. His new piece in The Washington Post is titled “Israel has chosen a two-tiered society. Violence is the inevitable result.” Earlier this year, B’Tselem released a landmark report denouncing Israel as an “apartheid regime.”…
With coronavirus vaccinations accelerating and infections down, the French are looking forward to the loosening of many coronavirus restrictions Wednesday [May 19th], although outdoor lunches at restaurants risk being rained out.
[…]
Some restaurant owners were already complaining about the limits on hospitality, especially given the risk of rain in what has so far been a wet May.
Imagine you get the whole machine started again, create a new menu, get all your staff back, but then you have to cancel everything and throw your merchandise away because it’s raining, star chef Philippe Etchebest told the JDD [Sunday newspaper Journal du Dimanch].
What’s more, less than half of restaurants across France even have space for outdoor dining, he said.
Impossible, Etchebest concluded, adding that he would wait until the next turn of the ratchet on June 9, when some indoor dining and drinking will be allowed.
[…]
Guess he’s never heard of patio umbrellas (e.g.), which are more-or-less de rigueur here in S.France, albeit to protect from the Sun (they can do a good good of protecting against light rain and bird shite as well). Some terraces have a retractable roof.
I’ve no idea how common restaurant terraces are in France, albeit along the Mediterranean coast they are also essentially de rigueur. Very few restaurants in the village lack one — some restaurants offer almost nothing but terrace(s) — and the village itself can help by closing off streets (allowing the terraces to “overflow” into the street). Both the village and Paris (and presumably other places) did that last year in-between lockdowns, but I’ve no idea if either plans to do the same again this year.
(Locally, rain is only currently forecast for tonight and next Monday: And restaurants aren’t open today, and locally, Mondays are a common day for restaurants to be closed.)
“Unsure if this point has been made prior but if 1) there’s ‘Hamas’ in a certain building and 2) the world’s most moral army gives people time to evacuate said building before shelling…. then wouldn’t Hamas just leave? Yeah they really didn’t try that hard with their propaganda.”
[…]
An Israeli air raid has hit the Qatari Red Crescent Society (QRCS) office in Gaza, killing two Palestinians and wounding 10 others.
The organisation tweeted that its offices were attacked “by the Israeli occupation forces” on Monday. [probably not language the ICRC is happy with, despite its accuracy‡ –blf]
[…]
The attack on Monday came as international rights groups denounced Israel for its indiscriminate attacks against ambulance crews and health facilities, including a Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières, or MSF) crew.
“Last night, an MSF clinic in #Gaza where we provide trauma and burn treatment was damaged by Israeli aerial bombardment, leaving a sterilization room unusable and a waiting area damaged. No one was injured in our clinic, but people were killed by the bombing,” MSF said in a tweet.
[…]
† Disclaimer: I make regular contributions to MSF.
Russia’s lower house of parliament Tuesday approved legislation in a first reading that would ban members of “extremist” organisations from becoming lawmakers, a move targeting supporters of jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny.
The vote in the lower house State Duma is part of broader efforts by Russian authorities to snuff out the activities of Navalny, who is serving two-and-a-half years in a penal colony outside Moscow on old fraud charges he says are politically motivated.
It comes alongside a trial beginning in June to decide whether to add Navalny’s network of regional offices and his Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) to a list of “terrorist and extremist” organisations.
Russia is also due to hold parliamentary elections in September, in which the deeply unpopular ruling United Russia party is expected to struggle.
The legislation debated Tuesday will bar leaders of extremist groups from standing in parliament elections for five years, said lawmaker Vasily Piskaryov.
He said it would also block members of the groups and other people involved in their work — including those who helped finance them — for three years.
Deputies voted 293 in favour of the bill to 45 against with two abstaining.
The draft legislation would affect not only senior members and activists of Navalny’s political network but tens of thousands of Russians who supported its work with donations.
It will go through two more readings in the lower house. In steps that are considered formalities, the legislation will then need to be approved by the upper house Federation Council before President Vladimir Putin signs it into law.
Prosecutors in April requested that Navalny’s regional network and the FBK be given the extremist designation, accusing them of plotting to stage a Western-backed uprising in Russia.
…
The FBK routinely publishes investigations into alleged graft by officials at all levels of government.
Its most notable probes were YouTube reports showing sprawling luxury properties allegedly belonging to Putin and former president and prime minister Dmitry Medvedev. The reports helped spur mass anti-government protests.
The organisation’s nationwide network of regional offices helped organise Navalny’s Smart Voting elections strategy, which calls for voters to cast their ballots for the candidate most likely to defeat Kremlin-linked opponents.
The group’s members routinely face police searches and arrests for their activism, with the pressure ballooning since Navalny returned to Russia in January from Germany where he had been recovering from a poisoning attack.
Most of his top allies have since been placed under house arrest or left the country, with several announcing publicly their were quitting the Anti-Corruption Foundation after prosecutors requested the extremism tag.
blf @ #13, I’m sure you know, but just in case someone reading doesn’t – El-Kurd was being fully sarcastic.
(For context, he’s the Palestinian writer from Sheikh Jarrah in danger of being ethnically cleansed who was interviewed in US media last week after which the police arrived and forcibly ejected him from his own neighborhood; he later returned.
He tweeted an hour ago: “IOF snipers have shot over 10 Palestinians in the upper body with live ammunition, within the very first minutes of the protests.”)
It’s hard to describe how profoundly sick the US public is of press conferences by nontransparent local white dude DAs who refuse to recuse and arrogantly shout at the media about how the police were fully justified in killing black people.
The journalists are rightly asking why he’s making claims about the video that don’t appear to be backed up by the video – even by the cherry-picked segments he’s released. Now he’s saying the video won’t be released!
Apologies – #s 16 and 19 refer to this press conference, which is still ongoing: “Now in Elizabeth City: D.A. will announce results of the investigation into Andrew Brown Jr.’s fatal police shooting. Will likely reveal whether any deputies will be criminally charged. Four remain on administrative leave….”
The DA claimed the killing was justified and that no deputies will be charged. The press saw the same thing I did – even the video/stills he just showed don’t really appear to support his claims about danger to the officers. And now he’s saying that not only will this footage not be released but he won’t even show it again now! His answers make his decisions seem even more suspect than they already did. This is absurd. If the federal government can step in in any way, they should.
Just sitting here at home watching American police descend into a residential neighborhood, armed up like a military unit like it’s a war zone and blow a man away in his car … to affect a … drugs arrest. And the D.A. is saying this is all fine. I feel sick. #AndrewBrown
When they say the “war on drugs,” apparently they mean literal war. War like it’s Mogadishu in the ‘90s or Baghdad when we invaded in 2003. This is repulsive. Is this the way we want to live???
Those cops rode into action armed up like they were about to take down a terrorist cell. They jumped out of that truck ready for violence. How can this possibly be justifiable in anything close to a civilized society??
And lastly, why did they hold back the video for so long, if they think the shooting was perfectly justifiable? Is that the complete, unedited video? Who should we trust on that? The DA? The Zimmerman-loving judge? Give me a break.
Republican state legislators see this year’s decennial redistricting process as a prime opportunity to gain House seats in next year’s midterms — with some believing those gains alone can help the GOP take back the majority.
Legislators are preparing for the most public redistricting process in American history. Both Democrats and Republicans stand ready to accuse each other of radical gerrymandering, while advances in technology give each side the chance to draw ideal districts that are both pleasing to the eye and politically favorable.
Republicans start with an advantage.
Their party will hold complete power over the redistricting process in 20 states that collectively send 188 members to the House, including Nebraska’s ostensibly nonpartisan state Senate, which is in practice run by Republicans.
Democrats will control the process in seven states that send 72 members to the House. Districts in 16 other states are drawn either by independent commissions or by divided government. The seven remaining states send only one at-large member to the House.
The GOP’s level of control, especially in critical battleground states, may be sufficient to gain the five extra seats they would need to reclaim the majority.
[…]
Democrats, who suffered lasting political defeats in the redistricting process a decade ago, believe the GOP’s advantage has narrowed — but they caution it is still sufficient in big states to put the majority at risk. Democrats are nervously watching Texas, Florida, Georgia and North Carolina — states that will send 92 members to the next Congress, and where Republicans hold complete control of the process.
“If they draw extreme gerrymanders, by our estimation they could pick up 11 seats which they wouldn’t otherwise have with fair maps,” said Patrick Rodenbush, who heads communications for the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, a group helmed by former Attorney General Eric Holder….
SC in comment 498 in the previous chapter of this thread: Elie Mystal in the Nation – “Marjorie Taylor Greene Is Gunning for AOC—and There’s Only 1 Reason.”
Follow up to SC @20 and 21: 44 seconds. I think that was the amount of time it took police to kill the unarmed black man they were supposed to arrest for a drug offense. Like Joy Reid said, they showed up like soldiers in a war zone, and then they immediately killed a man they did not have to kill.
I couldn’t listen to the arrogant white guy making excuses and using language like “evasive action.” I had to mute him so I wouldn’t start crying or screaming.
The fact that officials are even having conversations about how to handle the possible criminal indictment of a former president is extraordinary.
It’s surreal that this conversation is even underway, but these are apparently the times we find ourselves in.
Palm Beach County State Attorney Dave Aronberg said Gov. Ron DeSantis cannot unilaterally block former President Donald Trump from being extradited to New York if he is indicted on criminal charges but said there is room for delay tactics. He responded Sunday on CNN Newsroom to rampant speculation that officials in the Florida county are grappling with the possibility of Trump being indicted by Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr., who is looking into the Trump Organization for possible bank, tax, or insurance fraud.
Steve Vladeck, a University of Texas law school professor and an MSNBC opinion columnist, noted the other day that there’s “an obscure provision of Florida law that allows the governor, upon receiving an extradition request from another state, to investigate ‘whether the person ought to be surrendered,'” which has led to some speculation that Florida’s Republican governor, a Trump sycophant, could “play hero with the former president’s supporters by dragging his feet” in the event of a Trump indictment.
On CNN over the weekend, Palm Beach County State Attorney Dave Aronberg acknowledged “informal conversations” have occurred between local officials “in case an indictment happens.”
He added, in reference to DeSantis, “So that’s a conversation we’re having: What is the governor’s power? And the governor’s power to stop an extradition is really nonexistent. He can try to delay it, he can send it to a committee and do research about it, but his role is really ministerial, and ultimately the state of New York can go to court and get an order to extradite the former president.”
In his MSNBC piece, Vladeck came to the same conclusion, explaining, “[…] If Trump is indicted in New York, both the U.S. Constitution and a federal statute dating to 1793 require DeSantis (or the governor of whatever state Trump is in at the time) to hand him over. And if DeSantis still refuses, a 1987 Supreme Court decision makes clear that federal courts can order him to comply. Unlike in cases of international extradition, where treaties often leave significant room for political and diplomatic machinations and maneuvering, the law of interstate extradition is both clear and straightforward.”
[…] As Rachel noted on the show last week, the issue came to the fore in March, when Jane Mayer wrote a piece for the New Yorker, which noted Trump’s willingness to “engage in almost unthinkable tactics to protect himself.” The article added, “Among his social circle in Palm Beach, speculation abounds that Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, an ally, might not honor an extradition request from New York if a bench warrant were issued for Trump’s arrest.”
It raises the prospect of a former American president being criminally charged — something that has never happened before in our history — and him responding to a possible indictment by trying to hide in Florida, hoping the governor would shield him from having to show up in a New York courtroom.
[…] Common sense suggests that these remarkable circumstances — officials having conversations about how best to handle Trump’s possible criminal indictment — might diminish the twice-impeached former president’s influence, but as things stand, Trump continues to wield power over the contemporary Republican Party.
* We knew Rep. Val Demings (D) would run for statewide office in Florida next year; we just didn’t know which one. NBC News reported this morning that the congresswoman and former chief of the Orlando Police Department has decided to run against Sen. Marco Rubio (R) in 2022. [Good!]
[…] * After drawing Donald Trump’s wrath, Georgia Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan (R) announced yesterday that he won’t seek a second term and will instead try to “change the trajectory of the Republican Party” away from its radical course.
[…] * Montana’s new Republican-imposed voting restrictions are facing a new lawsuit filed yesterday by the ACLU and the Native American Rights Fund. “The legislature knows that Native Americans are very distant from registration opportunities,” said Jacqueline De León, a staff attorney at the Native American Rights Fund. “They know that they have a very limited window to register and vote on the reservation, and they know that so many homes don’t receive residential mail delivery, and so they are again, I think, taking advantage of those barriers and amplifying them.” [All too true.]
* According to an Atlanta Journal-Constitution report, former appointed Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-Ga.) “has had to refund millions of dollars in campaign donations, many to people who said they unknowingly signed up to make recurring contributions.” [Grifters caught grifting.]
* And in New York, Andrew Giuliani this morning kicked off a gubernatorial campaign. The 35-year-old Republican, son of former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, has never before sought or held elected office, though he served as a special assistant to the president in Donald Trump’s White House. Despite his lack in qualifications and experience, Andrew Giuliani told the New York Post, “I’m a politician out of the womb.”
The White House didn’t just release Joe Biden’s and Kamala Harris’ tax returns. It also got in a not-so-subtle dig at a certain former president.
Just two weeks before Election Day 2020, Donald Trump and Joe Biden met for the final debate of the election cycle, and the Democratic challenger pressed the Republican incumbent on a sensitive subject.
“I released all my tax returns. Twenty-two years — go look at them,” Biden said. “You have not released a single solitary year of your tax return. What are you hiding? Why are you unwilling?”
Trump, turning to a familiar talking point, said he was facing an IRS audit, and therefore had to keep the materials hidden from the public. “I’m going to release them as soon as we can,” he added. “I want to do it.”
Even at the time, it was a cynical deception. As the Republican knew, all presidents since Watergate have their tax returns automatically audited by the IRS.
That same policy applies, of course, to President Biden, who released his tax returns to the public yesterday, indifferent to the automatic audit.
Despite the specter of an IRS audit, President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden on Monday released their 2020 tax returns. The first couple made just over $600,000 in 2020, and paid $157,414 in federal income tax, the return shows. That’s a federal income tax rate of 25.9 percent. The Bidens also paid $28,794 in income tax in their home state of Delaware, reported donating $30,704 to 10 different charities.
Vice President Kamala Harris and her husband, Douglas Emhoff, also released their tax returns […]
At yesterday’s press briefing, a reporter asked whether Biden facing an IRS audit affected the decision regarding the release of the tax materials. “No,” White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki replied, “I would expect that we will continue to release the president’s tax returns, as should be expected by every President of the United States.”
Adding to the not-so-subtle messaging, when the White House issued a press release on the disclosure of Biden’s and Harris’ tax returns, the written statement’s first sentence read, “Today, the president released his 2020 federal income tax return, continuing an almost uninterrupted tradition.”
As for the former president who interrupted the bipartisan tradition, Trump, even now, continues to hide the tax returns he previously vowed to release. That said, Bloomberg News reported yesterday that the former president and congressional Democrats “said in a court filing Monday that they are close to a deal resolving issues surrounding congressional subpoenas of his financial records from Deutsche Bank.”
The dispute stems from a 2019 subpoena seeking the then-president’s financial records from one of the banks willing to do business with Trump. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Congress has the authority to seek the materials, but Trump has the authority to try to narrow the scope of the subpoena, and the justices left it to lower courts to work out the details.
Bloomberg’s report added that the old subpoenas expired at the end of the last Congress, but House Democrats are prepared to renew the effort. If the parties reach an agreement, as now appears likely, that would presumably end this part of the dispute.
All of this is separate, of course, from the criminal investigation launched by a New York prosecutor’s office, which has already obtained the former president’s tax materials.
A video uploaded to Reddit Sunday has gone viral for its atrocity. In it, a man can be seen destroying Black Lives Matter signs and a memorial in honor of George Floyd. The short video taken outside of the George Floyd Square in Minneapolis begins with a truck pulling into the memorial site, blocks away from where Floyd was killed.
The pixelated man then begins vandalizing the area by removing barricades, flipping tables, and ripping down Black Lives Matter signs. His violence continues as he retrieves an ax from his truck and targets the Square shed. In the shocking and horrific footage, he can be seen bashing windows, tearing the sign from the front of the “house” and breaking wooden beams.
He even had the audacity to go inside and remove items from there. In the video, his truck’s lights illuminate the inside of the shed as he works on destroying it. [video is available at the link]
After going back and forth causing damage, bystanders finally come into the area and are heard shouting at the man. After one questions what he is doing there and yells, “get the fuck out of here!”, the man can be seen running away from the scene.
Of course, the man had to be a coward for his actions and the fact that he ran away leaving his ax behind is confirmation of just that. Reddit users took to the platform to share their thoughts on the incident, including suspicions that his ax looked like one a firefighter or law enforcement official would use.
“I bet he is a cop,” one user commented. “Yep, that’s why he took his time. Knew nobody was coming because he forewarned them what he was going to do,” another added.
According to the Daily Dot, a police report has not yet been filed. But many are confident the man will be apprehended soon because of the ax he left at the scene.
“I’m guessing off duty firefighter with the fire axe and pickup truck. He left the axe behind hopefully they can pull prints from it,” one Reddit user wrote.
[…] The fact that someone was heartless enough to commit this crime is beyond words. The incident follows days after a jury indictment of Derek Chauvin and three other former Minneapolis police officers on civil rights violations for their roles in the murder of Floyd. According to the three-count indictment, all the former officers were charged with depriving “George Floyd of the right, secured and protected by the Constitution and laws of the United States, to be free from an unreasonable force by a police officer” in addition to failure to act when they saw Floyd “lying on the ground in clear need of medical care.” […]
Disrespecting his memorial shows why the need for racial justice and police reform is so important. “Imagine being so full of hate you tear down memorials of a man killed by police,” a Reddit user commented.
It took North Carolina officials seven days to take seriously an allegation that a Fayetteville appeals court judge tried to run down Black Lives Matter protesters even though the city had video of the encounter […] Myah Warren, a 23-year-old activist and member of a Fayetteville-Cumberland Human Relations Commission, told both the local newspaper and The Washington Post she twice tried to press charges against Republican Judge John Tyson after he tried to hit her and other protesters with his SUV on May 7 in the town center, the Market House. Civil officers told her she couldn’t and even lied that Tyson was no longer a judge, but when an investigator reviewed footage of the incident, she received word that she had a case against the well-connected judge […]
“This vehicle circled the market house twice and on the second time veered into activists at approximately 6:28pm!!!” the Fayetteville Activist Movement said in a Facebook post. “He then JUMPED the curb and we approached to get ID info on the car.” Warren said she still had a hard time finding an attorney that would represent her against Tyson. “He’s a well-known racist,” she told The Washington Post. [Video is available at the link]
Warren cited a murder case in which Tyson wrote a dissent opinion on appeal defending Chad Cameron Copley, a white man who in August 2016 murdered an unarmed Black man after telling 911 dispatchers he was “locked and loaded” and there were “hoodlums” in the area, according to The Associated Press. Responding to the appeal attempt, Judge John Arrowood wrote the majority opinion that Copley, 43, “concealed himself in his darkened garage with a shotgun” and without warning fired his gun, killing 20-year-old Kourey Thomas. Tyson wrote in his dissent obtained by the AP that the trial judge “denied (Copley) of his most fundamental rights to protect and defend himself, his family, and their home.”
Seemingly taking a cue from the murderer, Tyson also is accused—although charges against him don’t reflect it—of lying to a 911 dispatcher in the incident involving Warren. The Washington Post identified the judge as the person who called police to report about five to 10 protesters blocking traffic, a claim the city video fails to support. It does however show an SUV allegedly driven by Tyson driving in a lane closed to traffic with the words “BLACK LIVES DO MATTER” painted in the center. The lane was a few steps away from the curb protesters held signs on. [more video available at the link]
[…] The Fayetteville Activist Movement is calling for the judge to be removed and all of his past decisions to be reconsidered. “The whole situation sucks because I feel as if he’s going to get away with it,” Warren said. “You were driving a state vehicle, you tried to hit protesters and you lied to 911. There’s only so much I can do.” […]
[…]
Shops were shuttered across cities in Gaza, the occupied West Bank and in villages and towns inside Israel as Palestinians observed a general strike to protest against occupation and Israel’s ongoing bombardment of the blockaded enclave.
The strike, which is supported by Hamas, the group running Gaza, and Fatah, the ruling party of the Palestinian Authority, led to the suspension of all economic activity and closure of educational institutions.
“It’s the first time in decades that we see Palestinians across the political divide take part in such a general strike,” said Al Jazeera’s Nida Ibrahim, reporting from Ramallah.
At least 212 Palestinians, including 61 children, have been killed and 1,500 wounded since Israel began its offensive on Gaza on May 10. Ten people in Israel have also died, including two children, in rocket attacks from Gaza.
[…]
Israeli forces have also killed at least 21 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank since last week.
Collection of images at the link. One thing that struck me about those images is how dignified-looking the people (presumably mostly Palestinians) were in the various protest marches.
“We are witnessing the last vestiges of what has been known as the Arab-Israeli conflict,” Jared Kushner crowed in The Wall Street Journal two months ago.
He was surveying the results of the Abraham Accords, the ersatz Middle East peace plan he helped negotiate under Donald Trump. At the heart of his supreme self-assurance, and of the accords themselves, was the deadly fiction that the Palestinians were so abject and defeated that Israel could simply ignore their demands.
“One of the reasons the Arab-Israeli conflict persisted for so long was the myth that it could be solved only after Israel and the Palestinians resolved their differences,” wrote Kushner. “That was never true. The Abraham Accords exposed the conflict as nothing more than a real-estate dispute between Israelis and Palestinians that need not hold up Israel’s relations with the broader Arab world.”
To circumvent that dispute, the United States set about bribing other Arab and Muslim countries to normalize relations with Israel. The United Arab Emirates got an enormous arms deal. Morocco got Trump to support its annexation of the Western Sahara. Sudan got taken off America’s list of state sponsors of terrorism.
But the explosion of fighting in Israel and Palestine in recent days makes clear something that never should have been in doubt: justice for the Palestinians is a precondition for peace. And one reason there has been so little justice for the Palestinians is because of the foreign policy of the United States.
“I don’t think that there’s any way that this occupation and creeping annexation process could have gotten where it is today if the United States had said no,” said Jeremy Ben-Ami, the president of the liberal Zionist group J-Street.
One can condemn Hamas and its rockets and still recognize that this current conflagration began with Israeli overreach born of a sense of impunity. A major flash point was the campaign led by Israeli settlers to evict Palestinian families from their homes in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah. There was also an Israeli police raid on the Al Aqsa Mosque on the first night of Ramadan, not to prevent violence, but to cut off its loudspeakers lest prayers drown out a speech by Israel’s president.
Palestinians fear, not without reason, that Israel is trying to push them out of Jerusalem altogether. That, in turn, has let Hamas position itself as Jerusalem’s protector. And Israel seems to consider its right to defend itself from Hamas justification for causing obscene numbers of civilian casualties. So much horror has been born of the delusion […]
To be fair, this is not something that began with Trump: America has been enabling Israel’s occupation and settlement project for decades. Tareq Baconi, a Ramallah-based senior analyst for the International Crisis Group, argued that in some ways the Trump administration was simply more honest than its predecessors about its disregard for the Palestinians. All the same, he said, Trump’s foreign policy allowed “the Israeli right-wing to understand that they can get away with their most extreme policies.”
Before Trump, it was common to say that the occupation would eventually force Israel to choose between being a Jewish state and a democratic one. During the Trump years, Israel’s choice became undeniable.
Israel’s 2018 “nation-state law” enshrined “Jewish settlement as a national value” and undermined the legal equality of Israel’s Arab citizens. As settlements expanded, a two-state solution turned from a distant dream into a fantasy.
The death of a two-state framework, Baconi said, has strengthened a sense of common destiny between Palestinians in the occupied territories and Arab-Israelis, or, as many refer to themselves, Palestinian citizens of Israel. “The more that we see Israel-Palestine as a one-state reality, where Jews have full rights and Palestinians have different tiers of rights,” the more Palestinians will “understand their struggle as a shared struggle,” he said.
A unique and harrowing aspect of the violence now shaking the region has been the intercommunal clashes between Jews and Palestinians within Israel proper. In Lod, at least four synagogues and a religious school were burned. “Jewish mobs were seen roaming the streets of Tiberias and Haifa looking for Arabs to assault,” reported The Times of Israel.
“I’ve lived here for a long time; I’ve never seen it this bad,” Diana Buttu, a former lawyer for the Palestine Liberation Organization, told me by phone from Haifa.
All this mayhem is overdetermined; nearly every iniquity in the region has an impossibly complicated prehistory. But the United States has underwritten both Palestinian subjugation and the growing power of Jewish ethnonationalism. It’s not enough for Joe Biden to be a little bit better than Trump or to try to restart a spectral “peace process.” If Israel can no longer afford to ignore the demands of the Palestinians, neither can we.
Kevin McCarthy’s turnabout on a Jan 6th Commission proposal that was negotiated by his chosen negotiator and, by all indications, at his direction is a good reminder […] of the reality of bipartisan negotiations in the Trump era. As I noted yesterday, Rep. Katko does not appear to have been freelancing. McCarthy chose him to negotiate on his behalf. And reporting suggests Katko worked from McCarthy’s directives and kept him in the loop. But once the deal was announced McCarthy felt he needed to torpedo it.
The only plausible explanation here is that McCarthy didn’t really think the negotiations would go anywhere. When the Democrats agreed with most of his demands, he had a hot potato in his hand and didn’t know what to do with it.
Trump clearly made clear he doesn’t want any commission under any circumstances ever. And I mean … of course he doesn’t. The perp never wants an investigation. That’s obvious. As my colleague Kate Riga has noted a number of times, McCarthy has his own reasons not to want any commission, even over and above Trump’s opposition. McCarthy was on the phone with Trump at the critical moments demanding the then-President do something. McCarthy’s testimony would likely be some of the most illuminating about the President’s state of mind and actions. That’s a nightmare for McCarthy. Of course he wants to avoid it.
The other possibility, though I find it a bit hard to credit, is that Katko basically sandbagged McCarthy. Perhaps Katko got McCarthy most of what he said he wanted but knew McCarthy would probably not accept any deal. So rather than showing McCarthy the deal which he said he wanted, he just announced it. As I said, that’s a bit hard for me to believe. Members don’t usually cut their leaders off at the knees like that.
On the other hand, Katko is one of the ten members who voted to impeach President Trump over January 6th. That alone makes me wonder why McCarthy put him in charge of the negotiation. But he did. The whole thing is a mystery.
The only global reality we can glean from this is one I think we already know: that the leader of the House GOP caucus is Donald Trump. He’s a big factor in the Senate. But he’s not the leader. He’s the leader in the House. McCarthy is most charitably seen as his spokesman.
“House GOP Whip Scalise announces Republicans WILL whip GOP Members to vote AGAINST the creation of a bipartisan National Commission to Investigate the January 6th Attack”
In a big bipartisan vote, House lawmakers on Tuesday passed legislation aimed at combating the sharp rise in hate crimes against Asian Americans that have occurred since the start of the coronavirus pandemic.
The bill now goes to President Biden, who is expected to sign it into law as soon as Thursday, in the middle of Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month. The bill passed in a 364-62 vote, with all no votes coming from Republicans. The Senate last month approved the COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act on a 94-1 vote, with Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) the lone “no” vote.
“After a year of the Asian American community crying out for help, today Congress is taking historic action to pass long overdue hate crimes legislation and send the COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act to President Biden’s desk,” Rep. Judy Chu (D-Calif.), chair of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus, told reporters before the vote.
The broad bipartisan vote demonstrates just how much these “daily tragedies of anti-Asian violence have shocked our nation into action,” Chu said.
“It is a momentous day,” added Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who represents a San Francisco district where multiple anti-Asian hate incidents have occurred, including the death last year of an elderly Thai American man and the stabbing of two Asian American women just this month.
The legislation, authored by Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) and Rep. Grace Meng (D-N.Y.), would create a position at the Justice Department to expedite a review of COVID-19-related hate crimes; provide grants for states to create hotlines for reporting hate crimes and for law enforcement training on how to prevent and identify hate crimes; and direct federal agencies to work with community organizations to help raise awareness about hate crimes during the pandemic.
…
Since the start of the pandemic, in March 2020, there have been more than 6,600 hate incidents against Asian Americans, according to the group Stop AAPI Hate. Nearly two-thirds of those incidents targeted women….
“The Tennessee governor just signed a bill which will require businesses to post signs warning other customers if trans people like me are welcome at that business. This should sound familiar and worrying….”
(CNN)New York Attorney General Letitia James is joining the Manhattan district attorney’s office in a criminal investigation of the Trump Organization, James’ office said Tuesday.
The attorney general office’s investigation into the Trump Organization, which has been underway since 2019, will also continue as an ongoing civil probe, but the office recently informed Trump Organization officials of the criminal component.
“We have informed the Trump Organization that our investigation into the organization is no longer purely civil in nature. We are now actively investigating the Trump Organization in a criminal capacity, along with the Manhattan DA,” James’ spokesman Fabien Levy told CNN. “We have no additional comment.”…
James’ office is working with Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance’s Office, whose wide-sweeping probe into the Trump Organization has looked into whether the company misled lenders and insurance companies about the value of properties and whether it paid the appropriate taxes….
Investigators have deposed multiple Trump Organization officials including Eric Trump, the former President’s son, and Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg.
Here’s a link to the May 19 Guardian coronavirus world liveblog.
From their morning summary:
India has suffered a world record one-day death toll, surpassing the previous highest toll, recorded in the US. According to the health ministry, 4,529 people were confirmed dead in the last 24 hours. It is the highest daily toll of any country on earth over the course of the pandemic and the first time India has seen a figure over 4,500.
More than 1,500,017,337 vaccine doses have now been administered in 210 countries and territories, according to an AFP tally. Nearly three-fifths of the total have been given in three countries: China (421.9m), the US (274.4m) and India (184.4m).
…
Meanwhile there has been huge confusion in England over mixed messaging from the government over international travel. Ministers appear to be saying that you can go to countries on the “amber” list, but you shouldn’t.
Ireland hopes to have the vast majority of its adult population fully vaccinated against the coronavirus by the end of September, deputy prime minister Leo Varadkar has said.
It’s a big day in France as bars, cafés and restaurants are finally allowed to open their terraces for the first time since October last year. President Macron was among those seen having coffee in Paris.
France will also see the reopening of all shops, cinemas, museums and theatres today. The nationwide curfew remains in place but is pushed back two hours running from 9pm to 6am.
A manhunt is under way in Belgium for a heavily armed soldier with links to the extreme right who has made threats against a high-profile virologist who backed the country’s Covid lockdowns.
The whole of Taiwan will move into level three of its four-tier alert system, as the virus spreads to more than half the island’s counties, infecting more than 1,300 people and killing two.
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In Australia more than 1.5m Covid-19 vaccines – one in every four distributed – are sitting unused in clinics across the country, prompting calls for a “major campaign” to tackle vaccine hesitancy
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Tunisia has ended its one-week lockdown, despite having the highest reported deaths per capita of any country in Africa.
A flaw in Japan’s coronavirus inoculation programme has been exposed barely a day after the government opened a facility in Tokyo designed to speed up the country’s slow vaccine rollout.
The EU will reportedly be opening up travel to vaccinated travelers from the UK and US.
Rachel Maddow reports on the immense popularity of the Ford F series pick-up trucks, and particularly the F-150, which is set to be released in an all-electric version. If the electric F-150 is a success, its popularity could make the difference in normalizing electric vehicles in the U.S.
Rachel Maddow reports on the growing awareness among Arizona Republicans that not only is the incompetence of their so-called “election audit” making them a laughing stock, but it is likely doing unnecessary damage to public confidence in future elections.
Steve Gallardo, a member of the Maricopa County, AZ board of supervisors, talks with Rachel Maddow about growing outrage among county officials that the poorly run “audit” ordered by state senate Republicans is embarrassing the state and undermining confidence in future Arizona elections even though Arizona’s 2020 election was “safe, secure and accurate.”
Desperate residents of a Myanmar town hit by clashes between the military and an anti-junta defence force pleaded for help Wednesday as the UN warned the fighting may have forced thousands to flee.
Government forces used artillery to flush out rebels from the western town of Mindat after fighting broke out on May 12, a spokesman for a local insurgent group said, and later cut off its water supply.
One resident who did not want to be named told AFP that most of those who had been trapped in the town by the fighting had now fled, but those left behind faced a grim struggle for basic supplies.
…
The fighting around Mindat between the Chinland Defence Force and the Myanmar military has likely displaced “thousands” of civilians, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said Tuesday.
“Access by humanitarian partners to the people fleeing violence or those still in their homes is challenging due to insecurity,” it said, adding it had received reports civilians had been killed in the fighting.
“We have been constantly helping the people from the town to relocate to the remote villages,” another resident told AFP.
“They need… a safe zone recognised by international organisations like the UN.”…
ravensays
Uneven vaccination rates across the US linked to Covid-19 case trends, worry experts
By Deidre McPhillips and Elizabeth Cohen, CNN
Updated 6:52 AM ET, Wed May 19, 2021
But vaccination rates across the United States are uneven — a worrisome trend that could obstruct efforts to end the Covid-19 pandemic. Rates range from more than 78% of adults in Vermont with at least one vaccine to less than 45% of adults in Mississippi.
Ten states have vaccinated less than half of their adult residents with at least one dose, and their average per capita case rate was about 19% higher than those seven states that have already reached the Biden administration’s goal.
The 10 states that have vaccinated less than half of their adult residents — Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee, West Virginia and Wyoming — reported an average of more than 78 new cases per 100,000 people over the past week.
This was predicted and predictable.
States vary a lot in their vaccine uptake.
The states with low uptake have higher rates of Covid-19 cases.
The 10 states with the lowest rates are all…Red states.
Only 4 states have rising rates of Covid-19 cases. They are all Red States, Mississippi, Alabama, Wyoming, and Idaho.
This is the pattern we will see for the next few months. Clusters of Covid-19 cases in areas with low vaccine uptake.
Already in many areas, the majority of people in the ICU’s with the virus are Covid-19 virus deniers and antivaxxers.
Tuesday was a “landmark day,” as the United States reached a new Covid-19 vaccine milestone: 60% of adults have now received at least one dose of Covid-19 vaccine, according to the US Centers and Disease Control and Prevention.
But vaccination rates across the United States are uneven — a worrisome trend that could obstruct efforts to end the Covid-19 pandemic. Rates range from more than 78% of adults in Vermont with at least one vaccine to less than 45% of adults in Mississippi.
And over the past week, states with higher vaccination rates have generally had lower Covid-19 case rates, a CNN analysis of data from the CDC and Johns Hopkins University found.
Seven states have already reached the Biden administration’s goal of vaccinating at least 70% of adults with at least one shot by July 4, data from CDC shows: Connecticut, Hawaii, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey and Vermont.
Over the past week, those seven states reported per capita case rates that were about 10% lower on average than those states that haven’t yet vaccinated as many adults, according to JHU data — an average of about 66 new cases per 100,000 people, compared to about 73 cases per 100,000 people.
And the gap in case rates widens along with disparities in vaccination rates.
Ten states have vaccinated less than half of their adult residents with at least one dose, and their average per capita case rate was about 19% higher than those seven states that have already reached the Biden administration’s goal.
The 10 states that have vaccinated less than half of their adult residents — Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee, West Virginia and Wyoming — reported an average of more than 78 new cases per 100,000 people over the past week.
New Jersey illustrates the power of vaccination.
Over the course of the pandemic, the Garden State has had one of the highest rates of Covid-19, ranking 12th, with more than 11% of its population infected with the virus at some point. Yet, over the past week, the state had the third lowest rate of new Covid-19 cases, reporting an average of less than 5 cases per 100,000 people per day.
In mid-December, before the first dose of Covid-19 vaccine was administered in the United States, the Covid-19 case rate in New Jersey was tracking very close to the national average. Now, New Jersey has become a leader in vaccinations. It’s one of the seven states that has already vaccinated more than 70% of adults with at least dose — and the latest 7-day average of new cases in the state is about a third of the national average.
While New Jersey illustrates the link between higher vaccination rates and lower case rates, there are exceptions….
Data shows another troubling trend: There are clusters of unvaccinated people in various parts of the country, and the virus could flourish in those areas.
“Clearly if you have geographic areas that are under-immunized, the virus is going to find them. It will continue to smolder, will continue to make people sick, will continue to send people to the hospital, and will continue to cause deaths,” said Dr. William Schaffner, a member of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices.
As the virus spreads through these areas with low vaccination rates, it has many chances to change and become potentially even more dangerous.
“Every time this virus finds a new person, it multiplies. Every time it multiplies, it creates mutations that can spring off, and those mutations can create a variant that is so different that our current vaccine protection might not work or might not work as well,” said Schaffner, an infectious disease expert at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.
If a variant is resistant, even to some degree, to the vaccine, that “could be problematic even for those who are vaccinated,” said Dr. Paul Offit, an infectious disease expert at the University of Pennsylvania.
“I think we need to fix this. We need to impress on people the importance of vaccination to stop the virus,” said Offit, a member of the US Food and Drug Administration’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee. “How many more variants need to be created before this gets their attention?”
And vaccination rates vary even more widely county to county than they do state to state in the US….
A new report from the CDC found that vaccination rates in rural counties are particularly low….
Such unevenness in vaccination rates “is a big concern,” said Dr. Bhavini Murthy, a medical officer at the CDC and lead author of the report. “We need to make sure we have high vaccination coverage in both rural and urban populations so we can keep moving the needle forward toward ending the pandemic.”
A Kaiser Family Foundation survey in April found that 3 in 10 rural residents said they would “definitely not” get a Covid-19 vaccine or they would get one only if they were required to have it — more than those in urban or suburban areas.
“We need to continue to ensure vaccination coverage is uniform across the country,” CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said in a White House Covid-19 briefing Tuesday. “This will require us to meet people where they are, to listen to their concerns, and to help people make informed decision about vaccination.”
A year after the late Tanzanian president John Magufuli denied the existence of coronavirus in the country, the government will start reporting on the prevalence of the disease in the country.
According to recommendations by a taskforce appointed by president Samia Suluhu to evaluate the prevalence of the disease in the country, the government will draft a new coronavirus treatment guide, ramp up testing for the disease and build capacity to detect other variants of the virus.
“Government will provide data on Covid-19 disease to the public and the World Health Organization so that citizens can get the correct information from the authorities while respecting agreements and regulations that the country is signatory to,” states the committee report.
And in a marked departure from the hardline stance taken against the use of vaccines by Magufuli, the country will start administering vaccines approved by the WHO through the Covax facility, first to protect frontline health workers, tourism industry employees, border personnel, religious leaders, pilgrims and those aged 50 and above.
The committee reports that Tanzania has had two deadly waves of the virus, and a third was likely.
The task force gave no figures regarding any deaths or hospitalisations resulting from the two waves.
Tanzania had not provided the WHO with any figures related to Covid-19 since May 2020, when it reported 509 confirmed cases and 21 deaths.
Since then, a number of high-ranking government officials have died of coronavirus-related complications.
In February, the WHO reported that some Tanzanians travelling to neighbouring countries had tested positive for coronavirus, prompting Kenya to ban passenger traffic between the two countries in May 2020.
Despite the new recommendations, the committee insists Tanzanians should continue using “natural remedies and other alternatives that conform to the basics of science.”
In her career in journalism, Nikole Hannah-Jones has been awarded the Pulitzer Prize and a MacArthur Fellowship “Genius Grant.” But despite support from the UNC-Chapel Hill chancellor and faculty, she won’t be getting a tenured teaching position at her alma mater. At least not yet.
As Policy Watch reported last week, UNC-Chapel Hill’s Hussman School of Journalism and Media pursued Hannah-Jones for its Knight Chair in Race and Investigative Journalism, a tenured professorship. But following political pressure from conservatives who object to her work on “The 1619 Project” for The New York Times Magazine, the school changed its plan to offer her tenure — which amounts to a career-long appointment. Instead, she will start July 1 for a fixed five-year term as Professor of the Practice, with the option of being reviewed for tenure at the end of that time period.
“It’s disappointing, it’s not what we wanted and I am afraid it will have a chilling effect,” said Susan King, dean of UNC Hussman.
…
Last summer, Hannah-Jones went through the rigorous tenure process at UNC, King said. Hannah-Jones submitted a package King said was as well reviewed as any King had ever seen. Hannah-Jones had enthusiastic support from faculty and the tenure committee, with the process going smoothly every step of the way — until it reached the UNC-Chapel Hill Board of Trustees.
The board reviews and approves tenure applications. It chose not to take action on approving Hannah-Jones’s tenure.
“I’m not sure why and I’m not sure if that’s ever happened before,” King said.
UNC-Chapel Hill Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz stood up for Hannah-Jones before the board, King said, telling the members she was such a strong candidate that he was willing to bring her on in a fixed-term position with the opportunity to be approved for tenure after five years.
That’s a departure from the school’s usual practice. Knight Chairs, sponsored by the Knight Foundation, are important and influential journalists who bring their expertise to the classroom at some of the nation’s most respected universities. While continuing their work in journalism, Knight Chairs offer students the perspective they’ve gained through their experience in the industry.
Not all Knight Chair professors are tenured. But since UNC began working with the foundation in 1980, all of those teaching at the flagship Chapel Hill campus have been. Fixed-term positions, like the one now being offered to Hannah-Jones, do not need board approval.
“It was a work-around,” a UNC-Chapel Hill Board of Trustees member told Policy Watch this week.
…
“This is a very political thing,” the trustee said. “The university and the board of trustees and the Board of Governors and the legislature have all been getting pressure since this thing was first announced last month. There have been people writing letters and making calls, for and against. But I will leave it to you which is carrying more weight.”
As Policy Watch previously reported, conservative groups with direct ties to the Republican-dominated UNC Board of Governors have been highly critical of Hannah-Jones’s work and the idea of her teaching at UNC-Chapel Hill.
Last week, a columnist for the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal (formerly known as the Pope Center for Higher Education) wrote that UNC-Chapel Hill’s board of trustees must prevent Hannah-Jones’s hiring. If they were not willing to do so, the column said, the UNC Board of Governors should amend system policies to require every faculty hire to be vetted by each school’s board of trustees.
The column laid out the playbook that many powerful conservative interests in the state would like to follow, the trustee said.
“That is the argument we’ve been hearing and that is what some people on the board of governors are expecting, I can tell you that,” said the trustee. “There is already a lot of pressure about oversight from the Board of Governors of trustees at the various schools that are not doing what they believe we should be doing, that are making any decisions they disagree with, really.”
The Board of Governors has decided not to reappoint certain trustees they felt were not on the right ideological page, the trustee said, and have even engineered the ouster of chancellors with whom they disagreed. They have defunded academic centers and discontinued programs with which they were at political odds. Trustees across the system know that track record when they’re making these kinds of decisions, the trustee said.
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The compromise solution of bringing Hannah-Jones on in a fixed-term position is not ideal, King said. But it was better than losing her altogether.
“She represents the best of our alumni and the best of the business,” King said. “I don’t want to get into a food fight. I want to make sure that our students have the opportunity to have someone of her caliber here and to learn from her. I think our faculty do as well. I realize this is a fraught era in the state. When I heard that the chancellor and the provost wanted to move to this, it was better than having a battle royale about the theory of academic freedom.”
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“Our job is to expose our students to the great issues of our time,” King said. “This is a fraught time and a time of racial reckoning.”
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“I think the board has to think about what the reputation will be in terms of the larger community of our peers, in terms of attracting great scholars,” King said.
“Israeli extremists have formed WhatsApp groups to organize and coordinate attacks which they call revenge against Palestinian citizens of Israel. We found over 100 groups, with thousands of members….”
Al Watkins, the St. Louis attorney who represents so-called “QAnon Shaman” Jacob Chansley, is defending his use of profane language to describe his own client and a few others similarly charged with playing various alleged roles in the Jan. 6th siege on the U.S. Capitol Complex. In an interview with Talking Points Memo, Watkins said Chansley’s Asperger’s Syndrome left him susceptible to being led astray by President Donald Trump’s so-called “propaganda” efforts.
“A lot of these defendants…. they’re all fucking short-bus people,” Watkins said….
[“Short-bus” is a derogatory term that refers to the smaller school bus that transports special-needs children to schools in the US.]
….Watkins continued, “These aren’t bad people, they don’t have prior criminal history. Fuck, they were subjected to four-plus years of goddamn propaganda the likes of which the world has not seen since fucking Hitler.”
The broader TPM article questioned whether such finger-pointing defense tactics will legally work; the piece also brought up Anthony Antonio, whose attorney claimed he suffered from “Fox-itus” and “Fox-mania” after watching Fox News under lockdown while unemployed.
Two former federal prosecutors told TPM that such defense tactics might convince a judge to go soft at sentencing but would not negate a defendant’s core guilt….
SC @37, and now I see that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has joined Trump and Kevin McCarthy in opposing the January 6 commission. Pathetic, unethical. Also, they are afraid that their own misdeeds will be aired in full before the public.
As Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) said, “Congress was physically under siege in an organized attempt to overthrow democracy itself…. [T]he House just needs to let subpoenas fly.”
* Just a few days after Donald Trump told the public that the entire voter database in Maricopa County “has been DELETED,” the former president’s Republican allies conceded that this wasn’t true.
* Nevertheless, some reporters at One America News (OAN), the far-right, Trump-aligned network, are reportedly trying to raise money to help fund Arizona’s utterly bonkers election “audit.”
* In related news, a judge in Michigan yesterday dismissed a lingering lawsuit falsely alleging fraud in the 2020 election. This was one of the cases that the Florida-based Cyber Ninjas outfit was involved with.
* Republican legislators in Alabama this week approved a ban on curbside voting, which was notable in part because Alabama doesn’t have curbside voting.
[…] * Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto lost in a Democratic primary yesterday to challenger Ed Gainey, a five-term state representative. If Gainey prevails in the general election, he’ll become the city’s first Black mayor.
* In nearby Unity township, Republican Leslie Baum Rossi won a state legislative special election yesterday. The Pennsylvania GOP candidate is perhaps best known for creating a shrine to Donald Trump along Route 982 in Youngstown, including a 12-foot metal likeness of the former president in the yard. [Oh, FFS.]
[…] * In Georgia, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) has decided to seek re-election, despite the attacks he’s faced from Donald Trump and his cohorts.
* And on a related note, the former president issued a statement yesterday, encouraging Georgia’s Republican-led legislature to “build up the courage to expose” election conspiracy theories that only exist in his mind. He added that Georgia should “just look at” Arizona as a model to emulate. [Oh, FFS]
I wouldn’t say Marjorie Taylor Greene is in good company, but she certainly has plenty of company.
At face value, the fact that Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) is defending the Jan. 6 insurrectionist rioters, and opposes the creation of a bipartisan commission to investigate the attack on the Capitol, is the least surprising story in recent memory. But there is a larger context to this.
Georgia GOP Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene said supporters of former President Donald Trump who stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6 are “being abused” in federal custody as she blasted House calls for a commission to study the insurrection.
“The people that breached the Capitol on Jan. 6 are being abused,” the right-wing congresswoman said during remarks on the House floor. As proof, the Georgia Republican claimed that some of those who participated in the deadly riot are being held “in solitary confinement.”
As a rule, Greene’s nonsense is easy to dismiss, since she’s obviously not a serious person. Of course GOP extremist sees the insurrectionists as victims. Of course she’s against an independent examination of the attack.
What’s more significant is the emergence of a growing Republican contingent that appears desperate to whitewash what transpired on Jan. 6. From just the last week:
Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-Ga.) rejected the idea that the insurrectionist violence constituted “an insurrection,” adding that Trump’s rabid mob behaved “in an orderly fashion.” The Georgia Republican went on to say, “[I]f you didn’t know that TV footage was a video from January the 6th, you would actually think it was a normal tourist visit.”
Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) blasted the Justice Department for “harassing” suspected rioters, whom he described as “peaceful patriots.”
Rep. Jody Hice (R-Ga.) said, “It was Trump supporters who lost their lives that day, not Trump supporters who were taking the lives of others.”
“I don’t know who did the poll to say that they were Trump supporters,” Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) said, adding that Trump shouldn’t be blamed for inciting the attack.
Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) lent his support to his right-wing colleagues late last week, trying to argue that there are worse things than an insurrectionist riot inside the nation’s seat of government.
Outside the House, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) has also argued that the armed rioters may not have actually been armed, adding soon after that the rioters’ patriotism is worthy of praise. In March, Donald Trump, who played a key role in inciting the violence, got in on the game, insisting that the Capitol attackers posed “zero threat,” and were merely “hugging and kissing the police and the guards.”
Taken together, there’s a loud and growing Republican faction that seems eager to rewrite the history the world saw unfold on camera just four months ago. […]
Masks do not limit oxygen. They do not increase the amount of CO2. They don’t “amplify” disease. However, they are effective at preventing transmission of many diseases, including COVID-19. That fact has become even more important with increasing evidence that the spread of SARS-CoV-2 virus is primarily through aerosols that can travel distances greater than 3 or 6 feet, and can linger in the air for prolonged periods.
Masks are just about the only effective way of protecting unvaccinated people from spreading COVID-19, and even for those who have been fully vaccinated, they remain recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in multiple situations—including facilities where many people may not be vaccinated. It’s a cheap, painless, easily monitored solution that provides protection for everyone with the very minimum of effort.
Naturally this easy, cheap, and effective solution has been under constant assault from Republicans from the outset of the pandemic because … Honestly, there’s no good way to finish that sentence. Republicans appear to hate masks simply because masks work, and wearing masks represents both an acceptance of scientific facts and a concern for fellow citizens—the two things that the modern Republican Party cannot tolerate.
Just writing that Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed an executive order to prevent any locality from issuing a mask mandate seems like a flashback. Because it is. Even though Politico reported on Abbott issuing such an order on Tuesday, it’s not the first time. Abbott is just one of several Republican governors, including Ron DeSantis of Florida and Doug Ducey of Arizona, who previously issued such orders preventing local authorities from taking even this simple, minimal action to protect citizens, only to have to roll back that order when COVID-19 cases predictably surged.
This comes in spite of a study conducted last fall showing that counties that had a mask mandate showed a 32% slower rate of COVID-19 spread than counties in the same state without a mask mandate. That study included data from counties in Texas. In all of those counties, there was no law or regulation that prevented anyone from choosing to wear a mask. But without a mandate—and without the regular reminder of seeing most other people wearing a masks—people simply didn’t wear a mask.
[…] Right now, 60% of American adults have been vaccinated. That’s 48% of the total population. Though the number vaccinated varies by area, that means that in every store, every restaurant, every shopping center, theater or museum, some portion of the people there are going to be a number of people who are not vaccinated. A mask mandate means those people are protected. […]
If no one is wearing a mask, then the pressure is there for people who should be wearing a mask—those who are unvaccinated, or those who haven’t yet received two shots, or those still waiting out the period for those vaccines to become effective—feel pressured not to wear a mask. […]
Wearing a mask when it’s not necessary harms no one. Not wearing a mask when it is necessary harms … well, 33.7 million and counting.
[…] House Republicans chose Tuesday to stage a “rebellion” against the rules that require mask use there. Unsurprisingly, the crew of around a dozen loud and undeservedly proud anti-maskers included Marjorie Taylor Greene and some of the other solidly anti-sense members like Thomas Massie, Louie Gohmert, and Lauren Boebert.
During this deliberate breaking of House rules—done for the sake of getting a minute’s attention on Newsmax and sending out the daily “look how I owned the libs!” fundraising letter—the members of the Obnoxious Caucus were confronted by Rep. Jaimie Raskin, who told them, “Hey, you guys are just like 21st century Freedom Riders. John Lewis would be so proud.” But considering that Republicans long ago sailed beyond the limits of sarcasm, it’s likely they took the remarks seriously.
Republicans might have a better point if they would simply admit they had been vaccinated. Which they won’t. Because, just as with masks, they’ve taken a point of public health and turned it into a literally sick bit of political theater. That’s why 100% of Democrats in both the House and Senate confirm that they have been vaccinated, but only 95 out of 212 House Republicans will admit they got a jab.
Republicans are both complaining that they have to wear masks after the CDC said that the fully vaccinated could remove their masks in most situations, and they are refusing to admit that they’ve been vaccinated. […]
None of this makes sense. And that is apparently all it takes these days to make it completely Republican.
Viola Fletcher, the oldest living survivor of the Tulsa Race Massacre, testified before Congress on Wednesday seeking “justice” a century after one of the most horrific racist attacks in the nation’s history.
Fletcher testified before members of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, some of whom discussed potential remedies for survivors of the tragedy and their descendants […]
Fletcher […] was seven years old when white mobs descended on the thriving Black community in Tulsa’s Greenwood District, also known as the Black Wall Street, in 1921, burning it to the ground.
Fletcher […] described the horrific night during her hearing.
“The night of the massacre, I was awakened by my family, my parents and five siblings were there. I was told we had to leave, and that was it,” Fletcher said.
“I will never forget the violence of the white mob when we left our home,” she testified. “I still see Black men being shot, black bodies lie in the street. I still smell smoke and see fire. I still see black businesses being burned. I still hear airplanes flying overhead. I hear the screams.”
“I have lived through the massacre everyday. Our country may forget this history, but I cannot. I will not, and other survivors do not. And our descendants do not,” she said.
Fletcher said when her family left Tulsa that she lost her chance of an education and “never finished school past the fourth grade.”
“I have never made much money and my country, state and city took a lot from me,” she said. “[…] most of my life I was a domestic worker serving white families. […]
Rep. Katie Porter made another Pharma CEO sweat yesterday, during a House Oversight Committee hearing on prescription drug prices. Porter used her “whiteboard of justice” and a few sticky cutouts to dismantle a favorite excuse for high prescription drug pricing in the US: that we have to pay the highest prices in the world to ensure the companies can afford to do research and development of new lifesaving medical miracles. The reality, Porter pointed out, is that Big Pharma spends far more on advertising, executive pay, and enriching stockholders than on R&D.
Her sacrificial victim for the day was Richard Gonzales, CEO of AbbVie, which makes the world’s top-selling drug, Humira. The Oversight Committee yesterday released a report detailing how much of AbbVie’s profits have been driven by ever-increasing prices on just two medications: Humira, which is used to treat rheumatoid arthritis, Crohns, and other autoimmune and gastrointestinal illnesses, and Imbruvica, which is used to treat cancers such as mantle cell lymphoma.
In January, Fortune reported that AbbVie would be jacking up the price of Humira again, by another 7.4 percent. As the committee report detailed, since Humira was first released in 2003, its price has been increased 27 times, by more than 470 percent. An annual supply of the medication now costs $77,000 in the USA.
[…] After noting that AbbVie spent a total of $2.45 billion on research and development from 2013 to 2018, Porter got to the items that the company spent far more on, like $4.7 billion annually for advertising, and $50 billion for stock buybacks and dividends from 2013 to 2018 […]
And of course there’s the executive pay; Gonzales figured that comes to a modest $60 million annually, but Porter replied, “Try $334 [million] on for size.”
In short, Porter summed up,
You’re spending all this money to make sure you make money rather than spending money to invest in, develop drugs, and help patients with affordable, lifesaving drugs. You lie to patients when you charge them twice as much for an unimproved drug, and then you lie to policymakers when you tell us that R&D justifies those price increases.
The Big Pharma fairy tale is one of groundbreaking R&D that justifies astronomical prices. But the pharma reality is that you spend most of your company’s money making money for yourself and your shareholders. […] You’re feeding us lies that we must pay astronomical prices to get “innovative” treatments.
Porter’s grilling of Gonzales reflected the findings of the committee’s report, which was based on 18 years’ worth of internal documents and data from AbbVie and its parent company, Abbott Labs. Ways and Means Chair Carolyn Maloney (D-New York) had to subpoena the documents last year when the company refused a request to turn over the information. The report stated that
AbbVie pursued a variety of tactics to increase drug sales while raising prices for Americans, including exploiting the patent system to extend its market monopoly, abusing orphan drug protections to further block competition, and engaging in anticompetitive pricing practices.
In the hearing yesterday, Maloney noted that even as AbbVie raised drug prices in the US, it reduced them in other countries. Gonzales said, “The system you described is how it does work.” And how!
For instance, as NBC News explains,
The list price for Humira in countries outside of the U.S. is much lower. The committee found that in 2015, the cost for a 40-milligram syringe of the drug was $1,727 in the U.S. while price range was between about $400 and $970 in Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, Japan and South Korea.
Well yes, but those are all socialist hellholes without any freedom, don’t you see. We need to pay higher prices to subsidize their leeching off all the innovation and R&D here in the USA, even though that actually turns out not to be where the money really goes. It’s a talking point, and pharma’s sticking with it.
The committee report also pointed out that unlike the Department of Defense and the Department of Veterans Affairs, Medicare is legally prohibited from negotiating drug prices with companies; if it could, taxpayers could save billions annually, but again, if we did that, how would shareholders make any obscene profits? Also too, NBC News notes, the report found that AbbVie “engaged in a series of anticompetitive strategies to block lower-priced biosimilar versions of Humira from entering the U.S. market.”
All in all, it wasn’t a great day for the cherished myth that’s constantly used to justify the high cost of for-profit healthcare. You might want to bookmark Porter’s tweet with that video, just to have it on hand the next time someone swears to you we have no choice but to pay through the nose for prescription drugs.
Now, if we could get adequate funding for immediate research on cloning Katie Porter.
Madison Smith will be just a few months out of college when her story is heard this fall by a most unusual Kansas grand jury — one she convened.
For three years, the local prosecutor has resolutely refused to make her case: that what began as consensual sex in a college dorm room became a rape, and that she was unable to say “stop” because her classmate was strangling her.
But Smith invoked a vestige of frontier justice that allows citizens in Kansas to summon a grand jury when they think prosecutors are neglecting to bring charges in a crime. […] The 22-year-old graduate is believed to be the first to convene a citizen grand jury after a prosecutor declined to pursue a sex-crime charge.
“It took me a while to find my voice,” she said recently. “But I have found it, and I am going to use it.”
[…] Unlike Smith, most victims have no way to seek justice when they feel a blind eye is being turned toward a crime. Only five other states, all in the Great Plains or the West, have similar laws still on the books. […]
[…] court records and recordings of conversations reveal, [that the family’s] disagreement with McPherson County Attorney Gregory Benefiel had turned highly contentious.
“The one person who I believed was supposed to fight for the victim on the legal side has pushed me aside, stalling, and waiting for me to give up,” Smith wrote in one statement to the court. “This is a common tactic used by defense attorneys, but now the prosecution. I won’t ever give up. Ever.”
Benefiel initially refused to press any charges. He later reversed course, seeking and winning a conviction on felony aggravated battery, the most he thought he could prove in the February 2018 attack.
Yet Smith has never considered it as anything other than rape.
It happened at Bethany College, a small Christian liberal arts school in Lindsborg, an hour north of Wichita. She had bumped into a friend, Jared Stolzenburg, while doing laundry in a dorm. They went to his room, talked some, started kissing. They progressed to sex — by mutual consent, she acknowledges.
Almost immediately, Stolzenburg began slapping her face and strangling her while continuing intercourse, according to court records.
“I tried to initially pull his hands off of my throat, and he squeezed harder every time,” Smith recounted in one court hearing. “He would strangle me for 20 to 30 seconds at a time, and I would begin to lose consciousness. When he would release his hands from my neck, the only thing I could do was gasp for air.”
She had told investigators Stolzenburg forced her to perform oral sex and tried to penetrate her anally. “I truly thought that he was going to kill me and the only way I was going to leave that room was in a body bag,” she continued in court.
The day after the assault, the college freshman stood in the driveway of her parents’ house three blocks from campus. “I was raped last night,” she told them, tugging down the collar on her hoodie to reveal a necklace of purple bruises.
Her parents called police and drove her to a nearby hospital for a forensic exam. The report noted the bruising and abrasion on her neck, as well as bruising inside her mouth.
Five weeks later, the family arrived for their first meeting with the prosecutor. Benefiel asked to speak to Madison alone.
“He told me that the rape I experienced wasn’t rape, it was immature sex because I didn’t verbally say no when I was being strangled,” she recalled in one court hearing. “He then told me he was not filing charges.”
She walked out of his office in tears.
In subsequent meetings with the family, which they recorded, the county attorney further explained his position. Because the sex had begun consensually, he said, the issue was whether Stolzenburg had “any knowledge whatsoever of [Madison’s] withdrawal of consent.”
[…] “I couldn’t speak. How can I say ‘no’ if I can’t speak, if I can’t breathe?”
A former Minnesota prosecutor reviewed Kansas law for the Smiths and concluded that the attack qualified for a rape charge.
“I would contend that it is clear that if while strangling someone, they are pulling on your hands and gasping for breath, and they are crying, none of that sounds consensual to me,” said Julie Germann, who specialized in sexual assault cases. “I would not have a hard time taking that case to a jury at all.”
[…] To convene the grand jury, the Smiths needed 329 voter signatures — 2 percent of the county’s vote total in the last gubernatorial election, plus 100 — and to have a court approve the legal grounds.
They drove last May to that Lindsborg parking lot, tied some balloons on their tent and began asking people to sign a petition tersely setting out the facts, including that the county prosecutor refused to file rape charges “because Madison didn’t verbally revoke consent while being strangled.”
“It was very hard to keep retelling my story to stranger after stranger,” she said this month, “but at the same time I knew that what I was doing was going to make a difference one way or another.”
The first petition was rejected on a technicality, forcing the family to stage another signature drive. A three-judge panel approved the next effort […]
In the meantime, the county attorney had charged Stolzenburg with aggravated battery. He pleaded guilty and received two years’ probation, an outcome Madison Smith called inadequate and “bittersweet.”
“Mr. Benefiel, through all of this, has been the only person to tell me my rape was not rape, and I will not allow him to minimize what I survived,” she said at the sentencing hearing last August. “While I’m grateful that [Stolzenburg] didn’t completely get away with his crimes, I feel angry and re-victimized that he was not charged for the sexual side of this.”
[…] The young woman at the center of the case knows that her grand jury may not return the indictment she wants. Even so, she expects that her advocacy will raise awareness of inadequate charges in sex crimes and appropriate ways to handle victims of sexual trauma.
“Win or lose, we swung the bat, and we swung it hard,” said Smith, who grew up on the softball field. “We tried everything we could, and we exhausted all our resources. I’ve got to know I tried.” […]
Senate Republicans are candidly admitting their political calculus in opposing a January 6 commission: they don’t want it to encroach on the 2022 midterms, during which they worry it would be “weaponized politically.”
In other words, they don’t want voters reminded of the attack their leader and party provoked as they mull over their ballots.
Sen. John Thune (R-SD), the Senate minority whip, told reporters […] “A lot of our members, and I think this is true of a lot of House Republicans, want to be moving forward and not looking backward,” he said. “Anything that gets us rehashing the 2020 elections I think is a day lost on being able to draw a contrast between us and the Democrats’ very radical left-wing agenda.”
Up until this point, the 2022 factor has been more tacit in Republicans’ opposition than explicit. A commission of the sort proposed in the House bill encompassing the attack and “influencing factors” — e.g. the conspiracy theories peddled by former President Donald Trump and his GOP allies — would keep focus squarely on the sins of the Republican party. In recent days, Republicans have channeled this concern more through complaints about the commission’s scope, seeking to zoom out so far that Trump’s and their culpability seem insignificant.
Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) told reporters Wednesday that the midterm knock-on effect was a feature, not a bug, of the bipartisan commission proposal. “[…] That’s Pelosi’s plan,” he said, adding that it would be “Democrats’ dream” to make the midterms all about the Capitol insurrection.
The commission proposal did not come from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) but from House Homeland Security committee chair Bennie Thompson (D-MS) and ranking member John Katko (R-NY) late last week. The legislation, expected to pass the House Wednesday evening, mandates that the commission’s report on its findings be given to Congress and the President by December 31, 2021.
[…] Multiple House GOP members claimed to still be mulling it over, and a last minute whipping effort indicated some nerves from leadership. Some Republican senators expressed openness too, most notably Sen. Mike Rounds (R-UT) who said he supported an independent January 6 commission. Rounds is a mainstream Republican and dependable GOP vote whose receptiveness seemed more indicative of broader caucus feelings than the outliers like Sens. Mitt Romney (R-UT) or Lisa Murkowski (R-AK).
But on Wednesday morning, that momentum was quashed by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), who expressed his opposition to the commission in a floor speech.
Soon after, Rounds said he’d changed his mind.
“It would appear that under the layout that they’ve got this probably could not get started with a staff approved until late this year — that’s way too late, way too long to get the folks in with the appropriate security clearances to go through everything,” he told reporters.
He said that he’d had an “informal coffee” with McCarthy and about 14 other Republican senators Wednesday morning where he discovered that he was dissatisfied with the partisan nature of the proposal, pointing to the power of the Democratic chair to staff the commission. When a reporter pointed out that the staffing clause was virtually identical to that of the widely-praised 9/11 commission, he said that he wouldn’t be able to identify the “differences or comparisons.”
[…] “I also think it’s important that this be independent and nonpartisan and that means that we should make sure that the work is done this year, and does not go over into the election year,” Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) told reporters Wednesday afternoon. “There’s plenty of time to complete the work.”
It took more than two years of a Black mother’s repeated and public questioning for Minnesota officials to take seriously an investigation into her son’s death. But Del Shea Perry’s work, bolstered by a nurse practitioner’s gripping account in letters and on NBC-affiliated KARE 11 News, is finally beginning to inform legislative reform in Minnesota that would among other things improve requirements for jails to report neglect. Perry’s 27-year-old son, Hardel Sherrell, was all but left to die at the Beltrami County Jail, and even after nurse practitioner Stephanie Lundblad’s advocacy for the man, he died on Sept. 2, 2018. Jail staffers had accused him of faking paralysis, Lundblad said in her first public interview, held last week with KARE News.
She is a central witness in an FBI investigation of the Beltrami County Jail, and the level of neglect she described is simply unconscionable. “Felt like I had witnessed a murder,” she told KARE News. Warning: The videos in this story contain disturbing jail surveillance footage that may be triggering to some viewers.
Lundblad was newly employed with the Beltrami County Jail and still undergoing training when she was told on Aug. 31, 2018, to check on Sherrell. He had been recently transferred to the jail regarding firearm possession charges, and he also was charged with domestic assault in Dakota County, stemming from an incident with an ex-girlfriend […]. When Lundblad encountered Sherrell, she knew immediately he wasn’t faking. He was begging for his life with his mouth drooping, tears on his cheeks, and the scent of sweat and urine thick in the air, the nurse told KARE. Lundblad, an employee of MEnD Correctional Care at the time, checked Sherrell’s vitals, and he had high blood pressure, an elevated heart rate, and low oxygen saturation, she said.
“He couldn’t even stand up. He could barely talk. He could still cry,” the nurse told KARE. “It looked like a man who was suffering, that was sick. That was dying.” [video is available at the link]
The day before Lundblad saw Sherrell, jail administrator Calandra Allen refused to allow him to be taken to the hospital and deemed him a flight risk despite a doctor’s recommendation[…]. When Lundblad saw Sherrell, she advised staff members he should be taken to an emergency room […] Lundblad wrote the Minnesota Department of Justice Inspection Unit on Sept. 11, 2018, to report what she described as neglect.
“The conditions in which I found the inmate were disturbing,” she said in the report KARE obtained. “My report gives all details, including that when I directed that the inmate’s diaper and clothes be changed, the officers refused to help. The RN later had to call her family to bring another set of clothes to the jail for her, as her clothes were full of urine and sweat after we changed the inmate ourselves.”
Lundblad had earlier written to the Ramsey County Medical Examiner’s Office to describe a man living in fear of guards. “When Hardel was getting changed into clean clothes I remember him saying to please don’t let the officers touch him,” she wrote. The nurse also said she disagreed with Todd Leonard, the doctor who evaluated Sherrell’s case off-site and initially prescribed him over the counter pain killers and an antihistamine. “I told him vital signs and ECGs don’t lie—both of which were consistently abnormal with Hardel,” Lundblad said. She accused the doctor, who founded MEnD Correctional Care and bragged about spending less time in jails on the company’s website, of being more worried about his company than Hardel. She said at one point in the report that Leonard accused Sherrill of “giving himself a blood clot from faking his illness.” “He said it was likely he killed himself or even stuck a sock down his throat,” Lundblad wrote.
Although the Ramsey County medical examiner initially determined Sherrell died of pneumonia, an independent autopsy later revealed he suffered from a rare but treatable disorder known as Guillain-Barré Syndrome, which can trigger paralysis […] Lundblad sent letters to the Minnesota Board of Medical Practice and the state Board of Nursing, documents that would ultimately lead to an FBI investigation into Sherrell’s death and inform the legislative reform currently being considered by state lawmakers.
The original opinion given by the Minnesota Department of Corrections, however, found “no violations” in Sherrell’s case. Department of Corrections Commissioner Paul Schnell told KARE a previous administration let Lundblad’s letter “slip through the cracks.”
Perry refused to let her son’s death investigation do the same. She gave powerful testimony in February before a House committee considering legislation named in her son’s honor. She also filed a lawsuit against the Beltrami County Jail, MEnD Correctional Care, and Sanford Health in February. “Unfortunately, he was slowing dying right before their very eyes,” the mother said. “And they just left him there on a cold jail cell floor. Crying out for help for days—not minutes, days. Until he took his last breath.” [More video available at the link.]
[…] Mariani [Democratic Rep. Carlos Mariani] said in his statement: “Everyone who enters a correction facility deserves to be safe and should have hope that as they re-enter society, they can be a successful, contributing member of their community. Today, we heard how our systems are falling short of those objectives. We have the capacity to build a corrections system that both delivers the accountability that comes with wrongdoing, while recognizing the humanity and worth within each and every person.”
AIPAC is helping to facilitate a trajectory for support of Israel similar to what the NRA facilitated for guns.
In some ways, the NRA’s approach has been very effective. Gun laws have been rolled back, and gun sales are through the roof. But they’ve also helped polarize the issue and made something that used to be quite bi-partisan and even back burner a highly polarized culture war issue.
From a strategic perspective, AIPAC and others may be playing this correctly, but it will have, I think, serious unintended consequences and we’re already seeing them show up in the Democratic party and media discourse around the latest violence.
“NEWS: MEMBERS of the U.S. Capitol Police have issued a statement to members of Congress expressing ‘profound disappointment’ with McConnell and McCarthy’s positions on the Jan. 6 commission, citing the ‘trauma’ that officers endured that day.”
Statement atl. The family of one of the officers who took his own life in the aftermath also wrote encouraging them to vote for the commission. AFAIK, McCarthy is still refusing to talk to Officer Fanone.
…Statement from USCP on the matter: “A statement is circling on social media, which expresses an opinion about the proposed legislation to create a commission to investigate January 6. This is NOT an official USCP statement.”
“The Department has no way of confirming it was even authored by USCP personnel. The U.S. Capitol Police does NOT take positions on legislation.”
Update to #69: MSNBC and others are reporting that the statement was released through the office of Rep. Raskin (lead manager in the second impeachment trial), so I assume it’s really from a group of anonymous USCP officers.
Here’s a link to the May 20 Guardian coronavirus world liveblog.
From there:
WHO Europe chief: authorised vaccines effective against all variants of concern
Progress against the coronavirus pandemic remains “fragile” and international travel should be avoided, the World Health Organization’s Europe director warned on Thursday, but stressed that authorised vaccines do work against variants of concern.
“Right now, in the face of a continued threat and new uncertainty, we need to continue to exercise caution, and rethink or avoid international travel,” Hans Kluge said, adding that “pockets of increasing transmission” on the continent could quickly spread.
The so-called India variant, which may be more transmissible, has now been identified in at least 26 of the 53 countries in the WHO Europe region, Kluge said during his weekly press conference.
But, AFP report, he said that authorised vaccines were effective against the new strain.
“All Covid-19 virus variants that have emerged so far do respond to the available, approved vaccines,” Kluge said, adding that all Covid-19 variants can be controlled with the same public health and social measures used until now.
So far only 23% of people in the region have received a vaccine dose, with just 11% having had both doses, Kluge said, as he warned citizens to continue to exercise caution.
“Vaccines may be a light at the end of the tunnel, but we cannot be blinded by that light,” he said.
Uki Goñi reports for us from Buenos Aires:
With both the Brazilian and UK variants circulating widely in Argentina, the patients now being seen by intensive care doctor Vanina Edul at the Fernández public hospital in Buenos Aires are dying faster, and younger: one recent victim was just 42 when he died.
“I am seeing people die in less than a week – young patients unresponsive to treatment. You administer oxygen, do all the mechanics – turn them face down, face up – but it doesn’t work. Then there are other patients whose oxygenation level is not so bad – but they die anyway,” Edul says.
A devastating second wave of Covid cases has caught Argentina off guard, with relaxed restrictions and a low vaccination rate. Cases have risen from a daily total of about 5,000 in early March to a record 35,000 this week, while deaths surged from 112 at the start of March to a record 744 on Tuesday. On Wednesday daily contagions set a new record, just under 40,000 cases, while deaths dropped to 494….
Canada is poised to overtake the US in the proportion of population with one dose of the coronavirus vaccine, following early delays in its rollout. But Canada’s success in quickly vaccinating residents has raised questions over what more it can be doing as the pandemic persists in poorer nations.
For months, Canada has trailed its neighbour in vaccination rates, prompting envy and frustration among residents. In March, the US was vaccinating at a rate three times that of Canada.
Canada’s initial rollout was hampered by limited supply and confusion: in December, officials in Ontario, the country’s most populous province, apologised for shutting down vaccine clinics for the holidays.
But with nearly 47% of its population covered by a single dose and new shipments arriving, the rollout has picked up speed.
Russia has confirmed 4,974,908 cases of coronavirus and 117,361 deaths, according to the national coronavirus information center. Russia’s total excess fatality count since the start of the coronavirus pandemic is above 460,000.
[graph at the link shows cases possibly beginning to rise anew after the country opened up again]
May 20: What you need to know today
-Russia on Thursday confirmed 9,232 new coronavirus cases and 396 deaths.
-Russia’s former Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev has expressed support for compulsory vaccinations Wednesday as the country grapples with slower-than-hoped-for coronavirus vaccine uptake.
-Russia has registered cases of a rare and deadly fungal infection afflicting current and former coronavirus patients that has been on the rise in virus-stricken India, the pro-Kremlin Izvestia newspaper reported Monday.
-42% of Russians refuse to get vaccinated against the coronavirus under any circumstances, the SuperJob[dot]ru job portal said in a survey published Sunday….
…Years of data have shown that students of color and those with disabilities are disproportionately subjected to corporal punishment, a practice that goes on despite a substantial body of research showing its harmful effects on youth development.
…
New Jersey became the first state to ban the practice in schools – in 1867 – and all but 19 have since followed suit.
Today, a considerable body of research suggests the practice can lead to significant and lifelong harms….
…
…One recent report suggests that the roots of corporal punishment in southern schools run deep – with ties to lynching.
The report, published this year in the journal Social Problems, found that in places where lynching was once routine, schools are more likely to rely on corporal punishment today – especially against Black students. The south has a “distinct history of racialized violence for social control purposes,” researchers noted.
“As is lynching itself a vestige of slavery, so too is beating and whipping people,” Jackson, of the Southern Poverty Law Center, said. Corporal punishment is used in schools on students who educators “believe are either less than deserving of grace or people who you believe need to be controlled, people who you believe need to be kept in line as opposed to being nurtured or educated”.
Though previous federal efforts have failed to to ban corporal punishment in schools, Rollin, of the National Center for Youth Law, said the Biden administration could combat the practice through the education department’s Office for Civil Rights. Given corporal punishment’s disparate impact on students of color and those with disabilities, she urged the office to investigate districts for discrimination.
“There’s a reason we don’t go to the Colosseum and watch lions ripping people open,” Jackson said. “At some point, we have to evolve.”
Much more atl. (It’s ironic and frustrating but unsurprising that phrases like “it’s barbaric” and “we have to evolve” appear here, but a worthwhile article.)
Rachel Maddow shares newly public details on the brutal beating and tasering by police of Ronald Greene, who ultimately died in police custody. After police repeatedly resisted releasing body camera footage of the of the deadly arrest, the AP was able to obtain one such video, shedding new light on the circumstances surrounding Greene’s death.
The Gaza Strip’s already feeble health system is being brought to its knees by the fourth war in just over a decade.
Hospitals have been overwhelmed with waves of dead and wounded from Israel’s bombardment. Many vital medicines are rapidly running out in the tiny, blockaded coastal territory, as is fuel to keep electricity going.
Two of Gaza’s most prominent doctors, including the No. 2 in Gaza’s coronavirus task force, were killed when their homes were destroyed during barrages since fighting between Hamas and Israel erupted 10 days ago.
Just as Gaza was climbing out of a second wave of coronavirus infections, its only virus testing lab was damaged by an airstrike and has been shut. Health officials fear further outbreaks among tens of thousands of displaced residents crowded into makeshift shelters after fleeing massive barrages.
…
The Gaza Strip’s health infrastructure was already collapsing before this latest war, said Adnan Abu Hasna, a spokesman for UNRWA, the U.N. agency that provides vital assistance to the 75% of the enclave’s population who are refugees. “It’s frightening,” he said.
The sector has been battered by three previous wars between Israel and Gaza’s Hamas rulers.
…
During each of the wars, hospitals and clinics were damaged or destroyed, and medical personnel killed. And after each, authorities had to slowly rebuild, hampered by the blockade imposed by Israel and Egypt since Hamas took power in 2007.
Other turmoil also weighed on the system. More than two years of weekly Friday Palestinian protests at the border with Israel against the blockade produced a constant stream of casualties from Israeli fire — more than 35,000 injured, many with lifelong disabilities and around 100 still awaiting reconstructive surgery and amputations.
Now health facilities are struggling to handle both the casualties of war and the everyday needs of Gaza’s 2 million people.
“It’s layer-upon-layer of crisis. And there never is really enough time between each crisis to rebuild,” said Matthias Schmale, the UNRWA director in Gaza. “The (health care) system has gradually been quite significantly weakened. I wouldn’t say it’s on its knees, but getting close.”
Gaza health officials say at least 227 Palestinians, including 64 children, have been killed in airstrikes and more than 1,600 wounded. Twelve people in Israel have been killed by rockets.
The bombardment has driven more than 56,000 Gazans from their homes, fleeing into 59 schools run by UNRWA. The U.N. agency is providing them with water and basic hygiene supplies, including face masks. Unknown numbers more have taken refuge with relatives.
…
…Israeli attacks this time have damaged at least 18 hospitals and clinics, the World Health Organization said. Nearly half of all essential drugs have run out. Schmale said at least three health care centers have been leveled, including a trauma and burn center run by Doctors Without Borders.
Among the sites damaged was the main health care clinic, the only site in Gaza where tests detecting COVID-19 can be analyzed, said Dr. Majdi Dhair, head of preventive medicine at the Health Ministry. As a result, coronavirus testing has halted.
“It’s like a ticking bomb because people are not tested, and those who are infected won’t know that they are infected,” Dhair said.
As of Monday, when the clinic was damaged, Gaza had recorded more than 105,000 coronavirus infections, including 986 deaths. Some 80 people were in critical condition with the virus.
Gaza’s COVID-19 vaccination drive, already slow, has stopped, said WHO’s top official in Gaza, Sacha Bootsma.
Just under 39,000 people, or 2% of Gaza’s population, have received vaccinations. There are only enough doses to vaccinate another 15,000, and those expire in June, raising fears they will be unusable by the time they can be given.
“In a war, there are responsibilities to protect health institutions and health care workers,” Schmale said.
He said this week a senior lab technician who works at a main UNRWA health clinic was seriously wounded in an airstrike as he rushed home to help his wife evacuate. He is in intensive care with severe brain damage.
“The price the civilian population is paying is unbearable and unacceptable, and health care workers are an element of that,” Schmale said.
“Our staff are as terrified as the rest of the population. They are really afraid to go to work after heavy nights of shelling or bombing.”
…
Also urgently needed is fuel. Electricity output in Gaza has dropped some 60%, forcing hospitals to rely more on fuel-thirsty generators, UNICEF Executive Director Henrietta Fore said in a statement.
During one brief opening, UNRWA was able to bring in five fuel trucks, enough to help it run its facilities for a few weeks. But other trucks of food and medicine could not enter, reportedly prevented by ongoing shelling. Two days ago, Egypt sent in a supply convoy that included medical supplies and fuel, but that fuel is expected to run out Thursday.
If the border stays closed, supplies will begin to run out and “we will need so-called humanitarian corridors open to bring stuff in,” Schmale said.
The Republican Party chairs of Texas and Wyoming have flirted with secession from the United States. Oklahoma’s Republican chair has called Islam a “cancer.” The Oregon GOP called the Capitol insurrection a “false flag” operation. And at least 19 Republican state chairs—including most of the ones in key swing states—publicly pushed former President Trump’s big lie about the election.
A VICE News review of public positions of all 50 GOP state chairs shows a significant number are openly pushing conspiracy theories, spouting unhinged rhetoric, and actively undermining voters’ trust in democracy. That includes the chairs of nearly every swing state in the U.S. And the trend is accelerating: Many of the most extreme chairs just won their chairmanships or have been reelected since Trump left office four months ago, a number of them with his explicit endorsement.
Liz Cheney’s ouster from GOP party leadership showed how much Trump retains his stranglehold on the GOP on the national stage. But the overwhelming wins by Trump loyalists in the first widespread internal Republican elections since Trump left office, albeit in small contests chosen by a hardcore, activist subset of the GOP base, show that his conspiratorial claims about the election run even deeper in the states than in Washington—and will guide the grassroots for years to come.
“I don’t know why people are sitting around expecting that somehow this is going to fix itself,” said Michael Steele, the Republican National Committee’s national chairman from 2009-2011 and a fierce Trump critic. “It won’t fix itself because Donald Trump won’t allow it to be fixed. And people who back Donald Trump and all the stuff that comes with it, they think they’re right, they think this is working, they think this is what a party should be like.”…
SC @76, the Israeli forces are always bragging about their pinpoint accuracy when they fire missiles, so why are they hitting facilities like those run by Doctors Without Borders?
SC @75, I lost count of how many times the police tased the black man before he died. You can hear the tasers in the video, and it sounds like the officers do not always say “taser” first. They even tased Ronald Greene again after he was out of the car and lying prone on the ground.
SC @80, “[…] they tortured him.” Yes. And worse yet, they seemed to enjoy it. And where would be without the persistent AP reporters who finally got their hands on the video tape? The details were being kept secret.
Bits and pieces of other news:
* In case the bonkers Arizona “audit” wasn’t already a big enough circus, Reps. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) and Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) have scheduled an “America First” event for tomorrow in Mesa.
[…] * As part of the rollout of his new gubernatorial campaign in New York, Andrew Giuliani told reporters this week, when asked about his lack of experience, “I’m the only candidate who spent five different decades in politics or public service.” Andrew Giuliani is 35 years old. [LOL] In a separate interview, the Republican candidate insisted his political experience spans 32 years, which would suggest Giuliani believes his career began when he was literally a toddler.
After months of hit-or-miss progress on weekly unemployment claims, we’re starting to see relatively consistent blue skies. As CNBC reported this morning, the new report from the Labor Department offers a fresh round of encouraging news.
The procession of Americans heading to the unemployment line fell last week, with jobless claims totaling a fresh pandemic-era low of 444,000, the Labor Department reported Thursday. Economist surveyed by Dow Jones had been expecting 452,000 new claims as the jobs picture improves thanks to an accelerated economic reopening across the country.
[…] it was in March 2020 when jobless claims first spiked in response to the COVID-19 crisis, climbing to over 3 million. That weekly total soon after reached nearly 7 million as the economy cratered. For 55 consecutive weeks, the number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits was worse than at any time during the Great Recession.
And now, that’s no longer the case. In fact, today’s report — like the last few weekly reports — was the best since the start of the pandemic. What’s more, the speed of the progress is important: today’s report shows a 51% improvement since January.
To be sure, it’d be a mistake to see 444,000 jobless claims as good news on its own. Under normal circumstances, this would be an awful total. In the early months of 2020, for example, the U.S. average on unemployment claims was roughly 211,000 — well under half of the total from today’s report.
But given what Americans have been dealing with throughout the pandemic, these new figures are worth feeling good about.
Just got an email from my kids school. Iowa law now *prohibits* schools from requiring masks. This is just a flagrant disregard for human life and well being.
Schools can police what young girls wear or boys baggy shorts. But they cannot mandate that children wear masks to protect them and others from a deadly new virus.
There is a week and a half left of school. Kids are not being vaccinated. There is no need for this.
Just to make this clear: My kids school has a rule that prohibits girls from wearing leggings without a dress or long top to cover their butts, which they enforce. But the school can now no longer enforce the wearing of a mask to protect from a deadly novel virus.
The message from the @IowaGOP here are your freedoms, we will force them on you, and hope you absolutely die from them. You have no freedom to choose otherwise.
Once again, for the people in the back. Welcome to Iowa: A State that Doesn’t Care if You Live or Die
When the House approved a measure condemning the mass shooting in Atlanta from March, 180 Republicans voted “no.” It’s worth understanding why.
It’s not uncommon for Congress to take up symbolic resolutions on major national tragedies, and yesterday was no exception: the House approved a measure on the mass shooting in Atlanta from March. But while these votes tend to be lopsided — no one wants to be seen as pro-tragedy — the Washington Post noted that yesterday’s vote was unusually close.
The House on Wednesday passed a resolution condemning the Atlanta shooting in March that led to nationwide attention to violence against Asian Americans…. The resolution sought to reaffirm the House’s commitment “to combating hate, bigotry and violence” against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. It came a day after the House passed legislation to aggressively investigate hate crimes, especially those targeting Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, that have increased during the coronavirus pandemic.
In theory, this seems like the sort of resolution that would pass unanimously. In practice, 180 of the chamber’s 211 Republican members — roughly 85% of the conference — voted against it. Even Georgia Republicans opposed the resolution, and the deadly mass shooting happened in their own state.
And why, pray tell, did this non-binding measure generate so much GOP opposition?
Because the resolution included a provision noting that racist rhetoric — including “Kung Flu” and “Wuhan Virus” — contributes to racism and violence against Asian Americans. As Forbes reported, this became a partisan issue.
Some Republicans took issue with the resolution’s mention of the coronavirus nicknames, and GOP leaders urged members to oppose it, according to a GOP source. Rep. Julia Letlow (R-La.) said in a floor speech she had “hoped” to support it but that it’s “just another vehicle for delivering cheap shots against our former president.”
In other words, Donald Trump used racist rhetoric; the resolution condemned racist rhetoric (though it did not reference the former president); and most of the House Republican conference felt the need to reject the measure in order to avoid giving the appearance of indirectly criticizing Trump. […]
Texas became the largest state Wednesday with a law that bans abortions before many women even know they are pregnant, but with a unique provision that essentially leaves enforcement to private citizens through lawsuits against doctors or anyone who helps a woman get an abortion.
Commentary:
[…] As abortion bans go, this one’s a doozy. Texas has approved a so-called “heartbeat” bill, which bans abortions after roughly six weeks of pregnancy. As the Associated Press’ report noted, there are real, practical problems with such a timeline: many Texas women, at least those who can’t afford to travel to Democratic-led states to terminate unwanted pregnancies, will be required to seek abortions before they know they’re pregnant.
But while other Republican-led states have approved related measures, the new abortion ban in the Lone Star State goes a little further.
The Texas Tribune reported, “Instead of having the government enforce the law, the bill turns the reins over to private citizens — who are newly empowered to sue abortion providers or anyone who helps someone get an abortion after a fetal heartbeat has been detected. The person would not have to be connected to someone who had an abortion or to a provider to sue.”
In other words, if a Texan learns that a neighbor had an abortion seven weeks after getting pregnant, he could file suit against the physician who performed the procedure. And the nurse who was in the room. And the friend who drove the neighbor to the health clinic.
Whether that litigious Texan has anything to do with the neighbor or her family is, under the state’s new law, irrelevant. The AP report added, “Critics say that provision would allow abortion opponents to flood the courts with lawsuits to harass doctors, patients, nurses, domestic violence counselors, a friend who drove a woman to a clinic, or even a parent who paid for a procedure.”
[…] MSNBC’s Laura Bassett noted an ironic twist: Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) signed the abortion ban just one day after the Republican governor signed a measure banning local government entities, including public schools, from enforcing COVID-19 mask mandates.
After signing the executive order, Abbott wrote on twitter, “Texans, not [government], should decide their best health practices.”
So much for that idea.
Ordinarily, the state’s new abortion ban would face immediate trouble in the courts, but let’s not forget that the U.S. Supreme Court announced this week that it will hear a Mississippi case that threatens to undo Roe v. Wade protections, and perhaps even allow the kind of abortion ban signed into law in Texas yesterday. Watch this space.
[…] The first tranche of President Biden’s judicial nominees are moving through the Senate Judiciary Committee, which will vote on five of his nominees Thursday.
Whether Biden will be able to match Trump’s influence on the courts is, in one sense, a game of numbers. Trump was able to put 234 judges on the bench. Biden, currently, has 81 vacancies to fill, with at least another 30 seats on the bench expected to open up in the months to come. So far, Biden has announced 20 nominees.
“We have so much damage to repair, I would like to see the pace really increase,” said Zinelle October, executive vice president of the progressive legal organization American Constitution Society.
But for advocates and Democratic senators alike, quality is just as important as quantity.
“Joe Biden is so focused on distinction and diversity — those are the key qualities,” Senate Judiciary Committee Democrat Richard Blumenthal (CT) told TPM.
All five nominees being considered by the committee Thursday are people of color. One nominee, Zahid N. Quraishi, who’s been selected for New Jersey’s U.S. district court, will be the federal bench’s first Muslim American judge if he is confirmed. […]
Pro bono attorneys tasked with reuniting families separated at the southern border by the previous administration said in their latest court filing this week that they’ve located the parents of an additional 54 children, NBC News reports. The number of children whose parents have still not yet been contacted is now at 391 children, down from 445 stated in the previous court filing in April.
“The effects of the Trump Administration’s cruel policy of separating children from their parents still lingers to this day,” the Congressional Hispanic Caucus tweeted in response to the report. “We commend @POTUS on his commitment to reuniting these children with their families.” […]
[…] In case Republicans had not noticed, several of the groups they are busy offending with stunts such as opposition to the Jan. 6 commission and preference for corporate tax scofflaws are the same people turning out in larger numbers than ever before. TargetSmart, a Democratic data firm, reports that the youth vote, which remains strongly Democratic, increased in 2020 while “voters age 40-49 and 50-64 dropped by a significant margin.” Meanwhile, the groups Republicans aim to appeal to (at the expense of growing segments of the electorate) are declining. Another political data firm, the Catalist, found that “72% of the electorate was white, down 2 percentage points from 2016. This comes almost entirely from the decline in white voters without a college degree, who continue a steady decline (in percentage terms).” Republicans’ prime target, non-college-educated Whites, were a majority of the electorate in 2008. In 2020, they were down to 44 percent.
The instinct for many is to assume a basic level of competence among Republicans. But that flies in the face of evidence. Remember: They are pledging undying loyalty to the guy who lost them the House, Senate and White House. Their dastardly plots, as infuriating as they might be, are not necessarily working in their favor. Just because, for example, they are creating barriers to voting does not mean that they will improve their chances in 2022. The opposite might be true.
Kowtowing to the MAGA crowd while unconscionably shirking their oaths of office is no brilliant plot guaranteed to deliver victories in 2022 or 2024. No one should confuse mendacity with competence. In other words, never mistake Republicans for very stable geniuses.
Rep. Greg Pence (R-Ind.), the brother of former vice president Mike Pence, said in a statement Wednesday that he will vote against the formation of an independent commission to investigate the Jan. 6 storming of the U.S. Capitol by a pro-Trump mob. The Indiana congressman was with the vice president during the Jan. 6 attack. They huddled together inside a Capitol office guarded by Mike Pence’s Secret Service detail and later took an unknown evacuation route to a secure room in the Capitol complex.
Rioters, gathered for a rally and then urged by Donald Trump to go to the Capitol, hunted Vice President Pence during the assault. They chanted, “Hang Mike Pence!”
Violent people threatened to hang his brother, but Greg Pence isn’t interested in talking about that. He issued a statement: “Hanging Judge Nancy Pelosi is hellbent on pushing her version of partisan justice complete with a hand-picked jury that will carry out her pre-determined political execution of Donald Trump before law enforcement officials have completed their investigation.”
Is he talking about “hanging”? And is he talking about “political execution”?
Fact check from Steve Benen:
The independent commission wouldn’t feature a “jury” whose members are “hand-picked” by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. On the contrary, thanks to bipartisan negotiations, the commission would be evenly divided and Republican leaders would choose half of its participants.
“The attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6 was an unprecedented assault on our democracy,” Psaki said at a press briefing. “It demands a full and independent investigation into what happened. This is not a political issue in the president’s view, this is a question of how we secure our democracy and the rule of law. So it’s incredibly disappointing to see how many representatives have opted to turn this into a political issue instead of doing what’s right.”
What’s worse, Ron Johnson’s rhetoric about the pandemic or Ron Johnson’s rhetoric about the Jan. 6 attack? It’s a close call.
When it comes to taking stock of Sen. Ron Johnson’s (R-Wis.) propensity for peddling nonsense, it’s probably best to rely on separate categories.
The Wisconsin Republican has, for example, repeatedly made ridiculous and potentially dangerous comments about COVID-19, vaccines, and the threats posed by the pandemic. He’s also been cavalier about his indifference to an FBI warning that he was “a target of Russian disinformation” during the last election cycle. He’s denied ever having “talked about the election being stolen,” despite ample evidence pointing in the opposite direction. There’s also the problem, of course, of the senator relying on ugly rhetoric about immigration when discussing what he sees as efforts to “remake the demographics of America.”
But one of my favorite categories is Ron Johnson’s nonsense related to the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. The Hill reported this morning:
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) suggested on Wednesday that the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 was not an insurrection but a largely “peaceful protest.” … “Even calling it an insurrection, it wasn’t,” Johnson said during an appearance on Fox News’s “Ingraham Angle.”
No, of course not. All we saw was a violent group of armed radicals storming the seat of the U.S. government in the hopes of blocking the results of an American election and preventing the rightful president from taking office. Why would anyone call that an “insurrection”? Or for that matter, why would anyone have the audacity to describe the deadly riot as anything other than a “peaceful protest”?
[…] Johnson also told Fox News, “I’m doing my own investigation to really accurately recreate what happened on January 6th.” The GOP senator added that the proposed commission, negotiated by Republicans and Democrats, with each party having equal representation on the panel, isn’t “bipartisan” enough for him.
[…] It was just two months ago when Johnson insisted there “was no violence” on the north side of the Capitol during the Jan. 6 attack. That wasn’t at all true.
[…] Two weeks earlier, he praised the rioters’ patriotism and boasted that he was never concerned for his safety on Jan. 6 — though he added he would’ve felt differently if the mob was made up of Black Lives Matter protesters.
That came on the heels of Johnson appearing at a Senate hearing, reading an item from a right-wing blog, and peddling the ridiculous idea that the pro-Trump forces that launched the attack on the Capitol were secretly made up of “fake Trump protesters.”
Before that, the Wisconsinite falsely argued that armed insurrectionists may not have actually been armed, reality notwithstanding.
The overarching point is hardly subtle: Johnson appears desperate to convince people that the most violent attack on our Capitol in two centuries just wasn’t that important. It’s the same line that led to last night’s nonsense.
The senator wrote a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed, which ran with a headline that read, “I Won’t Be Silenced by the Left.” In reality, it’s clear that no one is trying to shut down Johnson’s right to say what he pleases, but it’s equally clear that everyone would benefit if he enjoyed a little quiet time.
Top members of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee unveiled a bill to reform the U.S. Postal Service in the wake of the agency’s financial woes in recent years.
The bill — spearheaded by Sens. Gary Peters (D-Mich.) and Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) — would save the post office nearly $46 billion over 10 years by eliminating a pre-funding requirement for postal service retirees and integrating retirees’ health care with Medicare.
The bill has the support of 10 GOP senators, appearing to give it the support needed to defeat a potential filibuster on the Senate floor and pass if every Democrat backs it.
[…] The bill would also require that the post office deliver mail six days a week, as well as requiring weekly public data on service and reports to Congress every six months.
The bill comes as U.S. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, who attracted controversy last year when he proposed changes to the Postal Service’s operations, has laid out a 10-year reform plan and warned that without changes his agency is in a “death spiral.”
DeJoy’s plan includes a longer time-frame for first class mail delivery and cuts to hours of operations. […]
The USPO was already struggling when Louis Dejoy was appointed by Trump. Dejoy is the kiss of death. I’ll be so glad to see him ousted … hopefully soon.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is predicting an above-average hurricane season, but said it doesn’t expect this year to match the “historic” 2020.
The agency said in a forecast released on Thursday that there’s a 60 percent chance of an above-normal season, a 30 percent chance of a near-normal season and only a 10 percent chance of a below-normal season.
This year, NOAA expects there to be between 13 and 20 named storms, six to 10 of which would become hurricanes. Between three and five are expected to be major hurricanes, or those in categories 3, 4 or 5.
If the prediction is accurate, it will be the sixth consecutive above-average season.
[…] Hurricane season falls between June 1 and Nov. 30.
Last year’s season produced 30 named storms, the highest number on record. A total of 13 of these became hurricanes and six were major hurricanes.
To clarify #97, Biden is reportedly planning to appoint another man. It was just that I saw the name and thought “I don’t recall any women in that role” and checked and it appears to be the case.
blfsays
Yesterday (Wednesday) France relaxed its pandemic measures, notably allowing restaurant and bar terraces to open. I myself deliberately avoided venturing outside yesterday, a decision seemingly-confirmed by all the noise. Today I did (double-)mask up and wander out… First stop, the closest and also favourite bar… intent was to have an espresso before hunting down a lunch… but wound up with two beers — a last-moment change on my part, then the bar’s owner offering me a second gratis… followed by a long lunch at a favourite restaurant with a pint, a bottle (a nice rogue local vin), and a cognac; then off to to specialist beer bar for a nice local pint, then a stagger to a nearby restaurant for a tasty dinner, with another bottle and a rum, followed by a very stagger back to the lair after (technicality) curfew… (Hic, *hic* — sorry, I’m less sober then usual — unusual? — at the moment… and obviously this isn’t political; per se.)
Mike Pence’s brother, Greg Pence, tells some more lies:
Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Rep. Greg Pence (R-Ind.) traded barbs Thursday after Pence, the brother of former Vice President Mike Pence, accused the Speaker of not wanting to bring Congress back into session after the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol.
Pelosi forcefully rejected the Indiana congressman’s account that she had wanted to delay having the House and Senate certify President Biden’s 2020 election victory hours after the deadly Capitol riot.
“He completely does not know what he’s talking about,” Pelosi said when told about Pence’s remarks by a reporter from The Hill. “I was a force for coming back from the start, and I was glad it was bipartisan that we all agreed to come back.”
“But he knows not of what he speaks, and he can ask his brother if he wants to get any information,” she added.
[…] Greg Pence, who was with his brother during the attack and evacuation of the Capitol on Jan. 6, praised the former vice president Thursday for carrying out his duties to certify the election just hours after the assault on the Capitol. The congressman also suggested that Pelosi took the opposite approach that day and had wanted to delay the certification for several days, the first time such an accusation has been leveled at the Speaker.
Mike Pence “was a hero. He wouldn’t leave. He said, ‘I’m going to gavel back in,’” Greg Pence told reporters in a rare interview in the hallways of the Capitol. “Nancy Pelosi said, ‘We can’t come back for two or three days,’ and [the vice president] said, ‘As soon as the Capitol Police, the heroes, clear the building, I’m gaveling back in.’”
When the House gaveled back in that day, Pence was among the 138 Republicans who voted to object to the election results in Pennsylvania.
He also voted on Wednesday against bipartisan legislation that would create an independent commission to investigate the Jan. 6 attack, even though some of the perpetrators had been seemingly trying to assassinate his brother. […]
BioNTech’s chief executive Uğur Şahin said on Thursday the Covid-19 vaccine it developed with Pfizer Inc is expected to be 70% to 75% effective in protecting against infections caused by the coronavirus variant first detected in India, Reuters reports.
“So far we’ve had the chance to test our vaccine against more than 30 variants of the virus. It has proven effective against mutations so far,” said Şahin in televised comments.
Tests this week have focused on the India variant, he said. “We expect [our vaccine] to protect against infections by 70% to 75%,” he said after virtually attending the Turkish government’s science council meeting.
Since the concerning variant, known as B.1.617.2, was first identified in India, it has ravaged that country and spread to at least 26 nations out of the 53 in the World Health Organization’s European Region, the WHO said.
The WHO’s regional director said on Thursday vaccines being deployed in Europe, including the Pfizer/BioNTech shot, appear able to protect against circulating virus variants that have caused concern because they are more easily transmitted.
A BioNTech spokeswoman said lab tests show that when the blood of vaccinated people is exposed to the Indian variant, 25% to 30% fewer antibodies were binding to the virus than would have been the case with the original coronavirus.
That suggests protection against the variant, whether symptomatic or not, is a bit lower but still 70% to 75%. It is about 95% effective against the original version of the virus.
“Pelosi on House mask rules and the idea that masking and vaccination would be on ‘honor system’:
‘Do you want them breathing in your face on the strength of their honor?'”
You see, one of the conspiracy theories surrounding the 2020 election in Arizona — the best one — is that, well, you see, on March 6, there was a big fire at a chicken farm in Maricopa County, specifically a chicken farm owned by the family of one of the Republican members of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors. (The board, with its five members, is 80 percent Republican. Always remember that.) Clint Hickman, Republican board member and vice president of Hickman Family Farms, has had no patience for these BS stories about election fraud.
So, the fire. It killed 160,000 chickens. RIP chickens! But is it also RIP Arizona’s real ballots? Because they were inside the chickens? Did somebody set the chicken coop on fire with the ballots inside the chickens? Were those chickens all “Ain’t nobody here but us chickens AND THESE BALLOTS WE JUST ATE FOR LUNCH?”
As the Daily Beast reported a couple months ago, a weirdass group called the Arizona Patriot Party had done some amateur investigatin’, and reported in its newsletter that it didn’t smell like no burned up chickens out there, but rather “burned wood or paper.” Was it BALLOTS?!?1!!!111? Joe Hoft, the stupidest brother of the stupidest man on the internet Jim Hoft, reported breathlessly at the time about “mysterious fire” and demanded to know “Did any shred catch fire in the chicken coops?” He meant BALLOT “shred,” like from shredded ballots.
Inquiring minds needed to know.
In that spirit, you should know that Chemtrail Kelli Ward, Patron Saint of Batshit and actual chair of the Arizona GOP, went on the One America News Network earlier this week and threatened to arrest the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors (80 percent Republican) for failing to take this very serious audit very seriously.
[…] “There have to be consequences,” Ward said. “There could be arrests of people who are refusing to comply.”
Local officials who refuse to comply and take Arizona GOP legislators and their fraudit seriously — what with all the obvious bamboo fraud and the chickens with the bellies full of the ballots burning mysteriously in the night! — they might just have to be arrested […]
(To be clear, we have not heard reporting that the frauditors are personally trying to dissect burnt out chicken carcass to find the missing ballots, but this fraudit is going all summer, so give them a minute.)
Ward made that threat Monday, the same day the Maricopa board — the one that’s 80 percent Republican — sent idiotass Arizona GOP Senate President Karen Fann that amazing letter […] making fun of their bamboo X-rays. In that letter, they explained with small words and pictures how accusations that the board had deleted the Maricopa County voter database were horseshit. And what do you know, the frauditors admitted it was horseshit on Tuesday. They were just looking for it the wrong way, but now they found it! DERP.
But the damage had been done, as Donald Trump had already spent the weekend creaming his large golf pants over “DELETED!” and “UNBELIEVABLE ELECTION CRIME!”
Has anyone told the former president the story about the chickens? Somebody should tell him about the chickens.
Anyway, also Tuesday, the same day the frauditors admitted they were full of shit about the database, the county board responded to Ward’s threats:
The Senate President says the dispute over elections isn’t personal. The subpoena, the attempt to hold the Board in contempt w/ possible jail time, and the @ArizonaAudit lie that the county deleted files all suggest otherwise.
Kelli Ward responded back, and if you want to know what it’s like to sniff bath salts, you can scroll through her Twitter and find it for yourself.
[…] a fun thing we missed from earlier this week. Want to hear an Arizona GOP state senator talk in a normal voice like she doesn’t need to immediately see a neurologist about how cool and wonderful it is that they are scratch ‘n’ sniffing the ballots to find the bamboo? She thinks it is cool and wonderful, just really great.
Her name is Kelly Rogers, and she is a real person, and she went on some wingnut Seth Leibsohn’s radio show to talk about BAMBOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. [video is available at the link]
ROGERS: The most fascinating aspect [of getting to see the fraudit firsthand] was the table with cameras that have microscopic ability to look at each ballot to determine if the fibers of the ballot are made of wood or — I know there’s a rumor out there that ballots were shipped in from overseas that were made of bamboo — this process can determine that! […] And it also determines if the bubbles, the ovals, were filled in by a human or not. […]
The wingnut host was like WHOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA MIND BLOWN.
Ain’t none of THESE people gonna get BAMBOO-zled! Get it? Get it? Do you get it?
BAMBOO-zled!
Seriously, these people are fucking amazing, we would like to give them a medal or a gift certificate for talk therapy in recognition of how good they are at life.
Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas mostly spends his days saying foolish and easily debunked things out loud and then tweeting out similar witless things. […] On Thursday, Cruz decided to retweet an edited comparison of a purported 2021 Russian military recruitment commercial and the much-fretted about in the right-wingosphere U.S. military advertisement considered too “woke.” He wrote “Holy crap. Perhaps a woke, emasculated military is not the best idea….”
What passes as clever in right-wing circles is historically lame, and the intention of Cruz and the person that juxtaposed the videos is to show how soft and weak our country’s recruitment advertisements are in comparison to the very manly Russian recruitment video. One video is shot using single-light sources, with darkness and shadows adding dramatic grittiness, while the other video employs animation and bright colors to promise a more inclusive and positive experience. It’s a recruitment video, to be clear. The tweet was so homophobic, so sexist, and so archaic you wouldn’t believe someone could be so backward as to believe it funny. But of course, we are talking about Ted Cruz, the epitome of Republican “manhood.”
Let me preface this by saying I’m not a fan of military recruitment ad campaigns in general. They give me the jingoistic willies and the use of the military as a funnel for military contractors and siphoning money away from more productive avenues of investment is a never-ending source of consternation for me […] But the idea of a military recruitment video that attempts to attract people who look, and hopefully act, more like people such as Sen. Tammy Duckworth than, say, Sen. Ted Cruz, makes sense. In fact, even if you are going by Cruz’s own old-timey concepts of strength, masculinity, and integrity, Tammy Duckworth is your still your soldier.
Cruz is a man who let another man accuse Ted’s own father of murder and called Ted’s wife ugly and grotesque. Cruz then made arguably the lamest pantomime of what he clearly considers to be masculinity, which he promptly reversed course on when Donald Trump became president. What makes this cisgender bullshit bit of archaic heteronormativity quadruply pathetic is that the cis male douchebag pushing it so clearly fails in every category that he proclaims to believe proves one’s manhood. This is true of all the right-wing operatives. I’m looking at people like Tucker Carlson, whose shrill cries for things to revert 100 years backward don’t cover up the fact they they are bagmen for wealthier interests.
Forget the fact that the Russian military ad looks like a video game commercial for a World War II-themed game, and forget the fact that the Russian recruitment video is arguably the single most homoerotic thing you’ll see this year. Is Cruz under the impression that modern warfare consists of pushup contests and poorly lit cage matches? The last Republican president’s idea for a military advertisement used Russian military planes instead of American ones, by the by. The Twitterverse made sure Cruz got to hear the sound of a thunderous ratio. […]
[Don Moynihan]:
Getting a little worried that Ted Cruz’s understanding of the CIA and military is entirely based on whatever movie, ad or TikTok video he just watched
[other comments]:
I just can’t get over the irony of Ted Cruz calling *anyone else* emasculated.
—————–
Perhaps a sitting US senator promoting a fascist country’s military isn’t the best look?
Israel’s government agreed to what it said was a bilateral cease-fire with Hamas on Thursday to halt nearly two weeks of fighting that has left hundreds dead and parts of the impoverished Gaza Strip reduced to rubble. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Security Cabinet agreed ‘to accept the Egyptian initiative for a bilateral cease-fire, which will take effect at a later date,’ the government said in a statement.
Former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos must testify in a class-action lawsuit about her handling of student loan forgiveness claims, which involved delays in the administration’s decision-making and ultimate denial of a significant number of the applications, a federal judge ruled Wednesday.
The price of the sketchy, already-expensive Arizona audit may have gotten even higher.
According to a letter Thursday from Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, Maricopa County — the target of a 2020 recount ordered by the state’s GOP Senate — may need to replace the election equipment it turned over to the auditors under a legislative subpoena.
[…] Hobbs said that, in keeping with guidance from the federal government’s cybersecurity arm, the equipment should not be reused, given the chain-of-custody issues.
“[M]y Office consulted with election technology and security experts, including at the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, regarding the appropriate next steps, and each unanimously advised that once election officials lose custody and control over voting systems and components, those devices should not be reused in future elections,” she said.
[…] In her letter to the county, Hobbs said her office was “urging” the county not to use any of the equipment it turned over to the audit. She also threatened to decommission the equipment herself, through a process outlined in state law, if the county did choose to redeploy the equipment.
Her assertion is the latest example of how the controversial “audit” has devolved into an all out debacle. […]
[…] Hobbs’ letter indicated that some but not all of the election equipment the Senate had subpoenaed for a supposed forensic audit had been returned back to the county.
The Maricopa Elections Department has vowed to not “use any of the returned tabulation equipment unless the county, state and vendor are confident that there is no malicious hardware or software installed on the devices.”
[…] Replacing the equipment could cost as much as $6 million, according to the Arizona Republic.
[…] Fann [Senate President Karen Fann] signed an agreement that the Senate would cover costs for the county to replace or recertify equipment that was “damaged, altered, or otherwise compromised” while in the “Senate‘s custody and control.” Even just the recertification process could cost tens of thousands of dollars, according to the Arizona Republic. […]
When Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed an executive order this week banning counties and cities from enacting or enforcing mask mandates—and threatening any official who tries to enforce a mandate with a $1,000 fine—it was actually a repeat. One year earlier, Abbott issued another order forbidding local officials from enforcing a mask mandate. Here’s April 2020:
Abbott’s order … said no local government could issue a civil or criminal penalty to anyone not wearing a mask.
Here’s Abbott in May 2021:
Abbott today issued an Executive Order prohibiting governmental entities in Texas — including counties, cities, school districts, public health authorities, or government officials — from requiring or mandating mask wearing.
Why did Abbott have to repeat himself? It’s because in between, Texas had not one but two massive spikes of COVID-19 cases, with the Lone Star State on several occasions standing alone at the top of the charts for new cases and COVID-19 deaths. Ultimately, Texas brought those spikes under control with, ahem, a statewide mask mandate that Abbott kept in place until the beginning of May. What did Abbott say when he issued his second threat to any official trying to protect the citizens who count on them? “Texans, not government, should decide their best health practices, which is why masks will not be mandated …” Apparently this is true except when the government is Greg Abbott, Rex.
But there is one big difference between Abbott’s first wrong-headed threat to local officials and this one. It’s that this time, Abbott explicitly extends the threat to Texans who need protection the most: school children.
[…] Schools, according to Abbott, can continue any existing mask mandates until June 4. After that, it’s masks off. Or else.
The problem here is that the Centers for Disease Control and prevention mask instructions specifically address those who are fully vaccinated. However, the Pfizer vaccine was just made available to those under 16, and no vaccine is available to those under 12. Vaccines are not expected to be available for children until sometime in the fall, and possibly not until around the end of the year.
By banning schools from issuing mask mandates, Abbott is absolutely guaranteeing that kids—unvaccinated kids—will continue to be exposed to, continue to carry, and continue to suffer from COVID-19. The rate of deaths from COVID-19 among children may be low, but it is not zero. And the rate of kids who end up with serious illness resulting in long-term damage is considerably higher.
Abbott can proclaim all he wants about Texas making their own decisions, but children are children. Responsible adults are supposed to makes serious decisions about their health for them. That’s the job description that comes with being an adult. […]
Goodell joined Obama’s visit to Alaska in 2015 and interviewed him:
…I pressed on. “But you know the science – doesn’t it scare the hell out of you sometimes?”
“Yeah,” he said, simply and flatly.
…
“Look, part of my job is to read stuff that terrifies me all the time.”
I couldn’t help but laugh, the way he said it. “That’s true, I suppose.”
“I’ve got a chronic concern about pandemics, for example. And the odds are that sometime in our lifetime there’s gonna be something like the Spanish flu that wipes out a lot of people…if we’re not taking care. I do what I can do and as much as I can do and what I don’t want to do is get paralyzed by the magnitude of the thing and what I don’t want is for people to get paralyzed thinking that somehow this is out of our control. And I’m a big believer that the human imagination can solve problems. We don’t usually solve them as fast as we need to. It’s sort of like two cheers for democracy….”
Associated Press staff received a memo this morning that [Emily Wilder] is no longer with the company, after conservatives rallied to get her fired because she was part of Students for Justice in Palestine in college…
Sen. Whitehouse: “Today, we advanced judicial nominees who reflect American society and the full diversity of the legal community, not a narrow selection of overwhelmingly white men hand-picked by big Republican donors. That felt good.”
Brazil can be rescued after being turned into a Covid-stricken global outcast by its “psychopath” president Jair Bolsonaro, the politician best placed to defeat him in next year’s presidential election has insisted.
In an interview with the Guardian, Brazil’s former leftist leader Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva – who is widely tipped to challenge Bolsonaro for the presidency after regaining his political rights – stopped short of explicitly confirming he would run. But Lula, who rose from rural poverty to become Brazil’s first working-class president, left no doubt he was plotting an extraordinary finale to one of the world’s most enduring and dramatic political careers.
“I ran eight kilometres before this interview … and I usually run 9km a day, Monday to Friday, because walking around Brazil is going to be very tough, very tiring and I need to get my legs ready to fix this country’s problems,” said Lula, a former shoeshine boy and union leader who was president from 2003 until 2011.
“I’ll be 77 by [next year’s election]. I thought that was old. But then I saw Biden win the elections at 78 and said, ‘Well, I’m a boy compared to Biden so perhaps I’ll be alright.’”
Lula said Brazil’s still-raging Covid outbreak and the socioeconomic crisis it had spawned meant it was too early to launch what would be his sixth presidential campaign since 1989. But the Workers’ party (PT) veteran claimed he had the experience and desire to lead Brazil’s “recovery” after the damage inflicted by Bolsonaro’s incompetence, and would do so, if his party and voters wished.
…
“Once our party has its candidate and we’re in campaign mode, I want to travel around Brazil, to visit every state, to hold debates, to talk to the people, to visit the favelas, to the recyclers, to LGBT people … I want to talk to Brazilian society so I can tell them: ‘It is possible for us to build a new country … It’s possible to make this country happy again.”
…
Surveys suggesting Lula’s ascendancy appear to have spooked Bolsonaro, 66, whose ratings have tumbled to record lows as a congressional inquiry investigates his Covid response. The former paratrooper has tried to rally hardcore supporters in recent weeks, organising pro-government rallies and labeling Lula a “nine-fingered crook” and the “son of Satan”.
Lula laughed off those insults as the words of a jittery rival. “For the last two or three years Bolsonaro hardly uttered my name because he thought I was out of the game – and now suddenly he realizes I’m holding all the best cards and if this was poker he would already have lost,” the former president said with a grin.
Lula said he was too old to engage in mudslinging with his adversary: “You’re not dealing with a normal human being. You’re dealing with a psychopath, who lacks the slightest ability to govern.”
But the leftist icon was scathing about Bolsonaro’s “genocidal” stewardship of a Covid epidemic that has killed nearly 450,000 Brazilians, including Lula’s mother-in-law. “He could have avoided half of these deaths,” Lula claimed, predicting Bolsonaro would eventually be held to account for his anti-scientific sabotage of containment measures such as physical distancing and mask wearing. If that reckoning did not come through impeachment or the congressional inquiry, “I’ve no doubt whatsoever that he won’t escape being judged by the Brazilian people in 2022,” Lula said.
“Mark my words … it won’t be Lula who defeats Bolsonaro. It won’t be any candidate who defeats Bolsonaro. It will be the Brazilian people who free themselves of Bolsonaro.”…
When Victor Kossakovsky was four, his parents sent him from St Petersburg to stay with his uncle’s family in the countryside. “It was a cold winter,” he says, brrr-ing over Zoom. “Minus 30 degrees.”
Warmth came from the boy’s friendship with a one-month-old piglet named Vasya. They were inseparable – until she became cutlets for New Year’s Eve supper.
“When they ate her, for me, it was a total disaster,” says Kossakovsky. “You killed my best friend!” he screamed at his relatives. And so, he jokes, he became the Soviet Union’s first vegetarian.
Half a century later, Kossakovsky went vegan, as he began production on Gunda, a documentary shot in Norway, Wales and England starring a sow, who gives her name to the title, a couple of ageing cows, and a one-legged chicken.
Gunda is no ordinary wildlife documentary. There is no narration or soundtrack. Instead, in glorious monochrome, we watch the animals simply exist: they feed, snuffle, snuggle, care for their young, and scamper in fields. It turns out that no digital trickery or anthropomorphic narrative is needed for us to fall in love with them.
“I see documentary films as an artform, so I didn’t put any words or music there,” says Kossakovsky of the aesthetic. “That is why, when we are talking, I need to express all this because I’m burning.”
Gunda is not, he says, vegan propaganda. Yet there is no doubt the man himself is an activist as much as an artist. On set, he would gather the crew together every day at 5am and deliver a motivational talk, reminding them why this 20-years-in-the-making passion project was so vital for humanity.
“The difference between a normal person and a film-maker is that a film-maker can see things a normal person cannot see,” he says. “That’s why cinema exists: not to tell you a story but to show you things that you cannot see, did not want to see, or chose to ignore. Every day, people choose to ignore what they know about how the food came to the table.”
…
He is eager not to simply preach to the converted, he says. “I don’t make films for myself. I don’t make films for people who believe in nature, or only for vegetarians. I make films for everyone, even those who do not share my opinions.”
Still, he loves letters testifying to Gunda’s power to make one renounce eating animals for ever (his own children, he says proudly, have never tasted meat).
Today, he lives in Berlin, which is a good place for vegan food. When he came over to the UK to shoot the non-porcine portions of Gunda, he was cheered by the number of animal sanctuaries.You can see how such institutions would impress a man for whom direct action is not something to shy away from. When we speak, he is still recovering from a six-day hunger strike in support of the Russian opposition activist Alexei Navalny. “It was not a political act,” he says. “It was an act of empathy for his mum, who for me was Gunda. Her child was taken away from her. We stopped because our demand was for him to be visited by a doctor. I was so happy because at least his mum could breathe a sigh of relief. I do not consider myself a hero.”
…
The capacity of cinema to win hearts and minds cannot be understated, he says. “We had the industrial revolution, digital revolution, sexual revolution, social revolution and now is time for the empathy revolution.”
Here’s a link to the May 21 Guardian coronavirus world liveblog.
From there:
Covid infections in England rise for first time in five weeks
The prevalence of Covid-19 infections in England has risen after dropping for five straight weeks, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said on Friday.
The ONS said that an estimated 1 in 1,110 people had the virus in the week ending 15 May, compared to 1 in 1,340 a week earlier, adding that the proportion of people testing positive for coronavirus in the country shows “early signs of a potential increase” although rates remain low.
Sarah Crofts, head of analytical outputs for the ONS Covid-19 Infection Survey, said:
This week there is a mixed picture of infection levels across the UK.
Although we have seen an early indication of a potential increase in England, rates remain low and it is too soon to say if this is the start of a trend.
A decision in Brussels to add the UK to an EU “white list” of countries from where tourists will be welcome this summer is to be delayed, it is understood, due to concerns over the Covid variant first identified in India.
EU diplomats were expected to use a new lower threshold of infection cases to extend the list of countries at a meeting on Friday but sources said that the decision will be put back by two weeks.
While the UK easily meets a newly revised threshold of under 75 cases per 100,000 people over days, allowing it to be added to the list, the strong emergence of the India variant, or B.1.617.2, in the UK, is key to the delay.
The number of such cases in the UK stands at 3,424 – up 160% from the past week. It is believed to be more transmissible than the dominant variant first identified in Kent although analysis continues.
“Member states need a bit more time to look into developments regarding the Indian variant”, one diplomat said. “They want to prevent putting countries on and off the list too much. So back on the agenda in two weeks unfortunately.”
The maintenance of restrictions on non-essential travel will remain the central recommendation from Brussels to the 27 member states, although countries remain free to make their own decisions. British tourists have been allowed to enter Portugal from Monday following an announcement by the Portuguese authorities.
Earlier this week, the EU did agree on text recommending that fully vaccinated travellers could be safely permitted to travel into the bloc for non-essential reasons, such as holidays.
An infectious disease expert and co-opted member of the New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group to the UK government has warned that there is “plenty of space” for the variant of concern first detected in India, B.1.617.2 to grow exponentially in Britain.
Speaking at an online meeting of the Independent Sage group of experts, professor Ravi Gupta of the University of Cambridge said that despite the UK’s vaccination programme, cases of B.1.617.2 are set to rise.
“We still have people under the age of 30 not vaccinated, we have many with only one dose, so this virus has plenty of space to expand exponentially and reach very high levels of infection with quite high levels of morbidity overall,” he said.
His comments come as data from the Covid-19 Genomics UK (COG-UK) Consortium reveals that the India variant has been detected in 4,717 positive Covid samples to date, with the India variant found in around a fifth of analysed positive specimens dating to within the past 28 days.
The rise has also been reflected in case data, which unlike the Cog-UK data does not include potential duplicates, with figures released by Public Health England (PHE) last night revealing there have now been 3,424 confirmed cases of the B.1.617.2 variant in the UK, up from 1,313 cases confirmed by last Thursday.
Both of these datasets are likely to underestimate the current situation as there is a time lag between samples being collected and the variant in positive tests being determined.
Christina Pagel, professor of operational research at University College London, who is a member of the Independent sage group of experts said the rise in cases of the India variant is not yet fully reflected in overall Covid case numbers because of the decline in cases of the Kent variant that has been dominating in the UK.
Anthony Costello, professor of global health and sustainable development at University College London and a former director of maternal and child health at the WHO who is also a member of Independent Sage noted that while Covid vaccines appear to offer protection against the variant, some people can still become very ill with the disease.
He said:
I was on a call with a lot of very experienced Indian physicians in Delhi yesterday and many of them on the call had been hospitalised even though they had been fully vaccinated.
There have been 244 doctors who have died in Delhi during the latest surge and 3% of them were fully vaccinated. Now that is much lower than those that weren’t, but nonetheless, this is a serious virus and that is why we should be suppressing it.
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trollssays
Interesting rant from Joe Scarborough on Morning Joe telling Trump supporters that they are desecrating democracy with their conspiracy lies about the election, are unworthy of being citizens since they won’t spend 5 minutes to Google the refutation of the lies to find the truth, and they should “love this country or leave it”.
[…] * A Democratic National Committee source confirmed this morning that the party raised $15.6 million raised in April, the best off-year April in the DNC’s history. Through the first four months of 2021, the DNC has now raised $63.8 million, while the Republican National Committee has raised $57.6 million.
* In Wyoming, state Sen. Anthony Bouchard (R), a leading primary challenger to U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney (R), shared a secret from his past with the Casper Star Tribune: When Bouchard was 18, he impregnated a 14-year-old girl, and married her in Florida when she was 15. They divorced when she was 18 and the unidentified young woman committed suicide at the age of 20.
* Ahead of an “America First” event in Arizona today featuring Reps. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) and Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), the right-wing Floridian bought radio ads to promote the gathering.
* Speaking of Arizona, Donald Trump is apparently furious with “weak” Republicans who aren’t talking up the bonkers “audit” underway in the Grand Canyon State. (He’s also lashing out at House Republicans who supported the creation of an independent Jan. 6 commission.)
Yeah, I don’t really care that Trump is furious, nor about what he is furious. He is a semi-retired Florida man who will soon be spending all his time defending himself against various criminal and civil charges. Trump is also still clueless … and he refuses to learn anything.
* And speaking of the former president, Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) suggested this week that Trump should stay out of Senate GOP primaries next year and let “the citizens in that state pick their primary winner.” I have a hunch the Florida senator, who chairs the NRSC, is going to be disappointed. [Trump’s interference may backfire. Think about Georgia. In the recent election, Trump’s stupid interference actually helped the Democratic candidates, Ossoff and Warnock, win.]
* In Nevada, North Las Vegas Mayor John Lee (R) launched his gubernatorial campaign this week, and hours later, he announced that he’d tested positive for COVID-19. The 65-year-old Republican, a former cancer patient, acknowledged in a written statement that he had not been vaccinated. […]
Last month, the Republican National Committee was so eager to curry favor with Donald Trump, it paid the former president to host a party event and invited him to speak at a donor event.
The result was predictable: Trump not only lied about his 2020 defeat, he also lashed out at Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), calling his party’s most powerful lawmaker a “dumb son of a b—-” and a “stone cold loser” as part of a lengthy harangue.
It came on the heels of a similar condemnation in February, in which Trump said of McConnell, “Mitch is a dour, sullen, and unsmiling political hack, and if Republican Senators are going to stay with him, they will not win again.”
Yesterday, as the Washington Post noted, he did it again.
Former president Donald Trump blasted Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) as “weak” and “hopeless” in an interview that aired Thursday on the right-wing One America News.
As part of a tirade that included the former president whining about other Republicans failing to echo his bonkers conspiracy theories, Trump added, “[Democrats] get whatever they want approved. McConnell is hopeless and he can’t stop anything.”
I’m not generally inclined to defend the Senate minority leader, but there was a degree of irony to Trump’s condemnations: McConnell is actually stopping all sorts of things, usually with the specific intention of helping the former president.
McConnell shielded Trump from facing consequences in his impeachment trial; McConnell is in the process of shielding Trump again by scuttling an independent Jan. 6 commission; and as President Joe Biden looks for 10 Senate Republicans to help advance key legislative priorities, McConnell has so far prevented this from happening.
On issues ranging from voting rights to immigration, the White House has low expectations for legislative success, precisely because of McConnell’s unyielding obstructionism.
Meanwhile, as the Senate minority leader takes advantage of every possible opportunity to stand in Democrats’ way, the Kentucky Republican also lets the public know that he’s “absolutely” prepared to support Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign, should it exist. […]
So why is it, exactly, that the former president continues to attack the GOP Senate leader? Because McConnell accepted the results of his own country’s elections and criticized Trump for failing to do the same.
And that alone makes McConnell a villain in Trump’s eyes. The consequence, of course, is the former president continuing to divide his party in order to satisfy his ego.
Ahead of the votes [to advance Biden’s judicial nominees], Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa, the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee, claimed GOP senators have been “more deferential about a Democrat president’s ability to pick his judges. […] There can’t be one set of rules for Republicans and another for Democrats.
Hilarious! Grassley has been in the Senate for 40 years. He must know that he had the facts backasswards. Or perhaps, in his old age, he is practicing delivering deadpan standup comedy routines.
Not that we really need to be reminded, but after Justice Antonin Scalia’s death, Obama picked Merrick Garland to fill the Supreme Court vacancy. Grassley and his fellow Senate Republicans refused to even give Garland a hearing. Deferential?
Republicans kept the vacancy open for 11 months, and they said they would keep the Supreme Court seat empty for another four years if a Democrat won the 2016 election. (Trump won, so they suddenly became deferential to nominees picked by the president.)
And that’s not all. Senate Republicans ignored judicial nominees from Obama in 2015 and 2016. This had nothing to do with the qualifications of the nominees. Republicans still controlled the Senate then, so they showed maximum discourtesy to Obama’s nominees.
Donald Trump sparked an international incident with a plan to try to buy Greenland. The Biden administration is still cleaning up the mess.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken traveled to Greenland this week after attending a meeting of the Arctic Council in Iceland. The American diplomat said the trip reflected the Biden administration’s intention to enhance ties with “our Arctic partners,” including Greenland.
But because politics in the United States took some unfortunate turns in recent years, Blinken also had to clear up a lingering issue as part of the diplomatic effort. Reuters reported yesterday:
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Thursday confirmed that the United States does not seek to buy Greenland, after then-President Donald Trump had proposed buying the island, sparking diplomatic fallout. Sitting beside Danish Foreign Minister Jeppe Kofod, Greenland’s premier, Mute Egede, and Foreign Minister Pele Broberg during a news conference, Blinken confirmed to a reporter it was “correct” that the United States does not seek to buy the country.
[…] The Wall Street Journal first reported in August 2019, and NBC News confirmed, that the then-Republican president held multiple discussions about the prospects of buying the country of Greenland.
Miles Taylor, a former Department of Homeland Security chief of staff who became a fierce Trump critic, later told MSNBC that in 2018, the then-president explored the possibility of swapping Greenland for Puerto Rico.
None of this sat well with Danish officials […]
Because Trump is Trump, the Republican responded the way he always does: with a tantrum. As the New York Times reported, “Mr. Trump, angered at the Danish response to his idea, abruptly canceled a diplomatic visit to Denmark.” The then-U.S. leader then described Mette Frederiksen, the prime minister of Denmark, as “nasty,” sparking an international incident.
All of that unpleasantness is now behind us, and Antony Blinken has apparently resolved any lingering ill will. But the fact that the Biden administration is having to deal with such nonsense is a reminder of just how much damage the former president did to the United States’ credibility and stature.
(WaPo) Former president Donald Trump charged the Secret Service more than $40,000 this spring for rooms that Trump’s own protective detail used while guarding him at his Mar-a-Lago Club, according to federal spending records.
The records show that Trump’s club charged the Secret Service $396.15 every night starting Jan. 20, the day he left the White House and moved full-time into his Palm Beach, Fla., club.
Those charges, ultimately paid by taxpayers, continued until at least April 30, the spending records show, for a total of $40,011.15. The charges were for a single room used as a workspace by Secret Service agents, according to one person familiar with the payments…The Secret Service released spending records up to April 30.
While he was president, Trump’s properties charged the U.S. government more than $2.5 million, often so that Secret Service agents could use rooms near him.
I had the stamina to offer to do a Covid 19 Q&A on a nextdoor politics board this weekend. I feel prepared. I did a post to collect questions. I’m including a primer on transcription/translation so mRNA vaccines make sense. I’ve prepared for conflicts. The admin seems good with it so far… I should be ready to start posting tomorrow.
In 2019, Ted Cruz faced some pushback after endorsing Russian propaganda for partisan purposes. In 2021, he’s done it again.
A couple of years ago, U.S. officials invested a fair amount of time reminding American elected officials about the dangers of promoting Russian disinformation. In fact, the New York Times reported in November 2019 that U.S. intelligence professionals specifically informed senators and their aides that Russia was engaged in a lengthy campaign “to essentially frame” Ukraine for Moscow’s attack against our 2016 elections.
It was against this backdrop that Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), just a couple of weeks after the Times’ report ran, appeared on NBC News’ “Meet the Press” and told Chuck Todd that Ukraine “blatantly interfered” in our elections.
[…] this wasn’t true. But more important was the fact that Cruz thought it’d be a good idea to echo Russian disinformation, on purpose, in order to advance the Trump White House’s twisted partisan agenda.
In other words, the Kremlin hoped to undermine American interests with bogus claims, and [Cruz] decided to play along because he believed Moscow’s message suited his agenda.
Two years later, Cruz once again made a conscious choice to promote Russian propaganda. The Washington Post reported this morning:
The first half of the TikTok video shows a muscular Russian man with a shaved head doing push-ups, jumping out of a plane, and staring down the scope of a rifle. The second half shows a brightly animated U.S. Army ad telling the true story of Cpl. Emma Malonelord, a soldier who enlisted after being raised by two mothers in California and graduating at the top of her high school class. The U.S. Army said its ad showcases the “the deeply emotional and diverse” backgrounds of its soldiers. But to Sen. Ted Cruz, who retweeted the TikTok on Thursday, the contrast with Russia’s campaign instead made American soldiers “into pansies.”
[…] the viewer was supposed to believe that Russian troops are hardened killing machines, while U.S. troops are soft and weak.
[…] So, a couple of things.
First, it’s a little unsettling to see Cruz endorsing Russian propaganda again. MSNBC’s Brian Williams told viewers last night, “By all accounts, Ted Cruz did not like the nickname ‘Cancun Cruz.’ … He really won’t like being call ‘Kremlin Cruz’ after his latest and remarkably stupid lapse in judgment.”
And second, if Cruz is looking for actual examples of emasculation, I might suggest the senator look past Cpl. Emma Malonelord and consider the example of a Republican senator who adopted a sycophantic posture toward his party’s president even after he went after the senator’s wife and father.
Brony @124, sounds like excellent work. I, for one, thank you.
In other news, the Feds have arrested yet another Proud Boy.
Authorities arrested a Florida man with alleged ties to the Proud Boys who they said shouted “Let’s take the fucking Capitol!” an hour before the Jan. 6 attack, while marching with a swarm of Proud Boys around the building.
According to charging documents, authorities have identified 28-year-old Daniel Lyons Scott as the Proud Boys member known as “Milkshake,” who was wearing a ballistic vest, goggles and blue “GOD, Guns & Trump” cap that day. It appears he was the same person recorded on a previously released video yelling about taking the Capitol when one of the group’s leaders abruptly scolded him, saying, “Let’s not fucking yell that, alright?”
Court documents allege that accused Proud Boys leader Ethan Nordean perhaps unintentionally led authorities to Scott, when he was recorded on the livestream moments later saying, “It was Milkshake, man, you know . . . idiot!”
Reporters and digital sleuths attempting to track the Capitol rioters have known about Scott for months: photos that appear to depict Scott have surfaced on social media, showing him in similar glasses emblazoned with the name “Milkshake” and brandishing what appears to be a tattoo on his bicep that reads “Proud Boy.”
The Wall Street Journal identified Scott as “Milkshake” in a video it posted on Jan. 26. The Daily Herald in Everett, Washington also wrote about Scott — the Proud Boy who it said “fought police” during the riot in a Jan. 31 article.
Scott was also identified in court documents as the man seen in footage that ProPublica downloaded from Parler, which shows a man in the same outfit and goggles at the frontlines of a crowd outside the lower west terrace yelling at U.S. Capitol Police. In that footage, Scott can be seen pushing two officers up the steps.
[…] he is dealing with charges of assault on a federal officer, engaging in physical violence on Capitol grounds and obstructing Congress, among other charges.
[…] Scott was arrested Thursday and had an initial court appearance in Tampa, according to the Justice Department.
[…] In the United States cases of COVID-19 may have peaked in the first weeks of January, but around the globe, cases reached an even larger peak in April and are only now starting to drop as case counts in beleaguered India decline.
India is one of those nations where the official totals are expected to diverge most widely from genuine losses. Total deaths there are still listed at less than 300,000—about half the official total for the United States—but each day of the shocking spike in cases that began at the end of March has produced reports of thousands of uncounted deaths. On some days, local officials reported more deaths in a single city than the official records recorded for the nation. How, or if, all of this will eventually be reconciled is an open question.
The other thing that needs to be considered is that the pandemic is not over. […] Many countries in Africa had little experience of the disease through the last year. In Asia, a number of nations that appeared to have “beaten COVID-19” are now seeing record levels of cases as world travel increases and new variants are spread.
Just looking at a few relatively wealthy nations, it’s easy to see that the level of vaccination around the world varies widely. [chart available at the link]
Across Africa, there are more than two dozen nations where less than 2% of the population has been vaccinated. Many of these nations either have no reserve of vaccine, or may be getting vaccines that are significantly less effective than those being passed around wealthier nations.
Regardless of how the epidemic of cases shaped up in the U.S., a chart of reported cases around the world shows why this pandemic isn’t anywhere close to over. [chart available at the link]
New cases of COVID-19 around the world are exceeding half a million. The overall trend in cases remains an upward one. Only a tiny fraction of the world has been vaccinated, and most of that fraction is concentrated in a few wealthy nations. Not only does the potential exist for this pandemic to get much worse across the globe, the huge reservoir created by all these cases provides plenty of raw material for new, more dangerous variants.
Getting vaccine not just delivered to other nations, but into the arms of the world’s population, is a national security issue for the United States.
Many see Florida governor Ron DeSantis as the new Trump-in-waiting. To help his ascent to power, the National Review launched a pre-emptive strike against his chief critic.
Smearing her with irrelevant (and selectively-quoted) looks at her pre-employment history, they tell the story of a state-government whistleblower by…only talking to the people she blew the whistle on!
Bent on revenge, her former employers now obligingly divulge her personnel file (which the National Review again selectively quotes). If you want the real story, turn to a local Florida PBS channel, which distills it down to two irrefutable sentences — which are backed by actual documents they obtained from the state.
“Internal emails at the [Florida health] department confirm that her [Rebekah Jones] superiors asked her to remove raw data from the dashboard after new reports showed the disease circulating in Florida as early as January. If she did, no outside party would be able to analyze the data. But Jones refused.”
The real game here is obvious. The National Review would like everyone to please stop remembering that Governor DeSantis screwed up Florida’s Covid response, because DeSantis is going to be the next Trump. So they want us to start believing DeSantis’s lies without question.[…] in a newer hit piece the National Review even tries splitting hairs about Jones’ latest run-in with Florida’s press secretary.
But what they can’t hide is the MSNBC clip at the bottom of their story, which clearly shows their reporter finally being challenged over the falsity of his central claim.
Again and again, the National Review has tried to insist Florida’s numbers were perfect — at one point, Cooke actually called them “kosher!” And their story makes the mind-boggling assertion that really, the only person on planet earth who ever had any questions about DeSantis’s numbers were Rebekah Jones. There’s just one problem: that’s a big lie. MSNBC actually brought on Dave Aronberg, Palm Beach County State Attorney, who lays down the truth, saying:
Keep in mind, [Rebekah Jones] is not the first to accuse governor DeSantis of a lack of transparency. Months before she was fired by the Department of Health, months before she became a whistleblower, the Florida Sun-Sentinel newspaper came out with a scathing expose entitled Secrecy and Spin: how Florida’s Governor Misled the Public on the Covid-19 Pandemic! And they accuse the governor of suppressing data that was unfavorable to his administration, dispensing dangerous information, and promoting the views of political hacks instead of the public health officials. He hid information about the spread of Covid in nursing homes, prisons and hospitals. The state’s calculation of its positivity rate was different than the methods used in most other states, and over-emphasized the negative tests, and thus came up with an artificially low positivity rate compared to other states.
And then the Press also found that the state knew that they had Covid here as soon as January of 2020 — 175 cases by February of last year. […] All of this stuff deserves scrutiny. And none of it originated with Rebekah Jones […]
Then there’s the curious case of the medical examiners. They had data that showed that the state’s death total was higher than the state’s data. And so to remedy that discrepancy, the state of Florida ordered the medical examiners to stop publishing their data — I guess under the principle that if you close your eyes, the problem goes away. Well, that was undone because of political pressure. Finally they allowed the medical examiners to publish their information, but not before it was redacted — a lot of parts redacted. And the state’s medical examiner chair said this was a sham […]
Florida has not been fully transparent, and it’s not just Rebekah Jones who says so. […] there’s a larger issue at play here, and we shouldn’t gloss over it.”
The real game here is obvious. The National Review would like everyone to please stop remembering that Governor DeSantis screwed up Florida’s Covid response, because DeSantis is going to be the next Trump. So again, they want us to believe DeSantis’s lies without question. And the biggest lie of all is that the questions about Florida’s bad numbers were simply dreamed up in Rebekah Jones’ head, and nobody else in the world ever had a whiff of doubt.
That isn’t true. And don’t let the National Review try to con you otherwise…
With taxes due this week, it’s an apt time to consider some of the ways our federal tax code favors America’s wealthiest, and how a subset of those fortunate folks will use every trick in the book to game the system even further to their advantage.
Much of it revolves around the way the IRS taxes long-term investment profits—a.k.a. capital gains. President Joe Biden is asking people to pay a lot more on these profits. For decades, after all, the tax code has rewarded investors, particularly those at the very top of the nation’s wealth and income distributions, with very favorable rates. This policy is based on the long-debunked notion that the benefits of giving rich people even more money to invest will eventually trickle down and lift up the masses via job creation and so forth. (One report from the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service found no evidence that reducing tax rates for America’s upper crust increased the size of the nation’s economic pie, […]”)
When you sell a long-term investment—one you’ve held for 12 months or more—in a stock, for example, or a work of art, or a private equity stake, you are taxed at a maximum of 15 or 20 percent on those profits, depending on your overall earnings. A family that brings in $500,000 in 2021 will pay a maximum 35 percent tax on work income but only 20 percent on capital gains. A household with $400,000 in income will pay up to 32 percent on wages, but only 15 percent on capital gains.
In other words, the tax code favors passive investment gains over actual work. This stands in opposition to the longstanding—perhaps mythical—American ideal that not only is hard work honorable, something to be encouraged and rewarded, but that all Americans should have equal opportunities. In fact, most Americans own little to no stock, while asset ownership soars as one moves up the wealth and income ladders. A proprietary analysis published by Goldman Sachs last year estimated that, as of late 2019, the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans owned a staggering 56 percent of all public and private equity held by US households. Since March 2020, meanwhile, America’s billionaires, despite the pandemic—and also because of it—have seen their collective wealth grow by more than $1.6 trillion.
The disparity in tax rates for work earnings versus investment earnings, which Biden hopes to eliminate, has been a major factor in the rapid growth of the wealth and income gap in recent decades. The disparity also drives financial behavior by wealthy individuals and corporations alike. It is why, for example, CEOs of large public corporations typically take home twice to three times their base salaries in preferred stock, stock options, and other non-wage compensation.
Tim O’Reilly, a prominent Silicon Valley publisher […] told me about a conversation he had with a billionaire real-estate investor friend. “You have to understand, raising income taxes on the wealthy doesn’t really make much difference, because most of us avoid income,” O’Reilly recalls the friend saying. The guy had purchased his first building in Manhattan long ago for less than $10 million. Now it was worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Over the years, with the building as collateral, he had borrowed tens of millions to support his lavish lifestyle, which included a private jet. “I never got a penny of income,” he told O’Reilly. “I actually get a deduction for the money I live on.” […]
Much more at the link, including a discussion of the “carried interest” loophole, some of the trick’s Wall Streeters have mastered (“basket option”), offshore reinsurance companies, and more.
More than 70 U.S. Capitol Police officers have left the force in the wake of the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection and the department’s union says that the $1.9 billion supplemental funding package is insufficient to stave off further departures.
[…] Capitol Police union chair Gus Papathanasiou said that officers — facing the prospect of working longer hours for an indefinite period of time and the ongoing trauma of both the January riot and an April incident that left an officer and the suspect dead — are feeling demoralized and looking for a way out.
“What keeps me awake at night is not the challenge of hiring and training more police officers, but keeping the officers we have right now,” Papathanasiou said in a release disseminated after Thursday’s vote. “We have many officers on the fence about whether to stay with this department.” […]
On Wednesday, the House voted 252 to 175 in favor of establishing a bipartisan commission to look into the events of January 6. It’s probably not going to happen, because in order to get it through the Senate’s filibuster, they need 10 Mitt Romneys, and there are only about seven. Still, in the House, 35 Republicans voted in favor of the commission, and that’s a pretty big deal — especially to certain talking heads who are completely outraged that even that many — 16 percent of the caucus — were willing to support it.
And they have some theories about why.
On Newsmax, host and former Trump campaign spokesman Steve Cortes suggested that it was because they simply were not manly enough. He deemed the 35 not-all-male Republicans who voted in favor of the commission the “Eunuch Caucus,” suggesting that they had their testicles removed, allowing them to vote for commissions that would actually benefit them in the long run and also sing in a higher register. […]
[…] “I think people were really surprised to see so many, 35 members of Congress, kowtowing to the agenda of the D.C. contingent, unfortunately. So that’s the reality folks.”
“There’s a new gang in town, and there’s nothing cool about this group,” he added. “I’m referring, of course, to this new coalition formed on Capitol Hill, 35 House Republican representatives who voted with Nancy Pelosi yesterday to establish a congressional committee to investigate the Jan. 6 riot, 35 political cowards who are handing Adam Schiff, [Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez] and Jerry Nadler the keys to a high-powered truck, knowing full well that Pelosi and her squad will use that truck to then run them over now.”
[…] Of course, that’s not really the case. If Democrats can’t get a bipartisan commission together, they are free to establish their own select committee to look into January 6 (as Republicans did with Benghazi), without any input from Republicans. It would also mean that one of the big asks Republicans got from Pelosi, to have the commission conclude in 2021 for fear it would impact Republicans running in 2022 elections, would be right out the window. That is a far more high-powered truck than the one the 35 Republicans in the House voted for. Whoops!
Cortes continued to go on with a bunch of lies about how none of the people who entered the building were armed. At least three participants are now facing gun charges and many of the other insurrectionists carried other kinds of weapons. There are pictures. And videos.
On Real America’s Voice, the rightwing webcast that is somehow even kookier than Newmax and One America News combined, host Dr. Gina Loudon speculated that these 35 Republicans did it all for the fabulous cocktail parties to which she and Donald Trump and the people who invaded the capitol are not invited. […]
Transcript:
Cheney and many of those on that list have been in the swamp for so long that they have no idea what happens outside the DC beltway, and they’ve gotten to the point that they don’t actually care. What they do care about is their big consulting gig that they will get when they leave Congress or maybe that contributor job on some fake news network that pays them enough money to keep their fancy townhouses in DC so they can keep going to their white glove cocktail parties and toasting with their friends who are all on the Left and in the media. And that’s what really happens in Washington DC, folks.
People like you and me don’t get invited to those cocktail parties, nor will we ever, nor by the way does Donald Trump or anyone who’s ever mouthed the words of Donald Trump in a favorable manner. Because that’s the price you pay. It’s the price of never being invited back to those parties. So whenever you wonder why things don’t make sense in Washington DC, just think about those cocktail parties. Who’s invited, who isn’t, and who cares to be invited and who doesn’t. And it will all just make sense in your head.
That doesn’t really seem like a thing to me […]
It seems somewhat more likely that these people figured a bipartisan commission in which Republicans got a say was probably better than a partisan commission in which they did not. It is even possible that they would genuinely like to get to the bottom of why they were being hunted down in the US Capitol by terrifying criminals. […]
“Dr. Gina” by the way, is a real doctor. She has a doctorate in “human and organization systems” from Fielding Graduate University, an online school. This is mainly relevant because she frequently claims to have a doctorate in psychology, which she does not. That being said, she clearly does have an intuition about people. Not necessarily the people who voted in favor of the commission, but the people that watch her show. You tell them “These other people think they’re better than you! They’re having parties and not inviting you, because of how much you love America! But I think you are better than them!” and they will pretty much go along with anything you say.
On the especially kooky side of things, some of the folks on our favorite QAnon message board have a theory that, actually, 35 Republicans voting in favor of establishing a bipartisan committee is just “part of the plan.” […]
Does it matter all they are going to find is Antifa and BLM did all the damage and Trump voters went in because they were invited by the capital police. Then maybe we get the name of the cop that killed Ashli and hopefully he gets charged with murder.
Apparently when you’re a Republican, anything can be true and anything can be part of “the plan” so long as your imagination and paranoia can take you there. […]
This reporter, Emily Wilder, “grew up in an Orthodox community in Phoenix and graduated from Shearim Torah High School.”
Wilder says that Stanford College Republicans, which started the campaign vs her, is “trying to smear a Jewish person who is proud about her Jewishness … and got her fired from her job — and that’s really what they accomplished at the end of the day”
Local and state police, and the FBI, are treating the incidents in Windsor, Conn., as a potential hate crime.
Amazon has suspended work on a fulfillment center in Windsor, Conn., after numerous nooses were found at the construction site in the past month […]
The site will remain closed until security measures have been implemented […] The FBI and Connecticut State Police are helping local police with the investigation into the incidents, which are being treated as potential hate crimes. The e-commerce giant is offering a $100,000 reward for information that helps identify the responsible party.
Windsor police officers had been patrolling the site when the seventh noose was discovered early Wednesday afternoon, the department said in a news release. Employees in the area were interviewed, and the rope collected and taken for analysis at a state lab. The work site has no surveillance cameras, and hundreds of workers for various contractors come and go on-site each day.
[…] Such incidents are not uncommon in the construction industry. In 2020, at least 20 known racist incidents were reported on North American construction sites, according to Construction Dive. Some involved graffiti or verbal abuse, but almost half involved nooses found at worksites from Toronto to Portland.
Scot X Esdaile, president of the Connecticut NAACP, has been following the situation since the first noose was found April 27. Despite repeated inquiries, Esdaile said the group has not been able to get answers from police, contractors or Amazon as to how many Black workers are on the site and whether the company has checked on their welfare. He said company representatives met with him for the first time Thursday but offered little information. […]
Work on Windsor Amazon facility began late last year and is supposed to be completed in late 2021. Amazon has said the center will create 1,000 jobs in the next two years, and that employees will be paid a $15 hourly wage, plus benefits. […]
Surviving Covid could be followed by a struggle to survive financially:
One coronavirus survivor manages her medical bills in color-coded folders: green, red and tan for different types of documents. A man whose father died of the virus last fall uses an Excel spreadsheet to organize the outstanding debts. It has 457 rows, one for each of his father’s bills, totaling over $1 million.
These are people who are facing the financial version of long-haul Covid: They’ve found their lives and finances upended by medical bills resulting from a bout with the virus.
[…] They are fluent in the jargon of coronavirus medical coding, after hundreds of hours of phone calls discussing the charges with hospitals, doctors and insurers.
“People think there is some relief program for medical bills for coronavirus patients,” said Jennifer Miller, a psychologist near Milwaukee who is working with a lawyer to challenge thousands in outstanding debt from two emergency room visits last year. “It just doesn’t exist.”
[…] things were supposed to be different for coronavirus patients. Many large health plans wrote special rules, waiving co-payments and deductibles for coronavirus hospitalizations. When doctors and hospitals accepted bailout funds, Congress barred them from “balance-billing” patients — the practice of seeking additional payment beyond what the insurer has paid.
Interviews with more than a dozen patients suggest those efforts have fallen short. […] the bills can stretch into the tens of thousands of dollars.
[…] Lauren Lueder, a 33-year-old teacher who lives in Detroit, has depleted $7,000 in savings to pay for treatment so far. “You end up with a battery of tests, and every single thing adds up. I don’t have the disposable income to constantly pay for that.”
For 10 months, The New York Times has tracked the high costs of coronavirus testing and treatment through a crowdsourced database that includes more than 800 medical bills submitted by readers. If you have a bill to submit, you can do so here.
Those bills show that some hospitals are not complying with the ban on balance billing. Some are incorrectly coding visits, meaning the special coronavirus protections that insurers put in place are not applied. Others are going after debts of patients who died from the virus, pursuing estates that would otherwise go to family members.
[…] Coronavirus patients face significant direct costs: the money pulled out of savings and retirement accounts to pay doctors and hospitals. Many are also struggling with indirect costs, like the hours spent calling providers and insurers to sort out what is actually owed, and the mental strain of worrying about how to pay.
Ms. Miller, like many other patients, described trying to sort out her complicated medical charges — in her case in color-coded folders — while also battling the mental “brain fog” that affects as many as half of coronavirus long-haul patients.
“I have a Ph.D., but this is beyond my abilities,” she said. “I haven’t even begun to look at my 2021 bills because we’re still dealing with 2020 bills. When the bills come nonstop, you can only deal with so much.”
The United States is estimated to have spent over $30 billion on coronavirus hospitalizations since the pandemic began, according to Chris Sloan, a principal at the health research firm Avalere. The average cost of each hospital stay is $23,489. Little research has been published on how much of that cost is billed to patients.
[…] One coronavirus patient in Chicago recounted spending 50 hours trying to get the coding for an M.R.I. scan changed, to show it was related to coronavirus. His insurer will pay the entire bill if that happens — but if not, he is responsible for $1,600. So far, the issue is still unresolved.
[…] Congress mandated that insurers make coronavirus testing free last spring, but never wrote a similar requirement for treatment coverage — in part because insurers were volunteering to waive patient costs, she said.
Insurers are now starting to wind down those special protections: Aetna, Anthem and UnitedHealthcare — three of the country’s largest health plans — have ended some portion of their waivers this year. They have decided to treat the virus the same as the many other diseases that send patients to doctors’ offices and hospitals.
[…] Some Covid financial long-haulers never became ill themselves, but are overwhelmed by the bills that deceased loved ones left behind.
Rebecca Gale, 64, lost her husband of 25 years, Michael, to coronavirus last summer. Their insurance fully covered most of the “big stack” of medical bills that Ms. Gale received after his death. But it paid only a small portion of the $50,009 air ambulance bill for Mr. Gale’s transport between hospitals when his condition was deteriorating.
[…] The family’s health insurance plan limits its coverage of air ambulances to $10,000, and the air ambulance company spent months pursuing an additional $40,009 from Mr. Gale’s estate. […]
Health care companies have discretion over what to do about the debts of deceased patients, sometimes pursuing their estates for reimbursement.
The air ambulance company, PHI Medical, declined to comment on Mr. Gale’s bill but said in a statement that it “followed the regulatory requirements” for billing coronavirus patients. It did cancel the charges, however, after The Times inquired about the bill. […]
The digging-out of all the Trump administration’s dirt and rampant abuses of power continues—and it’s probably nowhere near done. CNN learned on Thursday that the Trump Justice Department had secretly obtained a reporter’s phone and email records, a revelation that came just two weeks after The Washington Post learned that the Trump Justice Department had obtained call records for three of its reporters. In between those two revelations, we learned that the Trump Justice Department had also intervened in Rep. Devin Nunes’ lawsuit against Twitter over the identity of the person behind the “Devin Nunes’ Cow” Twitter account.
[…] The Washington Post reporters’ records were targeted in an effort to find the source of a story about then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ interactions with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak during the 2016 presidential campaign. CNN does not know which of Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr’s stories the Trump administration was looking into, but according to the Justice Department (now) her sources, and not Starr herself, were the subject of the investigation. […]
The Trump administration claimed national security concerns about the leaks the reporters obtained, but let’s be real—we know that they were trying to uncover who was leaking about links between a Trump campaign adviser turned Trump Cabinet secretary and the Russian ambassador. And this effort took place amid a broader pattern of the Trump Justice Department acting as the personal law firm for the Trump family and allies like Nunes.
”We are deeply troubled by this use of government power to seek access to the communications of journalists,” the Post’s Cameron Barr told Politico in early May. “The Department of Justice should immediately make clear its reasons for this intrusion into the activities of reporters doing their jobs, an activity protected under the First Amendment.” […]
while the Biden administration may—emphasis on may—rein in these abuses, without more solid guardrails in place, the next Republican administration is likely to look at what Team Trump got away with and use that information to calibrate just how much further it can go. It won’t take many repetitions of that before freedom of the press is truly a myth, along with the democracy Republicans are trying to simultaneously take out with their sustained attacks on the 2020 elections.
Vivian Bercovici, Canada’s former ambassador to Israel, worked for the Israeli intelligence firm Black Cube after her diplomatic tenure ended, Radio-Canada has learned.
Black Cube is a controversial private sector company composed of ex-members of the Mossad and other Israeli intelligence agencies.
Messages addressed to a potential Black Cube client from Bercovici in 2019, obtained by Radio-Canada/CBC, contain references to her former occupation as an ambassador.
Black Cube made headlines in 2017 when it was discovered that Hollywood film executive Harvey Weinstein had hired it to dig up information on the women accusing him of sexual assault, and on the journalists pursuing the story.
In Canada, Black Cube has been criticized by an Ontario court for attempting to discredit a judge by trying to get him to make antisemitic comments in secretly recorded meetings.
Bercovici was appointed ambassador by then-prime minister Stephen Harper in January 2014. She was removed from her post by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in June, 2016.
In one of the messages Bercovici sent a potential Black Cube client in 2019, she says she can provide a wide range of services, such as undercover surveillance, finding hidden information about third parties’ personal lives and tracing bank accounts and assets.
In other messages, she writes that she works for Black Cube, that she would be one of the people personally supervising all operational matters and that Black Cube believes it can help the client achieve their objective. Although she was not ambassador at the time, the messages make it clear she had held that position.
Radio-Canada/CBC has chosen not to reveal the contents of all the messages to protect the identity of the person who shared them.
These messages were provided to Radio-Canada/CBC as Bercovici and some of her supporters — including Sen. Linda Frum, a personal friend — were accusing Radio-Canada/CBC of antisemitism in previous reporting on the former ambassador.
…
Black Cube has carried out controversial operations in Canada in the past.
One was an undercover sting operation to discredit a Toronto judge who had ruled against its client, Catalyst Capital Group, a private investment company. Radio-Canada/CBC has no indication that Bercovici participated in this operation.
…
Using a false identity, a Black Cube agent met with Judge Newbould and tried to get him to make anti-Jewish comments during secretly recorded meetings.
“Basically we’re trying to prove that he’s a racist, a depraved anti-Semite, and trying to find information that could paint him in as negative a light as possible,” wrote a Psy Group agent to a Black Cube agent, according to an Ontario Superior Court of Justice ruling that was made public in March 2021.
…
“Black Cube is dangerous because it does not abide by ethical rules,” said Avner Barnea, an academic and expert in private-sector intelligence.
Reached in Israel, Barnea said Black Cube “does not even come close” to the ethical standards established by the international association Strategic and Competitive Intelligence Professionals, which he serves as an advisory board member.
…
Bercovici, Sen. Frum and others, including some Jewish organizations, have criticized Radio-Canada/CBC for quoting unnamed sources in its reporting, saying the sources were smearing Bercovici with the antisemitic canard of dual-loyalty.
Accusing Jewish citizens of being more loyal to Israel than to the interests of their own nations is one aspect of antisemitism cited in the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism, which was adopted by the Government of Canada in 2019.
However, the concerns raised by the officials Radio-Canada spoke to were related to the nature of some of the former ambassador’s behaviour and decisions, which they said were highly unusual for a senior diplomat. During those interviews, none of the officials demonstrated any antisemitic sentiment.
States across India have begun declaring a “black fungus” epidemic as cases of the fatal rare infection shoot up in patients recovering from Covid-19.
The fungal disease, called mucormycosis, has a 50% mortality rate. It affects patients initially in the nose but the fungus can then spread into the brain, and can often only be treated by major surgery removing the eye or part of the skull and jaw.
It is usually a rare disease, but more than 7,200 people in India have now been reported with mucormycosis and 219 have lost their lives. The rise in black fungus infections, mostly in patients who had severe cases of Covid-19, has been linked to an overuse of steroids in the treatment of the coronavirus, which can acutely compromise the immune system if taken over a prolonged period.
The high incidence of diabetes in India has also been blamed, with high blood sugar levels linked to susceptibility. India has the second-highest rate of diabetes in the world.
It has also been reported in Covid patients who were on ventilators in intensive care units, due to their airways being exposed to humidity and moisture.
The San Francisco Chronicle […] has a real shitball of a story about “Solar customers: Why won’t they pay for the wildfires they aren’t causing?”
The gist is that PG&E, which lights the state on fire semi-regularly when it isn’t exploding actual neighborhoods, is having trouble with its bankruptcy. A hundred billion in wildfires here, there, you might even have to cut shareholder dividends! So PG&E needs a little help […] Which is why California’s AB 1139, which would reduce the value of solar energy that rooftop systems pump back into the grid by 70 to 80 percent, and mandate solar customers pay hundreds of dollars in fees to PG&E for not using its energy, is being marketed as a bill for “fairness” and “for the poor.”
Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez was previously best known for her sloppy and haphazard guesstimation of “what is freelance” when her AB5 bill insisted that 35 pieces a year would make a freelance writer or artist an employee. […]
Gonzalez is chair of the Appropriations committee. It’s an important role, and she shouldn’t be “arbitrary.” And in that role, regarding her bill, AB 1139, which would absolutely destroy the solar rooftop market and negate all the strides California is making in clean energy that will help the state be less on fire, she says,
the idea that she’s trying to destroy the rooftop solar market is “ridiculous” and “a silly argument.” In her mind, AB1139 tries to right-size an unfair burden faced by those who don’t have solar panels.
You know what really unfair burden is faced by those who don’t have solar panels? When their city is on fire and they can’t afford a motel room as hundreds of thousands of people flee.
Gonzalez said she has solar panels on her home and believes the current net metering program pays her too much. She said her most recent electric bill was negative, meaning she owed no money and doesn’t have to pay fixed costs for the electric system that her neighbors without solar can’t escape.
See, her most recent electric bill was negative, because she made energy for her neighbors who don’t have solar.
This is not a hard concept. But the math sure is. Check out this bullshit.
First up, solar customers:
Still, some solar supporters worry that the bill’s passage could motivate regulators to adopt far-reaching changes, including monthly charges of about $70 that utilities have proposed for new solar customers.
(Those charges are ONLY for solar customers, not for anybody else who also is using the grid.)
And then, a few paragraphs later, non-solar households:
Severin Borenstein, an energy economist and an author of the report, said the growth of rooftop solar under current net metering rules was a significant driver of high electric rates, though not the only major factor. He estimates that overhauling net metering could save the average household about $75 per year.
LOL, so everybody who put solar panels on their roofs will pay $800-ish a year so non-solar families can save $75 a year. Who’s free-riding whom?
According to the California Solar & Storage Association […] it now takes about 11 years of solar use “net metering” before you earn back the cost of your system — a system that helps society by obviating the need for big natural gas-fired plants out in the desert, and the wires and grid needed to get that energy over dry, combustible hills to people’s homes. Under Gonzalez’s bill, they estimate that 11-year payback for the cost of your solar panels would now take 45 years.
Solar panels have a life expectancy of 25 or 30.
Lorena Gonzalez might as well be Wyoming, suing other states for not buying its coal, but in this case, she’s putting the squeeze on people who are adding clean energy to the grid, to pay for PG&E’s bullshit.
Here’s some astroturf bullshit, if you like astroturf bullshit:
PG&E, its Southern California utility counterparts and various other groups that want regulators to reform net metering are aligned under a coalition called Affordable Clean Energy for All. One of its arguments is that the benefits afforded by the current program no longer make sense in light of how the costs of solar power technology have plummeted while California’s electric rates have risen.
Why have California’s electric rates risen? Is it because PG&E keeps setting the state on fire? Well, the $2 billion PG&E spent on shareholder dividends from 2016-2017 should have been spent on “not starting fires,” a judge ruled in 2019, and the CPUC report that recommends the new solar “tariff” also points out that ratepayers are on the hook for $10.5 billion in wildfire payouts, so … yes! And while the state gets a huge share of its energy from renewable resources, about half is still from natural gas. (Only one coal plant remains.)
Gonzalez is undoubtedly aware that her concern for low-income people getting shafted for rich people’s vanity solar panels is … say it with me! Some bullshit. Per the CSSA, there are 150,000 “income-eligible” people who currently have solar, whom Gonzalez’s bill would be fucking:
AB 1139 would hurt 150,000 income-eligible CARE consumers who have solar on their home today by retroactively changing their net metering contract, adding fees and reducing compensation for energy exported to the grid on hot summer days. Instead of saving $122-$178 on average monthly bills, monthly savings would be reduced to $37-$56, a 70% reduction of today’s solar savings. This would not be enough to cover the upfront cost of the system, thus harming consumers who were encouraged by the state to embrace clean energy. This kind of retroactive policy is bad for all consumers, but it is especially damaging to working-class solar users.
And:
California has invested over $1 billion [or one year of PG&E dividends — Editrix] to incentivize low-income solar adoption through 2030, with net metering as a critical driver of the economic success of those programs. At present, 15% of all net metered solar users (150,000) are on income-eligible CARE rates.
An additional 30,000 rental units serving over 100,000 people at multifamily affordable housing projects are under development via the Solar on Multifamily Affordable Housing (SOMAH) program. According to a recent Lawrence Berkeley National Labs report, solar adoption among low- and moderate-income households is trending upward, covering 42% in 2019, or 60,000 installations. AB 1139 would reverse this positive trend, leaving solar for only the wealthy, save for a relatively small number of fully subsidized systems. This would have a negative effect on efforts to shut down fossil fuel power plants and reduce persistent air pollution.
You know who’s most affected by persistent air pollution? It’s the low-income people Gonzalez is claiming this bill is for.
The Chronicle almost gives this voice of reason the last word:
“Why would we want to limit rooftop solar right now when the state needs it so much?” said Walker Wright, vice president of public policy at the San Francisco solar company Sunrun. “If anything, we should be doing more for distributed generation right now, and I think that lines up with what the public wants overwhelmingly.”
But then they didn’t, and ended up with a “utility critic” who’s like “but is it fair to not have to pay for wildfires if you paid for a thing to help stop wildfires?” but he didn’t say it like that, because I guess he hadn’t thought it through very well, and fuck ’em all.
Disclaimer! Your Wonkette put $20,000 in solar panels on her home in Montana and has been paying DOUBLE the electricity bill ever since, because her local utility still can’t figure out how to run her meter, so this would not affect her anyway and she considers it a gift to her state and the planet but still: That’s some bullshit. Also, Montana’s about to do this same thing as Gonzalez’s terrible bill, because won’t someone think of the coal companies?
From Abe Streep, writing for The New Yorker, “How Violent Cops Stay in Law Enforcement.”
Derek Colling was fired from one police department after two fatal shootings and allegations of brutality. Less than a year later, he had a new badge.
In September, 2009, a card dealer named Evie Oquendo arrived at her apartment, on the far east side of Las Vegas, with groceries for her fifteen-year-old son, Tanner Chamberlain. Tanner, who struggled with bipolar disorder, had stayed home from school that day, and Oquendo wanted to make beef stew, one of his favorite meals. But, before she could start cooking, Tanner became extremely agitated. Not long afterward, she discovered that he had swallowed a handful of her anti-anxiety pills. She wanted to take him to the hospital, but first she called her sister, a former New York City police officer. Her sister told her to call 911. “I said, ‘I’m not calling the police, because I’m afraid they’re gonna shoot him,’ ” Oquendo recalled. “She told me, ‘Evie, don’t be ridiculous. They’ll know how to handle it.’ ”
Tanner calmed down enough to suggest going to a nearby 7-Eleven for an iced tea, and Oquendo decided against calling the police. But her sister had already asked a family friend in Nevada to call 911, and soon officers from the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department pulled up to Oquendo’s apartment building, a stucco complex with a pool and a playground. Among the group was a twenty-eight-year-old officer named Derek Colling, who had been with the department for four years. When Colling and the others approached, Tanner stood behind Oquendo, grasping his mother and holding a folding knife in one hand. Officers instructed him to drop the knife and release his mother, but he did not comply. One of the officers on the scene, who was trained in de-escalating crisis situations involving people with mental illnesses, tried to speak to Tanner. Colling trained his gun on Tanner. “Don’t shoot him!” Oquendo pleaded. Colling shot him in the head.
This was Colling’s second fatal shooting in three years: in 2006, he had been one of five officers to shoot and kill a man who pulled a gun at a gas station. In both cases, a coroner’s inquest declared the killings justified. “I did what had to be done,” Colling said, during the second inquiry. One of Colling’s childhood friends, Jedadiah Schultz, recalled meeting up with Colling shortly after Tanner’s death, at a baseball game, and asking him about the incident. “The way in which he was telling the story was like his heroic journey,” Schultz said. “I was deeply unsettled.” (Colling did not respond to requests for comment.)
In 2011, after Colling beat a videographer who was filming police activity in a suburban neighborhood, the footage went viral, and the department launched an investigation. In December, just weeks after the Las Vegas Review-Journal began publishing a series of articles on the use of lethal force by police, Colling was fired for policy violations. The city’s police department, which had a long-standing reputation as one of the most violent in the country, announced that it would be undertaking extensive reforms, in conjunction with the Department of Justice, to improve transparency and accountability.
No criminal charges were brought against Colling, and the internal investigation that led to the department’s decision was not made public. Still, Oquendo felt some sense of vindication: Colling wasn’t going to jail, but at least he’d lost his badge and his gun. She decided to pursue a civil case against Colling and the department, including a wrongful-death claim, and, in 2013, two years after she’d filed it, a federal district-court judge allowed the case to go forward.
But, in 2015, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed the suit, citing qualified immunity, a legal doctrine that protects law-enforcement officers from civil lawsuits. Shortly afterward, while Oquendo was searching for news stories about Colling on the Internet, she got a hit from a paper in Laramie, Wyoming. Colling hadn’t left law enforcement—he’d just moved home. He was working as a patrol deputy for the Albany County sheriff’s office, which covers a forty-three-hundred-square-mile region of southeastern Wyoming, including Laramie, Colling’s home town. Oquendo was distraught. She started calling journalists and community leaders in Laramie. “I didn’t want him to kill again,” she said.
Eventually, she reached Debra Hinkel. An athletic woman with white-blond hair and a direct manner, Hinkel had lived in Laramie most of her life. She ran a few businesses in town, including the Ranger, a motel, bar, and liquor store, which her parents had owned. She was well-connected, and she had contacts at all three of the law-enforcement agencies with jurisdiction in Laramie—the police department, the sheriff’s office, and the University of Wyoming’s police department. Her middle child, Robbie Ramirez, had been diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder in his early twenties, and, in the years since, Hinkel had come to dedicate much of her time to mental-health advocacy. Oquendo had found Hinkel’s phone number through the Laramie chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, where Hinkel served as president. After explaining her story, Oquendo urged Hinkel to use her standing in the community to agitate for Colling’s dismissal. “She was trying to get ahold of anybody she could,” Hinkel said. “She told me, ‘The guy’s dangerous.’ ”
Hinkel knew Derek Colling. His father was a highway patrolman, and his mother worked at a local school. Laramie is a college town of about thirty thousand that feels smaller. As boys, Colling and Robbie had played on the same baseball team, the Vigilantes. They had attended high school together; as members of the school choir, they travelled to Carnegie Hall. After graduating, Colling attended college in South Dakota, then explored a career in law enforcement. He got the job in Las Vegas in 2005. Robbie, meanwhile, had never left Wyoming.
Hinkel and Robbie lived a few blocks apart—she in a ranch house, he in a log-walled apartment owned by two of Hinkel’s brothers. They had a close-knit family, with relatives spread throughout the region. Robbie’s siblings, Randy and Robyn, lived about an hour away; their father, Jimmy Ramirez, lived in a small town across the Snowy Range mountains. Some months, Hinkel saw Robbie regularly. When he felt good, he coached hockey, made ceramic art, and worked at the Ranger. At other times, when he was feeling anxious or depressed, he kept to himself. A fun-loving skater in his younger days, Robbie had become exceedingly careful over the years, and police especially concerned him. After his diagnosis, he had been arrested a few times, and he wanted to avoid any similar encounters. He kept a detailed budget, and family members remember him painstakingly tracking his medications and meal plan. He spent hours tinkering with his Ford Ranger, but he was a tentative driver who rarely left Laramie. He said he needed to stay near home, where he was safe.
Hinkel decided not to tell her son about Colling, but he found out anyway. Not long after Oquendo’s call, Robbie walked into the Ranger and found his mother standing by the pool table. The Boomerang, Laramie’s daily, had just published an article about Oquendo’s civil case. Robbie sounded matter-of-fact, Hinkel recalled later, when he told her that he’d read about Colling. “He’ll probably shoot me someday,” Robbie said.
The sheriff of Albany County, David O’Malley, hired Colling in 2012, ten months after he was fired from his job in Las Vegas. Colling had applied to work for the town’s police department, too, but his history disqualified him. “We didn’t even finish his background,” Dale Stalder, the chief of the Laramie Police Department, said. A Laramie law-enforcement veteran told me that, when he heard that Colling was working for O’Malley, he was unsurprised. “The sheriff’s office is kind of a second-chance oasis for cops,” he said.
O’Malley is widely known for his role investigating the murder of Matthew Shepard, a gay student at the University of Wyoming who was beaten and left to die on the outskirts of Laramie, in 1998. O’Malley, who was then the head of investigations at the Laramie Police Department, worked with a detective from the sheriff’s department to build the case that convicted two men of Shepard’s murder. The story garnered international attention, helped to catalyze a reckoning with anti-gay violence, and inspired a play, “The Laramie Project,” that was produced as a touring show. O’Malley became an outspoken public figure, advocating for national hate-crime legislation and speaking openly about his former anti-gay bigotry. He marched at Pride events, attended drag-queen bingo, and spoke out against a book that cast aspersions on Shepard. He left the police department in 2004 and, in 2010, ran for sheriff as a Democrat, winning by nearly twenty points.
The American sheriff—especially the Western sheriff—has always occupied a role that is both functional and performative, and O’Malley seemed intuitively aware of the outward-facing aspects of the job. He wore a bushy mustache and snap shirts, and he projected warmth, relying on folksy lingo. He was widely liked, and he easily won reëlection twice. But among law enforcement his department’s reputation was mixed, marred by a handful of cases of alleged misconduct. Stalder, Laramie’s police chief, told me that the expertise of sheriff’s departments varies widely. “There’s a huge disparity,” he said. “Some are very professional. Some are much less professional.” When I asked where O’Malley’s department fit within that spectrum, he said, “I think I’ll leave that one alone.”
Still, O’Malley’s popularity seemed undimmed, and he appeared confident deflecting scrutiny. A few years after Colling was hired, when local journalists found out about Colling’s history in Las Vegas, O’Malley defended him staunchly. In an interview with a local radio station and news site, he said, “The fact that he was terminated didn’t give me any real pause, because they didn’t move to decertify him as a law enforcement officer.” He added, “If you don’t believe that a person has any business in law enforcement, then you move for decertification. If they had done that, I couldn’t have considered Derek.”
Like the disbarring of an attorney, or the revocation of a doctor’s license, the decertification of a law-enforcement officer, which is handled by individual states, is meant to prevent bad actors from returning to the profession. (Wyoming, along with a few other states, recognizes decertification elsewhere as immediately disqualifying.) But standards for decertification vary widely. In a handful of states, like California, there is no process at all for removing an officer’s certification; in others, like Nevada, decertification is rare. Even though Colling had been fired following allegations of police brutality, his dismissal did not meet the state threshold for decertification. Kelly McMahill, a deputy chief at the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police, who oversaw the internal investigation that led to his firing, told me that, had the state initiated an inquiry, “It wouldn’t even have come close to pulling his certification.”
In recent years, the very idea of problem officers has become a flashpoint in the public discourse on police violence: when politicians and police chiefs blame the failures of policing on a handful of officers, they seem to be ignoring the systemic issues that plague American law enforcement. But it is widely accepted in the field of decertification studies that a small number of officers account for a large number of civilian complaints; if implemented fairly and consistently, decertification can serve as a vital mechanism for removing the worst actors. “Most professions have a way of getting rid of bad professionals,” Roger Goldman, an emeritus professor at the Saint Louis University School of Law, who is an expert on decertification, told me. “So why not police?”
In 2014, after a Cleveland police officer named Timothy Loehmann shot and killed Tamir Rice, a twelve-year-old Black child who was holding a toy gun, an investigation revealed that Loehmann had previously been deemed unfit for duty at another Ohio police department. Ohio decertifies law-enforcement officers in the event of felony convictions, but a grand jury declined to indict Loehmann for Rice’s killing. Although he was eventually fired from the Cleveland Police Department, on the grounds that he had falsified his employment history, he remained eligible to work in law enforcement.
Last year, the legal scholars Ben Grunwald and John Rappaport published a report, “The Wandering Officer,” that provided the first wide-scale analysis of officers, like Loehmann and Colling, who have lost employment at one law-enforcement agency and then found a new job at another. Analyzing data from nearly five hundred Florida police agencies over a thirty-year period, they found that such officers were more likely than their peers “to be fired from their next job or to receive a complaint for a ‘moral character violation.’ ”
Officers who have previously worked at large metropolitan agencies typically have extensive training, which can make them appealing as prospective hires for smaller departments with less funding, or rural departments with fewer applicants. When Colling attended Wyoming’s law-enforcement academy for basic training—a requirement for most new detention officers—he graduated at the top of his class and was recognized for exemplary physical fitness and marksmanship. The Albany County Sheriff’s Office is well funded—last year, it had $1.8 million in expenditures—but O’Malley said that he had struggled to recruit officers. “In the seventies and early eighties, you had people knocking down the door,” he told me. The last time he posted a job, he said, there were twenty applicants, but only eight showed up for the physical and psychological tests. Of those eight, he said, “We had one that our panel said they would recommend to hire.” Matthew Hickman, a professor of criminal justice at Seattle University, said, “Police departments in rural jurisdictions are just desperate for officers. And that’s where some of these guys end up.”
Still, O’Malley maintained that his agency had strict hiring procedures. He told me that Colling had been interviewed by a panel, which included representatives from the sheriff’s office, the police department, and the University of Wyoming Police Department. (He declined to share the interviewers’ names, citing the confidentiality of personnel records.) O’Malley also said that Colling had passed a background check: “I had a list of probably sixty people that were supervisory and peers.” He could not tell me exactly how many were interviewed, but he stood by comments he had made in the Boomerang, in 2014, in which he called Colling “the best man for the job.”
McMahill, a deputy chief in Las Vegas, was alarmed by the circumstances of Colling’s hiring in Wyoming. “I am shocked he got a job with another police agency,” she said. She said that the details from the investigation into Colling that she led, in 2011, were confidential. But she did tell me that Colling was one of a handful of officers who were involved in incidents that prompted the agency to change the way it monitored and supported personnel following use-of-force incidents. “What we realized is that so many of these officers, they’re going to relive their officer-involved shootings time and time and time again,” she told me. McMahill now sits on Nevada’s Peace Officers Standards and Training (post) commission, which certifies and decertifies officers. She told me that she hoped for reforms to the state’s decertification statute, and for more consistency across the country. “I think the answer to that is really, every state—state to state—is going to have to be much more lenient on what it takes to decertify someone.” She added, “We don’t want people like Derek Colling to remain with his post certificate.”
Debra Hinkel, like many Laramie residents, was unaware of Colling’s presence on the force until well after he had been hired, when the press got the story and Oquendo made calls around town. But she was inclined to trust O’Malley. Her kids had gone to school with his kids. She had once switched parties to vote for him, and they sat together on a mental-health board. She had also seen Robbie’s relationship with local law enforcement improve since he was first diagnosed. In the early years, Robbie and the rest of the family struggled to manage his condition. In 2004, Robbie punched an uncle at a family cabin, and was escorted to the hospital by sheriff’s deputies, who later tackled him to the ground so that a nurse could inject him with an antipsychotic. Robbie resisted, injuring two officers. After the incident, Hinkel became interested in crisis-intervention-team (C.I.T.) programs, which encourage the development of mental-health infrastructure and teach de-escalation techniques to law-enforcement officers. After attending a C.I.T. panel in San Diego, she met with a commander at the Laramie Police Department and representatives from the local hospital. Laramie’s C.I.T. program became among the first in the state.
Robbie’s final arrest for violent behavior was in 2010, when he punched a man outside of the Ranger. After that, he abided strictly by his court-ordered probation. He picked up skateboarding again, and, after buying a classical guitar while on vacation with his father, in Mazatlán, he started playing music with a local group. In 2016, the Wyoming legislature slashed funding for Medicaid, and Robbie became convinced that he needed to keep his income as low as possible in order to prevent his benefits from changing. He eventually stopped working, and his mental health declined. When Hinkel sold the Ranger, in 2018, he lost another anchor. But he tried to stay active, regularly visiting the Laramie skate park.
At this point, local law enforcement knew how to handle Robbie when he was in an anxious spell. Stalder, the police chief, told me that, during calls to Robbie’s apartment, officers stood outside the door and talked in a gentle voice until he calmed down. The department had a be-on-the-lookout alert set up for Robbie’s vehicles, so officers would know to respond with calm in the event of a traffic stop. “Because of the officers’ abilities to create that space and that time, things worked out,” Stalder said.
In November, 2018, Robbie drove his Ranger west on Grand Avenue, a commercial area near the university. He was travelling significantly under the speed limit, and soon a patrol vehicle from the sheriff’s office pulled in behind him. Robbie moved into the left lane, then turned across traffic, flipping on his signal a few seconds late. The patrol car followed. Robbie turned again, this time without a signal. The patrol car flashed its lights, and they both pulled over. Robbie was about a hundred yards from home.
Derek Colling is trim and muscular, with a blond crew cut that was, that day, covered by a dark beanie. He strode toward Robbie’s car. In college, Colling had been a two-hundred-and-fifteen-pound football player, and he still maintained an athletic build, training regularly in a form of martial arts called Krav Maga, developed for the Israeli military. When he reached the passenger’s side of the car, he told Robbie to roll down the window. Robbie refused, and pointed to his apartment building, which was visible across the street. Colling demanded again, and Robbie’s responses turned agitated. Then he started the car, and pulled away. (For someone fleeing the police, he drove slowly; before turning into his apartment’s parking lot, he used his turn signal.) Colling ran to his cruiser and followed in pursuit, calling for backup. Robbie parked next to his apartment, at the end of the parking lot, and got out. Officers trained in responding to calls involving people experiencing mental-health crises are taught how to speak in a calm voice and maintain distance. Colling pulled up quickly, pinning in Robbie’s truck and leaving him effectively cornered.
Colling pulled out his Taser and pistol and yelled, “Get your hands up now!” He approached, weapons drawn, closing the space between them. “Get your hands up now,” he repeated. He then deployed the Taser: its barbs stuck in Robbie’s shirt but didn’t appear to take effect. “Don’t shoot at me,” Robbie said. Colling tried again. Robbie covered his head, cursed, and charged. As the men grappled, Colling fired his pistol, and Robbie fell. Colling called for medical assistance, and held Robbie’s body to the ground. (He would later say that he still considered Robbie a potential threat.) With the assistance of a responding officer, he handcuffed Robbie, who lay bleeding. Another officer arrived and administered CPR. Colling had shot Robbie three times, including in the back. An ambulance transported him to a hospital. Hinkel arrived shortly afterward. In the lobby, she was informed that her son was dead.
Six days later, a vigil for Robbie was held at the Laramie skate park. More than a hundred people came to light candles. Later, at the memorial service, a friend of Robbie’s from the skate park delivered a eulogy, and Hinkel gave a short speech. She thought that more of Robbie’s friends might speak. But, she said, “They just couldn’t. They were just so angry.”
Hinkel walks quickly, and often wears a grin that conveys preparedness rather than joy. Following Robbie’s death, his older brother, Randy, tried to avoid returning to Laramie. Hinkel left frequently, to escape, but always returned home. “I don’t know how my mom does it,” Randy said. “She can’t go to the grocery store without someone wanting to talk about it.”
A deeply spiritual person, Hinkel felt that her son’s death had happened for a reason, and that some change should come of it. But she also tended to be trusting of local authorities. In the press, she praised O’Malley and Peggy Trent, the county attorney, with whom she was friendly. She told the Boomerang that her son’s death was the fault of “one police officer and not the whole force.” When the state announced that its Department of Criminal Investigations (D.C.I.) would conduct an inquiry into the shooting, she trusted that the system would deliver justice.
But others had started to organize around the shooting. After hearing about Robbie’s death, a graduate student named Karlee Provenza decided to start an advocacy group, which came to be called Albany County for Proper Policing (acopp). Twenty-four people showed up to the first meeting, which Provenza held at her house, a one-story home on Laramie’s west side, with a porch decorated by deer skulls. She served deer chili. One of Robbie’s uncles attended; Hinkel did not.
The week after Robbie’s vigil, Trent arranged a private viewing of Colling’s dash-camera and body-camera footage for Robbie’s family, including Hinkel, Ramirez, and their children Randy and Robyn. O’Malley was there, too. He cried as the tape rolled. “I felt bad for the family,” he told me later. Robyn hugged him and told him that she did not blame him for Robbie’s death. Randy felt different. “You did this,” he said to O’Malley. Hinkel left the room.
Trent eventually decided to gather a grand jury to determine whether Colling should be charged with a felony. Grand juries almost always convene in the absence of a judge or defense counsel, giving the prosecutor great influence. According to Kate Levine, a law professor at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, prosecutors often present exculpatory information during cases involving law-enforcement officers. “This is part of that careful, balanced presentation that is absolutely just never done for anyone but police officers,” Levine told me. Prosecutors have an incentive to maintain a good relationship with the police department, since they depend on the coöperation of law enforcement to build other cases, and jurors tend to trust and sympathize with law enforcement. Courts grant officers significant leeway in use-of-force cases: if officers who claim self-defense can demonstrate that they feared for their life or someone else’s, they can almost always avoid conviction. Rachel Harmon, a law professor at the University of Virginia, said that the legal standards “are mostly vague. And so they give a lot of room for officers who perceive a threat to use force.”
Shortly before the grand jury convened, Hinkel attended a community forum, where she finally met Provenza. They discussed the upcoming grand jury, which would convene under seal, concealing the proceedings from public scrutiny. Provenza was concerned that, if the grand jury declined to indict, it might create the impression that Robbie’s killing had been justified. “Debbie kind of brushed it aside,” Provenza told me. “Then, I think, she watched it happen.”
The grand jury, which met in January, 2019, was tasked with determining whether to indict Colling on a charge of involuntary manslaughter. Trent presented jurors with evidence that had been gathered by the D.C.I. Prepared by multiple investigators, including Tina Trimble, who was also the president of the Wyoming Fraternal Order of Police, the D.C.I. report provided a menacing portrayal of Robbie, noting that his apartment was extremely dirty and suggesting that he had not been taking his medication. (The report wasn’t released publicly until months later, under pressure from news outlets including the Boomerang and WyoFile, a nonprofit that has covered Robbie’s case extensively. Through a supervisor, Trimble declined an interview request.) The report briefly covered Colling’s two previous shootings, but it failed to mention his firing from the Las Vegas police department.
In an interview with Colling, which investigators waited to conduct until four days after the shooting, he claimed that he had not recognized Robbie during the encounter. But he also suggested that he had heard enough stories about Robbie’s past to consider him dangerous, providing secondhand accounts of encounters between Robbie and law enforcement that took place years before he joined the sheriff’s office. Only after Colling viewed body-camera footage did he come to the conclusion that Robbie might have been holding a key during their scuffle. “Colling remarked that he never saw the keys,” Trimble wrote, “but that he felt like it was an ‘edged weapon’ after viewing the video.”
The jurors listened to Colling’s interview, and to testimony from Trimble and from a use-of-force expert who has defended police officers in misconduct cases. One of the members of the grand jury told me that the group was instructed not to consider Colling’s history. (Later, in a press conference, Trent said that presenting the facts of Colling’s prior shootings would have taken away “the relevancy of the facts of the case.”) Much of the testimony, the juror said, “was framed in a way to say that law-enforcement officers had this different standard applied to them because of the parameters of their occupation.” The juror added that, for a charge to stick, “I feel like they have to scream out, ‘I’m going to kill you on purpose and I don’t care.’ And it has to be on camera.” (Trent said that she could not discuss the details of the grand jury, beyond her public comments.)
After three days of proceedings, the grand jury declined to indict Colling. O’Malley later moved Colling to an investigative role. Hinkel felt betrayed. “The whole good-ol’-boy aspect of protecting somebody who’s done something like that is totally confusing to me,” she said. She reconnected with Provenza, who was trying to get the county commissioners to establish a community oversight board for the sheriff’s office. Hinkel was impressed by Provenza’s persistence in a state where aggressive reform efforts are not the political norm. (In February, a former Albany County attorney wrote to Provenza, in an e-mail, “You should exercise caution in your efforts. The people you are challenging have the power of the entire state government to bring against you.”) Hinkel and Provenza discussed policing issues and decided to start working together on advocacy. In May, Hinkel wrote an op-ed that criticized O’Malley and the law-enforcement system: “Perhaps we need to look at de-certification of these officers so they do not continue to have opportunities to injure or kill citizens.” Provenza soon started gathering signatures on a petition that called for Colling’s decertification.
In Wyoming, as in many other states, decertification decisions are handled by the state’s post commission. (Most post agencies were established following the civil unrest of the nineteen-sixties, when authorities in cities across the U.S. responded to civil-rights protesters with military tactics.) In January, 2020, Hinkel and Provenza drove seventy-five icy miles north to a diner in Wheatland, where they met Chris Walsh, the director of the state’s post commission. Provenza presented Walsh with a petition for Colling’s decertification, which had nearly thirteen hundred signatures.
Typically, decertification cases are brought by police chiefs or sheriffs themselves. “The very people deciding whether to hire wandering officers are the people who need to decide whether to discipline them,” Ben Grunwald, the legal scholar, told me. But in Wyoming, citizens can file a grievance directly to the post commission. At the end of the meeting with Walsh, Hinkel filed a written complaint. Walsh began an investigation.
In April, Provenza announced that she was running as a Democrat for a seat in the legislature. Hinkel helped with the campaign, writing postcards to voters. A few weeks later, George Floyd was killed by Derek Chauvin, a white officer with eighteen prior complaints on his record. Protests erupted across the country, including in Laramie, where they attracted a diverse and durable crowd. Provenza attended, collecting more signatures for the decertification petition. Hinkel struggled to watch the video of Floyd’s death, and the similarity of the officers’ names—Derek Colling, Derek Chauvin—disturbed her. “Too many synchronicities,” she told me.
She left town to go rafting in Oregon. When she arrived home, in June, hundreds of people were marching in the streets, many of them chanting her son’s name. The marches continued daily. (Laramie police officers later arrested protesters for disorderly conduct and, in one case, “amplified noise,” even as counter-protesters in trucks with modified exhaust systems blasted them with diesel smoke.)
One law-enforcement veteran in Laramie told me that the events of the summer had shaken his foundational beliefs about his profession. He had started to reëxamine the assumptions that he had been trained to believe. When he had first seen the footage of Robbie’s death, he had thought Colling acted properly. “Now, looking at it through the way society is changing,” he told me, “it makes me question if it was a valid shoot.” For a long time, he had thought that the criminal-justice system was flawed but generally fair. “Having to now look at everything,” he said, “I’m starting to realize that—no, it is not fair. It is very skewed.” Another Laramie law-enforcement officer told me that Robbie’s death had deeply saddened and demoralized many of his colleagues. “With Robbie, it’s deeply personal,” he said. “Because Robbie was us.” He thought about Colling, and said, “Why was he hired?”
Walsh declined to comment on the specifics of the case, but he outlined a scenario that could hypothetically support decertification: “If a person were hired illegally, against Wyoming state statute, because, let’s say, information from another state is pertinent to their employment here, and through an investigation I found out that something had been overlooked”—that, he said, would be relevant. His investigation is ongoing. A hearing for Colling has not yet been scheduled.
In August, I met Sheriff O’Malley at the Albany County Courthouse, an impressive stone building on Grand Avenue. Inside, the receptionist greeted me from behind a gleaming one-way mirror. O’Malley came out and offered me a friendly handshake. He walked with his back slightly stooped. As he turned into his office, I could see Colling in a room across the way. O’Malley closed the door.
Hinkel had recently filed a twenty-million-dollar lawsuit on charges of wrongful death, listing the county, Colling, and O’Malley as defendants. O’Malley declined to discuss Hinkel’s suit directly, but his comments suggested that the public had developed an unfair impression of his office. He offered a quotation from Mark Twain (apocryphal, as it turns out): “No amount of evidence will ever convince an idiot.” He was concerned that the protests in Laramie and around the country were damaging the reputation of law enforcement. “The career, the profession, being associated with racism and excessive force and everything, that’s just—it’s not the case,” he said. “That happens, and there’s people in this profession that need to be out of it.” But Colling, he said, was not one of them. He stood by his decision to hire him. He said he planned to retire soon and move to Florida. “I can fish twelve months a year without cutting a hole in the ice,” he said, chuckling. He added, “I don’t know that I’ll ever come back.” He announced his resignation later that month.
O’Malley’s successor, Aaron Appelhans, was the first Black sheriff in Wyoming’s history. Appelhans said that he was focussed on improving services for the mentally ill and recruiting from underserved communities. “I’m not really sure law enforcement has put in enough work to really see the change,” he told me. Colling was reassigned to a job at the county detention center. O’Malley moved away; Trent took a job in Kansas. In November, on the anniversary of Robbie’s death, Karlee Provenza won her election by a hundred and sixty votes. Hinkel cried when she heard the news. “It’s not all about justice,” she said. “It’s about a need for a change.”
Still, Hinkel found herself spending more and more time away from home. She went to Colorado, Santa Fe, Elko. “There’s a heaviness in my heart every time I drive into Laramie,” she said. “I still have to leave periodically to just regroup.” One of her trips took her to Las Vegas, where she looked up Evie Oquendo. When they met, at a restaurant in a video poker lounge, they laughed at their similar statures—both women stand about five feet tall. Since losing the appeal for her case, Oquendo had been unable to work. At her apartment, she kept Tanner’s room as it had been, with his clothes still in the closet. She struggled to sleep, and her dreams were bad. Still, she said, she saw in Hinkel’s lawsuit a glimmer of hope. Maybe, she thought, it would yield a different result from her own.
Oquendo rarely left Las Vegas, and she was impressed by Hinkel’s adventurous nature. They talked about taking a trip one day. “Kind of a heck of a way to become kindred spirits,” Hinkel said. They finished lunch, and Hinkel started the long drive through Utah and Colorado and into the vast plains of Wyoming. After she arrived, her phone rang. It was Oquendo, calling to make sure she had got home safely.
My apologies to everyone. I accidentally clicked the “Post Comment” button before I had chosen only some parts of the text in comment 140 for posting here. I goofed up.
(WaPo) A Georgia state judge on Friday ordered Fulton County to allow a group of local voters to inspect all 147,000 mail-in ballots cast in the 2020 election in response to a lawsuit alleging that officials accepted thousands of counterfeit ballots.
The decision marks the latest instance of a local government being forced to undergo a third-party inspection of its election practices…
…Superior Court Judge Brian Amero ruled on Friday that the nine plaintiffs and their experts could examine copies of the ballots but never touch the originals, which will remain in the possession of Fulton election officials….
In this case, filed in December, the plaintiffs are seeking a declaratory judgment that counterfeit balloting occurred in the county. The judge’s ruling Friday was part of the suit’s discovery process and allows the plaintiffs to examine the ballots for evidence of their claim.
…some experts who have worked on similar efforts on behalf of pro-Trump groups may also participate in the examination in Georgia — including J. Hutton Pulitzer, who has served as a consultant in Maricopa and who some Trump supporters pushed to conduct an audit in Windham, N.H.
…expects to rely on paper experts to examine the ballot paper itself, as well as image-analysis experts and experienced auditors — including one, David Sawyer, who testified Friday that the state-run audit last year was flawed.
Follow-up to tomh @142, Rachel Maddow looks at different places around the United States where Donald Trump supporters, inspired by the ballot inspection spectacle in Arizona, are using conspiracy theories to insist on more ‘audits’ of the 2020 election results Trump lost, and the growing realization that these Trump supporters are not interested in election integrity so much as sabotaging the credibility of any election that doesn’t produce their desired outcome.
While President Joe Biden presides and former President Donald Trump has been shunted sideways to hold court at Mar-a-Lago, county officials are still awash in court proceedings stemming from Trump’s big election fraud lie.
And now, the former President’s old campaign aides are getting involved with a new lawsuit alleging misconduct by the county board of elections.
The mess started back in December, when the county board of elections voted to spend $1.5 million to purchase new voting machines manufactured by Dominion Voting Systems.
Dominion has become the beleaguered target of peddlers of the election fraud conspiracy theory. The company has fired off a series of defamation lawsuits against such characters in the MAGA-verse as Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani, who claim falsely that Dominion machines somehow flipped votes to Biden, or erased those for Trump. In March, Dominion sued Fox News for disseminating those conspiracy theories on air for an eye-popping $1.6 billion. The network filed to dismiss the lawsuit this week.
In March, the three-member board of Stark County commissioners — all Republicans — voted against providing the money for the 1,450 new machines after being flooded with calls from local Trump supporters.
“They believe the election was stolen from Trump and we should stand by Trump and the Dominion machines have been known to be hacked,” Commissioner Richard Regula told the Canton Repository. “It’s been the most calls I’ve ever received as a county commissioner. … I had 17 voicemails in one day.” [Oh, FFS.]
[…] “Whenever there exists a potential cloud […] or public perception or concern regarding a vendor’s long-term viability, regardless of the cause or reason, the County must take a vendor’s long-term viability into account,” they wrote. They also questioned the cost of the machines.
A few weeks later, the county board of elections sued the commissioners in Ohio Supreme Court, pleading for the justices to force the commissioners to cough up the money — and fast. A primary election was coming up in early May. That election came and went, and the Court still didn’t deliver a decision. It still hasn’t, meaning that the county will have to try to make the old machines work for a special election in early August too. By this point, officials are concerned that they won’t have new machines up and running for the November election either.
[…] the county board of elections has been smacked with a lawsuit by a group founded by, of course, former Trump campaign staffers.
“The process engaged in by the Board of Elections was not transparent and open to the public,” wrote Look Ahead America Executive Director Matt Braynard in a statement. “Right before voting on the contract with Dominion, the board excluded the public for eighteen minutes from their discussion and deliberations.”
Braynard, who led Trump’s 2016 data operations until he was fired, was nevertheless an eager participant in Trump’s attempts to overthrow the 2020 election.
[…] And so it continues for the embattled board of elections — another lawsuit, another headache, another obstacle to making needed improvements to their voting infrastructure — all because of a fantasy constructed to explain how Trump actually won the 2020 election.
[…] “The Mainstream Media and Radical Left Democrats want to stay as far away as possible from the Presidential Election Fraud, which should be one of the biggest stories of our time,” Trump wrote in a statement over the weekend, following up with a warning about the nonexistent fraud on OAN this week: “It’s being uncovered now.”
By the time Dominion gets through with their rampage through the courts, they’ll be able to buy Ohio.
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Don’t worry, Joe Manchin is going to end all of this nonsense soon by refusing to reform the filibuster and thereby allowing the GQP to realize their goal of forever rigging our elections processes to give themselves the permanent minority-rules white Christian hegemony they’ve always dreamed of. So stay patient, the euthanasia of democracy may be slow, but it IS inevitable.
———————- Trump won Ohio! What do they think they’re gonna get, Joe winning?
This is beyond crazy. It is, however, clear evidence of a conspiricy to destroy Dominion. Go lawsuits!
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It’s about making people distrust our elections.
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Putin couldn’t be happier with how Trump and Republicans are torching our democratic process.
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I’m sure Dominion’s lawyers are paying very close attention to the Trumpists’ reference to “any public perception or concern regarding a vendor’s long-term viability, regardless of the cause or reason” as a reason to ditch Dominion. They could hardly have scripted better proof of their claims of harm to Dominion.
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Stark County went 59-41 for Trump, so I’m not opposed to Trump and Co invalidating the results.
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This shit is exhausting. And more State AG’s need to follow PA’s example and pursue frivolous plaintiffs.
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All I hear is lots of noise. Biden is controlling the adult narrative, 80 million Americans still like what he’s doing, pandemic under control, legal system moving forward – w/o obstruction. Republicans are lost, leaderless, and have no real argument to make. Plow forward Democrats.
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So Stark County has under 200,000 voters? Well then print out paper ballots and hire some vote counters for the next two elections, or until such time the court hears and rules on the case.
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they normalize and spread this madness.
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Richard also does not seem to be a MAGA type, but he gets carried along with the flow of extremism and fails to defend truth. His words are another version of “many people are saying,” only with the added conclusion that if “many people” are saying a company such as Dominion has problems, then it inherently does have those problems and there is nothing “poor Richard” can do about it, which is a pathetic failure on Richard Regula’s part.
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It’s not even “many people” but more like a van load of loud, stupid people.
[…] While it is unclear whether that cooperation has been formalized, a report from CNN on Friday night, describes Gaetz’s ex-girlfriend as a former Capitol Hill staffer who could serve as a valuable witness due to her ties with the Florida Republican which reportedly date back to 2017. Their ties appear to overlap with a period of time that is likely of particular interest to investigators.
According to CNN, the woman had joined Gaetz on a trip to the Bahamas in 2018, which is reportedly being examined in the probe. She may also be able to help investigators make sense of records that allegedly detail payments that may have been for sex, CNN sources said.
[…] Gaetz is currently under investigation into whether he violated sex trafficking laws and paid the same 17-year-old for sex. The young woman in question was reportedly also among the group who went on the Bahamas trip. Gaetz has repeatedly denied having paid for sex or had sex with anyone underage. Neither Gaetz nor his ex-girlfriend have been charged with any wrongdoing.
[…] CNN reported that federal investigators have been seeking information from new witnesses as recently as this month, but the news of potential cooperation from Gaetz’s former girlfriend could be pivotal in providing a potential key witness as federal authorities consider whether to potentially charge Gaetz.
[…] As this article from Nature reports, some fires in northern regions don’t really disappear in the fall. Instead, they just go into hiding, smoldering below the snow throughout the winter months. Then, when spring returns, these fires are already there, ready to burst forth and spread. It doesn’t take dry lightning, fallen power line, or a dude dropping a cigarette.
[…] these “overwintering fires” can actually outlast a whole fire season. They can continue burning at a very low level until time and conditions are right—like say a record drought that provides lots of dry, ready-to-burn material, and increasingly hot summers—and allow them to flare up and rage. In past years, zombie fires have accounted for over a third of the total area burned in northern forests.
In this study, researchers from the U.S. and the Netherlands (one of those countries that keeps well-swept forests), modeled past behavior of overwintering fires, along with the conditions that allow those fires to return in the spring, and projected what those models means for the future. it almost goes without saying that what the future promises is … more zombies. More fire zombies. Which doesn’t exactly make the coming fire season any less scary.
Postmaster General Louis DeJoy is still intent on messing with our U.S. Postal Service (USPS), permanently slowing down delivery of the mail, and undermining the one thing the agency is supposed to do: that whole “neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds” thing. What USPS has prioritized, however, is its covert operation—entitled Internet Covert Operations Program (subtle, huh)—revealed last month by Yahoo News.
Investigative reporter Jana Winter followed up that report this week with new disclosures, including that the “the program is much broader in scope than previously known and includes analysts who assume fake identities online, use sophisticated intelligence tools and employ facial recognition software.” It uses the controversial facial recognition technology Clearview AI to spy on Americans’ images scraped from social media posts.
The analysts searching social media posts use software called Nfusion, which lets users create and maintain untraceable and anonymous accounts on various social media sites. This allows them “to help identify unknown targets in an investigation or locate additional social media accounts for known individuals,” according to materials that Yahoo News has reviewed.
“The U.S. Postal Inspection Service appears to be putting significant resources into covert monitoring of social media and the creation and use of undercover accounts,” said Rachel Levinson-Waldman, deputy director of the Liberty & National Security Program of the Brennan Center for Justice. “If these efforts are directed toward surveilling lawful protesters, the public and Congress need to know why this is happening, under what authority and subject to what kinds of oversight and protections.”
[…] Respecting the rights of citizens seems not to be the top priority of DeJoy’s Postal Service. Neither does delivering the mail. Take this truly horrendous example: It lost the remains of a Holocaust survivor. Eugenie Yuspeh, one of the oldest survivors of the Holocaust, died at 97 in late April in Milwaukie. She was cremated on May 3, and on May 4 her son entrusted her remains to the USPS—the only delivery service that can legally ship cremated human remains. They were to be sent overnight to New Orleans, where the family was holding her funeral. Finally, on May 15—after the intervention of news outlets and members of Congress and postal service officials—the remains were delivered.
As of now, it doesn’t look like getting rid of DeJoy is the priority of the board of governors of the Postal Service, even with the new members appointed by President Biden now on board. [WTF! Why aren’t they firing DeJoy?] Both the House and the Senate have introduced legislation to shore up the USPS’ finances.
That’s a start to restoring it, but it’s not enough. DeJoy’s plan to slow the mail has to be stopped. In fact, DeJoy has to be stopped. He needs to be fired.
THAT is Dejoy’s goal. Make sure FedEx is faster. (It wasn’t, cost-effectively, just a short time ago) Prove that privatizing is is better than having the USPS. Then the former FedExer and the gang du jour dissolve the PO and split up the billions […] A long-game that DeJoy has seemingly reveled in trying to win on his watch.
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Exactly the Goal; along with No Mail In Ballots for Elections
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Biden needs to find a way to remove DeJoy from his position. Preferably by holding him legally accountable for his deliberate sabotaging of the Postal Service.
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I am still utterly baffled at why the post office would monitor anything online at all?
What’s the goal? Protect employees? Well who are you monitoring then to accomplish that goal? The employees? That’s just sick 1984 shit.
Job is to get things from point A to point B. Also. Passports.
So I was and still am WTF at the news that this is even a thing.
[…] consider this cluster of interviews, from members of the Republican Party who are viewed as national leaders by that party, and who are using that position of leadership to spread what are—at best—harmful lies, if not sick delusions that create genuine danger to other Americans.
First up, Michael Flynn. Once the National Security Advisor, and before that the Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, […] He’s also the man who not only lied to the FBI and got away with it because Bill Barr forced U.S. attorneys to drop the charges, but the man who met with Donald Trump at the White House following Trump’s defeat and urged him to suspend the Constitution while having the military conduct a new election.
And now … This is Flynn explaining that COVID-19 doesn’t affect other countries, that the entire pandemic is a hoax, and that the virus was created in order to give them a distraction from the election and force people to hand over control of their bodies. Because voluntarily getting a vaccination is just like people being told they can’t control their own reproductive health. [video is available at the link]
Flynn also seems inclined to believe that COVID-19 only came into existence just before the election, but there’s plenty of delusion in everything else he says […]
If what Flynn was saying here seems like it might be one of those oddball outliers from the fringes of delusion-land, similar positions were being advanced by numerous Republican officials both before and after the election. Here’s Virginia Rep. Bob Good back in December, right in the middle of the biggest nationwide spike in COVID-19 cases, telling his people how they “get it” by refusing to believe in a “phony” pandemic. [video is available at the link]
Good also tells his audience that as many people die in car accidents as have died from COVID-19, which is only off by a factor of 10, and that cars are not regulated. Because seat belts, air bags, and safety tests are absolutely not a thing.
[…] Here’s Greene [Marjorie Taylor Greene] explaining how Nancy Pelosi asking members of Congress to wear a mask in the House is exactly like Jews being rounded up during the Holocaust. [video is available at the link]
And just for bonus points, let Madison Cawthorn explain how America would have lost the Revolutionary War if … if … Sorry, there’s no way to explain. Other than the part where Cawthorn says “the signs are clear, masks don’t work.” Which isn’t just wrong, but dangerously wrong. Which is kind of theme of this whole thing. [video is available at the link]
Pretty sure the British surrendered to George Washington because they were defeated. Had he shown up to the negotiations wearing a Batman costume, it would have been, well, suspiciously anachronistic … but they still would have surrendered.
At least 600,000 Americans are dead. The real number is probably somewhere on the high side of 900,000. Out of the top 10 states in terms of cases of COVID-19 per capita, nine are states with Republican governors, and eight are states Donald Trump won in 2020. This is a pandemic not only devastated the nation’s health and economy; it did so right in front of the Republican base.
But Republicans are still not just refusing to face reality, but gaining money and influence within their party by deliberately denying reality. Which is genuinely funny … just not in a “ha ha” way.
Wonkette: “Let’s Have A History Lesson With Marjorie Taylor Greene And Madison Cawthorn”
This week, several Republican members of congress were fined $500 for refusing to wear a mask on the House floor — which they have to do because while 100 percent of House Democrats are vaccinated, only 45 percent of their Republican colleagues are.
Among those “protesting” the mask rule are noted kooks Marjorie Taylor Greene and Madison Cawthorn, both of whom have recently shared some thoughts about why they don’t want to wear masks and why those who want them to wear masks are bad, based on some extremely wrong interpretations of historical people and events.
In the following clip, Greene claimed that by asking her to wear a mask or suggesting that perhaps unvaccinated House members could sit in a different area so that they only hurt themselves, Nancy Pelosi was this far from pinning a Star of David on her chest and sending her off to a gas chamber. [Video is available at the link]
Transcript:
This woman is mentally ill. You know, we can look back in a time in history where people were told to wear a gold star and they were definitely treated like second class citizens, so much so that they were put in trains and taken to gas chambers in Nazi Germany. And this is exactly the type of abuse that Nancy Pelosi is talking about.
Yep, this nonsense again.
Perhaps it would surprise Greene to learn that the situation in Nazi Germany had absolutely nothing to do with a pandemic or protecting people from getting sick. There have, indeed, been many situations throughout history where people with contagious diseases were quarantined […] but that was not what happened in the Holocaust. If that is what Marjorie Taylor Greene thinks, then probably nothing can help her.
Madison Cawthorn brought up another bad historical point that has also frequently been made by anti-maskers — the “George Washington wouldn’t have worn a mask!” theory that is based in absolutely nothing other than their own fevered imaginations. [Video is available at the link]
Transcript:
I just want us to imagine, really think to our founding fathers, know that we’re not descended from fearful men. Imagine if you had George Washington when he was trying to get the British to capitulate in Yorktown, except he had a mask on his face. That’s not who we’re descended from, we’re descended from men and women of valor who stood up for their own personal liberty and that’s what my friends and colleagues and I were doing on the House floor yesterday. I genuinely believe that it’s time for us to be leaders on this, let’s, I agree, let’s listen to the science, the science is clear — masks don’t work, we don’t need them it’s time for us to move on.
Literally nothing in that statement is true, except that George Washington did fight at the siege at Yorktown. And perhaps ironically, one of the reasons why the British lost at Yorktown is because half of Cornwallis’ army died from malaria — while members of the Continental Army had built up an immunity to it. You know, like vaccines do for people. If they had not built up that immunity and Washington had refused to do anything to keep his army from contracting malaria, things might have ended differently.
Also — George Washington’s death was very likely due to catching some kind of bug and sitting around in wet clothes at dinner, and then having several pints of blood let in an attempt to save his life. So while many wars did not kill Washington, an unknown disease of some kind did. And it’s possible that he might not have even died had his doctors had the benefit of modern medicine and current scientific understanding instead of, you know, leeches or whatever.
Also, also — I am no great fan of George Washington, as he was pretty into keeping human beings as slaves, but I still don’t think I would compare sitting in Congress and refusing to wear a mask to fighting in a bunch of wars during the 1700s. […]
Here’s what’s happening. Green and Cawthorn really, really don’t want to wear masks. More than that, though, they don’t like the people who are telling them they need to wear masks. They don’t like the people who are telling them the virus is real and could kill them and other people. They are also very not happy with the fact that they are the obvious villains in this situation. They very desperately want a narrative in which they are the good guys and the people telling them they need to wear masks are the bad guys, but they don’t have enough actual real life evidence to make that work. So they’re delving back into history finding good guys and bad guys and saying “Well, we’re this good guy and you’re that bad guy and we called it so now it’s true. We win!”
[…] It’s also really the same deal as the QAnon/Pizzagate people deciding that all of the people they don’t like are Satanic pedophiles. If your arguments and positions are weak, the best way to make yourself feel like the super heroic good guy is to place yourself in opposition to the worst thing on earth. They can’t do “What we want is good!” so they have to be “Actually we are George Washington and everyone who opposes us is like a Nazi who wants to send George Washington to the gas chamber for having the incredible courage to refuse a vaccine and not wear a mask.” […]
[…] Trump was backed up by members of his campaign, such as Roger Stone. And in August 2020, Stone gave the definitive statement that would shape the future of the Republican Party.
“I think we have widespread voter fraud, but the first thing that Trump needs to do is begin talking about it constantly,” said Stone. “If there’s voter fraud, this election will be illegitimate, the election of the winner will be illegitimate, we will have a constitutional crisis, widespread civil disobedience, and the government will no longer be the government.”
That was the coup Trump and Stone were preparing to launch in 2016, only Trump surprised them both by winning. Still, Trump’s team understood that keeping up the myth of voter fraud was essential to their future plans, those plans being to discredit any authority except their authority. Even on Election Day 2016, Trump told Fox News that the election had been “rigged” and that there would be “large-scale fraud.”
[…] Trump didn’t stop trying to convince his followers that democracy could not be trusted. The polls were barely closed when Trump claimed that there was “serious voter fraud in Virginia, New Hampshire and California.” As might be expected, he offered no proof for any of these chosen-from-a-hat states.
But it was only part of a larger claim that Trump made repeatedly: So many people had voted illegally, said Trump, that the results showing Hillary Clinton had won the popular vote were incorrect. “I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally,” said Trump.
It was a claim that, like the exaggeration of the small crowd at his inauguration, was easy to laugh off as just another example of Trump’s thin skin and expansive ego. It wasn’t. It was a continuation of a key strategy going forward.
By the time Republicans reached the 2020 election, they had literally failed to come up with an official platform. But that didn’t mean they didn’t have an unofficial one: using claims of voter fraud to end effective democracy. That was the plan. It still is. […]
The scandal-embroiled Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) is teaming up with one of his most controversial (and annoying) colleagues, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), to do their dear leader’s bidding in Arizona.
The two are holding a rally in Mesa, Arizona tonight “to defend President Donald Trump in the elections audit. The Biden DOJ is trying to stop the Arizona audit. We demand accountability,” Gaetz said in a new radio ad his campaign is running in Arizona.
Tonight’s affair will be the second in a series of “America First” rallies the two are holding, seemingly to support former President Trump and keep his fantasies of a stolen election alive and well among his base. They held an event in Florida earlier this month where Greene reportedly got the crowd riled up, proclaiming Trump was still their president. The stop in Arizona is no coincidence.
The two have made their support for the sham audit […] well known, signing onto a letter earlier this week alongside Republican Arizona Reps. Andy Biggs and Paul Gosar asking the Justice Department to allow the sketchy audit to continue without interference. It was written seemingly in response to a letter Deputy Assistant Attorney General Pamela Karlan sent to the Arizona Senate president outlining the DOJ’s “concerns” about the increasingly fishy affair in Maricopa County. […]
Rep. Peter Meijer (R-MI) on Sunday took aim at Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) in response to her incendiary remarks comparing the House’s mask policy to the Holocaust.
During an interview on Real America’s Voice on Friday, Greene complained about the House’s mandatory mask mandate on the floor and equated the policy to the mistreatment of Jews during the Holocaust.
“You know, we can look back at a time in history when people were told to wear a gold star, and they were definitely treated like second-class citizens, so much so that they were put in trains and taken to gas chambers in Nazi Germany,” Greene said. “And this is exactly the type of abuse that (House Speaker) Nancy Pelosi is talking about.”
Greene, who has come under fire for her remarks, also accused Pelosi of being “mentally ill” for keeping the House’s mask requirement in place during the interview.
Appearing on CNN on Sunday, Meijer added to the growing outcry against Greene’s comments, calling his colleague’s remarks “beyond reprehensible.”
“Any comparisons to the Holocaust, it’s beyond reprehensible. This is, I don’t even have words to describe how disappointing it is to see this hyperbolic speech that frankly amps up and plays into a lot of the antisemitism that we’ve been seeing in our society today,” Meijer said, pointing to recent anti-Semitic attacks in New York and Los Angeles amid the latest Israel-Palestinian conflict.
“I do condemn that in the strongest terms, there’s no excuse for that,” Meijer said, before arguing that “the most far-fetched, the most attention-seeking message” is “taking up the oxygen” on policy discussions that should be prioritized. […]
Rep. Carlos Gimenez (R-FL) confirmed on Saturday that a top aide from his office had alerted law enforcement hours before the Jan. 6 Capitol attack about comments the aide had overheard in a hotel lobby regarding what seemed to be plans to breach the FBI building.
During a CNN interview on Saturday, Gimenez provided his own account describing the scene in the lobby of a D.C. hotel where he was staying on the morning of Jan. 6, suggesting that while most of the people gathered there appeared to be dressed normally, the congressman and his chief of staff had also witnessed at least three men dressed in tactical gear.
Gimenez told CNN’s Jim Acosta that his chief of staff, Alex Ferro, had overheard troubling comments from one of the men that appeared to be about storming the FBI building. [video available at the link]
According to Gimenez, the aide called Capitol Police to alert them about the man who donned a helmet and tactical gear. The congressman said the incident took place at roughly 9 a.m.
“At least some people were ready to cause trouble at nine o’clock in the morning,” Gimenez said on Saturday. […] “The Capitol Police and the FBI had some warning that something was going to go down,” Gimenez said.
Ferro told the publication he made the call to law enforcement just an hour after hearing the comments.
The GOP congressman had previously mentioned the incident at the Hyatt Regency where he was staying as an incoming lawmaker, during a separate CNN interview earlier this week.
“I know for a fact that I saw people in my hotel room that were saying they were going to do something at 2 o’clock. And that happened at 9 o’clock in the morning,” Gimenez had said during that interview on Wednesday.
Ferro reportedly clarified to the network that the pair had witnessed the scene in the hotel lobby, not the congressman’s hotel room. “It didn’t sit well with me,” Ferro reportedly said of what he heard. […]
CNN has ended its contract with commentator and former Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, weeks after he suggested that colonizers had “birthed a nation from nothing,” when they arrived on American soil.
Alison Rudnick, vice president for communications at the network, confirmed to TPM in an email that CNN had “parted ways,” with Santorum.
HuffPost first reported the news of Santorum’s departure on Saturday, which comes weeks after he made racist comments related to Native Americans and the nation’s founding to a room full of conservative youth last month.
“We birthed a nation from nothing. I mean, there was nothing here,” Santorum said at a conference for the Young America’s Foundation last month. “I mean, yes we have Native Americans, but candidly there isn’t much Native American culture in American culture.”
Responding to backlash, the former senator and unsuccessful GOP presidential candidate appeared on CNN anchor Chris Cuomo’s primetime show earlier this month, and said that he “misspoke” when he made the brazen comments at the Standing Up For Faith & Freedom Conference.
“Just — just to be clear, what I was not saying is that Native American culture — I misspoke. I was saying — what I was talking about is, as you can see from the run-up, I was talking about the founding of our country,” Santorum said at the time.
CNN anchor Don Lemon criticized Santorum’s missed apology hours after the commentator’s appearance on Cuomo.
“I cannot believe the first words out of his mouth weren’t ‘I’m sorry. I said something ignorant, I need to learn about the history of this country.’ No contrition,” he said of Santorum at the time.
Even before the comments about Native Americans, Santorum had a long history of incendiary remarks on the network since his first contract was announced in 2017. Santorum was also once a contributor at Fox News before launching a failed 2012 presidential bid. […]
The Mar-a-Lago Blogger is having a hard time adjusting to his new role in the nation’s consciousness. According to an analysis of web traffic by The Washington Post, the worst American president in modern history just doesn’t matter as much as he used to. Banned from Twitter (permanently) and Facebook (probably permanently), the Q Anon messiah just can’t seem to find a way to dominate the national discourse.
Sure, he launched a shitty little website, where he sells event appearances and publishes carelessly written missives “From the Desk of Donald Trump.” Admittedly, certain members of the media race to amplify those missives, often tweeting screenshots … but that keeps the conversation on Twitter.
Which means there’s little reason to visit the Donald’s shitty little website.
How irrelevant is the twice-impeached, would-be dictator’s online presence? Let’s check The Post’s analysis.
Online talk about him has plunged to a five-year low. He’s banned or ignored on pretty much every major social media venue. In the last week, Trump’s website — including his new blog, fundraising page and online storefront — attracted fewer estimated visitors than the pet-adoption service Petfinder and the recipe site Delish. […]
Social engagement around Trump — a measure of likes, reactions, comments or shares on content about him across Facebook, Twitter, Reddit and Pinterest — has nosedived 95 percent since January, to its lowest level since 2016.
It’s almost like trying to destroy democracy has consequences. Sure, Trump still has a vise-like grip on the Republican Party that still considers him their king. […]
But the rest of us? We’re enjoying the stability and calmness of the Biden-Harris presidency thus far, getting our vaccines, trying to recover from the trauma of this pandemic and the previous administration. […]
[…] According to new data, the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine has “high levels of effectiveness” against the highly transmissible variant found in India. The data, from Public Health England, an agency in the UK department of health, studied Pfizer’s efficacy after two doses and found it was 88 percent effective in preventing symptomatic cases of the B.1.617.2 variant.
Researchers found that the Pfizer shot is also highly effective against B.117, the variant first found in the UK, preventing 93 percent of symptomatic cases. And as with other variants, “even higher levels of effectiveness are expected against hospitalisation and death” after the second dose, according to the UK officials. Researchers also studied the effectiveness of the AstraZeneca vaccine, which has been used widely in the UK but has not yet been approved in the US; data shows it was was 60 percent effective against the B.1.617.2 variant, and 66 percent effective against B.117. […]
Iran’s hard-line parliament speaker said Sunday a temporary deal between Tehran and international inspectors to preserve surveillance images taken at nuclear sites had ended, escalating tensions amid diplomatic efforts to save the Islamic Republic’s atomic accord with world powers.
[…] last-minute discussions further underscored the narrowing window for the U.S. and others to reach terms with Iran. The Islamic Republic is already enriching and stockpiling uranium at levels far beyond those allowed by its 2015 nuclear deal.
Iran’s hard-line parliament in December approved a bill that would suspend part of U.N. inspections of its nuclear facilities if European signatories did not provide relief from oil and banking sanctions by February. The IAEA struck a three-month deal with Iran in February to have it hold the surveillance images, with Tehran threatening to delete them afterward if no deal had been reached. […]
It also wasn’t clear what this meant for in-person inspections by the IAEA. There are 18 nuclear facilities and nine other locations in Iran under IAEA safeguards. […]
President Joe Biden has said he’s willing for the U.S. to re-enter the nuclear deal. Weeks of negotiations in Vienna have been described as positive, though no draft agreements have been released. The U.S. also is not directly talking to Iran in the sessions.
[…] “What we haven’t yet seen is whether Iran is ready and willing to make a decision to do what it has to do,” Blinken said. “That’s the test and we don’t yet have an answer.”
Wonkette: “Ammon Bundy Hates The Government So Much He Wants To Be Governor Of Idaho”
After failing for many years to beat the government, anti-government extremist Ammon Bundy has apparently decided he wants to join them. In fact, he has decided that wants to be Governor of Idaho and has filed the paperwork needed to run for the position in 2022. Sort of.
Bundy did fill out the paperwork, but it didn’t count because no one named “Ammon Bundy” is registered to vote in the state of Idaho — a requirement for running for office in the state — and also because he listed himself as his own treasurer. Which is also not a thing one can actually do. And the treasurer needs to be a registered voter as well.
According to a tweet from the Idaho Secretary of State “a treasurer must be a registered Idaho voter, Ammon Bundy will either need to register and refile or name a new treasurer by refiling. IDSOS staff have notified him as such.”
Awkwardly, Bundy is currently banned from the Idaho State Capitol after having staged an anti-mask protest there last August, during which he refused to leave and had to be wheeled out in an office chair. This will obviously make being the Governor of Idaho a little difficult. Bundy was also arrested twice last month, in the span of 24 hours.
In the event that Bundy successfully figures out his paperwork situation, he will be one of five Republicans, one “unafillliated” and zero Democrats currently running for the office. It would be lovely to say “LOL, like he’ll actually win!” but we’ve probably all learned our lesson now with that one.
When Arizona’s secretary of state asked me if I would serve as an observer of the Arizona Senate’s audit of Maricopa County’s ballots, I expected to see some unusual things. Post-election audits and recounts are almost always conducted under the authority of local election officials, who have years of knowledge and experience. The idea of a government handing over control of ballots to an outside group, as the state Senate did when hiring a Florida contractor with no elections experience, was bizarre. This firm, Cyber Ninjas, insisted that it would recount and examine all 2.1 million ballots cast in the county in the 2020 general election.
So I figured it would be unconventional. But it was so much worse than that. In more than a decade working on elections, audits and recounts across the country, I’ve never seen one this mismanaged.
I was stunned to see spinning conveyor wheels, whizzing hundreds of ballots past “counters,” who struggled to mark, on a tally sheet, each voter’s selection for the presidential and Senate races. They had only a few seconds to record what they saw. Occasionally, I saw a counter look up, realize they missed a ballot and then grab the wheel to stop it. This process sets them up to make so many mistakes, I kept thinking. Humans are terrible at tedious, repetitive tasks; we’re especially bad at counting. That’s why, in all the other audits I’ve seen, bipartisan teams follow a tallying method that allows for careful review and inspection of each ballot, followed by a verification process. I’d never seen an audit use contraptions to speed things up.
Speed doesn’t necessarily pose a problem if the audit has a process for catching and correcting mistakes. But it didn’t. Each table had three volunteers tallying the ballots, and their tally sheets were considered “done” as long as two of the three tallies matched, and the third was off by no more than two ballots. The volunteers recounted only if their tally sheets had three or more errors — a threshold they stuck to, no matter how many ballots a stack contained, whether 50 or 100. This allowed for a shocking amount of error. Some table managers told the counters to recount when there were too many errors; other table managers just instructed the counters to fix their “math mistakes.” At no point did anyone track how many ballots they were processing at their station, to ensure that none got added or lost during handling.
I also observed other auditors working on a “forensic paper audit,” flagging ballots as “suspicious” for a variety of reasons. One was presidential selection: If someone thought the voter’s choice looked as though it had been marked by a machine, they flagged it as “anomalous.” Another was “missing security markers.” (It’s virtually impossible for a ballot to be missing its security markers, since voting equipment is designed to reject ballots without them.) The third was paper weight — the forensics tables had scales for weighing ballots, though I never saw anyone use them — and texture. Volunteers scrutinized ballots for, of all things, bamboo fibers. Only later, after the shift, did I learn that this was connected to groundless speculation that fake ballots had been flown in from South Korea.
The fourth reason was folding. The auditors reasoned that only absentee voters would fold their ballots; an in-person, Election Day voter would take a flat ballot, mark it in the booth and submit it, perfectly pristine. I almost had to laugh: In my experience, voters will fold ballots every which way, no matter where they vote or what the ballot instructs them to do. Chalk it up to privacy concerns or individual quirks — but no experienced elections official would call that suspicious.
At one point, I overheard some volunteers excitedly discussing a stain on a ballot. “It looks like a Cheeto finger,” one said. “Like someone’s touched it with cheese dust!” That had to be suspicious, their teammate agreed. Why would someone come to the polls with cheese powder on their hands? But I’ve seen ballots stained with almost anything you can imagine, including coffee, grease and, yes, cheese powder. Again, when you have experience working with hundreds of thousands of ballots, you see some messes: That’s evidence of humanity’s idiosyncrasies, not foul play.
Their equipment worried me more than their wild theorizing. At the forensics tables, auditors took a photo of each ballot using a camera suspended by a frame, then passed the ballot to someone operating a lightbox with four microscope cameras attached. This was a huge deviation from the norm. Usually, all equipment that election officials use to handle a ballot — from creating to scanning to tallying it — has been federally tested and certified; often, states will conduct further tests before their jurisdictions accept the machines. It jarred me to see volunteers using this untested, uncertified equipment on ballots, claiming that the images would be used at some point in the future for an electronic re-tally.
[…] procedures should never change in the middle of an audit. Here, they did, and not just a couple of times, but almost daily. […]
This is not an audit, and I don’t see how this can have a good outcome.
The dissident, Roman Protasevich, co-founded a Telegram channel that is a popular opposition outlet in Belarus. The plane was flying from Athens to Lithuania when it was forced down.
The strongman president of Belarus sent a fighter jet to intercept a European airliner traveling through the country’s airspace on Sunday and ordered the plane to land in the capital, Minsk, where a prominent opposition journalist aboard was then seized, provoking international outrage.
The stunning gambit by Aleksandr G. Lukashenko, a brutal and erratic leader who has clung to power despite huge protests against his government last year, was condemned by European officials, who called it a “state hijacking.” But it also underscored that with the support of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, Mr. Lukashenko is prepared to go to extraordinary lengths to repress dissent.
The Ryanair flight from Athens to Vilnius, Lithuania, carrying some 170 passengers — among them the journalist, Roman Protasevich, 26 — was flying over Belarus when Belarusian air traffic controllers notified its pilots of “a potential security threat on board” and directed the plane to divert to Minsk, the Ireland-based airline said in a statement.
Mr. Lukashenko, often referred to as “Europe’s last dictator,” personally ordered a MiG-29 fighter jet to escort the Ryanair plane to the Minsk airport, his press service said. According to the statement, Mr. Lukashenko gave an “unequivocal order” to “make the plane do a U-turn and land.” […]
Mr. Protasevich’s arrest demonstrated the lengths to which Mr. Lukashenko is ready to go in order to pursue his political opponents. Many of them have sought safe heaven in exile in Lithuania and Poland, but Sunday’s events showed that Mr. Lukashenko can reach them even in the air.
Both Lithuania and Greece are members of the European Union. Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, the E.U.’s executive body, called the situation “utterly inadmissible.” The Greek Foreign Ministry called it a “state hijacking.”
Greece’s prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, said on Twitter, “The forced landing of a commercial plane to detain a journalist is an unprecedented, shocking act.” Calling for stepped-up pressure on Belarus, he said, “Enough is enough.” […]
But in Russia — where the state media described last year’s uprising against Mr. Lukashenko as a Western plot — the arrest met with approval among Mr. Putin’s supporters. Margarita Simonyan, editor of the pro-Kremlin RT television network, wrote on Twitter that Mr. Lukashenko “played it beautifully.” And Vyacheslav Lysakov, a member of Parliament allied with Mr. Putin, described Mr. Protasevich’s arrest as a “brilliant special operation.” […]
Ms. Tikhanovskaya, Mr. Lukashenko’s main opponent during the last presidential election in August, which was widely regarded as rigged, called the episode with the Ryanair flight “an operation by the special services to hijack an aircraft in order to detain activist and blogger Roman Protasevich.”
“Not a single person who flies over Belarus can be sure of his safety,” she said.
It was near the beginning of the pandemic, in mid-April of 2020, when a stranger spit on me. After apparently taking note of my hospital badge and mask, he announced that even though I was a doctor, I “brought the sickness.” He called me “Hindu,” along with a string of profanities.
I got away quickly, washed the saliva out of my hair in a hospital bathroom and started my day. I had other things on my mind: Those of us in medicine were working extra shifts, even as the virus changed our lives.
I felt intense pride about being a doctor — I’m a psychiatrist who was working in a hospital in the Boston area — when the country needed me most, and it made me feel deeply American. I felt needed and seen […] I monitored my temperature and oxygen twice a day and quarantined away from my young children. I drove out to far-flung medical supply stores, finding stashes of personal protective equipment and sharing them with house staff members and other health workers. I offered extra masks to grocery store clerks and donated cleaning supplies to hospitals with shortages. I had never served in war before, but now I was enlisted.
I focused on all this, instead of the stranger’s cruel words.
The truth is, I had experienced the same kind of hate and bigotry before, in public places and in health care settings, but until this year I didn’t fully grapple with or fully acknowledge the impact of such aggression. My medical training encouraged me to focus on the work and deny and minimize the discrimination I faced.
But the recent rise in attention to anti-Asian hate has forced me to reckon with how we Asian-American women doctors are demeaned as a group, and how even the valor we display when we show up to work to risk our lives during a pandemic doesn’t protect us from having to endure racism and sexism.
My awareness of this grew gradually as the pandemic went on, and all around us, anti-Asian bigotry seemed to be intensifying. Donald Trump’s use of cruel phrases — “Chinese Virus” and, later, “Kung Flu” — no doubt inspired some of the abuse. The murders of Asian-American women in the Atlanta area and the spate of brutal beatings of Asian-Americans, including elders and women, have made such hate impossible to ignore.
[…] I’ve been similarly stereotyped by colleagues and patients. Docile and passive. Deferential. Tentative. Servile. The persistent, pernicious American prejudice about women like me undermines us on a daily basis. Our white coats and hospital badges don’t discourage aggression — they make us a target for it. Our very existence in these relatively powerful roles challenges white male dominance.
It’s no surprise that one of the first Asian-American doctors to practice medicine in the United States, Dr. Margaret Chung, was allowed to train but forced to work only as a nurse for the first few months after she graduated from medical school in 1916.
[…] Last year, only 64 medical department chairs in the country, out of more than three thousand surveyed, were occupied by Asian-American women doctors (compared with 2,037 by white men, and only 49 by Black women, who have themselves endured discriminatory treatment).
[…] I still feel proud of my work at the hospital during the pandemic. But I can no longer look away from the specific, fetishizing, gendered hate that Asian-American women face, both in and out of the hospital setting. Something has to change. Our valor should be reserved for coping with the challenges of a pandemic; it shouldn’t be required to endure the distorted perceptions and ugly words that Asian-American women encounter every day.
TPM via Lynna @ # 156: … Santorum had a long history of incendiary remarks on the network since his first contract was announced in 2017.
I came up with an idea at the time, that some executive had ordered a certified Republican join the CNN cast and the incumbent liberals had deliberately chosen the absolutely worst mouthpiece for conservatism available.
Nothing since then has confirmed, nor contradicted, that hypothesis, though now at least the coast seems clear for somebody’s memoirs to reveal some part of that decision. Will the inevitable replacement designated-deplorable match the same pattern?
KGsays
“What we haven’t yet seen is whether Iran is ready and willing to make a decision to do what it has to do,” Blinken said. “That’s the test and we don’t yet have an answer.” – Lynna,OM@159, quoting Politico
Just a small point, Mr. Blinken: it was the USA, not Iran, that trashed the agreement keeping Iran’s nuclear technologies restricted and under international surveillance. What we haven’t yet seen is whether the USA is ready and willing to make a decision to do what it has to do to. That’s the test and we don’t yet have an answer.
The Black Lives Matter activist Sasha Johnson is in a critical condition after sustaining a gunshot wound to her head in an incident in south London, her affiliated group, Taking the Initiative party, has announced on social media.
In a statement on the group’s Facebook page, the party said the incident happened in the early hours of Sunday and followed “numerous death threats”.
…
Johnson is a prominent member of TTIP, which has been described as “Britain’s first Black-led political party”. She rose to prominence after last year’s BLM protests spread around the country, helping to organise marches and addressing crowds.
She has worked in activism and community support and achieved a first-class degree in social care at Oxford Brookes University.
…
A [Met police] spokesperson said that, while the investigation was at an early stage, there was nothing to suggest it was a targeted attack or that the woman had received any credible threats against her before this incident. Detectives from the Met’s specialist crime command (Trident) were leading the investigation.
DCI Jimi Tele said: “This was a shocking incident that has left a young woman with very serious injuries. Our thoughts are with her family who are being provided with support at this terribly difficult time.”
He said detectives were making “good progress” in hunting the attackers but they needed help from the public and it was “crucial” that anyone who saw anything suspicious in the Consort Road area in the early hours of Sunday or who had heard information since then get in touch.
Tele added: “Finally, I recognise that this incident will have shocked those in the local community and further afield. I would ask people to avoid speculating as to the motive or the circumstances behind it.”
…Imarn Ayton, a friend of Ms Johnson’s, told the BBC doctors had carried out surgery on her fellow activist which had gone well and she was “now with her parents”.
She said Ms Johnson had been at a party or gathering when she was injured but she did not believe “she was the intended victim”.
“As far as I am aware… this incident is more related to rival gangs as opposed to her activism,” Ms Ayton said.
Detectives from the Met’s Specialist Crime Command have been investigating at the scene and the surrounding area and are pursuing a number of lines of inquiry.
It is believed the shooting happened near a house where a party was taking place and a number of people may have been in the area, a Met Police statement said….
Here’s a link to the May 24 Guardian coronavirus world liveblog.
From there:
The World Health Organization (WHO) has started its annual member states’ meeting this morning.
French president Emmanuel Macron called for the body to be empowered to visit countries rapidly in case of outbreaks with potential to spark a pandemic, and to access data.
In separate pre-recorded remarks, German chancellor Angela Merkel called for funding to be improved and backed the idea of a new international treaty to prevent pandemics.
Director general Tedros Adhanom is speaking at the moment, and has said a “scandalous inequity” in vaccine distribution is perpetuating the pandemic.
India’s overall death toll from Covid crossed 300,000 on Monday, as it reported 4,454 deaths over the last 24 hours. Its daily coronavirus infections rose by 222,315.
…
The International Olympic Committee’s insistence that “sacrifices” must be made to ensure the Games go ahead in Tokyo regardless of the coronavirus situation in Japan has sparked a backlash and more calls for them to be cancelled. Japan opened its first mass vaccination centres on Monday in a bid to speed up a cautious Covid-19 inoculation programme
…
The UK has reported five new deaths with 28 days of a positive Covid test. That puts the seven-day average down to just over seven deaths per day.
…
Israel will end local Covid-19 restrictions following its vaccine rollout that has nearly stamped out new infections, the country’s health minister said.
At least 115,000 health and care workers have died from Covid-19 since the onset of the pandemic, the World Health Organization chief has said at the organisation’s annual member states’ meeting as he called for more equitable distribution of vaccines.
Director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus acknowledged the sacrifices made by these workers during the health crisis, adding that they have often lacked access to personal protective equipment and, more recently, vaccines.
“For almost 18 months, health and care workers all over the world have stood in the breach between life and death,” he said. “They have saved countless lives and fought for others who, despite their best efforts, slipped away.”
Tedros added: “Many have themselves become infected, and while reporting is scant, we estimate that at least 115,000 health and care workers have paid the ultimate price in the service of others.”
He underlined the inequitable global distribution of vaccines, with more than 75% of the world’s doses going to just 10 countries.
“The number of doses administered globally so far would have been enough to cover all health workers and older people if they had been distributed equitably,” he said.
A study published on Monday found that people who are infected with coronavirus give off a distinct odour, which highly trained dogs can detect with pinpoint precision.
The paper, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, found that dogs could detect Covid-19 on clothing worn by infected people with up to 94.3% sensitivity: they would correctly identify 94 out of every 100 infected people. This compares with a sensitivity of 58-77% for lateral flow tests, and 97.2% for PCR tests.
In other news, the numbers on the CDC site suggest that the US will hit 50% of adults fully vaccinated and 50% of the population with at least one dose in the next few days, and possibly today. The wide gaps in vaccination rates among the states continue.
“Belarusian authorities have stopped a start of a Lufthansa commercial flight LH1487 Minsk-Frankfurt ‘because of a terror threat’. All passengers have been requested to leave the plane and to proceed to security control. I wonder, what dissident is on board this time….”
“#Breaking [UK] Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said he has instructed the Civil Aviation Authority to request airlines avoid Belarusian airspace in order to keep passengers safe and has suspended Belarus’ national airline Belavia’s operating permit”
Malta ‘achieves herd immunity’ vaccinating up to 70 per cent of adult population
Malta has vaccinated up to 70 per cent of the adult population with least one dose of the vaccine, the first country in the EU to reach this goal.
While addressing a press conference on Monday, the health minister, Chris Fearne said the nation has now reached ‘herd immunity’ against coronavirus.
“Today we have reached herd immunity. The vaccine is a weapon against the virus,” the health minister said.
Malta is currently vaccinating people at a faster rate than its EU peers.
Fearne said by Monday evening 70% of adults will have received at least the first dose of the vaccine, while 42% of the population have been completely vaccinated at this stage.
He encouraged people aged 16-29 to come forward and register, saying 52% of this age group had signed up so far.
He was speaking as Malta entered another phase in its reopening timeline – with gyms and pools welcoming back patrons on Monday and restaurants allowed to open until midnight. People who are fully vaccinated will not have to wear a mask outdoors from July.
The health minister said a vaccine certificate would be launched in the coming days and from July authorities would be able to use this to begin to open cultural and entertainment events.
According to official figures released by Malta’s health authorities on Monday, a total of 474,475 COVID-19 vaccination jabs have been administered so far. The figures show that 302,933 of these were first doses.
Israel-Hamas Ceasefire Holds as Gazans Face Grief and Destruction After Israeli Assault
A ceasefire between Israel and Hamas continues to hold as Egyptian mediators try to maintain the relative calm that follows Israel’s brutal 11-day assault on the Gaza Strip, which killed at least 248 Palestinians, including 66 children. But tensions in the region remained high over the weekend as Israeli forces and settlers entered the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in occupied East Jerusalem multiple times since Friday, with local outlets reporting attacks on Palestinian worshipers. Gazans have begun to clean up the wreckage as they surveyed the devastating aftermath of the Israeli bombardment.
…
The U.N. said it is launching an aid appeal for the Gaza Strip, where fears are mounting COVID-19 could further spike after residents were forced to flee their homes and shelter together from the bombing. The U.S. has said it would contribute to helping rebuild Gaza, while refusing to condemn the death and destruction wrought by Israel.
Meanwhile, massive protests in solidarity with the Palestinian people took place around the globe again this weekend, including here in the U.S. An estimated 180,000 people took part in a London march….
India’s Official COVID Death Toll Passes 300,000, Latin America Tops 1 Million Deaths
India recorded over 4,400 new COVID fatalities today, bringing its official death toll over 300,000 — just the third country to pass the tragic milestone after the U.S. and Brazil. Its daily cases have dropped significantly from early this month, with around 220,000 reported today. Experts say both numbers are vast undercounts.
Latin America has now recorded over 1 million COVID-19 deaths — around 30% of the world’s death toll, despite accounting for just 8% of the global population. Brazil represents around 45% of the region’s fatalities. On Friday, the state of Maranhão issued a fine to far-right Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro for refusing to respect local health rules by holding a mass gathering and not wearing a face mask.
This all comes as the World Health Organization said Friday the true global death toll for COVID-19 is likely two to three times higher than official reports.
Average of Daily U.S. Coronavirus Infections Falls Below 30,000 for First Time Since June
Here in the U.S., the seven-day rolling average of daily coronavirus cases has fallen below 30,000 for the first time since last June, with daily deaths also at a similar level to last summer. Hospitalizations are also way down. At least eight states — Rhode Island, Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Vermont and Hawaii — have now given at least one COVID-19 vaccine dose to 70% of their adult population. Here in New York City, Mayor Bill de Blasio just announced schools will open in full in September with no remote option.
Biden Administration to Extend Temporary Protected Status to 100,000 Haitians in U.S.
The Biden administration is granting more than 100,000 Haitians in the U.S. the chance to gain temporary protected status, or TPS, which includes work permits and protection from deportation while Haiti suffers a political crisis. Haitian President Jovenel Moïse continues to refuse calls to step down, even as human rights groups report he has sanctioned attacks against civilians in impoverished neighborhoods of Port-au-Prince, with targeted assassinations and threats against government critics carried out with impunity. President Biden deported more Haitians during his first two months than Donald Trump did in the last year of his presidency. We’ll have more on the Biden administration’s decision to grant TPS to Haitian immigrants later in the broadcast.
…
Weekend Mass Shootings Around U.S. Leave 11 Dead, 69 Injured
The United States experienced another weekend of deaths and injuries from at least 12 mass shootings. At least 11 people were killed and 69 injured from gun violence in New Jersey, South Carolina, Georgia, Ohio and Minnesota. The nonprofit Gun Violence Archive reported 2021 is the second straight year the U.S. has seen over 60 mass shootings in the month of May, with 229 mass shootings recorded since the start of the year.
…
Alden Global Capital Hedge Fund to Purchase Tribune Newspaper Chain
In media news, shareholders have approved the purchase of Tribune Publishing by New York hedge fund Alden Global Capital for $633 million. Tribune Publishing’s many newspapers include the Chicago Tribune, The Baltimore Sun and New York Daily News. Alden, which already owns around 100 newspapers and 200 publications, is known for making major cuts to local papers in pursuit of profit. The outlet More Perfect Union reports Alden slashed the staff of The Denver Post by 75% and closed six newsrooms in 2020. About half of daily local newspaper circulation in the U.S. is now controlled by hedge funds.
The Republican pariah Liz Cheney has repeatedly refused to admit a link between Donald Trump’s lies about voter fraud and restrictive voting laws being introduced in Republican states, telling an interviewer on Sunday night she will “never understand the resistance to voter ID”.
“There’s a big difference between that and a president of the United States who loses an election after he tried to steal the election and refuses to concede,” said the Wyoming representative ejected from party leadership for opposing the former president.
…
…Cheney has ranged herself against Trump but when pressured by Axios on HBO interviewer Jonathan Swan, she stayed in lockstep with her party.
To Cheney’s remark about resistance to voter ID laws, Swan countered: “Even the Republican lieutenant governor of Georgia, Jeff Duncan, said … when this bill was started that the momentum was when Rudy Giuliani was testifying that the Georgia election was a sham.”
…
“Four hundred-some voting bills have been introduced,” Swan said, “90% by Republicans, supported by the Republican National Committee. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that after the election, this has happened.”
Cheney said: “I think everybody should want a situation and a system where people who want to vote and ought to have the right to vote, vote, and people that don’t shouldn’t. And again I come back to things like voter ID.”
Actual instances of voter fraud or attempted voter fraud are few and far between. Some involve Trump voters. Nonetheless, state Republican parties have pursued strict laws while in Arizona the GOP has gone so far as to conduct a highly controversial recount in the most populous county.
“But what problems are [these laws] solving?” Swan asked. “What are all these states doing?”
“Well,” said Cheney, “each state is different.”
Swan asked what the problem was in Georgia, or Texas, or Florida.
“I think you’ve got to look at each individual state law,” Cheney said.
Swan said: “But you can’t divorce them from the context. Come on.”
Cheney said: “But I think what we can all agree on is that what is happening right now is really dangerous.”
Swan said: “I can agree with that.”
Cheney switched back to her preferred subject – Trump’s refusal to concede defeat, which led to the deadly attack on the Capitol by his supporters on 6 January, over which more than 400 people have been charged, while Republicans in Congress oppose a 9/11-style investigation….
From text quoted by SC in comment 173, “The health minister said a vaccine certificate would be launched in the coming days and from July authorities would be able to use this to begin to open cultural and entertainment events.”
Excellent plan. It’s really too bad that we have so many unreasonable doofuses in the USA that such a plan will probably not work here, at least not nationwide.
! According to his mother, Roman Protasevich is in hospital in critical condition – heart disease.
FYI, 3 days ago another Belarusian political prisoner – Witold Ashurok – has died of an alleged ‘heart disease’. His family last heard from him on 30 April, although previously they got letters from him every 10 days. Prison officials still refuse to hand his body over to family.
It’s as if Republicans pondered every way in which a democracy could be “fixed” in their favor, and launched an offensive on every front, all at once.
When political observers take note of Republican efforts to curtail democracy, one of the principal lines of attack is voter-suppression measures. […]
…Georgia is hardly the only state that’s made it harder to vote this year. Republican lawmakers have now enacted new voting restrictions in a total of 11 states — Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Montana, Utah and Wyoming.
But there’s no reason to stop there. There are also election administration concerns.
“In 2021, state legislatures across the country — through at least 148 bills filed in 36 states — are moving to muscle their way into election administration, as they attempt to dislodge or unsettle the executive branch and/or local election officials who, traditionally, have run our voting systems.” That is the conclusion of a recent report, “A Democracy Crisis in the Making,” by two nonpartisan organizations, States United Democracy Center and Protect Democracy, and a nonprofit law firm in Wisconsin, Law Forward.
Republicans also intend to duplicate Arizona’s bonkers election “audit” by exporting the scheme. “Republican county committees around the country are making requests to do forensic audits, according to multiple state secretaries of state, and local officials nationwide are fielding bizarre offers from unqualified ‘auditors.'”
On a related note, plenty of Republicans intend to replace secretaries of state with far-right partisans, who’ll approach the administration of future elections in a Trumpier way. “Republicans who sought to undercut or overturn President Joe Biden’s election win are launching campaigns to become their states’ top election officials next year, alarming local officeholders and opponents who are warning about pro-Trump, “ends justify the means” candidates taking big roles in running the vote.”
Republicans are also targeting the volunteers who work at local polling places. “Republican lawmakers in Texas, following in the footsteps of their counterparts across the country, are pressing forward with a voting bill that could impose harsh penalties on election officials or poll workers who are thought to have committed errors or violations.”
GOP officials are also curtailing the ability of Americans to pursue policy goals through ballot initiatives.”[T]his year, Republican-led legislatures in Florida, Idaho, South Dakota and other states have passed laws limiting the use of the practice, […] So far in 2021, Republicans have introduced 144 bills to restrict the ballot initiative processes in 32 states, according to the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center, a liberal group that tracks and assists citizen-driven referendums. Of those bills, 19 have been signed into law by nine Republican governors”
By some measures, Republicans are even exploring ways to make it more difficult for Americans to turn to the courts in the hopes of protecting voting rights. “A new Brennan Center analysis identified at least 93 bills in 26 states introduced this year that threaten judicial independence by limiting courts’ power or injecting more politics into state judiciaries. According to the analysis, in at least eight of these states, bills have specifically targeted election-related cases. And in 21 states, broader court bills were introduced that would impact election cases, among others, by changing how judges are selected, which courts hear cases challenging the constitutionality of state actions or how judicial decisions are enforced.”
It’s not enough to say that Republican officials are interfering with Americans’ voting rights, though they are. What’s striking is the multi-faceted quality of the campaign. It’s as if GOP officials pondered every possible way in which the democracy could be “fixed” in their favor, and decided to launch an offensive on every front, all at once.
In isolation, each of the aforementioned reports is important, but collectively, they create an ugly mosaic. The image is one of a major political party that believes the key to acquiring and maintaining power is less about broadening appeal through the power of ideas, and more about rigging the system, across multiple fronts, to defy the will of the electorate.
If Democrats — and democrats — fail to appreciate the gravity of the situation, the consequences for our system of government will likely be severe.
Additional, embedded links to source material are available at the main link.
[…] * In New Mexico’s congressional special election to fill the vacancy left by Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, Democrats are cautiously optimistic, but not taking any chances: Roll Call reports that the party and its allies “have rushed to support” New Mexico state Rep. Melanie Stansbury’s (D) candidacy. Election Day in the district is a week from tomorrow, though early voting is underway.
* According to a local Fox affiliate in Minnesota, a Republican strategist named Kip Christianson, who was on the Republican National Committee’s payroll during the last election cycle, recruited Kevin Ne Se Shores to run for Congress last year. That wouldn’t be especially notable except Shores, who is blind and permanently disabled, was recruited to run against then-Rep. Collin Peterson (D-Minn.) as a candidate for the Grassroots Legalize Cannabis Party, and he now believes he was tricked.
* And in Arizona, state Rep. Daniel Hernandez (D), perhaps best known as a former Gabrielle Giffords staffer who helped save her life after a 2011 shooting, is now running for Congress in the district Giffords used to represent.
Just when it seemed the Arizona Republicans’ election “audit” couldn’t become an even bigger fiasco, the story somehow managed to get a little worse.
[…] The Arizona Republic reported yesterday:
An organization run by an ardent supporter of former President Donald Trump will help decide who counts ballots when the Arizona audit of 2020 election results resumes Monday. An email obtained by The Arizona Republic shows a nonprofit started by former Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne will handle background checks, non-disclosure agreements and volunteer agreements of audit workers.
Before proceeding, let’s take a moment to review some of what we’ve learned about Patrick Byrne.
Late last year, as Donald Trump grew increasingly desperate about nullifying his own country’s election results, the then-president formed a new inner circle. As the Washington Post reported shortly before Christmas, Trump had turned to “a ragtag group of conspiracy theorists, media-hungry lawyers and other political misfits in a desperate attempt to hold on to power after his election loss.”
The article added that there were officials who tried to level with Trump, but he “sidelined” those who told him the truth, and embraced fringe figures instead. One of the figures who gathered around the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office last December was Byrne, who famously had a lengthy romantic relationship with a Russian spy, and who denounced the U.S. charges against his former girlfriend on Overstock letterhead. He was ousted as the company’s CEO soon after.
Byrne went on to start echoing the kind of bonkers conspiracy theories espoused by Sidney Powell — another member of Trump’s inner circle from last December — and sharing his strange ideas with the likes of Glenn Beck.
Reflecting on Byrne’s circuitous path, Jon Chait joked a while back, “There was once a time, years ago, when ‘CEO falls for Russian spy, goes mad, gets fired, becomes presidential strategist’ would have been a major story in itself, not merely a colorful side plot.”
[…] And now, according to the Arizona Republic’s reporting, Byrne’s outfit “will help decide” who’s responsible for counting the ballots. Would could possibly go wrong?
Remember, there’s no reason whatsoever to question Arizona’s official vote tally. The ballots have been counted and recounted. There have already been two independent audits, which found literally nothing untoward.
But for Republican conspiracy theorists in the Arizona state Senate, reality was unsatisfying, so they’ve turned to Cyber Ninjas, a Florida-based outfit with no qualifications, and which is run by a QAnon conspiracy theorist, to oversee a laughable process. The process will now apparently be staffed in part by locals who are vetted by an entirely different conspiracy theorist.
This madness will not end anytime soon, and just as importantly, Republicans in other states are eager to follow Arizona’s lead.
The Republican Study Committee has put its budget plan in writing. Democrats would be smart to recognize this as a gift.
The White House is scheduled to release President Joe Biden’s first budget plan this week, which will likely include the Democrat’s fiscal blueprint for the next decade. […] congressional Republicans will denounce the document using predictable talking points about government spending and deficits, which the party forgot to care about over the last four years.
[…] the Republican Study Committee, one of the dominant caucuses in the House, unveiled a budget plan of its own a few days ago, and as the Washington Post’s Henry Olsen explained, the blueprint is an amazing piece of work.
[…] most notable features are its changes to the major entitlement programs most Americans rely on in old age. The age at which one receives full Social Security benefits would go up to 69 by 2030, from a planned rise to 67 in 2022. Medicare’s eligibility age would rise from 65 to 69. Combined, these increases would likely keep many aging Americans in the workforce for years more than they expect or desire.
Olsen added that under the Republican Study Committee’s plan, Medicare’s structure “would also be thoroughly transformed.” That’s an understatement: Medicare currently exists as a guaranteed benefit for seniors, providing coverage through a robust government insurance program. The RSC intends to replace Medicare with a new model in which seniors would get a subsidy to purchase private insurance, and in the instances in which the Republicans’ health care coupon doesn’t cover enough of the costs, the out-of-pocket burdens for the elderly would be considerable. [Yikes!]
In case this weren’t quite enough, the Republican Study Committee’s budget calls for turning Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, and the Affordable Care Act exchange marketplaces into lump-sum block-grants to states, which would in turn be free to scale back the scale and scope of the social-insurance programs.
[…] In case any readers are seeing this and feeling some anxiety about their personal wellbeing, it’s important to emphasize that the Republican Study Committee’s plan will not pass. So long as there’s a Democratic majority on Capitol Hill, proposals like these have literally no chance of success. [Right! “So long as …]
So why would such a blueprint be important, if it will inevitably fail? For a couple of reasons.
[…] the Democrats’ hold on the reins of power may not last long. Traditionally, the president’s party loses quite a few seats two years after a national election, and given the Dems’ thin margins in both chambers, the prospect of GOP majorities on the Hill in a couple of years is quite real.
What kind of proposals do Republicans have in mind? As it turns out, they’ve put some of these ideas in writing.
Which leads us to other reason the RSC budget plan is so important: it’s a rare peek into the Republican Party’s actual agenda. […] The Republican Study Committee, representing nearly three-quarters of the House GOP conference, has put its budget plan in writing.
If Democrats are smart, they’ll not only bring the RSC plan to the floor for a vote, forcing Republicans to go on the record, yea or nay, on their party’s budget blueprint, Democrats will also take full advantage of such of a document ahead of next year’s midterm elections.
Gordon Sondland, the former U.S. ambassador to the EU, is suing former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and the government in a bid to have one of the two pay for $1.8 million in legal fees incurred during the 2019 Ukraine impeachment inquiry.
[…] When the impeachment inquiry began in September 2019, Sondland alleged, he met with Pompeo and received an assurance: while government lawyers would not represent him in the inquiry, the State Department would reimburse Sondland for all of his legal costs relating to the impeachment.
But when it came time to pay up in February 2020, Sondland said, State Department officials told Sondland that “the Administration wanted to purge everyone remotely connected to the Impeachment trial.”
[…] He played a key role in affirming that there was a quid pro quo at the heart of the scandal, in which the Ukrainian government would have to deliver on damaging information about the Bidens in exchange for military aid and high-level White House contacts.
“Was there a quid pro quo?” Sondland told Congress. “The answer is yes.”
[…] “Testifying truthfully and candidly before Congress as cameras roll was in fact a fireable offense in Pompeo’s Department of State,” the lawsuit reads, saying that Sondland uttered “words that were entirely candid and truthful (but uncomfortable to the Trump Administration).”
[…] “Indeed, Pompeo was making a promise that was not the type of act he was employed to perform, and which was not motivated by a desire to serve the Government,” the lawsuit alleges. “Instead, it was entirely for self-serving personal or political reasons in the hopes that Ambassador Sondland would not implicate him or others through his testimony.”
Those same political motivations spurred Pompeo’s refusal to make good on the deal, Sondland argues, saying that it was “abandoned apparently for political convenience.”
[…] Should Pompeo attempt to argue that his promise to Sondland exceeded his authority as secretary of state, Sondland says that he will demand Pompeo cover the $1.8 million in legal fees.
“In the alternative, if Pompeo attempts to assert that he did not possess the authority to bind the Government to reimburse Ambassador Sondland’s attorneys’ fees, Pompeo was at all times acting for his own self-serving personal or political reasons, to further his interests to protect himself and others,” the lawsuit reads. “Thus, in the alternative, Plaintiff seeks to hold Pompeo personally liable for misrepresenting his authority.”
[…] a handful [of Republicans] have launched campaigns to become their states’ top election officials:
Rep. Jody Hice of Georgia, who voted against certifying the 2020 Electoral College results and joined a lawsuit to overturn the results.
Arizona state Rep. Mark Finchem, who has pushed the sham election audit in Arizona’s largest county, Maricopa.
Nevada’s Jim Marchant, who sued to overturn his 5-point congressional loss last year.
Michigan’s Kristina Karamo, who devoted herself to claiming election fraud in every pro-conspiracy outlet that would take her.
All four are making bids to control elections in battleground states that will likely prove critical to determining which party controls Congress once the dust settles from the 2022 cycle. That prospect even has some Republican officials worried about how bad actors could undermine the integrity of state elections.
Someone who is running for an election administration position, whose focus is not the rule of law but instead ‘the ends justifies the means,’ that’s very dangerous in a democracy,” Bill Gates, Republican vice chair of the Board of Supervisors in Maricopa County, Arizona, told Politico. “This is someone who is trying to tear at the foundations of democracy.”
In Georgia and Nevada, these conspiracy-minded Trumpers are running to replace Republicans who they believe betrayed Trump and his voters by adhering to their oaths of office. But in Arizona and Michigan, they are hoping to replace Democrats who ran their state’s elections.
[…] “Any secretary of state who is a chief elections official is going to have a megaphone and a media platform during the election,” Grayson said. “A lot of the power is the perception of power, or that megaphone.”
The scenario that is currently playing out in Arizona with the sham audit of Maricopa County offers a window into the havoc one maligned actor with a platform could wreak. While actual Secretary of State Katie Hobbs has been laboring to reassure and educate voters about 2020 election integrity, one of the candidates to replace her, Finchem, has been pushing conspiracy theories as the audit progresses.
On Twitch, where many alt-right, pro-conspiracy voices broadcast, Finchem railed against mainstream media for calling the baseless fraud claims “baseless.”
“I hate to break the news to you, but just in case you news people haven’t been paying attention, there’s a lot of evidence that’s already out there,” Finchem said. “We’ve got the proof, we’ve got the receipts.”
There’s still no proof. There’s still no receipts. All there is in Maricopa right now is the corruption of the process at the hands of people who have zero experience in administering elections. Despite having no proof of their claims, Finchem and others are both preying on and pumping the hopes of Trumpers who still haven’t accepted the simple fact that their guy lost. Nationwide, that’s roughly two-thirds of GOP voters based on repeated polling of the issue.
Rep. Lloyd Smucker (R-Pa.) became the sixth House member to be issued a $5,000 fine for failing to complete a security screening before entering the House chamber last week, the House Ethics Committee revealed on Monday.
The Capitol Police report filed with the fine notification states that Smucker entered the House chamber without undergoing a security screening last Wednesday, even though a police officer on duty tried to get his attention.
Police officers later got Smucker’s attention after he had already entered the House chamber. Smucker subsequently went back through the metal detector for a screening after he had already voted on the floor.
[…] The Capitol Police report accompanying the fine notification issued to Rogers stated that he continued to walk into the House chamber despite setting off the metal detector. A Capitol Police officer told Rogers that he needed to be wanded, but Rogers replied: “Maybe later, I have to vote.” Rogers later returned to the security checkpoint, at which time the officer clarified he needed to complete the screening before — not after — entering the chamber. […]
“#Belarus Breaking. Pro-government channels published Raman #Pratasevich video address. He was forced to say he is confessing that he was ‘plotting riots’…”
(I don’t know what this means re the report @ #177 – could have been recorded earlier. I hope it means that report was incorrect.)
Another one of those sign of the times story. A bar owner in Troy, New York, Matt Baumgartner, reopens with a rule that patrons must show they’re vaccinated before entering the bar. He’s then inundated by calls, something threatening violence in response to his decision. “They’re all saying the same thing: that I’m a Nazi, that I’m anti-American.” Most of the calls seemed to be coming from Florida.
Then there’s Bill McCamley, former Secretary of the New Mexico Department of Workforce Solutions. He resigned his position recently and at first it wasn’t clear whether he’d resigned voluntarily or been forced out. Last week he revealed that he resigned because of a rising tide of threats to his and his family’s safety. He’s also chosen to move out of the state because of the volume of threats.
Just before the election last fall a New Mexico state senator, Jacob Candelaria, was forced to flee his home over death threats after being publicly critical of people gathering without masks at a political protest outside the state capitol.
As 21 Republican governors and counting cut off the federal government’s $300 weekly unemployment subsidy and yell and scream about how no one wants to work, a big, big thank you to one Las Vegas restaurant manager for telling it how he sees it.
“‘How much do you pay?’ that’s one of the first questions out of their mouth,” said Steven Kim, director of operations for restaurants Zenshin and Island Sushi & Grill, of jobseekers. “When they opened the economy, they should have decreased the amount of unemployment.”
How DARE people looking for work ask how much the jobs are going to pay! How f’ing dare they. Everyone knows that it is your obligation, when looking for work, to not even think about trifles like pay rather than simply getting straight to work at unknown but presumably rock-bottom wages serving Zenshin’s “8 Second Bull Ride” sushi roll: “Deep Sea Crab, Avocado, Tempura Asparagus Roll, Topped with Seared Wagyu Beef, Sesame Miso & Truffle Essence” for $17.
[…] For the record, generous unemployment benefits are not keeping people from looking for jobs. Multiple studies show that, most recently one from the commies over at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. And the Census Bureau has found that, even with the extra $300 a week, one in three people on unemployment still has trouble paying basic bills. It’s not that $300 a week that is keeping people from working at restaurants where management gets offended when asked how much the jobs pay.
Some other restaurant executives have a better grasp of what’s going on.
”The world is reopening,” Jeffrey Bank, CEO of Alicart Restaurant Group, which has restaurants in New York, Atlantic City, Washington, D.C., and the Bahamas as well Las Vegas, said to the Las Vegas Review-Journal. “When was the last time in history this many jobs were created in four weeks, six weeks? This is a tsunami of an opening. Employees have a chance to decide where they want to work.”
Which means they get to show up and ask “How much do you pay” and do a little comparison shopping. […]
“Sexual harassment, hostility and health risks are way up,” said Saru Jayaraman, director of the Food Labor Research Center at the University of California, Berkeley, and president of One Fair Wage. A survey conducted by her group found that 53% of restaurant workers are thinking about leaving the industry. Low pay is a reason for 76% of those, but the sexual harassment and hostility are presumably not making those low-paid jobs more appealing. It’s not a “Well, the pay isn’t great, but the people coming back to Las Vegas first at the end of a pandemic are just treating me with such love and respect that I can’t wait to bring them their 8 Second Bull Ride sushi roll at any pay level” kind of situation.
Things are legitimately looking up. Weekly unemployment claims have fallen two weeks in a row, to a pandemic low of 444,000 (which is still a lot, to be clear). Vaccination rates are still rising, albeit more slowly than would be ideal. Unfortunately, Republicans and too many employers think that the answer to everything—including the United States not coming back from a major global pandemic in the time it takes to snap their fingers—is blaming workers.
National Guard troops are slated to decamp from Capitol Hill this week, nearly five months after thousands were deployed to safeguard Congress amid fears of further unrest after the violent Jan. 6 insurrection.
The military presence has been a regular fixture for lawmakers and staff since mid-January, with troops scattered throughout the Capitol for high-profile events such as the impeachment of former President Donald Trump and the inauguration of President Joe Biden. […]
The departure of roughly 2,000 troops will return control of the complex back to the Capitol Police, which is now seeking a major expansion of its own capacity after its top brass faced criticism during the riot. […]
Renewed momentum around the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act as the anniversary of George Floyd’s murder on Tuesday approached has led to some optimism from those around the process that a bipartisan bill is within reach, a rare achievement in a divided Washington.
President Biden called on Congress to pass the bill by May 25 during his first address to Congress last month. But lawmakers spearheading the legislation have since said it won’t be ready.
The White House has announced its intention to give lawmakers space to work […]
[…] “Obviously, we are in close touch, and we certainly defer to the expectations of the key negotiators here. And I would note that Senator Booker has indicated that there’s good energy to the talks. Senator Scott has said that ‘The key for us … is to keep making progress.’ And we certainly support those efforts,” White House Press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters on Thursday.
“The President talked about the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act in his joint session speech, put a marker down because he feels it’s important to be bold, to be ambitious. And that’s exactly what he feels we’re hopefully working toward,” she added.
Psaki also told reporters the White House has been “in close touch” with lawmakers, though Biden officials have hardly been visible as talks play out.
“We are not going to slow our efforts to get this done but we can also be transparent about the fact that it’s going to take a little bit more time. Sometimes that happens, and that’s OK,” Psaki said Friday. When asked if the president wants a bill done this summer, Psaki said he wants to sign it “as quickly as possible.” […]
Madison Cawthorn Too Busy To Deal With The People’s Business
Last week Axios reported that GOP Rep. Madison Cawthorn led the pack of freshmen cutting class, missing a whopping 16.2 percent of the votes since swearing an oath to represent the interests of his North Carolina constituents in the House. Luckily Cawthorn has a very good excuse and it was that he was too busy making sexytimes with his new wife. (Or whatever he meant by “service as a husband.”)
“It just shows exactly how the Democrats feel about the nuclear family in America right now,” the newlywed father of none told “Real America’s Voice” host David Brody. “I will tell you, I was doing the only thing that I find more important than my service here in congress, and that was my service as a husband. I just got married about seven weeks ago and my wife and I went on our honeymoon.”
Mazal tov to the lovely couple! And where did the congressman take the new Missus? We know he’s already crossed Hitler’s summer home off his bucket list. […]
Well, wherever they were, they were so busy doing “marital service” that Cawthorn couldn’t be bothered to vote remotely. Not even by proxy.
Cawthorn had no explanation for why he needed to get hitched during the legislative session rather than during the several months of the year when the House is in recess. Instead he appeared to accuse Democrats of allowing votes to “pile up” during his honeymoon just to make him look like a lazy asshole. Pffffft, like we have to lift a finger for that.
Coming in at 14th place, the freshman Democrat who blew off the most votes was New York’s Rep. Jamaal Bowman with just a 2.8 percent truancy rate, meaning there are 13 Gippers including Cawthorn ahead of him on that list. Because Republicans are not here to govern, they just want to fuck shit up. Although most are less explicit than Cawthorn, who bragged that “I have built my staff around comms rather than legislation.”
“Every single vote that came up was some Democrat garbage, so I was happy to be able to not actually have to vote on those,” Cawthorn gabbled on to Brody, painting his fundamental unseriousness as a virtue. “Because they’re eliminating our voices. They’re not allowing us to debate on the House floor. And, I’m telling you, if I had to choose between voting with Nancy Pelosi or spending time with my beautiful wife, I’ll choose Cristina every time.”
Yes, please do that, Blondie. Choose Cristina every time to stick it to the libs! Oh, we would be so triggered.
Administration will also launch a new NASA initiative aimed at collecting better climate data.
President Biden will announce Monday afternoon that he is doubling the amount of money the U.S. government will spend helping communities prepare for extreme weather events, while launching a new effort at NASA to collect more sophisticated climate data.
While the $1 billion in funding is a fraction of what taxpayers spend each year on disasters, it underscores a broader effort to account for the damage wrought by climate change and curb it. Last week the president signed an executive order instructing federal agencies to identify and disclose the perils a warming world poses to federal programs, assets and liabilities, while also requiring federal suppliers to reveal their own climate-related risks.
[…] The Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) program helps communities prepare in advance for hurricanes, wildfires and other natural disasters. The administration will target roughly 40 percent of the additional money to disadvantaged areas.
In a phone interview Monday, White House national climate adviser Gina McCarthy said that Biden’s actions will help convey to Americans how the climate has already changed and what the United States must do to respond to it.
“That’s really going to make this climate issue real and relevant to people,” she said. “We just have to prepare for this, and the president is a realist. This is the world we’re living in.”
Monday’s hurricane briefing, McCarthy said, marked a sharp departure from how President Donald Trump approached extreme weather events. In a 2019 incident known as “Sharpiegate,” Trump and his deputies pressured the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to contradict its own experts and say the path of Hurricane Dorian would severely impact Alabama. He also repeatedly questioned the link between rising temperatures and more frequent and intense wildfires. […]
The disturbing video went viral across India in a matter of hours: Scores of bodies, feared to be of covid-19 victims, washed up on the shores of the holy Ganges River in the northeastern state of Bihar. […]
Investigators are still trying to understand what happened, but it appears to be another grim reminder of the raging death toll in the country — a death toll that is going largely undercounted, especially in rural areas, even as the official figures break records: On May 19 there were more than 4,500 deaths reported in a single day.
While a lot of media coverage has focused on the lack of oxygen and hospital beds in large cities, the real carnage is unfolding in our villages, where access to basic health care is virtually nonexistent.
India’s leading Hindi newspaper, the Dainik Bhaskar, has dispatched brave reporters to several towns in Uttar Pradesh, which neighbors Bihar and is governed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, and their dispatches should shame the collective conscience of the nation. The journalists counted more than 2,000 bodies that had either been dumped or hurriedly buried by local officials in a clear effort to underplay the coronavirus casualties in the region.
Village after village is being wiped out in Uttar Pradesh, and it’s impossible not to draw a link to local elections that were not postponed. People traveled to the state from cities like Mumbai and Delhi to cast their votes, and they brought the virus with them, infecting an already vulnerable population.
Vikas Singh, a villager from Lalganj in Uttar Pradesh, developed a cough and fever a few days after casting his vote. Six of his relatives developed similar symptoms. The local doctor, who had no coronavirus tests, suggested it was a flu and treated the entire family with what he said was medicine that would help cure them of their breathlessness. Within four days, Singh succumbed to covid-19 as the virus ravaged his lungs. His daughter, Mirsha, 22, who was to be married in two months, died from the virus, too. When the time came to cremate Singh, none of the villagers were willing to help. His wife had to pay $300 from the only savings in the house to get locals and priests to help her perform the last rites. […] He got dignity in death, a privilege that is not being accorded to thousands of Indians who are dying in villages, and whose bodies end up on river banks and sometimes even dragged by stray dogs.
[…] In Ghazipur, in Uttar Pradesh, villages are reportedly experiencing deaths in “almost every second” house. A district magistrate from a town in Uttar Pradesh, who has been very active on social media attending to requests for medical help, tells me that he feels as complicit in the death of the people he needed to take care of as the elected representatives who were last seen during the local elections. The magistrate told me that his office has received orders to not make a “spectacle” of the covid-19 deaths.
But as hard as officials try to hide the truth, people are suffering and showing their discontent. […]
Local health volunteers tell us that the scale of the devastation in rural India won’t likely be fully known. I’ve also been reporting from the ground and have spoken to hundreds of villagers. It’s probably an understatement to suggest that the real death toll is at least five times the actual figures.
But Modi and his deputies are nowhere in sight. We are seeing a complete failure of leadership. The scathing criticism of India’s handling of the pandemic is coming from all over the world. But his acolytes are focused only on salvaging the prime minister’s reputation — not on saving lives. They denounce journalists from international publications, saying they are writing at the behest of the opposition. Government ministers go on news channels talking about an international conspiracy. […]
Misinformation is spreading fast, but Modi and his political henchmen should know their lies can do little when the dead are speaking for themselves.
It has all of the elements of a Jason Bourne plot: A commercial flight carrying a dissident journalist is intercepted by a MiG-29 fighter jet under orders from the strongman president of Belarus.
This protagonist is very much real. His name is Roman Protasevich, and on Sunday, he drew worldwide attention because the Belarusian government and its authoritarian leader went to extraordinary lengths to stop him.
Mr. Protasevich, 26, was traveling by commercial airline from Athens to Vilnius, Lithuania, when the Belarusian air force scrambled a fighter jet. The flight, on the Irish airline Ryanair, was diverted to Minsk, the capital of Belarus, where the millennial opposition figure was taken into custody.
The widely condemned tactic was the latest attempt by Aleksandr G. Lukashenko, the country’s authoritarian leader, to suppress the influential voice of Mr. Protasevich.
There are few remaining sources of independent news in Belarus, where most media outlets were forced to shut down after widespread protests over a disputed presidential election in 2020.
Mr. Protasevich is a co-founder and a former editor of the NEXTA channel on the social media platform Telegram, which has become a popular conduit for Mr. Lukashenko’s foes to share information and organize demonstrations against the government.
He fled the country in 2019, fearing arrest. But he has continued to roil Mr. Lukashenko’s regime while living in exile in Lithuania, so much so that he was charged in November with inciting public disorder and social hatred. […]
What happened on Sunday?
Mr. Protasevich was returning to Vilnius from an economic conference in Greece with the Belarusian opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya […]
As [the plane] approached the border between Belarus and Lithuania, a MiG-29 fighter jet was scrambled to intercept it.
Mr. Lukashenko, who is often referred to as “Europe’s last dictator,” personally ordered the fighter jet to escort the Ryanair plane to the Minsk airport after a bomb threat, his press service said. According to the statement, Mr. Lukashenko, an ally of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, gave an “unequivocal order” to “make the plane do a U-turn and land.”
No bomb was found on board […]
Antony J. Blinken, the U.S. secretary of state, sharply criticized the government of Belarus on Twitter on Sunday for its detention of Mr. Protasevich. He called it a “brazen and shocking act to divert a commercial flight and arrest a journalist.” […]
What kind of punishment is he facing?
The government’s main security agency in Belarus, called the K.G.B., placed Mr. Protasevich’s name on a list of terrorists. If he is accused and convicted of terrorism, he could face the death penalty.
The charges of inciting public disorder and social hatred carry a punishment of more than 12 years in prison.
Republicans on Capitol Hill are arguing that a proposed January 6th commission is uncalled for because the rioters were merely middle schoolers on a field trip.
Speaking to reporters, Senator Ron Johnson, of Wisconsin, said that, after reviewing footage of the riot, “It’s plain to see that this was just a bunch of middle-school kids who got a little rowdy.”
“I’ve had teen-agers, and I know what kind of horseplay and tomfoolery they can get up to,” he said. “I didn’t set up a commission every time they raised a little heck.”
Claiming that the rioters’ behavior should be expected of “a bunch of crazy kids looking to cut loose,” Johnson said that the responsibility for investigating them belongs “not to Congress but to their teachers.”
“I think the teachers need to find out who were the class clowns behind these stunts, and say to them, ‘Any more nonsense like this and you’re not going to the water park on the last day of school,’ ” he said.
“Piracy,” “hijacking” and “state terrorism” — the condemnation of Belarus was swift and strong after it forced the landing of a commercial airplane carrying an opposition journalist. In a show of unified fury, the United States, Britain, the European Union, NATO and the United Nations on Monday lined up to call out the action in the skies above the eastern European country led by Alexander Lukashenko, often referred to as Europe’s last dictator.
In perhaps the strongest evidence yet of an attempted cover-up in the deadly 2019 arrest of Ronald Greene, the ranking Louisiana State Police officer at the scene falsely told internal investigators that the Black man was still a threat to flee after he was shackled, and he denied the existence of his own body camera video for nearly two years until it emerged just last month.
President Joe Biden says he won’t allow the Department of Justice to seize journalists’ phone records and emails, calling the practice “wrong” in a significant departure from his predecessors. “Absolutely, positively, it’s wrong. It’s simply, simply wrong,” he told a reporter Friday at the White House.
johnson catmansays
re Lynna @197: It is amazing that the body cam video didn’t “disappear” in the two years since the incident.
…The laborious project of establishing truth in the face of official lies is one that Americans embraced during the racial reckoning of the summer of 2020, whether it was individuals speaking out about their experiences of racism at work, or institutions acknowledging their own complicity in racial injustice. For a time, it seemed that America was finally ready to tell a more honest, nuanced story of itself, one that acknowledged the blood at the root.
But alongside this reassessment, another American tradition re-emerged: a reactionary movement bent on reasserting a whitewashed American myth. These reactionary forces have taken aim at efforts to tell an honest version of American history and speak openly about racism by proposing laws in statehouses across the country that would ban the teaching of “critical race theory”, the New York Times’s 1619 Project, and, euphemistically, “divisive concepts”.
The movement is characterized by a childish insistence that children should be taught a false version of the founding of the United States that better resembles a mythic virgin birth than the bloody, painful reality. It would shred the constitution’s first amendment in order to defend the honor of those who drafted its three-fifths clause.
…
Legislation seeking to limit how teachers talk about race has been considered by at least 15 states, according to an analysis by Education Week.
In Idaho, Governor Bill Little signed into law a measure banning public schools from teaching critical race theory, which it claimed will “exacerbate and inflame divisions on the basis of sex, race, ethnicity, religion, color, national origin, or other criteria in ways contrary to the unity of the nation and the wellbeing of the state of Idaho and its citizens”. The state’s lieutenant governor, Janice McGeachin, also established a taskforce to “examine indoctrination in Idaho education and to protect our young people from the scourge of critical race theory, socialism, communism, and Marxism”.
In Tennessee, the legislature has approved a bill that would bar public schools from using instructional materials that promote certain concepts, including the idea that, “This state or the United States is fundamentally or irredeemably racist or sexist.”
The Texas house of representatives has passed a flurry of legislation related to teaching history, including a bill that would ban any course that would “require an understanding of the 1619 Project” and a bill that would establish an “1836 Project” (a reference to the date of the founding of the republic of Texas) to “promote patriotic education”.
Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, in April came out in opposition to a small federal grant program (just $5.25m out of the department of education’s $73.5bn budget) supporting American history and civics education projects that, among other criteria, “incorporate racially, ethnically, culturally, and linguistically diverse perspectives”.
…
While diversity training and the 1619 Project have been major targets, critical race theory has more recently become the watch word of the moral panic. Developed by Black legal scholars at Harvard in the 1980s, critical race theory is a mode of thinking that examines the ways in which racism was embedded into American law.
…
…In the hands of the American right, critical race theory has morphed into an existential threat. In early January, just five days after rightwing rioters had stormed the US capitol, the Heritage Foundation, a rightwing thinktank with close ties to the Trump administration, hosted a panel discussion about the threat of “the new intolerance” and its “grip on America”.
“Critical race theory is the complete rejection of the best ideas of the American founding. This is some dangerous, dangerous philosophical poisoning in the blood stream,” said Angela Sailor, a VP of the Heritage Foundation’s Feulner Institute and the moderator of the event.
“The rigid persistence with which believers apply this theory has made critical race theory a constant daily presence in the lives of hundreds of millions of people,” she added, in an assessment that will probably come as a surprise to hundreds of millions of people.
The Heritage Foundation has been one of the top campaigners against critical race theory, alongside the Manhattan Institute, another conservative thinktank known for promoting the “broken windows” theory of policing.
Bridging the two groups is Christopher Rufo, a documentary film-maker who has become the leading spokesperson against critical race theory on television and on Twitter. As a visiting fellow at Heritage, he produced a report arguing that critical race theory makes inequality worse, and in April the Manhattan Institute appointed him the director of a new “Initiative on Critical Race Theory”. (Rufo is also affiliated with another rightwing thinktank, the Discovery Institute, which is best known for its repeated attempts to smuggle Christian theology into US public schools under the guise of the pseudoscientific “intelligent design”.)
A host of new organizations has also sprung up to spread the fear of critical race theory far and wide. The Foundation Against Intolerance & Racism (Fair) launched recently with an advisory board comprised of anti-“woke” media figures and academics. The group is so far encouraging opposition to the grant program McConnell opposed and has highlighted a legal challenge to a debt relief program for Black farmers as a “profile in courage”.
Those who take the Fair “pledge” can also join a message board where members discuss their activism against critical race theory in schools and access resources…
Parents Defending Education, another new organization, encourages parents to “expose” what’s happening in their schools and offers step-by-step instructions for parents to set up “Woke at X” Instagram accounts to document excessive “wokeness” at their children’s schools.
A new website, What Are They Learning, was set up by Daily Caller reporter Luke Rosiak to serve as a “woke-e-leaks” for parents to report incidents of teachers mentioning racism in school. “In deep-red, 78% white Indiana, state department of education tells teachers to Talk about Race in the Classroom, cites Ibram X Kendi,” reads one such report. (The actual document submitted is, in fact, titled Talking about Race in the Classroom and appears to be a copy of a webinar offering teachers advice on discussing last year’s Black Lives Matter protests with their students.)
Such initiatives and others – the Educational Liberty Alliance, Critical Race Training in Education, No Left Turn in Education – have received enthusiastic support from the rightwing media, with the New York Post, Daily Caller, Federalist, and Fox News serving up a steady stream of outrage fodder about the threat of critical race theory. Since 5 June, Fox News has mentioned “critical race theory” by name in 150 broadcasts, the Atlantic found.
For some of these groups, critical race theory is just one of many “liberal” ideas they don’t want their children to learn. No Left Turn in Education also complains about comprehensive sex education and includes a link on its website to an article suggesting that teaching children about the climate crisis is a form of indoctrination.
For others, it seems possible that attacking critical race theory is just a smokescreen for a bog standard conservative agenda….
Whatever their motives, today’s reactionaries are picking up the mantle of generations of Americans who have fought to ensure that white children are taught a version of America’s past that is more hagiographic than historic. The echoes are so strong that Adam Laats, a Binghamton University professor who studies the history of education in the US, remarked, “It’s confusing which decade we’re in.”
…
Still, the fact that reactionaries are looking to legislate against certain ideas may be a sign of just how weak their own position is.
Laats suspects that the right is using “critical race theory” as a euphemism. “You can’t go to a school board and say you want to ban the idea that Black Lives Matter.”
“They’ve given up on arguing in favor of indoctrination and instead say that critical race theory is the actual indoctrination,” he said of the conservative movement. “They’ve given up on arguing in favor of racism to say that critical race theory is the real racism. This campaign against the teaching of critical race theory is scary, and it’s a sign of great strength, but it’s strength in favor of an idea that’s already lost.”
Or at least, so we hope.
Last week I called Paweł Machcewicz, a Polish historian who has been at the center of a battle in his own country between those who want to tell the truth about the past, and those who want to weaponize history for political purposes. Machcewicz was one of the historians who uncovered evidence of Polish complicity in Nazi war crimes, and as the founding director of the Museum of the Second World War in Gdańsk, he attempted to provide an accurate account of Poland’s experience in the war. The far-right ruling party, Law and Justice, deemed the museum insufficiently patriotic and fired him. The next year, the government passed legislation to outlaw accusing Poland of complicity in Nazi war crimes.
“Democracy turned out to be very fragile,” Machcewicz said. “I knew history was important for Law and Justice, but it became a sort of obsession. I never thought that as a founding director of a museum of the second world war, I would become a public enemy.”
“You never know what price you have to pay for independent history,” he added. “I don’t think it will ever go as far in the US as Poland, but some years ago, I also felt quite secure in my country.”
Day after day they flock to the emerald green house on Estévez Street, seeking news of loved ones who have vanished without a trace.
…
Others sought daughters or wives, Central American women feared to have fallen prey to the house’s proprietor, the former police officer and alleged serial killer Hugo Ernesto Osorio Chávez, who is feared to have buried his victims inside.
…
The mass grave at No 11 Estévez Street was discovered on the night of 7 May after neighbours called police having heard the cries of a young woman. By the time police arrived more than an hour later she and her mother were dead – reportedly bludgeoned to death with an iron tube by Osorio, who confessed to the crimes. While taking the 51-year-old into custody, police stumbled across the half-buried bodies of two men in the house’s patio and, when they started digging, found more corpses below in a series of pits.
Authorities have yet to announce the precise number of bodies buried inside but the excavators still probing its foundations believe there could be as many as 40, and no fewer than 15.
Officials say they believe most of the victims are young women who Osorio lured home by reportedly promising to help them find work in Mexico. At least three were young children aged two, seven and nine. Nine other suspects have been arrested, among them people traffickers and other former members of the police and military, fueling suspicions Osorio also used his clandestine cemetery to dispose of other people’s victims.
…
The case has sent shock waves through El Salvador and cast a spotlight on the femicide emergency raging across Latin America, from Argentina to Mexico, where 4,000 women were killed in 2019 alone.
El Salvador has long been considered one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a woman, a reality that forces many to flee north to seek shelter in the United States. Last year, 541 women disappeared in the country with a population of 6.7 million, according to Ormusa (the Organisation of Salvadorian Women for Peace).
“The serial killer of women in Chalchuapa is not an isolated incident,” said the feminist and social activist Morena Herrera.
“It is an incident rooted in two factors: society’s permissiveness towards violence against women and institutional complicity. El Salvador’s institutions care very little about the lives of women and I’m not just talking about the police,” Herrera added.
…
…Authorities – apparently unsettled by the outcry over what local newspapers are calling “the slaughter of Chalchuapa” – have sought to portray the killings as the freakish actions of a deranged “psychopath”, although the arrests of former members of the security forces seemed to undercut that narrative.
“Thanks to the swift action of our officers and investigators, he will spend at least 100 years in prison,” El Salvador’s social media-savvy president tweeted last Friday, vowing Osorio would never again enjoy direct sunlight.
Earlier in the day the attorney general, Rodolfo Delgado, had attacked the media’s “morbid” reporting while the security minister, Gustavo Villatoro, criticised “malicious” journalists using the case to draw broader conclusions about the security situation in the Central American country and the increase in disappearances.
For families of El Salvador’s missing the discovery has provided a tiny ray of hope that at least there may be some answers for those looking for missing relatives. One security officer guarding the crime scene said up to 15 people were arriving each day in search of answers and remains….
Here’s a link to the May 25 Guardian coronavirus world liveblog.
From there:
Mass vaccination of children against Covid-19 moved a step closer as Moderna became the second manufacturer to announce successful trial results, showing its vaccine can stop transmission in people aged 12 to 18….
EU expects enough doses to fully vaccinate population by end of September
The European Union expects to receive over 1 billion doses of Covid-19 vaccines by the end of September from four drugmakers, a document seen by Reuters shows.
The over 1 billion doses estimated by the end of September would be sufficient to immunise the entire EU population of 450 million, well beyond the EU’s initial goal of vaccinating at least 70% of its adult population by the end of the summer.
The estimates take into account only vaccines from four drugmakers: Pfizer-BionTech, Johnson & Johnson, AstraZeneca and Moderna.
They exclude doses from German biotech firm CureVac and French drugmaker Sanofi, which have signed contracts with the EU for hundreds of millions of doses but are struggling to develop their vaccines and get them approved by EU regulators.
The EU is currently in a dispute with AstraZeneca over its earlier failure to deliver promised supplies.
EU leaders have agreed to donate at least 100m doses of Covid-19 vaccines to poorer countries by the end of the year as supplies steadily rise across Europe….
The Associated Press sent a memo to the news agency’s editorial staff this weekend about its controversial decision to fire a young staff reporter, Emily Wilder, following a conservative campaign to have her removed over her college activism regarding Israel-Palestine. The memo, obtained by The Intercept, assured staffers that “we hear you” and “you will have a voice,” then goes on to stand by the decision. “We did not make it lightly,” the memo notes. Signed by 10 senior executives, one signature is conspicuously absent: AP’s Executive Editor Sally Buzbee.
On Monday, Buzbee insisted to NPR that she had no involvement in the decision, saying that she had already handed over day-to-day operations after accepting a new job at the Washington Post. Buzbee’s first day as the Post’s executive editor will be June 1.
Two AP staffers, who spoke to The Intercept on the condition of anonymity to avoid professional reprisal, said that Buzbee’s distancing from the issue reflects how controversial the firing is — both within the news agency and beyond. (Lauren Easton, a spokesperson for AP, declined to comment on why Buzbee did not sign the memo.)
“Sally doesn’t want the controversy directly attached to her name,” one of the AP staffers speculated.
Wilder, a 22-year-old who graduated from Stanford University last year, joined AP as a news associate earlier this month. Last week, she became the target of Stanford College Republicans who deemed her an “anti-Israel agitator” in a Twitter thread, pointing to her membership in student organizations like Jewish Voice for Peace and Students for Justice in Palestine, as well as a Facebook post mocking Sheldon Adelson, the late Republican billionaire and ardent defender of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The tweets were later amplified by right-wing news outlets and even Republican Sen. Tom Cotton. The campaign targeting Wilder came after she tweeted criticism of news coverage of Israel’s occupation of Palestine.
An AP editor assured Wilder that she would not be fired for her old posts on social media, Wilder has said. Then she was fired on Thursday for violating the news agency’s social media policy. Citing a company policy of not commenting on personnel matters, AP has declined to specify what rules Wilder violated, except to say that she was terminated “for violations of AP’s social media policies during her time at AP.”
The firing has become a major controversy within the news agency. On Monday, over 100 AP staffers publicly condemned the firing in an open letter, saying that the organization was bowing to a “smear campaign.” In response to the letter, AP said, “The Associated Press looks forward to continuing the conversation with staff about AP’s social media policy.”
This afternoon, the union representing Washington Post reporters tweeted, “Solidarity with the staff of the @AP and Emily Wilder. We hope management provides swift answers on her termination and clarifies the newsroom’s social media practices.” (This is the first tweet the Washington Post Guild has issued since welcoming Buzbee’s hiring on May 11.)
One AP staffer told me that while there’s a “spectrum” of opinion on whether Wilder violated any rules, “all concur that firing blew up in management’s face.”
Wilder issued a statement on Saturday saying, “I am one victim to the asymmetrical enforcement of rules around objectivity and social media that has censored so many journalists — particularly Palestinian journalists and other journalists of color — before me.”
In an interview, Wilder said she remains frustrated with the challenge of defending herself against violations that AP says took place but refuses to specify. “What’s most unfair is that they refused to explain what tweet was problematic or exactly what policy I violated,” Wilder told me. “I’m not sure how I am supposed to understand, learn, or defend myself if they can’t tell me what I did wrong.”
…
On Monday afternoon, Brian Carovillano, AP’s managing editor, sent staff another memo outlining new efforts for “expanding the conversation taking place about AP’s approach to social media.” That memo, also obtained by The Intercept, describes plans to establish “group conversations” among AP’s reporters to discuss social media guidelines “in a collaborative, deliberative way,” starting next week. A committee, the memo says, will review ideas produced by these conversations and “bring the best of them forward by September 1.”…
French and German YouTubers, bloggers and influencers have been offered money by a supposedly UK-based PR agency with apparent Russian connections to falsely tell their followers the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine is responsible for hundreds of deaths.
Fazze, which said it was an “influencer marketing platform … connecting bloggers and advertisers”, claimed to be based at 5 Percy Street in London but is not registered there. On Tuesday, it closed its website and made its Instagram account private.
The agency contacted several French health and science YouTubers last week and asked them, in poor English, to “explain … the death rate among the vaccinated with Pfizer is almost 3x higher than the vaccinated by AstraZeneca”.
The influencers were told to publish links on YouTube, Instagram or TikTok to reports in Le Monde, on Reddit and on the Ethical Hacker website about a leaked report containing data that supposedly substantiates the claim.
The article in Le Monde is about data reportedly stolen by Russian hackers from the European Medicines Agency and later published on the Dark Web. It contains no information on mortality rates. The pages on the other two sites have been deleted.
The influencers were asked to tell their subscribers that “the mainstream media ignores this theme”, and to ask: “Why some governments actively purchasing Pfizer vaccine, which is dangerous to the health of the people?”
The brief also included requests to “act like you have the passion and interest in this topic”, and to avoid using the words “advertising” or “sponsored” in posts or videos because “the material should be presented as your own independent view”.
Screen shots of the emails were posted on Twitter by Léo Grasset, a popular French science YouTuber with nearly 1.2m subscribers. Grasset said the campaign had a “colossal budget” but that the agency refused to identify its client.
The French investigative news site Numerama also published extracts from the exchanges, including Fazze’s exhortation to “encourage viewers to draw their own conclusions, take care of themselves and their loved ones”.
Mirko Drotschman, a German YouTuber and podcaster with 1.5 million subscribers, also posted a screenshot of an email asking him to take part in an “information campaign” about “a significant number of deaths” after the Pfizer shot.
“Please send us statistics on the age of your subscribers … and how much it would cost,” the mail concluded….
According to LinkedIn, Fazze’s management come from Moscow and have worked for an agency reportedly founded by a Russian entrepreneur.
French media have pointed to the similarities between Fazze’s message and the official Twitter account of Russia’s Sputnik V – a viral vector vaccine like AstraZeneca – which has repeatedly claimed “real world data” shows they are “safer and more efficient” than mRNA vaccines.
An EU study last month accused Russian and Chinese media of “state-sponsored disinformation” aimed at sowing mistrust in western vaccines by sensationalising safety concerns, making “unfounded links between shots and deaths in Europe”, and promoting Russian and Chinese vaccines as superior.
An EU study last month accused Russian and Chinese media of “state-sponsored disinformation” aimed at sowing mistrust in western vaccines by sensationalising safety concerns, making “unfounded links between shots and deaths in Europe”, and promoting Russian and Chinese vaccines as superior.
It would be to Putin’s advantage if more non-Russians died from coronavirus infections. Not to mention that sowing distrust in institutions and in other governments is also to Putin’s advantage.
Glad to see the disinformation campaign was spotted and outed.
“Critical race theory is the complete rejection of the best ideas of the American founding. This is some dangerous, dangerous philosophical poisoning in the blood stream,” said Angela Sailor, a VP of the Heritage Foundation’s Feulner Institute and the moderator of the event.
The opposite of truth. This kind of lie reminds me of Trump’s method of “branding” concepts that he wants to oppose. This is disgusting. This is what’s dangerous.
News coming in from Associated Press that the US will reach 50% of American adults fully vaccinated against coronavirus.
President Joe Biden had previously set a goal of having 70% of all adults receiving at least one dose of the vaccine by July 4th.
Since ramping up its vaccine distribution, coronavirus case and deaths have dramatically fallen across the nation.
There are currently three vaccines in use in the United States. The Biden administration has increased the number of inoculations it is exporting to other nations.
As I said above, the US should reach 50% of the total population having received at least one dose soon as well.
“It’s official. Biden fulfills campaign promise to reopen Jerusalem consulate to engage with Palestinians. It’s a smart move to have a senior official – the Consul General – to deal with the Palestinians….”
Republican leaders could’ve simply done the right thing, and condemned Greene’s garbage.
It was last week when Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) added to her greatest-hits collection, comparing a mask mandate on Capitol Hill during a pandemic to Nazis forcing Jews to wear gold stars. The right-wing congresswoman insisted the House leadership’s masks policies are “exactly” similar to Jews being “put in trains and taken to gas chambers in Nazi Germany.”
Soon after, Greene reiterated her Holocaust-focused rhetoric, and she then did it once again this morning.
As we’ve discussed, the question isn’t whether the unhinged Georgia Republican will keep engaging in ridiculous antics; the question is what her party is prepared to do about it. The answer became a little clearer a couple of hours ago.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy joined a quick chorus of outrage at Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., on Tuesday after she doubled-down on her comparison of Covid-19-related rules to the Holocaust.
It took several days, but McCarthy finally issued a written statement calling Greene’s Holocaust rhetoric “appalling,” adding, “Let me be clear: the House Republican Conference condemns this language.” Similarly, House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.), the #2 Republican in the chamber, added that he “does not agree with these comments and condemns [Greene’s] comparisons to the Holocaust.”
That’s the good news.
The bad news is, House GOP leaders couldn’t simply criticize one of their conference’s most offensive extremists; they also felt the need to take cheap rhetorical shots at Democrats, too.
McCarthy’s statement for example, before saying that House Republicans condemn Greene’s language, said, “At a time when the Jewish people face increased violence and threats, anti-Semitism is on the rise in the Democrat Party and is completely ignored by Speaker Nancy Pelosi.” Scalise did the same thing, adding this morning, “We also need to be speaking out strongly against the dangerous anti-Semitism that is growing on our streets in the Democrat party.”
It’s just so tiresome. […] Because partisanship must be paramount, McCarthy and Scalise were also careful to smear their rivals in the Democratic Party — which they continue to call the “Democrat Party” […]
Also note, neither McCarthy nor Scalise gave any indication they’re prepared to act beyond their perfunctory rebukes. As we’ve discussed, Greene has already lost her committee assignments — a step McCarthy and the vast majority of House Republicans tried to prevent — but the Republican leadership has other options. The minority leader could, for example, recruit and endorse a primary rival. He could announce that she will not have the party’s support during her re-election bid. McCarthy could even call for her expulsion.
As things stand, the House GOP leader has issued a blame-both-sides statement that gives no indication of further action. If McCarthy expects this to discourage Greene, she’s already proving otherwise.
Trump issued a statement yesterday claiming an election audit in New Hampshire has “revealed that large-scale voting machines” appear to have counted “NON-EXISTING VOTES.” Two sentences later, the former president added that he considered his his own assertion is “probably” true.
A federal judge accused former Attorney General Bill of plotting to get a “jump” on the department’s “public relations” spin of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report and then obscuring that scheme in later Freedom of Information Act litigation.
The swipes at Barr’s handling of the Mueller probe came in previously redacted portions of a May 3 opinion that ordered the release of an internal DOJ memo related to the Mueller report.
Judge Amy Berman Jackson unsealed the unredacted opinion Tuesday after the Biden administration agreed to a release of her opinion in full, even as it’s fighting in court to keep some parts of the internal DOJ memo private.
The litigation and Jackson’s description of the memo sheds light on how Barr sought to shape the public perception of Mueller’s probe, by releasing a letter to Congress “summarizing” Mueller’s report several weeks ahead of when it made the report itself public.
Jackson and another federal judge have said Barr’s summary didn’t square up with Mueller’s own explicit refusal in his report to clear the former president’s conduct.
The memo being sought in the FOIA case was assembled by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel — which gives legal advice to the federal government — in the weekend between when Barr received the report from Mueller and when he sent the summary letter.
Jackson earlier this month ordered the department to release previously redacted portions of the memo, because she concluded that the sections did not meet FOIA’s carve outs for “predecisional” deliberations and for attorney-client privilege.
The Biden administration late Monday night agreed to release some of the memo sections in question, but is appealing her findings for other parts of the memo.
The unredacted version of Jackson’s opinion includes a lengthy section in which she describes what Trump’s DOJ was up to in the withheld parts of the OLC memo.
One of the “apparent purposes of the memorandum” was to “justify the Attorney General’s plan to opine about the strength of the evidence,” Jackson wrote, “even though he and his team were well aware that under DOJ policy, there was no prosecution decision to be made.”
In Jackson’s telling, the department hid this purpose in the FOIA litigation and instead suggested that the OLC was advising Barr on whether to prosecute Trump. In a filing Monday night, the Biden administration acknowledged that a decision whether to prosecute Trump was never “in play,” given a DOJ policy prohibiting charges being brought against siting president.
Instead, the OLC was advising Barr on whether he could come to his own determination as to whether the conduct Mueller described would be of the sort that the DOJ would prosecute, if it were not for its internal policy of not charging sitting presidents. The OLC memo, according to the judge, also weighed in on whether Barr could communicate his determination to the public.
“This is news,” Jackson said, as the DOJ’s filings in the FOIA litigation did not inform “the Court that whether the Attorney General should offer a public opinion was even a subject of the memorandum.”
Once she herself got to review the memo in private, it revealed “that there was no decision actually being made as to whether the then-President should be prosecuted.”
Instead, “the agency was girding for a preemptive strike on the Mueller report,” she wrote.
According to Jackson, the department had not been not been candid about the memo’s purpose. She said the government’s arguments in the FOIA case suggested “that the Attorney General’s advisors were helping him make a decision about whether to initiate or decline a prosecution.”
“So why did the Attorney General’s advisors, at his request, create a memorandum that evaluated the prosecutive merit of the facts amassed by the Special Counsel? Lifting the curtain reveals the answer to that too: getting a jump on public relations,” she wrote….
When Interior Secretary Deb Haaland gave up her congressional seat to join the White House cabinet, she created a U.S. House vacancy. A week from today, voters in New Mexico’s 1st congressional district will fill that vacancy.
At first blush, Democrats have reason to be optimistic about the race. This is, after all, a district President Joe Biden won by 23 points, and Deb Haaland was a popular incumbent, winning by a similar landslide last fall. For the special election, the party has nominated State Rep. Melanie Stansbury (D), who’s already won local contests, and who’s focusing her message on addressing infrastructure, fight climate change, drought, and food insecurity.
But Politico ran a report today on the special election, focusing specifically on the message from Stansbury’s Republican opponent.
Her Republican opponent used the same pre-election push to warn that [Stansbury] would be heading to Washington to “defund the police” and back legislation to close all federal prisons within 10 years, releasing infamous criminals out on the street. “Think about who’s in federal prison right now: El Chapo, the co-founder of al Qaeda, the Oklahoma City bomber, the Unabomber,” state Sen. Mark Moores told a luncheon of three dozen Republican women on Friday. “That is how radical this agenda is, and we have to stop it.” [JFC!]
[…] there are no Democratic congressional candidates, in New Mexico or elsewhere, who’ve endorsing closing all federal prisons.
[…] A Republican congressional candidate, fearing a likely defeat in a Democratic-leaning district, feels the need to tell demagogic lies about his opponent in the hopes of remaining competitive. This is hardly the first time such a political dynamic has unfolded in recent years.
But the special election in New Mexico’s 1st is offering the parties a test-drive of sorts. Politico’s report added, “Both parties are using next week’s race in this central New Mexico district to test their messaging” ahead of next year’s midterm cycle.
And that’s what makes this notable. Stansbury and her party believe the key to success is to focus on a post-pandemic recovery and ambitious governing goals. Moores and the GOP hope to shift attention away from the post-pandemic recovery — it makes Biden look better, and Republicans opposed the American Rescue Plan — and the party has no ambitious governing goals to pursue.
And so, Moores is going with “defund the police” and the idea that Democrats intend to let terrorists walk the streets.
We knew Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign chair, lied to prosecutors. Now, we’re finally learning what it is he lied about.
[…] the former president’s campaign chairman, deputy campaign chairman, campaign adviser, lawyer, and national security adviser, among others, were all convicted of assorted felonies.
But even within this motley crew, Paul Manafort still stands out as special.
Manafort, of course, oversaw Trump’s political operation in 2016, before he was convicted of a variety of felonies, including tax fraud and bank fraud, and he even served some time in federal prison — right up until Trump pardoned him, rewarding his former aide for failing to cooperate with law enforcement.
But there’s long been some mystery surrounding the short-lived cooperation agreement Manafort initially reached with Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team. We know that Manafort ended up lying about a great many things, which in turn voided the agreement and sent the Republican to prison. What we didn’t know was some of the relevant details: court records of the episode included a variety of redactions, obscuring key elements.
[…] the materials are being unredacted, which means we now have a better sense of what the former president’s campaign chairman lied to prosecutors about […] TPM noted yesterday:
The evidence that Special Counsel Robert Mueller had suggesting that Paul Manafort was sharing polling with a shady figure with links to Russian intelligence was more extensive than previously known, as revealed by documents unsealed Monday in Manafort’s case.
Quite right. As Rachel explained on last night’s show, Manafort specifically lied about sharing internal campaign polling data — during the 2016 campaign, as Russia was targeting our political system in the hopes of putting Donald Trump in power — with Konstantin Kilimnik, a former Manafort business associate whom U.S. officials have identified as a Russian intelligence agent.
It was just last month when the U.S. Treasury Department said Kilimnik relayed the information he received from Team Trump to Russian Intelligence Services.
So where does that leave us? For one thing, Manafort insisted that the internal campaign polling data he shared wasn’t important. According to the newly unredacted court documents, that wasn’t true.
For another, the same unredacted filings indicate that Manafort also lied about knowing that the leaked information would be passed along to the Kremlin.
I’m mindful of the debate surrounding the opaque definition of “collusion” — a political term, not a legal one — but none of these revelations do Team Trump any favors. Donald Trump’s own campaign chair shared internal information with a Russian intelligence officer, who conveyed that information to Russian Intelligence Services, during Russia’s attack on our elections, and then lied about it to federal prosecutors.
Occasionally, the former president likes to claim that the Russia scandal was a “hoax.” It’s among the most important lies he’s ever told.
[…] Just below the surface, there’s a little more to this. As we’ve discussed, Biden’s plan for the IRS is the kind of revenue-generating idea that conservatives should be comfortable with.
When it comes to financing the president’s domestic agenda, there’s a predictable fight underway about taxes — or more specifically, tax rates. Democrats want to ask more from the wealthy and big corporations, while Republicans want to shield the rich and powerful while pretending to be a working-class party.
But Biden’s IRS plan is a little different.
The service has been gradually undermined for years, which in turn has made it far more difficult for the agency to be aggressive in pursuing possible tax cheats, which in turn has meant less revenue for policy priorities. Spending more on the IRS would almost certainly mean a lot more money for the treasury, even with existing tax rates.
As Catherine Rampell explained in a recent column, “How do you raise tax revenue without raising taxes? By increasing enforcement of existing tax law and making sure every penny already owed gets paid.”
By some measures, strengthening the IRS could generate an additional $700 billion in tax revenue over the next decade […] For the “law and order” party, this shouldn’t be too heavy a lift.
In effect, White House officials are telling Republicans, “We have an idea to raise federal revenue, to help pay for key priorities, without raising tax rates.”
To which Republicans are effectively telling the White House, “We’re against that, too.”
Indeed, as Eric Levitz noted, Donald Trump’s former legislative director, Marc Short, is helping spearhead the effort against efforts to bolster the IRS, and his group’s message is far from subtle:
The 30-second spot shows an army of shadowy IRS agents — all apparently clones of the same bespectacled man — stalking anxious middle-class taxpayers with surveillance drones. This is “the new America,” the voice-over warns, “where congressional Democrats want to defund the police, and Biden wants to add thousands of IRS agents.” To prevent their nation from becoming a dystopian hellscape in which criminals murder with impunity — while IRS agents arrest small-business owners for math errors — viewers must call their representatives now.
[…] these conservatives want to be seen as allies of law enforcement, except for those who enforce tax laws. The right would have Americans believe tax cheats aren’t a problem, but efforts to catch tax cheats are a problem.
[…] There’s broad agreement for the need to invest in U.S. infrastructure. Can we inch the corporate tax rate higher? Republicans say no. Can we ask more of millionaires and billionaires? Republicans say no. Can we strengthen the IRS to enforce existing tax laws? Republicans are saying no to that, too. […]
Team Trump pioneered the practice of raising money through pre-checked boxes and recurring contributions. Sen. Amy Klobuchar has proposed a ban.
[…] The FEC voted unanimously on May 6 that recurring contributions through prechecked boxes should be banned.
Of course, FEC members can’t unilaterally alter federal election laws — it’s an enforcement agency, not a policymaking one — which is why the commissioner specifically asked Congress to protect the public and prospective donors by strengthening the campaign-finance system.
Yesterday, as NBC News reported, a group of senators answered the call.
Senate Democrats introduced legislation Monday to ban political campaigns from prechecking recurring political donation boxes after a number of former President Donald Trump’s supporters complained that they’d been duped into contributing more than they’d intended to. […] The bill would require contributors to consent to recurring charges and require political committees or campaigns to inform donors about how to cancel recurring contributions.
The lead sponsor is Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), who chairs the Senate Rules Committee, which has jurisdiction over campaign-finance laws and the administration of federal elections. As of this morning, the bill — the “Rescuing Every Contributor from Unwanted Recurrences” Act” (RECUR Act) — has seven co-sponsors: six Democrats and an independent who caucuses with Democrats.
That list may yet grow, but if Republicans refuse to support the measure, it suggests the bill may not survive a GOP filibuster.
[…] Team Trump set up a default system for online donors: by adding easily overlooked pre-checked boxes and opaque fine print, the then-president’s operation was able to fleece unsuspecting donors for months. Not surprisingly, banks and credit card companies were soon inundated “with fraud complaints from the president’s own supporters about donations they had not intended to make, sometimes for thousands of dollars.” Some donors even canceled their cards just to make the recurring payments to Trump stop.
[…] effectively fleecing his own supporters, and while the former president didn’t like the reporting, he also didn’t contest any of its specific details.
The original article added that the tools Team Trump relied on are being “exported … across the Republican Party, presaging a new normal for G.O.P. campaigns.” […] “Those donors who do not proactively uncheck the box will have their credit cards billed or bank accounts deducted for donations every month.”
[…] What made Trump’s and his party’s tactics unusual was the predatory nature of their tactics. The specific tool may be relatively common, but Republicans’ efforts to hide and intimidate stood out for a reason.
The National Republican Congressional Committee’s donation page read last month, for example, “If you UNCHECK this box, we will have to tell Trump you’re a DEFECTOR & sided with the Dems. CHECK this box and we can win back the House and get Trump to run in 2024.” All of that text is bolded. Below it, in text that isn’t bold, the box added, “Make this a monthly recurring donation.”
The appeal came on the heels of a different recent NRCC fundraising pitch with a similar pre-checked yellow box. “If you want Trump to run for President in 2024, check this box,” it read. “If we flip 5 seats and the House RED, Trump says he’ll run. Uncheck this box, we lose.”
Trump didn’t actually say this, of course. The National Republican Congressional Committee simply wanted to separate its supporters from their money.
Manhattan federal prosecutors executed search warrants on three Ukrainians in their investigation into Rudy Giuliani, botched redactions in a court filing reveal.
Prosecutors with the Southern District of New York have searched the email accounts of two former Ukrainian officials, ex-prosecutor general Yuriy Lutsenko and tax service chief Roman Nasirov. They also seized the iPhone and iPad of Alexander Levin, a Ukrainian businessman who put two associates of Giuliani’s in touch with a powerful Ukrainian oligarch.
A filing by Joseph Bondy, an attorney for Lev Parnas, accidentally revealed the information by blackening lines in the court document while leaving it possible for them to be copied and pasted to another file, CNN first reported. […]
Lutsenko played a key role in Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch’s 2019 firing. Text messages that Parnas gave to the House Intelligence Committee show Lutsenko pushing the Giuliani associate for her firing, tying it at times to his announcement of damaging information about the Bidens.
Nasirov, another former Ukrainian official who met his downfall amid corruption allegations, reportedly helped to fund a $10 million loan for a project that Parnas was working on. Nasirov also attended Trump’s 2017 inauguration. […]
[…] A new watchdog report by the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General released on Monday found that between July 2017 and July 2018, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement returned as many as 348 parents to their home countries without their children and without documenting if they had agreed to be separated. In some cases, the investigation concluded, ICE knowingly removed parents without their children even though those parents explicitly stated that they wanted to bring their children with them. “There was no policy or standard process requiring ICE officers to ascertain, document, or honor parents’ decisions regarding their children,” the report states.
This latest OIG investigation adds to the mounting evidence of the sheer negligence or cruel intent behind the practice of prosecuting migrant parents and separating families at the border.
[…] at least in some cases, the report concluded, “ICE’s removals of parents without their children were intentional, and not just inadvertent incidents resulting from human error or inaccurate records.”
[…] no government action will undo the years of trauma that parents and children have now endured.”
In a sharp rebuke to Donald Trump’s cheerful, optimistic approach of “everything will be fine, shut up,” President Joe Biden and California Gov. Gavin Newsom have both unveiled plans to prepare for likely disasters before they even happen, based on something they call “science.” It is believed this “science” thing may secretly be a form of communism that will take away your guns and make your children speak Chinese.
Biden announced yesterday that, ahead of the Atlantic hurricane season, he would double the amount of federal funding to help communities prepare for hurricanes and other extreme weather events, which “scientists” say will be made worse and less predictable by climate change. Biden also announced a plan to significantly build up NASA’s ability to collect climate data, as if the space agency had any business looking at the planet we live on instead of at cooler faraway places without oil lobbyists.
Meanwhile, in Sacramento, Newsom announced that he too would double funding for disaster preparedness, but in this case it was a plan to spend $2 billion to get ready for what’s expected to be another horrible fire season in California, as well as for other disasters the state is prone to, like earthquakes, landslides, and the release of Michael Bay movies.
Neither Biden nor Newsom made any mention of the need to rake the forests […]
Visiting the Washington DC headquarters of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Biden warned that the coming hurricane season and the western wildfire season both promise to keep the nation’s disaster response agencies busy, saying his administration would “spare no expense, no effort, to keep Americans safe and respond to crises when they arise. And they certainly will.” Talk about a downer!
By contrast, Trump regularly assured Americans that the coronavirus would just suddenly go away, which was certainly a more positive message. Biden also advanced the odd idea that even people in states that didn’t vote for him deserve to be helped, both with preparedness and after a disaster strikes.
[…] “It’s not about red states and blue states. You all know that. It’s about having people’s backs in the toughest moments that they face, ready with food, water, blankets, shelters and more.”
It is unclear whether Biden has any plans to personally throw rolls of paper towels to survivors, a step that endeared Donald Trump to political satirists everywhere. It is not believed he intends to use a Sharpie on any hurricane path projections, either.
[…] As if you needed more reasons to work to keep Democrats in control of the House and Senate in 2022, let’s recall that when the GOP took over the Senate last time, Ted Cruz became the head of the subcommittee with oversight of NASA. He then spent two years hectoring the space agency to stop wasting time and money on climate, which isn’t even in space. In 2015, Cruz notoriously lectured then-NASA Administrator Charles Bolden that climate was outside NASA’s real mission, which was about exploring other planets, not ours. After all, said Cruz, space exploration is “what inspires little boys and little girls across this country,” not a bunch of boring “climate” data.
Bolden agreed that space is very nifty (as a former astronaut, he’d know), but added that NASA “can’t go anywhere if the Kennedy Space Center goes underwater. … It is absolutely critical that we understand Earth’s environment because this is the only place that we have to live,” […]
Out in California, which mostly got Donald Trump’s attention when he was blaming the state for irresponsibly catching fire, Gavin Newsom held a press conference to announce his plans for fire season, arriving in a CalFire firefighting helicopter because that’s an exciting visual for the evening news. […]
As Politico points out, Newsom has plenty of reasons to focus on wildfire prevention and suppression, like the thousand or so fires that have already hit California in 2021 so far, well ahead of the worst months for wildfire, in the fall and early winter.
[…] And without ever saying the name of the previous president, Newsom was happy to point out that the current president takes science seriously, and believes that the federal government’s job is to assist states, not to whine at them.
He reminded that “close to 60 percent of the forest land in the state of California is managed by the federal government,” with just a “very few percent” even owned by the state. “Now with an administration that is less a closed fist — and more of an open hand — we expect significant investments by the U.S. Forest Service to advance these efforts,” he said.
[…] it sure is terrible that Newsom is buying votes by doing things Californians want. Particularly since that spending is possible because the state had a pleasantly surprising budget surplus […]
Seems unfair of Democrats to pander to voters by investing in plans to prepare for disasters. […]
A video purporting to show dissident Belarusian journalist Roman Protasevich confessing to organizing “mass riots” has met with skepticism from scholars, family members and human rights groups who say that there is little doubt that he was coerced.
The 29-second video surfaced Monday evening, a day after Belarusian authorities forced a plane with Protasevich on board to land so that he could be arrested, roiling European aviation and prompting an E.U. agreement to impose sanctions. In the footage, Protasevich, seated against a blank wall in a brightly lit room, says that he is being treated “as correctly as possible” and is not experiencing any health problems.
The detained journalist’s demeanor in the video alarmed his father, Dzmitry, who told Reuters that his son’s nose appeared to have been broken, “because the shape of it is changed,” and that his remarks were out of character.
“It’s not his words, it’s not his intonation of speech, he is acting very reserved, and you can see he is nervous,” Dzmitry Protasevich said. “My son cannot admit to creating the mass disorders, because he just didn’t do any such thing.”
In the video, Protasevich’s face appears to be marked with abrasions and bruises, suggesting that authorities subjected him to “torture or other ill-treatment” before recording the supposed confession, Amnesty International spokesman Alexander Artemyev told The Washington Post.
[…] World leaders have also approached the video with skepticism. President Biden said in a statement Monday that it appeared to have been “made under duress” and called for Protasevich’s immediate release. […]
“All I can say is the behavior of the Belarus regime does not lend itself to think that in any way this statement was offered voluntarily,” Therese Coffey, a British government minister, told Sky News on Tuesday.
[…] The video of Protasevich’s alleged confession was distributed in multiple channels on the social media and messaging site Telegram that are allied with Belarus’s strongman president, Alexander Lukashenko.[…]
Sen. Joe Manchin, in all his hubristic, mulish certainty that he’s God’s gift to legislating, is demanding a colossal amount of time and energy from the rest of us trying to save this damned country. Now that includes 39 constitutional scholars who have written to congressional leaders to say, in essence, that Manchin is full of shit. In this case, the shit he is full of is on statehood for the District of Columbia.
“As scholars of the United States Constitution, we write to correct claims that the D.C. Admission Act is vulnerable to a constitutional challenge in the courts,” write the 39 scholars, including Laurence Tribe of Harvard Law, Erwin Chemerinsky of UC Berkeley Law, Larry Sabato of the University of Virginia, and Leah Litman of the University of Michigan Law School. There is “no constitutional barrier,” they write, to prevent Washington, D.C., from “entering the Union through a congressional proclamation, pursuant to the Constitution’s Admissions Clause, just like the 37 other states that have been admitted since the Constitution was adopted.”
Manchin is laboring under the impression—or excuse—that admitting the district as a state would require a constitutional amendment. Earlier this month, he said on West Virginia MetroNews’ Talkline radio that he had taken a “deep dive” on the issue and knew what he was talking about. “D.C. statehood is not a new one,” Manchin said, and remarked that the Justice Department had studied the issue from the 1960s to the 1980s. “They all came to the same conclusion: If Congress wants to make D.C. a state, it should propose a constitutional amendment. It should propose a constitutional amendment and let the people of America vote.” His home state of West Virginia, by the way, broke from Virginia in 1861 and Congress passed a bill to declare it a state in 1863.
The actual constitutional scholars disagree. “Congress’s exercise of its express constitutional authority to decide to admit a new state is a classic political question, which courts are highly unlikely to interfere with, let alone attempt to bar,” they write in the letter. They also obliquely refer to the controversial splintering of Virginia and West Virginia by pointing out that the Supreme Court “has never interfered with Congress’s admission of a state, even when potentially legitimate constitutional objections existed.” Those objections were raised in 1863, when some argued that West Virginia’s statehood violated Admissions Clause, the scholars point out. “The Supreme Court, however, did not bar West Virginia’s admission; to the contrary, it later tacitly approved of it,” the letter says.
The House passed Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton’s D.C. statehood bill on April 22. The legislation would preserve the immediate surroundings of the White House, Capitol Hill, the Supreme Court, and the National Mall as the federal district and turn the rest of what is now Washington, D.C. into the “State of Washington, Douglass Commonwealth.” It would also give the 714,153 residents of the district the full benefits of being U.S. citizens—representation to go along with their taxation, and the right to have a fully functioning local government that is not at the mercy of the whims of Congress.
That representation would include a member of the House who had an actual vote in Congress. Norton is still only a delegate. She’s a powerful voice, but has no vote when it counts. The people of Washington, D.C., have no U.S. senators, and yes, the population of the district is larger than that of either Wyoming or Vermont. That the new state would be plurality-Black (in stark contrast to both Wyoming or Vermont) has just about everything to do with Republican opposition to the fundamentally patriotic ideal of Washington statehood.
That fact—that Republicans are not even attempting to hide the white supremacist motivations behind the Big Lie and all their voter suppression tactics—that’s something that should make any Democrat think about what they’re enabling by allowing Republican obstruction. Especially when it comes to restoring and then preserving democracy.
It’s Kyrsten Sinema, who McConnell has made a bestie of, or Manchin, who has the unmitigated hubris to dismiss what’s happening before his very eyes with a sniff and a thoroughly misplaced sense of superiority, and the sense that he and he alone can bring bipartisanship back to the Senate.
[…] The filibuster has to go. It’s as simple as that.
Julia Ioffe: “Mikhail Baryshnikov, the ballet dancer who defected from the USSR to the US, apparently always checked the flight path before buying plane tickets: he never took a flight if it flew over Soviet territory.”
Well, yeah, he starred in White Nights. The first thing I thought of when I heard about the hijacking and abduction of Protasevich was him shouting “We’re landing in Russia!”
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is pretty much the worst. The prominent anti-vaxxer [source links are available at the main link], anti-masker, and anti-sound health policy scion of the famous family has done incredible damage to our ability to weather and emerge from this global pandemic, making common cause with Republicans like Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin to spread their anti-science, pro-COVID-19 message. Indeed, the Center for Countering Digital Hate found that just 12 people were responsible for 65% of all the COVID-19 misinformation on social media, including 73% of misinformation on Facebook. And No. 2 on their list? Kennedy and his […] Children’s Health Defense.
But Kennedy isn’t content just spreading dangerous, life-threatening misinformation and lies. You know how crazy California Republican Rep. Devin Nunes sued a parody Twitter account to try and unmask the author, with Trump Justice Department help? Well, Kennedy has sued Daily Kos to unmask the identity of a community diarist for writing a story attacking him for attending an anti-mask rally in Berlin that was heavily planned, promoted, and attended by Nazis. […]
[…] Here is my affidavit expressing why it’s important for Daily Kos to protect the pseudonymity of its community, boiling down to this simple conclusion: “It is essential that Daily Kos take all efforts to ensure that a registered user may maintain anonymity. This is because some of the participants in our community would be subject to adverse treatment, for example in the workplace, and in some instances even physical harm to themselves and their family if their Daily Kos identity was revealed.” We take that seriously, which is why we’ve been fighting this case and will continue to do so.
[…] instead of going after a pseudonymous community writer/diarist on this site, maybe Kennedy will drop that pointless lawsuit and go after me. No guarantees, of course. He’s a coward who has avoided going after major news organizations like Reuters and The New York Times that are writing the same stories. But we’re certainly not done legally fighting him. In fact, consider this an escalation. Because yes, Kennedy cavorts with Nazis. And so let me explain, in detail, from the top.
The community story in question is this one: “Anti-Vaxxer RFK JR. joins neo-Nazis in massive Berlin ‘Anti-Corona’ Protest,” by DowneastDem. The story was a translation of a German-language news story about the event.
The protest was organized by right-wing extremist organizations- including the AfD party and various anti-Semitic conspiracy groups as well as the neo-Nazi NPD party.
Among the speakers was Robert F. Kennedy Jr.. who warned against the “totalitarianism” of Angela Merkel.
“He sounded the alarm concerning the 5G mobile network and Microsoft founder Bill Gates. Referring to the famous Berlin speech of his uncle JFK he said ‘Today Berlin is is once again the front against totalitarianism.’”
Protester were seen carrying posters urging “Trump, Please Help” with the QAnon logo.
Kennedy sicced his lawyers on us, demanding identifying information on DowneastDem. Because of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, he cannot sue Daily Kos—the site itself—for defamation. We are protected by the so-called safe harbor. That’s why he’s demanding we reveal what we know about DowneastDem so they can sue her or him directly.
Kennedy justifies his legal assault by claiming that the community story […] calling the organizers “right-wing extremist organizations” is defamatory, and that the specific group that invited him to speak, the Querdenken movement, is “a broad-based, peaceful citizens’ movement for freedom, peace and human rights.” He claims that it “strongly opposes Nazism, anti-Semitism and all forces of extremists.” As a result, he concludes that the “article’s claims were utterly false” and “[t]he fact that the erroneous nature of Daily Kos’s inflammatory ‘fake news’ was so easily discernible attests to the journal’s malicious intent. By tarring Kennedy with Nazism and anti-Semitism, Daily Kos was employing two of the three most damaging accusations that anyone can levy at a public figure.”
Now, there are two different frames upon which to view this attack: The first is Kennedy’s assault on the First Amendment and efforts to silence a critic, even one as small as a pseudonymous community writer on Daily Kos. The second is the facts of the matter. In other words, there are two ways to approach this: What does the law say, and what is the truth of the matter? We’ll tackle both.
Let’s start with the law. Given that he is a public figure, the legal standard for defamation is “actual malice,” which is further defined in The New York Times v. Sullivan as “with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard” for truth.
Keep in mind that DowneastDem essentially translated a local newspaper account, Der Tagesspiegel. This literally destroys any “actual malice” argument on its face, no matter how much Kennedy wants to claim “malicious intent.” […] And note, it wasn’t just that newspaper that reported the rally organized and attended by Nazis. Here’s The New York Times:
Some 38,000 protesters from all over the country flocked to the German capital last weekend, the biggest number since the marches started in April. It was an eclectic crowd. There were anti-vaxxers like Robert F. Kennedy Jr., anticapitalists, esoterics, ordinary citizens angry at having to wear face masks — but also about 3,000 members of the far-right scene.
CBS News:
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., nephew of former U.S. President John F. Kennedy, speaks to people from a wide spectrum, including coronavirus skeptics, conspiracy enthusiasts, right-wing extremists, religious conservatives, hippies and others gathered under the Victory Column in the city center to hear speeches during a protest against coronavirus-related restrictions and government policy on August 29, 2020 in Berlin, Germany.
That CBS article also has pictures of people in the crowd wearing and carrying pro-Trump, pro-Q, and white supremacist extremist symbols and messages. This Irish Times article notes, “Noticeable numbers of neo-Nazis, kitted out with historic Reich flags and other extremist accessories, mixed in with the crowd.” In their briefs, Kennedy’s lawyers try to distinguish between the Victory Column protest, the one Kennedy spoke at, and a gathering of neo-Nazi protesters at the Reichstag (Parliament) a couple of kilometers away, but as this same story notes, “as the main demonstration was winding down, a small group of extremists waving historic Reich flags held an unofficial gathering at the Reichstag.” In other words, they weren’t concurrent, separate events.
[…] Our response brief has many more examples of media coverage, as literally dozens of media organizations reported on the event the same way—anti-vaxxer Kennedy spoke at an event organized and attended by extremists. So why isn’t he suing those media outlets […]
There is literally nothing in the reporting of the event that would suggest any hint of “fake news.” Rather, it’s obvious that Kennedy is using that phrase the same way Donald Trump does: as a way to refute the very reality we see before our eyes.
[…] Kennedy is a public figure, hence the standard for defamation is almost impossibly high to meet. He knows this, of course—his lawyers have told him this. And he himself isn’t an idiot. He is simply pissed at the media focus on his shady, racist, antisemitic associates and is taking it out on what he thinks is the easiest target in sight.
But those are legal arguments. […] let’s talk about the Querdenken.
Here’s the German outlet Deutcheswelle, with a … significantly different picture of who and what they are.
Meet Germany’s ‘Querdenker’ COVID protest movement. They act like a peace movement, but Querdenker march alongside the far-right, and their protests often end in violence.
Reading that piece, one gets the impression that as movement it’s certainly eclectic, yet happy to host extremists among its ranks, […] Extremist parties have strong support among its members, and its leadership has coordinated with other explicitly extremists groups.
The Daily Beast had its own look at the group, and called them “the Weird Pro-QAnon German Group Behind RFK Jr.’s Latest Anti-Vaxx Stunt.”
Querdenken 711, whose name loosely translates to “Thinking Outside the Box 711,” had tried to invite other controversial world leaders to the rally before landing Kennedy. On Aug. 7, the group’s Twitter account tweeted at Donald Trump, calling him […] Three days later, the account tweeted at Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, asking him, too, to speak about “Peace in Europe,” apparently ignoring Russia’s intervention in Eastern Ukraine.
In a last-ditch effort to score a major speaker outside of their own ranks, the group finally tweeted at Kennedy, asking him to join them on stage for “freedom and peace” […]
Voice of America has taken its own look at the rise of German extremist groups.
Last month, officials in the southwestern Baden-Wuerttemberg region added the “Querdenken 711” group to a watch list, the state’s Interior Ministry said.
“Legitimate protest against coronavirus restrictions is increasingly making way for a general hate against state and politics,” Interior Minister Thomas Strobl told Reuters.
Strobl said violent right-wing actors are spreading false claims to incite hate against the state, making “absurd comparisons” with the Nazis, and minimizing the Holocaust.
[…] violent far-right elements appear to have become more pronounced in the group, which has increasingly embraced the idea that the modern German state is illegitimate.
Meanwhile, the BBC reports that “’Querdenker’ anti-lockdown demonstrations have drawn support from a variety of groups, including the far-right AfD party, anti-vaxxers and conspiracy theorists. […]
[…] Furthermore, Querdenken is working alongside white supremacism Nazi groups in Germany. […]
At the first large protest in Berlin on Aug. 1, [Querdenken founder Michael] Ballweg cited the QAnon slogan, “Where we go one, we go all” in front of a cheering crowd. At the same event, he was photographed talking to Nikolai Nerling, a former primary school teacher who was convicted for incitement by a German court after denying the Holocaust in front of students at the concentration camp memorial in Dachau […]
Ballweg also dog-whistled his support for Reichsbürger (“Imperial Citizen”), a movement similar to the “sovereign citizens” in the U.S. […]
Note: This all happened at the event with Kennedy. […] Kennedy spoke at an event in Berlin organized and attended by antisemitic Nazis and Nazi sympathizers. […]
Obviously, this fight isn’t inexpensive. So you can help us fight for the pseudonymity of this community by contributing here. I’ll keep everyone apprised of the legal case as it winds its way through the courts.
And if Kennedy isn’t a coward, he can drop the suit targeting DowneastDem and come directly after me, as I’ve reiterated every single charge made in that one original diary. […]
Marjorie Taylor Greene made herself a GOP star. By creating chaos for clicks. Seeking money using racist, homophobic, antisemitic language. Spewing nonsense and hate. Her actions are only a sign of the greater rot in her party. It won’t stop until people stop rewarding them.
…As Gerson noted, many of the threats of violence from extremists are being experienced by election officials who don’t support the Big Lie. The Arizona Secretary of State, Democrat Katie Hobbs, who has spoken against the outrageous “fraudit” in Maricopa County, has received death threats and had to get extra security, as is the case with many Democrats in Congress.
But even Republicans who’ve stood against the Big Lie, like Georgia’s Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, received death threats. And according to Washington Post reporter Dan Zak, Republicans fearful of physical violence from Trump supporters if they cross Trump have a name for this: getting “Mike Pence’d.” It’s obviously an allusion to Vice President Mike Pence being targeted by Trump supporters — after Trump lashed out at him at the “Stop the Steal” rally — during the insurrection, who chanted “Hang Mike Pence!” and even brought a gallows to the event.
Covering the Arizona “fraudit” up close — “The Maricopa Mess” — Zak reports:
This is just a race to the bottom, according to current and former officials, who say some Arizona Republicans are worried about getting “Mike Pence’d” — facing political or possibly physical danger — if they don’t support Trump’s continuing attack on democracy. The Maricopa supervisors have been harassed outside their homes, assigned police protection and decamped to Airbnbs to avoid threats.
“My colleagues across the country in Georgia and Michigan and many other states have protection details because their lives have been threatened” since the election, says Kim Wyman, the Washington secretary of state. “It’s frightening.”
…
So the talk of a “Second Civil War,” as red states are passing more laws allowing access to guns, and as GOP officials do all they can to protect the violent insurrectionists who beat and stomped police, is clearly a signal that there is more to come.
Democrats must understand the gravity of this — and progressives should be turning up the heat if they’re not….
“Another hostage video from Belarus, being pushed by pro-Kremlin media. Sofia Sapega, the Russian partner of Roman Protasevich who was detained with him, is forced to ‘confess’ to being admin of an opposition Telegram channel that exposed names Lukashenko’s abusive police officers
Belarusian authorities today arrested her for two months.”
“RIP Josep Almudéver, who died today aged 101, the last surviving member of the International Brigades. Photo is from from 2013. Born in Marseille to a Valencian family, volunteered as a French citizen to fight in Spain, then Franco’s terrible camps. French exile and return…”
Iran agreed on Monday to a one-month extension of an agreement with international inspectors that would allow them to continue monitoring the country’s nuclear program, avoiding a major setback in the continuing negotiations with Tehran. Under the agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency, Iran will extend access to monitoring cameras at its nuclear facilities until June 24, Rafael Mariano Grossi, the agency’s director general, told reporters in Vienna.
The Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921 killed hundreds of residents, burned more than 1,250 homes and erased years of Black success.
Imagine a community of great possibilities and prosperity built by Black people for Black people. Places to work. Places to live. Places to learn and shop and play. Places to worship.
Now imagine it being ravaged by flames.
In May 1921, the Tulsa, Okla., neighborhood of Greenwood was a fully realized antidote to the racial oppression of the time. Built in the early part of the century in a northern pocket of the city, it was a thriving community of commerce and family life to its roughly 10,000 residents.
Brick and wood-frame homes dotted the landscape, along with blocks lined with grocery stores, hotels, nightclubs, billiard halls, theaters, doctor’s offices and churches.
Greenwood was so promising, so vibrant that it became home to what was known as America’s Black Wall Street. But what took years to build was erased in less than 24 hours by racial violence — sending the dead into mass graves and forever altering family trees.
Hundreds of Greenwood residents were brutally killed, their homes and businesses wiped out. They were casualties of a furious and heavily armed white mob of looters and arsonists. One factor that drove the violence: resentment toward the Black prosperity found in block after block of Greenwood.
The financial toll of the massacre is evident in the $1.8 million in property loss claims — $27 million in today’s dollars — detailed in a 2001 state commission report. For two decades, the report has been one of the most comprehensive accounts to reveal the horrific details of the massacre — among the worst racial terror attacks in the nation’s history — as well as the government’s culpability.
The destruction of property is only one piece of the financial devastation that the massacre wrought. Much bigger is a sobering kind of inheritance: the incalculable and enduring loss of what could have been, and the generational wealth that might have shaped and secured the fortunes of Black children and grandchildren.
“What if we had been allowed to maintain our family business?” asked Brenda Nails-Alford, who is in her early 60s. The Greenwood Avenue shoe shop of her grandfather and his brother was destroyed. “If they had been allowed to carry on that legacy,” she said, “there’s no telling where we could be now.”
For decades, what happened in Greenwood was willfully buried in history. Piecing together archival maps and photographs, with guidance from historians, The New York Times constructed a 3-D model of the Greenwood neighborhood as it was before the destruction. The Times also analyzed census data, city directories, newspaper articles, and survivor tapes and testimonies from that time to show the types of people who made up the neighborhood and contributed to its vibrancy.
Perhaps no other collection of businesses tells the story of Greenwood and Black entrepreneurship better than the 100 block of Greenwood Avenue, rising near the southern tip of the neighborhood. This marquee block was the pulse of the Black business community.
More than 70 businesses operated in mostly one-, two- and three-story red brick buildings clustered along the block. All but a couple were owned by Black entrepreneurs.
In this stretch alone, there were four hotels, two newspapers, eight doctors, seven barbers, nine restaurants and a half-dozen professional offices of real estate agents, dentists and lawyers. A cabaret and a cigar shop were on the block, too. […]
Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr. has convened a grand jury in his wide-ranging investigation into former President Donald Trump, The Washington Post reported Tuesday, citing two sources familiar with the probe.
Prosecutors have been investigating Trump, the Trump Organization and its officers since at least 2018. The grand jury signals that they are ready to present evidence and potentially seek indictments.
The panel was convened recently, according to the Post, but it was unclear precisely when. It will meet three days a week over a span of six months.
…
In New York state, this kind of special grand jury typically hears a number of different cases and is especially useful in complex, long-running matters.
Although much of Vance’s investigation is still opaque, court filings and witnesses have confirmed that prosecutors are investigating several kinds of financial activities that Trump and the Trump Organization engaged in.
One of them is whether the former president and his company falsely inflated the value of their properties for insurance adjusters and then undervalued the properties for tax purposes.
Another area under investigation is how the Trump Organization paid its top executives and whether taxes were paid on various forms of compensation….
Elie Mystal is on MSNBC with Ari Melber talking about it, and brought out popcorn. :)
Vance Has Convened A Grand Jury To Consider Trump Indictment [!!!]
Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance has convened a special grand jury to hear evidence about potential charges in his investigation of the Trump Organization, the Washington Post reported.
Citing two anonymous sources, the newspaper reported that the grand jury has begun to meet recently, but did not specify a start date.
Vance has been investigating Trump for more than two years. A grand jury issued a subpoena for the former president’s tax returns in August 2019, which Trump successfully fought off until after the 2020 election.
During that time, Vance has suggested in public filings that bank, insurance, and tax fraud all may be focuses of the probe.
The investigation has heated up in recent months, as New York Attorney General Letitia James joined the investigation with Vance. James’s probe began with testimony from former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen that Trump would inflate or deflate the value of his assets for lending or tax purposes, while Vance’s probe reportedly began with Cohen’s testimony about the Stormy Daniels hush money payments.
The Post described Vance’s probe as “expansive,” saying that he has been focusing on Trump’s business career before he ran for president.
After so many disappointments in the legal pursuit of the Trumps I’m hesitant to get my hopes up, but this looks promising. I hope we get to see Uday and Qusay do the perp walk.
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Trump putting the “flop” in “flop sweat”. Yes! All in all, today’s been a good news day.
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Though I am nothing if not pessimistic, having Donald sweat is worth a lot, for pure schadenfreude if nothing else. And I really don’t believe that, now that he’s out of office, he can avoid everything forever. Even if this isn’t the tolling of the bell
—————–
I don’t think Vance worked this thing for two years in order to produce nothing.
If you’re hoping that trump will be pilloried in Times Square, well that probably won’t happen.
———————-
Sure willing to celebrate over here a bit.
A sunshine break in the clouds is always appreciated.
And this does not have to be the issue that gets through all the way. It will be a drain on him. And it is not the last lawsuit.
He’s bottomlessly corrupt. We’re still barely scratching the surface.
——————–
Neil Katyal is saying this is the worst thing that has happened to donnie and the public shouldn’t give into the fatigue of…“Oh, he always gets away with everything.”
Katyal: “This jury is working three days a week. They’re working a lot more than HE ever did.”
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being an ex-president is a big difference that renders a lot of the past performance moot. Now that he’s passed on from the presidency and he’s a former president, his earlier legal “arguments” are pushing up the daisies and have joined the choir invisible.
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All I can say, its about damn time!!
Looks like Trump’s hell is about to fire up!
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Neil Katyal says: “Trump has the most to fear about this because Weisselberg will flip and he knows where are the bodies are buried.”
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Everything is the same right up until it isn’t and things don’t happen until they do. People didn’t think we would ever have a Black president until one day we did. John Gotti was teflon until he wasn’t. That’s how shit goes
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For major cases the DA will use one or more investigative grand juries. Then the evidence is turned over to an indicting grand jury that puts the evidence together. That is where we are now.
Under NY law any person who is the potential criminal defendant has the right to testify before indictment. Interesting to see if any members of the Trump crime family take advantage.
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Don’t protect his head when you push him into the back seat on the way to the jail.
Manhattan’s district attorney has convened the grand jury that is expected to decide whether to indict former president Donald Trump, other executives at his company or the business itself should prosecutors present the panel with criminal charges, according to two people familiar with the development.
The panel was convened recently and will sit three days a week for six months. It is likely to hear several matters — not just the Trump case — during the duration of its term, which is longer than a traditional New York state grand-jury assignment, these people said. Like others, they spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation. Generally, special grand juries such as this one are convened to participate in long-term matters rather than to hear evidence of crimes charged routinely.
The move indicates that District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr.’s investigation of the former president and his business has reached an advanced stage after more than two years. It suggests, too, that Vance believes he has found evidence of a crime — if not by Trump then by someone potentially close to him or by his company.
Vance’s investigation is expansive, according to people familiar the probe and public disclosures made during related litigation. His investigators are scrutinizing Trump’s business practices before he was president, including whether the value of specific properties in the Trump Organization’s real estate portfolio were manipulated in a way that defrauded banks and insurance companies, and if any tax benefits were obtained illegally through unscrupulous asset valuation.
The district attorney also is examining the compensation provided to top Trump Organization executives, people familiar with the matter have said.
[…] Adam S. Miller, who served as deputy bureau chief of the Major Economic Crimes Bureau in the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office before entering private practice in 2011, said such a “special grand jury” is “certainly not an uncommon thing to do with a large, technical and complicated investigation.”
“It’s really for very complicated cases that have a lot of information for a grand jury to digest,” Miller said, noting that special grand juries can be extended beyond their initial term with a judge’s approval.
[…] Roiphe said the recent step of seating a long-term panel shows that Vance’s investigation has progressed to the point that prosecutors will visit the grand jury, bring them evidence and witnesses, and potentially ask them to contemplate charges. They were unlikely to take that step without believing they had evidence to show there was probable cause to believe someone committed a crime, she said.
“The prosecutors are convinced they have a case. That’s at least how I read it,” Roiphe added. […]
President Joe Biden’s team shut down a closely-held State Department effort launched late in the Trump administration to prove the coronavirus originated in a Chinese lab over concerns about the quality of its work, according to three sources familiar with the decision.
The existence of the State Department inquiry and its termination this spring by the Biden administration — neither of which has been previously reported — comes to light amid renewed interest in whether the virus could have leaked out of a Wuhan lab with links to the Chinese military. The Biden administration is also facing scrutiny of its own efforts to determine if the Chinese government was responsible for the virus.
Those involved in the previously undisclosed inquiry, which was launched last fall by allies of then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, say it was an honest effort to probe what many initially dismissed: that China’s biological weapons program could have had a greater role in the pandemic’s origin in Wuhan, according to two additional sources.
But the inquiry quickly became mired in internal discord amid concerns that it was part of a broader politicized effort by the Trump administration to blame China and cherry-pick facts to prove a theory.
The decision to terminate the inquiry, which was run primarily out of the State Department’s arms control and verification bureau, was made after Biden officials were briefed on the team’s draft findings in February and March of this year, a State Department spokesperson said. Questions were raised about the legitimacy of the findings and the project was deemed to be an ineffective use of resources, explained a source familiar with the decision.
…
Though Biden officials shut down this particular inquiry, they remain skeptical of Beijing’s role in limiting investigators from accessing information that may be pertinent to the origins of the virus. US intelligence agencies continue to examine the question of whether the virus emerged naturally from human contact with infected animals or if it could have been the result of a laboratory accident.
One US intelligence report, which CNN and the Wall Street Journal recently reported on, found that several researchers at China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology fell ill in November 2019 and had to be hospitalized, a new detail which has fueled the continued debate about the virus’s origin. The exact nature of their symptoms remain unclear.
A State Department spokesperson confirmed work on the inquiry had stopped, saying, “Even though this discrete project has concluded, the State Department continues to work with the interagency to look into the COVID origins issue.”
…
Opponents of the State Department inquiry viewed the effort as alarming because those working on it appeared to actively hide their work from skeptics, two sources said.
“The way they did their work was suspicious as hell,” said one former State Department official who was familiar with the effort. “They basically conducted it in secret, cutting out the State Department’s technical experts and the Intelligence Community, and then trying to brief certain senior officials in the interagency on their ‘tentative conclusions’ even before they’d let the department leaders they worked for know an investigation was underway at all.”
During the final weeks of the Trump administration, when senior officials in the department who had been shielded from the efforts learned about how far the inquiry had gone, they pushed for a panel of outside scientists to review the findings. When scientists looked at the data, during a 3-hour long meeting in early January, the evidence collected up until that point appeared inconclusive and misguided, two sources said.
“It smelled like they were just fishing to justify pre-determined conclusions and cut out experts who could critique their ‘science,’ ” said the former official familiar with the effort. “The reason for all this became clear when real scientists finally got a chance to see their analysis, and [the inquiry’s] ‘statistical’ case fell apart.”
The briefing prompted then-Assistant Secretary Chris Ford to send a memo to a handful of department officials, including top leadership, urging caution about the group’s findings.
Ford called aspects of the analysis “gravely flawed” and urged officials “against suggesting that there is anything inherently suspicious — and suggestive of biological warfare activity — about People’s Liberation Army involvement at WIV on classified projects.”
…
National security adviser Jake Sullivan has been vocal in criticizing the World Health Organization’s efforts thus far, which have been inhibited by the Chinese government restricting their access.
“Going forward, all countries, including China, should participate in a transparent and robust process for preventing and responding to health emergencies, so that the world learns as much as possible as soon as possible,” Sullivan said in February. The State Department has echoed those calls.
The Biden administration’s effort to investigate the origins of the pandemic is primarily focused on rallying pressure and support for the WHO’s investigation to be transparent and fulsome, explained a Biden administration official.
The WHO, too, has said the theory needs more investigation and more access is required.
Biden national security officials have also stated publicly that the US intelligence community does not have any solid details about the origin of the virus….
The panel was convened recently and will sit three days a week for six months. It is likely to hear several matters — not just the Trump case — during the duration of its term, which is longer than a traditional New York state grand-jury assignment, these people said.
That’s harsh. I feel for the jurors. Hope it’s at least interesting for them, and that participating in such a big case makes it worthwhile.
Cummings says original plan would have been exposed as ‘complete garbage’ six weeks earlier if outside experts had been involved
Cummings says what happened was “a classic historic example of groupthink”.
The more people criticised the plan, the more people on the inside took the view that others just did not understand.
He says part of his job was to challenge things. He did do that, but he obviously did not do that early enough.
If the process had been opened up early to scrutiny by smart people, “we would have figured out at least six weeks earlier that there was an alternative plan”.
People would have realised the original plan was “complete garbage”, he says.
Cummings says system that offers voters choice between Johnson and Corbyn for PM deeply flawed
Cummings says that at the last election people had a choice between a government led by Boris Johnson or Jeremy Corbyn. He says any system that presents people with a choice like that has gone “extremely badly wrong”.
There are thousands of people who could provide better leadership, he says.
He also says it is “crazy” that someone like himself was able to have so much power. And it was “crackers” that Johnson was in there too, he says.
It is completely crazy that I should have been in such a senior position in my personal opinion.
I’m not smart. I’ve not built great things in the world.
It’s just completely crackers that someone like me should have been in there, just the same as it’s crackers that Boris Johnson was in there, and that the choice at the last election was Jeremy Corbyn.
He says the political parties need to ask themselves about why they present the public with choices like this.
And he says Whitehall needs to explain why people out of their depth reach senior positions.
Cummings says there were many brilliant people at middle and junior levels, but they were let down by the leadership.
He says Matt Hancock should have been fired for at least 20 things, “including lying to everybody in multiple occasions in meeting after meeting in the cabinet room and publicly”.
He says the cabinet secretary also told the PM Hancock should be fired, as did other senior people.
…Cummings said:
Like in much of the government system, there were many brilliant people at relatively junior and middle levels who were terribly let down by senior leadership.
I think the secretary of state for health should’ve been fired for at least 15, 20 things, including lying to everybody on multiple occasions in meeting after meeting in the cabinet room and publicly.
There’s no doubt at all that many senior people performed far, far disastrously below the standards which the country has a right to expect. I think the secretary of state for health is certainly one of those people.
I said repeatedly to the prime minister that he should be fired, so did the cabinet secretary, so did many other senior people.
Cummings says in February and early March Boris Johnson, and others, thought the most serious threat was to the economy, not to public health.
And he says people also thought they had more time than they did, because Covid was not expected to peak until June.
Starmer urges the government to bring forward the official inquiry.
Johnson says that will not be a good use of officials’ time.
Ian Blackford, the SNP leader at Westminter, says Dominic Cummings apologised this morning. Like Starmer, he quotes Cummings’ opening apology. (See 9.36am.) If even a ‘disgraced figure” like Cummings can apologise, shouldn’t Johnson do the same?
Johnson says he is truly sorry for what happened. But the government acted with the intention of saving lives, he says. And it followed the best advice.
Blackford asks when the PM will accept responsibilities for the failings of his government.
Johnson says he takes responsibility. He has set up an inquiry, he says.
…Absolute deafening silence over Brexit in all these things the govt was so occupied by.
Procurement, HS2, reshuffles – sure. That small project Cummings helped force through, that we know took up all emergency planning capacity in the years running up to covid, and literally took place in Jan/Feb? Not so much.
…
Cummings says Johnson thought covid was a scare story. “The view of various officials in No.10 was, if we have the PM chairing Cobra meetings and he just tells everyone it;s swine flu… that would not help actually serious planning.”
Incredible statement from Cummings there. Not that the PM was useless, but that he was so useless his presence would have actively undermined a government response.
“I am not a technical person, I am not a smart person, I couldn’t understand a lot of the models that were being discussed.” Incredible. He said this.
…
When Hancock said on March 15 that herd immunity wasn’t part of the plan, was that wrong?
Yes, Cumming says.
“That was the plan. I’m completely baffled by why No.10 has tried to deny that. You can see it in the Cobra documents I’ve brought along.”
“A lot of it was over my head.” This is really happening.
…
Cummings says he was told on March 7th by someone he trusted that “this plan could easily be mad, it could be incredibly destructive”.
…
Incidentally this timeline is extremely convincing. It tallies, almost day by day, with what we know. And Cummings in this case (unlike his idiot blog edits) is offering a realistic appraisal of his own thought process at the time.
And it is tragic, because of the reality of exponential growth. The decisions he’s talking about cost thousands of lives.
…
Cummings backtracks to the 12th. Reads out a message he sent to PM at 7:48am. “We’ve got big problems coming. The Cabinet Office is terrifyingly shit. We must advise today if you feel ill stay home.”
That morning theTimes had run a story about the PM, is girlfriend and their dog. She was angry and we had to deal with that. “The prime minister had his girlfriend going crackers over something completely trivial.” This is amazing.
There was also pressure from Trump to join in a bombing campaign btw.
…
Dep Cabinet secretary walks in and says official in charge of coordinating with Dept for Health. He said: “I’ve been told for years there was a whole plan for this. There is no plan. We’re in huge trouble.”
The Dep Cab sec added: “I think we are absolutely fucked. This country is heading for disaster. We’re going to kill thousands of people.”
…
Jesus Christ. He says on [March] 12th, the Cabinet Secretary was telling the PM that they had a herd immunity plan “like the old chickenpox parties”….
…”On the day the PM tested positive, we were told by officials that the Dept of Health had been turning down ventilators because the price had been marked up. it completely beggars belief. ”
Clark tells Cummings that accusing Hancock of lying is a serious charge. What’s the evidence?
“In summer he said everyone who needed treatment got the treatment they required…
He knew that was a lie because he’d been briefed by the chief scientific adviser himself about the first peak and we were told explicitly people did not get the treatment they deserved and people were left to die in horrific circumstances.”
“In mid-April, the sec of state told us everything is fine with PPE. When I came back [after getting covid] almost the first meeting I had in the Cabinet room was about the disaster with PPEand how… hostpials all over the country were running out.”
…
Course it could all be bollocks, because the person saying it is himself someone who doesn’t care about truth. Haha! What fun. A festival of bullshitters.
…
Quick reminder that this session is called ‘Coronavirus: lessons learned’ and Cummings’ chief conclusion is that people like him and Johnson should never be allowed in politics.
…
You get a sense of how different this new contrite Cummings is by his comments on Brexit. “Reasonable people can agree or disagree about Brexit. It’s perfectly reasonable to have the view that Remain should have won.”
Rather significant change there from the ENEMIES OF PEOPLE YOU HATE BRITAIN shit we got from him earlier. Still, welcome aboard.
…
You get a good sense for how fucked we are as a country by the fact that Jeremy Hunt, who looks like a frightened rodent caught in the headlights at night, is basically an elder statesman in this session.
…
Dunno what Hancock did to him man, but he fucking pissed this guy off.
Basically blaming him for single-handedly undermining test-and-trace. “Completely because Hancock wanted to be able to go on TV and say ‘look at me and my 100K target’. It was criminal disgraceful behaviour which caused serious harm.”
…
Amazing. “I blame myself for many many things in this crisis, but one thing can say completely honestly is: I said repeatedly from Feb/March, if we don’t fire [Hancock], we are going to kill people and it;s going to be a catastrophe.”
…
Interesting that Cummings seems to live in a very black and white universe. Everyone he mentions is either a hero or villain. Hancock is basically Skeletor. “Mark Warner”, though, “is one of the smartest and most ethical people that I’ve ever met in my life”….
Here’s a link to the May 26 Guardian (support them if you can!) coronavirus world liveblog.
From there (aaaaargh):
Indian doctors have questioned the free distribution of an ayurvedic medicine to Covid patients by the state of Haryana as the maker of the herbal concoction which has not undergone large clinical trials faced criticism.
The news comes after the state of Goa announced it would give anti-parasitic drug Ivermectin to all adults due to claims, which have raised some eyebrows – not least at the World Health Organisation – that it may help combat the virus.
Reuters has the full story:
The northern state, which is ruled by prime minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janta Party, said this week it would hand out Coronil to Covid-19 patients. The ayurvedic medicine was launched by yoga guru Baba Ramdev’s company Patanjali Ayurved last year.
The government later said the consumer goods company co-founded by Ramdev, who has a large following in India, could not market the drug as a cure, and it needed to market it as an immunity booster.
There is no scientific basis to Coronil’s use in treating Covid-19 patients, said Ajay Khanna, the state secretary of the Indian Medical Association (IMA) in Uttarakhand, where Patanjali is headquartered.
One small study suggests it could be effective, but experts have said further research would be required to support any such claims.
Ayurveda is an ancient Indian system that includes medicines, meditation, exercise and dietary guidelines practiced by millions of adherents.
Johnson ‘never wanted proper border policy’, says Cummings
Cummings says “there was no proper border policy because the prime minister never wanted a proper border policy”.
He says they could have just copied what Singapore or Taiwan did.
But Boris Johnson was at this point arguing that lockdown was a mistake, and he wanted to be like the mayor in Jaws (who kept the beaches open when the shark was a threat).
He says Johnson was worried about the impact on the tourism industry. But he was told if they did not control April there would not be a tourism industry.
He says Johnson was also being influenced by the Daily Telegraph’s “stupid campaign” on this topic, and Tory MPs were “going crackers” about this too.
He says in the early stages of the pandemic Johnson was not prioritising the economy over health. But after April it was a different story. That was when he was opposing border controls, Cummings says.
…Hancock also responsible for the deaths in care homes, apparently. In April, when they realised what happened, PM asked what had happened? Hancock had apparently said in Cabinet room that people would be tested before they left hospital and went back to care homes.
“We only subsequently found out that hadn’t happened. The govt rhetoric was we’d put a shield around care homes. Complete nonsense. Quite the opposite of putting a shield around them, we sent people with covid back to the care homes.”
Read that last sentence and take it in. The scale of the irresponsibility. The scale of the failure.
And that operates regardless of whether Hancock was responsible. Important to note that, given I’m pretty sure that if someone asked who killed JFK in this session, Cummings would say that Hancock did it….
…”Some of the people working on communications were some of the best in the world. Fundamentally the reason for all these problems was bad policy, bad decisions, bad planning, bad operational capability.”
“It doesn’t matter if you have great people doing comms, if the PM changes his mind ten times a day, calls up the media and contradicts his own policy day after day after day. You’re going to have a communications disaster zone.”…
The French presidency has appointed Laurence des Cars, the current director of the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, to head the world’s largest museum as of September 1[st …]
[…]
An art historian and specialist of the 19th and 20th centuries, des Cars won plaudits for her efforts to expand the Musée d’Orsay’s exhibition rooms and introduce greater diversity in its shows.
There’s also a video about that exhibition embedded in the middle of the excerpted article (but not, weirdly, in the older article specifically on that exhibition).
[…]
Earlier this year, the Musée d’Orsay director successfully pushed for a Gustav Klimt painting in the museum’s collections to be returned to the heirs of a Jewish family that was forced to sell it by the Nazis in 1938.
[…]
Ian Dunt (from the livethread): “I find it extraordinary, given how long this has all gone on for, that we’ve talked so little about Johnson’s delay in the second and third lockdown. Unlike the first, there are no excuses for that. And the price we paid in human life was terrible.”
The Republican Governors Association on Tuesday threw out Mike Lindell, the CEO of MyPillow and a top Trump ally, after he showed up to its spring conference in Tennessee, he told POLITICO in an interview.
Lindell said he had flown to Nashville on Monday to attend the three-day meeting starting on Tuesday, but that only a few minutes after he collected his credential at the JW Marriott Hotel, an event coordinator in the lobby told him he was not allowed at any of the official RGA events.
An RGA official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said on Tuesday night that Lindell tried to join transportation for members only for a dinner at the Tennessee Governor’s Mansion and was denied. The person added: “These events are for RGA members, and Mike Lindell is not currently an RGA member.”
…
Lindell on Tuesday shared a screenshot of a calendar event headlined “RGA – Nashville Meeting” with the attachment “Nashville Agenda[dot]pdf,” and said he had been invited to the event in the last month or two. He also shared the schedule of RGA events for Tuesday and Wednesday that had the word “CONFIDENTIAL” at the bottom.
Earlier on Tuesday, Lindell had gone on Steve Bannon’s radio show and promised to confront Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp and Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey, RGA’s chair, about the election and allegations of fraud in their states.
Hundreds of people are attending this week’s conference in Nashville, the organization’s first widely attended event to be held since the start of the Covid pandemic more than a year ago.
…
Lindell has attended previous meetings of the RGA, including the winter 2020 meeting, where a few Republican governors encouraged him to run for governor of Minnesota. Former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell brought him to that event, but Lindell was not with McDonnell at the hotel on Tuesday. Trump has also encouraged Lindell to run.
Lindell said in the interview on Tuesday that instead of staying the next few days in Nashville, he was going to the airport to leave the city on his private plane.
Darnella Frazier, the teenager who filmed George Floyd’s murder, pays tribute to him on the one-year anniversary of his death. The author and poet Caroline Randall Williams reads her powerful statement.
Cummings describes how Johnson rejected Sage’s call for lockdown in late September
The hearing is now resuming. The next session will focus on what happened in the autumn, ahead of the second lockdown.
Dominic Cummings says Sir Patrick Vallance, the government’s chief scientific adviser, advised a short, sharp lockdown. The PM refused to agree to that. But eventually the government did lock down, at the end of October.
He says Vallance and Prof Chris Whitty, the chief medical officer, came to No 10 proposing a lockdown lasting two weeks or more.
He says Whitty had said previously that, once schools went back in September, R, the reproduction number, would rise above 1.
He says over the summer he and others had told the PM not to tell everyone to go back to work. But the PM’s priority was the economy.
He says there was a long discussion on a Friday near the end of September when the PM said no.
Cummings proposed a meeting on Monday 21 September, looking at the predictions for what the data would say at the end of October.
But he says by this stage the PM was listening to people saying there was already herd immunity in the population.
…
Cummings says all credible people, in his opinion, were pushing for a lockdown at this point.
But the PM was just taking his own advice.
He says the cabinet was not asked. He says he has been very critical of Matt Hancock, but Hancock agreed with Cummings at this point.
Cummings says he heard PM say he would rather see ‘bodies pile high’ than order another lockdown
Carol Monaghan (SNP) asks how a previous PM would have dealt with this.
Cummings says if you took “anybody at random from the kind of top 1% competent people in this country” they would do things differently.
Q: Was it arrogance or complacency?
Cummings says Boris Johnson is misunderstood. People think that after he fell ill, he took it more seriously. But he thought that the first lockdown was a mistake. And he thought he had been gamed into ordering it.
Q: Did you hear him say that he would rather see the bodies pile high than order another lockdown?
Cummings says there are different versions of this. There was a version in the Sunday Times that was not correct. But he says the BBC version was correct.
He says: “I heard that in the PM’s study.”
He says this was at a different point. This was on 31 October.
[From the BBC report]:
Boris Johnson said he would rather see “bodies pile high” than take the country into a third lockdown, sources familiar with the conversations have told the BBC.
The remarks were said to have been made last autumn, just as England went into a second lockdown.
This piece of evidence from Cummings is important because Johnson specifically denied saying this, or anything to this effect, in the House of Commons. Cummings is the first on-the-record witness to contradict him.
[…] About 67% of the country’s national museums are headed by women, according to the culture ministry, a rise of 27% from 2019. In March, Catherine Chevillot, the director at the Rodin Museum in Paris, was named president of the Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine, the biggest architectural museum in the world; the Élysée museum has been run by Tatyana Franck since 2014; and Sophie Makariou is president of the Musée Guimet, the national museum for Asian arts.
Wow… 67% floored me. Great! (I note the Grauniad carefully qualified the statistic as referring to France’s national museums; so, e.g., the village’s own museum wouldn’t be considered in that count (I have absolutely no idea who is the director, and a quick search only confirmed what I already knew, it’s largely run by the local historical society).)
Q: You spoke about people saying the UK could not follow Asian countries because “Asians all do what they’re told, so it won’t work here.” Who said that and who was promoting that outdated racist stereotype?
Sarah Owen, who asks this, is British Chinese.
Cummings says he does not want to reveal private conversations. But he says there is a problem with the UK’s refusal to learn from other countries.
Q: Is Boris Johnson a fit and proper person to get us through this?
… “It’s a full-on knife fight,” frothed one insider at the Evening Standard. Another source whispered hoarsely to the Sunday Times: “Dominic has copies of everything and knows where all the bodies are buried.”
And, my, aren’t there a lot of bodies. More than 150,000 Britons have been killed by Covid: the equivalent in deaths of a twin towers terrorist attack happening on these shores every week for a year. Well over a million people report suffering long Covid, with one in six so ill they cannot carry out daily tasks. These are bodies, all right: sick and dead ones. No cache of top-secret documents is necessary to find out about them; they are our relatives, friends, neighbours. And the cause of their deaths is rather bigger than a punch-up between two middle-aged private school boys. It lies in a grotesque failure of the state.
In a country that as late as 2019 considered itself to be among the best prepared on Earth to handle a pandemic, hundreds of thousands of families are today struggling with premature death or the nursing of a chronically ill loved one, and the loss of vital income. Forget the blame game being played on Downing Street, this is an indictment of an entire governing class: lethal in its complacency, cocksure despite its manifest inadequacy, and forever blocking its eyes and ears to the lessons from history, or even the TV pictures from hospitals across northern Italy.
“When the public needed us most, the government failed,” Cummings acknowledged on Wednesday. And tens of thousands died as a result. That’s what counts, not who said what about herd immunity. [This is an overstatement – obviously it matters what the Prime Minister and people in government said about herd immunity. – SC] The machinery of state buckled, the government all but collapsed – not just once, but again and again: from PPE to lockdowns to test and trace to care homes. The result is that Johnson’s UK stands alongside Donald Trump’s US as a cautionary tale of what happens when a ragtag bunch of cash-in merchants, state-haters and incompetent braggarts are allowed to run a country in grave danger. Plenty of examples of that were given to the parliamentary committee: Johnson pretending to be the mayor from Jaws, Cummings dreaming of replacing dull old civil servants with supercomputers, and Hancock blagging his way through.
The thread that pulls all this together is denialism. The denial you saw etched on the face of Hancock last spring is now writ large across what Cummings calls the “political-media system”. Many of the pundits and politicians refuse to take on board how singularly badly the UK has handled the pandemic, even while relatively poor states such as Vietnam have done much better.
…For now, what counts for the front pages is jabs and freedom day just around the corner, the binning of social distancing rules, the return of big, fat weddings and heaving nightclubs. With all that waiting for us, the pandemic has been consigned to the rear view, its lasting effects chiefly a matter for careers in SW1.
Except, to misquote an old Athenian, just because you do not take an interest in Covid doesn’t mean Covid won’t take an interest in you. As MPs questioned Cummings, the so-called Indian variant of the coronavirus continued its advance across the country. It is no longer confined to Bolton and Burnley and a few other pockets, but is increasingly widespread across west London. And what the Cummings circus has obscured is how many of the failures that left the UK so fatally exposed remain with us….
Lindell has attended previous meetings of the RGA, including the winter 2020 meeting, where a few Republican governors encouraged him to run for governor of Minnesota. Former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell brought him to that event, but Lindell was not with McDonnell at the hotel on Tuesday. Trump has also encouraged Lindell to run.
OMFG. Lindell as the governor of any state is an effing nightmare.
The machinery of state buckled, the government all but collapsed – not just once, but again and again: from PPE to lockdowns to test and trace to care homes. The result is that Johnson’s UK stands alongside Donald Trump’s US as a cautionary tale of what happens when a ragtag bunch of cash-in merchants, state-haters and incompetent braggarts are allowed to run a country in grave danger.
The mother of fallen Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick is requesting meetings with GOP senators to push them to support a proposed bipartisan commission to investigate the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, which Republicans are poised to block as soon as Thursday.
Gladys Sicknick is seeking sit-downs with every single Senate GOP office on Thursday to emphasize “the importance” of establishing an independent body to investigate the deadly insurrection, according to a copy of one of the scheduling request emails obtained by POLITICO. Brian Sicknick died a day following his response to the Jan. 6 attack after suffering from a stroke.
“Not having a January 6 Commission to look into exactly what occurred is a slap in the faces of all the officers who did their jobs that day,” Gladys Sicknick said in a statement provided to POLITICO. “I suggest that all Congressmen and Senators who are against this Bill visit my son’s grave in Arlington National Cemetery and, while there, think about what their hurtful decisions will do to those officers who will be there for them going forward.”
“Putting politics aside, wouldn’t they want to know the truth of what happened on January 6? If not, they do not deserve to have the jobs they were elected to do,” she added.
A measure to set up the commission passed the House last week with the support of every single Democrat and 35 Republicans. But that legislation is on shaky ground in the Senate, where 10 Republicans would need to get on board in order to circumvent a filibuster. So far, only a few GOP lawmakers — including Sens. Mitt Romney of Utah, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska — have signaled support for the proposal. Even then, they want to see changes made.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has warned his members behind closed doors that the release of the commission’s findings could drag into the height of the 2022 election cycle, when both the Senate and House majorities are up for grabs. Former President Donald Trump has also come out swinging against the commission and slammed the House Republicans who voted for it.
But Republicans are facing mounting political pressure, including from some in the law enforcement community, to get behind the proposed commission. D.C. Police officer Michael Fanone, who was severely injured on the job while responding to the Jan. 6 attack, has been seeking a meeting with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy.
Last week, an anonymous and unsigned statement was released on Capitol Police letterhead and said to be authored by multiple officers on the force, delivering a rare and scathing public rebuke of top Republicans for opposing the commission bill….
Data retrieved and analyzed by the DFRLab shows that the language of the QAnon conspiracy theory movement as it has historically appeared online has all but evaporated from the mainstream internet. In its wake lies a kind of neo-QAnon: a cluster of loosely connected conspiracy theory-driven movements that advocate many of the same false claims without the hallmark linguistic stylings that defined QAnon communities during their years of growth.
…
The theory and its followers received increased public attention and scrutiny in the last year corresponding with its groundswell within the broader Republican Party base. Data analyzed by the DFRLab shows that the taglines and phrases associated with the movement have plummeted in mainstream internet venues following major tech moderation and policy actions meant to counter the conspiracy theory. While alternative social media platforms like Parler and Gab have seen swells in QAnon language on their respective platforms, those peaks still pale in comparison to mainstream platforms’ slowest days….
Trump believes the Arizona GOP’s election “audit” is “engendering such tremendous respect, even adoration.” Reality tells a very different story. [“Adoration”? JFC]
Donald Trump has been watching the utterly bonkers election “audit” in Arizona with great interest. In fact, a New York Times reporter recently noted that Trump has told people close to him that he believes the Arizona audit “could undo” the results of the 2020 presidential election.
It was against this insane backdrop that the former president issued a statement yesterday that read in part, “Arizona Republican State Senators are engendering such tremendous respect, even adoration, for the great job they are doing on the Forensic Audit of the 2020 Presidential Election Scam.”
There is no scenario in which any of that was true. On the contrary, a variety of prominent Arizona Republicans are increasingly mortified by this embarrassing fiasco. What’s more, as the Arizona Republic reported yesterday, the IT company that was in charge of running the day-to-day audit no longer wants anything to do with the partisan debacle.
The contract with Wake TSI ended May 14, the original completion date for the hand count, and the company chose not to renew its contract, according to Randy Pullen, an audit spokesperson and former state GOP chair. […]
If Wake TSI’s name sounds familiar, it’s not your imagination. Rachel explained on the show last week that Cyber Ninjas, the woefully unqualified Florida outfit run by a fringe conspiracy theorist, needed a subcontractor to oversee the actual recounting of more than 2 million ballots in Maricopa County.
[…] Last week, the Republican-dominated Maricopa County Board of Supervisors urged the GOP-led state Senate to put a stop to this madness, calling the outlandish process a “spectacle that is harming all of us,” adding, “Our state has become a laughingstock.”
They went on to write, “You have rented out the once good name of the Arizona State Senate to grifters and con-artists, who are fundraising hard-earned money from our fellow citizens even as your contractors parade around the Coliseum, hunting for bamboo and something they call ‘kinematic artifacts’ while shining purple lights for effect. None of these things are done in a serious audit. The result is that the Arizona Senate is held up to ridicule in every corner of the globe and our democracy is imperiled.”
The letter was signed by members of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, as well as the local Democratic sheriff, and Stephen Richer, the local Republican official who oversees Maricopa County’s elections department.
It was the same Richer who responded to Donald Trump’s deranged comments about the state’s election results, describing the former president’s preposterous nonsense as “unhinged.” Richer added, “We can’t indulge these insane lies any longer. As a party. As a state. As a country.”
Trump may adore the bogus “audit,” but few others are that unhinged.
SC @267, mostly good news when it comes to tamping down QAnon nonsense.
In other news: Arizona Republicans are moving forward with plans to strip Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs (D) of her authority to defend election lawsuits. Power will instead shift to state Attorney General Mark Brnovich (R), whom GOP legislators see as a partisan ally. The source for this is NBC News. Another “yikes!” moment, brought to you by unhinged Republicans.
Michigan’s top election official and the company whose voting equipment has been the subject of baseless claims of fraud are cautioning local governments in the state that outside audits of the 2020 election results like the one underway in Maricopa County, Ariz., would be illegal and would void the machines’ security warranties.
Joe Manchin is aiding and abetting the bad-faith “negotiating” from Republicans:
It took about a year for Democrats to pass the Affordable Care Act, but that wasn’t the timeline then-President Barack Obama had in mind. On the contrary, Obama wanted to see the health care debate wrap up in 2009, creating possible windows of opportunity in 2010.
But that’s not what happened. Instead, there was a “Gang of Six” — a group of three Democratic senators and three Republican senators, led by then-Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) — which was ostensibly focused on crafting a bipartisan health care reform package. The “gang” invested months into fruitless negotiations, in which Democrats pleaded for GOP votes that did not, and would not, materialize.
One Republican member of the “gang,” Wyoming’s Mike Enzi, later conceded that he negotiated with Democrats in bad faith, stringing Dems along and weakening the Affordable Care Act blueprint, though he didn’t have any intention of voting for it. Eventually, the Democratic majority recognized reality and approved their plan on their own, but not before moderate Dems wasted a precious resource: time.
Baucus’ unfortunate experiment came to mind this morning reading Politico’s report on infrastructure talks.
Democrats are warning time is already running out for President Joe Biden’s agenda. Joe Manchin isn’t in any rush. The West Virginia Democrat isn’t ready to wind down bipartisan negotiations on infrastructure, willing to blow through the unofficial Memorial Day deadline.
[…] The process doesn’t have to be a “long game.” It will only be dragged out if senators like Manchin insist on it being dragged out.
For weeks, leaders in both parties more or less agreed that Memorial Day was a sensible deadline. If President Joe Biden and Senate Republicans couldn’t strike a deal by May 31, the relevant players would agree that a bipartisan deal on this issue simply wasn’t possible. At that point, it would be up to Democrats to pursue their own plan using the budget reconciliation process (a step Democratic leaders have “quietly” started preparing for).
[…] many Senate Democrats agree that it’s time for the majority party to move forward with governing.
But not Manchin, who has more of a Baucus-esque vision in mind, working from the assumption that it’s possible to find 10 Republican senators to eventually support a Democratic infrastructure package.
[…] given the precarious state of the Democratic majority in the upper chamber, the West Virginian is taking a significant risk with a key national priority for no real reason.
What’s more, Manchin is already reportedly exploring the possibility of a side deal with some Republican senators on an entirely new infrastructure plan that’s smaller, less ambitious, and less effective than Biden’s proposal. In case this isn’t obvious, the president has enjoyed a fair amount of leverage in the infrastructure talks: everyone involved understood that if Republicans refused to strike a credible deal, Biden had the option of walking away from the table and pursuing his own plan without them.
That leverage disappears when Manchin freelances and starts negotiating with GOP senators on his own.
As things stand, Biden has already lowered the topline price tag of his infrastructure plan from $2.25 trillion to $1.7 trillion, and the White House this week said the ball is in the GOP’s court. Republicans will reportedly unveil a counter-proposal tomorrow, which will be in the ballpark of $1 trillion.
[…] pay attention to the details. When Senate Republicans ostensibly put forward a $568 billion plan last month, it wasn’t long before we took a closer look and realized the pitch was actually far smaller than it appeared.
[…] it’s time to stop pretending that there’s an effective and worthwhile infrastructure plan that can get 10 Republican votes in the Senate. My fear is this will not be obvious to Joe Manchin.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell […] has been candid about rallying opposition against an infrastructure plan and about devoting 100% of his focus to “stopping” the Biden administration’s agenda.
Yesterday, as Politico reported, McConnell was candid anew on the bipartisan plan to create a bipartisan commission to investigate the Jan. 6 insurrectionist attack on the Capitol.
McConnell warned Republicans at a closed-door meeting on Tuesday that regardless of tweaks to the bill that approving the commission could hurt the party’s midterm election message, according to attendees. He left that room and promptly told reporters that while Democrats want to talk about Trump, voters who’ll determine control of Congress next fall “ought to focus on what this administration is doing to the country.”
In the hopes of satisfying GOP demands, House Democrats made a series of concessions about the structure and scope of the proposed Jan. 6 panel. House Republicans, who probably thought their unreasonable demands would scuttle any possible deal, responded by saying they wouldn’t take “yes” for an answer.
When the bill cleared the lower chamber anyway, Senate Republicans started coming up with evolving rationalizations and excuses to oppose the plan they used to support.
Fortunately, McConnell’s approach doesn’t bother with pretenses: he wants to target President Joe Biden and position his party for the 2022 midterm elections. An independent commission would do nothing to advance those goals, so he wants Republicans to oppose it. Period. Full stop.
Answering questions about a deadly insurrectionist attack on the United States’ seat of government sounds fine, but for McConnell, prioritizing a partisan electoral strategy sounds a lot better.
[…] It would take 10 GOP senators to break ranks and advance the legislation, and as things stand, proponents are not close to reaching such a goal. Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Mitt Romney (R-Utah) appear to be “yes” votes, and Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) expressed tacit support for the plan yesterday. Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) also appears to be a likely supporter, though she’s still trying to tweak the details on the parties’ control over commission staff — as if such changes are genuinely important to her Republican brethren. […]
[…] Medicaid expansion through the Affordable Care Act is a good deal, but as regular readers know, there are still 12 holdouts. As a consequence, there are more than 2 million low-income Americans who don’t have health security, simply because Republicans in their respective states refuse to do the right thing.
One of those 12 states was handed an opportunity to act yesterday. As the Associated Press reported, it did not go well.
Republicans who control the Wisconsin Legislature on Tuesday convened and within seconds ended a special session called by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers to expand Medicaid, dashing chances for the state to receive a one-time bonus of $1 billion in federal coronavirus relief funding. The Senate and Assembly gaveled in and adjourned the special session in mostly empty chambers with only a handful of lawmakers in attendance.
The process was remarkably efficient. After Wisconsin’s Democratic governor called a special session on the matter, officials in the Republican-led state Assembly showed up, banged the gavel, and left after 40 seconds. In the Republican-led state Senate, they moved with even greater speed: the session wrapped up in less than 10 seconds.
GOP legislators not only refused to vote on Tony Evers’ Medicaid expansion plan, they also refused to even debate it.
[…] Republicans in the Wisconsin legislature are risking a fierce public backlash by expressing such callous indifference toward struggling families and their own state’s finances. […] GOP state lawmakers assume they’re free to act with impunity […] Wisconsin Republicans have rigged the state’s district lines to such a degree that the GOP keeps power, even when Democrats win more votes.
In other words, Wisconsin Republican legislators can make unpopular and irresponsible decisions, comfortable in the knowledge that, despite operating in an ostensible democracy, there’s little voters can do about it.
[…] In the Democrats’ COVID relief package, called the American Relief Plan, President Joe Biden thought he’d come up with an offer that states couldn’t refuse.
[…] the offer was straightforward: under the ACA, the federal government already covers 90% of the costs of expanding Medicaid. As Vox explained, the Democrats’ relief package ups the ante: “[N]ewly expanding states would also receive a 5 percent bump in the federal funding match for their traditional Medicaid programs for two years. Because the traditional Medicaid population is significantly larger than the expansion population, the funding bump is projected to cover a state’s 10 percent match for expansion enrollees and then some over those two years.”
It led Jon Chait to joke, “Now states taking the Medicaid expansion would have more than 100 percent of the cost covered by Washington. They would literally have to pay for the privilege of denying coverage to their poorest citizens.”
[…] how many states did the obvious thing? None. Literally, not one of the 12 holdouts has budged.
[…] they said no in Wisconsin. And Texas. And Wyoming. And Florida. And Tennessee.
Meanwhile, in Missouri, voters added Medicaid expansion to the state constitution last year, but GOP officials said they don’t care and still won’t approve the policy. A new lawsuit intends to force Republicans’ hands. […]
Since the failed revolt of Jan. 6, 2021, when MAGA heads, white supremacist dunderheads, and Republican Party officials stoked the fires of insurrection that led to a siege of the Capitol building in Washington, D.C., people have been getting identified and arrested. […]
One very public attendee of the Jan. 6 insurrection was Pennsylvania state Sen. Doug Mastriano. Mastriano is the elected official who had a strange, somewhat secretive meeting with Donald Trump just weeks after Trump lost the November 2020 election. Mastriano was an active participant in the runup to the Jan. 6 “Stop the Steal” anti-democracy disaster. He infamously told the crowd gathered in Washington that day: “It’s time to rise up, Americans.” Mastriano was filmed marching and reportedly organized one of the many bus trips to the Capitol that day. His colleagues have asked that he resign from his position. Mastriano has argued that he left early in the march and did not participate in the subsequent siege on the Capitol building. Well, there are new photos emerging that seem to tell a different story.
Let’s first give precise context here: In the day or two after the Jan. 6 insurrection, amidst calls for his resignation, Mastriano gave this exact statement: “My wife and I went to Washington, D.C., today to support President Trump. When it was apparent that this was no longer a peaceful protest, my wife and I left the area and made our way out of the area. At no point did we enter the Capitol building, walk on the Capitol steps, or go beyond police lines.” Let’s go take a peak at what the kids call the “receipts.” [Video is available at the link.]
[…] Mastriano said: “[…] Even disingenuous internet sleuths know that the police lines did shift throughout the course of the day.” Of course, these “disingenuous internet sleuths” have been a major resource for the FBI in the search for the identities of the hundreds of not-peaceful insurrectionists at the Capitol that day. That image above gives you a peek into what the retired military colonel considers “shifting.” [More video available at the link.]
One of the people yet to be arrested but on the list is Sam Lazar. He’s here at on the FBI wanted list at #275. He has been identified by Sedition Hunters as Sam Lazar, and given the proper hashtag of #facepaintblowhard. Lazar was also identified by Lancaster Online, which called him a “staunch Trump supporter” based on a review of his active social media accounts. According to Huffpost, Lazar has been out and about living his most MAGA life, which has included attending and taking some photos at a fundraiser for dubious coronavirus-spreading Trump ally and Big Lie inciter Republican Mastriano. Headlining the event where Lazar took photos with Mastriano was none other than the leaky head of corruption himself, Rudy Giuliani. Receipts!
[…] Lancaster Online says the FBI wants the Ephrata, Pennsylvania, resident for his bullhorn antics of incitement and more importantly, an allegation that what he was filmed spraying at the Capitol Police guarding the steps on Jan. 6 was possibly pepper spray. The news outlet reports that Lazar’s Facebook page has been scrubbed of the various images showing his more militant support of Donald Trump. What exactly was in that spray he was using is hard to say. Whether it was an actual irritant or something less destructive, you aren’t allowed to do that to people—spray them with crap.
Mastriano, like the rest of the ambitious and craven brass of the Trumpian GOP, will be happy to pass off all responsibility for the insurrection onto people like Lazar. And people like Lazar deserve all kinds of responsibility for their part. But one would hope a retired military colonel would have the lightest touch of integrity. He doesn’t, and that’s mostly because he has turned to fascism to feed his ambition.
[…] Jan 6, we’re all told that that’s the worst day that ever happened, these were the worst riots in America, Bachmann said. It absolutely wasn’t. It is my opinion that this was a theatrical event that the progressive left put on. The individuals who were the instigators, who brought this about, these were agitators brought in to create this problem. I believe it was specifically done to rebrand Donald Trump as being an insurrectionist and a leader of a terrorist movement. I also believe that this was done to rebrand the Make America Great agenda — because remember, that was considered extremely popular by about 80 million Americans — so they wanted to rebrand Make America Great as an evil thing and those of us who supported Donald Trump and that agenda as evil and terrorists.
[…]
There’s no real point in Earth, or indeed any part of reality, trying to contact bonkersmam, but hair furor got c.74m votes; it was President Biden who got over 80m.
Trump believes the Arizona GOP’s election “audit” is “engendering such tremendous respect, even adoration.” Reality tells a very different story. [“Adoration”? JFC]
…Unlike audits of 2020 election results that have popped up in Arizona and Georgia, New Hampshire’s audit arose from a tangible gap in vote tallies in a race for state representative. Auditors have said their early assessment reveals no sign of fraud and instead points to human errors that they don’t believe are pervasive statewide.
Even so, the bipartisan audit has become a flashpoint in this small town. And some conservatives are clinging to claims that the issue in Windham could point to broader election integrity problems throughout New Hampshire or even beyond.
Harri Hursti, an expert in electronic voting security and part of the three-man team leading the audit, said he’s been surprised at the level of “malicious misinformation” swirling around the audit.
“I’m a little bit surprised at the level of confusion and the level of deliberate trolling,” Hursti said. “The level of this is more than I expected. Nevertheless, we have to get the truth out. We have to make sure that people have the facts.”
While the Windham audit wraps up this week, the 2020 election conspiracy theories are sure to persist. Among those amplifying them: former President Donald Trump and his allies. In a statement Monday night, Trump seized on the errors auditors are uncovering in New Hampshire and then claimed — without any supporting evidence — that Democrats were somehow behind it.
“Why aren’t Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Republicans doing anything about what went on in the 2020 Election? How can the Democrats be allowed to get away with this?” Trump said.
Trump’s longtime political ally Corey Lewandowski, who lives in Windham, has also seized on the audit as evidence that there are voter discrepancies elsewhere.
“This isn’t just about the town of Windham,” Lewandowski said at an event flanked by conservatives who are pushing for an even broader audit in New Hampshire. “We’re seeing things take place across this entire country.”
There’s no indication that the presidential tallies were miscounted, and Trump’s race is not being audited here. He lost the state by nearly 60,000 votes and — even if Trump had managed to turn his fortunes around — New Hampshire’s four electoral votes would not have been enough to land him back in the Oval Office.
…
New Hampshire’s audit saga began after a candidate for state representative, Kristi St. Laurent, narrowly lost her race and requested a recount last November. The results puzzled election officials. St. Laurent’s vote total fell by 99, while the four Republicans who had won the state representative seats saw theirs rise by roughly 300 votes.
“Pretty much the whole room was shocked,” St. Laurent told CNN.
That kicked off an effort in the state legislature to authorize an audit in Windham. The measure passed on a bipartisan basis and was signed by Republican Gov. Chris Sununu.
…
Eventually the forensic audit got underway earlier this month, led by Hursti, Lindeman and Philip Stark, a statistics professor at the University of California, Berkeley.
Unlike the shadowy effort underway in Arizona — which has been criticized even by some Republicans for its lack of transparency and unclear audit methods — the New Hampshire auditors said they aimed to make their process as transparent as possible. They set up an independent livestream and the count is open to outside observers as well as the media. Auditors often stop throughout the day to field questions from observers and the press alike.
While the auditors plan to write a report on their findings, their early assessment points to a confluence of errors.
“I would say this is a perfect storm,” Hursti said. “This is a conspiracy of coincidences.”
Auditors and their conservative critics seem to agree on one issue skewing the count: Improperly folded ballots that led the machines to think a ballot bubble was shaded, when it was actually a blank bubble with a crease running through it.
Hursti said auditors have looked at the results for two additional races as well and, so far, there’s no indication the ballot issue in Windham’s roughly 10,000-vote election impacted races beyond the one for state representative. But the audit team still has plans to research whether this could have impacted any other New Hampshire towns.
“Right now, we are still gathering evidence, was this happening anywhere else in New Hampshire,” Hursti said. “We need to know that.”
Hursti noted that, even with the issues that were uncovered in Windham, none of the recounts or post-election analyses have upended who won the election in town.
“The original count, the recount, nothing has ever been changing who gets elected,” Hursti said. “This is an exercise of finding what caused the error, but the four winners have all — from day one — remained to be the same four winners. This has never threatened that. And, again, if there would have been a widespread fraud, which would have been uncovered (in) this, it would have come out. There was none.”
But after watching the audit play out, some conservative activists still aren’t satisfied….
…
Trump’s allies have already made clear they would like to see a New Hampshire audit focused on the presidential race, even though an audit wouldn’t overturn the statewide election results that showed Trump lost New Hampshire by more than 7 points.
…
As for Trump, he has remained fascinated by Windham’s proceedings and has been checking in weekly — sometimes daily — for audit updates, Breton said.
This is all so cultish and bizarre. It’s an audit for a state race in one town in New Hampshire, with bipartisan support, requested by a Democratic candidate who lost, which found a local error with folded ballots caused the discrepancy and didn’t change the outcome. It has nothing to do with Trump at all.
Appearing on the GunFreedomRadio podcast, 26-year-old Army Reserve chaplain Alex Stovall, a Republican candidate for the U.S. Congress from Arizona, made his opinion of Joe Biden and the legitimacy of the 2020 election very clear, saying: “We saw the inauguration of this well, I don’t think he’s President but whoever you would call this sleepy guy in office”
In an email this morning to the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) alerting MRFF to Stovall’s wearing of his uniform in his campaign ads, a retired Air Force senior NCO asked: “[D]oes wearing a uniform in the ad and directly attacking A.O.C. constitute a violation of Art 88 if being done and done on social-media in a cognizable duty status (such as on ADT Annual Tour or IDT weekend drills)?”
The answer to the retired NCO’s question in an unequivocal YES!!!
Article 88, part of Title 10 of the U.S. Code, also known as the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) addresses “Contempt toward officials,” stating: “Any commissioned officer who uses contemptuous words against the President, the Vice President, Congress, the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of a military department, the Secretary of Homeland Security, or the Governor or legislature of any State, Commonwealth, or possession in which he is on duty or present shall be punished as a court-martial may direct.”
[…] Chaplain Stovall’s campaign ads also violate DoD Directive 1344.10, “Political Activities by Members of the Armed Forces,” which contains a detailed section on what is and what is not allowed in campaign materials for active, reserve, or retired members of the military running for office.
The only use of photos of the candidate in uniform that is allowed are photos as part of the candidates biographical information, when accompanied by other non-military photos, and when also accompanied by a disclaimer stating that the appearance of the photo in uniform doesn’t imply a DoD endorsement.
[…] The focal point of Chaplain Stovall’s campaign ads is that he is a U.S. military chaplain — a chaplain who will “take on AOC.”
Chaplain Stovall’s campaign ads primarily target one person — Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY). “Socialists like AOC hate two things — God and America.”
Not surprisingly, Stovall is also opposed to mask-wearing, idiotically saying on the GunFreedomRadio podcast: “The government has no business telling us what to wear. … For Pete sake, you’re telling me I have to wear a mask to go into a grocery store? Before you know it, they’ll be telling you to wrap your face with Saran wrap.”
Equally unsurprising is that this Army Reserve chaplain and wannabe congressman is a former regional director for BLEXIT, the Trump-supporting organization founded by Candace Owens to “free” Black people from the Democratic Party.
He was also a “field organizer for the Trump Victory Campaign,” […]
Stovall is a U.S. military officer who is flagrantly violating military regulations to further his political ambition […]
MRFF, as it similarly and successfully did when failed Georgia Senate candidate and chaplain Doug Collins was similarly violating the same regulations in his 2020 Georgia primary ads, will be taking action to stop this anti-American chaplain […] from illegally using his military rank and position to advertise his candidacy and his contempt for America.
[…] “U.S. Army Reserve Officer/Chaplain Alex Stovall has most disgustingly managed to BLATANTLY violate just about as many crucial DoD regulations and standards as is humanly possible. MRFF will shortly be officially demanding to the Pentagon that the U.S. Army vigorously investigate and aggressively and visibly punish this individual to the full extent of the Uniform Code of Military Justice and related regulatory provisions.”
The shooting took place at a light rail facility that is next door to the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Department and across a freeway from the airport.
An assailant opened fire Wednesday at a California railyard serving Silicon Valley, killing eight people. The suspect was also dead, authorities said.
Santa Clara County Sheriff Laurie Smith said it was “undetermined” how the shooter died.
The shooting took place around 6:30 a.m. at a light rail facility in San Jose next door to the sheriff’s department and across a freeway from the airport. The facility is a transit control center that stores trains and has a maintenance yard.
Davis said he did not know the type of weapon used or whether the gunfire happened indoors or outdoors. He said the victims include VTA employees. Authorities did not release any of the victims’ names. […]
In a climate crisis landmark, a Dutch court on Wednesday ordered energy giant Royal Dutch Shell to slash its carbon emissions by a net 45 percent by 2030 compared to 2019 levels.
[…]
The Hague District Court ruled that the Anglo-Dutch energy giant has a duty of care to reduce emissions and that its current reduction plans were not concrete enough.
The decision could set a precedent for similar cases against polluting multinationals around the world. Activists who gathered outside the courtroom erupted into cheers as the decision was read out loud.
“The climate won today,” said Roger Cox, a lawyer for the Dutch arm of Friends of the Earth, which was one of the organisations behind the case.
[… nonsensical reaction along the following lines criticised by the court in it ruling:]
The court said in an English-language summary of its ruling that Shell was not currently in breach of its obligation to reduce emissions, as the environmental groups had argued, because the parent company was tightening its emissions policy.
But it ruled that Shell’s policy “is not concrete, has many caveats and is based on monitoring social developments rather than the company’s own responsibility for achieving a CO2 reduction”.
“Therefore, the court has ordered RDS to reduce the emissions of the Shell group, its suppliers and its customers by net 45%, as compared to 2019 levels, by the end of 2030, through the corporate policy of the Shell group,” read the court summary.
[…]
The case in the Netherlands is the latest in a string of legal challenges filed around the world by climate activists seeking action to rein in emissions, but it is believed to be the first targeting a multinational company.
One of the first successful climate cases also was in the Netherlands, where the Supreme Court two years ago upheld a 2015 ruling requiring the government to cut emissions at least 25 percent by the end of 2020 from benchmark 1990 levels.
In February, a Paris court ruled that the French government had failed to take sufficient action to fight climate change in a case brought by four nongovernmental organisations. Last month, Germany’s top court said the federal government must set clear goals for reducing greenhouse gas emissions after 2030.
blf @ #275, it’s funny when they say things like “I believe it was specifically done to rebrand Donald Trump as being an insurrectionist and a leader of a terrorist movement” and “they wanted to rebrand Make America Great as an evil thing and those of us who supported Donald Trump and that agenda as evil and terrorists.” They’re basically acknowledging that Trump and his followers are rightly regarded as evil insurrectionists and terrorists after the putsch, so it had to be fake.
Wonkette: “Jesus, Pennsylvania Republicans, What Freaking Year Is This”
This week, Republicans in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives decided the state should keep the word “homosexuality” in its indecency and obscenity laws. […]
Title 18, Section 5903 of the Pennsylvania criminal code makes it a crime to give or sell material containing “sexual conduct” to people under 18. And “sexual conduct” means
acts of masturbation, homosexuality, sexual intercourse, sexual bestiality or physical contact with a person’s clothed or unclothed genitals, pubic area, buttocks or, if such person be a female, breast.
Yeah, it’s always a good thing when homosexuality appears in the same sentence as bestiality. (And we don’t want to go into a whole rabbit hole about “showing a person under 18 a movie with a boob-touching in it is a crime,” but, well, we just did.)
After discovering Pennsylvania’s disgusting and archaic obscenity law made it illegal for LGBTQ kids to have materials about LGBTQ people, this session, Democrats introduced bills into both chambers of the General Assembly — House Bill 1279 and Senate Bill 609, respectively — to remove it. And you already know what happened next!
In a memo accompanying HB 1279, state Rep. Mike Zabel wrote,
Did you know that one of our current state laws still prohibits the distribution to minors of materials such as books, pictures, and videos which depict “acts of homosexuality,” classifying homosexuality as obscene? Recently, one of the municipalities I represent, Upper Darby Township, repealed a similar decades old ordinance and, upon further review, it was discovered that Pennsylvania has such a statute still on the books.
Under existing law, “acts of homosexuality” are classified as “obscene” in Title 18 (Crimes and Offenses), Section 5903 (Obscene and Other Sexual Materials and Performances). My legislation would rectify this injustice by amending this section to remove the term “homosexuality” from the state obscenity clause.
The fact that bigoted, offensive language is still listed in our state’s law is unacceptable. Please join me in bringing Pennsylvania into the 21st century by supporting this commonsense measure that will help promote equality and inclusion within Pennsylvania.
This week, another opportunity to repeal this disgusting law presented itself when the House considered House Bill 231, a human trafficking bill, and Rep. Zabel offered an amendment to stop making gayness a crime.
Every single Democrat in the House voted to remove homosexuality from the criminal code. Every Republican voted to keep it in.
The crazy scope of this law can’t be overstated — in Pennsylvania, it is a crime for a library to let a gay kid borrow a book about growing up as a gay kid. Because the word homosexuality isn’t elaborated upon or defined anywhere, it would arguably be illegal to give a child a photo of his same-sex parents kissing.
That. Is. Insane.
This week’s vote is a clear attempt to stifle LGBTQ content, making it inherently dirty, different from straight/cis content, and even illegal. When LGBTQ kids can’t access materials about the things they are dealing with, they just feel more alone, isolated, and depressed. Books can literally save lives. And it is beyond abhorrent, though entirely expected, that Republicans would put their own bigotry above the lives of their children.
[…] Rep. Brian Sims, Pennsylvania’s first openly gay state legislator and a current candidate for lieutenant governor, also took to Twitter with outrage at his Republican colleagues’ “rampant homophobia” and “cowardice.”
The only thing this is, is hatred. If a criminal case were actually brought against a same-sex couple for something like displaying a kissing picture where children can see it, I can’t imagine a court holding up such a conviction. But sure, keep unconstitutional bullshit in our laws just to make a point about what a bigoted piece of shit you are.
This isn’t the only part of Pennsylvania’s laws that discriminate against the LGBTQ community. According to the Movement Advancement Project,
– Pennsylvania doesn’t have adoption or foster care nondiscrimination protections for LGBTQ parents.
– The state’s family-leave laws don’t include LGBTQ-inclusive definitions of spouse, partner, children, or parents.
– There is no nondiscrimination policy for state employees.
– The state’s broad religious exemption law allows businesses to discriminate against LGBTQ people.
– Pennsylvania’s hate crimes law doesn’t cover LGBTQ people.
– PA’s anti-bullying laws don’t cover anti-LGBTQ bullying, and
– There aren’t protections for LGBTQ children in the child welfare system.
Shit like this is a stark reminder that, even in 2021, homophobia, transphobia, and assorted anti-LGBTQ bigotry are still all too common — both in people’s hearts and in our laws.
An investor with a tiny stake in ExxonMobil scored a historic climate victory when it won two seats on the oil giant’s board.
A first-time activist investor with a tiny stake in Exxon Mobil Corp. scored a historic win in its proxy fight with the oil giant, signaling the growing importance of climate change to investors.
Engine No 1 — the little-known firm that vaulted into the spotlight in December when it began pressing Exxon to come up with a better plan to fight global warming — won two seats on the company’s board at Wednesday’s annual shareholders meeting, according to a preliminary tally.
The result is an embarrassment for Exxon, unprecedented in the rarefied world of Big Oil, and a sign that institutional investors are increasingly willing to force corporate America to tackle climate change. That Engine No 1, with just a 0.02% stake and no history of activism in oil and gas, could win even a partial victory against a titan like Exxon, the Western world’s biggest crude producer, shows how seriously environmental concerns are now being taken in the boardrooms of the country’s largest companies.
This is one of those Bloomberg / Al Jazeera collaborations, which is perhaps why the above seems to have confused this small investor’s arguments with the position of the board of Extreme Carbon. Extreme Carbon has not been taking the Climate Catastrophe, or the environment in general, seriously, other than how to not do anything but continue on as before and make even more profit$. (It’s possible that Bloomberg (I presume) is referring to the boards of other investors who apparently backed — as-in voted-for — Engine No 1’s nominees.)
The vote is also striking because of the force with which Exxon battled the activist, which also criticized the company for its lackluster financial performance. Exxon refused to to meet with the nominees and Chief Executive Officer Darren Woods told shareholders earlier this month that voting for them would derail our progress and jeopardize your dividend. The company even went as far as to pledge, just 48 hours before the meeting, that it will add two new directors, including one with “climate experience.”
[…]
Exxon’s environmental record and unwillingness to embrace the transition to cleaner energy quickly enough was a key criticism in the six-month old proxy campaign. San Francisco-based Engine No 1 was scathing in its assessment of Exxon’s long-term financial performance, calling it “a decade of value destruction.”
Rather than pivot toward low-carbon fuels and selling power like its some of its rivals, Exxon is betting heavily on carbon capture and sequestration, a technology that it says needs substantial government support to be viable.
Engine No 1 said Exxon’s marquee CCS hub in Houston “lacks any real substance” and generated nothing more than an “advertising blitz.” The fund also said Exxon’s climate targets were “distorting its long-term emissions trajectory” and its claim of being aligned with the Paris Agreement “fails the basic test of logic.”
It remains to be seen how Exxon pivots, if at all, but the message from shareholders is clear: The status quo cannot continue.
A former Member of Congress to me: “Trump has not only made Congressional Republicans fear for their political lives, but for their actual ones. They worry about the safety of their families if they oppose him, even now. That’s how bad it is.”
Commentary from Wonkette:
[…] This is bullshit, of course. Republicans don’t look like they’re starring in hostage videos whenever they appear on cable news, promoting the MAGA line. Florida Senator Marco Rubio isn’t a brilliant method actor. He’s not secretly ashamed of himself because that would require possessing shame in the first place.
It’s obviously not encouraging when a former member of Congress claims that a major political party is operating like an organized crime family. If what this person says is true, then we’re already a failed state. Actual gangsters would at least take out their deranged Don, but Republican apologists paint the GOP as a bunch of victims, whose unwavering support and fealty to MAGA is their regular “protection payment.” Anyone who’s watched a mob movie knows that if you do business with gangsters, the parasites will bleed you out until there’s nothing left.
Conservative columnist George Will, during an appearance on ABC’s “This Week,” also suggested that congressional Republicans are a bunch of cowards, scared of the very people who put them in office because they promised to “take on” (wink, wink) Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the rest of the Squad.
We have something new in American history. We have a political party defined by the terror it feels for its own voters. That’s the Republican Party right now.
Every elected official is frightened of [Trump’s] voters, therefore doesn’t respect his voters and doesn’t like his voters and is afraid that a vote for [the 1/6 commission] would be seen as an insult to the 45th president.
Democrats also have every reason to fear Trump supporters, especially since some of the most unhinged are serving in Congress alongside them. That didn’t stop Democrats from impeaching Trump for a second time and pursuing an investigation into his attempted coup on January 6. Republicans claimed for years that Democrats were “soft on terror,” but it seems like they were just projecting.
No, what Republicans fear most is a loss of political power. They need Trump voters to win their next elections, so helping spread the Big Lie and undermining democracy is worth it. The Recount executive editor John Heilemann called this for what it is on MSNBC’s “Deadline White House.” [Video is available at the link.]
HEILEMANN: By using the language of terror, it makes it sound like it’s OK: ‘Well, of course you capitulate to terrorists because it’s like they have a gun to your head.’ Well, they don’t have a gun to your head! All they have to your head is the threat of voting you out of office, and that is nothing. That’s a career change. That is go work at a Washington law firm, go be a lobbyist, go write a book, go on the speaking circuit, go work for Fox News. There’s a million ways to go and make money. That’s all you’re talking about, maybe you lose an election. Who cares?
No matter what some feckless Republicans might say to their former colleagues, anyone who’s still a Republican and who isn’t actively opposing what the party represents now is choosing to do so because they approve or don’t mind that much. Neither option is noble or sympathetic. Don’t buy their sob stories. Just vote every last one of them out of office.
This bit of news […] is so agonizingly ridiculous that to even bring it up seems like it will first require dismembering it into all its constituent asininities. It simply will not fit through the news door otherwise.
At its heart, the “news” is that Incompetent Narcissist Criminal Guy—also known as Dear Leader, also known as Donald Trump, also known as the man who proved all of Republicanism to be a hollow shell propped up at this point only by racism and a willingness to commit petty crimes—wants to craft a new “policy agenda” for the Republican Party. To roughly quote Diogenes, I shitteth y’all not.
Donald Trump is sitting in Mar-a-Lago stewing in his own bile, and he has allegedly gotten it into his head that what Republicanism needs right now is a “policy agenda” that nobody in his party could come up before, that he was unable to elucidate during four years of half-assing his way through government […]
Recall, for example, that the Republican Party refused to even have an official party platform during their 2020 convention, instead going with a catch-all declaration that whatever Trump was for, they were for, whatever that happened to be on any particular day.
The news that Donald Trump is allegedly now of the belief that Republicans need a “doctrine” is bullshittery at the highest level. The next bit of the story makes it even more ridiculous.
Who is allegedly spearheading this new policy think-upping? Newt Gingrich!
No, really. Newt Gingrich. You know, the disgraced ex-House Republican leader (not the pedophile, the other one) who wrecked governance the first time around and has devoted his current would-be comeback to kissing Trump’s ample behind in as many individual television appearances as the gods will grant him. He seems thoroughly obsessed with joining the ranks of such Trump-promoted titans of Republicanism as Rudy Giuliani, Paul Manafort, the two Fox lawyers who got raided by the FBI, Michael Cohen, Michael Flynn, Jeff Sessions, and takeyourpick.
Trump “sat down” with Newt “in recent weeks,” […] to work out a new “Contract with America”—
Stop laughing, damnit, we’re going to get through this together.
—based on “MAGA” principles. He is assisted by Sen. Lindsey Graham, former chief of staff and unindicted co-conspirator Mark Meadows, and presumably whichever Mar-a-Lago guests spring for the […] Lunch Special on those particular days.
Newt Gingrich is meeting with Donald Trump to craft a new Contract with America based on new Republicanism’s principles. That is a baffling sentence, isn’t it? […]
“The group is still just beginning to hammer out the details—” yeah, no kidding. The document, “if one is issued at all,” is not expected to be ready “anytime soon.” […] coincidentally Newt is willing to pipe up to describe what he believes the document should look like.
“‘It should be positive,’ Gingrich said. ‘School choice, teaching American history for real, abolishing the ‘1619 Project,’ eliminating critical race theory and what the Texas legislature is doing. We should say, ‘Bring it on.’”
All right then, so it will be a “positive” document underlining white nationalist mythologies as a central theme, with a direct focus on weakening public schools and tightly restricting what can be taught about our history. That’s the only part of the story that sounds plausible. No need to meddle with infrastructure priorities, tax policy, or the rest; the new Republican Contract with America will focus on what New Republicanism can agree on, and what New Republicanism can agree on is hard racism and unrelenting propaganda.[…]
[…] Newt Gingrich—who was run out of politics for his conduct until at long last the rest of his party degraded so far that his own scandals now seem Paleozoic—is a new party savior working with Indifferent Self-Obsessed Narcissist to return Republicanism to a time of havin’ policies and theoretically standing for things, here’s the most likely “news” to be had here:
Newt Gingrich broke into Mar-a-Lago or had someone spring for him to attend as a guest, and began ingratiating himself to Trump with promises of a new Trumpian era of policies and important-looking slides that would just by-the-way allow Trump to claim some relevance despite spending the entirety of his post-presidential life hiding inside his for-profit house and airing an assortment of grievances to wedding guests. […]
This isn’t a story about Donald Trump wanting to suddenly write down policies he never gave a damn about writing down before. This is a story about Newt Gingrich crawling through Mar-a-Lago ductwork, dropping down on Donald’s table during a random gloomy lunch, and promising the deposed god-king that with the scrubbing bubbles of Newt Gingrich’s policy chops, he can yet again force the party into doing whatever he says. […]
Well, it is something that we’ll have to keep an eye on. The odds that Donald Trump will retain interest long enough to even give Newt something to work with are low […]
[…]
Exxon failed to defend its board against a coup launched by dissident hedge fund activists at Engine No 1 which successfully replaced two Exxon board members with its own candidates to help drive the oil company towards a greener strategy.
Meanwhile, a majority of Chevron shareholders rebelled against the company’s board by voting 61% in favour of an activist proposal from Dutch campaign group Follow This to force the group to cut its carbon emissions.
[…]
The shareholder rebellions in the US were matched by an unprecedented reversal for the oil industry upset in the Netherlands where green campaigners won a court battle in the Hague to force Shell to cut its carbon emissions by 45% in the next 10 years.
“Institutional investors understand that no investment is safe in a global economy wracked by devastating climate change,” [Follow This founder] Van Baal said.
The activist win against Chevron was the third successful insurrection coordinated by Follow This against the boards of US oil companies after it forced through votes to cut emissions at ConocoPhillips and Phillips 66 earlier this month.
Exxon was forced to adjourn its annual shareholder meeting for an hour in a bid to stave off the rebellion by Engine No 1 which may claim a further two board seats once the preliminary results are finalised. Exxon said the vote was too close to call late on Wednesday.
[…]
BlackRock, the world’s biggest asset manager, owns a 6.7% stake in Exxon, sided with the rival upstart, according to Reuters, due to frustration with the company’s refusal to take climate concerns seriously. Legal & General, one of Exxon’s top 20 investors, is also said to have backed Engine No 1 […]
Biden has ordered an intelligence assessment regarding the likely origins of COVID to be completed within 90 days. I can’t link to any of the articles I’ve seen about it because they’re stupid and misleading. (I think the text of the order might also be stupid and misleading but won’t bother to look – the order itself is the news.)
France’s average daily number of new Covid-19 cases fell to its lowest level since mid-September while the number of people being treated for the virus in hospital continued to decline, official data showed on Wednesday.
The daily figure, averaged out over seven days, fell below 10,000, down from a 2021 high of over 42,000 in mid-April.
New confirmed infections rose by 12,646 over the past 24 hours to a cumulative 5.62 million since the start of the pandemic, a slower pace of growth than a week ago, when they rose by 19,000. Four weeks ago the figure was 31,000.
The number of people in intensive care units with Covid-19 fell by 117 to 3,330, while the overall number of people in hospital with the virus fell by 837 to 18,593.
Both numbers have been on a steady downward trend since the end of April. The health ministry also reported 144 new coronavirus deaths in hospitals on Wednesday, compared with 141 a week ago.
Scientists in Germany claim to have solved the cause of the rare blood clotting events linked to the Oxford/AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson vaccines and believe the jabs could be fixed to prevent the reaction altogether, the FT (paywall) reports.
Rolf Marschalek, a professor at Goethe university in Frankfurt who has been leading research into the rare condition since March, said his research showed that the problem lies with the adenovirus vectors that both vaccines use to deliver the spike protein of the virus into the body.
In a preprint paper published today, the scientists wrote that the delivery mechanism means the vaccines send the spike protein into the cell nucleus as opposed to the cytosol fluid found inside the cell where the virus normally produces proteins.
According to Marschalek’s research, once inside the cell nucleus, certain parts of the spike protein splice, creating mutant versions, which are unable to bind to the cell membrane where important immunisation takes place; instead, the floating mutant proteins are secreted by cells into the body, which is what triggers blood clots in roughly one in 100,000 people.
In contrast, with mRNA-based vaccines, such as the BioNTech/Pfizer and Moderna jabs, the spike’s genetic material is delivered to the cell fluid and it never enters the nucleus. Marschalek told the FT that when virus genes are in the nucleus they can create “some problems”.
He believes there is a “way out” if the vaccine developers can adapt the sequence of the spike protein to prevent splicing.
A traveller arriving in Brazil has been diagnosed with the coronavirus variant first discovered in India, São Paulo health officials said on Wednesday, stoking concerns that it could further fuel one of the world’s deadliest outbreaks.
São Paulo health authorities said they requested a complete list of the passengers on the flight coming from India, as well as the names of all airport staff and other people who may have had contact with the passenger, for monitoring and isolation.
…
Following treatment of crew members with the B.1.617.2 variant on a cargo ship off Brazil’s northern coast last week, the case confirmed on Wednesday raised alarms about the easily transmissible variant passing through two of the country’s busiest airports.
The 32-year-old patient, a resident of Campos dos Goytacazes in Rio de Janeiro state, landed at Guarulhos International Airport near Sao Paulo on 22 May, state officials said.
The passenger was tested on arrival for Covid-19, but by the time São Paulo authorities were informed of the positive result, he had flown to Rio de Janeiro, according to a statement from state officials….
Brazilian senators conducting a high-profile inquiry into president Jair Bolsonaro’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic on Wednesday voted to recall the current and former health ministers for more testimony, as well as summon nine state governors for the first time, Reuters reports.
Senators are grilling government officials and other stakeholders to seek answers as to why Brazil has become the country with the world’s second-highest Covid-19 death toll, with more than 450,000 fatalities.
The probe may pose a headache for Bolsonaro, who has long sought to play down the severity of the virus, ahead of next year’s presidential election.
The current health minister Marcelo Queiroga and his predecessor, Eduardo Pazuello, an active-duty army general, will both be called to testify again in front of the Senate panel.
Former presidential adviser Arthur Weintraub and businessman Carlos Wizard Martins, who was briefly attached to the Health Ministry, will also be called.
In addition, nine state governors are due to explain irregularities in Covid-19 spending in their states.
Wilson Witzel, the former governor of Rio de Janeiro, was impeached in April over alleged graft in the purchase of medical supplies and services to fight the Covid-19 outbreak.
The phone call that shook the Jordanian government came in the second week of March this year. On the line to the General Intelligence Directorate (GID) in Amman was the US Embassy, seeking an urgent meeting about a matter of national importance. The kingdom’s spies were startled. Danger was brewing on the home front, they were told, and could soon pose a threat to the throne.
Within hours, the GID had turned its full array of resources towards one of the country’s most senior royals, Prince Hamzah bin Hussein, a former crown prince and half-brother of the king, whom the Americans suspected was sowing dissent and had begun rallying supporters. By early April, officials had placed Hamzah under house arrest and publicly accused the former heir and two close aides of plotting to unseat King Abdullah.
As two alleged plotters prepare to face court in Amman, a fuller picture is emerging of the three weeks that rattled the royal family. This week prosecutors in possession of phone taps, intercepted messages and recorded conversations will outline evidence supporting sedition charges against Bassem Awadallah, a former head of the Royal Hashemite Court and businessman and cousin of the King, Sharif Hassan bin Zaid.
However, away from the courthouse, evidence that a family feud could have been driven by a broader conspiracy has also been taking shape. The alleged deeds of Hamzah and his two accused conspirators are increasingly being seen as the dying echoes of a larger plot, fuelled by Jordan’s closest allies, that could have imperilled Abdullah’s grip on the throne if Donald Trump had won a second stint as US president.
As the turmoil of Trump’s term recedes, the implications of his attempts to redraw the map of Israel and Palestine via his showpiece foreign policy play – the so-called deal of the century – are crystallising. Officials in the Biden administration, which has restored a more traditional approach to regional diplomacy fear that Jordan’s interests would have been shredded in a second Trump government. And its leadership may well have been a casualty.
Regional officials say there may be links between Prince Hamzah’s alleged actions, which officials in Amman describe as sedition but not a coup, and the approach to Middle East affairs steered by Trump’s son-in-law and Middle East envoy, Jared Kushner, with the backing of his friend and ally, Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
…
Phone intercepts from that time heard by the Guardian portrayed Hamzah and Sharif Hassan in close coordination. The pair often spoke in English and referred to each other as ‘bro’. For Awadallah, they used the nickname ‘No Lube’. [Totally want to hear these.]
From the early months of Trump’s presidency, Kushner and Prince Mohammed rode large across the regional landscape, drawn by each other’s nakedly transactional worldview and their readiness to blend political power and business interests.
Both saw themselves as change agents breaking barriers through coercion and intimidation and were dismissive of allies who refused to do their bidding.
The normally watertight relationship between Amman and Washington, built on 50 years of security cooperation, reached breaking point in Trump’s first term, senior Jordanian officials say, as the White House pursued its Middle East agenda through a team of handpicked loyalists, eschewing both structures of state and sidelining officials whom Jordan would normally have dealt with.
First among the administration’s schemes was an attempt to forge peace between Israel and the Palestinians that ripped up the rulebook governing decades of talks and shattered understandings of what an eventual deal may look like. Despite being directly affected, Jordan knew none of its elements until the grand announcement in early 2019.
When the plan was finally revealed, Jordanian leaders sensed mortal danger…
…“They were desperate to get this done, and made no bones about blackmailing friend and foe. For the Emiratis it was F-35s. For the Sudanese, it was getting them off the terror blacklist. The prize (for both countries) was American patronage and Israeli technical expertise.”
By mid-2020 King Abdullah was under increasing strain, buffeted by ill winds from Washington and just as troubled by the chill from across the border with Saudi Arabia….
…
During the dying months of the Trump White House, demands to get the deal done intensified. Jordan’s defiance angered Kushner and Prince Mohammed, who had also been displeased with a similarly reluctant Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas.
…
As the friendship between Kushner and Prince Mohammed blossomed – often during all-night discussions in tents deep in the Saudi desert – ties between Bassem Awadallah and Riyadh were also deepening. A former Jordanian finance minister, Awadallah joined a panel at the Future Investment Initiative in Riyadh in 2019, where local dignitaries knew him well from another previous role as Jordanian envoy to Riyadh.
…
“The upshot is that Trump lost and it all fell over,” said a regional intelligence source. “Had he been re-elected, this would be a very different region.”
Senior officials in Amman would not be drawn on the likelihood of a foreign element to the alleged plot, and nor would they confirm that their most trusted security partner, the US, had alerted them to a potential threat. However, the officials clearly took comfort from the fact that the new US administration has restored a traditional security relationship, which had been traduced under Trump.
US officials have confirmed to the Guardian that in the final months of 2020, officials sought advice on which areas of funding to Jordan were outside congressional approval and could therefore be cut without debate.
Amman was ultimately spared a budget blow. As Joe Biden has settled in, its leaders have collectively exhaled and prefer not to focus on how close, if at all, King Abdullah came to being ousted by Jordan’s two closest friends.
Instead, senior officials are busying themselves with local dimension to the alleged plot….
While Jordanian officials refused to be to be drawn on whether Saudi Arabia played a role, it is understood that a bilateral arrangement broke down around the time the alleged plot was uncovered. Every autumn, locusts emerge from the Saudi deserts and fly north to Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. The plagues usually arrive in three waves, and early warning systems have been put in place to give Jordanian farmers time to safeguard crops. This year, there were no warnings.
After news broke that the Manhattan District Attorney was convening a grand jury, Donald J. Trump changed the name of his company to the Eric Trump Organization.
The former President made the announcement in a press conference at his signature Manhattan building, the newly renamed Eric Trump Tower.
“Changing the name of the company is no big deal,” he said. “It’s going to be the same company that it’s always been—with Eric Trump running the show and me just following his orders.”
“It’s only fitting to call this company the Eric Trump Organization, because Eric is responsible for everything it has ever done,” he added. “This is long overdue.”
Asked about the grand jury, Trump said, “From what I’ve heard, they’re going to be looking into Eric’s businesses quite strongly. I hope he hasn’t gotten himself into a big mess. He’s been a great boss to work for all these years, and I wish him well.”
BTW, thanks SC for summarizing the Guardian’s reporting, “Did Jordan’s closest allies plot to unseat its king?” It looks to me like Jordan, and King Abdullah in particular, narrowly escaped nefarious machinations fueled by Jared Kushner, Donald Trump and Prince Mohammed.
“Scoop: You may recall Robert Packer, a man wearing a ‘Camp Auschwitz’ hoodie on Jan 6th at the Capitol. It took a few calls & some USGovt court filings but I got the search warrant
Here’s a rundown of Hitler, antisemitic, and white supremacy items the FBI took out of his house…”
Form atl. One of those wily antifa agitator/instigators.
“On CNN, @GovMikeDeWine says there was a 45% increase in the number of people getting vaccinated against COVID19 after he announced the $1 million Vax-a-Million lottery (first winner to be announced tonight).”
There may be another side to the Roman Protasevich story besides that of the idealistic anti-Lubashenko activist suddenly playing the role of a Belarusian Navalny:
Per FOIA Research, apparently a Eurocentric antifa information website:
Protasevich has a neo-Nazi and anti-communist background. He is a sympathizer of the Pahonia Detachment4, a Belarusian militia that has fought alongside the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion in Ukraine’s post-Maidan civil war.5 … In February and March 2017, Belarus was swept by a series of demonstrations throughout the country, which Protasevich eagerly “documented,” always just a step away from the neo-Nazi black block. … According to his Facebook page, he started working for the USAID-supported radio in Belarus Euroradio.fm on August 31, 2018.17 … According to his Facebook page, Protasevich left his job with Euroradio on December 1, 2019.18 … Protasevich is a neo-Nazi-affine Western-backed regime change activist.
I know next to nothing about FOIA Research; their writings have a whiff of doctrinaire leftism (and English-as-a-second-languageism), and I don’t know enough details of neo-Euro-fascism to assess their reliability (though their Oath Keepers profile seems accurate and well-done). Anybody here know more about either Protasevich or FOIA Research?
Protasevich is a neo-Nazi-affine Western-backed regime change activist.
That’s like Putinesque-trope bingo. I’m not sure who the audience for that set of smears is even supposed to be. Also, they’re arresting journalists en masse.
Here’s a link to the May 27 Guardian coronavirus world liveblog.
From there:
Russia has administered at least one dose of a Covid vaccine to almost 17m people, the RIA news agency has cited health minister Mikhail Murashko as saying.
The figure suggests Russia has given the first dose of one of its vaccines to about 3m people in the past two weeks.
Deputy Prime Minister Tatiana Golikova said on 12 May that 14m Russians had received one vaccine dose, according to Reuters.
Some of Russia’s regions have complained that the vaccination process is not going fast enough despite the country having begun rolling out its Sputnik V shot in December.
Matt Hancock is off the hook – at least for now. That was the clear takeaway from his performance in the Commons just now. That is not because he has refuted (proved wrong) all or any of the allegations Dominic Cummings made about him in his select committee evidence yesterday. Most of them he did not even rebut (claim to be wrong), because as far as he could he refused to engage with the substance of what Cummings said. But Conservative MPs gave him the most solid support he could hope for, which went well beyond loyalist sycophants asking suck-up questions at the behest of the whips. Cummings was famously contemptuous of most MPs (even Brexity ones), and the feeling seems to be heartily reciprocated. Tory MPs feel much more warmly towards Hancock, and almost all of the ones who spoke showed zero interest in re-opening a debate about who in government said what when, despite the immense significance of the decisions taken.
Even Jeremy Hunt, the chair of the health committee, who has generally been a shrewd critic of government policy, and who is running an inquiry specifically intended to get to the truth of what happened, spoke about the Cummings allegations about Hancock with disdain. Until there was “evidence”, they were “unproven”, he said… – as if Cummings telling MPs that he was in the room when he heard these things being said wasn’t evidence.
But it was telling that on the one Cummings allegation on which he was repeatedly questioned – that he told colleagues patients would be tested before being discharged into care homes, when in fact that did not happen – Hancock studiously avoided denying the claim…. Some of the other allegations made by Cummings did not even come up at all. It may be that the moment of reckoning has just been postponed.
Election Day 2022 may seem far away, but the Republican Governors Association this week invested $500,000 in a new attack ad targeting Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D), who’s seeking a second term next year.
Well, at least that’s better than planning to kidnap her.
The White House national security advisor said systemic racism is a national security threat. Why does Tom Cotton have a problem with that?
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) is apparently on the lookout for Chinese communist propaganda, and he finds it with great regularity. Is the New York Times publishing propaganda from Beijing? According to the Arkansas Republican, it certainly is. Are Senate Democrats also helping push propaganda from China? To hear Cotton tell it, they’re guilty, too.
This week, the GOP senator saw the imagined problem reach the White House.
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) claimed on Tuesday that advocating for dismantling systemic racism is propaganda in service to the Communist Party of China. On Tuesday afternoon, White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan wrote, “On the anniversary of George Floyd’s murder, we reflect on the fact that dismantling systemic racism is also a national security priority. The fight for racial justice at home and abroad is foundational to our future [and] to how the world sees us.”
[…] Tom Cotton apparently disapproved. “This tweet is approved by the Communist Party of China,” the Arkansas Republican tweeted minutes later, in response to the White House national security advisor’s brief statement.
It’s a difficult sentiment to parse, but I suspect the senator believes a domestic focus on systemic racism paints the United States in an unflattering light, which in turn helps the interests of our detractors abroad, including those in Beijing.
The problem, of course, is that if this is what Cotton was getting at, he has it backwards.
As Historian Kevin Kruse explained yesterday, in the not-too-distant past, Presidents Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, and John F. Kennedy each argued that the United States needed to address racial injustices at home, not just to advance a moral cause, but also because “communist powers — like China — were highlighting them in their propaganda.”
Quite right. The world takes note of our domestic conflicts. George Floyd’s murder sparked international protests because much of the world recoiled at images, aired far and wide, of a police officer who kept his knee on a Black man’s neck. For countries like China, eager to push the United States aside in the race for 21st-century primacy, racial injustices are evidence against the American experiment.
Our rivals and enemies, in other words, are eager to exploit our racial divisions. It’s precisely why Jake Sullivan’s point on the anniversary of George Floyd’s murder was axiomatically true: the more we address systemic racism, the more it will improve, among other things, our global stature and credibility. […]
A group of GOP senators made the cynical and likely futile move on Thursday of responding to President Biden’s infrastructure plan with a proposal that accounts for around a tenth of the spending that the White House has proposed.
The GOP proposal, which Republican senators described as a reasonable alternative, constitutes a fraction of the $1.7 trillion in spending that Biden has already offered as a concession from his initial proposal of $2.3 trillion. That’s largely due to GOP reluctance to finance any new spending, opting instead to scavenge unused money from elsewhere.
While GOP senators heralded the counteroffer as approaching $928 billion, there’s a big catch at the heart of it: only $257 billion is new spending. The remaining $671 billion, senators said, comes from repurposing money that was appropriated for the response to the COVID pandemic.
[…] The hollowness of the counterproposal may be by design for Republicans, who have dragged out mostly unproductive negotiations for weeks. Everyone in Congress is aware of the uphill battle Democrats will wage in the 2022 midterms: historical precedence and largely GOP-controlled redistricting will make it difficult for Democrats to retain control over both chambers of Congress.
That leaves Biden’s party a very short window to legislate before members’ focus shifts to campaigning, a clock Republicans are eager to run down.
[…] [Republicans] insisted that the legislation be paid for, but took almost all the viable methods of doing so off the table: no changes to the tax code post-former President Donald Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, and no deficit spending.
[…] At Thursday’s press briefing, Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO) said that they are putting other payfors on the table too — and proceeded to mention only taxing electric vehicles.
[…] Thursday’s press conference was also riddled with jabs at Democrats — a surprising component for a presentation supposedly about brokering a deal and bringing the parties closer together.
[…] The moderate Republicans on Thursday hit darker notes too, slyly resurrecting a Trump campaign attack from 2020: that “sleepy Joe” Biden is checked out, too pliable to make his own decisions. For a while, the campaign had tried out the premise that Biden was the senile puppet of the dangerous, radical Kamala Harris. […] they snuck in the idea that Biden is not really in charge of his own decisions.
[…] “Basically socialism camouflaged as infrastructure, which is the direction they’re headed,” Barrasso warned.
MADISON – Assembly Speaker Robin Vos is hiring retired police officers to investigate aspects of the November election, joining with Republicans from around the country who have questioned President Joe Biden’s victory.
Vos, of Rochester, said he recognizes Biden narrowly won Wisconsin and is not trying to change the results with his taxpayer-funded investigation.
He said he hopes the investigators can get to the bottom of issues Republicans have raised unsuccessfully in court, such as how the state’s largest cities used more than $6 million in grants from a private group to run their elections.
Vos in a Wednesday interview said he was giving the investigators a broad mandate to spend about three months reviewing all tips and following up on the most credible ones. In addition to the grant spending, he said they may look into claims of double voting and review how clerks fixed absentee ballot credentials….
Vos said he is hiring three former law enforcement officers along with an attorney who will oversee them.
As contractors with the Legislature, they will have subpoena power. Anyone they subpoena will be immune from criminal prosecution, he said….
“… These are professional investigators,” Vos said…”A sizable chunk of people believe the election was illegitimate. And democracy cannot flourish if both sides don’t believe in the end both sides had a fair shot.”
Jeffrey Mandell, an attorney with the nonprofit voting rights legal firm Law Forward, said”….this is a fishing expedition in a dry lake, to look for fraud in 2020….”
Republicans have already started passing election legislation, and any bills they approve face likely vetoes from [Gov. Tony] Evers (D)…
Wonkette: “Once Again, Rage-Filled Woman-Abusing Good Guy With Gun Does Mass Shooting”
America is once again going through the cycle of horror, anguish, and ultimately probably not doing anything following yet another mass shooting, this time in San Jose, California, where a public transit employee went on a shooting rampage at a rail yard where he worked, killing nine people and himself. Eight of the victims died at the scene, and a ninth died later.
The killer was identified as Samuel Cassidy […] The office of the Medical Examiner-Coroner released the names and ages of the nine dead on Wednesday:
Paul Delacruz Megia, 42; Taptejdeep Singh, 36; Adrian Balleza, 29; Jose Dejesus Hernandez III, 35; Timothy Michael Romo, 49; Michael Joseph Rudometkin 40; Abdolvahab Alaghmandan, 63; and Lars Kepler Lane, 63. Alex Ward Fritch, 49, was the ninth victim who died Wednesday evening.
Cassidy’s former wife and a former girlfriend both said he had a history of ragey behavior and of taking his anger out on them. While it’s too early to know what the shooter’s motives were, we’ll just note again that angry misogynists commit a large portion of mass shootings. […]
Santa Clara County Sheriff Laurie Smith, in a press briefing this morning, said the dead were found in two different buildings at the rail yard, suggesting that Cassidy “went from building to building.” Smith said that Cassidy didn’t exchange fire with police, but that he apparently shot himself when he became aware they were on the scene. More, from NBC News:
He had two semiautomatic handguns and 11 loaded magazines, according to the sheriff. Investigators are looking into whether Cassidy targeted specific co-workers, but they do know “he was very deliberate, very fast. He knew where employees would be,” Smith said. […]
The early morning attack came at a particularly busy time at the transit hub as overnight workers overlap with, and passed off their duties to, colleagues checking in for early-morning shifts.
[…] In addition to the shootings, Cassidy apparently set fire to his home about 10 miles away. When fire crews arrived, the home was “engulfed in flames.” Authorities believe there was ammunition inside the home and firefighters smelled an accelerant when they arrived, sources said.
[…] A woman who dated the gunman for about six months in 2008 told NBC News she believes he was “not mentally stable.” She said that when she told him she didn’t want to marry him, he “was so angry, yelling and screaming […] And then he started making trouble for me.”
One day not long after the breakup, she said he stole her brand new car out of her driveway […] She said she reported it to police, but nothing happened. He returned the car a month later, with a broken bumper and other damage.
[…] CNN reports that, in court documents, the woman said Cassidy had violent mood swings that got worse when he was drinking, and that he played “mind games” with her. She also said “Several times during the relationship he became intoxicated, enraged and forced himself on me sexually.”
The shooter’s former wife told the San Jose Mercury News that Cassidy “had two sides … When he was in a good mood, he was a great guy. When he was mad, he was mad.” […]
He would frequently come home angry from work, and get angrier as he talked about how badly he felt he was treated at work, and he would sometimes turn his anger on her, his ex-wife said. […]
In a statement released by the White House before the ninth victim’s death had been announced, President Joe Biden called again for Congress to take action on guns, as if even the easiest, most broadly-supported measures to curb firearms violence might be achievable this time. […]
Biden too noted how common these horrors have become:
I have the solemn duty of yet again of ordering the flag to be lowered at half-staff, just weeks after doing so following the mass shootings at spas in and around Atlanta; in a grocery store in Boulder, Colorado; at a home in Rock Hill, South Carolina; and at a FedEx facility in Indianapolis, Indiana.
Enough. […]
Every life that is taken by a bullet pierces the soul of our nation. We can, and we must, do more.
And now it’s on to the next stages of the national ritual: the thoughts and prayers, the grief, the profiles of the victims, the gun humpers showing up to carefully explain that anyone saying “automatic” instead of “semi-automatic” isn’t allowed to have an opinion […]
Marjorie Taylor Greene is upset because not all of her Republican colleagues are defending her latest lunacy. Marjorie wants us to know that her feelings are hurt … and that people on Nancy Pelosi’s side sleep with Chinese spies (not kidding):
GREENE: You have to have respect for Nancy Pelosi in that she never allows attacks on her own, and she defends them even when they sleep with Chinese spies, when they attack Israel, when they stand with Hamas terrorism.
EVEN WHEN THEY SLEEP WITH CHINESE SPIES.
She has zero proof of what she’s saying, of course. She may not even know where she is right now.
GREENE: And that when their rhetoric is so disgusting, and that antifa, pro-Palestinian rioters are on the streets attacking American Jews.
What? What? Where does she think she is seeing this? What does she think she sees when she opens her eyes?
To be clear, there has been an alarming recent rise in anti-Semitic attacks in America, just like there’s been an alarming rise in attacks on the AAPI community. Greene seeing that and screaming ANTIFA!1111!!!! and blaming it on Nancy Pelosi and members of the House Democratic caucus is where this goes off the rails.
Continuing:
GREENE: You know Nancy Pelosi stands with her own, and Kevin McCarthy never had to say a word. He could have said, ‘You know, you should ask Marjorie about her words and ask her what she had to say.’
That would have been the right answer for him. So, it’s unfortunate that he took this route, and he didn’t even text me or call me, which is really a shame, before I found out seeing it in the news that he had said that.
He didn’t even text. :(
GREENE: And then sadly Elise Stefanik, our new GOP chair, you know, followed suit of course right along, and then I think Steve Scalise and others. And they shouldn’t have done that. None of them called me and asked me what I meant by what I said.
They didn’t even call. :(
And she could have explained so easily! And her explanation would have been that she said what she meant the first time, apparently:
GREENE: It’s terrible how people are being treated in this country about masks and about vaccine passports, and we have to stand up to these aggressions, and these are the exact types of aggressions that take away our freedoms, and we’ve seen it with tyrants in the past throughout history, and these are definitely countries that pursued the Socialist path, the same path that the Democrats are pursuing.
Dear. God.
[…] There are five more minutes of interview in the above clip after Kelly brags about his own VERY good TWEET about BACKBONE!!! We turned it off because we just couldn’t anymore. But if you’d like to watch it, it’s there. [Available at the link.]
On Tuesday, Greene retweeted and immediately deleted a tweet calling Kevin McCarthy, the leader of the caucus that allows her to be in it, a “feckless c**t.” […]
[…]
A “cataclysmic day” for three major oil companies in which investors rebelled over climate fears and a court ordered fossil fuel emissions to be slashed has sparked hope among campaigners, investors, lawyers and academics who said the historic decisions marked a turning point in efforts to tackle the climate crisis.
A Dutch court on Wednesday ordered Shell to cut carbon emissions from its oil and gas by 45% by 2030. A tiny activist investor group simultaneously won two places on ExxonMobil’s board and Chevron’s management was defeated when investors voted in favour of forcing the group to cut its carbon emissions.
Chevron is second on the list of fossil fuel firms with the biggest cumulative carbon emissions, ExxonMobil is third and Shell sixth.
“It may be the most cataclysmic day so far for the fossil fuel industry,” said the climate campaigner and author Bill McKibben. “If you want to keep the temperature low enough that civilisation will survive, you have to keep coal and oil and gas in the ground. That sounded radical a decade ago. Now it sounds like the law.”
[… numerous quotes from the environmentally-literate…]
Michael Burger at Columbia Law School in the US said there was no question that the Shell court defeat was a significant development in global climate litigation, and that “it could reverberate through courtrooms around the world”.
[…] The International Energy Agency said earlier this month that if governments were serious about the climate crisis, there could be no new investments in oil, gas and coal from this year, contrasting with most companies’ plans for further exploration.
[…]
Exxon’s chief executive, Darren Woods, said he had heard shareholders’ desire for change and that the company was well positioned to respond. [utter bullshite — environmentally-literate investors rebelled precisely because of the opposite — Extreme Carbon is notorious for dismissing and moving very slowly on the Climate Catastrophe; quoting from @282, “Chief Executive Officer Darren Woods told shareholders earlier this month that voting for them [the environmentally literate directors] would derail our progress and jeopardize your dividend — clearly a “company was well positioned to respond.” –blf]
An editorial in the Wall Street Journal [of course! continuing their nonsense –blf], which has frequently been sceptical[has repeatedly denied the Climate Catastrophe and belittled the science] about global heating, said: The usual suspects are casting ExxonMobil’s partial defeat in a proxy shareholder battle as a Waterloo for fossil fuels. {But} this wasn’t a revolt by retail investors against fossil fuels. It was a progressive political coup. Fossil fuels aren’t going away, and Exxon won’t prosper if it acts like they will.
A religious sect known for worshipping with AR-15s and its MAGA politics has purchased a sprawling, 40-acre compound in central Texas, which it hopes will offer a safe-haven for “patriots” from what they believe is an imminent war brought by the “deep state,” VICE News has learned.
The property, located in the small community of Thornton, 40 miles from Waco, was listed at just under $1 million. It’s been dubbed “Liberty Rock” by its new owners, the Sanctuary Church aka Rod of Iron Ministries, led by Pastor Hyung Jin “Sean” Moon. Members of the congregation often refer to him as “King.”
While Moon’s congregation, estimated to number in the hundreds, is relatively fringe, it’s a direct descendant of the much larger Unification Church, founded by his father, Rev. Sun Myung Moon, a self-proclaimed messiah and accused cult leader whose adoring followers became known to outsiders as “Moonies.”
The younger Moon, who set up shop in 2017 in Newfoundland, Pennsylvania, follows the doctrine of his late father—with a twist. Moon says he was inspired by a biblical passage in the Book of Revelation that talked about Jesus using a “rod of iron” to protect himself and others. He concluded this was a reference to AR-15s, and integrated high-powered firearms into regular church services, including wedding ceremonies. He founded the church with the support of his brother, Kook-jin “Justin” Moon, the CEO of Kahr Arms, a gun manufacturing company headquartered nearby.
From its beginning, the church wholeheartedly embraced former President Donald Trump and incorporated Trumpian culture war and conspiracies into its rhetoric. Moon told VICE News in late 2019 that he believed God was working through Trump to rid the world of “political satanism” (for example, the “deep state” and “the swamp”) and restore Eden. Through his gun-centric, MAGA-friendly outlook, Moon has been able to establish some fringe political alliances. Former Trump adviser Steve Bannon spoke at a recent event hosted by the church. Pennsylvania state senator and “Stop the Steal” organizer Doug Mastriano was also recently billed as a special guest at another church event.
As Moon’s church has expanded, bought additional property, and incorporated in at least two more states (Delaware and Florida), his teachings and rhetoric have grown even more radical and militaristic. His sermons contain a wide range of topics, from the weather, to why he hates ski resorts (too many “leftist lunatics”), to how to prepare for the coming “false flag” deep-state war.
…
“It’s a dangerous time, and this is a place of refuge and retreat if our community needs it,” Moon said in one of his recent sermons, titled “The King’s Report,” which he typically delivers wearing a crown made of bullets and a golden AR-15 displayed before him. “Of course, in worst-case scenarios.”
…
The new property acquisition has been a recurring topic in Moon’s King’s Reports, which are now broadcast via the gaming platform Twitch or the streaming site Rumble since they were booted off YouTube for violating community guidelines. Their videos are often accompanied by a slew of hashtags, including #MAGA, #Trump, #QAnon, #Q and #bluelivesmatter.
“The internationalist Marxist globalists are trying to start a civil war here, so that they can bring in the U.N. troops and Chi-Com Chinese military to come in and destroy and kill all gun owners, Christians, and any opposition, i.e., Trump supporters,” Moon said matter-of-factly in a recent sermon. “We are in the death of America right now, and that’s why, of course, God is allowing for our expansion.”
…
Since January 6, Moon’s sermons have taken on a greater intensity and urgency. In a broadcast from February titled “Danger coming for Trump supporters,” Moon warned viewers that the Biden administration was plotting genocide against its political opponents–or planning to round up Trump supporters and put them in “reeducation camps.”
“We have to understand the enemy we are dealing with,” Moon said. “We have to be ready to pray very, very hard, move fast, and of course, to resist on many levels, all the evil that they are trying to perpetrate on the world.”
…
All the while, a community of former “Moonies,” many of whom have family or friends who are deeply involved with the Sanctuary Church, are watching its slide into extremism with horror….
[…] When I made those statements, I wasn’t even talking about masks per se, Greene said. I was talking about the mistreatment of being treated like a second-class citizen. And I never said the word ‘Holocaust.’ It’s just the same as I never said the words ‘Jewish space lasers,’ but then the media made that one up too. So this is another fake news story that the media had to create to cover up the fact that the Jihad Squad is supporting terrorism, that the Democrat Party is the real party of ant-Semitism, they’re the real party of hate, division, and stealing our freedoms. So the media needed cover for the Democrats and the precious women that they love — the Jihad Squad — and so they decided to attack me.
[…]
Greene’s defense of her comments is unlikely to succeed given that anyone who hears her original statement knows exactly what she meant: We can look back in a time in history where people were told to wear a gold star, and they were definitely treated like second-class citizens — so much so that they were put in trains and taken to gas chambers in Nazi Germany, and this is exactly the type of abuse that Nancy Pelosi is talking about.
Considering that the Holocaust is precisely when Jews were “put in trains and taken to gas chambers in Nazi Germany,” it is absurd for Greene to now claim that she wasn’t comparing the House’s mask mandate to the Holocaust simply because she did not specifically use the word “Holocaust” while making the comparison.
In one post, on which New York magazine reported earlier this year, Greene suggested that the 2018 California wildfires were started by space lasers controlled by the Rothschild banking firm, instead of something more probable like climate change. The claim is rooted in a long history of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories about the Rothschild family […]
She later went to claim, improbably, that she didn’t know the Rothschilds were Jewish until recently.
Amusingly, whilst typing this, I’m listening to Grace Petrie slag off teh “U”K’s hereditary dictators, using the point she doesn’t object to individual members of that corrupt family, only to the institution. As she says (paraphrasing), “it’s funny, anytime someone hears you say you object to the monarchy, they think you mean you object to the individuals” — a problem not too different than what Greene is lying about, albeit with the exception Ms Petrie isn’t wrong. (Well, she is, in that she doesn’t seem to claim that are corrupt — but does acknowledge they are greedy & embarrassing.)
Max Baucus, a former Democratic senator and one of the architects of Obamacare, said in an interview that he was getting “somewhat” of a case of deja vu seeing the infrastructure discussions unfold. “I’d keep pushing forward as hard as I could, but there’s not much time left. I’d give it a month or so and then tell Schumer to push reconciliation,” the former Montana lawmaker said, referring to a legislative tactic available to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to approve some bills with only a simple majority.
“I doubt you’re going to see much bipartisanship in the end. Frankly, a lot of Republicans would rather not see a bipartisan bill,” the former senator added. “They say they would, but deep down they don’t.”
Baucus concluded, “I think you go as far as you can, but then there comes a time where the other side is just not seemingly negotiating in good faith, so you’ve got to stop and pass your own bill.”
Retired cops hired by a top Wisconsin Republican. A litmus test in Pennsylvania’s U.S. Senate race. A fight in rural Michigan over a small town’s election equipment.
Fueled by a shambolic election recount in Arizona, the audit-bug is spreading, and, with it, the fantastical belief that President Trump’s 2020 electoral defeat could still be reversed.
The Arizona exercise — ostensibly labeled an “audit,” though its procedures are questionable at best — was ordered by the state’s Republican Senate. It has been plagued with conspiracy theories, incompetency and dissent from within the state GOP. But it has also given Trump’s supporters hope that validating his false claims of mass fraud just takes a little more digging. In battleground states across the country, MAGA diehards are making increasingly loud demands for another round of review of the 2020 results […]
Trump has cheered on the reinvigorated recount effort and lied about what it’s shown so far, including in a statement Monday about an audit in New Hampshire.
“Why aren’t Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Republicans doing anything about what went on in the 2020 Election? How can the Democrats be allowed to get away with this?” Trump said. “It will go down as the Crime of the Century! Other States like Arizona, Georgia (where a Judge just granted a motion to unseal and inspect ballots from the 2020 Election), Michigan, Pennsylvania, and more to follow.”
Egged on by MAGA Media
[…] tune into the far-right Trump-aligned media sphere, and you see a different story. One America News Network — which is exclusively livestreaming the audit — has floated the expectation that the auditors are about to find mass fraud, while its correspondents have promoted a private fundraising campaign to help foot the bill for the recount.
Arizona Senate President Karan Fann nonetheless defended the cozy relationship her audit has had with the conspiracy theory-loving outlet
“Are you saying that OAN is not a credible news source?” Fann asked CNN, when grilled about the extensive access the platform has received.
[…] Steve Bannon, who’s hosted some of the activists involved in Arizona’s recount on his podcast, has also questioned Republican candidates for Pennsylvania’s U.S. Senate race about whether they support an audit there.
[…] Far-right outlets have also distorted the expectations of a legitimate review underway of a state legislative race in a small New Hampshire town, where discrepancies arose between the initial tabulation and a recount. The presidential race isn’t even being examined in the New Hampshire audit. The auditors have rejected claims of mass fraud, and instead are leaning towards a theory that the tabulation issue arose because of folds in the paper that created creases specifically over the part of the ballot with the state legislative race.
So of course, Gateway Pundit, another audit-obsessed fringe-right outlet, is now claiming that the auditors — all nationally known election experts — cannot be trusted.
The 2020 election was already subjected to unprecedented review and litigation as Trump tried to overturn it. But election officials have had only mixed success in fending off this latest round of frivolous and error-prone recounts.
A Republican judge dismissed last week a lawsuit seeking an audit of Antrim County, Michigan’s results. But a court in Georgia on Friday suggested it would be willing to give a local conspiracy theorist, Garland Favorito, and other voters some limited access to the ballots of Fulton County, home to Atlanta. Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) — who is currently facing a primary challenge aimed directly at his refusal to meddle with Georgia’s results — opposed handing over the physical ballots to the amateur audit-seekers, but now supports letting them inspect copies of the ballots. [FFS]
Another dispute has popped up in Cheboygan, Michigan, a largely rural county of about 25,000 people where Trump won by 30 percentage points over President Biden. A group of activists — parroting the claims about voting equipment that were rejected in the Antrim case — want to get their hands on the county’s election machines there for an audit.
“The election deniers, in many cases, have taken on a strategy where they’ve tried to go after individual counties, thinking that those counties might have fewer resources and be less inclined inclined to oppose some of these fake, so-called audits,” David Becker, a former Justice Department official who know heads the Center for Election Innovation & Research, told reporters on a press call Thursday.
He said a “sickness is spreading” with the push for amateur audits in various states.
[…] “Interest in granting access to unqualified third parties to conduct a ‘forensic audit’ may stem from misplaced reliance on ongoing misinformation, which has been repeatedly, comprehensively, and definitively debunked,” Michigan State Election Director Jonathan Brater said in a letter to the county clerk, according to the Washington Post. […]”
Cross-posted with another thread – Vice – “We’re Not Ready for the Next Pandemic”: “We’re learning the wrong lessons from the search for COVID-19’s origins.”
[…] the behavior actually demanded of Republican officials, if they want to keep their positions in the party, is gutless, spineless cowardice. Donald Trump, a perpetual whiner who is terrified of strong women and needs a golf cart to get from one end of a green to the other, is allowed to be the “alpha male.” Every other Republican is expected to be so beta as to barely exist.
George P. Bush, ambitious if loutish offspring of Jeb! Bush, is the extended Bush clan’s only plausible current inheritor of the family political dynasty. He will be challenging Texas attorney general Ken Paxton, who is indicted for f’cks sake, in upcoming Republican primaries. George P. is expected to run a campaign based broadly around “the name Bush is on my driver’s license” and “the other guy is indicted, for f’cks sake!” But Donald Trump absolutely loathes the Bush family, and has been very loud in saying so, because the Bush family is one of the few nests of Republicans left willing to point out that Donald Trump is a grifting, incompetent helium balloon of a man who has screwed up everything he’s ever touched. This requires George P. Bush to make a decision. Defend his family? Or cozy up to Coughed-Up Hairball?
We’re kidding, of course. Like Sen. Ted Cruz and every other Republican before him, George P.’s response to Donald Trump mocking his would-be presidential dad as “low energy” and claiming his family “has to like Mexican Illegals” because George’s mother was born in Mexico is … to suck up to him.
[…] George has been courting Trump for a long time now […] Donald Trump, incompetent death-dealing blowhard, is more popular among the Texas Republican base than father Jeb! or uncle President Guy, so family is out and Typhoid Hitler is in. A man’s got to get elected, after all. George P. Bush is not the sort of person who would settle for simply not being in politics.
[…] Want George P. to attack Rep. Liz Cheney for standing up to Trump’s support for a seditious act? You got it, boss. He’ll get his phone out and do it on the spot.
Republicans appear to genuinely hate Trump, mind you. There are no illusions there as to what Trump is or how destructive he is. In another of the day’s stories we learn that Republican lawmakers and aides are dreading Trump’s eventual return to politics. “This guy is a disaster,” goes one anonymous quote. “If we win the majority back,” it’s “going to be in spite of Trump.”
[…] For a party that ties itself so tightly to premises of toxic masculinity, the actual behavior of its supposed leaders is confusing at best. Lindsey Graham humiliates himself almost daily on Trump’s behalf. House Republicans compete viciously with one another to be the most visibly obsequious, to do Trump’s bidding and protect Trump’s buffoonery and shovel praise in his direction no matter how clownish his actions. Any Republican showing actual spine or independent thought, like Rep. Liz Cheney, results in shrieking panic.
And the base? The base is expected to be absolutely terrified, all the time, about everything. If a food service worker hands you your hamburger wrong, you’re supposed to treat it as communist encroachment. If you have to hear a Black American talk about racism, it must be because Red China wants that to happen. You must be terrified of yoga. You must panic at the thought of having to wear a mask to keep your own relatives from dying. […]
And Trump, the alpha male who is considered the Dear Leader everyone else must bow to no matter how many insults he hurls at their families or allies? The man is a wilting flower about everything. There’s never been a more paranoid person in the Oval Office, and that is saying something. The guy thought a worldwide disease outbreak was a plot to make him, personally, look bad. The guy spent four obsessive years both believing that everyone in government was out to get him and tasking his advisers with firing them all before they could. A tame eagle flapped its wings at him and he bolted like he was under sniper fire.
This isn’t a movement of masculine manly-men reclaiming their toughness. This is a collection of all the biggest cowards in America, all watching each other to make sure everyone else is as gutless as they are […]
What is even going on here? How the hell are we supposed to make sense of a movement that demands maximal cowardice from every official? Hey George P. Bush, can you make any sense of this for us? Because all we see from the outside is a party of spineless and amoral weasels ingratiating themselves to other spineless weasels for the sake of … what? Getting to do it again?
Chris Hayes: “As far as I can tell the GOP [infrastructure] ‘counteroffer’ is…13% (in new dollar terms) of what Biden is proposing. Not sure how you’d react to someone who offered that in any other negotiation.”
…On Wednesday…four Jewish House Democrats penned an open letter in which they claimed that statements accusing Israel of apartheid “are antisemitic at their core and contribute to a climate that is hostile to many Jews.” Though their names weren’t included, it was a clear rebuke of statements from Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., and other progressive members of their caucus in recent weeks.
In response, I would ask the four drafters of the letter if I am now antisemitic for agreeing with Human Rights Watch’s 213-page report detailing how “deprivations” of Palestinian rights by Israel are now “so severe that they amount to the crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution?” Is my award-winning MSNBC colleague Ali Velshi, who recently said — and wrote — that “the idea that it’s even remotely controversial to call what Israel has imposed on Palestinians a form of apartheid is laughable,” an antisemite as well? (Ali, incidentally, is the child of brown South African parents who left that country because of, wait for it, apartheid.)
Is B’Tselem, an acclaimed Israeli human rights organization staffed by Jewish Israelis, antisemitic for accusing Israel of creating an “apartheid regime?” How about Yesh Din, another Israeli human rights organization staffed by Jewish Israelis? The group issued a legal opinion concluding that “the crime against humanity of apartheid is being committed in the West Bank.”
You can, of course, agree or disagree, in good faith, with the claim that Israel is guilty of the crime of apartheid. But it’s not antisemetic; apartheid is not an insult or a trope; it is a “crime against humanity” clearly defined under international law “as inhumane acts … committed in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime.”
It wasn’t anti-Christian to condemn South Africa for apartheid policies and practices in the 1980s; it isn’t anti-Jewish to condemn Israel for what many believe to be apartheid policies and practices today.
The letter from these Democratic lawmakers is yet another example of the way in which the charge of antisemitism — a serious and growing problem here in the United States — is often used and abused by defenders of Israel to protect the world’s only Jewish state from any and all criticism. Perhaps above all else, Wednesday’s open letter is also a reminder of how pro-Israeli politicians in the United States, in their zeal to denounce and discredit their rivals, pay little attention to the rhetoric or actions of actual Israeli politicians in Israel.
If statements connecting Israel to apartheid are “antisemitic at their core,” how then do the letter’s signatories explain the fact that some of the Jewish state’s most senior and prominent politicians have also invoked the threat, or even the reality, of apartheid in Israel and the occupied territories?
Here are 10 of them, including four men who served as prime minister of Israel:
[quotes remarks from David Ben-Gurion, Yitzhak Rabin, Ehud Barak, Ehud Olmert, Michael Ben-Yair, Yossi Sarid, Shulamit Aloni, Alon Liel, Zehava Galon, and Meir Dagan]
Maybe the Democrats who penned that letter should write a follow-up, one explaining clearly how it is that Israel has, by their logic, been led for so much of its history by “antisemites.” I look forward to reading it.
Matt Hancock is under mounting pressure to explain why the UK government failed to protect care home residents at the outset of the Covid pandemic, as he sought to salvage his reputation after Dominic Cummings accused him of lying.
The health secretary claimed for the first time it “wasn’t possible” to test all care home residents for Covid before they were discharged from hospital last March, because the testing capacity was not yet available.
But the shadow social care minister, Liz Kendall, said that explanation “simply doesn’t stack up”.
“There were over 530,000 tests carried out in the UK by 20 April, yet they couldn’t test 25,000 people discharged from hospitals to care homes, after we saw it sweep through care homes in Italy, France and America?” she said. “The reality is, they wanted to free up the beds and they didn’t prioritise older people.”
She accused Hancock, who previously claimed to have thrown a “protective ring” around care homes, of changing his story to “wriggle out” of responsibility….
Argentina reported a record one-day number of new Covid-19 cases of 41,080 on Thursday, amid a second wave of infections that has made the country one of the hardest hit in the world, pushing the local health care system to its limit.
The nation of 45 million inhabitants has so far registered a total 3,663,215 cases and 76,135 deaths, according to official data, making it one of the countries with the most deaths per capita along with neighbouring Uruguay, Paraguay and Brazil.
Argentina began a strict lockdown for nine days on Saturday to get the virus under control. But the rollout of its vaccination program has been slower than promised by the centre-left government of the president Alberto Fernandez.
Current lockdown measures include a suspension of in-person school classes, a nightly curfew and take-out-only restaurant service.
“Just spoke w/ a doctor outside of the Greene/Gaetz event in Dalton, GA who works at a nearby hospital. He went into the event briefly to evaluate if it would become a COVID-spreader event for his community. Says vaccine rates aren’t very high here.”
“Where things are in the GOP in a nutshell: MAGA-friendly Lt Gov of Idaho who wants to challenge current GOP Gov in next primary, takes advantage of gov’s trip out of state to issue order banning mask mandates in schools and public buildings.”
The Argentinian government has sent thousands of DNA testing kits to its consulates around the world in a groundbreaking effort to put names to unidentified victims murdered in the “Dirty War” waged by the brutal military dictatorship four decades ago.
Last month, the Argentinian authorities, in collaboration with the National Commission for the Right to Identity, the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo movement and investigators from the Argentinian Forensic Anthropology Team (EAAF), launched its international Right to Identity campaign, committed to putting a name to every woman, man and child killed by the military junta in Argentina in the 1970s and early 80s.
After the 1976 coup, Argentina’s military set about systematically crushing any potential opposition, and eventually “disappeared” and murdered 30,000 people, almost all of them civilian, unarmed non-combatants.
The abuses meted out to “los desaparecidos” in Argentina’s Dirty War have inflicted a deep trauma on the Argentinian psyche. Pregnant prisoners were kept alive until they gave birth and were then murdered. At least 500 babies were taken from their parents while in captivity and given to childless military couples to raise as their own.
The task of identifying victims of the dictatorship is a herculean one, starting with discovering where the military buried the bodies of their victims.
After the return of democracy it was discovered that many victims were hidden in mass unmarked graves, some in municipal cemeteries. Others washed up on Argentina’s beaches after they were drugged and thrown into the Atlantic Ocean from aircraft in macabre “death flights” organised by the military.
Last year, the EAAF, which was nominated for the Nobel peace prize in 2020, started a campaign to identify some 600 remains recovered in the years after the war and believed to be people “disappeared” by the junta. However, their efforts have been thwarted by missing genetic data.
Now the search for the missing families has been extended internationally with the government instructing Argentinian embassies and consulates around the world to help find missing relatives who could supply DNA to assist with the identification.
The first DNA collection kits arrived two weeks ago at the Argentinian consulate general in Rome.
It is hoped that testing in Italy will reveal many of the missing identities. Hundreds of thousands of Italians emigrated to Argentina in the late 19th century and early 20th century and almost 700,000 Argentinians hold dual citizenship. Many Italians also travelled to Argentina during the military dictatorship to join the resistance against the far-right regime. In October 1982, the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera published a list of 297 Italians aged 17 to 29 who disappeared while in Argentina.
Maco Somigliana, who has been a member of the EAAF team since 1987, said: “We’ve been able to identify around 1,000 remains of victims of Argentina’s dictatorship. There are 75 Italians reported as kidnapped during the dictatorship and we’ve been able to positively identify five of them so far.”
The Guardian has seen an official list of 45 desaparecidos of Italian origin, who have yet to be identified. The search for their families, which has already started, will be led by two Argentinian consulates in Italy, which will collect DNA in Italy, Albania, Malta and San Marino.
…
Once the remains have been identified, they will be returned to their families. This procedure is free and confidential and there will be financial compensation for relatives of the victims.
…
The EAAF have since applied the skills they acquired in Argentina elsewhere, identifying victims of summary executions and genocide around the world, in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Africa, Mexico and Asia, including the identification of the body of Che Guevara, the Cuban-Argentinian revolutionary, in Bolivia. They also participated in the case of the 43 students massacred in 2014 in Mexico’s drug war at the request of the families of the victims.
A federal judge granted a request by prosecutors in New York to appoint a special master to review materials seized from Rudy Giuliani’s home and office during a raid in late April.
In a decision posted Friday, Judge Paul Oetkin said he agrees a special master is warranted for the “perception of fairness.”
The judge had ordered both sides to submit candidates to serve in that role by June 4….
The EU has said it will provide Belarus with €3bn (£2.6bn) through grants and loans if the country “changes course”, as the bloc seeks to ramp up internal pressure on the president, Alexander Lukashenko.
Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president, came close to an all-out call for regime change as she made the pledge of funds in return for a “transition” to democracy.
“Our messages are twofold. To the people of Belarus: we see and hear your desire for change, for democracy, and for a bright future,” she said. “And to the Belarusian authorities: no amount of repression, brutality or coercion will bring any legitimacy to your authoritarian regime.
“So far, you have blatantly ignored the democratic choice of the Belarusian people. It is time to change course. When – and we believe it is a case of when, not if – Belarus starts its peaceful democratic transition, the EU will be there to accompany it.”
The offer is part of a carrot and stick approach to force a change of approach or leadership in Belarus. This week EU leaders agreed on a raft of new economic sanctions in response to the arrest and holding in Belarus of the opposition journalist Raman Pratasevich and his Russian girlfriend, Sofia Sapega.
…
A commission spokeswoman said Von der Leyen had also written to Belarus’s opposition leader, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, and other opposition figures “expressing her respect and admiration for the courage and strength of the people of Belarus”.
“The president conveyed the EU stands ready to engage in all possible ways to accompany a peaceful democratic transition in Belarus, and outlined in her letter the EU’s comprehensive plan of economic support to a democratic Belarus of up to €3bn,” the spokesperson said.
The Kremlin has announced that Lukashenko will meet the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, in the Black Sea resort of Sochi on Friday for talks on closer economic ties. Earlier in the day, the countries’ prime ministers met in Minsk to pave the way for the presidents’ talks.
…
Lithuania’s foreign ministry on Friday said it was expelling two Belarusian diplomats for “activities incompatible with the status of a diplomat”.
“Two [Belarus] intelligence officers working under the diplomatic cover were asked to leave Lithuania. No thank you and goodbye,” the foreign minister, Gabrielius Landsbergis, said on Twitter.
Landsbergis said the move was in solidarity with Lithuania’s Baltic neighbour Latvia, which had its entire embassy staff expelled from Belarus.
Here’s a link to the May 28 Guardian coronavirus world liveblog.
From there:
Hungary has identified two cases of the coronavirus variant first detected in India, the government official in charge of vaccinations has said.
Reuters reports:
The central European country has been badly hit by the pandemic, and according to Johns Hopkins University data is the country with the most deaths per 100,000 people. An especially lethal third wave has been easing after an aggressive vaccination campaign.
“The Indian variant is present in Hungary, according to experts we cannot exclude the possibility of a new wave of the pandemic,” Istvan Gyorgy, deputy minister and head of the government’s task force on vaccinations, told a news conference.
Surgeon General Cecilia Muller added one of the two patients has recovered already. Contact tracing was unable to establish how they were infected. Neither of them spent time abroad recently.
…So yes: you’ve heard a lot of denials over the past 24 hours. But the biggest UK repository of denial remains the polls, where no revelation of incompetence or failure impacts other than positively for the government. A midweek poll saw the Conservatives climb six points, to 44%, which feels about perfect for a country where at that moment Cummings was claiming industrial levels of lying, incompetence and contempt for elderly and vulnerable people, and spiking it all with such details as Boris Johnson wanting Chris Whitty to inject him with the virus live on TV. Remember, even Donald Trump at his maddest only wanted other people to inject the disinfectant.
Still, we are where we are. The great puzzle is that so many of the people who talked about “the Corbyn cult” are so reluctant to face up to the fact of the Johnson cult. In many ways, Johnson is the much more classic cult leader. His decisions have led to the deaths of large numbers of people, and he’s got a lot of women pregnant.
…And for well over a year, many – not just Cummings – have pointed in remorseless and verifiable detail to his abysmal decisions or indecisions, which have led to tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths, far deeper-than-necessary economic damage and longer loss of freedoms. To say nothing of his having an approach to funding holidays and interior decoration that would not seem out of place in a TV evangelist.
But let’s return to first principles on this whole cult business. The thing about cult leaders, typically, is that they’re charismatic, male and able to persuade people of the wisdom of things very much not in their best interests. There is simply no moral failing of theirs that could be placed in front of their followers that would not cause those same followers to passionately excuse it or love them more for it. Faulty prophecies, missing funds, being present but not involved at the laying of a wreath to Black September, notching up one of the world’s worst death tolls and persistently dithering to the point of alleged manslaughter – all this is bad shit to outsiders, but simply makes the cultists cleave ever closer to their dear leaders.
…
Even more unfortunately, Johnson is aided and abetted by a generation of Westminster-watchers so addled by polling that they have completely divorced morality from politics. I’m frightfully bored of being told things don’t matter because they didn’t “cut through”, or that this or that horror show is “priced in” to the public’s relationship with Johnson, or that something is irrelevant because “voters don’t care about it”. So what?! Voters don’t care about a lot of things that are, nonetheless, properly important. Yet we’re awash with pundits and politicians who can tell you the electoral price of everything but the value of nothing.
Ultimately, crowing that the public don’t expect better than the substandard governance served up over the past 14 months isn’t the win they think it is. Is that the mindset that’s going to make a success of Global Britain? Do me a favour. It’s the mindset of managed decline, and if they can’t see that, they really are lost to the Kool-Aid.
[I don’t care for the Kool-Aid metaphor, but whatever.]
Russia has retaliated against a ban on carriers entering Belarus’s airspace by refusing to grant permission to European planes flying to Moscow.
In an apparent escalation by the Kremlin, Russian aviation authorities forced Austrian Airlines to cancel its flight from Vienna to the Russian capital. Air France also cancelled its Paris-Moscow flight for the second day in a row, after it was denied permission on Wednesday to land in Russia.
Both carriers had posted new routes bypassing Belarus. The move follows the “hijacking” on Sunday of a Ryanair plane flying between Greece and Lithuania, and the arrest of two passengers onboard, the journalist Raman Pratasevich and his Russian girlfriend, Sofia Sapega.
Air France and Austrian Airlines were following a recommendation by the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA). It is unclear if Moscow’s retaliation is temporary or signals a more lasting standoff, which could in turn lead to countermeasures against the Russian national carrier Aeroflot.
Airlines including British Airways and KLM have been able to use new routes on flights to Moscow.
The UN’s International Civil Aviation Organization agreed on Thursday to launch a speedy investigation into the Belarus president Alexander Lukashenko’s decision to down Pratasevich’s flight, as governments rush to deter copycat incidents.
The 36-member ICAO council held an “exceptional session” to “share and review the latest information available, and discuss” the forced grounding of the aircraft in Minsk, a spokesperson said.
After the meeting in Montreal, the Irish Transport minister, Eamon Ryan, said: “These unacceptable actions were an attack on European aviation security and put in danger the lives of the passengers and crew as they traveled between two EU capitals.”
Legal experts said that Belarus’s eventual expulsion from an international convention facilitating travel by its national airline around the world and by others in its airspace was likely to win the necessary majority support if Lukashenko and his Moscow-supported regime failed to back down.
…
“[Belarus’s expulsion] depends on very much of the position that Mr Lukashenko takes now. If he is very stubborn, says he is master of his house, I’m a sovereign state, then the reaction must be: ‘Sorry you don’t understand: we are talking about international civil aviation and we have to exclude you.’
“The question for the ICAO is not just to punish somebody. The problem is the danger of copying. If ICAO reacts in a soft way this could encourage other autocrats in the world, and there are many of them, to ignore and disregard the international community. If this spreads all over the place, we can forget international aviation.”…
“#BREAKING: 54-35, Senate Republicans block effort to open debate on bill to create an outside commission to probe Jan. 6 attack. The vote marks their first successful legislative filibuster this Congress. House Dems are now considering opening a Dem-led probe into the attack
The six Rs who voted to advance bill:
Murkowksi
Collins
Cassidy
Sasse
Romney
Portman
Pat Toomey, who voted to convict Trump in February, skipped the vote. He told me for days he was ‘undecided’.”
Violent insurrectionists attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. Senate Republicans killed a bipartisan plan to investigate the riot.
Ten days ago, on the heels of the House approving a bipartisan plan to create a Jan. 6 commission, the Washington Post published a headcount that raised proponents’ hopes. By the newspaper’s tally, there were seven Senate Republicans who expressed tacit interest in the proposal, and with just three more votes, success was a distinct possibility.
One of the seven was Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.), who conceded the United States “clearly had an insurrection” on Jan. 6, and he didn’t to see the violence “swept under any rug.”
One day later, the South Dakota Republican changed his mind, explaining that GOP leaders had told him the bipartisan plan wasn’t quite bipartisan enough.
It was emblematic of how the process unfolded. Republicans said they were open to the creation of an independent commission, but only if their demands were met. Democrats, willing to pay high prices in the interest of governing, met those demands, only to have House GOP lawmakers balk anyway.
Today, Senate Republicans did the same thing. The final tally was 54 to 35.
I can appreciate why the procedural details may seem boring and unimportant, but it’s worth emphasizing that this was not the vote to create the Jan. 6 commission. Rather, this was a procedural vote on something called a motion to proceed — which in practical terms means Republicans blocked a Senate debate over whether to create the Jan. 6 commission.
For those unfamiliar with congressional procedures, it’s probably also worth noting that the gap between the opponents and proponents was less important than it might appear: proponents of the bipartisan plan needed 60 votes. Period. Full stop. The fact that most senators supported the proposal is, thanks to the filibuster rules, irrelevant. In fact, if only 60 senators showed up for today’s vote, and 59 of them voted “yes,” the one “no” vote would prevail.
This is the first bill of this Congress to fail as a result of a Republican filibuster.
SC @330, this paragraph from the text you quoted is going to stick with me:
Even more unfortunately, Johnson is aided and abetted by a generation of Westminster-watchers so addled by polling that they have completely divorced morality from politics. I’m frightfully bored of being told things don’t matter because they didn’t “cut through”, or that this or that horror show is “priced in” to the public’s relationship with Johnson, or that something is irrelevant because “voters don’t care about it”. So what?! Voters don’t care about a lot of things that are, nonetheless, properly important. Yet we’re awash with pundits and politicians who can tell you the electoral price of everything but the value of nothing.
Meanwhile, in USA politics:
Now that Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) has announced his opposition to a bipartisan Jan. 6 commission, the editorial board of the Orlando Sentinel is arguing that it’s “time to give up on” the Republican senator. The editorial, published yesterday morning, added, “Sorry to say it, but Marco Rubio is beyond hope.”
More political news related to the January 6 attack:
Less than a week after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, Facebook announced a pause on all political contributions for three months. This week, the social-media giant decided to renew its donations, but it will exclude congressional Republicans who voted against certifying President Biden’s victory.
Trump didn’t do his most dangerous followers any favors on Jan. 6. Twenty weeks later, he’s still making their lives worse.
Several hundred suspected rioters have been charged in connection with the Jan. 6 insurrectionist attack on the Capitol, and many have appeared in courtrooms in recent weeks asking to be released pending trial. Those requests aren’t going especially well for an important reason.
To hear the defendants and their lawyers tell it, there’s no reason to keep them in jail ahead of their criminal trials because the accused insurrectionists don’t pose a public threat. The argument is relatively straightforward: Jan. 6 was an unusual, onetime event — a singular, unrepeatable moment in time — in which a violent mob was whipped into a frenzy by Donald Trump’s lies.
Twenty weeks later, with Trump out of office, the alleged rioters keep telling judges that there’s no reason to see them as dangerous. There’s just one problem, which Politico recently highlighted:
Trump’s refusal to accept the reality that he lost the 2020 election — reflected in a torrent of recent statements renewing discredited claims about a “rigged” vote — has become a feature of prosecutors’ latest attempts to jail Capitol riot defendants they deem too dangerous to release pending trial. Judges have started citing this argument — as part of broader analysis — in cases where they’ve decided to detain defendants for presenting a threat of future violence, and even in some cases where they’ve agreed to let defendants go free, pending trial. They’ve agreed that Trump’s rhetoric could spur his most radicalized supporters to attack again. And that could be bad news for dozens of additional riot suspects being hauled in on alleged conspiracy and police assault charges.
It’s a difficult truth to get around: if Trump’s election lies led these suspected rioters to launch a violent attack, and Trump is still telling the exact same election lies, then judges have a reason to believe these same suspected rioters may be dangerous.
[…] In a federal courtroom yesterday, a judge denied a pre-trial release for a Michigan man accused of participating in the riot, noting that the man posted messages on social media after Jan. 6 to say that continued resistance to the election might be necessary.
“Defendant’s promise to take action in the future cannot be dismissed as an unlikely occurrence given that his singular source of information, (‘Trump’s the only big shot I trust right now’), continues to propagate the lie that inspired the attack on a near daily basis,” the judge wrote, adding, “[T]he anger surrounding the false accusation continues to be stoked by multiple media outlets as well as the state and federal party leaders who are intent on censuring those who dare to challenge the former President’s version of events.” [Yep. The judge got that right.]
[…] a different federal judge in a different pre-trial detention hearing concluding, “[T]he Court is not convinced that dissatisfaction and concern about the legitimacy of the election results has dissipated for all Americans. Former President Donald J. Trump continues to make forceful public comments about the ‘stolen election,’ chastising individuals who did not reject the supposedly illegitimate results that put the current administration in place.”
Trump didn’t do his most dangerous followers any favors on Jan. 6. Twenty weeks later, he’s still making their lives worse.
Biden had a little fun mocking Republicans for touting the relief bill they voted against.
COVID cases are down, COVID deaths are down, unemployment filings are down, hunger is down, vaccinations are up, jobs are up, growth is up, people gaining health coverage is up, small business confidence is up. Put it simply: America is coming back. America is on the move. And that wasn’t an accident. It wasn’t luck.
[…] Even my Republican friends in Congress, not a single one of them voted for the Rescue Plan. I’m not going to embarrass any one of them, but I have here a list of how, back in their districts, they’re bragging about the Rescue Plan…. I mean, some people have no shame. But I’m happy. I’m happy they know that it’s benefited their constituents. That’s okay with me. But if you’re going to try to take credit for what you’ve done, don’t get in the way of what we still need to do.
A scorching drought and historic anger over the federal government turning off farmers’ taps has led to a combustible situation in southern Oregon, where members of anti-government activist Ammon Bundy’s network are starting to talk about yet another standoff with the feds.
[…] Bundy said he was prepared to travel to the area and “bring as many people as I can muster up” with him.
The federal government on May 12 announced that it would be sealing shut a canal that typically delivers irrigation water to well more than 100,000 acres of farmland in the Klamath River Basin, leading to dire predictions not only of crop losses, but also of potential infrastructure damage and mass die-offs of birds and fish down-stream.
The water will stay in Upper Klamath Lake, which is the habitat of two aging populations of sucker fish, the C’waam and Koptu, that are protected by the Endangered Species Act and considered sacred by tribes in the area. Desperate farmers reliant on water from the lake are understandably frantic. The Klamath Tribes said that while they took “zero pleasure” in the news, the federal Bureau of Reclamation “made the only decision reasonably available to it.”
“[…] It’s the federal government coming in and claiming rights that are not their own and taking them from the rightful people.” [Bundy said] “‘Oh, the tribes have rights, too. Oh, the endangered species, what about them? Oh, the drought and climate change.’ Those are liberal talking points that are there, designed to literally strip the people of their rights and to put the power in the government’s hands.”
[…] Bundy’s boots on the ground are the local members of his decentralized “Peoples Rights” network, which began essentially as a phone tree to organize demonstrations against COVID-19 orders, and has since spun into activism on a buffet of local grievances.
At first, “we were concerned about, like, mandating mask-wearing, stuff like that,” said Kristen Clark, the Peoples Rights organizer in south central Oregon. The group also discussed potential shortages of goods like food and toilet paper, Clark said, as well as ham radio operation and homeschooling: “All that, that had to do with COVID-19.”
[…] Now, Clark and Peoples Rights are helping run a “Water Crisis Info Center” out of a large canvas tent on the property.
[…] Peoples Rights’ has urged the Klamath Irrigation District, or KID, to step in and open the canal themselves, staging a protest at a board meeting the day after the federal announcement.
[…] In a letter dated the same day, May 14, a Bureau of Reclamation official warned, “Any attempt to remove the bulkheads could subject the individuals involved to legal consequences.”
[…] “People are worried, and these guys march around with guns and play soldier on the weekends, and so there is a real concern for peoples’ safety,” Craig Tucker, a natural resources consultant for the Karuk Tribe, told TPM. [Sounds like another gun battle is shaping up.]
[…] “We’re very concerned about it,” said Chuck Tanner, research director at the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights, which has tracked Peoples Rights for months. “This is a very volatile group. They’ve got a radically anti-democratic vision and ideas about how to use paramilitary activism as a way to advance that. That’s never a good combination.”
[…] Bundy told TPM that if local Peoples Rights activists call on him, “if they need me, I’ll be down there, I’ll support them. I’ll bring as many people as I can muster up to come down.” […]
Some of the locals have said that they don’t want Bundy bringing in outsiders to exacerbate an already volatile situation, but I think it may be too late for calming rhetoric to have any effect.
Joy Reid: “Today is one of the most shameful days in the history of the United States Senate. Enough already. The Republican Party has again bowed to sedition. And @JoeManchinWV has again proved that he can’t deliver 10 Republicans for his precious Jim Crow filibuster-loving bipartisanship.”
Brandon Armbruster just wanted to keep his students safe. The chief operating officer of St. Andrew’s Episcopal School in Austin, Texas, Armbruster spent the spring and summer of 2020 diligently preparing for students to return—designing outdoor classrooms, setting up testing routines, and debating whether to cancel sports.
A private school with nearly 1,000 K–12 students on two campuses, St. Andrew’s had its own advisory committee of doctors and scientists to guide decisions about COVID. And as they learned more about how the coronavirus could hang suspended in aerosols for hours, the committee urged Armbruster to turn his attention to ventilation and ways to maximize the amount of fresh air St. Andrew’s could pump into its classrooms.
So when a contractor the school had worked with before suggested installing high-tech devices in air ducts to scrub out the coronavirus, Armbruster was intrigued. The devices used a technique called bipolar ionization, shooting tiny, electrically charged ions into the air, where they would interact with and neutralize airborne contaminants like viruses. Or, at least, that’s the theory. […]
Armbruster, a 45-year-old business and finance guy, liked how the ionizers sounded more “proactive” than filters, which trap tiny contaminants as they float through air ducts or are sucked into the kind of free-standing air purifier you can buy at Home Depot. The contractor assured him that other Texas schools had already gone ahead with the technology. But Armbruster wasn’t convinced. For one thing, he couldn’t find much data on bipolar ionization that didn’t come directly from the companies peddling the products. And a video on the Plasma Air website raised red flags. In a science fair–style experiment captured on camera, two slices of bread were placed side by side in transparent boxes—one with a Plasma Air ionizer running, and one without. Over six days, mold blossomed across the bread in the non-ionized box; the other slice appeared fresh. “Yeah, it works great inside a small box,” Armbruster remembers thinking. “But what’s it going to do for a big classroom?”
To find out, he got in touch with Atila Novoselac and Pawel Misztal, two engineering professors and indoor air experts at the University of Texas, Austin. He asked if they would run tests on a couple of these ionizers before the school forked over more than $100,000. “Well, why not?” Novoselac recalls answering. They didn’t have access to a biosafety lab where they could test the ionizers against actual coronavirus. But they could measure whether the machines removed particles or broke down volatile organic compounds released in the air by household cleaning products, which would give them an idea of whether they worked as advertised. […]
Yet when they turned on the ionizers in their own stainless steel chamber, the two engineers couldn’t detect any meaningful change in air quality. At first they thought the devices must not be working. After consulting the manual and running the tests again, they got the same results. Both researchers cautioned that their experiments were informal and confined to the two specific devices they tested. But the conclusions were unambiguous: “Installing this unit in a classroom’s HVAC was as good as putting a brick in a duct,” Novoselac wrote in an email to another researcher.
[…] nearly a dozen chemists, engineers, and indoor air-quality experts laid out a range of possible dangers. First there’s the matter of the molecules that additive purifiers release into air, which can include ozone or free radicals. Ozone, a highly reactive form of oxygen, has long been known to damage lungs and worsen chronic respiratory diseases. While some purifiers are certified to produce undetectable levels of ozone, others produce much more. And little oversight exists to keep levels in check. Free radicals, meanwhile, have an odd number of electrons, which makes them unstable and greedy. When they meet other molecules, they grab their electrons, transforming into something new. While purifiers rely on those transformations to destroy unwanted gases, some research suggests free radicals may damage lung tissue when inhaled.
Experts also worry the machines run the risk of creating harmful byproducts like formaldehyde, a probable carcinogen at high concentrations. A federal class-action lawsuit filed in May against one of Plasma Air’s competitors, Global Plasma Solutions (GPS), alleges that bipolar ionizers “make the air worse for people” by causing toxic chemicals to form. In two recent studies conducted in China, researchers found that ionizing air purifiers tested in schools reduced particulate matter but also appeared to cause health problems. “Indoor air is a complex chemical soup,” explains Jeff Siegel, a University of Toronto civil engineering professor who has spent decades researching air cleaners. “If you’re operating one of these devices, the most charitable thing I can say is you are doing an uncontrolled experiment on the air in your building,” Siegel says. “In some environments, this could be really hazardous.” […]
peer-reviewed research does not show additive air purifiers consistently working under real-world conditions without forming potentially harmful byproducts […]
More at the the link, including details concerning Dr. Deborah Birx and former CDC Director Robert Redfield who have both joined manufacturers of additive purifiers. This looks like Trumpism being exported to the air-purifying industry.
Leader McConnell and Senate Republicans’ denial of the truth of the January 6th insurrection brings shame to the Senate. Republicans’ cowardice in rejecting the truth of that dark day makes our Capitol and our country less safe.
Democrats worked across the aisle, agreeing to everything that Republicans asked for. We did this in the interest of achieving a bipartisan Commission. In not taking yes for an answer, Republicans clearly put their election concerns above the security of the Congress and country.
Two men were removed from Yankee Stadium during a Thursday night game after they displayed a large banner declaring “Trump Won” and “Save America.”
Videos and photos posted to social media showed many other fans booing the men who unfurled the banner while some appeared to clap. The men unfurled the banner from the second deck behind first base.
In a video posted by Sports Illustrated reporter Max Goodman, fans continued to boo the sign as one person could be seen attempting to pull down the banner from his seat below the two men.
[…] a Yankees Stadium security official could be seen struggling to take the flag from the two men as they resisted.
A later video posted to Facebook showed more security guards arriving before they confiscated the banner and appeared to handcuff one of the men.
Security officials led the men away, prompting a round of cheers inside the stadium. The incident took place during the second game of a doubleheader between the Yankees and Toronto Blue Jays. […]
The Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist is reportedly considering a lawsuit.
[…] Pulitzer Prize winner and UNC graduate Nikole Hannah-Jones was hired by the university as the Knight Chair in Race and Investigative Journalism in April, reportedly a tenured position.
The Board of Trustees did not grant Hannah-Jones tenure as it had for previous hires in the position, generating backlash.
Hannah-Jones sent a letter to state lawmakers requesting the preservation of evidence, suggesting a potential lawsuit against the university. […]
A network of Russian marketing companies known for selling dubious nutritional supplements and pushing malware is behind a disinformation campaign to denigrate Western coronavirus vaccines, according to a new RFE/RL investigation.
The revelations, which lead to a Moscow-based businesswoman active in pro-Kremlin political circles, add new insight into the campaign that targeted social-media influencers in France and Germany, among other countries, and reportedly attracted the attention of French intelligence agencies.
The woman, Yulia Serebryanskaya, is a veteran of political campaigns and event planning for the ruling United Russia party, and briefly ran as an independent for election in the Moscow city elections in 2019.
She also heads an organization called Russian Initiative, which describes itself as a “worldwide union of Russian speakers” that “helps people carry on our culture and adequately represent our traditions, our social achievements, rather than tolerate a distorted idea of the Motherland, wherever they are.”
The disinformation campaign involving marketing companies adds a new dimension to Russia’s murky, under-the-radar efforts to promote its own COVID-19 vaccines — in particular the Sputnik V vaccine backed by the country’s sovereign wealth fund, the Russia Direct Investment Fund.
Known as RDIF, the fund has aggressively promoted Sputnik V, extolling, and at times exaggerating, its benefits, while also openly criticizing Western vaccines such as Pfizer/BioNTech, AstraZeneca, and Moderna, and amplifying negative scientific results.
…
Graham Barrow, a U.K.-based financial crimes expert and host of a podcast about money laundering, told RFE/RL that Serebryanskaya is identified as a “person of significant control” for three U.K. entities, all three of which appear to be connected, and exhibit strong signs of being shell companies.
Along with being registered at a corporate mailbox address — a common business practice where hundreds of corporations can be located at a single location — all indications are that the companies “have no real commercial activity but exist solely to act as a conduit for assets, often of unknown provenance,” Barrow told RFE/RL.
“For example, all three have declared, at some point in their existence, the same pair of offshore companies, one from Belize and one from British Virgin Islands, to be the officers of the company. These two companies have acted for many other U.K.-registered companies, none of which appears to be associated with the U.K. in any way,” Barrow said.
Though no evidence has turned up suggesting the involvement of Russian public entities, or government officials or agencies in the social media campaign, the effort has echoes of other public relations efforts conducted by RDIF….
Wonkette: “Ohio Bill To Ban Vax Lotteries, Free Vax Donuts”
Ohio announced its first winner of the Vax-A-Millions lottery Wednesday. Abbey Bugenske of Cincinnati was on her way to buy a used car when she got the call telling her she’d won, so we hope she decided to go ahead and get the extended warranty. California is following Ohio’s lead, designating $116.5 million for vaccine incentives, including a $15 million cash prize that’ll be split by 10 lucky people who’ve gotten vaccinated.
And West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice released a video featuring his bulldog “Baby Dog,” advising residents that “she wants you vaccinated, I want you vaccinated, and I want a bunch of you to win all this stuff,” by which he means the state’s own incentive giveaway of cash prizes, 10 pickup trucks, and college scholarships. […]
So that’s the encouraging vaccination news today, thanks for reading and have a great wee … oh shit, there’s also this Ohio fuckery we have to talk about. While Gov. Mike DeWine brags about how the lottery announcement has actually increased rates of vaccination that had been slacking off, Republicans in the Ohio General Assembly have introduced legislation that would largely eliminate vaccination mandates — or even requests or suggestions — across the state.
We’re not just talking the COVID vaccine here, either: The proposal, Ohio House Bill 248, would make it virtually impossible for most entities in the state to require vaccinations for infectious diseases, though we suppose the bill’s supporters will generously not try to overturn federal requirements, so enlistees in the military will still lose their precious right to contract diphtheria. The Ohio Capital Journal reports that on Tuesday, anti-vaxxers crowded into a hearing so they could demand freedom for infection.
[…] The legislation would ban vaccine requirements on customers, employees or students from businesses, hospitals, nursing homes, K-12 schools, colleges, daycares, or others. It would also prevent governments, insurers, or businesses from offering incentives for people to get vaccinated, or even requesting that people get vaccinated. […]
Under the bill, a small business owned by asthmatics or cancer survivors — both of whom are at higher risk of serious COVID-19 complications — would have no legal right to require or even request that employees or customers who come inside be vaccinated. […]
Ohio may well end up with a law that’s going to actively promote deadly diseases that could be prevented. It’s a far more radical gift to anti-vaxxers than the Pennsylvania bill that would limit doctors’ ability to ensure that kids get vaccinated.
Not surprisingly, the insurance industry and Ohio’s medical community are horrified by HB 248, and doing all they can to oppose it; we’ll have to see whether that will be enough to prevent it from becoming law. […]
“from @Sen_JoeManchin on failed #January6thCommission vote: Had 6 ‘brave Republicans’, 4 short. ‘Choosing to put politics & political elections above the health of our Democracy is unconscionable. And the betrayal of the oath we each take is something they will have to live with’.”
Well, what are you going to do about it?
KGsays
SC@263,
I’m in the middle of Margaret Atwood’s The Testaments. The Pennsylvania legislators would undoubtedly regard it as a useful “how to” guide, except that Gilead collapses at the end.
“Pelosi’s preference has been outside commission but has not closed door on a select committee. Schiff says: ‘While today’s vote is a remarkably dark moment in our history, we will uncover the full and sad truth about that deadly day – with or without Republican cooperation’.”
Senator Lisa Murkowski (a Republican from Alaska):
“They don’t want to rock the boat,” Murkowski said of Republican senators who oppose the commission. “They don’t want to upset. But again, it’s important that there be a focus on the facts and on the truth. And that may be unsettling, but we need to understand that.
[…] “To be making a decision for the short-term political gain at the expense of understanding and acknowledging what was in front of us on January 6th, I think we need to look at that critically,” Murkowski said when asked about McConnell’s opposition to the measure. She added: “Is that really what this is about, is everything is just one election cycle after another?”
[…] “I didn’t have any reason to leave my party in 2010,” Murkowski said in January. “I was a Republican who ran a write-in campaign and I was successful. But I will tell you, if the Republican Party has become nothing more than the party of Trump, I sincerely question whether this is the party for me.” […]
Bennet on Senate floor says he is appealing to Republican senators’ conscience to not filibuster the 1/6 Commission.
Bennet’s speech on 1/6 here. [link to the video atl]
Says some Republicans didn’t “have enough respect for their base to tell them the truth, that the election had been decided by millions of voters and by every court that looked at it…”
“The good news is, we actually had a January 20th. A lot of countries that have a January 6th never get to January 20th.”
“Consider how close we came, not just on the 6th. Consider what would have happened if elected officials, many of them Republicans, in Georgia, and Arizona and Michigan, hadn’t fulfilled their obligations…”
“Where would we be then?”
“The democracy is *still* at risk…”
“Political violence is what brings these republics to an end…”
After four years of stalling by the Trump administration, officials in Washington approved the $11.6 billion project for federal funding.
For five years, the plan to build a second pair of rail tunnels between New York City and New Jersey has been deemed one of the most critical infrastructure projects in the country.
But it needed a green light from federal officials.
On Friday, after years of delays during the Trump administration, that approval officially arrived from the new administration in Washington. Now, the $11.6 billion needed for the tunnel project could come from the giant infrastructure bill that Republican and Democratic lawmakers are wrangling over on Capitol Hill.
“We’re now where we should have been four years ago,” said Steven M. Cohen, co-chairman of the Gateway Program Development Corporation, the agency overseeing the project. “All of this has been in suspended animation for four years for no reason other than politics and games.”
The Biden administration has indicated its support for the project and the transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg, has acknowledged its importance to the economy of the region and the nation. “This is a big step for the Northeast, and for the entire country, as these tunnels connect so many people, jobs and businesses,” Mr. Buttigieg said in a statement announcing the approval.
The tunnels, which would carry trains deep under the Hudson River, are part of a massive project known as Gateway that aims to modernize the rail system that serves New York City. They would supplement the existing tunnels that are more than 110 years old and were severely damaged during Hurricane Sandy in 2012.
Under the existing construction timetable, the new tunnels could be finished by the end of the decade.
[…] Since the hurricane, transportation officials in the New York region have worried about the deteriorating condition of the existing tubes under the Hudson. Salt left over from the flooding has been eating away at the interior walls and electrical cables, forcing occasional shutdowns for repairs.
Amtrak officials say that the old tubes cannot be fully fixed until there are new ones to handle the daily traffic. About $1.8 billion of the $11.6 billion estimated cost for the tunnel project would go toward overhauling the old tubes, they say. […]
The vote on the Jan. 6 commission wasn’t just a disappointment for Joe Manchin, it was a vote that shattered his vision for governance.
As Senate Republicans prepared to kill the bipartisan plan for a Jan. 6 commission, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) was seen on the chamber floor having a tense conversation with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). It was obvious to those who saw the discussion that the conservative Democrat was not pleased.
That was understandable. This fight, more than any other in recent memory, put Manchin’s entire political worldview to the test — and it lost.
After the vote, the West Virginian expressed his disappointment to reporters.
“Mitch McConnell makes it extremely difficult,” Manchin said. “The commission is something this country needs. There’s no excuse. It’s just pure raw politics. And that’s just so, so disheartening. It really, really is disheartening. I never thought I’d see it up close and personal that politics could trump our country. And I’m going to fight to save this country.”
The senator never explicitly acknowledged the dynamic, but for Manchin, the debate over the commission was not simply a legislative fight; it was a case study for a style of governing.
Indeed, the pieces were in place for Manchin to prove that his approach worked. Most Democrats and Republicans agreed that there was an insurrectionist attack on our seat of government. The parties also agreed on the need for an examination. There were bipartisan negotiations, concessions from both sides, and an eventual compromise agreement.
If Manchin were literally writing a script as to how political disputes should be resolved, it would exactly like this.
As recently as late last week, the senator assured reporters there was a “very, very good chance” the Senate would pass the bipartisan proposal, adding that he hoped there were at least “10 good, solid patriots” among Senate Republicans.
Manchin didn’t just want to believe this, he needed to believe this. If Republicans rejected a bipartisan compromise, prioritizing politics and electoral strategies over country, then his entire vision of how Congress can operate would be shattered.
We don’t need to change the Senate’s filibuster rules, Manchin tells us, we simply need well-intentioned officials to sit down, talk, listen, compromise, and reach responsible agreements.
It’s an idea with hypothetical appeal. But in practice, a clear majority of Senate Republicans just told the conservative Democrat that his model doesn’t work. The parties reached a consensus, and GOP leaders decided the consensus wasn’t good enough.
What Manchin needs to consider is the implication of today’s lesson. If 10 Senate Republicans won’t accept a bipartisan plan for a Jan. 6 commission — after they endorsed the idea and accepted Democratic concessions — why in the world would anyone think GOP officials would work in good faith toward a sensible agreement on infrastructure? And voting rights? And immigration? And literally every other meaningful policy dispute under the sun?
[…] last night in Georgia, the event went predictably off the rails. At one point, Greene [Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene] apparently mocked the way Mexican people speak. Gaetz [Represeentative Matt Gaetz] cried about cancel culture before hinting at violence against Silicon Valley.
He then took it all a massive and concerning step further, saying the founders’ intention with the Second Amendment was to give citizens the ability to rise up against the government if needed.
“It’s not about hunting, it’s not about recreation, it’s not about sports,” he said. “The Second Amendment is about maintaining, within the citizenry, the ability to maintain an armed rebellion against the government if that becomes necessary.”
The remark was met with explosive applause. Gaetz shouted over the crowd: “I hope it never does, but it sure is important to recognize the founding principles of this nation and to make sure that they are fully understood.” […]
…QAnon… has significant traction with a segment of the public — particularly Republicans and Americans who consume news from far-right sources.
Those are the findings of by the Public Religion Research Institute and the Interfaith Youth Core, which found that 15 percent of Americans say they think that the levers of power are controlled by a cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles, a core belief of QAnon supporters. The same share said it was true that “American patriots may have to resort to violence” to depose the pedophiles and restore the country’s rightful order.
And fully 20 percent of respondents said that they thought a biblical-scale storm would soon sweep away these evil elites and “restore the rightful leaders.”
“These are words I never thought I would write into a poll question, or have the need to, but here we are,” Robby Jones, the founder of P.R.R.I., said in an interview….
Mr. Jones said he was struck by the prevalence of QAnon’s adherents. Overlaying the share of poll respondents who expressed belief in its core principles over the country’s total population, “that’s more than 30 million people,” he said.
“Thinking about QAnon, if it were a religion, it would be as big as all white evangelical Protestants, or all white mainline Protestants,” he added. “So it lines up there with a major religious group.”
….found a strong correlation between where people get their news and how much they believe in QAnon’s ideas. Among those who said they most trusted far-right news outlets, such as One America News Network and Newsmax, two in five qualified as full-on QAnon believers. Fully 48 percent of these news consumers said they expected a storm to wipe away the elites soon….
Those who expressed belief in QAnon’s premises were also far more likely than others to say they believe in other conspiracy theories, the poll found. Four in 10 said they thought that “the Covid-19 vaccine contains a surveillance microchip that is the sign of the beast in biblical prophecy.”
A sheriff’s deputy in Denver, Colorado, who shared anti-vaccine content on Facebook has died of COVID.
Daniel “Duke” Trujillo, 33, died on Wednesday evening from COVID complications, the Denver Sheriff Department said on Thursday. Trujillo was a former Marine who served as a deputy sheriff for 7 years and had recently been appointed vice-president of the Denver Sheriff Latino Organization.
“We ask that you keep his family in your thoughts and prayers and respect their privacy,” the department said. “We also ask that you pray for the members of our Department as well.”
Trujillo is survived by his wife and three-year-old son, according to a GoFundMe page set up for his family.
…
Trujillo had previously shared social media content that appeared to reject the COVID vaccine. A Facebook profile photo updated in early May said “I have an immune system,” a common refrain among those eschewing pandemic-era precautionary measures. [shown at the link]
In late April, Trujillo’s profile picture bore a banner that read “I don’t care if you’ve had your vaccine.”
Social media users circulated recordings of a TikTok video reportedly shared by Trujillo, in which an unidentified man promotes anti-vaccine rhetoric. The post could not be independently verified by Newsweek.
…
Trujillo’s alleged post sharing the TikTok video read: “I’ll get it later on after y’all start growing apendages [sic] out of y’all’s foreheads.”
The last post on an Instagram account that appears to have belonged to Trujillo said “Before you shame me in public for not having a mask, ask yourself one simple question. Will this mask stop an uppercut?”
According to Colorado’s COVID vaccine plan, the rollout phase that included police and workers at correctional facilities began on December 30, 2020. The Denver Sheriff Department said Trujillo worked for the Downtown Detention Center.
The facility had recorded 11 active COVID cases as of Thursday, according to data by the Denver Sheriff’s Department. It’s unclear whether Trujillo contracted the virus there.
Less than two weeks before Trujillo’s passing, Denver Sheriff’s Deputy James Herrera, 51, died of COVID-19 on May 16. Trujillo had paid tribute to Herrera by posting a picture of him as his Facebook cover photo, calling Herrera his “brother and coworker.”
So, not just a misogynist then, but also a racist.
The mass shooter of the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority (VTA) in San Jose, Calif., was said to be not only a “disgruntled employee” but was also facing a disciplinary hearing Wednesday due to alleged racist remarks.
Since 2016, when Customs and Border Protection agents questioned him, authorities knew Samuel Cassidy, 57, and described him as “highly disgruntled.” But he still managed to obtain firearms and explosives and bragged about them to some of his co-workers.
In 2016, authorities found a black notebook detailing Cassidy’s hatred for his job as a maintenance worker and his colleagues, as well as books on terrorism […] More recently, some of his co-workers have reported that Cassidy made inappropriate racial remarks.
He was supposed to attend a hearing Wednesday, but he came to work with a duffel bag loaded with two semi-automatic handguns and 11 magazines […]
He killed nine of his colleagues, most of whom are people of color. Before he killed himself, surveillance footage shows that he was searching for others around the station’s campus […]
His ex-wife, Cecilia Yolanda Nelms, who is a person of color, told NBC that she recalls times he talked about killing his co-workers during their marriage, which ended in 2004. But she says she didn’t take it seriously. […]
“He killed nine of his colleagues, most of whom are people of color.”
“Thinking about QAnon, if it were a religion, it would be as big as all white evangelical Protestants, or all white mainline Protestants,” he added. “So it lines up there with a major religious group.”
But…there’s a huge amount of overlap with white Evangelicals. It’s not an alternative to the religion – it’s arguably the major sect of it.
“I got an email a week or so ago, saying due to this new law, they were canceling my completely full race and ethnicities class [at Oklahoma City Community College]”
Administrators preemptively canceling classes because they’re unsure if they run afoul of a law regulating speech is the exact chilling effect people warned would happen…
The European Medicines Agency (EMA) backed the use of Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine for children as young as 12, paving way for a broader roll-out in the region after similar clearances in the US and Canada.
EMA task force chair Marco Cavaleri said that additional reports of blood clots in people after having the AstraZeneca jab since mid-April shows no change in frequency, but the fatality rate has decreased.
…
The World Health Organization called for access to patients in the Gaza strip and free passage to evacuate them for medical treatment as health workers struggle to care for the sick and wounded after 11 days of violence.
Hotels in Ireland can reopen on 2 June and pubs and restaurants can resume outdoor service on 7 June, the government announced. Ireland will also adopt the European Union’s Covid-19 certificate to help citizens move more freely across the bloc from July 19 and broadly apply the same approach to arrivals from elsewhere including Britain and the US.
Indian authorities announced a tentative easing of the lockdown in the capital Delhi as coronavirus infections fall in major cities after weeks of restrictions.
…
Fuelling doubts about whether the Olympics can go ahead safely, Japan’s government has, as expected extended a coronavirus emergency in Tokyo and other parts of the country until just a month before the Games.
Lockdown measures in the Netherlands will be eased as of next week, allowing bars and restaurants to serve customers indoors and museums to reopen, Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte said.
All Italians aged over 16 will be able to be vaccinated from 3 June onwards, the government’s Covid-19 commissioner has said, with the country also preparing to extend the campaign to 12 to 15-year-olds.
The Greek government unveiled the first EU Covid passport, described by the country’s prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, as a “fast lane to facilitate travel”, after a successful dry run of the technology.
Following the Senate GOP’s filibuster of a Jan. 6 commission bill, Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia lamented the outcome by claiming that enough Republican senators would have voted to advance the bill if Majority Leader Mitch McConnell hadn’t gotten in the way.
“It was an awful lot of Republicans that would have supported it if it hadn’t been for [McConnell’s] personal intervention,” Manchin told reporters, suggesting that some 13 or 14 had favored the commission but for McConnell’s personal appeal to block it. Instead, just six Senate Republicans voted to proceed. “To see fear take over is truly disheartening,” Manchin noted.
Presumably, Manchin intended to suggest that, yes, reasonable Republicans exist and more than a dozen of them would have patriotically voted for an investigation into a failed coup attempt if only McConnell hadn’t meddled in the outcome. Instead, what Manchin highlighted was exactly how self-defeating it is to negotiate with Senate Republicans. Mitch McConnell effectively has veto power over every vote, and he has stated repeatedly and relentlessly that his sole objective is dooming President Joe Biden’s agenda.
“100% of my focus is on stopping this new administration,” McConnell told reporters earlier this month in no uncertain terms. He also proceeded to claim “total unity” within the caucus around that effort […]
So, for instance, even as lead GOP negotiator Sen. Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia assures everyone that Senate Republicans are making a good-faith effort to cut a deal with the White House on Biden’s jobs plan, it’s all a ridiculous charade. No matter what Capito’s true intentions are, McConnell will nix it, and he hasn’t been the least bit shy about admitting it. In fact, it’s a clearly stated badge of honor for him.
[…] Whatever Manchin thinks lies in the hearts of GOP senators is merely a hostage of McConnell’s legislative terrorism. That’s a simple fact. And the more time Joe Manchin spends dithering, the more he jeopardizes everything Biden is trying to achieve with the precious little time in which Democrats have to achieve it.
More despicable actions taken by Idaho legislators:
[…] after a terrified teen accused an Idaho lawmaker of rape, the lawmaker and others targeted and harassed her. The teen, going by the name of Jane Doe, was not only followed by members of an extremist group after her testimony, but was identified by name by another state official. Idaho state Rep. Priscilla Giddings publicly announced the survivor’s name and discredited her in a newsletter sent to her constituents. While the email was later retracted with the photo and name of the survivor removed, the survivor still faced trauma and harassment due to being doxxed publicly.
Of course, instead of being regretful for what she did and the danger she put the 19-year-old in, Giddings decided to play the victim card herself. Giddings, a candidate for lieutenant governor, claimed she was the victim—not the teen she outed—during a town hall meeting at the Idaho County Veterans Outreach and Community Center. “I will not be muzzled!” she told audience members at the meeting.
According to Giddings, “she has recently received more than 200 nasty e-mail threats against her and her family, “all for sticking up for my conservative values.'” Apparently, conservative values consist of dragging survivors of rape and identifying them publicly online. But she’s not the only one who believes that: The room, filled with more than 80 people, burst into applause and showed her support.
[…] Giddings continued on to speak about the repercussions she is facing for harassing a teen, without acknowledging what the teen must have faced after the lawmaker’s email and social media posts.
The teen Giddings doxxed had accused former Idaho state Rep. Aaron von Ehlinger of rape. As a result of multiple allegations and ongoing investigations, von Ehlinger resigned after board members planned to censor him. […]
Hearing about the accusations, Giddings furthered the teen’s trauma by sharing her information publicly through an article. She claimed that she was supporting a fellow Republican by sharing the news article. Giddings was well aware that multiple investigations were being conducted in light of the teen’s and other women’s accusations against von Ehlinger, but chose to support him anyway. Giddings shared the article link in her official newsletter as well as in a Facebook post. […]
Her Facebook post also included this caption: “Follow the money! Idaho’s very own Kavanaugh.” Many saw the caption as an attempt to make the rape allegation political, but Giddings denied such claims.
“Everything was in accordance with the House Rule 45 and if Rep. von Ehlinger’s name was going to be made public, I believe that everybody should be innocent until proven guilty and that both sides of the story need to be equally represented,” Giddings said.
But of course, Giddings’ reasoning as to why she doxxed the teen was not bought by all. The Idaho 97 Project and others are working to investigate her conduct and ethics […]
“She shared a redoubt article with both a picture and the name of the survivor in this case,” said Mike Satz, executive director of the Idaho 97 Project. […]
It is difficult enough for survivors to come out and speak about the violence they face. Individuals like Giddings contribute to a toxic culture of victim-blaming that shames survivors into silence.
The U.S. federal agency responsible for overseeing the protection of civil rights and prevention of discrimination in the workplace said in updated guidance Friday that employers may legally offer incentives for workers to get the COVID-19 vaccine.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) said in a fact sheet posted to its website that under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA) and other EEOC laws, employers may offer “an incentive to employees to voluntarily provide documentation or other confirmation of a vaccination received in the community.”
Employers are also allowed to offer incentives to employees who get vaccinated through their employer or an affiliated agent, so long as the incentive, which can include “both rewards and penalties,” is “not so substantial as to be coercive,” according to the EEOC. […]
A few points: He just turned 26, so during the events in question he would have been barely 20, and my baseline presumption concerning people’s political choices at that age is stupidity (it’s not always the case, but it’s often the case). He can’t tell his side of the story. As I said above, they’re arresting opposition journalists en masse, so any alleged past or present personal associations of any given one only matter to them insofar as they can be used to distract and smear (just as happened with Navalny, incidentally). Even if the claims are true, the regime violated his (and his girlfriend’s, and the other passengers’ and crew’s) rights, and they’re not even trying to claim the alleged background has anything to do with the hijacking and detention; it’s a means to distract from Lukashenko’s crimes (which go well beyond this incident). Finally, Putin actively supports neo-Nazi movements in a variety of countries.
“At least six earthquakes, including one with a preliminary magnitude of 4.2, shook the Lake Tahoe, Reno and Carson City area on Friday. Seismologists are worried the series of quakes could trigger a bigger one that would spawn a 30-foot tsunami in the lake.”
Vice President Kamala Harris delivered the U.S. Naval Academy’s commencement address Friday in Annapolis, the first woman to do so in the school’s 175-year history.
In the 2020 election, self-described libertarian, Stephen Richer was the Republican candidate for the position of Maricopa County Recorder. The office that oversees the elections in the county. He won. His Democratic opponent, Adrien Fontes, lost. Which raises the question, if the election was fixed by the Democrats, why didn’t Fontes ensure his own re-election?
Richer asks that provocative question in a piece published by the National Review: “The Madness of the Maricopa County Election Audit”. As he says, he has no skin in the game. He doesn’t have to defend his actions. He played no part in the election. He has no personal or political reason to lie. So when he writes,
“Armed with these facts and professional assessments, I made the only reasonable conclusion I could make: Maricopa County accurately tabulated the November 3 ballots.”
every reasonable American can take that to the bank.
And what were these “facts and professional assessments”? Richer elucidates,
“In the immediate aftermath of the November 3, 2020, election, Maricopa County oversaw a hand-count audit of over 47,000 votes, a statistically significant sampling as determined by multiple professional statisticians.”
Beyond the math of the numbers, further measures ensured the validity of the process. The methodology removed any chance of partisanship and the result was definitive,
The recognized political parties — Republican, Democrat, and Libertarian — administered the hand count in groups of three volunteers appointed by party leadership. Those hand-counted results matched the machine-tabulated results with 100 percent accuracy. Perfect accuracy. This was the third hand-count performed by the political parties in 2020 that confirmed the accuracy of Maricopa County’s tabulation equipment.”
The machines performed as they should. There is no doubt the computer count matched the physical count.
So what about the software? Was there evidence of fraud there? Richer addresses that,
“The same is true of the pre-election and post-election tests done of the tabulation equipment — 100 percent accuracy. The machines are state and federally certified, and the county has used machines owned by the same parent company (Dominion) since 1998 without problems or discrepancies.”
Dear God, could anything more have been done to ensure the purity of the count? The answer is ‘yes’. And the election officials of Maricopa County did it,
Nonetheless, in February, the county enlisted two professional, certified elections-equipment companies to analyze the oft-voiced concerns regarding the Dominion tabulation software and hardware.”
The county asked the two election-validation companies to do everything necessary to:
Analyze hacking vulnerabilities of both the tabulation hardware and software
Verify that no malware had been installed to the tabulators
Determine if the tabulators had connected to the Internet at any point before, during, or after the election
Assess if any vote switching occurred as a result of the tabulators
Both companies used methodologies honed over the course of hundreds of previous examinations. Neither company found problems with the tabulators.
There’s more. Richer adds,
We also had the benefit of the eight court cases challenging Maricopa County’s election administration. None of those eight cases found any widespread inaccuracy, fraud, or wrongdoing. Only two were dismissed for lack of standing.”
The Republicans hide behind a smoke-screen of ‘election integrity’. But Richer dismisses any idea that the Arizona Senate’s decision to re-audit the re-audit was anything but a partisan hatchet job. As he points out,
For an unknown reason [I think the reason is well known], Maricopa County is the only county of Arizona’s 15 counties being audited, and only the top two contests on the ballot — the presidential, in which Joe Biden (D) defeated incumbent Donald Trump (R), and the Senate race, in which Mark Kelly (D) defeated incumbent Martha McSally (R) — are being audited. Down-ballot, Republicans held the state legislature and won five of the six countywide seats.”
By now it is well-known that Arizona Senate President, Republican Karen Fann’s choice of the completely unknown ‘Cyber Ninjas’ to audit the election has led to a farce of blue pens, purple lights, and bamboo fibers. The Senate rejected a bid by the well-regarded and experienced election company, Clear Ballot, to conduct the audit in favor of an outfit that had never done anything of the kind — and was unknown even to Republican election officials in its home state, Florida.
A company which, in further evidence of the partisanship of the enterprise, is headed by conspiracy theorist Doug Logan. A man who believes the dead Venezuelan dictator, Hugo Chavez, has corrupted the American election. Before the audit, he retweeted: “I’m tired of hearing people say there was no fraud. It happened, it’s real, and people better get wise fast.”
What evidence exists that this audit is being run with evenhanded professionalism? None. The process is in the hands of ill-motivated morons, out of their depth, tackling a task they have no expertise for.
Richer chose to start his piece with a self-description, and an analogy involving the IRS. I will end my piece with it.
I’m a libertarian-minded Republican. I hate taxes. Especially the income tax. But I pay all required taxes.
I suspect you also pay your taxes. And like most Americans, you probably don’t cheat or lie.
For that reason, even though an IRS audit might annoy you and cause you some stress, you’d eventually realize that you have nothing to fear as long as the audit is done fairly and properly.
But you’d likely feel differently if the IRS outsourced the audit to someone who:
– Had no applicable professional credentials
– Had never previously run a tax audit
– Believed that Hugo Chavez had nefariously controlled your tax-auditing software
– Had publicly stated prior to examining your taxes that you’d certainly committed tax fraud
That is what is happening to elections in Maricopa County, Ariz. — the home of almost two-thirds of Arizona’s voting population.
Amen.
ravensays
Here is an article summarizing what I’ve been hearing multiple places for a while.
The Covid-19 virus case load in the USA is still high as is the number of deaths. At the same time, we are starting to toss expired vials of vaccine.
The vast majority of cases and deaths these days are Covid-19 virus deniers and antivaxxers.
In Bend, Oregon it has been 98% nonvaccinanted since March.
Going to be a long tail on this pandemic thanks to the antivaxxers of the fundie xians/GOP.
In Bend, COVID-19 patients flood hospital, ICU; 98% unvaccinated
St. Charles
By Kyle Spurr, The Bulletin May 27,2021 edited for length
Emily Kroytz, a registered nurse in St. Charles Bend’s intensive care unit, ended a 16-hour shift this week and came home in tears.
Kroytz and the other ICU nurses have not seen this many COVID-19 patients at once in six months. As of Thursday, all 24 beds were full in the ICU, including five patients with the virus. Three of the infected patients are on ventilators.
Another 36 COVID-19 patients were being treated in the hospital.
”It takes an emotional toll,” Kroytz said.
The full capacity in the ICU is due to the ongoing spread of COVID-19, but also an increase in patients who put off medical treatment during the pandemic and are now showing up to the emergency room with neglected illnesses. In addition, the hospital is seeing heart attacks and major injuries that will likely increase through the summer.
Dr. Louis Davignon, who works in the St. Charles Bend ICU, sees the benefits of getting the vaccine. Since March, 98% of infected patients were not vaccinated, he said.”
And even the (vaccinated) patients that get admitted do much better,” he said.
As more evidence surfaces, showing how former attorney general William Barr worked to make sure that the Mueller investigation couldn’t touch Donald Trump, the current Department of Justice is put in a very ugly position. Even as a federal judge makes clear that Barr’s “summary” of the Mueller report badly misrepresented the true contents, and hints that the decision not to charge Trump with obstruction was anything but the result of careful deliberation, the DOJ is fighting in court in an effort to keep the truth about these decisions hidden. Over two years after Barr released his summary, Americans are still forced to squint at heavily redacted documents, or draw conclusions by looking at secondhand documents filed in defense of these actions. The truth of what Barr did remains maddeningly oblique.
It’s far from the only thing that happened over the last four years that’s still being hidden unnecessarily, and certainly not the only battle the DOJ is fighting to defend actions that generated active harm to the nation. As The Washington Post reported on Friday evening, the Justice Department has asked another judge to toss a quartet of lawsuits involving Barr’s ordering a violent clearing of peaceful protesters from Lafayette Square so that Trump could walk across the street and hold an upside-down Bible—bizarrely—above his head.
The DOJ is trying to make this an issue about “presidential safety,” but Trump’s safety was never in question. It was the safety of everyone else, those people who were exercising Constitutional rights to assemble that were already constrained by both fences and the presence of overwhelming military force, who suffered harm that day. What would most benefit the nation is not just a full investigation of what happened on the day of Trump’s Bible walk, but the DOJ stepping aside so these cases can go forward. Because there are questions here that desperately need serious answers.
The DOJ’s argument to U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich is that the lawsuits—from the ACLU, Black Lives Matter, other civil liberties groups, and some of the individual protesters harmed that day—is that “Trump and other U.S. officials are immune from civil lawsuits over police actions taken to protect a president and to secure his movements,.”
[…] The problem was that Trump simply told Barr that he wanted to be over there, where the roughly 1,000 protestors were standing. With that, Barr ordered a violent assault on the square and associated park: A force that included not just local law enforcement, but Secret Service, Park Police, and Arlington County Police, fired pepper balls, rubber bullets, and tear gas. Horse-mounted officers pushed aggressively into the crowd, swinging batons as a mass of club-wielding officers came on. Then Trump—accompanied by not just Barr but General Mark Miley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff—walked across the street to a church, waved a Bible around for a photo-op, and walked back home.
There is a difference between protecting the president, and saying that the president can go wherever he wants, for the most trivial of reasons, no matter how many people are harmed. […] There is also a huge difference between what happened on June 1, and what happened on Jan. 6. This wasn’t a police line overwhelmed by a huge and violent crowd; this was a peaceful crowd that was overwhelmed by a violent police assault. That assault was ordered by Barr and Trump for no good reason.
For the DOJ to argue that this is an issue of protecting presidential safety isn’t just disingenuous, it’s dishonest. If upheld, it’s a license to end any protest by simply pointing at it and declaring that the president would like to stand over there.
Are there legitimate issues here surrounding the extents of protest and the actions of police, especially considering that earlier, on the evening of May 29, 2020, a number of Secret Service agents were injured by a group that did push past security boundaries? Absolutely. That’s why the best answer to these lawsuits is not to dismiss them, but to have them fully play out in court. […]
Of course, there is someone who can address this: Attorney General Merrick Garland could simply order DOJ attorneys to stand down. That doesn’t mean surrendering the idea that the government should defend the president, or that all internal discussions should be subject to outside scrutiny. That means allowing these cases to go forward, so that the judiciary can break this logjam and define limits that give people inside and outside the government a firmer position for the future.
Last year’s decline in international students and the bureaucratic strain of Covid are likely to hurt university finances for “several years.”
A steadily growing pipeline of cash for U.S. colleges and universities from international students was abruptly cut off with the pandemic. Now higher education institutions are looking to the White House to shore up a besieged visa process to bring those lucrative students back.
Students from abroad often pay the full sticker price on tuition and fees, making them desirable to admit. But when the pandemic closed borders, canceled flights and shuttered buildings, that cash flow halted. Education groups are looking at President Joe Biden to restore it.
[…] Nearly 1.1 million students from abroad attended college in the U.S. in the 2019-2020 academic year, according to the Institute of International Education, an organization that tracks enrollment.
[…] Enrollment will likely rebound for the fall, the credit rating agency said, but be slowed by travel restrictions, lingering sourness from the Trump administration’s immigration policies and increased competition from other countries.
Biden has eased Trump-era travel bans and will allow students on visas to study online if campuses close for Covid-19 outbreaks, but higher education advocates are urging him to loosen restrictions around student visas to ease the process of getting to the United States.
“Whether or not they waive the interviews, or perhaps set up virtual interviews, we have heard from State that there are security concerns with that and whether their system is set up to handle virtual interviews,” said Sarah Spreitzer, director of government relations for the American Council on Education.
NAFSA: Association of International Educators, the world’s largest international education nonprofit, has also asked Secretary of State Antony Blinken to prioritize student and scholar visa processing, extend temporary in-person visa interview waiver eligibility and use videoconferencing for required visa interviews.
To receive a student visa, prospective students must submit paperwork and participate in an in-person interview at an American consulate. Then, it takes a few months to process the visa.
[…] there could be a huge backlog of visa processing requests when consulates open back up, which could mean international students wouldn’t be able to arrive on time in the fall. […]
“From online academic fairs and virtual presentations, there isn’t any indication at all that there’s any less enthusiasm for coming to American colleges and universities,” Goodman said. “The problem is, can people get here and how much of that is dependent on containing the virus, banks opening, consulates opening, vaccinations happening.” […]
The White House on Friday said the Department of State has issued a Level 4 Do Not Travel Warning to U.S. citizens, urging them to not travel to Belarus.
The Biden administration on Friday night further condemned Belarus’ May 23 forced take down of a civilian airliner, calling it a “direct affront” to international norms and announcing sanctions against the former Soviet republic.
“Belarus’s forced diversion of a commercial Ryanair flight under false pretenses, traveling between two member states of the European Union, and the subsequent removal and arrest of Raman Pratasevich, a Belarusian journalist, are a direct affront to international norms,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said in a statement. “These events took place amid an escalating wave of repression by the Lukashenka regime against the aspirations of the people of Belarus for democracy and human rights.” […]
Wonkette: “Dan Crenshaw Launches ‘Woke Ideology’ Whistleblower Site For Military Crybabies”
Are you currently serving in the military? Did someone in the military tell you that you were racist after you used a racial slur? Did someone else suggest that you not sexually harass or assault the women you serve with? Did a trans person expect that you use the right pronoun to refer to them […]? Did LGBTQ soldiers react poorly to you telling them they were going to hell?
Did someone tell you that slavery happened and that people were not actually happy to be kept as slaves? Did they correct you when you referred to The Civil War as The War of Northern Aggression? Did they take down your Confederate flag and your lifesize statue of Robert E. Lee?
Did female soldiers balk when you told them to get back in the kitchen and make you a sandwich?
If so, you may be a military victim of “woke ideology,” and Texas Representative Dan Crenshaw wants to be the manager you speak to about that.
[…] Dan Crenshaw has your back. The former Navy SEAL has created an online form that “whistleblowers” can use to let him and Tom Cotton know what kind of completely legal things people are doing that make you sad.
On Friday afternoon, he tweeted
Enough is enough. We won’t let our military fall to woke ideology. We have just launched a whistleblower webpage where you can submit your story. Your complaint will be legally protected, and go to my office and @SenTomCotton.
With written permission we will anonymously publish egregious complaints on social media and tell the country what’s happening in our military.
For too long, progressive Pentagon staffers have been calling the shots for our warfighters, and spineless military commanders have let it happen. Now we are going to expose you.
You know what this is about, right? It’s all because there was an army recruitment ad featuring a woman with lesbian moms and the Ted Cruzes of the world were all scared that the Russians were all gonna laugh at us because their recruitment ads featured super macho tough guys shaving their heads and doing push-ups like super macho tough guys do! Also because Crenshaw wants to collect a bunch of “horror stories” he can use to ratchet up his base and get them all upset like they were over that Army lady having parents.
[…] When a woman who had been a member of his unit was sexually assaulted at a VA facility, Rep. Crenshaw took it upon himself to assist former V.A. Secretary Robert Wilkie in a smear campaign against her, providing Wilkie with potentially false information about her in hopes of destroying her credibility. […]
[…] The site suggests that “whistleblowers” would be covered from retaliation by the Military Whistleblowers Protection Act. That actually only covers people who provide lawful disclosures of illegal activity. As much as Dan Crenshaw may desire it to be so, “woke ideology” does not constitute an “illegal activity,” so these people would not actually be protected by this law.
Curiously, this form does not actually require that anyone prove that they are or were an actual member of the military in any manner whatsoever, which means that pretty much anyone could fill it out and tell Crenshaw any story they want. Surely, this will not backfire on him at all.
I for one would love to know what it is that Rep. Crenshaw even thinks “woke ideology” is. Can he define it? Or explain what it is he thinks is illegal here? Perhaps it is just one of those “I know it when I see it” things wherein he “knows” it because someone is telling him to stop being an asshole.
Excerpts from an article written by Jelani Cobb for The New Yorker:
Late last month, when Senator Tim Scott, of South Carolina, delivered the Republican response to President Joe Biden’s first major address to a joint session of Congress, the subtext could scarcely have been closer to the surface: the sole Black Republican in the Senate was speaking on behalf of a Party that, under the increasing influence of the far right, has embraced a brand of belligerent and overt racism that was naïvely thought to have been banished from American politics. In the midst of a fairly straightforward conservative critique of Biden’s policies and priorities, the senator detoured into a complaint about liberals whom he said had called him racial epithets […] and claimed that progressives are intent on teaching people that, “if they look a certain way, they’re an oppressor.” He defended the G.O.P. voter-suppression bills that have swept the nation in the wake of Donald Trump’s defeat, and stated his case plainly. “America,” he said, “is not a racist country.”
This was a stunning display of cynicism, even by the standards of the current G.O.P., yet this was not the first time that Scott’s race had been utilized so disingenuously. A month earlier, he said on Fox News that “woke supremacy is as bad as white supremacy,” a kind of equivalence that could be dismissed as political pandering had Scott not been a friend of the late Reverend Clementa Pinckney, the South Carolina state senator and pastor who was gunned down in the Emanuel A.M.E. Church, in 2015, by Dylann Roof, a white supremacist who dreamed of a race war. Scott was also the man whom the G.O.P. turned to when, in the wake of Trump’s comments about the Charlottesville crisis, they decided that the President needed to be tutored in matters of race. (Ahead of that meeting, Scott said, “Racism is real. It is alive.”) The absolution that Scott offered the nation in his rebuttal to Biden sparked an online discussion about how much racism it takes for a country to be considered racist, but, in some ways, that question was beside the point. The real significance in Scott’s words lay in their connection to a broader offensive that the Republican Party has been coördinating since Trump’s reëlection loss, in November.
[…] (They have oddly chosen to lump all things racial and contemptible under the banner of critical race theory, a school of legal thought concerned primarily with inequality and the failures of civil-rights litigation to ameliorate it.) The objective here is not only to launder the G.O.P.’s reputation—though that is part of it—but also to facilitate the more overtly racist portions of the Party’s agenda. The left, in this light, is not simply advocating equality of people regardless of their backgrounds; it’s a cabal seeking to marginalize and browbeat white people for having created a bigoted society that does not actually exist.
Before Trump lost reëlection, he issued an executive order banning federal diversity initiatives that involve anti-racism training. Corollaries to that directive began taking root earlier this year, as bills to ban anti-racism training and to penalize public schools for teaching the 1619 Project were introduced in Republican-controlled state legislatures. […] Last summer, Senator Tom Cotton, of Arkansas, launched both a Twitter crusade against the 1619 Project and an ultimately failed effort to pass federal legislation that would ban it from being taught in schools nationwide. […]
A very specific divide animated these conflicts, and it underlies the G.O.P.’s current efforts to rescue Americans from an accurate account of their own history. A growing body of progressive white scholars and scholars of color have spent the past several decades fighting for, and largely succeeding in creating, a more honest chronicle of the American past. But these battles and the changes they’ve achieved have, by and large, gone unnoticed by the lay public until benchmark anniversaries occurred, and the scholarship collided with a public unsettled by how distinct that version of history was from the anodyne tales they imbibed in school. […]
Trumpism established the profitability of telling wholesale lies; the G.O.P. has realized that those lies need not be told only about the present. […]
The narrative took another turn last week, when it was revealed that the board of trustees of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill declined to extend tenure to Nikole Hannah-Jones. […] when asked to explain the decision, an unnamed board member used exactly that word—politics—to sum up what had happened.
[…] the U.N.C. situation appears a logical outcome of the G.O.P.’s campaign. The Party, in seeking to discredit work examining the durability of racism, clears a path to pursue white anxiety and racial-resentment politics in the Trump mold. […] conservatives are validating the very contentions that progressives have been making all along: that racism remains a vital force in American life, that it is deeply rooted in the American past, and that our politics have been shaped, with disastrous consequences, by efforts to utilize racism for political profit. […]
A disturbing story about the just-completed race for Mayor in Anchorage:
For Anchorage election workers, this month’s mayoral runoff was like no other. Citizen observers crowded outside the Election Center, photographing workers and writing down their license plate numbers. Inside, they filed challenge after challenge to routine counting procedures.
At times, the observers grew openly hostile. Several officials were “accosted” in the parking lot, according to the city clerk’s office. Emailed threats poured in, with one announcing that election officials “should be publicly executed.”
Meanwhile, the clerk’s office said, false claims flowed on local talk radio and blogs about “blank ballots” being smuggled into the Election Center, part of an effort to “sow distrust among voters.” Dave Bronson, the Republican candidate, parked an RV outside the center to provide 24/7 surveillance.
…Anchorage has for years used a universal mail-in system, sending ballots to every registered voter in the city. But during the campaign, the Daily News reported, Bronson supporters repeatedly questioned and attacked the mail-in procedures….
“The national playbook is happening right here in this little election, too. It’s alarming to see it even on this level,” Claire Shaw, [Democratic candidate] Dunbar’s campaign manager, told The Post. “If the election doesn’t go your way, then you can claim it’s fraud.”
KGsays
“The question for the ICAO is not just to punish somebody. The problem is the danger of copying. If ICAO reacts in a soft way this could encourage other autocrats in the world, and there are many of them, to ignore and disregard the international community. If this spreads all over the place, we can forget international aviation.” – Eamon Ryan, Irish Transport minister, talking about Lukashenka’s kidnap of Roman Protasevich, quoted by SC@31, emphasis added by me
Well, they do say every cloud has a silver lining.
KGsays
Sorry, @31 -> @331
KGsays
On Protasevich, outrageous as his kidnap is, and obviously Putinist as Pierce R. Butler’s link@295 is, we shouldn’t assume Protasevich is one of the good guys. He does appear to have been linked to some extent to the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion – there were undoubtedly fascists on both sides in the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and Belarussian nationalism has a pretty sordid history. Similarly Navalny, astonishingly brave as he is in his opposition to Putin, has never renounced, let alone apologised for, the disgusting things he has said about Muslims and migrants, or his participation in fascist marches. And Aung San Suu Kyi supported the Myanmar military’s genocidal campaign against the Rohingyas, Daniel Ortega is de facto dictator of Nicaragua, Thabo Mbeki turned out to be an AIDS denialist, probably responsible for more deaths than any of his apartheid-era predecessors, and Jacob Zuma stinkingly corrupt… I could, depressingly, go on more or less indefinitely.
ravensays
The Covid-19 virus pandemic continues. Among the antivaxxers of the fundie xians/GOP. This pandemic has split into two pandemics.
The one among the vaccinated is going down rapidly and has almost disappeared.
The one among the antivaxxers and Covid-19 virus deniers is still going as strong as it was in December, 2020.
This virus is very transmissable and 25% of the US population are antivaxxers.
The US has 500 people dying every day of Covid-19 virus, almost all antivaxxers, while we are throwing vials of outdated vaccine away.
Who wants to be the last Americans to die of Covid-19 virus?
Strangely enough, there are tens of millions of volunteers.
COVID-19 cases and deaths are down but rate of infection is the same as it was in December for unvaccinated
Sarah Al-Arshani Business Insider May 30, 2021
In an analysis, the Post found that if vaccinated people are removed from assessing the data, the case rate for unvaccinated Americans is similar to the case rate for all residents on December 31.
In the past week, the US has averaged a little over 20,000 cases per day, the CDC reported.
There is going to be a long tail on this pandemic.
Rep. Jason Crow (D-CO), who served as a House impeachment manager in then-President Trump’s first impeachment trial last year, on Sunday urged his Democratic colleagues to move forward with creating a commission investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol attack after Senate Republicans deployed the filibuster to block it.
[…] Crow recalled the “brutal and violent day” of Trump supporters breaching the Capitol on the day of the joint session of Congress certifying Joe Biden’s electoral victory. Then-President Trump told his supporters at a “Stop the Steal” rally hours before the attack to “fight like hell” to overturn the election results amid refusing to concede and espousing election fraud falsehoods.
Asked where the commission goes next after Senate Republicans killed the House-passed bipartisan bill that would establish a Jan. 6 commission, Crow replied that it’s a question of whether Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) will take another vote on the commission, and if House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) believe that vote would be in good faith.
After noting that the final tally for the commission bill had 54 yes votes and that some senators had already left for the holiday weekend, Crow said that Democrats believe more people would have voted for it had they been present.
[…] made clear that investigations into the Jan. 6 attacks must happen regardless.
[…] “I am sick of playing the game of Whac-a-Mole with GOP members in Congress. Every time we address one of their concerns, another one pops up,” Crow said. “It’s like playing Whac-a-Mole with Chuck E. Cheese growing up. We just can’t continue to do that forever. We need to get answers. There’s an urgency to this, let’s not forget.”
Crow cited the spread of the big lie that is being used to further voter suppression laws around the country and the growing number of Republicans who embrace false claims of a stolen election. “This is a problem that is prescient and it’s growing and we have to address it with some timeliness,” Crow said. [I think he’s right.]
[…] Some Senate Republicans who voted in favor of the commission have began looking to the future after the bill was blocked by their colleagues.
“The most likely outcome, sadly, is probably the Democratic leaders will appoint a select committee,” Collins told Politico. “We’ll have a partisan investigation. It won’t have credibility with people like me, but the press will cover it because that’s what’s going on.” […]
A “partisan investigation” is exactly what they want to see, it’s the only way they’ll be able to dismiss the damning findings, wringing their hands and accusing Democrats of playing politics. It was their game during both impeachments and they’re falling back on it again. If it’s “partisan” it can’t be true, right? If we aren’t the ones saying it’s so then it won’t be so. And here’s Collins already seeding the ground.
———————
remind folks repeatedly that is only “partisan” because the R’s don’t want any investigation of their own complicity
——————
Susan Collins has her own credibility problems, going back years.
———————
Republicans are out there this weekend trying to CONVINCE the rubes that Democrats are Satan worshiping, blood drinking pedophiles that attacked the Capitol. They have nothing else.
————————
Let’s be clear. Mitch McConnell says he fears a bipartisan commission to investigate January 6 would hurt the GOP’s chances of retaking the House and Senate in 2022.
He is ADMITTING that getting to the truth is bad for his party.
— George Takei (@GeorgeTakei) May 29, 2021
—————–
What would Mitch and Qevin do if Nancy appointed some Republicans to the committee? There must be at least one or two who are willing to dig into Trump’s complicity
——————
it’s exceedingly difficult, even for Republicans, to claim the investigation is partisan when they themselves shot down a bipartisan investigation even after their every request was granted. They’ll try, of course, but they will fail.
——————-
WATCH: Former GOP Rep. @BarbaraComstock says “If Donald Trump disappeared tomorrow, I don’t think you’d have many Republicans in the search party.” #MTP
“Maybe a few prosecutors. But not Republicans.” pic.twitter.com/3VbYqG5Oh3 3
— Meet the Press (@MeetThePress) May 30, 2021
Even if it is a “partisan” Select Committee investigation, members of Congress and their staff, including Kevin McCarthy, will have to testify under oath.
Three years ago in West Virginia, roughly 20,000 educators went on strike and shut down public schools across the state, protesting low pay and high healthcare costs. Their historic nine-day labor stoppage led to a 5% pay increase for teachers and school service personnel. Inspired by the success in West Virginia, strikes in states including Oklahoma, Colorado, and California soon followed.
The uprising sparked a wave of national attention, and the future of teacher organizing seemed more promising than it had in years. Their movement even had a name: “Red for Ed”—which referenced the red clothing educators and their allies wore each time they took to the streets for public schools. A year later, West Virginia educators walked off the job again in an effort to defeat a bill permitting charter schools to operate in their state. This time their success was more limited; teachers watered down the legislation, but lawmakers still rammed a version through in a special session, authorizing three charters to open by July 2023, with potential for more after that.
Today, it’s school choice advocates who feel they have the momentum.
[…] Following the 2020 election, […] GOP lawmakers then pushed through a flurry of bills to expand school choice and weaken public sector unions, including a bill allowing much faster charter school growth and prohibiting automatic union dues deduction from paychecks.
In perhaps the biggest victory for West Virginia school choice proponents, Republican lawmakers created a new voucher-like program called an education savings account, or ESA, which reformers are hailing as the most sweeping of its kind in the nation. Ninety-four percent of students in West Virginia will be eligible to receive up to $4,600 annually to cover the cost of private school tuition or tutoring, summer school, special needs therapies, and other education-related expenses.
[…] Both teacher unions and education reformers acknowledge the election helped usher in the new policies, and that the pandemic made it harder for public school advocates to fight back as they had in past years.
[…] Elections and the pandemic also changed education politics this year in Kentucky. Republican lawmakers recently overrode Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear’s veto of a bill authorizing a new tax credit scholarship program and requiring school districts to create open enrollment policies. To cover the cost, the bill will pull up to $25 million a year from state coffers, and opponents—which include school superintendents, administrators and teacher unions—warn that the legislation will divert funding from an already underfunded public education system.
Beshear has said the new program “will signal the end of public education as we know it.”
[…] it was actually a Kentucky Democrat, state Rep. Al Gentry, who provided the needed final vote in the House to get the ESA bill through. While Gentry had not supported ESAs in the past, he said he heard so much from his constituents that he had to lend his backing. “I personally don’t like this bill,” Gentry said on the House floor. “I do not support many things in this bill. However, the majority of those who sent me here do support this bill. So I voted yes for them.” It passed by a razor-thin margin of 48-47.
[…] Laura Hartke, a Lexington teacher and member of KY120 United, called the ESA bill “revenge” for their activism. “They forced us into buildings to teach and kept us out of the Capitol, and used the pandemic to ram it through,” she said.
Kentucky educators who are members of both the Kentucky Education Association and the nascent KY120 United say they’re gearing up to fight back against further cuts to public education and hope the new union will strengthen their collective efforts.
[…] In Arizona, on a November 2018 ballot measure known as Prop 305, teachers and public education advocates successfully defeated a voucher law that would have allowed all 1.1 million Arizona K-12 students to use public funds for private school tuition and other education expenses. The measure died handily, with 65% of voters rejecting it. But the fight for more school choice bills has not relented […]
“Prop. 305 was not a simple up-or-down vote on educational choice—despite the opponents’ spin,” said Jason Bedrick of the libertarian group EdChoice. […]
Dawn Penich-Thacker, a spokesperson for Save our Schools Arizona, which led the fight against Prop. 305, said the challenge is Arizona schools are so far behind other states that even the wins they’ve managed to achieve have done little to move the needle. “We won a 20% pay increase for our teachers in 2018, but our teachers are still the lowest paid in the nation,” she said. Arizona also has among the highest teacher turnover rates, the highest pupil-to-teacher ratios, and the lowest in public school spending. [Yikes! That’s bad.]
Penich-Thacker said advocates are working hard to defeat a new wave of privatization bills in the legislature and preparing for the next round of elections. Arizona voters consistently cite public education funding as their top issue.
[…] Save our Schools Arizona is open to organizing future ballot initiatives if some of the currently proposed school choice bills pass this year. […]
said Penich-Thacker. “Now it’s like, ‘Oh, you want to do something good for your teachers? Then call your legislator.’” […]
The most disturbing part about this story is that MyPillow guy Mike Lindell still has a jet. Why hasn’t he been sued into a lukewarm puddle of adipose and hotdish-redolent mustache clippings yet? Come on, Dominion. Go do that voodoo that you do so well.
Of course, despite getting sued for $1.3 billion over his false and (allegedly) defamatory election fraud claims, Lindell just keeps rolling along like the Energizer Bundt Cake. As a result, he’s largely become a pariah among both the political and shitty-pillow communities.
Case in point: He was recently ousted from the Republican Governors Association spring meeting in Nashville, most likely because he planned to confront Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey and Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp over their separate decisions to hew (at least for now) to consensus reality and let Donald Trump be the loser he’s always been (i.e., they refused to overturn the valid presidential election results in their states).
But even though you may very well be laughing right now, that’s not the funny part. Oh, no. Not even close.
This is: [From Sam Stein]
Mike Lindell brought Kristi Noem on his private jet to the RGA meeting. He then got kicked out, left for Nashville and left Noem looking for a new ride home.
According to Politico, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, who somehow turned her state into an Old Country Buffet for COVID despite overseeing one of the least densely populated jurisdictions in the U.S., got a lift to the governors meeting on Lindell’s private jet but had to find her own ride home.
[…] By the way, Lindell’s upcoming rally has a new guest scheduled, though it’s an open question as to whether he actually shows up. Lindell has been pranked before, after all:
Trump to make Live Appearance at Mike Lindell’s MAGA Frank Rally On June 12th
Wait, isn’t every television screen Donald Trump appears on automatically a jumbotron?
President Biden on Sunday delivered remarks in Delaware to commemorate Memorial Day, commending the military members who he said make up the “solid spine of this country.”
“As a nation, we must always remember, always remember. We must remember the price that was paid for our liberties. We must remember the debt we owe those who have paid it and the families left behind,” Biden said. […]
“I know the pride you feel in the loved one that you lost and those who are still serving, the pride and the bravery and the service to our great American experiment. Our military community is the solid spine of this country. It’s literally the spine of the nation,” Biden said.
“And on my first Memorial Day as commander in chief, I want to reaffirm my long-standing belief: We may have many obligations as a nation, […] one truly sacred obligation and that’s to equip those we send into harm’s way with all they need and care for them and their families when they return home and when they don’t.”
Biden also referred to a recent two-hour conversation he had with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in which he stressed the importance of human rights.
“I’ll be meeting with [Russian] President Putin in a couple weeks in Geneva making it clear that we will not — we will not stand — by and let him abuse those rights,” Biden said.
Memorial Day honors military personnel who have died in the service to the United States. It’s not a time when you’d […] kiss up to the troops just days after blocking an investigation into a domestic attack on the Capitol. But Republicans are gonna do [that] anyway because they all had their shame removed on an outpatient basis.
House Rep. Conor Lamb from Pennsylvania preemptively suggested that the GOP sedition caucus go stuff it.
Monday is Memorial Day. As a veteran, I’d like to ask that these 35 Senators just stay home. No more BS speeches about those who gave their lives.
The mother of a veteran who gave his life just begged for your vote, & you turned your back on her & all of us.
More than a year has passed since the start of the pandemic, and this Memorial Day, we can leave the house and share the same air as other sensibly vaccinated people. But we shouldn’t forget the almost 600,000 people who’ve died from COVID-19. They weren’t in uniform, but they were drafted into this invisible war so Americans could remain free from science, mask mandates, and the most basic societal obligations to others.
During a speech in March in recognition of the pandemic’s first anniversary […], President Joe Biden suggested that if we all do our part together, as a nation, we might be able to safely gather outside with our loved ones and even our family members for a Fourth of July cookout or barbecue. National Review editor Rick Lowry couldn’t resist gloating over how Uncle Joe had failed the country by delivering on his promise a month early. Maybe Lowry is the one who’s old and confused.
Vaccination rates are up and new COVID-19 cases are down, despite the best efforts of rightwing conspiracy theorists who host Fox News programs or serve in Congress, so last week, Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, gave the thumb’s up for a more laidback Memorial Day.
“If you’re vaccinated, go enjoy your Memorial Day weekend. […],” Walensky said at an event with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce on Thursday.
“And if you’re not vaccinated, give yourself a gift this holiday weekend and get vaccinated so you can protect yourself, your family and your entire community.”
Walensky sounds pretty excited about the holiday. You just know she’s going to show up at the cookout with the good pasta salad, like this one my girl Alison Roman makes. [video available at the link]
That’s right. She put capers in that motherfucker. I love Alison Roman.
There’s gotta be some bad news, Republicans are likely wondering. Well, gas prices are the highest they’ve been since 2014, and while that’s likely a result of increased demand because we can travel again, Republicans are already declaring this the Summer of Jimmy Carter. They’re desperate for every Democratic president to wind up like Carter, a respected humanitarian who doesn’t incite attacks on the US Capitol. Gas prices could rise as as high as $3.25 per gallon during the summer, which is still better than they were in 2012 […]
Tom Kloza, global head of energy analysis at the Oil Price Information Service, anticipates that gas prices will hover around $3 per gallon until the Fourth of July. […]
My Memorial Day weekend doesn’t suck. I’ve been doing some gardening. And because I’m fully vaccinated, I felt safe enough to have workmen here last week to make some much-needed repairs to my house.
It’s not exactly hard to divine what Nashville milliner Gigi Gaskins thought she was doing when she went and announced on Instagram that her store, HatWrks, would be selling yellow Star of David badges similar to the ones Jewish people were forced to wear in Nazi Germany, with “Not Vaccinated” written on them. For months now, probably longer, various people not only across the country but across the world (even in Germany) have worn such badges in hopes that they will engender sympathy by comparing themselves to Jewish victims of the Holocaust.
The irony that they are the ones out there trying to kill people, clearly, has been lost on them. But they keep trying. And Gigi Gaskins probably thought “People will get it if I do this. They will see that people not wanting to be around me because I could transmit a deadly virus the same thing as killing people for practicing a different religion!”
Things did not go that way. Right now, there are people outside her store protesting and holding a large sign reading “No Nazis in Nashville.” [Photo at the link]
Additionally, two of the biggest hat brands around — Goorin Bros. and Stetson, the latter we can assume is very popular in Nashville — have announced that they reject Gaskin’s nonsense and are looking into what actions they can take. Which means they’re probably pulling out of her store. […]
We are aware of the situation in Nashville. We take this matter seriously and are investigating in order to take the necessary and appropriate next steps. Along with our distribution partners, Stetson condemns antisemitism and discrimination of any kind.
[…] Gaskins has put this post up as a response.
people are so outraged by my post? but are you outraged with the tyranny the world is experiencing? if you don’t understand what is happening, that is on you, not me. i pay much more respect to history by standing up with the fallen than offering silence and compliance. that is the worse crime. it was then & is now. i will delete your disgust and hope you put it where it belongs.
The fallen, huh? Would that include Denver Police Deputy Daniel Trujillo, a fervent anti-vaxxer who recently died of COVID? [Photo at the link]
Or not. Who else would “the fallen” be? Are we throwing people who refuse to get vaccines off roofs now?
What “tyranny” is it that she’s talking about? How is she, personally, being tyrannized? There have always been vaccine requirements for certain activities, and other requirements for other activities. The state doesn’t require you to get a driver’s license because they want to do tyranny to you, they require it so that you are less likely to kill someone than you might be otherwise. The state isn’t forcing anyone to get a vaccine, it’s just being encouraged. People who haven’t had vaccines are being encouraged to continue to wear masks because they could still spread the virus to other people who don’t want it. That’s all. It’s not discrimination, it’s not tyranny, it’s a safety issue and a health issue.
And it is a whole lot different from throwing people in the gas chamber. Not even sort of comparable.
When Jewish people wore yellow star badges — not just during the Holocaust, by the way, but in various other times throughout history, for the explicit purpose of identifying them as Jewish in Christian or Muslim areas — they did not go and buy them at a hat shop by choice. They were forced to wear them. Required by law. They weren’t wearing them to be petty. Wearing such stars on a voluntary basis is a signal to the world that not only do you not get that, but that you do not even care to find out.
It looks as though Gigi Gaskins has a lovely space for her shop, hopefully the business that moves in there after she implodes won’t make her same mistakes.
The Himalayan country is considering declaring a health emergency to help contain a second wave that experts say migrant laborers brought back from India.
Ram Singh Karki escaped the first wave of India’s pandemic by boarding a crowded bus and crossing the border home to Nepal. Months later, as the rate of new infections fell, he returned to his job at a printing press in New Delhi, which had sustained his family for two decades and helped pay the school fees of his three children.
Then India was swept by a second wave, and Mr. Karki wasn’t as lucky.
He was infected last month. Hospitals in New Delhi were overwhelmed. When his oxygen level dropped, his manager arranged for an ambulance to take him back to the border. He crossed into Nepal, carrying with him just the clothes on his back — and the virus.
Nepal is now considering declaring a health emergency as the virus rampages virtually unchecked across the impoverished nation of 30 million people. Carried by returning migrant workers and others, a vicious second wave has stretched the country’s medical system beyond its meager limits.
Nepal has recorded half a million Covid cases and 6,000 deaths, numbers that experts believe deeply undercount the toll. Testing remains limited. One figure could indicate the true severity: For weeks now, about 40 percent of the tests conducted have been positive.
A government in disarray has compounded the trouble. K.P. Sharma Oli, Nepal’s embattled prime minister, has been pushing for an election in November after the country’s Parliament was dissolved this month, an event that could worsen the spread. […]
officials in Kathmandu, the capital, have urged people to store food for at least a week and stay home. […]
First, Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey came after women, signing into law in 2019 a bill outlawing abortions, even for victims of rape and incest, except when medically necessary. Then, she targeted transgender youth and signed into law on April 23 a bill prohibiting the children from participating in public school sports. Now, Ivey’s targeting people with disabilities.
The Republican governor signed a bill into law on Wednesday to ban curbside voting and in effect make casting ballots more difficult for people with disabilities. The unfortunate law prohibits placing voting machines outside of voting places and prevents poll workers from taking ballots into or out of voting places except when done as part of the established process to transport ballots. […] The ACLU of Alabama tweeted: “With our state in the middle of a devastating pandemic and economic downturn, what is the Alabama Legislature doing? Passing bills that burden or attack Alabamians.”
Ivey didn’t mention curbside voting ban’s potential impact on people with disabilities in her press release bragging about rubber stamping Republican Alabama Secretary of State John Merrill’s voter suppression effort. “Our freedom of speech is rooted in our ability to vote,” she instead said. “A strong election process is what sets our democracy apart from every other country in the world.” Protecting the electoral process has become a popular guise for voter suppression tactics embraced throughout the country among Republicans following a triple loss for the party, last year in the White House and in two U.S. Senate runoff races effectively flipping the Senate from majority Republican to majority Democratic.
Maria Schell-Cannon, a mother and educator, called the new Alabama law “disgraceful’ in a tweet on Wednesday. “This doesn’t prevent fraud, just mks it more difficult 4 the disabled & elderly 2 gt 2 the polls,” she said in the tweet. “Sad! The GOP is destroying democracy.” Randy Wilson, a real estate investor and father, tweeted on Thursday: “[…] No expanded medicaid. No effort to rewrite the antiquated constitution. BUT, we made it a priority on the last day in session to ban curb side voting without a single case of curbside voting or any significant voter fraud. C’mon Alabama…” […]
Pierce R. Butlersays
SC … @ # 372 & KG @ # 388 – Thanks for the follow-ups, even if we still don’t have an answer to the questions raised.
I’ve done a little further digging on my own, and still have no clue whether Protasevich was innocently reporting on or not-so-innocently participating with armed fascists. Nor have I found anything one way or t’other about foiaresearch.net, which seems to have gotten very little attention for the apparent amount of work invested. (covertactionmagazine.com claims to have a partnership going with them – I had a lot of respect for the first incarnation of CA, but hadn’t even known of their revival until looking around for this.)
The most pressing question now may be not whether Roe and Casey can survive but how reproductive rights can be sustained without them.
One of the most striking facts in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, a case that the Supreme Court has now agreed to hear, concerns the identity of one of the parties. Jackson Women’s Health is the only licensed abortion clinic in Mississippi. Women seeking its services often have to travel hundreds of miles to the pink building on North State Street, in Jackson, and to either make the trip twice or find somewhere to stay—Mississippi imposes a twenty-four-hour waiting period after mandatory in-person counselling. Girls younger than eighteen need a parent’s permission or a waiver from a court. And when a woman arrives she is usually subjected to people shouting through megaphones that she is murdering her child. The city tried to limit the noise, which reportedly can be heard inside businesses down the street, but the ordinance was revoked after a challenge. […]
Jackson Women’s Health has another distinction. There is every possibility that the case bearing its name—along with that of Thomas Dobbs, the state health officer of Mississippi—will be the one that either overturns Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, the two Supreme Court rulings that are the bedrocks of reproductive rights, or renders them powerless. This case began as a challenge to a Mississippi law forbidding abortions after fifteen weeks (counting from a woman’s last menstrual period), except in very narrow circumstances. A woman would have to be facing a medical emergency that could cause “substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function”—or threaten her life. The only other exception would be if doctors determined that the fetus, even if carried to full term, could not survive. Rape and incest would not be taken into account.
Crucially, fifteen weeks is well before the point at which a fetus would be viable outside the womb, and that is also the point at which the Supreme Court has said that a woman’s interest in controlling her own body outweighs any other interests the state has. The Mississippi law is so clearly contrary to the Court’s precedents that Judge James Ho, a Trump appointee to the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, wrote in an opinion in 2019 that it was his “duty” to strike it down […] Similar state laws are regularly batted down. Why, then, did the Court take this one?
The obvious, depressing answer is that Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health will be argued in the term that begins in October, with Amy Coney Barrett seated in place of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died last September. It’s a good bet that Barrett, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh—the Trump trio—along with Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, will try to severely limit reproductive rights. They wouldn’t even need John Roberts. […] In the past few months, there has been a frenzy of anti-choice legislation at the state level; the Guttmacher Institute tallied twenty-eight new restrictions signed into law in the four days between April 26th and April 29th alone. […]
The specific question the Court has said it will examine is this: “Whether all pre-viability prohibitions on elective abortions are unconstitutional.” The wording is important. Casey allows states to regulate abortion in certain ways, even before viability, as long as the rules do not put an “undue burden” on women. The burdens have nonetheless become quite undue in recent years, from mandatory waiting periods to licensing requirements designed to close down clinics. […] About ninety per cent of the counties in the United States lack an abortion clinic. […] the reality of abortion access for a woman in the Northeast or California is in stark contrast with that for a woman in the South or the Midwest. The Mississippi case is different and more radical because the state claims, implausibly, that its near-total ban on abortion after fifteen weeks is merely a regulation of the sort envisioned by Casey. Indeed, the state, in its brief for the Court, objects strongly to the use of the word “ban” to describe the law.
A particularly shameless defense of the Mississippi law can be found in an amicus-curiae brief filed by Texas and seventeen other states. It argues that the Court should treat the Mississippi law not as a profound conceptual shift, from regulation to prohibition, but as a small adjustment, because it’s already so difficult to get an abortion in that state. Jackson Women’s Health offers abortions only until the sixteenth week, and the amicus brief insists that the clinic must “explain why these women could not schedule their abortions one week earlier.” This argument is doubly disingenuous because, soon after the Fifth Circuit struck down the post-fifteen-week ban, Mississippi passed an even more extreme one, on abortions after six weeks. That law has been blocked by the courts. There are also pending challenges to near-total bans approved in Arkansas, in March, and in Oklahoma, in April—and to a law that Governor Greg Abbott, of Texas, signed on May 19th, banning abortion after the detection of a heartbeat, which can be as soon as six weeks and often before a woman knows that she is pregnant.
And yet, as harsh as the heartbeat law is, it took Texas only a week to outdo it. Last Wednesday, the state legislature approved what is known as a “trigger law,” which would go into effect if Roe is overturned. It would ban abortion almost entirely, as would similar trigger laws that exist in a dozen other states, such as Missouri, Tennessee, and Utah. […] By comparison, about a dozen states have measures in place to safeguard access to abortion to a certain extent. California, for example, still has a pre-Roe law legalizing abortion on the books. More states need more robust trigger laws that would protect reproductive rights, and they will likely need them soon. […]
Texas Democrats staged a dramatic walkout in the state House late Sunday night to block passage of a restrictive voting bill that would have been one of the most stringent in the nation, forcing Republicans to abruptly adjourn without taking a vote on the measure.
The surprise move came after impassioned late-night debate and procedural objections about the GOP-backed legislation, which would have made it harder to vote by mail, empowered partisan poll watchers and made it easier to overturn election results. Republicans faced a midnight deadline to approve the measure….
…it was an unmistakable defeat for the governor and fellow Republicans, who had crafted one of the most far-reaching voting bills in the country…
Calling the measure “egregious” and “horrific,” Democratic lawmakers likened it to the Jim Crow laws of the 20th century that effectively barred Black Americans from voting in Southern states. They sought to slow the process by arguing that the bill had not been properly debated in either chamber….
Republicans hashed out a final version behind closed doors late last week over the objections of Democrats, civil rights leaders and business executives, who said the measure targets voters of color…
The measure would have made it illegal for election officials to send out unsolicited mail ballot applications, empowered partisan poll watchers and banned practices such as drop boxes and drive-through voting that were popularized in heavily Democratic Harris County last year. It would have barred early-voting hours on Sunday mornings, potentially hampering get-out-the-vote programs aimed at Black churchgoers.
The final version included numerous provisions inserted at the last minute, including language making it easier to overturn an election, no longer requiring evidence that fraud actually altered an outcome of a race but rather only that enough ballots were illegally cast that could have made a difference. The legislation also would have changed the legal standard for overturning an election from “reasonable doubt” to “preponderance of the evidence” — a much lower evidentiary bar….
Republican Sen. Paul Bettencourt of Houston defended the restrictions, claiming without evidence that “drive-through voting didn’t work” and resulted in a 1.5 percent error rate.
Chris Hollins, who served as elections clerk in Harris County last year, disputed that claim.
“Drive-thru voting is safe, convenient, and secure for Texas voters. It worked so well in 2020 that nearly 1 in 10 in-person voters in Harris County cast their votes at drive-thrus,” he said in a text message.
“It’s a great service for Democratic and Republican voters, and everyone in between. Senator Bettencourt is not a fan because in 2020, too many of those voters were women and minorities.”
….an earlier version of the voting bill described the need to protect the “purity of the ballot box,” a phrase in the Texas Constitution. Similar language was used decades ago by white supremacists to limit Black voting.
Major hat brands cut ties with a Nashville shop over the weekend, continuing fallout after the store announced on social media that it was selling yellow Star of David-shaped patches emblazoned with the all-caps message: NOT VACCINATED. […]
By Saturday, the outrage had grown loud enough that major hat brands decided to jump ship.
“As a result of the offensive content and opinions shared by HatWRKS in Nashville, Stetson and our distribution partners will cease the sale of all Stetson products,” the company wrote on Twitter. “We thank you for your continued support and patience.”
“Due to the recent offensive content shared by Hatwrks in Nashville, Goorin Bros. has ended their distribution with this business effective immediately,” the hatmaker said on Instagram, adding: “Goorin Bros is horrified by the display and selling of the Jewish badge by HatWRKS, a store in Nashville Tennessee, that sells some of our hats.” […]
Though COVID-19 cases in the U.S. are going down while the number of vaccinations is ramping up, Americans shouldn’t get complacent about the state of the pandemic, warns top White House COVID-19 expert Dr. Anthony Fauci.
In an interview with the Guardian published on Monday, Fauci asserted that “[w]e don’t want to declare victory prematurely because we still have a ways to go.”
“But the more and more people that can get vaccinated, as a community, the community will be safer and safer,” he added.
Still, “We cannot abandon public health measures when you still have a degree of viral activity in the broad community in the United States,” the health official said. “Although we’re down to less than 30,000 infections per day, that’s still a lot of infections per day.”
Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) shows that more than half of American adults had been fully vaccinated at the time of writing. And 62.6 percent of adults have had at least one shot of the vaccine.
“Today, in our current day, the accessibility and the convenience of getting a vaccine is really rather striking,” Fauci told the Guardian.
Instagram has changed its algorithm after a group of employees complained that pro-Palestinian content was being hidden from other users in the midst of conflict between Israelis and Palestinians that culminated in an 11-day conflict in Gaza.
The Verge reports that Instagram will now surface original and reposted content at the same rate, as it had previously surfaced original content before reposted.
As BuzzFeed News reported last week, employees at Facebook, the parent company of Instagram, complained that content featuring Arabic or pro-Palestinian content was often flagged or received a label warning.
“I fear we are at a point where the next mistake will be the straw that breaks the camel’s back and we could see our communities migrating to other platforms,” one unnamed Facebook employee wrote to his co-workers.
A Facebook spokesperson told The Verge that the change in its algorithm was not entirely about pro-Palestinian content. According to the spokesperson, Facebook realized that bubbling content that it believes its users care about the most had made it appear as though the company was suppressing certain viewpoints.
“We want to be really clear— this isn’t the case,” the spokesperson told The Verge. “This applied to any post that’s re-shared in stories, no matter what it’s about.”
Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri, who is Israeli, acknowledged users in early May who complained they were unable to post pro-Palestinian content for several hours, tweeting, “Many people thought we were removing their content because of what they posted or what hashtag they used, but this bug wasn’t related to the content itself, but rather a widespread issue that has now been fixed.” […]
President Biden on Monday stressed the right for Americans to be able to vote “freely,” “fairly” and “conveniently” during Memorial Day remarks that came one day after Texas Democrats staged a walkout to block the passage of a sweeping election overhaul package.
Speaking from Arlington National Cemetery, Biden in his address to Armed Forces members and Gold Star families said that how we honor the U.S. soldiers who have died in conflicts and wars across the globe “will determine whether or not democracy will long endure.”
“Democracy thrives when the infrastructure of democracy is strong,” Biden said. “When people have the right to vote freely and fairly and conveniently.”
“When a free and independent press pursues the truth, founded on facts, not propaganda,” Biden added. “When the rule of law applies equally and fairly to every citizen, regardless of where they come from, what they look like.”
Biden’s remarks come as Republican-led state legislatures across the U.S. attempt to institute new restrictions on voters that critics say disproportionately impact communities of color. […]
Wonkette: “Insipid Cartoon Children Have Time Travel Adventure With Ronald Reagan”
[…] I stumbled onto this extremely cringey Prager U video meant to teach the children about Ronald Reagan.
And boy is it ever a doozy. [video available at the link]
According to this video …
– Reagan “starred” in over 50 movies, which is not even sort of true. Like, dude appeared in a lot of movies, largely because he spent most of his career doing B movies that were produced and distributed quickly, but “starring?” Not so much. The only “good” movie he was ever even in was Dark Victory alongside actual good actors Bette Davis, Humphrey Bogart and George Brent — in which even his very small part was a blight on an otherwise perfect movie.
– “He was in the military during WWII!” — I mean, sure, technically, but only for like three years and he never actually served abroad because he had “bad eyesight.” He served in the First Motion Picture Unit, the film production unit of the Army during WWII and the “Provisional Task Force Show Unit” where he made recruiting films for the Army. Many of which he would later recall as real things that happened in his actual life.
The most notable of these films was This Is The Army, a musical comedy film with book and music written by Irving Berlin. And like … remember earlier this month when Ted Cruz and a bunch of other weirdos were sad because some Army recruitment video wasn’t macho enough? Well, I’m just gonna leave this here. [video available at the link]
– “He was tooooooootally handsome” — In comparison to the chimp?
– The Cold War was a lovely and peaceful war fought with no weapons and was ended through Reagan personally tearing down the Berlin Wall and also Reaganomics.
– Ronald Reagan liked jelly beans. Sure. That’s true. He did like jelly beans.
Oddly enough, there was no mention of naming names, the Iran Contra, not mentioning AIDS until practically the end of his administration and 90,000 people had already died, the drug war, killing unions, reliance on the advice of psychics, the savings and loan crisis, the use of racist dogwhistles like “welfare queen,” HUD grant rigging, or the investigation, indictment or conviction of 138 administration officials in various scandals throughout his time in office.
But hey, those are the kind of things you leave out when you’re propagandizing to children.
Authorities in Texas arrested a man on Friday who was allegedly planning to carry out a mass shooting at a Walmart and a search of his home turned up firearms, ammunition and material described as “radical ideology paraphernalia.”
Coleman Thomas Blevins, 28, was arrested in Kerrville, Texas, on charges of making a “terroristic threat to create public fear of serious bodily injury,” The Associated Press reports.
Investigators intercepted a message from Blevins in which he said he was “preparing to proceed with a mass shooting,” according to a statement from the Kerr County Sheriff’s Office on Sunday.
Investigators searched Blevins’s home where they found “firearms, ammunition, electronic evidence, concentrated THC, and radical ideology paraphernalia, including books, flags, and handwritten documents were seized.”
The AP reports that Blevins is on felony probation and is not allowed to own firearms.
“During an operation evolving over the past seven days, the KCSO Special Operations Division, along with Texas Department of Public Safety Criminal Investigation Division (DPS-CID), worked cooperatively with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) regarding a Kerrville man who was believed to a threat to national security,” the Kerr County Sheriff’s Office said in a Facebook post.
“Through the period of investigation, KCSO investigators made contact and conversed with Mr. Blevins, confirmed his affiliation and networking with extremist ideologies,” the sheriff’s office added. […]
President Biden delivered a rousing defense of democracy and a plea for unity during remarks to commemorate Memorial Day on Monday at Arlington National Cemetery, saying “democracy is more than a form of government — it is a way of being.”
“Democracy itself is in peril,” the president said.
Speaking for roughly 20 minutes, Biden said the American soldiers buried around him, and around the world, gave their lives to uphold the U.S. Constitution and the country’s form of government.
“Democracy must be defended at all costs,” Biden said. “Democracy, that’s the soul of America. And I believe it’s a soul worth fighting for. And so do you. A soul worth dying for.”
Biden also referred to the threats to the country’s form of government.
“The soul of America is animated by the perennial battle between our worst instincts, which we’ve seen of late, and our better angels.” […]
The move is the Communist Party’s latest attempt to reverse declining birthrates and avert a population crisis, but experts say it is woefully inadequate.
China said on Monday that it would allow all married couples to have three children, ending a two-child policy that has failed to raise the country’s declining birthrates and avert a demographic crisis.
The announcement by the ruling Communist Party represents an acknowledgment that its limits on reproduction, the world’s toughest, have jeopardized the country’s future. The labor pool is shrinking and the population is graying, threatening the industrial strategy that China has used for decades to emerge from poverty to become an economic powerhouse.
But it is far from clear that relaxing the policy further will pay off. People in China have responded coolly to the party’s earlier move, in 2016, to allow couples to have two children. To them, such measures do little to assuage their anxiety over the rising cost of education and of supporting aging parents, made worse by the lack of day care and the pervasive culture of long work hours.
In a nod to those concerns, the party also indicated on Monday that it would improve maternity leave and workplace protections, pledging to make it easier for couples to have more children. But those protections are all but absent for single mothers in China, who despite the push for more children still lack access to benefits. […]
‘You’re not alone’: Graduation speakers [including Kamala Harris and Jill Biden] from White House and beyond deliver powerful messages.
The academic year is coming to a close, and what a devastating year it has been. More than 591,000 people have died of COVID-19, and even in the thick of graduation season as vaccinations are on the uptick, the pandemic has been difficult to escape. It’s been a resounding theme of commencement speeches.
But even amid the sorrow, speakers throughout the country, including those in the White House, offered hope to the class of 2021.
First lady Jill Biden shared her personal story of overcoming tragedy with the 2021 class at George Mason University on May 14. “A few years ago, I had to tell my class that I would miss the next session for personal reasons,” she started. “Now, my students have never suffered from a lack of curiosity. So, they immediately began shouting, ‘Dr. B, Dr. B, where you going?’
“My sister was having the first of her cancer treatments, and she would be in a hospital room for six weeks,” Dr. Biden said. “I tried to explain with as much composure as I could muster, but the words caught in my throat. So, I turned to face the whiteboard, hoping to hold back my emotions. And when I turned back around, the entire class was standing. They lined up and gave me a hug, one by one.”
She added: “Until that moment, I didn’t realize how much I was struggling, or how much I needed their strength. Sooner or later, we all suffer heartaches—some unimaginable. Some that we might think we can’t survive. In my life, I never could have imagined the ways my heart would be shattered. Sometimes our strength comes from within us … and sometimes it can’t. Sometimes we carry the weight of our lives … and sometimes our knees buckle beneath us. But in those moments, remember: You’re not alone. Let the people who love you help carry that weight.”
Grammy award-winning singer/songwriter John Legend also emphasized the importance of overcoming obstacles in a commencement speech for Duke University on May 2. He said during the speech that it was his first time in front of a live audience since last February. “Your class lost a lot,” Legend said. “Some lost job offers. Some lost loved ones, and all of you last a whole year those little moments that make college so special. I feel your pain. You’ve lost something that you won’t get back. I won’t sugarcoat that. It sucks.” But the musician also highlighted what the class has to gain and the opportunity it has to learn. [video available at the link]
“America’s story has always been marred by efforts to exclude, to dominate, to subjugate, to keep certain groups of people with no voice, no power and no opportunity—workers, women, indigenous people, Black people, immigrants, the LGBTQ community. All because of a fear that if those people did better, somebody else would have to lose,” Legend said. “But the miracle of our story is that as we expanded opportunity, in our best moments, we proved that those fears were unfounded.”
During a CNN special that aired on May 23, Vice President Kamala Harris included in her congratulations for the class of 2021 an acknowledgement of all students have withstood. [video available at the link] “You now know, that you have what it takes to get through pretty much anything,” she said. “So when you come up against an obstacle, when you experience a setback — and you will, we all do — remember the resilience that you showed this past year. The determination. Remember, that you have the strength to get through anything.
“You do not have to get through anything alone. You are not alone. We are all in this together and when we look out for one another, everybody is better off.” […]
The same week cowardly Senate Republicans filibustered a bipartisan January 6, 2021 investigation, a grand jury of courageous Americans indicted 4 more Oath Keepers in fourth superseding indictment involving January 6, 2021 insurrection
U.S. prosecutors have criminally charged at least 19 alleged Oath Keepers or associates in the Capitol riots, including Jon Ryan Schaffer, an Indiana rock musician who is the only defendant known to have pleaded guilty.
Prosecutors say the Oath Keepers, a loose network of groups founded in 2009 that includes some self-styled citizen militias, target law enforcement and military members for recruitment with an apocalyptic vision of the U.S. government careening toward totalitarianism. Its members have provided security to some conservative politicians and causes in recent years.
The four new defendants are charged with conspiring to obstruct Congress’s confirmation of the 2020 presidential election in joint session on Jan. 6. They are accused of forcing entry through the Capitol’s East Rotunda doors after marching single-file up the steps wearing camouflaged combat uniforms, tactical vests with plates, helmets, eye protection and Oath Keepers insignia.
Paul Waldman:
It’s almost as though someone told them to “Stand back and stand by”
Michael Flynn, former national security adviser in the Trump administration, appeared to call for a Myanmar-like coup to take place in the U.S. during a QAnon conference in Texas.
MarketWatch reports that Flynn made the remarks while speaking at the QAnon conference in Dallas, which was called “For God & and Country Patriot Roundup.” In a video shared online, someone from the audience asks Flynn, “I want to know why what happened in Myanmar can’t happen here?”
This question elicited a round of cheers from the audience.
Once the crowd quieted, Flynn responded, “No reason. I mean, it should happen here.” [video available at the link]
Myanmar’s military seized power and overtook the country’s democratically-elected government in February. Since the coup, hundreds have been killed by Myanmar security forces and thousands of pro-democracy demonstrators have been detained according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP).
[…] In December, after Biden had been declared the victor of the presidential election, Flynn suggested that Trump should deploy the military to “rerun” the 2020 election. During an appearance on conservative news network Newsmax, Flynn suggested that Trump seize every voting machine in the country and deploy the military to swing states where Biden won.
CNN notes that QAnon followers are distinctly enamored with the idea that Trump will use the military to regain power in the U.S. Many believed that he would declare martial law on Inauguration Day to prevent Biden from assuming the office.
According to CNN, Flynn also falsely claimed at the Dallas event that “Trump won. He won the popular vote, and he won the Electoral College vote.” Since leaving the Trump administration, Flynn has become a major figure in the QAnon movement, posting content related to the conspiracy theory on social media.
Cranky old white guy with military background goes fucking bonkers.
President Biden issued a proclamation on Monday commemorating the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa Race Massacre, in which a mob of white attackers killed hundreds of Black Americans and burned down several blocks of what was referred to as Black Wall Street.
Biden declared Monday to be a “Day of Remembrance: 100 Years After The 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre” to commemorate the horrific racist attack.
“One hundred years ago, a violent white supremacist mob raided, firebombed, and destroyed approximately 35 square blocks of the thriving Black neighborhood of Greenwood in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Families and children were murdered in cold blood,” Biden said in his proclamation. “Homes, businesses, and churches were burned. In all, as many as 300 Black Americans were killed, and nearly 10,000 were left destitute and homeless.”
“With this proclamation, I commit to the survivors of the Tulsa Race Massacre, including Viola Fletcher, Hughes Van Ellis, and Lessie Benningfield Randle, the descendants of victims, and to this Nation that we will never forget,” Biden continued. “We honor the legacy of the Greenwood community, and of Black Wall Street, by reaffirming our commitment to advance racial justice through the whole of our government, and working to root out systemic racism from our laws, our policies, and our hearts.”
“The Federal Government must reckon with and acknowledge the role that it has played in stripping wealth and opportunity from Black communities,” he added.
Biden is schedule to travel to Tulsa on Tuesday to meet with survivors of the massacre and to deliver further remarks about the 100th anniversary. […]
Hard to imagine Trump doing anything like that.
johnson catmansays
re Lynna @414:
Hard to imagine Trump doing anything like that.
He would have met with the descendants of the white mob and celebrated their “victory”.
KGsays
Biden’s remarks come as Republican-led state legislatures across the U.S. attempt to institute new restrictions on voters that critics say disproportionately impact communities of color. – Lynna, OM, quoting The Hill@406 – my emphasis
Genghis Khan’s career of conquest, that critics say disproportionately impacted communities his forces massacred.
blfsays
Trying to convince people the cult is doing something about its problem with pedophile priests, teh raping children cult has published revisions to its so-called criminal law, which seems to completely fail to unambiguously outlaw pedophilia, Pope Francis updates canon law to address paedophilia by priests (my added emboldening):
[…]
The purpose of the revision, wrote Francis in introducing the changes, is restoration of justice, the reform of the offender, and the repair of scandal.
[…]
The new code falls short of explicitly spelling out sexual offences against minors yet refers to offences against the sixth commandment, which prohibits adultery.
A priest is to be stripped of his office and punished with other just penalties if he commits such offences with a minor, the new code says.
Similarly, a priest who grooms or induces a minor “to expose himself or herself pornographically or to take part in pornographic exhibitions” will be similarly punished.
[…]
The changes will take effect in December.
Despite recent measures to root out abuse by priests and increase transparency, some victims say the Vatican still has not gone far enough to protect children even in the West, where intense media coverage of paedophile priests has led to greater scrutiny of church practices.
From Ye Pffft! of All Knowledge, “The term adultery refers to sexual acts between a married person and someone who is not that person’s spouse.”
Priests in that cult are notoriously not married, and the child he raped isn’t either, hence the priest’s crime is not “adultery”, so there’s no change. (Unless the priest was stupid enough to make child p0rn.) Nothing to see here, move along, just leave the child behind for a special session with the priest…
Here’s a link to the June 1 Guardian coronavirus world liveblog.
From there:
Doctors marched throughout India to protest a popular guru who claimed yoga can defeat Covid-19, AFP reports.
The doctors denounced and called for the arrest for Baba Ramdev, who claimed modern drugs were “stupid and failed science”.
The doctors’ association at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), one of Delhi’s biggest government hospitals, called Ramdev’s comments “disgraceful”.
Ramdev, a keen supporter of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, retracted his comments after an appeal by India’s health minister and the guru said he had been merely reading out other people’s WhatsApp messages.
But he then caused further outcry by saying that he did not need a coronavirus vaccine because he was protected by yoga and traditional medicine, or Ayurveda.
He would have met with the descendants of the white mob and celebrated their “victory”.
Someone on MSNBC this morning (Mara Gay?) reminded everyone that he’d originally scheduled his pro-COVID rally in Tulsa last year (the one that almost no one showed up to and that likely killed Herman Cain) for Juneteenth.
An Indian court has ruled that a local government administration in Uttar Pradesh filed a “false and unfounded” police report against eight Muslim leaders who had opposed the “illegal” demolition of their mosque.
The bulldozing of the Masjid Gareeb Nawaz Al Maroof last month, carried out on the orders of the local administration of Barabanki district, caused an outcry and sent many local Muslims into hiding.
In the days following the demolition, the Barabanki administration filed a police case against eight local Muslim leaders who had opposed the demolition, accusing them of forging documents that had led to the mosque being illegally registered on government land.
In a ruling at Allahabad high court published on Tuesday, judges declared that the administration had filed a “false and unfounded” police report against the Muslim leaders. The ruling, which was the result of a lawsuit challenging the demolition of the mosque, found that the state government had provided no proof to the court of falsified or forged documents.
The Muslims named in the case were also granted protection from arrest and the Uttar Pradesh government was given three weeks to produce the evidence.
The local administration that ordered the mosque to be flattened on 17 May had called it an “illegal structure” intruding on government land. The demolition has drawn comparisons with the demolition of Babri Masjid, a mosque torn down by a rightwing Hindu mob in 1992.
The Uttar Pradesh government is ruled by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) which also controls the central government. The state chief minister, Yogi Adityanath, is one of the most hardline leaders in the party, known for his vitriol towards Muslims.
…
The decision to demolish the mosque is also alleged to be also a violation of a high court order passed on 24 April where all demolitions and evictions in Uttar Pradesh were ordered to be halted until 31 May….
More than 50 former foreign ministers, prime ministers and senior international officials, including two British Conservative former ministers, have signed an open letter condemning political interference in efforts by the international criminal court (ICC) to investigate alleged war crimes in Palestine.
The letter follows moves by the Trump administration to sanction court officials – orders that have since been reversed by the Biden administration – and is also seen as a rebuke of Boris Johnson, the British prime minister.
Johnson said last month that an ICC investigation opened in March gave “the impression of being a partial and prejudicial attack on a friend and ally of the UK’s”, referring to Israel. The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has said that any ICC investigation would be “pure antisemitism”.
Condemning the “increasing attacks on the ICC, its staff and cooperating civil society groups”, the letter identifies the Trump administration’s moves against the court as part of a wider trend.
…
“It is well established and recognised that accountability for serious rights violations by all sides to a conflict is essential for achieving a sustainable and lasting peace. This is the case in Israel-Palestine, just as in Sudan, Libya, Afghanistan, Mali, Bangladesh/Myanmar, Colombia, and Ukraine.
“Attempts to discredit the court and obstruct its work cannot be tolerated if we are serious about promoting and upholding justice globally,” the signatories add while pushing back against complaints of the kind levelled by Johnson, which he made in a letter to the Conservative Friends of Israel.
…
The signatories to the letter come from across Europe’s political spectrum,…
…
While the letter does not mention Johnson by name, his intervention underlined concerns over attempts to hobble the ICC’s investigation, which was formally announced earlier this year.
The Palestinian mission to the UK described Johnson’s letter as a “deeply regrettable” contradiction of international law and previous British policy.
“It marks a low point in UK-Palestine relations and undermines the UK’s credibility on the international stage,” it said. “It is clear that the UK now believes Israel is above the law. There is no other interpretation of a statement that gives carte blanche to Israel.”
…Peru Revises COVID Death Toll to Become Nation with Highest Per Capita Death Rate
Peru’s government has admitted its COVID-19 death toll is nearly triple the number it previously reported. Peru’s new official toll of 180,000 deaths makes it the country with the highest per capita COVID death rate in the world.
Malaysia has entered a two-week nationwide lockdown as cases surge in Southeast Asian countries that had successfully tamped down the spread of COVID-19. Vietnam has begun mass testing and will limit public gatherings, after a surge that officials are blaming on a new, highly transmissible coronavirus variant.
China’s Guangdong province has ordered lockdowns after a sudden spike in cases.
WHO Calls for Pandemic Preparedness Treaty, Warning “The Pathogens Are Winning”
In Geneva, officials at the World Health Organization called Monday for a new international treaty on pandemic preparedness. WHO Emergencies Director Mike Ryan said that in the fight against emerging diseases, pathogens have the upper hand.
Mike Ryan: “They sicken and kill us and disrupt every aspect of our lives. They exploit our interconnectedness. They expose our lack of coordination, our lack of solidarity, our societal inequities. In short, the pathogens are winning this fight right now. And that should not be the status quo, and it should not be something we accept.”
Tens of Thousands March in Cities Across Brazil Demanding Impeachment of Jair Bolsonaro
In Brazil, tens of thousands of protesters marched in over 200 cities and towns Saturday demanding the impeachment of far-right President Jair Bolsonaro. Brazil continues to average more than 60,000 new coronavirus infections each day, with an official death toll of more than 460,000.
The protests came as Brazil’s Senate continued a high-profile inquiry into Bolsonaro’s catastrophic handling of the pandemic and his government’s slow rollout of vaccinations. Joining Rio de Janeiro’s protests was Mônica Benício, whose fiancé[e] Marielle Franco was murdered in 2018 by hitmen with close ties to the Bolsonaro family.
Mônica Benício: “It’s a duty to fight for democracy. This government is of no use to us. It doesn’t serve the people, and its political project is to kill us. We have taken to the streets because we have no alternative.”
Colombian Police Continue Deadly Crackdown on Anti-Government Protests
In Colombia, right-wing President Iván Duque deployed over 1,000 army troops to the city of Cali over the weekend in response to ongoing, massive anti-government protests. Duque reportedly ordered some 7,000 soldiers to be sent to Cali and other regions in the coming days. On Friday, tens of thousands of people took to the streets across Colombia to mark one month since massive mobilizations began in late April, initially triggered by a now-withdrawn tax reform. Protests have continued against Duque’s policies, skyrocketing poverty and police violence in Colombia. On Friday, at least 13 people were reported dead in the city of Cali alone.
Bodies of 215 Indigenous Children Discovered at Canadian Boarding School
The Canadian government is facing pressure to declare a national day of mourning after the bodies of 215 children were found in British Columbia on the grounds of a school for Indigenous children who were forcibly separated from their families by the government. The bodies were discovered at the Kamloops Indian Residential School, which opened in 1890 and closed in the late 1970s. The Catholic Church ran the school up until 1969. We’ll have more on this story later in the broadcast.
…
Arizona Plans Executions Using Same Poison Gas Used in Nazi Death Camps
Arizona prison officials have revived a decades-old gas chamber and are planning to use hydrogen cyanide — the same deadly gas used by Nazis at Auschwitz and other extermination camps — to kill people on death row. That’s according to documents obtained by The Guardian, which show Arizona’s Department of Corrections spent over $2,000 buying ingredients for the gas. The department has also “refurbished” a gas chamber at a prison in the town of Florence that was built in 1949 and hadn’t been used in over two decades….
Maggie Haberman: “Trump has been telling a number of people he’s in contact with that he expects he will get reinstated by August (no that isn’t how it works but simply sharing the information).”
“Today, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya will meet american senators @senrobportman, @SenatorShaheen, @ChrisMurphyCT, who arrived at Vilnius to express the bipartisan support for Sviatlana and the Democratic movement. We thank the United States for principled and strong position on Belarus
US Senators and Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya are giving the joint press conference. Tsikhanouskaya: Lukashenka has clearly become a threat to international peace and security. Resolution of the crisis is in interest of all international actors”
johnson catman @415 and SC @419, sometimes I think Trump likes to repeatedly demonstrate that he is clueless. He thinks cluelessness is a virtue.
In other news, some bits and pieces of campaign news:
* It’s Election Day in New Mexico’s 1st congressional district, where state Rep. Melanie Stansbury (D) and state Sen. Mark Moores (R) are competing to fill Interior Secretary Deb Haaland’s former U.S. House seat. Local polls close at 7:00 p.m. (M.T.).
* With Iowa’s position as the Democrats’ first presidential nominating contest in jeopardy, can Nevada leapfrog to the front of the pack? The state’s Democratic-led legislature is advancing a bill to do exactly that.
* At some point today, Florida Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried — the state’s only Democrat elected to statewide office — is expected to kick off her 2022 gubernatorial campaign against incumbent Gov. Ron DeSantis (R).
* Jim Lamon, a Republican U.S. Senate hopeful in Arizona, appears to have bought ad time on Fox News in the New Jersey cable market, specifically in the hopes of having Donald Trump see the commercials. [Oh, FFS.]
* The National Republican Congressional Committee’s new fundraising pitch includes a pre-checked box for monthly recuring donations, alongside text that reads, “If you UNCHECK this box, I’ll be forced to tell them you’ve deserted Trump for Socialism.” [WTF? Not this bullshit again.]
* A group of former Trump campaign veterans have formed a new group, called the America Strong PAC, which intends to target the House Republicans who voted for Trump’s second impeachment in January. The outfit’s website refers to the pro-impeachment GOP members as “the ten pretenders,” and the PAC’s website includes an attack ad targeting Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.). [Circular firing squad.]
* Rhode Island Secretary of State Nellie Gorbea (D) last week kicked off her gubernatorial campaign, and if successful, she would be the first Latina governor in New England history.
Trump appointed Douglas Macgregor to a West Point post despite (or because of?) his radical views. He’s still there, and his views haven’t changed.
Donald Trump’s original plan for retired Army Col. Douglas Macgregor was to make him the U.S. ambassador to Germany. It wasn’t long, however, before Macgregor’s record of offensive rhetoric came to light: During Fox News appearances, the retired colonel peddled strange conspiracy theories about George Soros, criticized Europe for being welcoming toward “Muslim invaders,” and spoke in support of using deadly force against those who try to immigrate to the United States illegally.
The diplomatic nomination was quickly derailed without so much as a hearing.
But the Republican president’s eagerness to help Macgregor endured. Trump appointed him to a senior Pentagon post, and late last year, the exiting president also named Macgregor to a West Point advisory board.
As CNN reported late last week, the retired colonel hasn’t changed.
A Trump appointee serving on West Point’s advisory board has repeatedly spread a conspiracy that the Biden administration is bringing in non-White immigrants as part of a “grand plan” to have them outnumber White Americans of European ancestry in the United States. In another interview, he also attacked women serving in the military in combat roles. The comments were made in April and May by retired Army Col. Douglas Macgregor […].
It’s generally known as the “great replacement” conspiracy theory, which argues that nefarious forces are trying to “replace” white people in the United States through immigration.
It’s against this backdrop that Macgregor said during a radio interview in April that Biden administration officials intend to “bring in as many people as they possibly can, as quickly as possible, from anywhere in the world, frankly. But preferably from Latin America, the Middle East, Africa and some, some portions of Asia, but not many.”
He added, “The idea is that they have to bring in as many non-Europeans as possible in order to outnumber the numbers of Americans of European ancestry who live in the United States. That’s what it’s all about. And I don’t think there’s any point in questioning it. That is the policy. … It is a deliberate policy to enact demographic change.”
A month later, Macgregor complained about what he described as “affirmative action programs” in the military: “Whether it’s someone who is a gender neutral or homosexual or whatever else, the left loves to put us into categories and push this. And the people that went along with it and said, ‘sure, let’s put women into the combat forces. Let’s have women everywhere.’ Let’s do whatever we want to do. We’re going to create this brave new world where everyone is the same. There are no differences, nothing matters. So I think that’s where we are.”
At first glance, the fact that some far-right figure is peddling ugly ideas is not especially interesting. But what struck me as notable about CNN’s report is that Trump appointed Macgregor and others like him to government posts before President Biden’s inauguration, effectively rewarding them for being political allies.
As the New York Times reported in December, Trump spent his final weeks in the Oval Office “doling out plum spots on premier boards and commissions to his friends and supporters … who will serve fixed terms even after Mr. Trump leaves office.”
Biden has taken some steps to clean out some of these Trump appointees from their government posts. Don’t be surprised if these efforts continue in the coming weeks and months.
A discussion of some of the options Democrats have to complete an investigation of the January 6 attack on the Capitol.
[…] A violent, insurrectionist mob attacked our seat of government with the intention of derailing the certification of an American election. When Democrats called for an independent commission, Republicans made a series of unreasonable demands, which Democrats nevertheless accepted.
Republicans refused to take “yes” for an answer and killed the proposal anyway. It’s hard to imagine any other advanced democracy on the planet where one of its major parties would choose such willful ignorance about a riot that unfolded in their own Capitol.
That said, while Friday’s GOP filibuster may have derailed a legislative proposal, it did not end the broader discussion. There are still many questions about the attack that deserve answers, whether Republicans want to hear them or not.
So, what happens now? Congressional Democrats have a few options.
First, the Senate might try again. In fact, while the chamber is out this week, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) sent a letter to members on Friday, outlining some of his plans for June, and wrote, “Senators should rest assured that the events of January 6th will be investigated and that as Majority Leader, I reserve the right to force the Senate to vote on the bill again at the appropriate time.”
The odds of success still aren’t great — finding 10 Senate Republicans willing to defy Donald Trump and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is nearly impossible — but there are other avenues. In fact, one of them has already begun: House Democrats launched their own probe of the insurrectionist riot in March. The probe was initiated by seven committees — Judiciary, Oversight, Armed Services, Administration, Appropriations, Homeland Security, and Intelligence — and document requests have already been sent to 16 agencies across the federal government.
But there’s another option that’s likely to generate quite a bit of discussion. Vox explained over the weekend:
After hopes for a bipartisan January 6 commission went down in flames on Friday, Democrats may have a new plan to investigate the attack on the Capitol: A select House committee, which would not require Republican support to establish. Such a committee would differ from the proposed bipartisan commission in several key ways, but it could still take steps to ensure accountability for those involved in the insurrection.
If this sounds at all familiar, there’s a good reason for that: after the 2012 attack against U.S. outposts in Benghazi, Libya, Congress launched six separate congressional investigations. When none produced evidence to bolster far-right conspiracy theories, House GOP leaders created a select committee to tell Republicans what they wanted to hear. (It ultimately failed, too.)
[…] a simple House majority could decide to create such a panel — and there’s nothing Senate Republicans could do about it.
On the flip side, the select committee would be comprised of sitting House members, and Republicans would be invited to name their own slate, even if they were in the minority. The odds of House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) choosing members who’d make every possible effort to turn the investigation into a ridiculous circus would be 100%.
Alternatively, GOP leaders could simply refuse to name anyone to a select committee, which wouldn’t derail its investigation, but which would make it appear more of a partisan exercise.
Unanimous decision holds that tribal officers have some power to search non-Indigenous people on Native reservations.
The US Supreme Court on Tuesday endorsed Indigenous tribal police powers […], backing the authority of a tribal officer in Montana to stop and search a non-Native American motorist on a public road on reservation land in Montana.
The justices ruled 9–0 against Joshua James Cooley in his effort to contest drug and weapons charges brought against him after a Crow tribal police officer found methamphetamine and firearms in his vehicle on a roadside on reservation land in 2016. The ruling means tribal police have at least some powers to conduct initial investigatory traffic stops involving non-tribe members.
Writing for the court, Justice Stephen Breyer said that “no treaty or statute has explicitly divested Indian tribes of the policing authority at issue.”
Are you having trouble keeping up on the press discussion of a ‘lab leak’ theory of the origins of COVID? Here are a few pointers.
Broadly speaking, there’s seldom been an example of a more rapid shift in public opinion or rather elite conventional wisdom in the face of so little changing evidence. A bunch of right wing or right-adjacent columnists are running around high-fiving each other and patting themselves on the back about how “the media” got it wrong.
On balance, this isn’t true. What happened is that from the outset China-hawks who were largely out to defend Donald Trump made a series of baseless accusations about COVID either being a bioweapon or the accidental release of a Chinese biological warfare weapon. When that got shot down (there’s strong genomic evidence against this), they retreated to a more conventional lab accident as their pet theory. The best one can say is that most journalists became reflexively skeptical to all such claims since they were mainly coming from people who are professional liars with obvious axes to grind.
This pattern continues even up until today. […] ‘Biden picks up on research done during the Trump administration’. Who are these Trump administration experts? One of the two quoted is David Feith, Trump’s deputy assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs. If that name rings a bell, yes, David is the son of Doug Feith, perhaps the most central figure in spreading disinformation about WMD and Iraq and al Qaida in the lead up to the Iraq War. Lest you think I’m simply judging Feith on the basis of his family … well, he came to the State Department via The Wall Street Journal editorial page. […]
Here’s another example of that. On May 26th President Biden ordered a new 90 day review of all the evidence about the origins of COVID and his statement included this passage.
As of today, the U.S. Intelligence Community has “coalesced around two likely scenarios” but has not reached a definitive conclusion on this question. Here is their current position: “while two elements in the IC leans toward the former scenario and one leans more toward the latter – each with low or moderate confidence – the majority of elements do not believe there is sufficient information to assess one to be more likely than the other.”
It was a jolt to conventional wisdom on this topic that at least one part of the intelligence community supports the lab leak hypothesis. But this is a case where understanding the jargon is really important. What this says is that most of the US intelligence community doesn’t think there’s enough evidence to know either way. One group thinks it’s lab related. Two others think it’s natural. But both say they really don’t have enough evidence to draw any real conclusions.
And yet, a few things have changed.
Reading opinion commentary you’d think there was a sudden turnabout and that a lab leak has all but been proven. What’s more accurate is to say that we didn’t know the origins of COVID and a lab leak was treated as very unlikely to now where we still don’t know and knowledgable, non-propagandists are saying we should look at that possibility more closely.
[…] None of the new information is dispositive. There’s just some more hints, a bit more circumstantial evidence that could suggest a lab-related origin that has made experts who mostly ruled it out say they’re not so sure.
One example of this is that scientists have still not found an animal version of COVID which is the clear link to the human version. If scientists had found such a cross over link that would basically end the debate. The fact that it hasn’t been found even 18 months later makes people less certain it’s out there and at least a bit more open to a different theory of COVID’s origins. Of course, the rejoinder is simply, maybe it just hasn’t turned up yet. And that’s what I mean by the elusive and fragmentary nature of the new evidence.
[…] Then there’s the fact that the scientist in charge of the part of the lab in question apparently didn’t disclose some of her earlier work with viruses quite similar to COVID.
Again, hints and allegations basically but ones that make deeply knowledgable people less willing to dismiss some sort of lab leak out of hand. Let’s also remember the Feith family because all of it does have an air of a bunch maybes and ‘can’t rule it outs’ suddenly adding up to certainty after some crafty packaging by malevolent interested parties.
[…] I’ve seen enough – speaking as a total lay person with no technical knowledge but reading over expert opinion critically – to think that we should not rule this out but that we also shouldn’t get rushed along or bamboozled by people with deep political or ideological needs for it to be true. It seems like a real possibility. But mostly we have suspicions and lack of disconfirming evidence rather than evidence itself.
Fox News host Sean Hannity reportedly played a part in writing a campaign ad for former President Donald Trump’s failed 2020 election campaign.
[…] the Fox News personality morphed into a onetime copywriter — playing a role in crafting an ad for Trump’s failed bid for the White House in 2020 that exclusively aired during Hannity’s Fox News show.
[…] the ad was deemed useless by the Trump campaign and was often internally referred to as “the Hannity ad” and “the one Hannity wrote.”
Meanwhile, Hannity has reportedly denied involvement in the ad-writing effort that cost the campaign $1.5 million […]
But during an interview in the aftermath of the election with Bender [Wall Street Journal reporter Michael Bender], Trump reportedly did not dispute claims that Hannity had written the ad which called Biden a “forty-seven-year swamp creature” with a “radical, socialist Green New Deal” who had accomplished nothing during his lengthy political career.
[…] Bender has trekked to Mar-a-Lago twice in recent weeks to talk to Trump for the book entitled “Frankly, We Did Win This Election: The Inside Story Of How Trump Lost,” which is expected to hit shelves on August 10.
Yeah, Fox “News” is propaganda. Faux News is an arm of the Trump campaign.
Posted by readers of the article:
Whenever I hear “Frankly…” or “Honestly…” I know the big lie is coming.
——————-
So if I have this straight, Hannity wrote an ad costing $1.5 million to run exclusively on his program to convince his 100% Trump supporting audience to vote for Trump.
———————–
FOX never, not even for a nano second felt a need to say “whoa” you can’t do that & still be regular staff.
————————–
“I was not involved that much. Anybody who said that is full of shit,” Hannity reportedly told Bender.
So… not involved “all that much”? And why use the “shit” word, is that to emphasize your innocence?
———————-
Excellent waste of 1.5M GQP dollars.
The Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro, has sparked outrage after approving plans to hold South America’s answer to the European championship in his Covid-stricken country despite warnings Brazil is steaming into a potentially calamitous third wave of infections.
The Copa América was originally due to be co-hosted by Colombia and Argentina, but their struggles with deadly street protests and coronavirus put paid to those plans.
On Monday, in a surprise move, the South American Football Confederation, Conmebol, announced that Brazil, which has the world’s second highest Covid death toll, would host the footballing event between 13 June and 17 July. “I want to say a special thanks to President Jair Bolsonaro and his cabinet for hosting the tournament,” tweeted Conmebol’s Paraguayan president, Alejandro Domínguez.
The announcement caused an immediate outcry in Brazil, where more than 462,000 lives have been lost in a Covid outbreak Bolsonaro stands accused of catastrophically mishandling.
Renan Calheiros, a Brazilian senator who is the rapporteur of a congressional inquiry into Bolsonaro’s Covid response, blasted the “unbelievable” idea of holding what he claimed would be a “championship of death”. Calheiros urged Brazilian players such as Neymar to refuse to take to the field “while your relatives and acquaintances continue to die”.
Juca Kfouri, one of Brazil’s top sports writers, branded the competition the “Cova América” or “Grave of the Americas”.
“There is no justification for bringing nine South American teams, and potentially new variants, to one of the epicentres of the pandemic, wasting resources and attention that should be directed towards our thousands of infected patients,” he wrote.
Others called the competition as the “Cepa América” – “the Strain of the Americas” – and demanded the Brazilian government reversed its decision which comes with an average of nearly 2,000 lives still being lost each day.
“This is shameful,” one of Brazil’s best-known commentators, Luís Roberto, told the Sportv network. “It’s a provocation. It is a slap in the face of all Brazilians.”
There was little sign Bolsonaro’s administration was rethinking its move on Tuesday. “As far as it’s up to me, and all the ministers – health included – it’s a done deal,” the far-right populist told supporters outside the presidential residence….
“The reality is in Texas, we are cooking people in prison.”
In the summer, Texas prisons become hell itself. Most prisons lack air conditioning in housing areas, and temperatures inside can rise above 100 degrees. People confined to their cells have few or no options for keeping themselves cool. Some break prison windows, trying to increase airflow. Lovinah Igbani used to cover herself with a wet sheet, according to the Texas Observer; it would dry in 30 minutes. Without options, she would lay on her bunk with her cellmate’s sweat dripping onto her. At least 13 people have died of heat stroke over the last decade.
Yet as Texas enters another summer, state lawmakers have once again killed a bill to require air conditioning in prisons, the Dallas Morning News reported.
Every couple of years, Texas legislators consider a bill to require air conditioning in state correctional facilities. And every couple of years, it goes nowhere. This year’s version of the air-conditioning bill looked like it might change that pattern. This spring, after Igbani told the Texas House Corrections Committee about her experience inside, the bill passed the Texas House with bipartisan support, with just 18 members voting against it. “The reality is in Texas, we are cooking people in prison,” Terry Canales, a Democratic legislator who has repeatedly introduced prison air conditioning bills, told the House during a debate.
But in the Senate, the bill didn’t even get a hearing […] The Texas legislative session ends tomorrow. So the law, again, will remain the same: County jails are required to maintain temperatures between 65 and 85 degrees. But for the 117,000 people serving state sentences in prison, there are no similar regulations. Those who are lucky will get one of the prison system’s 34,000 air conditioned beds. The others, like Igbani, will have to make do.
Part of the reason the bill faces such an uphill battle: The Texas Department of Criminal Justice claims that it will cost $1.1 billion to install A/C and $140 million annually to maintain it. (The department has inflated those estimates before, according to the Texas Observer.) This year’s bill capped spending at $300 million over the next seven years, phasing in air conditioning gradually. Meanwhile, the state has paid to fight 17 lawsuits involving the stifling heat inside its facilities. […]
“QAnon John, organiser of the QAnon-affiliated ‘For God & Country Patriot Roundup’ conference in Dallas, claims the reason he ejected [Will Sommer from the Daily Beast] from the event is because he has eaten pizza at Comet Ping Pong in Washington DC, the focus of the baseless Pizzagate conspiracy.”
More than one-third of the world’s heat deaths are directly caused by climate change, according to a new study that looks into the fatal effects of global warming.
The study, which looked at 732 cities in 43 countries from 1991 to 2018 and was published in the journal Nature Climate Change, says that 37 percent of warm-season heat-related deaths are linked to human-caused warming.
That amounts to 9,700 people a year from those cities alone […]
The study’s authors said that extreme weather events such as storms and draughts cause far more deaths than heat alone, though heat-related fatalities are expected to rise exponentially as the world continues to warm.
Researchers said approximately 35 percent of U.S. heat deaths can be attributed to climate change.
The highest percentages of heat-related mortality attributable to human-induced climate change — all above 50 percent — were detected in southern and western Asia, particularly Iran and Kuwait; southeast Asia, specifically the Philippines and Thailand; and a number of countries in Central and South America, according to the study. […]
Following Michael Flynn’s supporting a coup, Tucker Carlson’s Memorial Day message: “Our military, at times, does not seem interested in protecting the country.”
[…] As Mediaite notes, this was Tucker’s Memorial Day special. Hi, I’m Tucker Carlson, and fuck the troops!
[…] Tucker explains that a lot has changed in America over the past year. He says our “public health experts have been exposed as frauds, as incompetent and dishonest.” That has actually not happened […] He says, “Our schools are now openly teaching racism to our children.” That is also a lie, but we understand that white supremacists shrivel up into a tiny little balls of fear and puddles of their own excrement at any school curriculum that doesn’t portray the white man as a heroic, blameless savior. We also understand that conservatives are EXTREMELY concerned that all the schools, even the preschools, are teaching college-level critical race theory to children. They don’t know what critical race theory is, but that’s not important, because it sounds scary.
[…] As for whatever else Tucker said about the military on last night’s show, if you’re interested, you’ll have to find out for yourself. Wonkette doesn’t actually sit down and watch the entire Tucker Carlson White Power Hour, because we hear that’s bad for your brain.
But we do know Tucker has been on a tangent attacking the military for being too woke, waving his penile insecurity around as he whines about a supposed “masculinity crisis” in the military and pregnant servicemembers and Black women’s hairstyles in the military — you know, all the things completely normal and well-developed American males are worried about. […]
In summary and in conclusion, Tucker Carlson is a piece of shit again, the end.
More than 1 million Excelsior passes have been downloaded since they were introduced, but officials are hoping they will be adopted more widely.
On the Upper East Side in Manhattan, a well-heeled crowd flashed it to get into a socially distanced dance performance at the Park Avenue Armory. In Chelsea, people showed it to attend a John Mulaney stand-up set at City Winery. And in Troy, N.Y., patrons are using it to enter an intimate, speakeasy-style bar that only admits vaccinated guests.
This magic ticket is New York State’s Excelsior Pass, which was introduced in March as the first and only government-issued vaccine passport in the country, accessible, for now, only to people who have been vaccinated in the state.
Officials are hoping that it can help New Yorkers feel confident about the safety of businesses and jump-start a statewide economy that is still reeling from losses experienced during the pandemic. But in order for that to happen, they will need more people and businesses to start using it and vaccine passports to become more universally accepted.
Though it is basically just a QR code on your phone that indicates your vaccine status, the pass, and vaccine passports more generally, have become a political flash point among conservatives and others who say the passports violate privacy concerns.
[…] Eric Piscini, the vice president of emerging business networks at I.B.M., which developed the Excelsior Pass for the state, said New York was in discussions with other states so the pass could be used by out-of-state residents in New York and by New Yorkers elsewhere. […]
“Trump has reportedly told associates he hopes to be “reinstated” to the presidency by August. This entire line of thought is stark raving mad.”
It was unsettling to see former White House National Security Advisor Michael Flynn appear at a right-wing gathering over the weekend and endorse a military coup in the United States. Asked about Myanmar’s coup, the retired Army general specifically said, “I mean it, it should happen here.”
But a day earlier, attorney Sidney Powell appeared at the same event, and […] she went down a similarly outlandish path.
Attorney Sidney Powell, who is being sued by Dominion Voting Systems for spreading allegedly defamatory claims about the 2020 election, insisted on Saturday former President Donald Trump could “simply be reinstated” as president and fill the rest of President Joe Biden’s term.
To the delight of attendees, Powell specifically declared, “It should be that [Trump] can simply be reinstated, that a new inauguration date is set.”
Remember, Powell was a member of Donald Trump’s hapless legal operation late last year until she was fired for pushing conspiracy theories considered so hysterically ridiculous that the then-president’s other attorneys showed her the door. Nevertheless, by late December, Powell was making frequent trips to the White House. Axios reported at the time that in the West Wing, there was a “consensus” that Trump was “listening to Sidney Powell more than just about anyone who is on his payroll, certainly more than his own White House Counsel.”
[…] the former president continues to do exactly that. The New York Times’ Maggie Haberman noted this morning that Trump “has been telling a number of people he’s in contact with that he expects he will get reinstated” to the presidency by August. The reporter added that the Republican “is not putting out statements about the ‘audits’ in states just for the sake of it.”
[…] In late April, for example, Trump spoke to a small group at Mar-a-Lago and sounded like a politician who expected assorted partisan “audits” to tell him what he wanted to hear. […]
[…] soon after that Trump had told people the Arizona audit “could undo” the 2020 presidential election.
Two weeks later, the former president issued another written statement filled with more election conspiracy theories, arguing, “If a thief robs a jewelry store of all of its diamonds (the 2020 Presidential Election), the diamonds must be returned.” In context, the Republican was making it sound as if power had been taken from him improperly, so he expected power to be returned to him.
Last week, he also celebrated a poll showing most Republican voters “believe Donald Trump is the true President.” He added, “I always knew America was smart!” […]
In case this isn’t painfully obvious, there is literally no scenario in which Trump will return to the White House unless he runs and wins again in 2024. The election cannot be “undone.” The former president cannot be “reinstated.” This entire line of thought is stark raving mad.
But to assume that Trump recognizes the reality of the circumstances is almost certainly a mistake. […]
The number the city of Baton Rouge put on a Black teen’s dignity was $35,000, the amount reached in a settlement after city police officers strip searched a 16-year-old boy and his older brother in broad daylight during a traffic stop investigated by local news station WAFB. The actual officers accused of violating the brothers’ rights, however, have yet to be held accountable for their actions. The settlement was reached in a federal civil suit, and the case was dismissed last week after body-camera footage showed police pulling up the teen’s shirt, taking his underwear down, and grabbing his genitals and doing the same to his 23-year-old brother Clarence Green.
“In the course of about 90 minutes, these officers commit at least a half-dozen criminal offenses themselves,” Green’s family attorney Thomas Frampton told WAFB. Still, it was Green who sat in jail for five months before prosecutors dropped charges against him, claiming vaguely that they had “reevaluated the evidence,” The Advocate reported. When the charges against Green were dropped, Chief District Judge Brian Jackson said in an order the newspaper obtained that the arrest and prosecution were “emblematic of precisely the type of ‘foul’ blows universally condemned by our jurisprudence.” The brothers were initially stopped on Jan. 1, 2020, when the SUV they were riding in used the wrong turn signal.
Sgt. Ken Camallo, one of the cops involved in the humiliating search, called it “an investigatory stop … based on suspicious driving in a high crime area,” according to the incident report The Advocate obtained. The sergeant also said he was looking for a shoplifter when he saw the SUV Green was in at a “known drug house.”
Warning: This video may be triggering for some viewers. [video available at the link]
[…]
Last Sunday, a big red bus arrived at a church in Gainesville, Florida, offering a different kind of revival. The church parking lot turned into a social event and mini Covid-19 vaccination center, but the event’s real purpose was summed up by the images of voting rights activists emblazoned across the side of the bus.
The Florida Rights Restoration Coalition is in it for the long haul.
[…] Long-term is an understatement, based on the state’s history up to this point. The voter suppression laws being passed in Republican-controlled states nationwide have become collectively known as Jim Crow 2.0. But in Florida, that label is a bit of a misnomer, as the original era of disenfranchisement led right into this second golden age of overtly racist anti-democratic policy.
In 1868, Florida passed a law that permanently banned anyone convicted of a felony in the state from voting. Even 150 years later, the law was still working just as intended: Black people make up about 17% of Florida’s total population but nearly half of its prison population. In 2018, Black Floridians accounted for nearly a third of the 1.4 million permanently disenfranchised — nearly 20% of Florida’s entire Black voting-age population.
[…] After the 2016 election, the FRRC, the ACLU, and other activists decided to stop lobbying politicians and take matters into their own hands. Over the next two years, they collected petition signatures and campaigned statewide to pass Amendment 4, a ballot initiative intended to automatically restore the voting rights of over million returned citizens and end the same kind of disenfranchisement from happening going forward.
In 2018, both the gubernatorial and US Senate races in Florida went to recounts and were ultimately decided by less than a single percentage point. Amendment 4, on the other hand, received an overwhelming bipartisan show of support, passing with a whopping 64% of the vote.
It returned the right to vote to over one million Floridians. Sex offenders and murderers were left out, but anyone else, including people convicted of drug possession and an array of other nonsense felonies, such as “releasing helium-filled balloons in the air, catching a lobster whose tail is too short, disturbing turtle nesting eggs, and driving with a suspended license,” as FRRC director Desmond Meade put it in 2020, were welcomed back into the democratic process.
It was a historic victory for civil rights — until it was gutted by newly elected Gov. Ron DeSantis, who squeaked into office after an unabashedly racist campaign, and the GOP-controlled legislature. He signed a bill in May 2019 that went against the entire spirit of the ballot amendment, requiring that returning citizens had to repay all fines and fees handed down to them by judges, even though those fines and fees rarely had anything to do with their actual sentence. The court system in Florida is financed by poor people who can’t fight those penalties, leading to massive and capricious fines tacked on to sentences.
A legal battle ensued, but with 750,000 Floridians who were at risk of again losing their right to vote, the FRRC couldn’t wait on the results of the courtroom drama. The group had shrewdly lobbied for a minor clause in the bill that allowed it to preserve at least some path to quicker voting rights restoration for returning citizens, which became the FRRC’s focus in the meantime. […]
“We were trying to figure out how to operationalize this modification piece and in that process, it hit us that lots of people who have financial obligations, it’s just $300 or $400,” Volz says. “So toward mid-2019, we started to put a fund together, crowdsourcing to pay for it. It was just simply about removing barriers to voting for individuals. And we began distributing checks to people in late 2019, a whole year before a lot of other people would even hear about them.”
[…] In June 2020, a federal judge largely eviscerated DeSantis’s law, ruling that unrelated fines couldn’t prevent voter registration and that any fees on indigent Floridians would be considered a poll tax. But again, the victory was fleeting. By September, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit overruled that decision and reimposed the massive barrier, leading to a last-minute scramble to pay for and register as many people as possible.
“That was the ultimate catalyst for real growth in our funds and fees program, because we then were casting a vision out to anyone who would listen, saying ‘hey, if all this division and all this partisanship and all this frustration has you down about the political system, there’s actually a way for you to get involved that’s positive and hopeful,’” Volz recalls. “You can actually donate to somebody the gift of democracy.” […]
Josh Marshall seems to have it about right. Most of the media is not distinguishing between “the virus accidentally escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology” (which has always been a possibility, it’s certainly quite a coincidence that it appeared in the vicinity of the only level 4 biosafety lab in China, known to be researching bat coronaviruses), and “the virus was created in the Wuhan Insistute of Virology” (extremely implausible, there’s an expert consensus that it just doesn’t look like an engineered virus). It’s unlikely we will ever know if it was an escape, without some startling new evidence one way or the other: if the Chinese government knows or suspects it was an escape, it will certainly not admit it. My own guess early on was that it might be connected to the lab without necessarily ever being cultivated there: its employees go and collect samples from bat caves all over China, and bring them back for analysis. They wear PPE, but it’s still a likely setting for bat-to-human transmission. Any research on dangerous viruses is a two-edged sword, and we know there was more than one lab leak of the original SARS virus.
Today’s Guardian includes a bizarre opinion piece by one of their US correspondents, Thomas Frank, who can hardly contain his glee at the prospect of the “liberalestablishment” being discredited if the lab leak hypothesis is confirmed and (of course) does not distinguish accidental leak from engineered virus. Why are they employing this guy?
Today’s Guardian includes a bizarre opinion piece by one of their US correspondents, Thomas Frank, who can hardly contain his glee at the prospect of the “liberalestablishment” being discredited if the lab leak hypothesis is confirmed and (of course) does not distinguish accidental leak from engineered virus. Why are they employing this guy?
I read some of his books (One Market Under God and one or two others) years ago, and even then he was kind of a bro before his time. He and his gang were the only real leftists, and everyone else had sold out or was distracting from the real cause. I’m pretty sure I saw him on TV shortly before the 2016 election at an event introducing (now Thiel-backed capitalist tool) JD fucking Vance and bonding over their disdain for Clinton and the Dems. I could take about two minutes. Can’t imagine why they would be publishing him on this subject in which he has no expertise, but I’m sure he was grateful for the opportunity to bash liberals.
blfsays
KG@444, “Why [is the Grauniad US] employing [Thomas Frank]?”
Probably for the same reason they employ Simon Jenkins in the UK: To have a tame loon in-house. The rule with Jenkins is, “the opposite of what he says is much more probably true” (a weaker version of “not even wrong”). Jenkins is notoriously ignorant, especially about science, and that opinion column suggests Frank is as well. I don’t have adequate exposure to Frank to opinionate if the Jenkins-rule also applies to Frank, but suspect it (or a modification thereof) probably does. Fortunately, as far as I know, both Jenkins and Frank are confined to the opinion pages. Perhaps both should be treated as green-ink nutters, but less entertaining.
When the COVID-19 virus began to spread around the world in late 2019 and early 2020, right-wing broadcaster and anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist Rick Wiles immediately declared it to be a plague sent by God to purge the world of sin as the Last Days approached.
[… numerous examples of Wiles celebrating as non-fundies (specifically including Jews (he is antisemitic)) became ill or died…]
I am not going to be vaccinated, Wiles said in May 2021. I’m going to be one of the survivors. I’m going to survive the genocide. … The only good thing that will come out of this is a lot of stupid people will be killed off, Wiles added. If the vaccine wipes out a lot of stupid people, well, we’ll have a better world. I’m going to survive. I’m going to survive by God’s grace; by his will, I’m going to survive the genocide.
[… O]n Sunday, “TruNews” announced that Wiles himself had been hospitalized for COVID-19, adding for good measure that anyone who dared to mock Wiles at this moment was only adding fuel to their flames of torment in hell.
That was unexpected – “Biden: ‘I hear all the folks on TV saying why doesn’t Biden get this done? Well because Biden only has a majority of effectively four votes in the House and a tie in the Senate, with two members of the Senate who vote more with my Republican friends’.”
An attorney known for his role as a member of Sidney Powell’s so-called “Kraken” legal team that filed a slew of unsuccessful lawsuits challenging the presidential election is now suing Major League Baseball (MLB) for moving next month’s All-Star Game out of Atlanta.
The lawsuit, filed Monday in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, alleges that MLB, the players union, and Commissioner Rob Manfred, violated the civil rights of Georgia’s residents and businesses by moving the game to Denver in response to the Peach State’s new voting law, which opponents have called a “voter suppression bill” meant to appease “conspiracy theorists” upset about the 2020 election outcome.
The suit by attorney Howard Kleinhendler on behalf of the Job Creators Network, a conservative advocacy group founded by former Home Depot CEO Bernie Marcus that receives significant funding from the Mercer Family Foundation, seeks punitive damages of “not less than $1 billion.”…
“Probably the most frivolous lawsuit filed in federal court in recent memory,” Atlanta-based lawyer and legal analyst Page Pate reacted to the suit. “Not a single claim has legal merit. I expect the lawyer will be sanctioned if he doesn’t immediately dismiss it.”…
ravensays
This will brighten the day of many people.
Rick Wiles is one of the more vicious of the bad lot of fundie ministers, all hate, all of the time.
He called the Covid-19 vaccine, an agent of global genocide.
He is now in the hospital on oxygen.
Anti-vax evangelical pastor Rick Wiles hospitalized with COVID-19, given oxygen
New York Daily News |
Jun 01, 2021 at 2:29 PM
An anti-vaccine evangelical Christian pastor has contracted COVID-19 after describing the available vaccines as “global genocide.”
Rick Wiles, who runs a conspiracy website called TruNews while serving as the head pastor at Flowing Streams Church in Florida, has refused to get vaccinated and has spoken about it in videos posted on social media, according to Newsweek.
“I am not going to be vaccinated,” he said in April. “I’m going to be one of the survivors. I’m going to survive the genocide.”
Pastor Rick Wiles
Pastor Rick Wiles (Twitter)
“You and I are witnessing the first global mass murder and it’s being led by Satan’s team on the planet,” he told his fans. “You must survive it. Do not be vaccinated.”
KGsays
SC@445,
Thanks for that info about Thomas Frank. So he’s the Guardian‘s Vicar/consciousness razor!
blf@446,
Yes, I never read Simon Jenkins. I think he first came to my attention when he wrote a pro-nuclear-power column in which he claimed it produced 20% of the UK’s energy. It actually produced at that time 20% of its generated electricity – which was about 8% of its energy, IIRC.
In a leaked Amazon pamphlet obtained by Motherboard, the company describes warehouse workers as “industrial athletes” and details how its Working Well program will help workers by laying out guidelines to “prepare their bodies” for walking “up to 13 miles a day” or lifting “a total of 20,000 pounds” during a shift.
“Here at Amazon, you will become an industrial athlete. Just like an athlete who trains for an event, industrial athletes need to prepare their bodies to be able to perform their best at work,” the pamphlet reads. “We want to make sure you feel your best while doing your best!” The pamphlets are from a Tulsa, Oklahoma warehouse and date back to 2020, when the Working Well program was first piloted at various warehouses across the country.
The pamphlet then lays out six sections of interest to help prepare workers for laboring in a warehouse: nutrition, hydration, sleep, footwear, ergonomic work behavior, and injury prevention specialists. To wrap it up, there’s a section simply titled “How Can I Feel Better?” that offers helpful tips such as stretching and getting a massage. The pamphlet, and the Working Well program, are part of a suite of recent Amazon initiatives aimed at improving its image as a brutal employer and getting the most out of workers, many of whom may be working in a physically demanding role for the first time.
A new report by the Strategic Organizing Center, a coalition of some of the country’s largest labor unions, found that in 2020 Amazon workers were severely injured more than 24,000 times, twice the rate of the rest of the warehouse industry nationwide.
…
All of Amazon’s tips for avoiding injuries on the job…ignore the simplest fix: reducing the pace of work. Amazon is a particularly dangerous workplace precisely because it squeezes every worker for as much productivity as possible, at great risk of injury….
Amazon has recently launched its Working Well program, with services designed to improve the mental, physical and spiritual wellbeing of its employees and workers. It’s important to make the distinction between employees and workers, as Amazon relies heavily on contract and temporary laborers, who can be let go at any time and to whom they do not have to offer benefits like health insurance. But who needs healthcare when you can enter an AmaZen “mindful practice room,” one of a number of “coffin-sized booths,” in the words of Vice, that Amazon is planning to introduce at its warehouses? There you can watch a video of a baby deer leaping through a field or whatever as you try to stave off intrusive thoughts about, say, your upcoming eviction.
…
While claiming to be designed around concern for the “health” and “wellness” of its employees, the true goal of programs like these is always profit – increasing productivity and squeezing every last possible drop of labor out of your workers. It’s why corporations like Google, Apple and Harvard shell out big bucks for “mindfulness consultants” to train their workers not to be distracted by personal problems while on the job. They promise the workers reduced stress, but the consultants promise the employers they can reduce accidents, increase productivity, and decrease sick days. These consultants might charge thousands of dollars by the hour, but it’s still cheaper than paying all your workers a living wage.
…
…Mindfulness reinforces the idea that it’s your response to stimuli that is the problem… For a company like Amazon, which has responded to efforts to improve the working conditions of its warehouse workers and delivery drivers with aggressive union-busting strategies, guiding its workers toward the belief that the problem is their anxiety rather than their exploitation is going to be pretty useful….
Here’s a link to the June 2 Guardian coronavirus world liveblog.
From there:
Third Covid wave in Germany has been broken- Robert Koch Institute
Germany is slowly beginning to open up again with the government’s disease control agency, the Robert Koch Institute confirming that a third wave of the virus has been broken, and the number of new infections is lower than at any time since the autumn.
Almost a fifth of all Germans have now been fully vaccinated, and around 900,000 to one million jabs are being administered every day.
But caution is being urged as virologists say until 70 per cent have received two jabs, the situation remains fragile.
Among the much-awaited restriction easing measures taking place in Berlin from Friday are the reopening of gyms and swimming pools as well as restaurants and bars, though establishments with service both inside and out will have to demand a negative result from customers if they wish to open both areas.
The obligation to make an appointment before going shopping, so-called ‘Termin Shopping’, will be dropped, though mask wearing will remain the rule, including on public transport.
Despite the fact that 500 people are now allowed to meet for cultural or sporting events in the open air, 100 inside, Stephan Hengst from the Berlin Music Commission has criticised the suddenness of the announcement saying club operators and musicians have been given little notice to be able to organise events.
Companies must continue to allow their employees to work from home wherever possible which the German Trade Union Association, DGB, has insisted is necessary.
“As long as a majority of the population is not fully vaccinated, employers must not be allowed to shirk from their responsibilities,” the DGB’s head Reiner Hoffmann said.
But the head of the German Association of Employers (BDA), Steffen Kampeter, has insisted companies and employees should be relied upon to make the right decision as to whether they should return or not, with regular testing and the option to continue in home office necessary measures to help manage the coming weeks and months.
From Monday around 6000 company doctors are expected to boost the vaccine campaign when group prioritisation rules are lifted.
Having received an initial contingent of 700,000 doses, they have said they expect to be able to carry out around five million vaccines every month.
Democrat Melanie Stansbury won overwhelming in a special election for a suburban House seat in New Mexico Tuesday, tallying 60 percent of the vote en route to a 25-point win over Republican state senator Mark Moores. That a Democrat won the race to fill the seat vacated by Interior Secretary Deb Haaland is hardly surprising; the district swung to the left in 2008 and has turned out increasingly uncompetitive races over the past decade, including in 2020 where President Joe Biden carried the district by 23 points and Haaland won by 17 points. The timing of the race, however, gave the contest special importance as a potential barometer of support for the Biden agenda in a suburban district in a competitive presidential state far from Washington. National onlookers saw the margin of victory, rather than victory itself, as a key indicator of how the Democratic president’s policies were playing in the field….
The firm that owns the National Enquirer has agreed to pay $187,500 to the Federal Election Commission to settle complaints that it unlawfully aided Donald Trump’s presidential campaign in 2016 by suppressing the story of an actress who said she had a sexual relationship with Trump.
The FEC concluded that American Media Inc., now known as A360 Media LLC, made an illegal corporate contribution to Trump’s campaign by paying Karen McDougal $150,000 to give up the rights to her story about Trump.
AMI and its former chief, David Pecker, initially argued through attorneys that they acted as journalists in making the deal with McDougal. However, in 2018 the firm and Pecker entered into a non-prosecution agreement with federal prosecutors in New York, stipulating that the arrangement was intended to influence the 2016 presidential election.
The FEC concluded that contradicted the earlier claims that the Enquirer was simply acting as a news outlet.
“The available information supports the conclusion that AMI’s payment constituted an in-kind contribution to Trump and the Trump Committee,” an FEC legal analysis concluded. “AMI and Pecker appear to have violated the Act by making and consenting to making a corporate contribution in the form of a payment from AMI to McDougal. As explained below, the record indicates that there is reason to believe that this violation was knowing and willful.”
The FEC also concluded that AMI and Pecker coordinated with the Trump campaign, because they had contact with Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, who assured the company that its expenses related to McDougal would be reimbursed.
…
One of the watchdog groups that filed complaints about the deal, Common Cause, said the FEC resolution with Pecker and AMI highlighted the fact that Trump has never been held culpable for the payoff to McDougal and a similar payment to the adult-film actress Stormy Daniels.
“Michael Cohen went to prison for these violations. AMI has been fined. But the former president has not yet been held accountable,” said Paul Ryan, Common Cause’s vice president for policy and litigation. “The Department of Justice has until August to prosecute Trump for orchestrating this illegal campaign finance scheme.”
The FEC considered action against Trump, his campaign and the Trump Organization, but the panel’s Republican appointees blocked such moves, saying that “pursuing these matters further was not the best use of agency resources.”…
We, the undersigned, are scholars of democracy who have watched the recent deterioration of U.S. elections and liberal democracy with growing alarm. Specifically, we have watched with deep concern as Republican-led state legislatures across the country have in recent months proposed or implemented what we consider radical changes to core electoral procedures in response to unproven and intentionally destructive allegations of a stolen election. Collectively, these initiatives are transforming several states into political systems that no longer meet the minimum conditions for free and fair elections. Hence, our entire democracy is now at risk.
When democracy breaks down, it typically takes many years, often decades, to reverse the downward spiral. In the process, violence and corruption typically flourish, and talent and wealth flee to more stable countries, undermining national prosperity….
…
A new voting rights law (such as that proposed in the John Lewis Voting Rights Act) is essential but alone is not enough. True electoral integrity demands a comprehensive set of national standards that ensure the sanctity and independence of election administration, guarantee that all voters can freely exercise their right to vote, prevent partisan gerrymandering from giving dominant parties in the states an unfair advantage in the process of drawing congressional districts, and regulate ethics and money in politics.
It is always far better for major democracy reforms to be bipartisan, to give change the broadest possible legitimacy. However, in the current hyper-polarized political context such broad bipartisan support is sadly lacking. Elected Republican leaders have had numerous opportunities to repudiate Trump and his “Stop the Steal” crusade, which led to the violent attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6. Each time, they have sidestepped the truth and enabled the lie to spread.
We urge members of Congress to do whatever is necessary—including suspending the filibuster—in order to pass national voting and election administration standards that both guarantee the vote to all Americans equally, and prevent state legislatures from manipulating the rules in order to manufacture the result they want. Our democracy is fundamentally at stake. History will judge what we do at this moment.
“With 6 1/2 hours to go, Netanyahu calls on Likud ministers & Knesset members to demonstrate outside the convention hall in which coalition negotiations are taking place…”
blfsays
KG@451, Yeah, it’s been a long long time since I ever deliberately a Simon Jenkins column. I may be conflating different incidents (columns), but the one that did it for me was some rant about a (then-)recently-changed scientific consensus… albeit about what I can now no longer recall. Paraphrasing from defective memory, Jenkins ranted to the effect scientists keep changing their mind, so what use are scientists or their ‘science’?
Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel renewed former President Donald Trump’s grievances about the Commission on Presidential Debates, threatening in a letter to the commission Tuesday to discourage future Republican nominees against participating in presidential debates unless significant changes are made to the commission.
“The CPD’s repeated missteps and the partisan actions of its Board Members make clear that the organization no longer provides the fair and impartial forum for presidential debates which the law requires and the American people deserve,” she wrote to CPD co-chairs Frank Fahrenkopf and Kenneth Wollack.
The letter appeared to revisit attacks against the commission first made by Tump when he insisted last fall that the CPD was stacked against him and refused to participate in a virtual debate as an alternative to an in-person one after he tested positive for coronavirus.
McDaniel took pains to revisit the debacle on Tuesday, arguing in the letter that without certain changes, the committee would be left with no choice but to advise all its future nominees to decline any general election debates hosted by the nonpartisan commission and instead “look for other options for its candidates.”…
If I were the CPD, I would respond that any candidate who turned up for a debate carrying a deadly virus and was impeached for extorting a foreign government ti help him cheat in an election and impeached again for inciting a seditious insurrection after losing the election is banned from any future debates, but we’ll take the suggestions under consideration.
The next step for Trump and his cult will likely be attempting to stoke violence against the CPD and its individual members.
“The US Army will not investigate former General Michael Flynn’s statements about a coup like the one in Myanmar occurring in the United States ‘at this time’, an Army spokesperson said in a statement.”
Former President Donald Trump’s blog — a webpage where he shared statements after larger social media companies banned him from their platforms — has been permanently shut down, his spokesman said Wednesday.
The page, “From the Desk of Donald J. Trump,” has been scrubbed from Trump’s website after going live less than a month earlier.
It “will not be returning,” his senior aide Jason Miller told CNBC.
“It was just auxiliary to the broader efforts we have and are working on,” Miller said in email correspondence.
He declined to provide additional details about those efforts….
Just by continuing to exist, my blog is more successful than Trump’s.
The United States, Canada, and Mexico are reporting overall reductions in Covid-19 cases and deaths, though overall new infections are on the rise again in the rest of the Americas, the head of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), Carissa Etienne, said.
Colombia is reporting the highest rate of infections in South America, where new cases have nearly tripled in some regions, and Brazil is seeing a rise in new infections and hospitalizations.
Despite sharp increases in cases, hospitalizations, and deaths in Haiti, public health measures required to stop transmission there are being largely ignored by the population, Etienne warned.
SC @454, Good! I was so happy to see that Democrat Melanie Stansbury won … and by a 25-point margin. And she did that despite her Republican opponent trying to get voters to think that she wants to “defund the police.”
SC @462, “What blog? I hardly knew that blog. Wouldn’t recognize it if it walked into the room. What did that blog ever do for me?” Keeping a successful blog going is hard work. Trump was never good at doing the necessary work, and he can’t comprehend maintaining a sustained effort.
SC @461, why the fuck not?
SC @460:
If I were the CPD, I would respond that any candidate who turned up for a debate carrying a deadly virus and was impeached for extorting a foreign government ti help him cheat in an election and impeached again for inciting a seditious insurrection after losing the election is banned from any future debates, but we’ll take the suggestions under consideration.
LOL. Agreed.
From text quoted by SC in comment 452:
All of Amazon’s tips for avoiding injuries on the job…ignore the simplest fix: reducing the pace of work.
Exactly. And the same issue is a problem in the meat-packing industry.
raven @450, a schadenfreude moment for sure. Still sorry it has to be this way.
Text quoted by tomh in comment 449:
on behalf of the Job Creators Network, a conservative advocacy group founded by former Home Depot CEO Bernie Marcus that receives significant funding from the Mercer Family Foundation,
Sigh. How many frivolous lawsuits would not be filed if only doofuses like Bernie Marcus and the Mercer family stopped funding batshit bonkers “advocacy groups”?
“TruNews” announced that Wiles himself had been hospitalized for COVID-19, adding for good measure that anyone who dared to mock Wiles at this moment was only adding fuel to their flames of torment in hell.
LOL. We’re all adding fuel to the flames of our supposed torment in hell. LOL.
In other news, some campaign news:
* Confirming months of rumors, Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs (D) kicked off her 2022 gubernatorial campaign this morning, vowing to “deliver transparency, accountability, and results for Arizonans.” Hobbs hopes to succeed incumbent Gov. Doug Ducey (R), who can’t seek a third term.
* On a related note, Florida Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried (D) formally launched her gubernatorial candidacy yesterday, with a message focused on combatting corruption in the state. If she defeats incumbent Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), Fried will be the first Democratic governor Florida has elected since 1994.
KG @444, that’s a good analysis, and a good summary. I agree.
In other campaign news, Donald Trump endorsed Texas Governor Gregg Abbott. Abbott is running for re-election next year. He’s the guy that was governing in Texas when a winter storm knocked out power and water for hundreds of thousands of Texans. He still hasn’t done anything to prevent that from happening again. He’s the guy that threatened to cut off the pay for Democratic legislators who won’t vote for the voter-suppression measures he supports. Abbott deserves to lose the next election.
Over 272,000 registered voters don’t have a driver’s license or state ID on file with election officials, meaning they’d have to submit additional documents to vote by mail under Georgia’s new voting law, state election records show. The ID requirements disproportionately affect Black voters, who are much less likely than white voters to have ID numbers matched to their voter registrations, according to election data.
What happens when Republican senators are asked to “fix” their behavior, and they respond, “No”?
On Friday morning, Senate Democrats tried to advance a bipartisan proposal for an independent Jan. 6 commission. It failed: Senate Republicans launched their first successful filibuster of 2021, despite the fact that Democrats had already made concessions to give GOP lawmakers what they said they wanted.
The bill needed 60 votes, but it ended up with 54 — a majority, to be sure, but short of the supermajority that’s become common in our modern, dysfunctional Senate. The total would’ve been a little higher, but some supporters didn’t participate in the vote. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), for example, said she backed the bipartisan proposal, but the Arizonan didn’t explain why she wasn’t on Capitol Hill when the measure reached the floor. [She didn’t vote!]
Her vote wouldn’t have changed the outcome, but there was no shortage of questions about her whereabouts. Asked about the absence, Sinema told reporters in Tucson yesterday, “I had a personal family matter.” [She could have arranged for a proxy vote.]
Whether that satisfies the senator’s detractors or not, the Arizona Republic also reported on the Democratic lawmaker’s other notable comments from yesterday’s appearance:
On Tuesday, Sinema once again doubled down on her support for the filibuster, saying she would not budge on the issue…. In Tucson, Sinema reiterated her position that the filibuster is a tool that “protects the democracy of our nation” and is meant to create comity and encourage senators from both parties to work together. [Blinders!]
It’s important to understand the degree to which this is the opposite of the truth. The routinization of Senate abuses, abandoning the institution’s majority-rule tradition and founding, has undermined our democracy, not protected it. (An MSNBC column from historian Kevin M. Kruse last week fleshed this out in more detail.)
[…] Without the filibuster, the bipartisan proposal for a Jan. 6 commission would’ve passed. With the filibuster, senators from both parties worked together, made concessions, forged a compromise, and Republicans killed the bill anyway.
The local report added:
“To those who say that we must make a choice between the filibuster and ‘X,’ I say, this is a false choice,” she said. “The reality is that when you have a system that is not working effectively — and I would think that most would agree that the Senate is not a particularly well-oiled machine, right? The way to fix that is to fix your behavior, not to eliminate the rules or change the rules, but to change the behavior,” Sinema added.
[OMFG. Blinders.]
[…] it’s certainly encouraging to see the senator acknowledge concerns that the Senate is “not working effectively.” After all, the status quo is awfully tough to defend.
But by all appearances, it’s the abuse of the rules that has turned the chamber into such a mess. Restoring the Senate to a majority-rule institution — the way it operated for generations before the routinization of abuses — would allow it to start functioning again, but that’s a change Sinema will not consider.
The Arizonan’s solution has some superficial appeal: if senators abusing the rules would simply “fix” their behavior, the institution would start functioning again as a healthy and productive governing body.
[…] What if Americans elect a Democratic House, Democratic Senate, and Democratic White House, expecting elected officials to deliver on a Democratic agenda, and Republicans stand in the way of constructive policymaking? […]
Sinema appears to believe that, at that point, the nation should simply tolerate a broken Senate and accept the consequences. A more sensible alternative is allowing the chamber to function as it was designed to function, curtailing the abuses, and preventing indefinite dysfunction.
SC @462, remember when Team Trump claimed that his blog would “completely redefine the game”? Still laughing about that.
More backstory that is good for prompting raucous laughter:
[…] Fox News reported on May 4 — not quite a month ago — that Trump and his team had launched a new “communications platform,” powered by a “digital ecosystem” created by Brad Parscale, the former president’s former campaign manager.
Right off the bat, there was an obvious problem: the new “communications platform” was little more than a rudimentary blog, utilizing technology that’s existed for many years. […]
a former president with an unimpressive blog, utilizing outdated tech, which apparently didn’t even allow for clean paragraph breaks. […]
By now you’ve likely seen new reporting from the New York Times’ Maggie Haberman: Former President Trump is telling people that he expects he will be “reinstated” to the presidency in August.
Poor Trump. He’s just playing catch up to the MyPillow guy.
Mike Lindell has been saying for months that he thinks Trump will be back at the White House by August. In April, he told Steve Bannon on his “War Room: Pandemic“ podcast that the Trump campaign now has enough evidence hobbled together to to prove that President Biden didn’t win the election.
In that same interview, Lindell told Bannon that he is planning to go to the Supreme Court in August to present the “evidence” he’s apparently collected. It’s unclear how he intends to get an audience with the high court, as SCOTUS previously declined to take up Trump’s election lawsuits.
Lindell also told Bannon in March that his evidence centers around he and other members of Trumpworld’s unsubstantiated belief that China interfered in the 2020 election. Notably, Bannon didn’t get behind Lindell’s August pipe dream, but the former White House chief strategist did say he still supports a Trump 2024 bid.
It’s still, of course, unclear why Trump is telling his friends he thinks he’ll be back in the White House in two months, but, as we learned during those four long years, the mercurial ex-president’s musing can often be decoded by looking to whomever currently has his ear.
Is Trump too stupid to think up his own batshit bonkers conspiracy theories?
France will begin offering coronavirus vaccines for children as young as 12 years old beginning June 15.
President Emmanuel Macron made the announcement Wednesday that 12- to 18-year-olds will be eligible for the vaccine in the middle of June, Reuters reported.
The decision comes after the European Commission authorized the Pfizer vaccine for the younger age group Friday. […]
Since nearly the very start of the COVID-19 pandemic, right-wing pastor Tony Spell has been locked in battle with authorities in Louisiana over his steadfast refusal to abide by the state’s stay-at-home orders, mask mandates, and other public health restrictions enacted to help stop the spread of the virus.
Spell has filed various unsuccessful lawsuits against the state and its governmental leaders, and following his latest loss at the Louisiana Court of Appeal, 1st Circuit, last Monday, Spell used his Sunday sermon to attack the judges who ruled against him, declaring them to be enemies of God.
Any government that is not built on the shoulders of Jesus Christ, that government is headed for a fall, Spell preached with a delivery bordering on parody. It is impossible to govern a nation without God and the Bible. It is impossible for our Constitution to work in a nation that is not wholly and righteously consecrated unto God.
[…]
Security footage […] shows a large school bus–like church vehicle backing up to a man holding a sign. The bus stops right before it reaches the man, who was protesting Spell’s refusal to adhere to government lockdown orders.
[…]
“I could see him driving the bus. He was honking his horn loudly at me and making gestures suggesting he was yelling while he was driving. It didn’t seem real until it was physically in my face with a bus,” [protestor Trey] Bennett said of the incident.
[…]
That man has been in front of my church driveway for three weeks now. He shoots people obscene finger gestures and shouts vulgarities. I was pulling in from my bus route, picking up black children who haven’t eaten because of this sinister policy that has closed schools. I was going to approach this gentleman and ask him to leave, Spell said.
Bennett denied the accusations made by Spell, saying, “I haven’t done anything of the sort. I just stand there with a sign. I don’t say anything to anybody.”
The main reason I was searching for more about him is because he blattered on about Mr Carpenterson of Nazareth being critical to any government. So I was wondering if he was known antisemitic or Islamophobic (as two examples)… no idea, but it would not surprise me. I also presume the rubbish about (by implication, helping, albeit he doesn’t say that) hungry back children is just that — rubbish (I could be mistaken, he maybe, perhaps, isn’t as much of an wannabe-orc as he seems). Those searches also showed he apparently wanted people to tithe their entire(?) stimulus cheque(s?) to the cult. If one could actually afford to donate part or all of the payments, I can think of many many more deserving charities, some of which indisputably do help hungry children whilst not even trying to run over protestors.
blfsays
More on SC@475, Lake Highlands High Valedictorian Pulls Switcheroo on Commencement Speech, “Paxton Smith got one speech approved and then — surprise! — read another about abortion rights.” The full speech is in the article, as is a another video link (most of which is covered in the @475 version).
After just six months in office, Tito Ortiz, a former UFC fighter inducted into that sport’s hall of fame, resigned Tuesday night as mayor pro tem (essentially a vice mayor) of Huntington Beach, California. After being elected on an anti-mask platform, calling the COVID-19 crisis a “plandemic” at his swearing-in, spreading Donald Trump’s big election lie, and then crying a whole bunch about being victimized by cruel partisans, Ortiz will now serve as a warning to children that being on TV in a made-up sport (calm down, all sports are made up) doesn’t mean you’re fit to hold a position of public trust.
[…] In his resignation speech at last night’s City Council meeting, Ortiz insisted that he had been the victim of “character assassination” by the media, which very unfairly reported things he’d said and done. He said that the last straw was that his children were being “attacked,” by which he presumably meant accurate reporting on his sons being sent home from school for not wearing masks, and bringing a bogus document claiming they were exempt from mask requirements based on “religious freedom.” (We’ll just note that the Orange County Register, at least, didn’t include the boys’ names, ages, or the name of the middle school they attend, only the district.) [video available at the link]
“To put it simply,” Ortiz said, “this job isn’t working for me.” It’s unclear whether the lone person applauding as he stood to leave was a fan, or just glad to see him go.
From the start, Ortiz made a nuisance of himself by constantly making an issue of his refusal to wear a mask, as well as his stance opposing vaccinations. Just days after the election, well before his December swearing-in, Ortiz
tried to attend a [City Council] strategic planning meeting at the local library, but was barred from the building by the mayor because he refused to wear a mask. Ortiz’s anti-mask stance was part of his campaign platform, so he called into the meeting from his car instead of going home and getting a mask.
Eventually, the City Council voted to continue holding meetings remotely because Ortiz continued to refuse to wear a mask for in-person meetings.
In a January incident, Ortiz got into a tiff with a local burger joint, TK Burgers, after he was refused service for not wearing a mask. [video available at the link]
His pissy reaction, oddly, did not win Ortiz scads of adoring followers or inspire a boycott, but instead resulted in a surge of mask-wearing customers at TK Burgers. Ortiz eventually apologized on Facebook for his “bad decision,” saying he understood how difficult things have been for small businesses, and that he “would never want to ruin that business,” at least after trying to ruin that business and beclowning himself.
Oh, but that was just small (fried) potatoes compared to Ortiz’s next imbroglio, in which the OC Register discovered he had inexplicably filed for unemployment compensation in February, although the story broke in late April.
Naming the city as his employer, he gave his first day of work as Dec. 7, 2020 – when he was sworn in after comfortably winning his seat in the November election. He stated that his last day of work was Feb. 9, 2021, although he still serves on the council. On the portion of the unemployment application that asks for a “reason for separation,” Ortiz listed, “Still working part-time or on-call – related to the coronavirus (COVID-19).”
NBC Los Angeles confirmed with Mayor Kim Carr that Ortiz had not been laid off:
He’s been receiving the same amount of wages and hour. It’s my understanding that city council members are not eligible for unemployment, particularly when they are receiving their full salary.
Oh yes, and then there’s this tidbit from the OC Register story: Ortiz owns
two Huntington Beach businesses – Punishment Athletics clothing store and Punishment Training Center gym. He has a house in Huntington Harbour worth about $4 million.
Guess some people really are tempted into a life of idleness by those great big $300-per-week emergency unemployment benefits, then.
In its story on Ortiz’s resignation, the Register dutifully notes that Ortiz has “denied that his unemployment claim was improper, saying the allegations were politically motivated.”
At last night’s City Council meeting — the first in months at which masks were no longer required — Ortiz complained that “From day one, when I was sworn in, and I was met with hostility and judgement,” and that he’d been “the sole focus of character assassination each and every week with multiple news stories and leaked personal information, all of which were to slander and defame my name.”
And then he went on to whine about the “attacks” on his family, and his fears for their safety, although he didn’t actually provide any examples of their being endangered by anything other than his insistence that the virus is fake news. That threat, too many people have learned, is all too real. […]
[…] while Trump is summering at his trash palace and golf cheatery in Bedminster, New Jersey, the Secret Service detail guarding him is paying a cool $34,000 to rent fancy portable toilets.
The intrepid reporters at the Beast found the information in federal procurement data; the contract runs from May 24 through the end of September, so the Secret Service is shelling out about $8,500 a month for the terlets to “Imperial Restrooms,” a company in Saugerties, New York. For a change, the money doesn’t appear to be going to the Trump Organization itself, so … progress?
Also too, these appear not to be your everyday plastic shitters like you’d find outside a Trump rally, at least not according to this impressive promotional video from Imperial Restrooms. They are entire trailers full of restroom facilities, and perhaps even showers, although as far as we can tell, the Daily Beast wasn’t able to nail down what particular model(s) of Rolling Thundermug ended up being deployed to Bedminster. [video available at the link]
This isn’t the first Trump goat rodeo for Imperial Restrooms, either. In 2017, the company received a $1,700 contract for three weeks at Bedminster, and over the last four years, the Daily Beast says, the company has provided Imperial services to the tune of some $1.2 million in government contracts. We’d note that the story doesn’t specify whether those all involved Trump or his family, or if Thrones of Empire is just a really popular provider of seats of ease.
Even though Trump is out of office, he’s continued to cost taxpayers plenty; most adult presidential children lose their Secret Service protection at the end of papa’s presidency, but Trump ordered an extra six months of protection for his spawn, who travel frequently for “business.” In all, the Beast reports, extended protection is still being provided for
13 members of [Trump’s] family and at least three Trump appointees: ex-Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, ex-National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien, and Steven Mnuchin. […] In the first month after leaving the White House, Trump’s adult children cost taxpayers more than $140,000 in travel costs linked to their Secret Service details.
This is far from the first time the Secret Service has had difficulty finding Sanitary Facilities for Trump Protection. In January, shortly before Joe Biden took office, we learned that Secret Service teams guarding Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump’s home in Washington DC weren’t allowed to use any of the estimated 7,453 toilets in the Kushner-Trump manse, and sometimes agents had to drive bowel-straining distances to get to other facilities. Eventually, the agency found relief when it rented a basement room (with WC) from a neighbor, to use as a command post.
Even if the terlet rentals aren’t enriching the Trumps — that would be the Secret Service renting rooms at Trump properties every time a Trump stays at one, at what appears to be far above market rates — Noah Bookbinder, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, had a pretty good question: Why are taxpayers paying for porta-johns at a Trump resort that “surely has sufficient bathrooms,” huh?
At the risk of suggesting that this might not be entirely horrible, though, we have to wonder if the contract for the portable house(s) of office might provide an answer to the question of whether the Secret Service would once again have to rent a cottage at Bedminster this summer, as it did while Trump was in office. If the porta-san trailer(s) means that Trump’s protective detail is rooming in local hotels, instead of paying $567 a night for the cottage — which for the May 24 to September 30 period would come to $73,143 — then … big savings? We’re sure the Washington Post’s David Fahrenthold will plumb federal records for the real poop.
Group was rescued by their intended victims when boat exploded into a ball of flame
It could be viewed as a dramatic demonstration of the concept of karma: a group of young boaters hurling homophobic abuse towards another vessel flying gay pride flags, then needing to be rescued by their intended victims when their own boat explodes into a ball of flame.
[…]
“We got them out of the water safely, we were nicer than they were,” the video’s author posted alongside the clip, noting that the three people rescued, two men and a woman, did not offer any thanks.
[…]
The video shows a woman in the boat flipping her middle finger as they sped by, and according to Robbie[†] the boat made a sharp turn and then circled around them at least six times, spraying water on to them and causing their boat to rock.
The boat sped away, he said, and seconds later they heard an explosion and saw black smoke rising from the other vessel.
[…]
“The passengers were quite rude, shouting over us, ignoring my {questions} about their wellbeing when on the 911 call and smoking a vape pen on our boat without even so much as asking if they could,” Robbie told the [Washington] Post.
A second clip shows the conclusion of the incident: the rescued boaters speeding away on a friend’s boat while the crew of a police vessel attempts to douse the flames by churning up water with its propellers, then towing it away.
[…]
(Link to video at the link.)
Apparently, the sheriff is now investigating.
† It’s unclear if “Robbie” (who declined to provide his surname) was one of the boaters in the gay pride boat, or another (presumably nearby) boater, or if he either shot or posted the video.
[…]
The owner of a small sunflower oil factory in Bulgaria has filed a lawsuit after US soldiers accidentally stormed his facility during a Nato military exercise last month.
[…]
During the drill, members of the Italy-based 173rd airborne brigade simulated seizing and securing the decommissioned Cheshnegirovo airbase in southern Bulgaria by clearing bunkers and other structures, a US army statement said.
On 11 May, American soldiers entered and cleared a building next to the airfield that they thought was part of the training area but turned out to be occupied by Bulgarian civilians operating a private business […]
The Bulgarian president, Rumen Radev, said it was “absolutely unacceptable to have the life and calm of Bulgarian citizens put at risk by military units, be they part of the Bulgarian or foreign armed forces”.
“Exercises in Bulgarian territory involving our allies should boost the sense of security and trust in collective defense, instead of causing tension among Bulgarians,” Radev said.
[…]
Fortunately, no-one was physically harmed.
Next they’ll be raiding museums for daring to have paintings of sunflowers. Can’t be too careful, those sunflowers are, um, well, er, whatever. And just where is this subversive Van Gogh fellow anyways? (Psssst! It’s peas that are dangerous. And horses, never overlook the evil equine empire.)
“Breaking: The chairperson of Ra’am, Mansour Abbas, signed a document which allows the chairperson of Yesh Atid, Yair Lapid, to inform the president he has succeeded in forming a government after agreements were reached.”
(The tweet is from the Jerusalem Post’s chief political correspondent.)
“Ra’am has just signed Lapid’s letter to the president notifying him that they will support the government. The first Arab-Israeli party ever to do so. But it’s not over yet. Yamina, which may be already disintegrating, and New Hope yet to sign. And hour and 3 quarters left.”
“Per Haaretz journalist: MK/Joint List head Ayman Odeh told MK Mossi Raz on Twitter Spaces: ‘We won’t be an obstacle on the way to the establishment of a government’.”
It seems like the parties negotiating for Israel’s “change coalition” will agree to formally notify the President tonight that they can form a government, beating the midnight deadline with less than two hours to spare.
This doesn’t necessarily mean that the government will actually be seated. There are still issues to be resolved, and still the possibility of defections to Netanyahu from the new coalition.
The announcement hasn’t happened yet and it could all still fall apart tonight, too, but there seems to be momentum now to get it done.
blfsays
On Israel, Al Jazeera has a live blog (nothing as good as those of the Grauniad), and is reporting “Lapid’s Yesh Atid party has formed a coalition government, and he will announce this to President Reuven Rivlin later Wednesday, his spokesperson has said.” As I type, about 70 minutes until the deadline at 21:00 GMT.
Kamala Devi Harris is the vice president of the United States, the first woman to serve in that job, the first Black woman to serve in that job, the first Asian American woman or person to serve in that job. She’s kinda cool. Wicked smart. Seems like an all-around great human being.
Ivana Marie “Ivanka” Trump was a nepotism hire in the White House, a not-very-good fashion “designer” who sometimes did weird “business” deals for her lazy father for resort hotels in developing countries that weren’t particularly crying out for resort hotels. During her time in as a staffer in the White House, she did nothing of consequence besides occasionally leak to journalists about how she and Jare-Bear were totally behind the scenes trying to moderate some of Dear Father’s worst impulses. She certainly did not save small businesses at the beginning of the COVID pandemic, in America or around the world. Also not any time after that […]
Vice President Harris is on the cover of Forbes right now, and wrote an article about her “vision of inclusive entrepreneurship,” which Forbes is calling “Kamalanomics.”
[…] Two of Fox News’s stupidest contributors, Kayleigh McEnany and Tomi Lahren, are sorely offended by Forbes’s unwillingness to give equal cover time to [Ivanka] It happened on the “Outnumbered” program: [video available at the link]
McENANY: Forbes has discovered a new philosophy, called Kamalanomics, named after Kamala, and it’s about propping up women small business owners. Interestingly though, we have someone who did just that. Ivanka Trump did just that, securing $1.5 billion in relief from the private sector for small businesses, $10 billion to CDFIs which are banks that help minority and low-income communities. But I don’t remember the term Ivankanomics. Do you, Tomi?
Hahahaha, OK, Ivanka Trump saved the world, we should all admire her, ayup, muchly, you bet.
Tomi Lahren had thoughts. Oh, she had thoughts.
LAHREN: We expected her to do a lot more with this golden opportunity that she’s been given. But I’m not gonna put her really in this position, because I know how she operates. I know what kind of woman that she is.
Oh really, Tomi Lahren? What kind of woman is she? What vile racist thing do you really want to say here?
The segment continued with Lahren bellyaching about how those in the media “treat Republican women.” At one point she got mad like “WHERE ARE THE TOUGH QUESTIONS? SHE’S BEEN PUT IN CHARGE OF OUR BORDER AND ASJFKJADJFJACVKAJGJKSJDFIUQPUWJALKNV;KCISUUA!!!” It wasn’t her most coherent work.
The point is that they are mad because Vice President Harris is on the cover of Forbes and Vanky is not, and nobody even talks about Ivankanomics, which doesn’t exist unless somebody wants to use that term for business models that rely on sweatshop labor, in which case it’s kinda catchy.
Oh yeah, the guy in the segment is named Charlie Hurt and he is just pretty sure Democrats don’t like Kamala Harris because she didn’t even win any of the primaries, and Charlie Hurt says he doesn’t know what Kamala Harris stands for besides herself. A good way to find out what Harris stands for, of course, would be to listen to her every time she talks.
Hurt’s commentary led to Harris Faulkner insinuating that Vice President Harris is just scheming to stay away from all real issues so she can sneak into the Oval Office without doing anything controversial, and Kayleigh McEnany agreed. “That’s exactly what it is,” she said. “I read a report about how she’s trying to keep a low profile for that reason so she’s not on the record on these issues, on the border. She can sneak on by and try to walk right into the Oval Office.” We don’t know where McEnany read that “report,” but maybe it was a Klan newsletter/coloring book somebody left lying around the Fox News green room.
In conclusion, Wonkette would like to congratulate the cast members of “Outnumbered” for making it through this segment without calling Vice President Harris a conniving [B-word] or worse. It must have been difficult.
President Biden announced a raft a new private sector initiatives on Wednesday to encourage Americans to get vaccinated, as his administration increasingly looks to outside partners to help meet its goal of 70 percent of adult Americans with at least one shot of the vaccine by the Fourth of July.
The more aggressive push to vaccinate Americans comes as just under 63 percent of American adults have received at least one dose of the vaccine, but the demand for the vaccine is dropping and the remaining unvaccinated population is becoming harder to reach and to convince the vaccine is safe.
Declaring June as a “national month of action,” the administration hopes to incentivize Americans who are hesitant about the vaccine with a range of perks, including free food delivery, baseball tickets, Xboxes and chances to win cruise tickets, groceries for a year and free airline flights.
[…] “For all the progress we’re making as a country, if you are unvaccinated, you are still at risk of getting seriously ill or dying or spreading disease to others, especially when Americans spend more time indoors again, closely gathered in the fall,” Biden said in his speech announcing the new initiatives. […]
The private sector enticements include a CVS-run sweepstakes to win free cruises, tickets to Super Bowl LVI and cash prizes; gift cards from DoorDash; free tickets to Major League Baseball games for those vaccinated at stadiums; Xboxes distributed by Microsoft through Boys and Girls Clubs in hard-hit areas; free groceries from Kroger; and a sweepstakes run by United Airlines to win a year of free flights.
[…] The White House also announced the launch a handful of community-based outreach initiatives, including blanketing local media, providing colleges with resources and launching an effort to recruit 1,000 Black-owned barbershops and beauty salons across the country to boost coronavirus vaccinations and outreach in communities of color.
The announcement of “Shots at the Shop” builds on the success of several barbershops around the country, including one in Hyattsville, Md., that have held vaccination clinics. Vaccination levels lag in Black and Brown communities, among others, and the barbershop initiative is seen as one way to persuade those who have been hardest hit by the pandemic but are often reluctant to get the shots. […]
I’m too busy getting updates and writing to feel much emotion right now but my 15 year-old just said to me “Aba, that photo [at the link] really moved me. It’s a far-right Jew and an Islamist Arab and they’ve just decided to put everything aside and work together”
Netanyahu made this moment. First, by turning all his former allies and proteges in to rivals. Second, by cynically negotiating himself with Mansour Abbas, thereby legitimizing him for the rest of the right-wing. He’s the master politician but he’s sowed the seeds of his downfall
blfsays
I just got an alert from the Grauniad that Lapid has now informed President Ravlin he can form a new government. Al Jazeera (see @487) confirms, “Lapid has notified Israeli President Reuven Rivlin that he has a coalition for a government, a party statement says.”
Last month’s crisis between Israel and Palestinians in occupied Gaza highlighted a growing schism between far-right activists in the US.
While prominent far-right figures such as Rep Marjorie Taylor Greene capitalized on the crisis by using it as an opportunity to label Palestinians as terrorists, others were outspoken against Israel due to their longstanding beliefs in antisemitic conspiracy theories, claiming that Western states are controlled by an evil cabal made up of Jewish people. The contrasting narratives — unwavering support for the US-Israel alliance vs raging antisemitism and conspiratorial misrepresentations — have resulted in a noticeable rift within the extreme right.
[… C]ongressional Republicans from the GOP’s more extreme wing as well as other far-right activists opposed the attempt to deescalate or end the bloodshed, which they claimed would be a victory for Hamas. Their decision to openly advocate for increased violence underscores the GOP’s one-sided approach to politics in the Middle East region over the past few years.
[… C]onservatives have long equated Palestine’s liberation aspirations with radicalism and terrorist activity. In outward displays of Islamophobia, far-right Republicans have falsely generalized Palestinians as Hamas sympathizers and used the narrative of Islamic terrorism to further its alliance with Israel.
During the latest Israel-Palestine crisis, several Republican lawmakers, including Greene and Sen. Ted Cruz, accused Democrats of supporting radical Islamic terrorism. Cruz claimed that the far-left traffic in anti-Israel and antisemitic rhetoric while Greene suggested that fellow congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was a terrorist for calling Israel an apartheid state. Republican Sen Tom Cotton also accused Biden of caving to the Hamas sympathizers within his party by eventually demanding a cease-fire. None of them showed the slightest concern for the approximately 250 Palestinians who were killed in the Gaza Strip during the conflict, 65 of whom were reportedly children.
Greene has since continued her attacks following the cease-fire. She called for Reps Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, and Rashida Tlaib, whom she refers to collectively as the Jihad Squad, to be expelled from Congress for supporting the Palestinian cause.
[…]
Greene has also previously shown support for the far-right QAnon conspiracy movement, which thrives off antisemitic conspiracy theories and is, at its root, a modern version of blood libel. Many QAnon adherents believe in the so-called Zionist occupation government, which is an antisemitic conspiracy theory that reflects a belief that the US and various other Western governments are being controlled by a secret organization of Jewish bankers and influential figures. The term is used by far-right activists, white nationalists, and antisemites, who believe the secret organization is colluding against their interests. Greene’s Zionist supremacists theory regarding Muslim migration is rooted in this centuries-old conspiracy theory and remains widely accepted by QAnon adherents.
This brings in the other stance far-right actors are taking: support for Palestine if only because of their rabid antisemitism puts them at direct odds with a Jewish state.
GhostEzra, one of the most popular QAnon advocates with more than 340,000 subscribers on Telegram, shared a number of antisemitic attacks and conspiracy theories since the Israel-Palestine conflict began. Several of the posts were about Jewish billionaire philanthropist George Soros […]. The account also shared countless antisemitic memes, encouraged followers to seek out “Nazi propaganda,” and even posted a clip from “Europa: The Last Battle,” a 12-hour-long neo-Nazi propaganda film that claims Jewish people were responsible for both world wars as well as communism. GhostEzra’s posts drew thousands of comments from subscribers, most of whom agreed with his blatant lies and misrepresentations.
The term anti-Semitic is a weapon invented and used by the cabal minions to make people afraid to criticize the Rothschilds or any elites who call themselves Jews, one QAnon adherent responded. They are, as the Bible says, of the Synagogue of Satan.
Another comment followed up: The Rothschilds, which helped fund and create Israel, are the most evil people on the entire planet.
As conspiracy theorists and the extreme right reckoned with their conspiratorial and antisemitic worldview, some emerged as ardent supporters of the Palestinian cause — if only to further their false narrative that Jewish people as a whole are responsible for destruction around the world. These far-right actors also appeared to be against a cease-fire, if only to see the destruction of Israel.
[…]
Steve Bannon’s “War Room Pandemic” talk show also shared several antisemitic posts during the Israel-Palestine conflict, including a post claims that the US’s unconditional support for Israel is due to the enormous disproportionate power of political and financial Jewry in the United States. […]
[…]
Whenever far-right activists in the US have been outspoken about the Palestinian cause, their support is due to raging antisemitism and a hatred for Israel. Conversely, those who favored Israel in the recent conflict did so to further their Islamophobic narratives, label progressive politicians as terrorists, or encourage the conditions they believe will being about the End Times. None appear to have any genuine concern for the Israel-Palestine conflict or for the citizens who bear the brunt of this violence. Instead, these far-right actors are fueled by hatred, violence, and an embrace of white nationalism.
“The NFL says it will halt the use of ‘race-norming’ — which assumed Black players started out with lower cognitive functioning — in a $1 billion settlement of brain injury claims. The practice had made it harder for Black players to qualify.”
As if the Florida Republican weren’t already in trouble, investigators are also reportedly exploring whether Gaetz obstructed justice.
[…] Conditions grew more serious two weeks ago when Joel Greenberg, an almost comically scandalous figure whom Gaetz has described as his “wingman,” pleaded guilty as part of a cooperation agreement with federal prosecutors. Greenberg’s lawyer told reporters, “I am sure Matt Gaetz is not feeling very comfortable today.”
Politico’s reporting overnight doesn’t help matters.
Federal prosecutors are examining whether Rep. Matt Gaetz obstructed justice during a phone call he had with a witness in the sex-crimes investigation of the Florida congressman, according to two sources familiar with the case.
According to the reporting, which has not been independently confirmed by MSNBC or NBC News, the witness — one of the women who entered Gaetz’s orbit by way of Greenberg — spoke over the phone with the GOP congressman’s ex-girlfriend after the investigation was underway. During the conversation, Gaetz got on the line.
Politico added, “While it’s unknown exactly what was said, the discussion on that call is central to whether prosecutors can charge Gaetz with obstructing justice, which makes it illegal to suggest that a witness in a criminal case lie or give misleading testimony. The witness later spoke with prosecutors, the sources said.” […]
It wasn’t long ago when DeSantis called the American Relief Plan “Washington at its worst.” Now he’s patting himself on the back for putting the law to use
As the economy struggled throughout much of 2020, the Florida Republican proposed cuts to education and health care programs to help balance the state’s budget. As it turns out, those cuts weren’t necessary — because Democrats at the federal level passed the American Relief Plan that bolstered state finances.
In fact, yesterday, as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) signed his state’s budget, there were plenty of smiles, with the governor announcing $1,000 bonuses for teachers, principals, and first responders. “We’re proud that we got the bonuses through,” the Republican boasted.
There was a detail, however, that DeSantis didn’t mention. Politico reported:
Gov. Ron DeSantis on Wednesday signed a $100 billion state budget bolstered by nearly $9 billion in expected federal stimulus funds, putting the Republican governor in the awkward political position of building his budget on a wave of cash from President Joe Biden, whom he may run against in 2024…. The newly signed budget, the biggest in state history … was made much easier to cobble together because of the American Rescue Plan, the Biden administration’s $1.9 trillion Covid-19 stimulus package.
To be sure, plenty of governors from both parties have used Democratic COVID relief funds for all kinds of local priorities in recent months. What’s relevant in this instance, however, is that DeSantis railed against the American Rescue Plan as “Washington at its worst” — shortly before bragging about the great stuff he’s doing with funds his state received through the law he opposed.
It’s not quite the same thing as congressional Republicans voting against the bill, and then taking credit for its investments, but it’s awfully close.
Rep. Charlie Crist (D-Fla.), who’s running against the incumbent governor next year, wasted little time noting the tension between DeSantis’ condemnation of the Democratic law and the eagerness with which the Florida Republican celebrated the law’s resources.
“While Governor DeSantis will try to claim credit today, the truth is that he opposed the American Rescue Plan,” Crist said. “He opposed the funding that is providing bonuses to teachers and first responders. He opposed the funding that is helping cities and schools recover from a challenging year. And he opposed the direct relief checks that were a lifeline as our economy recovers.”
Last week, President Biden said, “Even my Republican friends in Congress, not a single one of them voted for the Rescue Plan. I’m not going to embarrass any one of them, but I have here a list of how, back in their districts, they’re bragging about the Rescue Plan…. I mean, some people have no shame.” […]
Arizona Republicans’ utterly bonkers election “audit” is a fiasco. It’s also a fundraising juggernaut, creating a twisted set of incentives.
By practically every metric, Arizona Republicans’ utterly bonkers election “audit” is a fiasco for the ages. A variety of prominent state GOP officials are increasingly mortified by this embarrassing debacle, and as of last week, the IT company that was in charge of running the day-to-day process no longer wants anything to do with the scheme.
The Republican-dominated Maricopa County Board of Supervisors recently urged the GOP-led state Senate to put a stop to the madness, calling the outlandish process a “spectacle that is harming all of us,” adding, “Our state has become a laughingstock.”
The assessment was more than fair given the circumstances. But there is one relevant metric that Republican proponents of the ridiculous “audit” are likely celebrating. The Arizona Republic reported yesterday on the fiasco’s financial rewards:
The Arizona Republican Party, along with other Trump-leaning groups, has used the state Senate’s ongoing ballot review as a way to raise funds for their causes and candidates. The fundraising has helped revitalize the Arizona GOP financially, tying its fortunes extremely closely to Trump.
The report added the state Republican Party, in the first part of 2021, has “taken in and kept far more cash” than at comparable periods in recent years.
The same article went on to note that this extends beyond just the Arizona GOP: “Pro-Trump individuals who tout election conspiracies and have set up companies to raise money for the ballot review claim to have collected millions of dollars, though those statements are not subject to the financial standards of filings with state and federal election authorities.”
[…] If all of this sounds familiar, it’s probably because of a certain former president: Donald Trump and his Republican Party raised more than $255 million in the eight weeks that followed Election Day 2020. Trump kept telling his followers that he’d won the election he lost, vowing to fight against the results, and his supporters kept giving him more of their money.
The result is a twisted set of incentives: Republicans have reason to keep pushing fact-free election conspiracy theories, confident that financial rewards will soon follow. […]
George P. Bush knows that Trump has gone after his father, uncle, and mother, but he’s putting all of that aside to advance his personal ambitions.
Ordinarily, a primary race in a state attorney general election wouldn’t generate national news, but the fight brewing in Texas has significance far outside the Lone Star State.
The incumbent is Texas A.G. Ken Paxton (R), who was already under indictment on felony securities fraud charges when members of his own team made multiple criminal allegations against him. In December, FBI agents arrived at Paxton’s door.
He’s running for re-election anyway, but he’ll have an intra-party rival from a notable political family. The Associated Press reported overnight:
George P. Bush on Wednesday launched his next political move: a run for Texas attorney general in 2022 that puts the scion of a Republican dynasty against a GOP incumbent shadowed by securities fraud charges and an FBI investigation.
In terms of the family tree, George P. Bush is the son of a governor (Jeb Bush), the nephew of a president (George W. Bush), the grandson of a president (George H.W. Bush), and the great grandson of a senator (Prescott Bush).
The key difference, however, is that George P. Bush, unlike other high-profile members of his family, has gone out of his way to ingratiate himself with Donald Trump, including endorsing his possible 2024 candidacy. Politico reported last week that the former president has noticed the Texan’s sycophantic efforts:
“…George P. has played this exactly right, and he’s definitely more conservative than his dad, and Trump knows that,” said one Trump confidante who discussed the race with him recently. “But I can tell you the president enjoys the prospect of knowing how much it kills Jeb that his son has to bend the knee and kiss the ring. Who’s your daddy? Trump loves that.”
[OMFG, so sick]
Yes, for the record, that is as creepy as it sounds.
The same article quoted another Trump insider who said the former president has pet name for George P. Bush — “My Bush” — has publicly referred to him as “the only Bush who got it right.”
Apparently indifferent to self-respect, Bush handed out beer koozies yesterday featuring an image of him and Trump alongside the “got it right” quote.
[…] On the surface, Bush’s tactics may seem obvious: much of the Republican Party is a personality cult in service of a failed former president, and those who want to win GOP primaries, especially in red states, feel the need to beg for Trump’s backing.
But just below the surface, the relevant details are striking: George P. Bush is well aware of the fact that Trump has gone after his father, his uncle, and even his own mother, but the Texan is willing to put all of that aside to advance his personal ambitions.
There are other examples of Republicans remaining subservient to Trump after he targeted members of their family […] but this is an especially awkward example of the phenomenon.
The result is a primary fight that’s likely to be cringe-worthy. As The Atlantic’s Adam Serwer put it, “The Republican primary for Texas attorney general is between a guy under federal investigation and a princeling of the Bush dynasty so desperate for power he would scrape and beg before a man who disrespected his mother.”
Well, sure, when you put it that way, it doesn’t sound great. […]
The Justice Department is investigating campaign contributions made by Postmaster General Louis DeJoy’s private sector employees, his spokesman confirmed Thursday.
Mark Corallo, DeJoy’s spokesman, denied any wrongdoing by DeJoy.
“Mr. DeJoy has learned that the Department of Justice is investigating campaign contributions made by employees who worked for him when he was in the private sector. He has always been scrupulous in his adherence to the campaign contribution laws and has never knowingly violated them,” Corallo said in a statement….
Federal prosecutors are investigating whether Rep. Matt Gaetz obstructed justice during a phone call with a witness in a potential sex crimes investigation, a law enforcement source confirmed to NBC News.
The obstruction probe, which stemmed from an inquiry about whether Gaetz, a Republican of Florida, had an improper relationship with a minor, was first reported by Politico, which cited two sources familiar with the case.
…
The witness in question is one of the women allegedly connected to Gaetz and his friend Joel Greenberg, a former Seminole County, Florida, tax collector who pleaded guilty last month to several crimes, including the sex-trafficking of a 17-year-old girl….
Here’s a link to the May 18 Guardian (support it if you can!) coronavirus world liveblog.
From their summary:
Apropos of nothing per se, and not political, I’d mentioned earlier that here in the village, a longstanding “orientalist” / hippy shop had closed (presumably due to the pandemic), to be replaced a vin shop. That vin shop is now open — they are an “essential” business in France and so not closed by the semi-lockdown (which will be lifted to some extent tomorrow) — and so I wandered around. And found something I’d never seen before, which also turns out to be unique: A French Zinfandel, Domaine de l’Arjolle (PDF). Zinfandel is the California grape, albeit its origins seem to be from Croatia. Zinfandel wines not made in California are unusual, and Domaine de l’Arjolle is apparently the only wineyard in all of France allowed to grow the grape. (Zinfandel is also a wine people tend to have strong opinions about, they either cannot stand the stuff or adore it — I originally couldn’t stand it, but after tasting some high quality Zinfandels, switched to the other side — but you almost never see Zinfandel (or indeed any Californian) wines in France, in my experience.)
Guardian – “Arab states split for first time on refusal to condemn Israel over Gaza”:
Guardian – “‘A new Chile’: political elite rejected in vote for constitutional assembly”:
Rachel Maddow last night on Carol Leonnig’s new book about the Secret Service, Zero Fail:
“Secret Service Questioned After ‘Astonishing Litany’ Of Screw-Ups”:
“Political Corruption Of Secret Service Made Biden Safety A Concern”:
Martin Rowson in the Graunaid On Boris Johnson’s coronavirus lockdown easing (cartoon). Based on the well-known MC Escher lithograph print Relativity (and Caution and confusion mark PM’s approach to lifting Covid lockdown: “[L]oosening of measures in England and Wales hedged with contradictory advice — but Boris Johnson sticks to plans”).
Democracy Now! – “Israeli Human Rights Group B’Tselem Blasts Two-Tiered Apartheid Israel, Says Violence Is ‘Inevitable'”:
Interview video and transcript at the link.
Oliver Willis – “America Doesn’t ‘Need’ The Republican Party.”
French chefs / restaurateurs being prime donne (the mildly deranged penguin warns they should not to be confused with the much tastier Prima Donna cheese), French hope bad weather won’t rain out ‘reopening’ as Covid-19 lockdown eased:
Guess he’s never heard of patio umbrellas (e.g.), which are more-or-less de rigueur here in S.France, albeit to protect from the Sun (they can do a good good of protecting against light rain and bird shite as well). Some terraces have a retractable roof.
I’ve no idea how common restaurant terraces are in France, albeit along the Mediterranean coast they are also essentially de rigueur. Very few restaurants in the village lack one — some restaurants offer almost nothing but terrace(s) — and the village itself can help by closing off streets (allowing the terraces to “overflow” into the street). Both the village and Paris (and presumably other places) did that last year in-between lockdowns, but I’ve no idea if either plans to do the same again this year.
(Locally, rain is only currently forecast for tonight and next Monday: And restaurants aren’t open today, and locally, Mondays are a common day for restaurants to be closed.)
France24, France cancels Sudan’s $5 billion debt (video): “At a summit for Sudan, France says it will cancel Khartoum’s $5 billion debt in a bid to bolster the African nation’s transition to democracy following the 2019 toppling of longtime strongman Omar al-Bashir. […]” Related article at Al Jazeera, Macron hosts Africa summit on post-COVID-19 economic recovery.
“Unsure if this point has been made prior but if 1) there’s ‘Hamas’ in a certain building and 2) the world’s most moral army gives people time to evacuate said building before shelling…. then wouldn’t Hamas just leave? Yeah they really didn’t try that hard with their propaganda.”
In addition to the media (e.g., the building housing Al Jazeera and the AP), Israel has also been attacking MSF (Médecins Sans Frontières)† and the QRCS (Qatar Red Crescent Society)‡, Qatari Red Crescent’s Gaza office targeted by Israeli air attack:
† Disclaimer: I make regular contributions to MSF.
‡ QRCS is part of the ICRC (International Red Cross and Red Crescent), so in simpler terms, Israel is attacking the Red Cross.
Yeah, bombs the QRCS (ICRC) and MSF — see SC@11 and me@12.
France 24 – “Russian lawmakers move to ban Navalny supporters from polls”:
blf @ #13, I’m sure you know, but just in case someone reading doesn’t – El-Kurd was being fully sarcastic.
(For context, he’s the Palestinian writer from Sheikh Jarrah in danger of being ethnically cleansed who was interviewed in US media last week after which the police arrived and forcibly ejected him from his own neighborhood; he later returned.
He tweeted an hour ago: “IOF snipers have shot over 10 Palestinians in the upper body with live ammunition, within the very first minutes of the protests.”)
It’s hard to describe how profoundly sick the US public is of press conferences by nontransparent local white dude DAs who refuse to recuse and arrogantly shout at the media about how the police were fully justified in killing black people.
“Andrew Clyde (@rep_clyde), the person screaming at the far left of this photo, is the person who recently likened the brutal, wildly out of control, deadly violent Jan. 6 insurrection on the U.S. Capitol to overthrow the will of the people, to a ‘normal tourist visit’.”
Photo atl.
SC@15, Thanks for adding the clarification to avoid misconstruing !
The journalists are rightly asking why he’s making claims about the video that don’t appear to be backed up by the video – even by the cherry-picked segments he’s released. Now he’s saying the video won’t be released!
Apologies – #s 16 and 19 refer to this press conference, which is still ongoing: “Now in Elizabeth City: D.A. will announce results of the investigation into Andrew Brown Jr.’s fatal police shooting. Will likely reveal whether any deputies will be criminally charged. Four remain on administrative leave….”
The DA claimed the killing was justified and that no deputies will be charged. The press saw the same thing I did – even the video/stills he just showed don’t really appear to support his claims about danger to the officers. And now he’s saying that not only will this footage not be released but he won’t even show it again now! His answers make his decisions seem even more suspect than they already did. This is absurd. If the federal government can step in in any way, they should.
Joy Reid:
Yesterday’s tweet o’ the day.
Charles Blow: “This #AndrewBrownJr press conference is a MESS. What is this man talking about? Did he really think this was going to go well?!”
It’s over now. It ended as infuriatingly as it started.
Republicans eye new House majority through redistricting
Reid Wilson – 05/18/21
The Hill:
Tweet (thread) o’ the day.
SC in comment 498 in the previous chapter of this thread: Elie Mystal in the Nation – “Marjorie Taylor Greene Is Gunning for AOC—and There’s Only 1 Reason.”
That’s a good article!
Follow up to SC @20 and 21: 44 seconds. I think that was the amount of time it took police to kill the unarmed black man they were supposed to arrest for a drug offense. Like Joy Reid said, they showed up like soldiers in a war zone, and then they immediately killed a man they did not have to kill.
I couldn’t listen to the arrogant white guy making excuses and using language like “evasive action.” I had to mute him so I wouldn’t start crying or screaming.
Florida prosecutor: DeSantis couldn’t stop Trump’s extradition to NY
The fact that officials are even having conversations about how to handle the possible criminal indictment of a former president is extraordinary.
Bits and pieces of news:
Team Biden releases tax returns, adds not-so-subtle dig at Trump
The White House didn’t just release Joe Biden’s and Kamala Harris’ tax returns. It also got in a not-so-subtle dig at a certain former president.
‘Imagine being so full of hate’: Video shows man destroying George Floyd memorial in Minneapolis
‘He’s a well-known racist’: Judge accused of trying to hit Black Lives Matter protesters with SUV
In show of unity, Palestinians go on strike (photo essay):
Collection of images at the link. One thing that struck me about those images is how dignified-looking the people (presumably mostly Palestinians) were in the various protest marches.
Cartoon: Revelations.
New York Times link
The op-ed is by Michelle Goldberg.
Josh Marshall:
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/trumps-puppy-speaks
“House GOP Whip Scalise announces Republicans WILL whip GOP Members to vote AGAINST the creation of a bipartisan National Commission to Investigate the January 6th Attack”
Pathetic.
Heh.
“France has tabled in the UNSC a draft resolution calling for a cease fire in Gaza and in Israel. In coordination with Egypt and Jordan.”
The Hill – “House sends anti-Asian hate bill to Biden’s desk”:
“The Tennessee governor just signed a bill which will require businesses to post signs warning other customers if trans people like me are welcome at that business. This should sound familiar and worrying….”
Endorse.
re SC @42: I wish all of our government representatives were like Katie Porter. The US would be SO MUCH BETTER if that were so.
New York attorney general adds ‘criminal capacity’ to probe of Trump Organization
By Sonia Moghe and Kara Scannell
Tue May 18, 2021
Here’s a link to the May 19 Guardian coronavirus world liveblog.
From their morning summary:
The EU will reportedly be opening up travel to vaccinated travelers from the UK and US.
From Rachel Maddow last night:
“Ford’s All-Electric Version F-150 Could Be A Game Changer”:
“AZ Republicans Finally Calling Out Shambolic Election Audit Spectacle”:
“‘Enough Is Enough’: Frustrated Official Rails Against Amateur AZ Ballot Circus”:
Donie O’Sullivan: “QAnon world turns to Arizona as next false hope to overturn election…”
2-minute video atl.
France 24 – “Myanmar town pleads for help as thousands flee fighting”:
This was predicted and predictable.
States vary a lot in their vaccine uptake.
The states with low uptake have higher rates of Covid-19 cases.
The 10 states with the lowest rates are all…Red states.
Only 4 states have rising rates of Covid-19 cases. They are all Red States, Mississippi, Alabama, Wyoming, and Idaho.
This is the pattern we will see for the next few months. Clusters of Covid-19 cases in areas with low vaccine uptake.
Already in many areas, the majority of people in the ICU’s with the virus are Covid-19 virus deniers and antivaxxers.
CNN – “Uneven vaccination rates across the US linked to Covid-19 case trends, worry experts”:
Had I refreshed, I could have saved myself some time!
Guardian world liveblog:
NC Policy Watch – “PW special report: After conservative criticism, UNC backs down from offering acclaimed journalist tenured position”:
More atl.
Biden spoke with Netanyahu today: “‘The president conveyed to the Prime Minister that he expected a significant de-escalation today on the path to a ceasefire’.”
“Israeli extremists have formed WhatsApp groups to organize and coordinate attacks which they call revenge against Palestinian citizens of Israel. We found over 100 groups, with thousands of members….”
NYT link atl.
Puts the lament configuration in the Event Horizon’s drive core. Starts to drag it to maricopa county.
QAnon Shaman’s Lawyer Called Capitol Siege Suspects Brain-Damaged ‘F***ing Short-Bus People.’
AARON KELLER May 18th, 2021
[“Short-bus” is a derogatory term that refers to the smaller school bus that transports special-needs children to schools in the US.]
SC @37, and now I see that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has joined Trump and Kevin McCarthy in opposing the January 6 commission. Pathetic, unethical. Also, they are afraid that their own misdeeds will be aired in full before the public.
As Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) said, “Congress was physically under siege in an organized attempt to overthrow democracy itself…. [T]he House just needs to let subpoenas fly.”
Bits and pieces of news:
Link
Marjorie Taylor Greene latest to see Jan. 6 rioters as victims
I wouldn’t say Marjorie Taylor Greene is in good company, but she certainly has plenty of company.
Republicans are determined to do whatever causes the most harm, because it does the most harm
Link
More at the link, including video.
Follow-up to comments 42 and 43.
Wonkette:
Link
A prosecutor says no to a rape charge, so a college student calls her own grand jury.
Washington Post link
Sen. Republicans Admit They Don’t Want Jan 6. Commission Because It Could Color Midterms
‘He couldn’t even stand up’: Minnesota nurse alleges jail neglect so rampant it ended a man’s life
Chris Hayes, responding to Steny Hoyer’s response to an AIPAC attack on Ilhan Omar:
“NEWS: MEMBERS of the U.S. Capitol Police have issued a statement to members of Congress expressing ‘profound disappointment’ with McConnell and McCarthy’s positions on the Jan. 6 commission, citing the ‘trauma’ that officers endured that day.”
Statement atl. The family of one of the officers who took his own life in the aftermath also wrote encouraging them to vote for the commission. AFAIK, McCarthy is still refusing to talk to Officer Fanone.
Oh – update to #68:
Update to #69: MSNBC and others are reporting that the statement was released through the office of Rep. Raskin (lead manager in the second impeachment trial), so I assume it’s really from a group of anonymous USCP officers.
“The bipartisan bill to create a Jan. 6th commission passes the House of Representatives by a vote of 252-175, the 77 vote margin includes 35 Republican YEA votes.”
LOL – another update to #69.
Here’s a link to the May 20 Guardian coronavirus world liveblog.
From there:
Moscow Times – “Coronavirus in Russia: The Latest News”:
Guardian – “‘It’s barbaric’: some US children getting hit at school despite bans”:
Much more atl. (It’s ironic and frustrating but unsurprising that phrases like “it’s barbaric” and “we have to evolve” appear here, but a worthwhile article.)
Maddow last night – “Video Of Deadly Arrest Of Ronald Greene Obtained By AP”:
Horrific.
AP – “Gaza’s health system buckling under repeated wars, blockade”:
Vice – “Pro-Trump Conspiracy Theorists Are Taking Over State Republican Parties”:
Much more atl. Kind of a companion piece to this one about Heritage from last week.
SC @76, the Israeli forces are always bragging about their pinpoint accuracy when they fire missiles, so why are they hitting facilities like those run by Doctors Without Borders?
SC @75, I lost count of how many times the police tased the black man before he died. You can hear the tasers in the video, and it sounds like the officers do not always say “taser” first. They even tased Ronald Greene again after he was out of the car and lying prone on the ground.
Lynna @ #78, it’s maddening that they’re still trying to gaslight the entire world, even after they bombed international organizations and press!
Lynna @ #79, they tortured him.
SC @80, “[…] they tortured him.” Yes. And worse yet, they seemed to enjoy it. And where would be without the persistent AP reporters who finally got their hands on the video tape? The details were being kept secret.
Bits and pieces of other news:
Link
Link
Lyz Lenz:
Why did the GOP oppose a resolution on the Atlanta mass shooting?
When the House approved a measure condemning the mass shooting in Atlanta from March, 180 Republicans voted “no.” It’s worth understanding why.
JFC.
NBC News:
Commentary:
Link
See SC’s comment 83 for one mother’s personal take on the Iowa state ban on mask mandates for schools.
Tweet o’ the day.
Link
Link
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/05/20/republicans-clueless/
Washington Post:
Rioters, gathered for a rally and then urged by Donald Trump to go to the Capitol, hunted Vice President Pence during the assault. They chanted, “Hang Mike Pence!”
Violent people threatened to hang his brother, but Greg Pence isn’t interested in talking about that. He issued a statement: “Hanging Judge Nancy Pelosi is hellbent on pushing her version of partisan justice complete with a hand-picked jury that will carry out her pre-determined political execution of Donald Trump before law enforcement officials have completed their investigation.”
Is he talking about “hanging”? And is he talking about “political execution”?
Fact check from Steve Benen:
WTF is wrong with Greg Pence?
“The attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6 was an unprecedented assault on our democracy,” Psaki said at a press briefing. “It demands a full and independent investigation into what happened. This is not a political issue in the president’s view, this is a question of how we secure our democracy and the rule of law. So it’s incredibly disappointing to see how many representatives have opted to turn this into a political issue instead of doing what’s right.”
MSNBC is reporting (that the AP is reporting) that the Israeli Security Cabinet has voted for a ceasefire.
Reuters is saying Hamas has agreed to the ceasefire.
“Full house for @POTUS’s Hate Crimes Act signing ceremony at the White House today.”
Photo atl. See weird to see. Tomorrow’s my freedom day and I’m going out. With other people. For the first time in 15 months.
This guy is so clueless that I don’t know he manages to get dressed in the morning.
Ron Johnson eyes his ‘own investigation’ into Capitol attack
What’s worse, Ron Johnson’s rhetoric about the pandemic or Ron Johnson’s rhetoric about the Jan. 6 attack? It’s a close call.
Re Biden’s potential appointment of an ambassador to Israel, it doesn’t appear the US has ever had a woman ambassador to Israel.
Saving the United States Post Office? Maybe.
Link
The USPO was already struggling when Louis Dejoy was appointed by Trump. Dejoy is the kiss of death. I’ll be so glad to see him ousted … hopefully soon.
NOAA predicts another above-average hurricane season
To clarify #97, Biden is reportedly planning to appoint another man. It was just that I saw the name and thought “I don’t recall any women in that role” and checked and it appears to be the case.
Yesterday (Wednesday) France relaxed its pandemic measures, notably allowing restaurant and bar terraces to open. I myself deliberately avoided venturing outside yesterday, a decision seemingly-confirmed by all the noise. Today I did (double-)mask up and wander out… First stop, the closest and also favourite bar… intent was to have an espresso before hunting down a lunch… but wound up with two beers — a last-moment change on my part, then the bar’s owner offering me a second gratis… followed by a long lunch at a favourite restaurant with a pint, a bottle (a nice rogue local vin), and a cognac; then off to to specialist beer bar for a nice local pint, then a stagger to a nearby restaurant for a tasty dinner, with another bottle and a rum, followed by a very stagger back to the lair after (technicality) curfew…
(Hic, *hic* — sorry, I’m less sober then usual — unusual? — at the moment… and obviously this isn’t political; per se.)
Mike Pence’s brother, Greg Pence, tells some more lies:
Link
Greg Pence has gone out of his way to establish the fact that he is a liar.
Guardian world liveblog:
But how effective is it against symptoms?
“Pelosi on House mask rules and the idea that masking and vaccination would be on ‘honor system’:
‘Do you want them breathing in your face on the strength of their honor?'”
Chemtrail Kelli Ward Gonna Arrest Maricopa County Board, That’s What She’s Gonna Do
Ted Cruz promotes Russian army recruitment video in order to disrespect the U.S. military
NBC News:
NBC News:
AZ SoS Says Maricopa Election Equipment Shouldn’t Be Used Again After Sketchy Audit
Will no one tell emperor Greg Abbott that he’s wearing a birthday suit, before it gets kids killed?
I recently read Jeff Goodell’s 2017 The Water Will Come: Rising Seas, Sinking Cities, and the Remaking of the Civilized [gah] World (it was better than I’d expected), and one part jumped out for obvious reasons.
Goodell joined Obama’s visit to Alaska in 2015 and interviewed him:
Go home, AP, you’re bombed:
Sen. Whitehouse: “Today, we advanced judicial nominees who reflect American society and the full diversity of the legal community, not a narrow selection of overwhelmingly white men hand-picked by big Republican donors. That felt good.”
Guardian – “‘Brazil is a global pariah’: Lula on his plot to end reign of ‘psychopath’ Bolsonaro”:
Guardian – “‘They killed my best friend for supper!’ Gunda, the farmyard film that could put you off eating meat for ever”:
Trailer atl.
Here’s a link to the May 21 Guardian coronavirus world liveblog.
From there:
Guardian world liveblog:
Interesting rant from Joe Scarborough on Morning Joe telling Trump supporters that they are desecrating democracy with their conspiracy lies about the election, are unworthy of being citizens since they won’t spend 5 minutes to Google the refutation of the lies to find the truth, and they should “love this country or leave it”.
Bits and pieces of news:
Yeah, I don’t really care that Trump is furious, nor about what he is furious. He is a semi-retired Florida man who will soon be spending all his time defending himself against various criminal and civil charges. Trump is also still clueless … and he refuses to learn anything.
Link
Even now, Trump can’t stop trashing Mitch McConnell
CBS News:
Hilarious! Grassley has been in the Senate for 40 years. He must know that he had the facts backasswards. Or perhaps, in his old age, he is practicing delivering deadpan standup comedy routines.
Not that we really need to be reminded, but after Justice Antonin Scalia’s death, Obama picked Merrick Garland to fill the Supreme Court vacancy. Grassley and his fellow Senate Republicans refused to even give Garland a hearing. Deferential?
Republicans kept the vacancy open for 11 months, and they said they would keep the Supreme Court seat empty for another four years if a Democrat won the 2016 election. (Trump won, so they suddenly became deferential to nominees picked by the president.)
And that’s not all. Senate Republicans ignored judicial nominees from Obama in 2015 and 2016. This had nothing to do with the qualifications of the nominees. Republicans still controlled the Senate then, so they showed maximum discourtesy to Obama’s nominees.
Grassley is a hypocrite and a liar.
US to Greenland: With Trump gone, we’re no longer trying to buy you
Donald Trump sparked an international incident with a plan to try to buy Greenland. The Biden administration is still cleaning up the mess.
Since leaving office, Trump has charged the Secret Service more than $40,000 to use space at Mar-a-Lago
By David A. Fahrenthold and Josh Dawsey
May 21, 2021
I had the stamina to offer to do a Covid 19 Q&A on a nextdoor politics board this weekend. I feel prepared. I did a post to collect questions. I’m including a primer on transcription/translation so mRNA vaccines make sense. I’ve prepared for conflicts. The admin seems good with it so far… I should be ready to start posting tomorrow.
Follow-up to comment 106.
Why it matters that Ted Cruz endorsed Russian propaganda (again)
In 2019, Ted Cruz faced some pushback after endorsing Russian propaganda for partisan purposes. In 2021, he’s done it again.
Brony @124, sounds like excellent work. I, for one, thank you.
In other news, the Feds have arrested yet another Proud Boy.
Link
COVID-19 numbers are still falling in the United States, but the world is a different story
More at the link.
Link
Do not fall for rightwing cons emanating from the National Review.
How superrich people avoid paying taxes:
Link
Much more at the link, including a discussion of the “carried interest” loophole, some of the trick’s Wall Streeters have mastered (“basket option”), offshore reinsurance companies, and more.
Link
Wonkette:
Link
More re #112:
Amazon suspends work on construction site after seventh noose is found.
Washington Post link.
Local and state police, and the FBI, are treating the incidents in Windsor, Conn., as a potential hate crime.
Surviving Covid could be followed by a struggle to survive financially:
New York Times link
Reports of the Trump Justice Department’s shady activities keep trickling out. What else is coming?
CBC – “Former Canadian ambassador to Israel worked for Black Cube, an Israeli intelligence firm”:
More atl.
Guardian world liveblog:
Wonkette:
Link
@Lynna 126
It seemed like more a more constructive thing to do.
Drags the Event Horizon back into the labyrinth.
From Abe Streep, writing for The New Yorker, “How Violent Cops Stay in Law Enforcement.”
Derek Colling was fired from one police department after two fatal shootings and allegations of brutality. Less than a year later, he had a new badge.
New Yorker link
My apologies to everyone. I accidentally clicked the “Post Comment” button before I had chosen only some parts of the text in comment 140 for posting here. I goofed up.
In echo of Arizona, Georgia state judge orders Fulton County to allow local voters to inspect mailed ballots cast last fall
By Amy Gardner
May 21, 2021
Follow-up to tomh @142, Rachel Maddow looks at different places around the United States where Donald Trump supporters, inspired by the ballot inspection spectacle in Arizona, are using conspiracy theories to insist on more ‘audits’ of the 2020 election results Trump lost, and the growing realization that these Trump supporters are not interested in election integrity so much as sabotaging the credibility of any election that doesn’t produce their desired outcome.
The video is 4:55 minutes long.
Ex-Trump Campaign Staffers File Lawsuit As Ohio County Continues To Grapple With The Big Lie
Follow-up to comment 144.
Posted by readers of the article:
CNN: Gaetz’s Ex-Girlfriend To Cooperate With Feds In Sex Trafficking Probe
Regarding the coming fire season:
Link
DeJoy forgoes protecting the mail and mail carriers in favor of monitoring social media
Follow-up to comment 148.
Posted by readers of the article:
600,000 Americans are dead, and Republicans are still telling people that the pandemic is a hoax
Wonkette: “Let’s Have A History Lesson With Marjorie Taylor Greene And Madison Cawthorn”
Link
Link
Link
‘Beyond Reprehensible’: GOP Rep Slams Greene For Comparing Mask Policy To Holocaust
GOP Rep’s Top Aide Alerted Police Ahead Of Riot About Comments Overheard In Hotel Lobby
About damned time Santorum lost that job.
CNN Dismisses Santorum After Botched Cleanup Of Remarks About Native Americans
Sad! Donald Trump is desperate to regain internet relevance, but so far, it’s just not working
More at the link.
Good News! New Data Confirms Pfizer Vaccine Is Highly Effective Against Two Variants
Link
Wonkette: “Ammon Bundy Hates The Government So Much He Wants To Be Governor Of Idaho”
Link
JFC.
“I watched the GOP’s Arizona election audit. It was worse than you think.”
Washington Post link
Belarus Forces Down Plane to Seize Dissident; Europe Sees ‘State Hijacking’
New York Times link
The dissident, Roman Protasevich, co-founded a Telegram channel that is a popular opposition outlet in Belarus. The plane was flying from Athens to Lithuania when it was forced down.
New York Times link
TPM via Lynna @ # 156: … Santorum had a long history of incendiary remarks on the network since his first contract was announced in 2017.
I came up with an idea at the time, that some executive had ordered a certified Republican join the CNN cast and the incumbent liberals had deliberately chosen the absolutely worst mouthpiece for conservatism available.
Nothing since then has confirmed, nor contradicted, that hypothesis, though now at least the coast seems clear for somebody’s memoirs to reveal some part of that decision. Will the inevitable replacement designated-deplorable match the same pattern?
Just a small point, Mr. Blinken: it was the USA, not Iran, that trashed the agreement keeping Iran’s nuclear technologies restricted and under international surveillance. What we haven’t yet seen is whether the USA is ready and willing to make a decision to do what it has to do to. That’s the test and we don’t yet have an answer.
Guardian – “Sasha Johnson: BLM activist in critical condition after gunshot to the head”:
I find the police statements perplexing.
BBC with more – “Sasha Johnson: Black Lives Matter activist critical after shooting, party says”:
“Russia is distancing itself from the Ryanair hijacking as Peskov says there’s ‘nothing to comment’, it’s up to international aviation authorities to look into the incident…”
Here’s a link to the May 24 Guardian coronavirus world liveblog.
From there:
Guardian world liveblog:
In other news, the numbers on the CDC site suggest that the US will hit 50% of adults fully vaccinated and 50% of the population with at least one dose in the next few days, and possibly today. The wide gaps in vaccination rates among the states continue.
“Belarusian authorities have stopped a start of a Lufthansa commercial flight LH1487 Minsk-Frankfurt ‘because of a terror threat’. All passengers have been requested to leave the plane and to proceed to security control. I wonder, what dissident is on board this time….”
“#Breaking [UK] Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said he has instructed the Civil Aviation Authority to request airlines avoid Belarusian airspace in order to keep passengers safe and has suspended Belarus’ national airline Belavia’s operating permit”
Guardian world liveblog:
From today’s DN! headlines:
Guardian – “Liz Cheney won’t link Trump’s election lies to restrictive Republican voting laws”:
From text quoted by SC in comment 173, “The health minister said a vaccine certificate would be launched in the coming days and from July authorities would be able to use this to begin to open cultural and entertainment events.”
Excellent plan. It’s really too bad that we have so many unreasonable doofuses in the USA that such a plan will probably not work here, at least not nationwide.
Update:
Republicans target democracy from multiple directions, all at once
It’s as if Republicans pondered every way in which a democracy could be “fixed” in their favor, and launched an offensive on every front, all at once.
Additional, embedded links to source material are available at the main link.
Bits and pieces of campaign news:
Link
Just when it seemed the Arizona Republicans’ election “audit” couldn’t become an even bigger fiasco, the story somehow managed to get a little worse.
Link
The Republican Study Committee has put its budget plan in writing. Democrats would be smart to recognize this as a gift.
Sondland Demands Pompeo Pay $1.8 Million In Impeachment Legal Fees
Getting into position to cheat:
Link
Cartoon: That inconvenient insurrection.
Link
“#Belarus Breaking. Pro-government channels published Raman #Pratasevich video address. He was forced to say he is confessing that he was ‘plotting riots’…”
(I don’t know what this means re the report @ #177 – could have been recorded earlier. I hope it means that report was incorrect.)
“Y’All Qaeda” —from Josh Marshall:
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/yall-qaeda
Las Vegas restaurant manager shows exactly why he might be having trouble hiring workers
Link
Link
Madison Cawthorn Too Busy To Deal With The People’s Business
Link
As hurricane season looms, Biden doubles funding to prepare for extreme weather.
Washington Post link
Administration will also launch a new NASA initiative aimed at collecting better climate data.
As covid-19 devastates rural India, Modi and his ministers focus on covering up their incompetence
Who Is Roman Protasevich, the Captive Journalist in Belarus?
New York Times link
Humor/satire from Andy Borowitz:
New Yorker link
NBC News:
AP News:
NBC News:
re Lynna @197: It is amazing that the body cam video didn’t “disappear” in the two years since the incident.
Guardian – “The fight to whitewash US history: ‘A drop of poison is all you need’ “:
More atl.
Guardian – “El Salvador’s house of horror becomes grisly emblem of war on women”:
Here’s a link to the May 25 Guardian coronavirus world liveblog.
From there:
Intercept – “AP, in Leaked Memos, Doing Damage Control With Staff: ‘You Will Have a Voice'”:
LOL.
Guardian – “Influencers say Russia-linked PR agency asked them to disparage Pfizer vaccine”:
Text quoted by SC in comment 205:
It would be to Putin’s advantage if more non-Russians died from coronavirus infections. Not to mention that sowing distrust in institutions and in other governments is also to Putin’s advantage.
Glad to see the disinformation campaign was spotted and outed.
Text quoted by SC in comment 200:
The opposite of truth. This kind of lie reminds me of Trump’s method of “branding” concepts that he wants to oppose. This is disgusting. This is what’s dangerous.
Guardian world liveblog:
As I said above, the US should reach 50% of the total population having received at least one dose soon as well.
“Manchin/Sinema implore Senate R’s to support 1/6 Commission…”
Statement atl.
“It’s official. Biden fulfills campaign promise to reopen Jerusalem consulate to engage with Palestinians. It’s a smart move to have a senior official – the Consul General – to deal with the Palestinians….”
Axios link atl.
GOP leaders slam Marjorie Taylor Greene, but add some fine print
Republican leaders could’ve simply done the right thing, and condemned Greene’s garbage.
Oh, FFS.
TPM – “Unsealed Order Shows Judge’s Scorn For Barr’s ‘Public Relations’ Plan For Mueller Report”:
Link
Yesterday’s tweet o’ the day.
Tweet o’ the day.
Team Trump’s info sharing with Russia comes into sharper focus
We knew Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign chair, lied to prosecutors. Now, we’re finally learning what it is he lied about.
Link
From Eric Topol:
Klobuchar takes aim at Trump favorite: Pre-checked fundraising boxes
Team Trump pioneered the practice of raising money through pre-checked boxes and recurring contributions. Sen. Amy Klobuchar has proposed a ban.
New Filing Accidentally Reveals Scope Of Giuliani SDNY Probe
Link
Wonkette:
Link
Belarus dissident’s ‘confession’ video suggests coercion and torture, experts and advocates say.
Washington Post link
Link
Per the CDC, 50% of US adults are fully vaccinated! Woohoo!
Julia Ioffe: “Mikhail Baryshnikov, the ballet dancer who defected from the USSR to the US, apparently always checked the flight path before buying plane tickets: he never took a flight if it flew over Soviet territory.”
Well, yeah, he starred in White Nights. The first thing I thought of when I heard about the hijacking and abduction of Protasevich was him shouting “We’re landing in Russia!”
Robert Kennedy Jr. cavorts with Nazis, and suing Daily Kos won’t make that any less true
Representative Adam Schiff:
Michelangelo Signorile – “January 6th just the beginning, as ‘second civil war’ is plotted”:
“Another hostage video from Belarus, being pushed by pro-Kremlin media. Sofia Sapega, the Russian partner of Roman Protasevich who was detained with him, is forced to ‘confess’ to being admin of an opposition Telegram channel that exposed names Lukashenko’s abusive police officers
Belarusian authorities today arrested her for two months.”
She’s not even from there!
“RIP Josep Almudéver, who died today aged 101, the last surviving member of the International Brigades. Photo is from from 2013. Born in Marseille to a Valencian family, volunteered as a French citizen to fight in Spain, then Franco’s terrible camps. French exile and return…”
Photo atl. BTW, the recent episode of the BBC’s Free Thinking podcast is “Ghosts of the Spanish Civil War.”
New York Times:
A century ago, a prosperous Black neighborhood in Tulsa, Okla., perished at the hands of a violent white mob.
Link
More at the link.
CNBC – “Manhattan DA convenes grand jury in Trump investigation, report says”:
Elie Mystal is on MSNBC with Ari Melber talking about it, and brought out popcorn. :)
Vance Has Convened A Grand Jury To Consider Trump Indictment [!!!]
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/wapo-vance-has-convened-a-grand-jury-to-consider-trump-indictment
Follow-up to comment 236.
Posted by readers of the article:
Prosecutor in Trump criminal probe convenes grand jury to hear evidence, weigh potential charges.
Washington Post link
CNN – “Pompeo-led effort to hunt down Covid lab theory shut down by Biden administration over concerns about quality of evidence”:
Much more atl.
Quoted in Lynna’s #238:
That’s harsh. I feel for the jurors. Hope it’s at least interesting for them, and that participating in such a big case makes it worthwhile.
Video of #235.
LOL.
“George Floyd’s daughter Gianna arrives at White House today:…”
Photo atl.
Dominic Cummings is testifying and it’s wild. And PMQs just started as well.
Here’s the Guardian liveblog.
A few snippets:
And here’s Ian Dunt’s livetweeting.
From the liveblog:
JFC.
From Dunt’s livetweets:
More from the livetweets:
Here’s a link to the May 26 Guardian (support them if you can!) coronavirus world liveblog.
From there (aaaaargh):
Guardian Cummings liveblog:
Dunt’s livethread:
Video of some of #244.
Dunt’s livethread:
Useful resource in the Grauniad, Fact-checked: Dominic Cummings’ evidence to MPs on Covid crisis.
Louvre museum will be headed by woman for first time in its 228-year history:
There’s also a video about that exhibition embedded in the middle of the excerpted article (but not, weirdly, in the older article specifically on that exhibition).
Ian Dunt (from the livethread): “I find it extraordinary, given how long this has all gone on for, that we’ve talked so little about Johnson’s delay in the second and third lockdown. Unlike the first, there are no excuses for that. And the price we paid in human life was terrible.”
Politico – “MyPillow’s Mike Lindell is turned away from Republican governors event”:
From Lawrence O’Donnell last night – “Poet Reads Darnella Frazier’s Powerful Statement On George Floyd”:
8-minute YT video atl.
Guardian Cummings liveblog:
Guardian Cummings liveblog:
Follow-up to @254, a snippet from the Gruniad’s report, Louvre appoints Laurence des Cars as first female president:
Wow… 67% floored me. Great! (I note the Grauniad carefully qualified the statistic as referring to France’s national museums; so, e.g., the village’s own museum wouldn’t be considered in that count (I have absolutely no idea who is the director, and a quick search only confirmed what I already knew, it’s largely run by the local historical society).)
Guardian Cummings liveblog:
Aditya Chakrabortty in the Guardian – “The Dominic Cummings circus is an indictment of the entire governing class”:
More atl.
This is evil.
Text quoted by SC in comment 256:
OMFG. Lindell as the governor of any state is an effing nightmare.
Text quoted by SC in comment 262:
Yep. That’s as good a summary as any.
Politico – “Mother of deceased Capitol Police officer presses GOP senators to back Jan. 6 commission”:
Sorry – this is the link for #266.
This is the article at the mistaken link – DFRLab – “QAnon’s hallmark catchphrases evaporating from the mainstream internet”:
Data and analysis atl.
Arizona GOP’s election ‘audit’ going far worse than Trump realizes
Trump believes the Arizona GOP’s election “audit” is “engendering such tremendous respect, even adoration.” Reality tells a very different story. [“Adoration”? JFC]
Trump may adore the bogus “audit,” but few others are that unhinged.
SC @267, mostly good news when it comes to tamping down QAnon nonsense.
In other news: Arizona Republicans are moving forward with plans to strip Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs (D) of her authority to defend election lawsuits. Power will instead shift to state Attorney General Mark Brnovich (R), whom GOP legislators see as a partisan ally. The source for this is NBC News. Another “yikes!” moment, brought to you by unhinged Republicans.
Washington Post:
Joe Manchin is aiding and abetting the bad-faith “negotiating” from Republicans:
Link
Link
Link
Unbelievable.
Link
Michele Bachmann Claims the Carried Out the Capitol Insurrection to Put Trump Down the :
There’s no real point in Earth, or indeed any part of reality, trying to contact bonkersmam, but hair furor got c.74m votes; it was President Biden who got over 80m.
Lynna @ #268:
How creepy and weird.
In related lunacy – CNN – “New Hampshire auditors see no sign of fraud — as Trump claims otherwise”:
This is all so cultish and bizarre. It’s an audit for a state race in one town in New Hampshire, with bipartisan support, requested by a Democratic candidate who lost, which found a local error with folded ballots caused the discrepancy and didn’t change the outcome. It has nothing to do with Trump at all.
Aiyiyiyi.
Link
Yet another mass shooting: 8 killed in San Jose shooting, suspect also dead
The shooting took place at a light rail facility that is next door to the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Department and across a freeway from the airport.
Climate landmark: Court orders Royal Dutch Shell to cut emissions:
blf @ #275, it’s funny when they say things like “I believe it was specifically done to rebrand Donald Trump as being an insurrectionist and a leader of a terrorist movement” and “they wanted to rebrand Make America Great as an evil thing and those of us who supported Donald Trump and that agenda as evil and terrorists.” They’re basically acknowledging that Trump and his followers are rightly regarded as evil insurrectionists and terrorists after the putsch, so it had to be fake.
Wonkette: “Jesus, Pennsylvania Republicans, What Freaking Year Is This”
https://www.wonkette.com/pa-republicans-are-homophobes
Related to @279, Exxon investor scores historic climate win with two board seats:
This is one of those Bloomberg / Al Jazeera collaborations, which is perhaps why the above seems to have confused this small investor’s arguments with the position of the board of Extreme Carbon. Extreme Carbon has not been taking the Climate Catastrophe, or the environment in general, seriously, other than how to not do anything but continue on as before and make even more profit$. (It’s possible that Bloomberg (I presume) is referring to the boards of other investors who apparently backed — as-in voted-for — Engine No 1’s nominees.)
Miles Taylor:
Commentary from Wonkette:
Link
What could go wrong?
Trump and Newt Gingrich are supposedly working on a ‘policy agenda’ after years of not having one
Follow-ups to @279 and @282 in the Grauniad (so no Bloomberg distortions), plus additional recent successful(-ish) Climate Catastrophe-related revolts at Chevron and other big oils, ExxonMobil and Chevron suffer shareholder rebellions over climate:
Biden has ordered an intelligence assessment regarding the likely origins of COVID to be completed within 90 days. I can’t link to any of the articles I’ve seen about it because they’re stupid and misleading. (I think the text of the order might also be stupid and misleading but won’t bother to look – the order itself is the news.)
Guardian world liveblog:
Guardian world liveblog:
Guardian – “Did Jordan’s closest allies plot to unseat its king?”:
More atl. Nicely reported.
Humor/satire from Andy Borowitz:
New Yorker link
BTW, thanks SC for summarizing the Guardian’s reporting, “Did Jordan’s closest allies plot to unseat its king?” It looks to me like Jordan, and King Abdullah in particular, narrowly escaped nefarious machinations fueled by Jared Kushner, Donald Trump and Prince Mohammed.
“Scoop: You may recall Robert Packer, a man wearing a ‘Camp Auschwitz’ hoodie on Jan 6th at the Capitol. It took a few calls & some USGovt court filings but I got the search warrant
Here’s a rundown of Hitler, antisemitic, and white supremacy items the FBI took out of his house…”
Form atl. One of those wily antifa agitator/instigators.
“On CNN, @GovMikeDeWine says there was a 45% increase in the number of people getting vaccinated against COVID19 after he announced the $1 million Vax-a-Million lottery (first winner to be announced tonight).”
I did not know this.
“Today we protested the imminent forced expulsion of 86 families in the Silwan town, where the Israeli authorities’ ethnic cleansing campaign intensifies….”
There may be another side to the Roman Protasevich story besides that of the idealistic anti-Lubashenko activist suddenly playing the role of a Belarusian Navalny:
Per FOIA Research, apparently a Eurocentric antifa information website:
I know next to nothing about FOIA Research; their writings have a whiff of doctrinaire leftism (and English-as-a-second-languageism), and I don’t know enough details of neo-Euro-fascism to assess their reliability (though their Oath Keepers profile seems accurate and well-done). Anybody here know more about either Protasevich or FOIA Research?
That’s like Putinesque-trope bingo. I’m not sure who the audience for that set of smears is even supposed to be. Also, they’re arresting journalists en masse.
Here’s a link to the May 27 Guardian coronavirus world liveblog.
From there:
From the Guardian UK-politics liveblog:
Yup.
Wow, has the media coverage of this lab-leak hypothesis been atrocious. Just unbelievably bad.
“BREAKING EXCLUSIVE:
Ex-girlfriend of San Jose VTA mass shooting suspect Samuel Cassidy alleged rape and violent, alcohol-fueled ‘mood swings’ in court declaration…”
SF Chronicle link atl.
SC @299, I’m looking forward to seeing Chris Hayes and Rachel Maddow puncture the bad media coverage.
Tweet o’ the day.
From a summary posted by Steve Benen:
Well, at least that’s better than planning to kidnap her.
Tom Cotton sees Chinese propaganda in the strangest places
The White House national security advisor said systemic racism is a national security threat. Why does Tom Cotton have a problem with that?
GOP Masks Tiny Infrastructure Counter-Offer With Lofty Claims And Muddied Numbers
Top Wisconsin Republican Robin Vos hires former cops to investigate November election
Patrick Marley
Wonkette: “Once Again, Rage-Filled Woman-Abusing Good Guy With Gun Does Mass Shooting”
Link
“Mitch McConnell has reached out to certain Republican Senators and asked them to vote against the commission as ‘a personal favor’ according to this…”
CNN clip atl.
Marjorie Taylor Greene is upset because not all of her Republican colleagues are defending her latest lunacy. Marjorie wants us to know that her feelings are hurt … and that people on Nancy Pelosi’s side sleep with Chinese spies (not kidding):
Link
Follow-up to @279, @282, and @285, ‘Cataclysmic day’ for oil companies sparks climate hope (Grauniad edits in {curly braces}):
Vice – “Gun Church That Worships With AR-15s Bought a 40-Acre Compound in Texas for Its ‘Patriots’”:
Much more atl.
Marjorie Taylor Greene Now Claims She Never Compared Mask Mandates to the Holocaust. She Did. (all emphasis in the original):
On the thing, it’s the same thing, no real doubt what she meant even if she didn’t use those precise words in precisely that order. A snippet from Forbes, Did Rep Marjorie Taylor Greene Blame A For Wildfires? Here’s The Response:
She later went to claim, improbably, .
Amusingly, whilst typing this, I’m listening to Grace Petrie slag off teh “U”K’s hereditary dictators, using the point she doesn’t object to individual members of that corrupt family, only to the institution. As she says (paraphrasing), “it’s funny, anytime someone hears you say you object to the monarchy, they think you mean you object to the individuals” — a problem not too different than what Greene is lying about, albeit with the exception Ms Petrie isn’t wrong. (Well, she is, in that she doesn’t seem to claim that are corrupt — but does acknowledge they are greedy & embarrassing.)
Business Insider:
“‘The Sickness Is Spreading’: MAGA’s 2020 Amateur Audit-Mania Is Sweeping The Nation”
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/trump-audit-battleground-states
Cross-posted with another thread – Vice – “We’re Not Ready for the Next Pandemic”: “We’re learning the wrong lessons from the search for COVID-19’s origins.”
Link
Chris Hayes: “As far as I can tell the GOP [infrastructure] ‘counteroffer’ is…13% (in new dollar terms) of what Biden is proposing. Not sure how you’d react to someone who offered that in any other negotiation.”
Mehdi Hasan at MSNBC – “Saying Israel is guilty of apartheid isn’t antisemitic. Just ask these Israeli leaders.”:
Guardian world liveblog:
Guardian world liveblog:
“[Matt Gaetz is] telling people who get their news and world view from Facebook and Twitter to violently overthrow Facebook and Twitter.”
Video atl.
Legality aside, isn’t it against the terms of service of these platforms to incite violence against them?
“Just spoke w/ a doctor outside of the Greene/Gaetz event in Dalton, GA who works at a nearby hospital. He went into the event briefly to evaluate if it would become a COVID-spreader event for his community. Says vaccine rates aren’t very high here.”
“Where things are in the GOP in a nutshell: MAGA-friendly Lt Gov of Idaho who wants to challenge current GOP Gov in next primary, takes advantage of gov’s trip out of state to issue order banning mask mandates in schools and public buildings.”
Guardian – “Argentina sends DNA test kits to embassies to find junta’s victims”:
CNN – “Judge grants federal prosecutor’s request for a ‘special master’ to review materials seized during Giuliani raid”:
Guardian – “EU pledges €3bn funding for Belarus if it transitions to democracy”:
Here’s a link to the May 28 Guardian coronavirus world liveblog.
From there:
SC @323, sounds about right … add more stupidity on top of several layers of stupid already in place.
From comment 219:
Brennan Center:
Voting Laws Roundup: May 2021:
14 States have enacted 22 laws restricting the right to vote, with another 61 bills with restrictive provisions moving through 18 state legislatures.
Details at the link.
Guardian – “A dangerous cult now runs Britain – the worshippers at the Temple of Johnson”:
[I don’t care for the Kool-Aid metaphor, but whatever.]
Guardian – “Russia refuses to allow European planes to land in Moscow”:
“#BREAKING: 54-35, Senate Republicans block effort to open debate on bill to create an outside commission to probe Jan. 6 attack. The vote marks their first successful legislative filibuster this Congress. House Dems are now considering opening a Dem-led probe into the attack
The six Rs who voted to advance bill:
Murkowksi
Collins
Cassidy
Sasse
Romney
Portman
Pat Toomey, who voted to convict Trump in February, skipped the vote. He told me for days he was ‘undecided’.”
“Photo du Jour: Prime Minister @BorisJohnson welcomes the Prime Minister of Hungary, Viktor Orban into 10 Downing Street….”
Swell.
SC @318, that set of facts presented by Mehdi Hasan is so well done. Thanks for posting that.
In other news, Senate Republicans kill bipartisan plan for Jan. 6 commission
Violent insurrectionists attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. Senate Republicans killed a bipartisan plan to investigate the riot.
SC @330, this paragraph from the text you quoted is going to stick with me:
Meanwhile, in USA politics:
More political news related to the January 6 attack:
Jan. 6 defendants continue to struggle as Trump continues to lie
Trump didn’t do his most dangerous followers any favors on Jan. 6. Twenty weeks later, he’s still making their lives worse.
Biden had a little fun mocking Republicans for touting the relief bill they voted against.
Oh, FFS.
Ammon Bundy And Co. Are Eyeing Another Standoff With Feds In Southern Oregon
Some of the locals have said that they don’t want Bundy bringing in outsiders to exacerbate an already volatile situation, but I think it may be too late for calming rhetoric to have any effect.
“11 Senators who missed this Jan 6 Commission procedural vote:
Blackburn
Blunt
Braun
Burr
Inhofe
Murray
Risch
Rounds
Shelby
Sinema
Toomey”
Joy Reid: “Today is one of the most shameful days in the history of the United States Senate. Enough already. The Republican Party has again bowed to sedition. And @JoeManchinWV has again proved that he can’t deliver 10 Republicans for his precious Jim Crow filibuster-loving bipartisanship.”
Tweet o’ the day.
Desperate to reopen and loaded with stimulus cash, schools are spending millions on high-tech purifiers. But are they safe?
More at the the link, including details concerning Dr. Deborah Birx and former CDC Director Robert Redfield who have both joined manufacturers of additive purifiers. This looks like Trumpism being exported to the air-purifying industry.
Nancy Pelosi:
Men displaying ‘Trump won’ banner removed from Yankee Stadium
UNC to reconsider tenure for 1619 Project author after backlash
The Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist is reportedly considering a lawsuit.
More re #205 – RFERL – “Exclusive: Meet The Murky Russian Network Behind An Anti-Pfizer Disinformation Drive In Europe”:
Wonkette: “Ohio Bill To Ban Vax Lotteries, Free Vax Donuts”
Link
“from @Sen_JoeManchin on failed #January6thCommission vote: Had 6 ‘brave Republicans’, 4 short. ‘Choosing to put politics & political elections above the health of our Democracy is unconscionable. And the betrayal of the oath we each take is something they will have to live with’.”
Well, what are you going to do about it?
SC@263,
I’m in the middle of Margaret Atwood’s The Testaments. The Pennsylvania legislators would undoubtedly regard it as a useful “how to” guide, except that Gilead collapses at the end.
“Pelosi’s preference has been outside commission but has not closed door on a select committee. Schiff says: ‘While today’s vote is a remarkably dark moment in our history, we will uncover the full and sad truth about that deadly day – with or without Republican cooperation’.”
Senator Lisa Murkowski (a Republican from Alaska):
Washington Post link
From last night:
At Long Last, a New Rail Tunnel Under the Hudson River Can Be Built
New York Times link
After four years of stalling by the Trump administration, officials in Washington approved the $11.6 billion project for federal funding.
Manchin’s political worldview was put to the test (and it lost)
The vote on the Jan. 6 commission wasn’t just a disappointment for Joe Manchin, it was a vote that shattered his vision for governance.
Link
NYT:
QAnon Now as Popular in U.S. as Some Major Religions, Poll Suggests
By Giovanni Russonello May 27, 2021
Newsweek – “Sheriff’s Deputy Who Posted Anti-Vaccine Content Dies of COVID”:
Re: #356 oops
This should have been in the second paragraph:
a poll released today
Follow-up to comments 278, 300 (SC), and 307.
San Jose gunman was facing disciplinary hearing over alleged racist remarks on day of massacre
So, not just a misogynist then, but also a racist.
“He killed nine of his colleagues, most of whom are people of color.”
Joe Manchin quoted in Lynna’s #354:
He’s seen it for the past six years!
Quoted in tomh’s #356:
But…there’s a huge amount of overlap with white Evangelicals. It’s not an alternative to the religion – it’s arguably the major sect of it.
JFC:
LOL.
“Marjorie Taylor Greene brags that she and Matt Gaetz are ‘taking charge’ of the Republican Party…”
Video atl.
WOW.
Lynna @ #328, update! The governor called it an “irresponsible, self-serving political stunt” and rescinded it.
From the Guardian world liveblog summary:
SC @360, my thoughts exactly.
SC @366, thanks for the update.
More commentary regarding Joe Manchin: Without realizing it, Manchin admits his absurd bipartisan schtick is dooming Democratic success
More despicable actions taken by Idaho legislators:
Link
LOL.
Federal agency says employers can offer incentives to get COVID-19 vaccine
Pierce R. Butler @ #295, from Meduza today – “Journalist or soldier? Meduza dissects allegations that Roman Protasevich (arrested in the Ryanair Minsk incident) served with a neo-Nazi Ukrainian paramilitary unit.”
A few points: He just turned 26, so during the events in question he would have been barely 20, and my baseline presumption concerning people’s political choices at that age is stupidity (it’s not always the case, but it’s often the case). He can’t tell his side of the story. As I said above, they’re arresting opposition journalists en masse, so any alleged past or present personal associations of any given one only matter to them insofar as they can be used to distract and smear (just as happened with Navalny, incidentally). Even if the claims are true, the regime violated his (and his girlfriend’s, and the other passengers’ and crew’s) rights, and they’re not even trying to claim the alleged background has anything to do with the hijacking and detention; it’s a means to distract from Lukashenko’s crimes (which go well beyond this incident). Finally, Putin actively supports neo-Nazi movements in a variety of countries.
A Global Picket of Solidarity with Belarus is planned for tomorrow in cities around the world.
Update to #331: “#Ukraine bans the use of Ukrainian airspace by aircraft registered in #Belarus, effective from 29 May.
Flights from Minsk by state-owned @Belavia_by to Turkey, Egypt or Israel would have to be detoured, adding to travel time and costs.”
Hahahahahaha.
Per the CDC, 50.1% of the total US population has now received at least one dose, and 40.2% is fully vaccinated.
“At least six earthquakes, including one with a preliminary magnitude of 4.2, shook the Lake Tahoe, Reno and Carson City area on Friday. Seismologists are worried the series of quakes could trigger a bigger one that would spawn a 30-foot tsunami in the lake.”
NYT link atl.
NBC News:
Maricopa County AZ Recorder, Republican Stephen Richer, Calls Audit “Insane” & Gives Details.
Here is an article summarizing what I’ve been hearing multiple places for a while.
The Covid-19 virus case load in the USA is still high as is the number of deaths. At the same time, we are starting to toss expired vials of vaccine.
The vast majority of cases and deaths these days are Covid-19 virus deniers and antivaxxers.
In Bend, Oregon it has been 98% nonvaccinanted since March.
Going to be a long tail on this pandemic thanks to the antivaxxers of the fundie xians/GOP.
The DOJ is still fighting to help Donald Trump and Bill Barr, but Merrick Garland could make it stop
Colleges beg Biden to save international student enrollment
Last year’s decline in international students and the bureaucratic strain of Covid are likely to hurt university finances for “several years.”
White House announces sanctions over Belarus’ passenger plane interception
The White House on Friday said the Department of State has issued a Level 4 Do Not Travel Warning to U.S. citizens, urging them to not travel to Belarus.
Wonkette: “Dan Crenshaw Launches ‘Woke Ideology’ Whistleblower Site For Military Crybabies”
Link
Excerpts from an article written by Jelani Cobb for The New Yorker:
New Yorker link
The entire article is well-written and worth reading.
A Harbinger of Things to Come?
Richard Pildes
A disturbing story about the just-completed race for Mayor in Anchorage:
Well, they do say every cloud has a silver lining.
Sorry, @31 -> @331
On Protasevich, outrageous as his kidnap is, and obviously Putinist as Pierce R. Butler’s link@295 is, we shouldn’t assume Protasevich is one of the good guys. He does appear to have been linked to some extent to the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion – there were undoubtedly fascists on both sides in the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and Belarussian nationalism has a pretty sordid history. Similarly Navalny, astonishingly brave as he is in his opposition to Putin, has never renounced, let alone apologised for, the disgusting things he has said about Muslims and migrants, or his participation in fascist marches. And Aung San Suu Kyi supported the Myanmar military’s genocidal campaign against the Rohingyas, Daniel Ortega is de facto dictator of Nicaragua, Thabo Mbeki turned out to be an AIDS denialist, probably responsible for more deaths than any of his apartheid-era predecessors, and Jacob Zuma stinkingly corrupt… I could, depressingly, go on more or less indefinitely.
The Covid-19 virus pandemic continues. Among the antivaxxers of the fundie xians/GOP. This pandemic has split into two pandemics.
The one among the vaccinated is going down rapidly and has almost disappeared.
The one among the antivaxxers and Covid-19 virus deniers is still going as strong as it was in December, 2020.
This virus is very transmissable and 25% of the US population are antivaxxers.
The US has 500 people dying every day of Covid-19 virus, almost all antivaxxers, while we are throwing vials of outdated vaccine away.
Who wants to be the last Americans to die of Covid-19 virus?
Strangely enough, there are tens of millions of volunteers.
There is going to be a long tail on this pandemic.
It appears Netanyahu may finally be ousted as Israeli leader – and replaced by Naftali Bennett, a:
Great news for the Palestinians, eh?
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/jason-crow-january-6-commission
Follow-up to comment 391.
Posted by readers of the article:
Even if it is a “partisan” Select Committee investigation, members of Congress and their staff, including Kevin McCarthy, will have to testify under oath.
‘School choice’ and charter proponents target public education in key states
Pillow Man reportedly stranded Kristi Noem in Nashville after getting tossed from governors meeting
Biden praises military as ‘solid spine’ of US at Memorial Day service
Wonkette:
Link
My Memorial Day weekend doesn’t suck. I’ve been doing some gardening. And because I’m fully vaccinated, I felt safe enough to have workmen here last week to make some much-needed repairs to my house.
Anti-Vax Creep Facing Swift Consequences For Selling Nazi-Inspired Yellow Stars
Creepy photo can be viewed at the link.
As Covid Rampages Across Nepal, Workers Pay the Price
New York Times link
The Himalayan country is considering declaring a health emergency to help contain a second wave that experts say migrant laborers brought back from India.
‘The GOP is destroying democracy’: Alabama GOP faces well-earned criticism after curbside voting ban
SC … @ # 372 & KG @ # 388 – Thanks for the follow-ups, even if we still don’t have an answer to the questions raised.
I’ve done a little further digging on my own, and still have no clue whether Protasevich was innocently reporting on or not-so-innocently participating with armed fascists. Nor have I found anything one way or t’other about foiaresearch.net, which seems to have gotten very little attention for the apparent amount of work invested. (covertactionmagazine.com claims to have a partnership going with them – I had a lot of respect for the first incarnation of CA, but hadn’t even known of their revival until looking around for this.)
The Unique Dangers of the Supreme Court’s Decision to Hear a Mississippi Abortion Case.
New Yorker link
The most pressing question now may be not whether Roe and Casey can survive but how reproductive rights can be sustained without them.
WaPo:
Texas Democrats block restrictive voting bill by walking off the floor to deny GOP-majority House a quorum
By Amy Gardner
May 30, 2021 at 10:06 p.m. PDT
Follow-up to comment 397.
Brands Cut Ties With Nashville Hat Shop That Advertised Anti-Vaxxer Star Of David Patches
Link
Instagram to alter algorithm after complaints it censored Palestinian content during Gaza conflict
Biden defends Americans right to vote ‘freely’ in Memorial Day remarks
Wonkette: “Insipid Cartoon Children Have Time Travel Adventure With Ronald Reagan”
Link
Police arrest Texas man over plot to carryout mass shooting at a Walmart
Biden offers defense of democracy in Memorial Day Remarks
Washington Post link
China Says It Will Allow Couples to Have 3 Children, Up From 2
New York Times link
The move is the Communist Party’s latest attempt to reverse declining birthrates and avert a population crisis, but experts say it is woefully inadequate.
‘You’re not alone’: Graduation speakers [including Kamala Harris and Jill Biden] from White House and beyond deliver powerful messages.
Link
More at the link, including Dr. Fauci speaking at Vanderbilt University.
Daniel Uhlfelder:
https://twitter.com/DWUhlfelderLaw/status/1399174292743593989
Washington Post:
Paul Waldman:
https://twitter.com/paulwaldman1/status/1399420337494925315
OMFG
Michael Flynn says Myanmar-like coup ‘should happen’ in US
Cranky old white guy with military background goes fucking bonkers.
Biden calls for ‘day of remembrance’ on 100th anniversary of Tulsa Race Massacre
Hard to imagine Trump doing anything like that.
re Lynna @414:
He would have met with the descendants of the white mob and celebrated their “victory”.
Genghis Khan’s career of conquest, that critics say disproportionately impacted communities his forces massacred.
Trying to convince people the cult is doing something about its problem with pedophile priests, teh raping children cult has published revisions to its so-called criminal law, which seems to completely fail to unambiguously outlaw pedophilia, Pope Francis updates canon law to address paedophilia by priests (my added emboldening):
From Ye Pffft! of All Knowledge, “The term adultery refers to sexual acts between a married person and someone who is not that person’s spouse.”
Priests in that cult are notoriously not married, and the child he raped isn’t either, hence the priest’s crime is not “adultery”, so there’s no change. (Unless the priest was stupid enough to make child p0rn.) Nothing to see here, move along, just leave the child behind for a special session with the priest…
Here’s a link to the June 1 Guardian coronavirus world liveblog.
From there:
I had been reading about this. Here’s a link to the Hindustan Times with a bit more of the background.
johnson catman @ #415:
Someone on MSNBC this morning (Mara Gay?) reminded everyone that he’d originally scheduled his pro-COVID rally in Tulsa last year (the one that almost no one showed up to and that likely killed Herman Cain) for Juneteenth.
Guardian – “India mosque demolition: report filed on Muslim leaders false, court finds”:
Guardian – “Senior figures attack ‘obstruction’ of ICC’s Palestine investigation”:
A few links from recent days:
Salon – “Rudy and me: My 1980s legal battle with Giuliani told me who he really was.”
CNN – “How a pastor’s spread of Covid misinformation divided one Tennessee family.”
AJ+ on Twitter
5-minute video atl.
From today’s Democracy Now! headlines:
Maggie Haberman: “Trump has been telling a number of people he’s in contact with that he expects he will get reinstated by August (no that isn’t how it works but simply sharing the information).”
“Today, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya will meet american senators @senrobportman, @SenatorShaheen, @ChrisMurphyCT, who arrived at Vilnius to express the bipartisan support for Sviatlana and the Democratic movement. We thank the United States for principled and strong position on Belarus
US Senators and Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya are giving the joint press conference. Tsikhanouskaya: Lukashenka has clearly become a threat to international peace and security. Resolution of the crisis is in interest of all international actors”
“One year ago today the president gassed his own people for a photo op.”
re SC @424: That makes me LOL because of how delusional he is, but it also make me afraid for our country because of how delusional his cult is.
Yeah.
johnson catman @415 and SC @419, sometimes I think Trump likes to repeatedly demonstrate that he is clueless. He thinks cluelessness is a virtue.
In other news, some bits and pieces of campaign news:
Link
Trump appointee pushes ‘replacement’ theory from West Point post
Trump appointed Douglas Macgregor to a West Point post despite (or because of?) his radical views. He’s still there, and his views haven’t changed.
Cleaning up after Trump takes time.
A discussion of some of the options Democrats have to complete an investigation of the January 6 attack on the Capitol.
Link
In the States, Supreme Court backs Indigenous police authority on tribal lands:
Josh Marshall: Some Thoughts on the COVID ‘Lab Leak’ Theory
Link
Yeah, Fox “News” is propaganda. Faux News is an arm of the Trump campaign.
Posted by readers of the article:
Guardian – “‘Shameful’: Bolsonaro denounced for hosting Copa America amid pandemic”:
As Texas Enters Another Hot Summer, Lawmakers Kill Effort to Cool Sweltering Prisons
“The reality is in Texas, we are cooking people in prison.”
“QAnon John, organiser of the QAnon-affiliated ‘For God & Country Patriot Roundup’ conference in Dallas, claims the reason he ejected [Will Sommer from the Daily Beast] from the event is because he has eaten pizza at Comet Ping Pong in Washington DC, the focus of the baseless Pizzagate conspiracy.”
Link
Edward-Isaac Dovere:
https://twitter.com/IsaacDovere/status/1399520283686486016
Video is available at the link.
Wonkette:
Link
New York Times: Will the Excelsior Pass, New York’s Vaccine Passport, Catch On?
More than 1 million Excelsior passes have been downloaded since they were introduced, but officials are hoping they will be adopted more widely.
With anti-election crusade, Trump reportedly has an endgame in mind
“Trump has reportedly told associates he hopes to be “reinstated” to the presidency by August. This entire line of thought is stark raving mad.”
Body-camera video shows cops strip search teen and brother after traffic stop. Case settled for $35K
Floridians are defying Ron DeSantis’s Jim Crow voter suppression law and it’s very inspiring.
A link to the donation site for the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition, via ActBlue!
Lynna, OM@433,
Josh Marshall seems to have it about right. Most of the media is not distinguishing between “the virus accidentally escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology” (which has always been a possibility, it’s certainly quite a coincidence that it appeared in the vicinity of the only level 4 biosafety lab in China, known to be researching bat coronaviruses), and “the virus was created in the Wuhan Insistute of Virology” (extremely implausible, there’s an expert consensus that it just doesn’t look like an engineered virus). It’s unlikely we will ever know if it was an escape, without some startling new evidence one way or the other: if the Chinese government knows or suspects it was an escape, it will certainly not admit it. My own guess early on was that it might be connected to the lab without necessarily ever being cultivated there: its employees go and collect samples from bat caves all over China, and bring them back for analysis. They wear PPE, but it’s still a likely setting for bat-to-human transmission. Any research on dangerous viruses is a two-edged sword, and we know there was more than one lab leak of the original SARS virus.
Today’s Guardian includes a bizarre opinion piece by one of their US correspondents, Thomas Frank, who can hardly contain his glee at the prospect of the “liberalestablishment” being discredited if the lab leak hypothesis is confirmed and (of course) does not distinguish accidental leak from engineered virus. Why are they employing this guy?
KG @ #444:
I read some of his books (One Market Under God and one or two others) years ago, and even then he was kind of a bro before his time. He and his gang were the only real leftists, and everyone else had sold out or was distracting from the real cause. I’m pretty sure I saw him on TV shortly before the 2016 election at an event introducing (now Thiel-backed capitalist tool) JD fucking Vance and bonding over their disdain for Clinton and the Dems. I could take about two minutes. Can’t imagine why they would be publishing him on this subject in which he has no expertise, but I’m sure he was grateful for the opportunity to bash liberals.
KG@444, “Why [is the Grauniad US] employing [Thomas Frank]?”
Probably for the same reason they employ Simon Jenkins in the UK: To have a tame loon in-house. The rule with Jenkins is, “the opposite of what he says is much more probably true” (a weaker version of “not even wrong”). Jenkins is notoriously ignorant, especially about science, and that opinion column suggests Frank is as well. I don’t have adequate exposure to Frank to opinionate if the Jenkins-rule also applies to Frank, but suspect it (or a modification thereof) probably does. Fortunately, as far as I know, both Jenkins and Frank are confined to the opinion pages. Perhaps both should be treated as green-ink nutters, but less entertaining.
Anti-Vax COVID-19 Conspiracy Theorist Rick Wiles Hospitalized With COVID-19:
Must have drunk the wrong brand of bleach.
That was unexpected – “Biden: ‘I hear all the folks on TV saying why doesn’t Biden get this done? Well because Biden only has a majority of effectively four votes in the House and a tie in the Senate, with two members of the Senate who vote more with my Republican friends’.”
‘Kraken’ Attorney Files $1 Billion Lawsuit Against MLB for Moving All-Star Game, Claims League Is ‘State Actor’ That Deprived Georgians of Civil Rights
JERRY LAMBE Jun 1st
This will brighten the day of many people.
Rick Wiles is one of the more vicious of the bad lot of fundie ministers, all hate, all of the time.
He called the Covid-19 vaccine, an agent of global genocide.
He is now in the hospital on oxygen.
SC@445,
Thanks for that info about Thomas Frank. So he’s the Guardian‘s Vicar/consciousness razor!
blf@446,
Yes, I never read Simon Jenkins. I think he first came to my attention when he wrote a pro-nuclear-power column in which he claimed it produced 20% of the UK’s energy. It actually produced at that time 20% of its generated electricity – which was about 8% of its energy, IIRC.
Vice – “Amazon Calls Warehouse Workers ‘Industrial Athletes’ In Leaked Wellness Pamphlet”:
Guardian – “Stressed-out Amazon workers can now access ‘mindfulness’ training. Gee, thanks”:
Much more at both links.
Here’s a link to the June 2 Guardian coronavirus world liveblog.
From there:
Update to Lynna’s #s 179, 214, and 429 – Slate – “Is a Democratic Landslide in New Mexico’s Congressional Special Election a Sign?”:
More atl.
Politico – “National Enquirer owner pays $187,500 for aiding Trump campaign in hush money deal”:
WTF.
” Statement of Concern: The Threats to American Democracy and the Need for National Voting and Election Administration Standards”:
Full statement and signatures atl.
“With 6 1/2 hours to go, Netanyahu calls on Likud ministers & Knesset members to demonstrate outside the convention hall in which coalition negotiations are taking place…”
KG@451, Yeah, it’s been a long long time since I ever deliberately a Simon Jenkins column. I may be conflating different incidents (columns), but the one that did it for me was some rant about a (then-)recently-changed scientific consensus… albeit about what I can now no longer recall. Paraphrasing from defective memory, Jenkins ranted to the effect
TPM – “RNC Threatens Debate Boycott If Trump’s Grievances With Format Aren’t Addressed”:
If I were the CPD, I would respond that any candidate who turned up for a debate carrying a deadly virus and was impeached for extorting a foreign government ti help him cheat in an election and impeached again for inciting a seditious insurrection after losing the election is banned from any future debates, but we’ll take the suggestions under consideration.
The next step for Trump and his cult will likely be attempting to stoke violence against the CPD and its individual members.
“The US Army will not investigate former General Michael Flynn’s statements about a coup like the one in Myanmar occurring in the United States ‘at this time’, an Army spokesperson said in a statement.”
LOL – CNBC – “Trump blog page shuts down for good”:
Just by continuing to exist, my blog is more successful than Trump’s.
Guardian world liveblog:
LOL.
SC @454, Good! I was so happy to see that Democrat Melanie Stansbury won … and by a 25-point margin. And she did that despite her Republican opponent trying to get voters to think that she wants to “defund the police.”
SC @464, “Dark and depraved.” LOL.
SC @462, “What blog? I hardly knew that blog. Wouldn’t recognize it if it walked into the room. What did that blog ever do for me?” Keeping a successful blog going is hard work. Trump was never good at doing the necessary work, and he can’t comprehend maintaining a sustained effort.
SC @461, why the fuck not?
SC @460:
LOL. Agreed.
From text quoted by SC in comment 452:
Exactly. And the same issue is a problem in the meat-packing industry.
raven @450, a schadenfreude moment for sure. Still sorry it has to be this way.
Text quoted by tomh in comment 449:
Sigh. How many frivolous lawsuits would not be filed if only doofuses like Bernie Marcus and the Mercer family stopped funding batshit bonkers “advocacy groups”?
Text quoted by blf in comment 447:
LOL. We’re all adding fuel to the flames of our supposed torment in hell. LOL.
In other news, some campaign news:
Yes. Let’s replace those Republican governors.
KG @444, that’s a good analysis, and a good summary. I agree.
In other campaign news, Donald Trump endorsed Texas Governor Gregg Abbott. Abbott is running for re-election next year. He’s the guy that was governing in Texas when a winter storm knocked out power and water for hundreds of thousands of Texans. He still hasn’t done anything to prevent that from happening again. He’s the guy that threatened to cut off the pay for Democratic legislators who won’t vote for the voter-suppression measures he supports. Abbott deserves to lose the next election.
Atlanta Journal-Constitution:
I still can’t believe that Manchin and Sinema are still wearing their blinders.
On Senate dysfunction, Arizona’s Sinema makes a badly flawed pitch
What happens when Republican senators are asked to “fix” their behavior, and they respond, “No”?
SC @462, remember when Team Trump claimed that his blog would “completely redefine the game”? Still laughing about that.
More backstory that is good for prompting raucous laughter:
Where Things Stand: Trump Is Only Now Catching Up To The MyPillow Guy
Is Trump too stupid to think up his own batshit bonkers conspiracy theories?
“Mercurial” is too kind.
France to offer vaccines for those 12 and older starting later this month
Tweet o’ the day.
Right-Wing Pastor Tony Spell Says Judges Who Ruled Against Him Are :
Annoyingly, the Encyclopedia of American Loons doesn’t seem to have an entry on Spell. However, whilst searching for more about this kook, I found Louisiana Pastor Tony Spell Arrested for Allegedly Backing Church Bus Toward Coronavirus Protester (April 2020):
The main reason I was searching for more about him is because he blattered on about Mr Carpenterson of Nazareth being critical to any government. So I was wondering if he was known antisemitic or Islamophobic (as two examples)… no idea, but it would not surprise me. I also presume the rubbish about (by implication, helping, albeit he doesn’t say that) hungry back children is just that — rubbish (I could be mistaken, he maybe, perhaps, isn’t as much of an wannabe-orc as he seems). Those searches also showed he apparently wanted people to tithe their entire(?) stimulus cheque(s?) to the cult. If one could actually afford to donate part or all of the payments, I can think of many many more deserving charities, some of which indisputably do help hungry children whilst not even trying to run over protestors.
More on SC@475, Lake Highlands High Valedictorian Pulls Switcheroo on Commencement Speech, “Paxton Smith got one speech approved and then — surprise! — read another about abortion rights.” The full speech is in the article, as is a another video link (most of which is covered in the @475 version).
Another moment of schadenfreude:
Link
Wonkette:
Link
This should probably be awarded a very confusing headline award, but that’s just the Grauniad doing Grauniadian things, Boaters rescue group hurling anti-gay abuse at them after their boat explodes:
(Link to video at the link.)
Apparently, the sheriff is now investigating.
† It’s unclear if “Robbie” (who declined to provide his surname) was one of the boaters in the gay pride boat, or another (presumably nearby) boater, or if he either shot or posted the video.
US troops accidentally raid sunflower oil factory in Bulgaria:
Fortunately, no-one was physically harmed.
Next they’ll be raiding museums for daring to have paintings of sunflowers. Can’t be too careful, those sunflowers are, um, well, er, whatever. And just where is this subversive Van Gogh fellow anyways? (Psssst! It’s peas that are dangerous. And horses, never overlook the evil equine empire.)
“Breaking: The chairperson of Ra’am, Mansour Abbas, signed a document which allows the chairperson of Yesh Atid, Yair Lapid, to inform the president he has succeeded in forming a government after agreements were reached.”
(The tweet is from the Jerusalem Post’s chief political correspondent.)
“Ra’am has just signed Lapid’s letter to the president notifying him that they will support the government. The first Arab-Israeli party ever to do so. But it’s not over yet. Yamina, which may be already disintegrating, and New Hope yet to sign. And hour and 3 quarters left.”
Oh, good grief.
“Per Haaretz journalist: MK/Joint List head Ayman Odeh told MK Mossi Raz on Twitter Spaces: ‘We won’t be an obstacle on the way to the establishment of a government’.”
Oh, good.
MSNBC is reporting that they’ve formed a government.
Arieh Kovler:
On Israel, Al Jazeera has a live blog (nothing as good as those of the Grauniad), and is reporting “Lapid’s Yesh Atid party has formed a coalition government, and he will announce this to President Reuven Rivlin later Wednesday, his spokesperson has said.” As I type, about 70 minutes until the deadline at 21:00 GMT.
Vice President Kamala Harris On Cover Of ‘Forbes,’ So Of Course Fox News Idiots Yelling WHABOUT IVANKA?
Offering beer, babysitting and barbershop outreach, the White House launches new initiatives to boost vaccinations.
Washington Post link
Lynna @ #488, that reminds me of the Elie Mystal piece I linked to and you mentioned @ #26!
“#BREAKING: Yair Lapid has informed President Reuven Rivlin that he has formed a government in which he will serve as prime minister alongside Naftali Bennett.
It is done.”
Anshel Pfeffer:
I just got an alert from the Grauniad that Lapid has now informed President Ravlin he can form a new government. Al Jazeera (see @487) confirms, “Lapid has notified Israeli President Reuven Rivlin that he has a coalition for a government, a party statement says.”
Israel-Palestine Conflict Exposes Schism Among Far-Right Activists in the US:
I’m speechless.
“The NFL says it will halt the use of ‘race-norming’ — which assumed Black players started out with lower cognitive functioning — in a $1 billion settlement of brain injury claims. The practice had made it harder for Black players to qualify.”
In Matt Gaetz probe, feds reportedly investigate obstruction, too
As if the Florida Republican weren’t already in trouble, investigators are also reportedly exploring whether Gaetz obstructed justice.
Florida’s DeSantis relies on federal relief funds he opposed
It wasn’t long ago when DeSantis called the American Relief Plan “Washington at its worst.” Now he’s patting himself on the back for putting the law to use
Oh, FFS.
For Arizona GOP, bonkers election ‘audit’ creates financial rewards
Arizona Republicans’ utterly bonkers election “audit” is a fiasco. It’s also a fundraising juggernaut, creating a twisted set of incentives.
Why George P. Bush’s new campaign in Texas stands out
George P. Bush knows that Trump has gone after his father, uncle, and mother, but he’s putting all of that aside to advance his personal ambitions.
CNN – “DOJ investigating Trump-appointed Postmaster General Louis DeJoy”:
NBC – “Federal prosecutors investigating Rep. Matt Gaetz for obstruction, law enforcement source says”: