Horrific crash in Los Angeles

A driver ran right through a red light at a busy city intersection at a speed estimated at possibly 60 mph or even higher, resulting in a fiery crash that killed six people. The video of the crash is disturbing. The driver is going so fast that you barely see the car before it enters the intersection and the crash occurs.

What astonishes me is how anyone could be driving so fast in a city. This did not look like mere distracted driving because of texting or speaking on the phone or other reasons. The car did not do anything to avoid a collision, such as swerve or brake, right up to the impact. It looked like the car was set on cruise control at that high speed which is implausible. To get up to such a high speed in city traffic, you have to be conscious of what you are doing. Even if she was on drugs, I cannot see why she would be going so fast. The only possibility I can think of is that she lost consciousness while her foot was on the accelerator. But surely you cannot press your foot down if you are unconscious? We will have to await an analysis of the blood that was taken from her in hospital.

Another astonishing thing is that her own injuries are described as ‘moderate’. How she even survived the. crash is astonishing. Her car was a Mercedes Benz and maybe they have very good protection for occupants.

Puzzles over the FBI search of Trump’s home

As is almost always the case with Trump, he exaggerates things. On Monday evening, he announced that his Mar-a-Lago home “is currently under siege, raided, and occupied by a large group of FBI agents”. It is not clear if this was, in actual fact, an FBI ‘raid’ in the usual sense. Those usually occur in the pre-dawn hours where armed agents break into a house, the surprise supposedly necessary to prevent the destruction of evidence. According to this report, what happened was far less dramatic.
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Alex Jones text circus goes on

During Alex Jones’s trial, it was revealed that his lawyers had inadvertently sent all the text messages on his cell phone over a two-year period to the lawyers of the people who were suing him. The texts revealed that Jones had lied while under oath during a deposition.

I wondered at that time what other damaging information might be on those texts, given Jones’s reckless nature. It seems that he had also sent nude photos of his wife to Trump advisor Roger Stone. It is not clear if his wife had consented to this act. If she did consent, then the story ends there. If she didn’t, she can take action against Jones depending on local laws since it is a crime in some states to disclose intimate photos of someone without that person’s consent. In 2021, his wife was arrested for domestic violence against him so the relationship seems fraught.

Jones is not happy about this latest development.

And now that his lawyer in these current legal issues appeared to have accidentally released two years’ worth of information from his phone, Alex thinks she is going to use it against him with his kids.

“I know the texts and information on his phone will be evidence of all the nefarious, truly conspiratorial things said between him and his employees in their plans to keep my kids from me,” Alex told Insider, per Yahoo! News. “It’s not even about my kids, it’s about control. Controlling me.”

It is a bit rich for Jones, the baseless conspiracy king, to complain that these texts will be used to create ‘nefarious’ conspiracy theories about him.

The congressional committee investigating the events of January 6, 2021 has requested the Jones text dossier as part of its work so now all this information will be in their hands as well. Jones’s ex-wife is also suing him over custody of the three children they had together and she may seek these texts as well to support her claim that he is unstable and should not have custody.

I suspect that it is only a matter of time before these texts leak to the media. I hope they do not publish the photos of Jones’s wife. They have no value other than to satisfy prurient interests.

Health care provisions in the IRA legislation

Health care in the US is a mess because of its dependence on an employer-based insurance model and the adamant opposition of the health care providers (insurance companies, hospitals, doctors, and other providers) against a national single payer system that would streamline the system and cut costs. Since all those interests lobby heavily against any changes and are willing to pour money into politicians’ campaigns, what results is a tinkering of the system in order to smooth out some of the roughest features. Obamacare was one such effort and the latest legislation that is due to be passed later this week known as the Inflation Reduction Act also makes some progress.
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Trump’s home raided

Donald Trump says that the FBI has raided his home in the Florida resort of Mar-a-Lago.

The FBI executed a search warrant around 6pm ET at Trump’s residence, which appears to have been related to an investigation into Trump unlawfully taking White House documents with him to Mar-a-Lago after his presidency, according to a source familiar with the matter.

“My beautiful home, Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, is currently under siege, raided, and occupied by a large group of FBI agents,” Trump said in a bitter statement lashing out at the raid, adding: “They even broke into my safe!”
…

In a furious statement, Trump compared the FBI raid to “Watergate” and blamed it on “Radical Left Democrats” who he said “desperately don’t want me to run for president in 2024 … who will do anything to stop Republicans and Conservatives in the upcoming midterms elections”.

Even at a time like this, Trump has to describe himself and his stuff grandiosely, referring to his ‘beautiful’ home.

I must confess that I did not expect this. I am puzzled as to what documents he would have thought he needed to remove.

Another bizarre report has photos that show Trump’s toilet with papers stuck in them, supporting allegations that his toilets used to get blocked because he would try and destroy official documents by tearing them up and flushing them down the toilet.

Remember our toilet scoop in Axios AM earlier this year? Maggie Haberman’s forthcoming book about former President Trump will report that White House residence staff periodically found wads of paper clogging a toilet — and believed the former president, a notorious destroyer of Oval Office documents, was the flusher.

Why it matters: Destroying records that should be preserved is potentially illegal.

That raises the question: Who goes around taking photos of Trump’s toilets? Is this part of their official duties? If so, how much do they get paid?

Can the Trump presidency get any weirder?

UPDATE: There is a livestream of the street in front of the gates of Mar-a-Lago where pro and anti-Trump people are hanging out.

The religious tax exemption boondoggle

The Family Research Council is a think tank that promotes right-wing causes that are consistent with a christian nationalist viewpoint. the investigative journalism outfit ProPublicareveals that it, along with other right-wing groups, has claimed to be a church to escape from paying its full share of taxes.

Forty members of Congress on Monday asked the IRS and the Treasury to investigate what the lawmakers termed an “alarming pattern” of right-wing advocacy groups registering with the tax agency as churches, a move that allows the organizations to shield themselves from some financial reporting requirements and makes it easier to avoid audits.

“FRC is one example of an alarming pattern in the last decade — right-wing advocacy groups self-identifying as ‘churches’ and applying for and receiving church status,” the representatives wrote, noting the organization’s policy work supporting the overturning of Roe v. Wade and its advocacy for legislation seeking to ban gender-affirming surgery.
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Film review: Phantom of the Opera (2004)

Just recently I watched this film version of the musical that has been one of the biggest musical stage sensations ever since it was first performed in 1986. I have not lived in places where big-budget musicals are staged and even if I did, I would likely not have gone to the theater to see them because the ticket costs would have been beyond my means. So I wait until they make a film version and usually watch it when they stream it.

Given how massively successful it was on stage, I was expecting a lot and was hugely disappointed in this film. It was, to be honest, quite boring and apart from a few songs that have become hits (the title song, Music of the Night and All I Ask of You), I found the whole thing underwhelming.

Not all successful stage musicals translate well to the screen. Other failures include Hair and Cats. Some notable successes were South Pacific, My Fair Lady, The Sound of Music, and Jesus Christ Superstar.

Why do some fail and others succeed? It is not due to skimping in the film version. Since this film production was lavish and elaborate (as the stage production was reputed to be) the difference may well be due to the fact that what people find spectacular when seen live on stage may seem just ordinary to film viewers who are used to special effects. It also depends on the strength of the music. The successes I listed each had many more memorable songs than this one.
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Huge job gains last month

The Bureau of Labor Statistics has released its monthly report and says that a whopping 538,000 jobs were added last month, about twice the expected number. They also revised upwards the jobs gains for the previous two months. This means that all the jobs that were lost during the pandemic have now been regained. The unemployment rate also edged down to 3.5%, another low number.

Since the GDP had declined for two straight quarters, there had been concerns that the economy was entering a period of recession. But this robust job growth contradicts that idea since in a traditional recession, people are thrown out of the labor market on a large scale. It also contradicts the idea that employers are finding it hard to get workers.
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Judith Durham (1943-2022)

The lead vocalist for The Seekers has died at the age of 79. This Australian group were massively popular in my youth and one of the reasons was the beautiful voice of Durham backed by the smooth harmonizing of Athol Guy on the double bass, Bruce Woodley on rhythm guitar, and Keith Potger on lead guitar.

It is hard to pick a favorite song from their oeuvre. But here is a video of them recording their first hit song I’ll Never Find Another You at the Abbey Road studios in London in 1964.

Potger played a 12-string guitar and that was another reason for their distinctive sound. The song Georgy Girl, the title track from the 1967 film, features the bouncy, upbeat sound of many of their hits.

Potger’s playing inspired me, just out of college, to buy a 12-string guitar in an effort to become even a half-way decent musician though, like all my other efforts, it failed.

Kyrsten Synema works for the venture capitalists

Thanks to the 50-50 balance in the US Senate, Democrats Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona have much greater leverage over legislation than they deserve and are thus able to force their priorities into legislation that needs to be passed. In the negotiations over the major legislation called the Inflation Reduction Act, what they demanded in return for their support is revealing about whose interests they really care about and it is clearly not the ordinary people of their respective states.

For Manchin it is the fossil fuel industry that he obeys, so he demanded, and got, Biden administration approval for a huge natural gas pipeline in his home state that has been blocked by courts.

For Sinema, it is the venture capitalists that she kowtows to.

In the statement, Sinema indicated that she won several changes to the tax provisions in the package, including removing the provision that would have tightened the carried interest loophole, which aimed to raise the taxes paid by hedge fund and private equity managers. That proposal would have raised $14 billion. She also suggested that she won changes to Democrats’ plans to pare back how companies can deduct depreciated assets from their taxes — a key demand by manufacturers that had lobbied Sinema over their concerns this week.

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