The Conversation -- January 1, 2025
Peter Baker of the New York Times: "To history, the Iran hostage crisis remains the emblem of a failed presidency, a grievous wound to American stature around the world and a proximate cause of the electoral tidal wave that swept Mr. Carter out of the White House after a single term. But to at least some of those who lived it, Mr. Carter remains a figure worthy of respect and admiration for his relentless determination to bring.... ”
Lost in Translation. President Carter visits David Letterman's show: ~~~
Ashleigh Fields of the Hill: "U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) announced a new low for border level crossings during the month of November...."
Andrew Solender of Axios: "C-SPAN cameras will once again be allowed to roll from inside the House chamber when lawmakers return in January to elect a speaker and certify the 2024 presidential election.... C-SPAN's special access during the protracted speaker election in 2023 gave the American public a rare glimpse into the House's usually hidden machinations. The high level of public engagement with that behind-the-scenes access led to a push to allow the independent news organization to be granted permanent permission to freely film the inside of the chamber. That push was unsuccessful, though then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy's (R-Calif.) did reportedly expand the access of the government-run cameras in the chamber.... The cameras are always allowed on Jan. 3 because speaker elections occur before a vote can take place to pass a House rules package explicitly barring them from the chamber. But House Speaker Mike Johnson's (R-La.) office also plans to allow the cameras on Jan. 6, when lawmakers meet to certify President-elect Trump's victory, a Johnson spokesperson told Axios. The cameras are typically only allowed in special circumstances such as State of the Union addresses."
Adam Liptak of the New York Times: "Judicial independence is under grave threat on several fronts, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote on Tuesday in an unusually urgent and somber year-end report on the state of the federal judiciary. 'Violence, intimidation and defiance directed at judges because of their work undermine our Republic, and are wholly unacceptable,' he wrote. The report, which arrived in the wake of questions about the court’s ethical standards and a drop in its approval ratings, said some criticism of judges’ work is healthy, warranted and welcome.... The number of hostile threats and communication directed at judges has more than tripled in the past decade, he wrote.... 'Public officials, too, regrettably have engaged in recent attempts to intimidate judges — for example, suggesting political bias in the judge’s adverse rulings without a credible basis for such allegations,' Chief Justice Roberts wrote.... 'In recent years, hostile foreign state actors have accelerated their efforts to attack all branches of our government, including the judiciary,' the chief justice wrote." The linked report comes via the Court, not the NYT.
David Klepper of the AP: "The United States has imposed sanctions on two groups linked to Iranian and Russian efforts to target American voters with disinformation ahead of this year’s election. Treasury officials announced the sanctions Tuesday, alleging that the two organizations sought to stoke divisions among Americans before November’s vote. U.S. intelligence has accused both governments of spreading disinformation, including fake videos, news stories and social media posts, designed to manipulate voters and undermine trust in U.S. elections.... Authorities said the Russian group, the Moscow-based Center for Geopolitical Expertise, oversaw the creation, financing and dissemination of disinformation about American candidates, including deepfake videos created using artificial intelligence.... The Iranian group, the Cognitive Design Production Center, is a subsidiary of Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, U.S. officials said, which the United States has designated a foreign terrorist organization. Officials say the center worked since at least 2023 to incite political tensions in the United States." ~~~
~~~ The Treasury Department's press release re: the sanctions is here, via the Department.
Carol Leonnig & Emmanuel Martinez of the Washington Post: "The causes of the mistakes in Butler, [Pennsylvania, that came close to killing Donald Trump and left one spectator dead and two injured] ... had been years in the making, a Post review found.... [It was] the Secret Service’s biggest security failure since the 1981 attempted assassination of President Ronald Reagan.... Three presidents and Congress have failed to fix the major vulnerabilities in the Secret Service that were identified a decade ago, the Post review has found. Instead, some problems have grown worse and left the agency weaker on key measures."
Alan Feuer of the New York Times: "A Virginia man was arrested this month with what federal prosecutors described in court papers on Monday as the largest cache of 'finished explosive devices' ever found in the F.B.I.’s history. The man, Brad Spafford, was taken into custody at a farm outside Norfolk on Dec. 17 on the basis of a single-count criminal complaint accusing him of illegally possessing an unregistered short-barrel rifle. When investigators searched his 20-acre property, in Isle of Wight County, they found in a detached garage more than 150 explosive devices — mostly pipe bombs, some of them labeled 'lethal,' prosecutors said. They found more pipe bombs in a bedroom inside Mr. Spafford’s house, loosely stuffed in a backpack that bore a patch shaped like a hand grenade and a logo reading '#NoLivesMatter,' prosecutors said.
"No Lives Matter is a nihilistic, far-right ideology that largely exists on encrypted online messaging apps like Telegram. The movement’s adherents promote 'targeted attacks, mass killings and criminal activity' and have 'historically encouraged members to engage in self-harm and animal abuse' according to a threat assessment released in August by the New Jersey Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness." A CBS News report is here.
D.C. Mayor Courts the Count of Mar-a-Lardo. Meagan Flynn & Martin Weil of the Washington Post: "D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) met with ... Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago on Monday, saying in a late-night statement that they discussed 'shared priorities' involving the federal workforce, buildings and park space during the 'great meeting.'... Bowser’s optimistic tenor appears part of a strategy to collaborate with Trump rather than provoke him in a city where over 90 percent of voters rejected him. Trump has repeatedly antagonized the District, threatening a federal takeover in rally speeches. And, combined with a GOP Congress, D.C. is expected to be particularly vulnerable to federal intervention in its affairs. Bowser will need Trump and the federal government’s buy-in on some of the District’s priorities, such as redeveloping federal land at the defunct RFK football stadium and underused federal buildings.”
Jerry Lambe of Law & Crime: "A federal judge in New York refused to allow Rudy Giuliani to hide a list of witnesses he plans to call at next month’s trial over whether he will have to turn over his multimillion dollar Florida condominium to the two Georgia election workers he defamed to the tune of $148 million. U.S. District Judge Lewis J. Liman said on Monday that Giuliani filed his witness list under seal on Dec. 23, despite the fact that the court had “neither directed nor permitted this list to be filed under seal.” The judge then ordered the clerk of the court to unseal the document on the court’s public docket. The failure to abide by the court’s processes and procedures in the latest in a long line of mishaps on Giuliani’s end in the contentious litigation over how he is going to pay the massive debt he owes to Ruby Freeman and her daughter Shaye Moss."
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California. Aaron Gregg of the Washington Post: "Insurance companies that pulled back from fire-prone areas of California in recent years will have to start covering those regions again if they want to stay in the state — but they can pass more costs on to customers. A regulation announced this week by the California Department of Insurance requires insurers to increase the writing of comprehensive policies in disaster-prone areas by 5 percent every two years up to a certain threshold. Currently, there is no requirement that insurers operate in high-risk areas at all, and some of the largest home insurers have cut their natural disaster coverage or hiked rates as climate risk grows. But in an effort to keep those firms from leaving California altogether, regulators included a concession that the industry has sought for years: the ability to include reinsurance costs in the rates that homeowners pay."
North Carolina. Sam Levin of the Guardian: "The governor of North Carolina has granted commutations to 15 people on death row on his final day in office, changing their sentences to life without the possibility of parole. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, announced his clemency action on New Year’s Eve, prompting praise from opponents of capital punishment, who have advocated for mass commutations to thwart executions. Cooper’s grants exclude dozens of people whose death sentences remain intact. Out of 136 people on the state’s death row, Cooper had received 89 clemency petitions, according to the governor’s office. His office said it considered the facts of the crime, input from prosecutors and victims, 'credible claims of innocence', the 'potential influence of race', prison conduct, a defendant’s age and intellectual capacity at the time of the offense and other case factors."
Puerto Rico. Luis Ferré-Sadurní, et al., of the New York Times: "A sweeping blackout hit Puerto Rico early Tuesday morning, plunging most of the island into darkness on New Year’s Eve.... Nearly 90 percent of Puerto Rico’s 1.4 million utility customers were without power on Tuesday morning in what was described as a 'systemwide' blackout, according to Luma Energy, a private Canadian American consortium that took control of the U.S. territory’s energy grid in 2021.... As of 11 p.m., power had been restored to 48 percent of customers, Luma said in an update late Tuesday."
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Germany. Christopher Schuetze of the New York Times: "... [German] Chancellor Olaf ... Scholz’s New Year’s Eve speech, which will probably be his last, comes amid unusual political turbulence in modern Germany and rising polarization in Europe. The tone of his address reflected the stakes for the country as it faces stalled economic growth, with the chancellor calling for 'solidarity' while acknowledging that life had become more expensive for many.... He also included an oblique reference to a non-German who has taken a strong, some might say baffling, interest in the country’s politics: Elon Musk.... 'Where Germany goes from here will be decided by you — the citizens,' Mr. Scholz said. 'It will not be decided by the owners of social media channels.... In our debates, one can be forgiven for sometimes thinking the more extreme an opinion is, the more attention it will garner. But it won’t be the person who yells loudest who will decide where Germany goes from here. Rather, that will be up to the vast majority of reasonable and decent people.'”
Russia/Ukraine, et al. Marc Santora, et al., of the New York Times: "The Russian energy giant Gazprom said early Wednesday that it had suspended the flow of natural gas to Europe through a pipeline that had carried Soviet and Russian gas through Ukraine for nearly six decades. The move came after Ukraine had said it would not renew an agreement that allowed for the transit of Russian gas through its territory. The agreement, signed in 2019, ended on Wednesday. Gazprom made its announcement in a post on the Telegram platform, saying that the gas had stopped flowing at 8 a.m. Moscow time on Wednesday.
"Europe has sharply reduced its consumption of Russian gas since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine nearly three years ago.... Austria, Hungary, Slovakia and several Balkan countries still rely on Russian gas delivered through Ukraine, but experts say gas in storage facilities and alternative supplies should prevent any immediate disruptions to electricity and heating in these countries."
The pipeline through Ukraine, built in the Soviet era to carry Siberian gas to European markets, was Russia’s last major gas corridor to Europe after the Nord Stream pipeline to Germany was sabotaged in 2022, possibly by Ukraine, and the closure of a route through Belarus to Poland.
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Reader Comments (5)
Apparent terrorist attack in New Orleans. Almost a carbon copy of the Christmas market attack in Germany. Ten killed, dozens injured. The driver of the vehicle is dead.
Had never heard of "No Lives Matter," but then from the description above it's not likely they're the kind of people I'd spend time with or invite over for dinner.
In my vast ignorance, hadn't heard of "rollin' coal" until yesterday either, when I heard the expression used to report an incident here in our county. The woman who was driving a Tesla (bought 15 years ago, long before she could have known better) was subjected to clouds of diesel smoke from an apparently angry motorist. Describing the incident, she used the term "rollin' coal."
I looked it up, and it's apparently a real thing.
"Rolling coal is a form of conspicuous air pollution, used for entertainment or as protest.[4]Some drivers intentionally trigger coal rolling in the presence of hybrid vehicles (a practice nicknamed "Prius repellent") to cause their drivers to lose sight of the road and inhale harmful air pollution. Coal rolling may also be directed at foreign vehicles, bicyclists, protesters, and pedestrians.[6][7][8][9] Practitioners cite "American freedom" and a stand against "rampant environmentalism" as reasons for coal rolling.[10][11]
—Wikipedia
I've seen the big pickups deliberately spew clouds of diesel but just attributed it to general asshole-ery. In my naïveté, I didn't know it was often so pointed and so political.
More people I'd not to invite over for dinner.
Good for the food bill, at least.
Paul Krugman
"The Plot to Poison Children’s Minds
Social media should be treated like alcohol. But money got in the way.
If social media can be bad for adults — it is, all too often, a force for bringing out the worst in its consumers — it can be really bad for minors. Both the Surgeon General and the American Psychological Association have issued advisories warning that heavy social media use by minors can cause serious mental health problems ranging from anxiety over cyberbullying to body image problems to eating disorders. As with gambling, the distinction between mental and physical effects is a false dichotomy; for teenagers in particular, excessive social media use can in effect rewire the brain.
After all, while most of us see social media addiction as a health crisis, for Meta it’s a business model."
Also I completely missed this gem, "Reuters reports:
A columnist for the conservative-leaning JoongAng Ilbo newspaper on Friday said Yoon's "YouTube addiction" had ruined his regime.
"If you are addicted to YouTube, you fall into a world of delusion dominated by conspiracy theories... President Yoon watched too much YouTube," the column said."
Seriously, YouTube may have helped inspired a coup? The effects of social media are crazy whether people come to it later in life or are steeped in it from childhood.
Benjamin Mullin, in The New York Times
"As news organizations gear up to cover President-elect Donald J. Trump’s return to the White House, The Atlantic is going big to cover the story.
The magazine, which in recent years has become a success in the realm of digital subscriptions, is preparing to hire roughly a dozen new reporters and editors to beef up its politics coverage, a spokeswoman for The Atlantic said.
'We believe in accountability journalism,' Jeffrey Goldberg, The Atlantic’s editor in chief, said in an interview. 'We want to cover the incoming administration rigorously. I want to build our team with the best political reporters and editors I can find.'
The hires are a sign of increased ambition at The Atlantic, which is controlled by Laurene Powell Jobs"
glad i renewed
Don’t remember much these days, but authors and titles still (mostly) stick.
This one came to mind when I saw that today's Sugar Bowl in New Orleans will be postponed until tomorrow.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sunday_(novel)