The Ledes

Sunday, October 6, 2024

New York Times: “Two boys have been arrested and charged in a street attack on David A. Paterson, a former governor of New York, and his stepson, the police said. One boy, who is 12, was charged with second-degree gang assault, and the other, a 13-year-old, was charged with third-degree gang assault, the police said on Saturday night. Both boys, accompanied by their parents, turned themselves in to the police, according to Sean Darcy, a spokesman for Mr. Paterson. A third person, also a minor, went to the police but was not charged in the Friday night attack in Manhattan, according to an internal police report.... Two other people, both adults, were involved in the attack, according to the police. They fled on foot and have not been caught, the police said. The former governor was not believed to have been targeted in the assault....”

Weather Channel: “Tropical Storm Milton, which formed in the Gulf of Mexico on Saturday, is expected to become a hurricane late Sunday or early Monday. The storm is expected to pose a major hurricane threat to Florida by midweek, just over a week after Helene pushed through the region. The National Hurricane Center says that 'there is an increasing risk of life-threatening storm surge and wind impacts for portions of the west coast of the Florida Peninsula beginning late Tuesday or Wednesday.'”

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Public Service Announcement

Washington Post: "Americans can again order free rapid coronavirus tests by mail, the Biden administration announced Thursday. People can request four free at-home tests per household through covidtests.gov. They will begin shipping Monday. The move comes ahead of an expected winter wave of coronavirus cases. The September revival of the free testing program is in line with the Biden administration’s strategy to respond to the coronavirus as part of a broader public health campaign to protect Americans from respiratory viruses, including influenza and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), that surge every fall and winter. But free tests were not mailed during the summer wave, which wastewater surveillance data shows is now receding."

Washington Post: “Comedy news outlet the Onion — reinvigorated by new ownership over this year — is bringing back its once-popular video parodies of cable news. But this time, there’s someone with real news anchor experience in the chair. When the first episodes appear online Monday, former WAMU and MSNBC host Joshua Johnson will be the face of the resurrected 'Onion News Network.' Playing an ONN anchor character named Dwight Richmond, Johnson says he’s bringing a real anchor’s sense of clarity — and self-importance — to the job. 'If ONN is anything, it’s a news organization that is so unaware of its own ridiculousness that it has the confidence of a serial killer,' says Johnson, 44.” ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: I'll be darned if I can figured out how to watch ONN. If anybody knows, do tell. Thanks.

Washington Post: “First came the surprising discovery that Earth’s atmosphere is leaking. But for roughly 60 years, the reason remained a mystery. Since the late 1960s, satellites over the poles detected an extremely fast flow of particles escaping into space — at speeds of 20 kilometers per second. Scientists suspected that gravity and the magnetic field alone could not fully explain the stream. There had to be another source creating this leaky faucet. It turns out the mysterious force is a previously undiscovered global electric field, a recent study found. The field is only about the strength of a watch battery — but it’s enough to thrust lighter ions from our atmosphere into space. It’s also generated unlike other electric fields on Earth. This newly discovered aspect of our planet provides clues about the evolution of our atmosphere, perhaps explaining why Earth is habitable. The electric field is 'an agent of chaos,' said Glyn Collinson, a NASA rocket scientist and lead author of the study. 'It undoes gravity.... Without it, Earth would be very different.'”

The New York Times lists Emmy winners. The AP has an overview story here.

New York Times: “Hvaldimir, a beluga whale who had captured the public’s imagination since 2019 after he was spotted wearing a harness seemingly designed for a camera, was found dead on Saturday in Norway, according to a nonprofit that worked to protect the whale.... [Hvaldimir] was wearing a harness that identified it as “equipment” from St. Petersburg. There also appeared to be a camera mount. Some wondered if the whale was on a Russian reconnaissance mission. Russia has never claimed ownership of the whale. If Hvaldimir was a spy, he was an exceptionally friendly one. The whale showed signs of domestication, and was comfortable around people. He remained in busier waters than are typical for belugas....” ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: Oh, Lord, do not let Bobby Kennedy, Jr., near that carcass. ~~~

     ~~~ AP Update: “There’s no evidence that a well-known beluga whale that lived off Norway’s coast and whose harness ignited speculation it was a Russian spy was shot to death last month as claimed by animal rights groups, Norwegian police said Monday.... Police said that the Norwegian Veterinary Institute conducted a preliminary autopsy on the animal, which was become known as 'Hvaldimir,' combining the Norwegian word for whale — hval — and the first name of Russian President Vladimir Putin. 'There are no findings from the autopsy that indicate that Hvaldimir has been shot,' police said in a statement.”

New York Times: Botswana's “President Mokgweetsi Masisi grinned as he lifted the diamond, a 2,492-carat stone that is the biggest diamond unearthed in more than a century and the second-largest ever found, according to the Vancouver-based mining operator Lucara, which owns the mine where it was found. This exceptional discovery could bring back the luster of the natural diamond mining industry, mining companies and experts say. The diamond was discovered in the same relatively small mine in northeastern Botswana that has produced several of the largest such stones in living memory. Such gemstones typically surface as a result of volcanic activity.... The diamond will likely sell in the range of tens of millions of dollars....”

Click on photo to enlarge.

~~~ Guardian: "On a distant reef 16,000km from Paris, surfer Gabriel Medina has given Olympic viewers one of the most memorable images of the Games yet, with an airborne celebration so well poised it looked too good to be true. The Brazilian took off a thundering wave at Teahupo’o in Tahiti on Monday, emerging from a barrelling section before soaring into the air and appearing to settle on a Pacific cloud, pointing to the sky with biblical serenity, his movements mirrored precisely by his surfboard. The shot was taken by Agence France-Presse photographer Jérôme Brouillet, who said “the conditions were perfect, the waves were taller than we expected”. He took the photo while aboard a boat nearby, capturing the surreal image with such accuracy that at first some suspected Photoshop or AI." 

Washington Post: “'Mary Cassatt at Work' is a large and mostly satisfying exhibition devoted to the career of the great American artist beloved for her sensitive and often sentimental views of family life. The 'at work' in the title of the Philadelphia Museum of Art show references the curators’ interest in Cassatt’s pioneering effort to establish herself as a professional artist within a male-dominated field. Throughout the show, which includes some 130 paintings, pastels, prints and drawings, the wall text and the art on view stresses Cassatt’s fixation on art as a career rather than a pastime.... Mary Cassatt at Work is on view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art through Sept. 8. philamuseum.org”

New York Times: “Bob Newhart, who died on Thursday at the age of 94, has been such a beloved giant of popular culture for so long that it’s easy to forget how unlikely it was that he became one of the founding fathers of stand-up comedy. Before basically inventing the hit stand-up special, with the 1960 Grammy-winning album 'The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart' — that doesn’t even count his pay-per-view event broadcast on Canadian television that some cite as the first filmed special — he was a soft-spoken accountant who had never done a set in a nightclub. That he made a classic with so little preparation is one of the great miracles in the history of comedy.... Bob Newhart holds up. In fact, it’s hard to think of a stand-up from that era who is a better argument against the commonplace idea that comedy does not age well.”

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Publisher & Editor: Marie Burns


Sunday
Jul142019

The Commentariat -- July 15, 2019

Late Morning/Afternoon Update:

Eileen Sullivan & Julie Davis of the New York Times: "President Trump on Monday accused Speaker Nancy Pelosi of using racist comments, escalating his attacks on four first-term Democratic congresswomen to the leader of the Democratic Party. Ms. Pelosi had criticized the president on Sunday for suggesting four lawmakers of color should 'go back' to their own countries, and she said that his slogan, '"Make America Great Again" has always been about making America white again.' Mr. Trump in turn accused her of racist remarks. 'So Speaker Pelosi said, "Make America white again." That's a very racist -- that's a very racist statement. I'm surprised she'd say that,' Mr. Trump said at an event celebrating American manufacturing at the White House." ...

... Racist Tweets Okay Because Many People Agree. Claudia Koerner of BuzzFeed News: "President Trump on Monday claimed his racist tweets attacking progressive congresswomen weren't racist, and he added that he's not concerned about backlash because 'many people' hold his same views.... 'Does it concern you that many people saw that tweet as racist and white nationalists are finding common cause with you on that point?' a reporter asked. 'It does not concern me because many people agree with me,' Trump said. 'And all I'm saying, they wanna leave, they can leave. It doesn't say leave forever. It says leave.'" ...

... Heather Caygle & John Bresnahan of Politico: "House Democrats are drafting a resolution to condemn ... Donald Trump's racist tweets against Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other high-profile freshman congresswomen, Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced Monday." ...

... Lindsey Changes His Mind, Embraces McCarthy's Tactics. Josh Israel of ThinkProgress: "Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) ... attacked Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) by name and others by association during a Fox News interview, claiming they were' Communists' who 'hate our own country.'... In the 1950s, Sen. Joe McCarthy (R-WI) and others famously accused American citizens of secretly being Communists -- often without evidence.... Last year, he angrily denounced the women who had come forward with allegations of sexual predation against Trump's then-Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh. 'This is as close to McCarthyism as I hope we get in my lifetime,' he charged." ...

... Inae Oh of Mother Jones: Trump "ratcheted up his [racist] attack on Monday by asserting that the congresswomen owe him an apology.... 'When will the Radical Left Congresswomen apologize to our Country, the people of Israel and even to the Office of the President, for the foul language they have used, and the terrible things they have said. So many people are angry at them & their horrible & disgusting actions!'" ...

... Steve M.: "If Trump is doing this now, 16 months before the election, how inflammatory will his rhetoric be by the fall of 2020? He thinks he's bulletproof. He thinks he's an expert on winning elections, based on a sample set of one, and is certain that this (rather than Russian interference of James Comey's incompetence) is what worked for him." ...

... Jon Allsop of the Columbia Journalism Review runs down how the MSM avoided calling Trump's tweets racist.

The Epstein Treasures. Tom Winter & David Li of NBC News: "Agents unearthed a 'pile of cash, diamonds' and 'a passport from a foreign country' in a safe belonging to Jeffrey Epstein, prosecutors told a judge Monday during a bail hearing for the wealthy financier and accused sex trafficker. Federal authorities are arguing for Epstein to be denied bail and to remain behind bars until he's tried for sex-crime charges in acts allegedly involving underage girls.... 'The passport was issued in the name of a foreign country, it was issued in the 1980s, it is expired, it shows a picture of Jeffrey Epstein, and another name,' [the prosecutor] said, adding the passport showed Epstein's residence as Saudi Arabia." The court will rule Thursday on the bail plea.

Marisa Fernandez of Axios: "Larry R. Felix, the director of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing from 2006 to 2015, said the probability of releasing a concept design [for the Harriet Tubman $20 bill] in 2020 had always been low due to security and fraud risks, despite then-Treasury Secretary Jack Lew's desire for an unveiling that coincided with the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment. Felix told the [Washington] Post: 'Those announcements were not grounded in reality. The U.S. had not at the time acquired the security features to redesign and protect the notes.'... A former Obama appointee told the Post that the new $20 bill had always been scheduled for release toward 2030, consistent with the Trump administration's claims."

Hans Nichols, et al., of NBC News: "... Donald Trump has told aides and allies that he is considering removing Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross after a stinging Supreme Court defeat on adding a citizenship question to the census, according to multiple people familiar with the conversations.While Trump has previously expressed frustration with Ross, 81, in particular over failed trade negotiations, Ross' long personal relationship with the president has allowed him to keep his job." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: If Trump were firing Ross because he lied to Congress, the move would be justified. But Trump is Trump, so he will fire Ross for not lying well enough.

BBC: "Computer pioneer and codebreaker Alan Turing will feature on the new design of the Bank of England's £50 note. He is celebrated for his code-cracking work that proved vital to the Allies in World War Two. The £50 note will be the last of the Bank of England collection to switch from paper to polymer when it enters circulation by the end of 2021. The note was once described as the 'currency of corrupt elites' and is the least used in daily transactions." Mrs. McC: Maybe the £50 will become more popular in a couple of years.

Morgan Chalfant, et al., of the Hill: "The Trump administration is moving to end asylum protections for most Central American migrants, the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security announced Monday. According to text of the rule set to publish in the Federal Register on Tuesday, asylum seekers who pass through another country before reaching the United States will be ineligible for asylum when they reach the southern border.... The Departments of Homeland Security and Justice announced the Interim Final Rule (IFR) in a joint statement Monday. Under the rule, those who have been the victims of trafficking are granted exceptions. The rule also allows exceptions for migrants passing through countries that have not signed major international refugee treaties and for migrants who have been denied asylum in the countries they traveled through.... 'The Trump administration is trying to unilaterally reverse our country's legal and moral commitment to protect those fleeing danger,' Lee Gelernt, the deputy director of the ACLU's Immigrants' Rights Project said in a statement. [']This new rule is patently unlawful and we will sue swiftly.'" ...

     ... The AP story, by Colleen Long, is here.

~~~~~~~~~~

What? Yet Another Trump Bluff. Bobby Allyn of NPR: "President Trump's threatened roundup of undocumented immigrant families this weekend that sent migrants in many communities on edge showed few signs of materializing on Sunday, the second time rumors of a large-scale immigration enforcement operation failed to come to fruition. Instead, in the cities where rumors of mass raids swirled, many immigrants stayed inside their homes, as jitters turned typically vibrant migrant markets and commercial corridors eerily quiet. Immigrant advocates across the country, meanwhile, took to the streets to demonstrate in protest of the promised roundup.... Before Sunday, there were weekend reports of attempted arrests by ICE in New York, New Jersey and Chicago, where The New York Times reported (also linked next) that a mother and her daughters were apprehended but the family was immediately released. But those actions appeared to be part of routine enforcement activity, not connected to a massive raid operation." ...

... Caitlin Dickerson, et al., of the New York Times: "Only a handful of arrests appeared to take place, and they were reported in just a few cities. That was much different than the nationwide show of force that had originally been planned, in which Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were expected to fan out in unison on Sunday morning across immigrant communities in major cities. But the authorities said that more arrests would follow through the week. The plans for the operation were changed at the last minute because of news reports that had tipped off immigrant communities about what to expect, according to several current and former Department of Homeland Security officials. Instead of a large simultaneous sweep, the authorities created a secondary plan for a smaller and more diffuse scale of apprehensions to roll out over roughly a week." Mrs. McC: It wasn't just "news report that ... tipped off immigrant communities"; it also was Donald Trump.

Bianca Quilantan & David Cohen of Politico: "... Donald Trump on Sunday called out progressive Democratic congresswomen in xenophobic terms, saying: 'Why don't they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.'... While the president didn't mention them by name in his tweets, it appears he was attacking Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), a native of Somalia, and possibly Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), whose family is Palestinian [Mrs. McC: Tlaib was born in Detroit]. Both have been outspoken when it comes to Trump's administration and the conditions of migrant detention centers on the border. 'So interesting to see "Progressive" Democrat Congresswomen, who originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world (if they even have a functioning government at all), now loudly and viciously telling the people of the United States, the greatest and most powerful Nation on earth, how our government is to be run,' the president wrote on Twitter." (Also linked yesterday.) ...

... Katie Rogers & Nicholas Fandos of the New York Times: "Broadly, Mr. Trump's attack was meant for members of the so-called squad, a group engaged in an existential and generational war of words with Ms. Pelosi: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Ayanna S. Pressley of Massachusetts.... Only one of the women, Ms. Omar, who is from Somalia, was born outside the United States. Ms. Ocasio-Cortez was born in the Bronx to parents of Puerto Rican descent. Ms. Pressley, who is black, was born in Cincinnati and raised in Chicago. And Ms. Tlaib was born in Detroit to Palestinian immigrants.... Mr. Trump's attack came after days of Fox News coverage that centered on Ms. Omar.... 'Like some of my Democratic colleagues, I'm young, from an immigrant family, also very critical of Trump,'[Rep. Brendan] Boyle [D-Pa.] wrote on Twitter. 'Funny thing though, he never tells me to "go back where I come from." Hmm I wonder why?'... He is white." (Also linked yesterday.) ...

     ... Annals of "Journalism," Ctd. So this is a sentence that Rogers & Fandos wrote: "His message was immediately seized upon by Democrats, who called it a racist trope." Yastreblyansky was not favorably impressed. AND Oliver Willis points out, "here's the ny times cleaning up trump's racism. his racism isn't racist. its just that democrats *called it* racism." AND Scott Lemieux in LG&$: "I wonder how racist Trump would have to be for Times reporter to just call the statement racist...."

... Matt Stieb of New York, on the other hand, does not mince words: "President Trump launched a white nationalist-themed attack on Sunday against four Democratic congresswomen of color who have been outspoken critics of his administration's war on immigrants and attention-earning proponents of more progressive government policies. The attack deployed one of the most obnoxious clichés of racist and xenophobic hate speech: telling an immigrant or descendent of immigrants to 'go back to your country.'" ...

     ... Justin Wise of the Hill: "Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Sunday condemned President Trump for telling a group of progressive lawmakers to go back to where they came from, saying the 'xenophobic' comments reaffirmed that Trump's plan is about 'making America white again.'" (Also linked yesterday.) ...

... Jonathan Lemire & Calvin Woodward of the AP: "Following a familiar script, Republicans remained largely silent after Trump's morning broadsides against the four women. But the president's nativist tweets caused Democrats to set aside their internal rifts to rise up in a united chorus against the president.... The attacks may have been meant to widen the divides within the Democrat caucus.... Instead, the president's tweets, which evoked the trope of telling black people to go back to Africa, brought Democrats together.... Trump appeared unbowed Sunday night when he returned [from golfing at his Virginia club] to Twitter to say it was 'so sad' to see Democrats sticking up for the women. 'If the Democrat Party wants to continue to condone such disgraceful behavior,' he tweeted, 'then we look even more forward to seeing you at the ballot box in 2020!'" ...

... Charles Blow of the New York Times: "On Sunday morning, the same day that the Trump administration earlier announced it would conduct raids to round up undocumented immigrants, Trump weighed in again on the conflict between four female freshmen congresswomen and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, tweeting a series of three of the most racist tweets he could produce[.]... The country Ocasio-Cortez, Tlaib and Pressley 'originally came from' is this one. They were born in America. Omar was a refugee from Somalia. But, this is the most important fact: They aren't white, and they are women. They are 'other' in the framing of the white nationalists.... We are watching a very dark chapter in this nation's history unfold in real time. We are watching as a president returns naked racism to the White House. And we are watching as fellow citizens -- possibly a third of them -- reveal to us their open animus for us through their continued support of him." ...

... Goldie Taylor of the Daily Beast: “Trump's repugnant rebuke of American values did not come out of thin air. It unfolded days after 'The Squad' travelled with a delegation of congressional democrats to tour detention facilities in border states. What they found was deplorable. Reports of rampant abuse and neglect filled the airwaves, leading Trump to again dismiss accurate coverage as 'fake news.' Rather than focus on improving basic conditions and getting to work on bi-partisan, comprehensive reforms, the president basically said if immigrants didn't like how they were being treated, they should stay in their own country.... His words Sunday were not racially 'charged,' 'fueled,' or 'tinged.' They were unapologetically racist. And, if you support him, so are you." ...

... Peter Baker of the New York Times reprises some of Trump's greatest racist hits. (Of course he misses quite a few since he's writing a newspaper story, not a book.) "His attack on the Democratic congresswomen came on the same day his administration was threatening mass roundups of immigrants living in the country illegally. And it came just days after he hosted some of the most incendiary right-wing voices on the internet at the White House and vowed to find another way to count citizens separately from noncitizens despite a Supreme Court ruling that blocked him from adding a question to the once-a-decade census.... His assumption that the House Democrats must have been born in another country -- or that they did not belong here if they were -- fits an us-against-them political strategy that has been at the heart of Mr. Trump's presidency from the start.... 'Trump has not only always been a racist, but anyone around him who denies it, is lying,' [Jack] O'Donnell..., the former president of Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City..., said on Sunday. 'Donald Trump makes racist comments all the time....' Mr. Trump, he said, regularly trafficked in racial stereotypes.... 'White people are Americans to Trump; everyone else is from somewhere else,' Mr. O'Donnell said. 'He simply denies the reality of how we all immigrated to the United States.'" ...

... Annals of "Journalism," Ha Ha Ha. Tommy Christopher of Mediaite: "The hosts of Fox & Friends Sunday were greatly amused by Trump's tweets, reading them aloud and laughing audibly." Includes video.

Who Let the Trump Organization off the Hook? Mrs. McCrabbie: Josh Marshall of TPM is very good at conspiracy theories. The difference between his theories & those floated by the wingnut crowd is that Marshall's (a) make sense, (b) are based on bits & pieces of suggestive evidence, so (c) sometimes prove to be true. In a post published Sunday, Marshall provides evidence for a conspiracy theory that immediately came to my mind when I read that the Southern District of New York had decided not to bring charges (story also linked Saturday) against the Trump Organization for obvious campaign finance violations: that Big Bill Barr put his big fat thumb on the scale. Marshall runs a timeline & finds that right before Barr was confirmed, SDNY investigators requested interviews with Trump Org officials, but then they never conducted the interviews, according to the CNN report. Marshall writes, "... Bill Barr was sworn in about exactly five months ago -- which seems to be roughly the time of the last contact between the US Attorney's office and executives of the Trump Organization." So now, apparently without doing any investigating, they're dropping the case. Coincidence? Uh, no. Congress should investigate.

Harry Howard of the Daily Mail: "Britain's former ambassador to the U.S. vouched for the credibility of Christopher Steele, the author of the explosive dossier detailing Donald Trump's alleged ties to Russia. Sir Kim Darroch, who quit his post after leaked diplomatic cables revealed his outspoken criticism of President Trump's administration and personality, backed the former MI6 spy when asked by a U.S. official." Mrs. McC: Last week, Trump read (and retweeted) a tweet from Lindsey Graham which Graham -- who was friendly with Darroch -- characterized as a compliment: "Ambassador @KimDarroch always understood the strength of President Trump and referred to him as the 'Terminator' who is indestructible and will most likely be reelected." (What Darroch actually wrote was, "Trump may emerge from the flames, battered but intact, like Schwarzenegger in the final scene of the Terminator.") This supposed "compliment" caused Trump to tack back & wish Darroch well. I guess he'll take that back now & start blaming Darroch for the "Russia hoax."

What's Wrong with These People? Oh. They're Sociopaths. Kevin Fitzpatrick of Vanity Fair: "Speaking with Sunday Morning Futures host Maria Bartiromo on Fox Business Network, Senator Lindsey Graham vehemently disagreed with humanitarian concerns raised by Vice President Mike Pence's recent tour of a migrant detention facility in Texas. 'I don't care if they have to stay in these facilities for 400 days, we're not going to let those men go that I saw,' said Graham. 'It would be dangerous.' Graham was referring to now-viral footage of Pence's tour, which saw the vice president blithely overlooking a fenced room filled to capacity with migrants protesting unsanitary conditions. Pence subsequently claimed over Twitter that the men 'were in a temporary holding area because Democrats in Congress have refused to fund additional bed space,' and derided CNN for allegedly 'ignoring the excellent care being provided to families and children' in a separate facility.... Donald Trump likewise tweeted on Sunday that 'Friday's tour showed vividly, to politicians and the media, how well run and clean the children's detention centers are. Great reviews!'... Graham, meanwhile, emphasized that the facility was 'overwhelmed,' and claimed 'all of [the detained migrants] broke our law.'" (Also linked yesterday.) ...

... Sophie Weiner of Splinter: "That's right: Graham is casually implying that he can somehow tell the men he saw crammed into a cage were 'dangerous,' based on nothing other than the fact that they crossed the border, a misdemeanor on par with failing to appear in court or public intoxication." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Apparently there are several verses in the Winger Bible that teach as an article of faith that Republicans can "look into a person's eyes" & judge his character. So Dubya tells us he could see Putin's soul; Acting Border Patrol chief Mark Morgan claims he can look into an immigrant child's eyes and tell he will grow up to be an MS-13 gangster; and now Loathsome Lindsey says he can tell that men who have been locked in overcrowded cages for more than 40 days with no place to lie down & sleep are "dangerous." You know, if you locked me up cheek-by-jowl with a few hundred people who, like me, hadn't showered in more than a month or slept in a bed or brushed their teeth or were otherwise allowed any normal creature comforts, I might be "dangerous," too.

Maggie Miller of the Hill: "Lawmakers are zeroing in on the potential for foreign cyber attacks to take down the U.S. electric grid, with members in both chambers pushing hearings and a flurry of bills to address the issue. Congressional interest in the issue is growing following reports that Iran has stepped up its cyber attacks against U.S. critical infrastructure, and as Trump administration officials cite threats from Russia and China against the electric grid." ...

... Spencer Kimball of CNBC: "Con Edison apologized on Sunday for a blackout that left 72,000 customers without power for hours in large parts of Manhattan, but the root cause of the outage remained unclear. The power failure began after a 'significant electrical transmission disturbance' impacted multiple circuits,' according to a company statement. Con Edison said the blackout was not due to a power overload.... Mayor Bill de Blasio said Sunday that the blackout was not caused by an act of terrorism. 'This was not a cyber attack and this was not an act of physical terrorism,' de Blasio said[.]" ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Until further notice, I'll accept the non-explanation, BUT Amy Plitt of Curbed: "In one of those bizarre coincidences that's almost too strange to be true, the blackout that affected a large swath of Midtown Manhattan on Saturday happened on the 42nd anniversary of the massive citywide power outage of 1977.

Ian Millhiser of ThinkProgress: "A federal appeals court struck down Trump administration regulations on Friday that allow virtually any employer to exempt itself from federal rules requiring employer health plans to cover birth control. This decision is only limited cause for celebration among public health advocates. Judge Patty Shwartz, the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit judge who wrote the opinion, is an Obama appointee. The two judges who joined her opinion in Pennsylvania v. President, United States of America are Clinton appointees. The Supreme Court, meanwhile, is dominated by Republicans.... Friday's victory for contraceptive care is likely to be temporary. Nevertheless, there are aspects of this case that may trouble even some Republican judges. As Judge Shwartz explains, the Trump administration bypassed the ordinary procedures agencies must nearly always follow when writing new regulations. It also wrote those regulations far more expansively than even a broad reading of federal 'religious liberty' laws could permit."

Presidential Race 2020

Will Bunch of the Philadelphia Inquirer: "She had them at 'hello.' No, seriously. After applauding performatively for anti-Trump red meat tossed out by New York Sen. Kirsten Gillbrand ... and former Cabinet secretary Julian Castro..., more than 3,000 politically left activists at the Convention Center went wild the instant that Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren took her first stride onto the Netroots Nation stage.... With her slam-dunk performance Saturday, Elizabeth Warren became president ... of the American progressive movement, anyway.... The current frontrunner, former Vice President Joe Biden, whose national headquarters is just a few blocks away in Center City, chose instead to campaign in New Hampshire rather than face what might have been tough questioning of his more moderate stances." (Also linked yesterday.)

Ed Kilgore of New York breaks down the "electability" factors that pundits attribute to Joe Biden & finds them all flawed.

Beyond the Beltway

Patricia Mazzei of the New York Times: "A political crisis engulfed Puerto Rico over the weekend, prompting the departure of two senior members of the government and threatening Gov. Ricardo A. Rosselló, who found himself increasingly isolated in office and no longer supported by leaders of his own [New Progressive] party. Mr. Rosselló's administration was rocked by the publication of a trove of derisive messages sent by the governor and some of his cabinet members and top aides in a private chat on the messaging app Telegram. The messages mocked political foes and allies alike, often with profanity. On Saturday, the governor tried to contain the fallout of the rapidly unfolding scandal by announcing that his chief financial officer and secretary of state had stepped down over their participation in the chat. But the high-profile exits proved insufficient to quell the widespread furor on the island that mushroomed in the hours after 889 pages of Telegram messages were published by Puerto Rico's Center for Investigative Journalism. Protesters gathered outside the governor's mansion, La Fortaleza, in San Juan late into the night on Saturday and demanded Mr. Rosselló's resignation, less than 18 months before the end of his term."

News Lede

CNN: "Communities in Louisiana are taking the first steps toward recovery after Hurricane Barry made landfall in the state as a Category 1 storm Saturday before being downgraded to a tropical storm.... Barry -- which weakened to a tropical depression Sunday as it moved slowly north across Louisiana and into Arkansas -- had put Louisiana on high alert for much of the weekend with a threat of epic flooding. Much of that threat failed to materialize. New Orleans, in particular, did not see the catastrophic storm surges that had been feared.... But the storm did dump significant rain on already inundated parishes, causing flooding, and authorities still warn that more water could be on the way.... Barry is forecast to produce an additional 3 to 6 inches of rain from the lower Mississippi River Valley through portions of Arkansas, west Tennessee and northwest Mississippi, said CNN meteorologist Michael Guy. Some areas in this region could see storm totals upward of 15 inches by the time the remnants of Barry push into the Ohio Valley by midweek."

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Saturday
Jul132019

The Commentariat -- July 14, 2019

Late Morning/Afternoon Update:

What's Wrong with These People? Oh. They're Sociopaths. Kevin Fitzpatrick of Vanity Fair: "Speaking with Sunday Morning Futures host Maria Bartiromo on Fox Business Network, Senator Lindsey Graham vehemently disagreed with humanitarian concerns raised by Vice President Mike Pence's recent tour of a migrant detention facility in Texas. 'I don't care if they have to stay in these facilities for 400 days, we're not going to let those men go that I saw,' said Graham. 'It would be dangerous.' Graham was referring to now-viral footage of Pence's tour, which saw the vice president blithely overlooking a fenced room filled to capacity with migrants protesting unsanitary conditions. Pence subsequently claimed over Twitter that the men 'were in a temporary holding area because Democrats in Congress have refused to fund additional bed space,' and derided CNN for allegedly 'ignoring the excellent care being provided to families and children' in a separate facility.... Donald Trump likewise tweeted on Sunday that 'Friday's tour showed vividly, to politicians and the media, how well run and clean the children's detention centers are. Great reviews!'... Graham, meanwhile, emphasized that the facility was 'overwhelmed,' and claimed 'all of [the detained migrants] broke our law.'"

Will Bunch of the Philadelphia Inquirer: "She had them at 'hello.' No, seriously. After applauding performatively for anti-Trump red meat tossed out by New York Sen. Kirsten Gillbrand ... and former Cabinet secretary Julian Castro..., more than 3,000 politically left activists at the Convention Center went wild the instant that Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren took her first stride onto the Netroots Nation stage.... With her slam-dunk performance Saturday, Elizabeth Warren became president ... of the American progressive movement, anyway.... The current frontrunner ... Joe Biden, whose national headquarters is just a few blocks away in Center City, chose instead to campaign in New Hampshire rather than face what might have been tough questioning of his more moderate stances."

Bianca Quilantan & David Cohen of Politico: "... Donald Trump on Sunday called out progressive Democratic congresswomen in xenophobic terms, saying: 'Why don't they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.'... While the president didn't mention them by name in his tweets, it appears he was attacking Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), a native of Somalia, and possibly Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), whose family is Palestinian. Both have been outspoken when it comes to Trump's administration and the conditions of migrant detention centers on the border. 'So interesting to see "Progressive" Democrat Congresswomen, who originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world (if they even have a functioning government at all), now loudly and viciously telling the people of the United States, the greatest and most powerful Nation on earth, how our government is to be run,' the president wrote on Twitter."

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Obviously Trump is unaware that telling "us" how "our" government is to be run is part of these Congresswomen's job description. BTW, they are "us," something else Trump can't bear to face. ...

     ... Update. Justin Wise of the Hill: "Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Sunday condemned President Trump for telling a group of progressive lawmakers to go back to where they came from, saying the 'xenophobic' comments reaffirmed that Trump's plan is about 'making America white again.'" ...

... Katie Rogers & Nicholas Fandos of the New York Times: "Broadly, Mr. Trump's attack was meant for members of the so-called squad, a group engaged in an existential and generational war of words with Ms. Pelosi: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Ayanna S. Pressley of Massachusetts.... Only one of the women, Ms. Omar, who is from Somalia, was born outside the United States. Ms. Ocasio-Cortez was born in the Bronx to parents of Puerto Rican descent. Ms. Pressley, who is black, was born in Cincinnati and raised in Chicago. And Ms. Tlaib was born in Detroit to Palestinian immigrants.... Mr. Trump's attack came after days of Fox News coverage that centered on Ms. Omar.... 'Like some of my Democratic colleagues, I’m young, from an immigrant family, also very critical of Trump,'[Rep. Brendan] Boyle [D-Pa.] wrote on Twitter. 'Funny thing though, he never tells me to "go back where I come from." Hmm I wonder why?'... He is white."

During yesterday's Midtown blackout, Mayor Bill De Blasio was MIA in Iowa, but after the power outage forced the show "Come from Away" to close, the cast took to the streets to keep the peace:

Forrest M. sent this along to cheer us up, but I'm afraid many of you will be ever so upset at the implied disrespect to the Addams family.~~~~~~~~~~

Tom Hilton in No More Mister Nice Blog: "We're in a situation that is completely untenable, that cannot be allowed to continue, but that absolutely will continue until (at least) January 20, 2021. Trump has to be removed; Trump will not be removed.... But the point isn't that the situation is shitty (it is) and isn't going to change for a while (it won't). The point is the toll this shitty situation is taking. And maybe it would be a good idea to recognize that toll when we interact with each other. To understand that we're all stressed and anxious right now;... To treat each other with kindness and patience, and to refuse to let small differences escalate into acrimony. Because we're all in this together unless we aren't. And if we aren't, the enemy will go on winning long after January 2021." --s

Trevor Hughes of USA Today: "Fear and anxiety spread through immigrant communities nationwide over anticipated federal raids aimed at detaining and deporting thousands of people accused of remaining illegally within the United States. Immigration reform advocates said that communities around Atlanta, Baltimore, Chicago, Denver, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, New York and San Francisco were being targeted by raids expected to start Sunday and last through at least Thursday.... Many large U.S. cities, including Los Angeles, Denver, Seattle and Miami, have declared themselves 'sanctuaries' for undocumented immigrants, and adopted policies barring local government workers from cooperating with federal immigration authorities.... In Denver, Mayor Michael Hancock said city police officers would avoid helping ICE agents but said city human service workers were on alert to assist any minor children left behind if their parents are arrested.... San Francisco Mayor London Breed reiterated that the city's police would not cooperate with any ICE operations and that the city was gearing up to protect its immigrants." ...

... AP: "Several thousand protesters have marched through downtown Chicago to protest the Trump administration's immigration policies, including planned sweeps in several American cities, including Chicago, over the weekend.... Police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi says the protest was peaceful and that there were no arrests. He says there were an estimated 5,000 protesters at its peak." ...

Daily Kos: "On Friday evening, The Wall Street Journal reported that agents had made their first foray to homes in New York City, but when agents arrived in Harlem and Brooklyn without warrants, the residences they visited stayed resolutely shut. So the agents retreated. For now." (Link is to the WSJ story.)

... Andy Borowitz of the New Yorker (satire): "Donald Trump was reportedly 'hopping mad' on Saturday after a surprise ICE raid left his Mar-a-Lago retreat with no employees.... A spokesman for Mar-a-Lago called the situation 'dire,' warning that the resort had lost almost as many staff members as the White House."

Brian Contreras & Paige Cornwell of the Seattle Times: "Tacoma[, Washington,] police said they shot at an armed man early Saturday who was attacking the Northwest Detention Center, the holding facility in Tacoma for federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The man died at the scene.... Police said [Willem] Van Spronsen tossed lit objects at vehicles and buildings, causing one car fire, and unsuccessfully tried to ignite a propane tank.... Four responding officers all opened fire and then took cover, uninjured. After medical aid arrived, officers found Van Spronsen dead. He had multiple gunshot wounds, according to the Pierce County Medical Examiner's office."

Rachel Frazen of the Hill: "Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said Saturday that she will create a commission to investigate 'crimes committed by the United States against immigrants' if she is elected president." Mrs. McC: This is a good idea. Maybe McConnell will propose it to Pelosi (ha ha), and we can get a truth commission started right away.

Jonathan Blitzer of the New Yorker: "Early next week, according to a D.H.S. official, the Trump Administration is expected to announce a major immigration deal ... with Guatemala.... According to a draft of the agreement obtained by The New Yorker, asylum seekers from any country who either show up at U.S. ports of entry or are apprehended while crossing between ports of entry could be sent to seek asylum in Guatemala instead.... Under this new arrangement, most of these migrants will no longer have a chance to make an asylum claim in the U.S. at all.... The biggest, and most unsettling, question raised by the agreement is how Guatemala could possibly cope with such enormous demands. More people are leaving Guatemala now than any other country in the northern triangle of Central America. Rampant poverty, entrenched political corruption, urban crime, and the effects of climate change have made large swaths of the country virtually uninhabitable." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: This plan, then, is insane. According to someone who has read the agreement, it "reads like it was drafted by someone's intern." My guess: the "intern" is named Stephen Miller.

Daniel Politi of Slate: "... Donald Trump is getting an early start in bashing former special counsel Robert Mueller as he came up with a deal to testify in the House Intelligence and Judiciary Committees on July 24.... Trump went back to a favorite talking point Saturday, accusing Mueller and his team of carrying out 'illegal deletion' of text messages that were exchanged between former FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page.... Needless to say, the president has not presented any evidence to back up his explosive claim.... Trump also retweeted several [nutty] messages from Judicial Watch...." ...

... Mrs. McCrabbie: Trump didn't "present any evidence" because of course there isn't any. As Tal Axelrod of the Hill reminds us, "Strzok was swiftly removed from Mueller's team after the texts were unearthed, and a Justice Department investigation found that while the messages did go missing for a time, their absence was attributed to a technical error rather than any malicious intent." But Trump doesn't need to worry much about the hearing, IMO. Mueller will be dry as burnt toast, his interrogators will be silly, and Nancy Pelosi will continue to quash impeachment proceedings. (The only hope on Pelosi is that she's waiting to open impeachment hearings until after (and if) the courts force Trump officials & toadies to testify before Congress. That would make sense.)

Molly Beck & Mary Spicuzza of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: "... Donald Trump raised $3 million in Wisconsin cash on Friday touring Milwaukee to promote a new trade deal.... But ... the president downplayed the suffocation felt by Wisconsin dairy farmers because of Trump's own tariffs.... Trump told a crowd at Derco Aerospace on Milwaukee's northwest side, '... We're over the hump. We're doing really well.' Trump said the new trade agreement would help Wisconsin dairy farmers by providing access to Canada's market, painting an optimistic picture of the future of the Wisconsin industry -- which is losing two dairy farms a day. Nearly 700 Wisconsin farms were shut down last year by owners used to enduring a brutal workload and hard times, calling it quits in a downturn now headed into its fifth year. In 2018, for the third straight year, Wisconsin led the nation in farm bankruptcies. If he's saying farmers are over the hump, he would be badly mistaken, said Darin Von Ruden..., dairy farmer ... and president of the Wisconsin Farmers Union."

BBC News: "Donald Trump abandoned the Iran nuclear deal to spite Barack Obama, according to a leaked memo written by the UK's former ambassador to the US. Sir Kim Darroch described the move as an act of 'diplomatic vandalism', according to the Mail on Sunday.... The paper reports that Sir Kim wrote a memo to [Boris] Johnson, saying: 'The outcome illustrated the paradox of this White House: you got exceptional access, seeing everyone short of the president; but on the substance, the administration is set upon an act of diplomatic vandalism, seemingly for ideological and personality reasons - it was Obama's deal. Moreover, they can't articulate any "day-after" strategy; and contacts with State Department this morning suggest no sort of plan for reaching out to partners and allies, whether in Europe or the region.'"

** Bill Browning of LGBTQ Nation: "Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has announced a new commission that he said will decide which human rights are more important to U.S. foreign policy.... Every member ... is an anti-LGBTQ activist.... Pompeo said that the commission would conduct 'one of the most profound reexaminations of the unalienable rights in the world since the 1948 Universal Declaration' of Human Rights. The group will focus, he said, on 'natural law.' Natural law is a philosophical thought that says that certain rights are inherent to being human, usually endowed by God, insisting that universal moral truths can be arrived at by examining religious texts or an imagined 'state of nature.' Natural law as a concept is often used by the right to argue against women's and LGBTQ people's rights." Mrs. McC: You can be pretty sure that if you're a white, straight, Christian, professional Republican male adult American citizen, you've got "natural" rights. The majority of us -- not so much.

Annals of "Journalism," Ctd. Nobody told the New Republic editors that gay-bashing is "inappropriate" until after they published an opinion piece by a gay writer that bashed Pete Buttigieg as "'the gay equivalent of Uncle Tom,' and referred to him as 'Mary Pete.'"

Lloyd Green in the Guardian: "Tim Alberta, Politico's chief political correspondent, has written a masterful must-read. Across 600-plus pages [of American Carnage], he chronicles more than a decade of transformation and turmoil within what was once but is no longer the party of Abraham Lincoln.... Like the deity on the sixth day of creation, Donald Trump has recast the Republican party in his own image. Aggrieved and belligerent is the new normal. The soul of the party has migrated from the sun belt to the Bible belt, from the suburbs to rural America, from a message suffused with upward arc to one brimming with resentment." ...

... Politico publishes an excerpt of the book, which covers how Trump survived release of the "Access Hollywood" tape. ...

... Oh, and here's more reaction from Trumpelthinskin to Alberta's interviews of former Speaker Paul Ryan. Christian Vasquez of Politico: "... Donald Trump on Saturday broadened his attack on Paul Ryan, saying conservatives like the former speaker 'almost killed the Republican Party' because they were 'weak, ineffective & stupid.'"

Burgess Everett of Politico: "Republicans have no real plan to establish a new health care system if the courts strike down the Affordable Care Act before the 2020 election. But plenty of them are rooting for its demise anyway -- even if it means plunging the GOP into a debate that splits the party and leaves them politically vulnerable. After a decade of trying to gut Obamacare, Republicans may finally get their wish thanks to a Trump administration-backed lawsuit. Its success would cause chaos not only in the insurance markets but on Capitol Hill. And Republican senators largely welcome it -- even if they don't know what comes next."

Jodi Kantor, et al., of the New York Times: "A strange thing happened when Jeffrey Epstein came back to New York City after being branded a sex offender: His reputation appeared to rise. In 2010, the year after he got out of a Florida prison, Katie Couric and George Stephanopoulos dined at his Manhattan mansion with a British royal. The next year, Mr. Epstein was photographed at a 'billionaire&'s dinner' attended by tech titans like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk. A page popped up on Harvard University's website lauding his accomplishments, and superlative-filled news releases described his lofty ambitions as he dedicated $10 million to charitable causes."

Mrs. McCrabbie: So if you're not booked up for September, you may want to block out the days around Friday, September 20, because that's the day "all of us" are going to storm Area 51, the U.S. Air Force facility in the Nevada desert, so we can "see them aliens." Apparently, the whole "plan" is a satire, but that hasn't stopped 600,000+ people from signing up. Since the base is super-restricted, the instigators have reckoned with the danger of getting shot dead by asserting, "If we naruto run, we can move faster than their bullets." Here's a demo, so practice. It sure seems as if it would work:

Beyond the Beltway

Idaho. Cynthia Sewell of the Idaho Statesman: "Former Idaho GOP chairman and lobbyist Jonathan Parker now has three pending criminal charges. The latest charge, misdemeanor unlawful entry, stems from Parker allegedly entering a woman's Meridian home without her consent. Parker pleaded not guilty to that charge on July 3, marking his third court appearance on three separate charges over the course of about one month. Parker resigned from his GOP post Feb. 18, with more than two years left in his term." --s

News Lede

AP: "Weakened but still potent, Barry inundated the Gulf Coast but appeared unlikely to deluge New Orleans as it continued its slow advance.... New Orleans had been braced for heavy rains Saturday, but instead had intermittent bands of moderate showers and occasional sunshine. Though Barry will continue to dump rain throughout the weekend, forecasters downgraded rainfall estimates for the city through Sunday to between 2 to 4 inches (5 to 10 centimeters). Forecasters had earlier said New Orleans could get up to 20 inches (50 centimeters) of rain...."

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Friday
Jul122019

The Commentariat -- July 13, 2019

** Prelude to Sunday's Day of Terror. This, unbelievably, is what passes for a Trump administration photo op:

... Michael Collins & John Moritz of USA Today:"With television cameras in tow, Vice President Mike Pence toured a pair of Border Patrol facilities in Texas on Friday as Republicans pushed back on reports that migrants detained in such centers are being held in deplorable and dangerous conditions. On his first stop, at a processing center for migrants just outside McAllen, Texas, Pence said he 'couldn't be more impressed' by what he described as 'the compassionate work' by Border Patrol agents. 'Every family that I spoke with told me they were being well cared for,' he said. The other stop, at an outdoor portal at the McAllen Border Station, offered a starkly different picture. A reporter traveling with Pence described a horrendous stench in the facility and said that nearly 400 men were housed in sweltering cages so crowded it would have been impossible for all of them to lie down. Some of the detainees shouted to reporters that they had been held 40 days or longer and complained that they were hungry. 'This is tough stuff,' Pence said at a news conference later. 'I was not surprised by what I saw,' he said. 'I knew we'd see a system that was overwhelmed.'" ...

... Mary Papenfuss of the Huffington Post has most or all of Josh Dawsey's pool report on conditions at McAllen here. Dawsey's Twitter feed is here for some additional commentary.

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Trump boasted earlier today (see Annie Karni's report linked below) that it was his idea to send pence to the border, and Trump excoriated the NYT for making up -- "they write whatever the want" -- a fake story about horrible conditions in border refugee camps.

Tal Axelrod of the Hill: "The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday ruled in favor of the Trump administration's efforts to prioritize federal dollars for local policing to towns and cities that complied with certain immigration policies. The ruling, a split 2-1 decision, said the Department of Justice (DOJ) was within its rights to withhold Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) grants from sanctuary cities and states over their refusal to work with federal immigratio enforcement authorities and instead prioritize agencies that focused on unauthorized immigration and agreed to give Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) access to jail records and immigrants in custody."

Dara Lind of ProPublica: "An unofficial commemorative coin has been circulating among Border Patrol agents at the U.S./Mexico border, mocking the task of caring for migrant children and other duties that have fallen to agents as families cross into the U.S. On the front, the coin declares 'KEEP THE CARAVANS COMING' under an image of a massive parade of people carrying a Honduran flag -- a caricature of the 'caravan' from last fall, which started in Honduras and attracted thousands of people as it moved north. (While the caravan included many women and children, the only visible figures on the coin appear to be adult men.) The coin's reverse side features the Border Patrol logo and three illustrations: a Border Patrol agent bottle-feeding an infant; an agent fingerprinting a teen boy wearing a backwards baseball cap; and a U.S. Border Patrol van. The text along the edge reads 'FEEDING ** PROCESSING ** HOSPITAL ** TRANSPORT.'"

Ryan Deveraux of the Intercept: "When news broke that thousands of current and former Border Patrol agents were members of a secret Facebook group filled with racist, vulgar, and sexist content, Carla Provost, chief of the agency, was quick to [condemn the 'inappropriate' posts & promise to hold the writers accountable].... For Provost, a veteran of the Border Patrol who was named head of the agency in August 2018, the group's existence and content should have come as no surprise. Three months after her appointment to chief, Provost herself had posted in the group, then known as 'I'm 10-15,' now archived as 'America First X 2.' Provost's comment was innocuous ... but her participation in the group, which she has since left, raises serious questions." (Also linked yesterday.)

So great looking [4 pinocchios] and smart [4 pinocchios], a true Stable [4 pinocchios] Genius [4 pinocchios]! -- Donald Trump, actual self-description, earning 16 pinocchios in only 9 words!, as tabulated by RAS in yesterday's Comments ...

Annie Karni of the New York Times: "Speaking for over 30 minutes in the hot sun on Friday morning, President Trump lashed out at his critics in no particular order, heaping vitriol on everyone from Democrats running for president to the former Republican House speaker, not to mention a foreign ambassador and the press.... The thing that bound Mr. Trump's disparate group of targets together was their recent public airing -- intended or not -- of something negative about Mr. Trump, or what he viewed as a critical portrayal of his policies." ...

... Aaron Rupar of Vox: "President Donald Trump spoke to and took questions from the media for about 30 minutes on Friday morning across a range of topics. He lied about just about all of them.... Trump's helicopter-side news conference ... was a master class in gaslighting.... It illustrated how Trump carefully manages the settings in which he makes himself available to reporters so he can control his message, no matter how divorced from reality it may be." --s

All the Best People, Ctd.

Jonathan Swan of Axios: "President Trump has told confidants he's eager to remove Dan Coats as director of national intelligence, according to five sources who have discussed the matter directly with the president.... One potential replacement Trump has mentioned to multiple sources is Fred Fleitz, who formerly served as chief of staff to national security adviser John Bolton." ...

     ... Dan Spinelli of Mother Jones: "Fleitz, through frequent appearances on Fox News, has aligned himself much more closely with Trump, but his longtime benefactor and ideological ally is Bolton, whose relationship with Fleitz goes back nearly two decades. Fleitz served as Bolton's chief of staff in the State Department under President George W. Bush before going to work for him at the National Security Council last year, a position he left after less than six months in October. His selection as Bolton's deputy was sharply opposed at the time by Muslim and Jewish advocacy groups due to Fleitz's affiliation with the conspiratorial Center for Security Policy, where he now serves as president and chief executive. In 2015, he co-authored a report for the think tank that claimed more than 80 percent of American mosques are 'incubators of, at best, subversion and, at worst, violence.' Fleitz distanced himself from the report's most extreme policy recommendations last year -- like stripping Muslims who support 'shariah-compliant norms' of their citizenship -- but has been sharply critical of Islam in other venues."

Adios. Annie Karni & Eileen Sullivan of the New York Times: "President Trump said Friday morning that R. Alexander Acosta, his embattled secretary of labor, will resign following controversy over his handling of a sex crimes case involving the financier, Jeffrey Epstein, when he was a prosecutor in Florida. Mr. Acosta called the president this morning and informed him of his decision to resign, Mr. Trump said, as he left the White House for travel to Milwaukee and Cleveland." (Also linked yesterday.) ...

... Darlene Superville & Jill Colvin of the AP: "... Donald Trump, with Acosta at his side, made the announcement as he left the White House for a trip to Wisconsin and Ohio. The president said Acosta had been a 'great' labor secretary. 'I hate to see this happen,' Trump said. He said he did not ask Acosta to leave the Cabinet. Acosta said his resignation would be effective in seven days. Acosta said he didn't think it was right for his handling of Epstein's case to distract from his work as secretary of labor." Mrs. McC: Yes, it's sad to see somebody suffer for being extra-nice to a serial child sex abuser & child pornographer. BTW, Trump mentioned twice that Acosta was "Hispanic -- Acosta's parents were Cuban refugees; he was born in the U.S. -- a bid no doubt to Cuban-American voters. (Also linked yesterday.) ...

Labor Pick #1: Alleged wife-beater [Andy Puzder]; Labor Pick #2: Alleged child rapist protector; Labor Pick #3: Sweatshop enthusiast -- Jake Maccoby, in a tweet ...

... Meet Your New Acting Labor Secretary. David Badash of the New Civil Rights Movement: On Friday, "Trump named ... Deputy Secretary of Labor Patrick Pizzella [to become] Acting Secretary of Labor.... 'He's a good man, highly recommended by Alex,' President Trump said of Pizzella Friday. Pizzella, which few know, has a long history, going back to the late 1990's, of being a lobbyist for sweatshops, and, as Mother Jones reported, advocating to advance an economy of 'indentured workers.'... Just to be perfectly clear, the Secretary of Labor -- Acting or otherwise -- and the Dept. of Labor, are tasked with protecting workers and enforcing the laws that protect workers.... The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights in 2017 released a letter opposing Pizzella as Deputy Labor Secretary. 'Pizzella worked closely with Jack Abramoff to lobby for policies on the Commonwealth of Northern Mariana Islands that essentially allowed for unchecked slave labor to be performed with the imprimatur of the "Made in the U.S.A." label on goods and clothing.'" ...

... Here's Sen. Al Franken grilling Pizzella in confirmation hearings in 2017. Pizzella testified he didn't know nuthin' (despite Congressional hearings & extensive news reports about conditions on the Marianas), & he couldn't remember nuthin' about how he might have lobbied against labor protection laws (as Franken documented for him during a previous meeting):

     ... Via Noah Lanard of Mother Jones. Thanks to contributor Hattie for the link. ...

... Pizzella's Russia Connection. Reid Champlin & Jessica Piper of OpenSecrets: "Documents obtained by OpenSecrets show that Pizzella was one of the lobbyists who worked on behalf of a shell corporation connected to the Russian government in the late 1990s. He was listed in a 1997 lobbying disclosure form as the 'director of coalitions' for Chelsea Commercial Enterprises Ltd., a Bahamas-based organization working closely with the Russian oil company Naftasib, which was itself a close affiliate of the Russian government. Working alongside [Jack] Abramoff and others, Pizzella helped Chelsea Commercial advocate for 'various commercial business enterprises, including investments in Russian businesses.'" Mrs. McC: Oddly enough, in 2013 President Obama appointed Pizzella, a former Bush appointee, to the Federal Labor Relations Board.

... ** Frank Rich lambastes Jeffrey Epstein's elite facilitators & tries to to leave out anybody. "Compared to the Manhattan heavy hitters who went to Epstein's dinner parties, rode his private jet, and furthered the fiction that he was some kind of genius hedge-fund billionaire, the now-departed Alex Acosta was a mere flunky to be muscled (easily) by Epstein's attorneys in the Southern District of Florida." (Also linked yesterday.) ...

... ** Acosta Resigns. The Caligula Administration Lives on. Michelle Goldberg of the New York Times: "Even with Acosta gone..., Epstein remains a living reminder of the depraved milieu from which the president sprang, and of the corruption and misogyny that continue to swirl around him. Trump has been only intermittently interested in distancing himself from that milieu. More often he has sought, whether through strategy or instinct, to normalize it." ...


... Witness Tampering. Benjamin Weiser of the New York Times: "Just days after [the Miami Herald] expose last November drew new attention to Jeffrey Epstein's predatory behavior toward young women, he wired $350,000 to two people close to him, federal prosecutors revealed on Friday. Mr. Epstein, a financier who now faces sex-trafficking charges in New York, was using the money to try to buy the silence of possible witnesses against him, the prosecutors said. The United States attorney's office in Manhattan made the new allegations in a court filing asking that Mr. Epstein be denied bail while he awaits trial, saying the payments were evidence that he might try to influence witnesses if he were not detained.... Two days after the Herald published its expose, Mr. Epstein wired $100,000 to a person who had been named as a possible co-conspirator in his deal with Florida prosecutors a decade ago. Three days later, Mr. Epstein sent $250,000 to a person who not only had been named as a co-conspirator in the Florida agreement, but was also identified in the New York indictment as an employee who helped Mr. Epstein in his sex-trafficking scheme." ...

... Kara Scannell & Brynn Gingras of CNN: "Not long after a 14-year-old girl reported Jeffery Epstein to authorities in 2005, she says she received a warning from someone who claimed to be in contact with ...[Epstein]. The girl would be paid cash if she agreed not to cooperate with law enforcement, the person told the accuser, adding that 'those who help him will be compensated and those who hurt him will be dealt with,' according to a Palm Beach, Florida, police report reflecting the accuser's statement. The threat was one of many intimidation and bare-knuckle tactics that accusers and witnesses told police they faced after Florida authorities opened their first investigation into Epstein.... During [the Miami] probe, at least three private investigators who police believed were working on Epstein's behalf tracked down accusers and possible witnesses to the alleged attacks, according to the police reports. They sat in black SUVs outside the homes of accusers, questioned their current and former boyfriends, and chased one parent's car off the road, according to police reports and a lawyer for three accusers." Epstein also intimidated prosecutors & made false claims against a lawyer for defendants. ...

... Mike Baker & Amy Harris of the New York Times: "At the Dalton School on the Upper East Side, some students saw Mr. Epstein as an unusual and unsettling figure, willing to violate the norms in his encounters with girls.... Most remembered his persistent attention on the girls in hallways and classrooms.... None of the female students who spoke to The New York Times in recent days remembered Mr. Epstein making unwanted physical contact with them, and he has not been accused of any crimes related to his time at the school. But a few students said they had been discomfited by a close relationship he had with one of their female peers, a concern that had escalated so much that one of them had raised the issue then to a school administrator.... Mr. Epstein's time at Dalton was brief, and an administrator said it ended in a dismissal."

Ed Pilkington of the Guardian: "E Jean Carroll, the esteemed New York journalist who has alleged Donald Trump raped her in the Bergdorf Goodman department store in Manhattan in the 1990s, now sleeps with a loaded gun by her bed having received online death threats.... She said she had received so many threats that she had been forced to stop looking at her social media feeds, and for the first time in her life had bullets loaded into the handgun in her bedroom." --s

Natasha Bertrand of Politico: "Attorney General Bill Barr has ordered an investigation into whether the CIA was correct to determine that Russian President Vladimir Putin wanted to boost Donald Trump during the 2016 election. But that question has already been asked and answered at the CIA's highest levels -- by Mike Pompeo, a Trump loyalist, according to three people familiar with the matter. Just after Pompeo took over as CIA director in 2017, he conducted a personal review of the CIA's findings, grilling analysts on their conclusions in a challenging and at times combative interview, these people said. He ultimately found no evidence of any wrongdoing, or that the analysts had been under political pressure to produce their findings. 'This wasn't just a briefing,' said one person familiar with the episode. 'This was a challenging back and forth, in which Pompeo asked the officers tough questions about their work and how they determined Putin's specific objectives.' Pompeo also asked about CIA's work with the FBI on the Russia probe in 2016. Two U.S. officials further confirmed to Politico that the interview occurred and was robust." (Also linked yesterday.) ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Wait, wait! I thought Barr was fake-investigating the oranges of the Russia investigation; Bertrand's opening graf suggests the citrus probe has been expanded to the point that Barr is about to fake-discover that Putin was not pro-Trump. I really am confused.

Erica Orden & Kara Scannell of CNN: "A federal investigation into whether Trump Organization executives violated campaign-finance laws appears to be wrapping up without charges being filed, according to people familiar with the matter. For months, federal prosecutors in New York have examined whether company officials broke the law, including in their effort to reimburse Michael Cohen for hush-money payments he made to women alleging affairs with his former boss ... Donald Trump....After Cohen made the $130,000 payment to [Stormy] Daniels, he was reimbursed, prosecutors said in court filings, by the Trump Organization. The company's executives authorized payments to him totaling $420,000, in an effort to cover his original payment, tax liabilities and reward him with a bonus, according to prosecutors, and they falsely recorded those payments as legal expenses in their books. The criminal inquiry centered on whether those payments, like the hush money Cohen gave to Daniels, violated campaign-finance law."

Jacqueline Thomsen of the Hill: "A panel of federal appeals court judges on Friday appeared deeply skeptical of President Trump's arguments against a congressional subpoena seeking his financial records. The judges on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments in Trump's appeal of a lower court ruling upholding a subpoena issued by House Oversight and Reform Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) for the president's records from the accounting firm Mazars. The arguments stretched on for twice the amount of time they were scheduled to take.... Judge Patricia Millet, nominated by former President Obama, said that it would make sense for lawmakers to scrutinize a sitting president. 'You keep talking like they picked some individual off the street to target,' Millet said. Oversight of the president 'sounds OK to me,' she added."

Nicholas Fandos of the New York Times: "House Democrats said late Friday that they had postponed until July 24 two hearings with Robert S. Mueller III, which had been scheduled to take place next week, to allow for expanded questioning of the former special counsel. The reversal, after a day of negotiations with Mr. Mueller's associates, came as both Democrats and Republicans were deep in preparations for the testimony." ...

     ... Morgan Chalfont of the Hill: "Mueller has agreed to testify for three hours before the Judiciary panel, allowing all members the opportunity to question him." Mrs. McC: IOW, the hearing will devolve into a typically-disjointed, useless series of speeches by members of Congress preening for their local news broadcasts. Super-stupid. Democrats should have let Republicans shout about the deep state or whatever, while they -- Democrats -- assigned a professional interrogator to question Mueller.

David Shepardson of Reuters: "The Trump administration said late on Friday it was issuing final rules to suspend a 2016 Obama administration regulation that more than doubled penalties for automakers failing to meet fuel efficiency requirements."

Connor O'Brien of Politico: "House Democrats closed ranks to pass a massive $733 billion defense policy bill on Friday, teeing up a partisan clash with Senate Republicans over military funding and contentious foreign policy issues. The National Defense Authorization Act was approved 220 to 197, with all House Republicans opposing the bill -- enough to sustain a promised veto from ... Donald Trump." (Also linked yesterday.)

Ashley Killough & Clare Foran of CNN: "The House on Friday passed legislation to extend funding for the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund through 2090, weeks after the bill received nationwide attention following impassioned pleas for support from surviving first responders and comedian Jon Stewart. The bill easily cleared the House with a vote of 402-12, and will now be sent to the Senate, where timing on that vote is not yet clear, though Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has vowed to hold a vote on the legislation. Moments after the House passage, McConnell's office issued a statement that the chamber would consider 'this important legislation soon.'" (Also linked yesterday.)

Catie Edmondson of the New York Times: "The House voted Friday to curb President Trump's ability to strike Iran militarily on Friday, adopting a bipartisan provision that would require the president to get Congress's approval before authorizing military force against Tehran. The 251-170 vote reflects lawmakers' growing desire to take back long-ceded authority over matters of war and peace from the executive branch, a reclamation legislators contend has grown increasingly urgent amid escalating tensions with Iran.... Mr. Trump said last month he believes he does not need congressional approval to strike Iran. The vote Friday amounted to a pointed and bipartisan rebuttal -- led by strange ideological bedfellows, Representatives Ro Khanna, a liberal Democrat from California, and Matt Gaetz of Florida, one of Mr. Trump's most strident Republican allies in Congress." (Also linked yesterday.)

Eliana Johnson of Politico: "Under leadership of Don McGahn, the White House counsel's office was focused almost singularly on filling the federal bench with conservative judges, and in [Michael] Kanne [an Indiana native who sits on the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals], Trump's lawyers had spotted an opportunity to nudge out an old-timer and lock in a conservative...for decades to come.... Tom Fisher, Indiana's solicitor general and a former clerk for Kanne.... It seemed like the perfect plan -- until Vice President Mike Pence's aides got wind of it and scuttled Fisher's nomination.... As solicitor general of Indiana, Fisher had defended Gov. Mike Pence's policies in court, and aides to the now-vice president feared his nomination would dredge up events and information politically damaging to Pence." --s

Mark Landler of the New York Times leaves his gig as a White House correspondent: "Choosing a single day that epitomizes Donald J. Trump's presidency -- amid the endless tangle of jaw-dropping, reality-bending, norm-shattering days -- is a fool's errand. But for a White House correspondent departing the beat after eight years, Thursday came awfully close. From Mr. Trump's morning Twitter rant (asking how anyone could vote for a Democrat over 'what you have now, so great looking and smart, a true Stable Genius!') to his social media summit (in which he praised a room of right-wing agitators for 'the crap you think of'), to a news conference that ended with his merry band of provocateurs almost coming to blows with reporters, the White House finally surrendered itself to being a stage set for Mr. Trump's greatest reality show." A good read.

Julia Wong of the Guardian: "The Federal Trade Commission has reportedly voted to approve fining Facebook roughly $5bn to settle an investigation into the company's privacy violations that was launched following the Cambridge Analytica revelations. The Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post, both citing anonymous sources familiar with the matter, reported Friday afternoon that the settlement was approved by a 3-2 vote that broke along party lines, with Republicans in favor and Democrats opposed. The justice department is expected make a final approval of the fine." ...

... Nilay Patel of the Verge: "Facebook's stock went up after news of a record-breaking $5 billion FTC fine for various privacy violations broke [Friday].... [T]he United States government spent months coming up with a punishment for Facebook's long list of privacy-related bad behavior, and the best it could do was so weak that Facebook's stock price went up.... The largest FTC fine in the history of the country represents basically a month of Facebook's revenue ... [and] increased Mark Zuckerberg's net worth.... That's actually the real problem here: fines and punishments are only effective when they provide negative consequences for bad behavior. But Facebook has done nothing but behave badly from inception, and it has only ever been slapped on the wrist by authority figures and rewarded by the market." --s

Beyond the Beltway

Alaska. Billy Corrigher of ThinkProgress: "Alaska's legislature has until Friday at midnight to override the governor's attack on the state's judicial system.... Using a line-item veto, Gov. Mike Dunleavy (R) recently slashed the budget of the state's Supreme Court, due to its repeated protection of abortion rights. Dunleavy cut the budget of the Alaska Supreme Court and the court of appeals by 5%, as part of a sweeping set of cuts that also impacted the University of Alaska. The legislature has been unsuccessful in overriding the veto, after 22 Republicans refused to come to the state capitol to discuss the budget earlier this week.... Without a veto override, the University of Alaska is expected to fire hundreds of workers, slash its course offerings, and lose thousands of students.... But what's at stake for the state's courts is far more concerning." --s

Tennessee. Happy KKK Day. Natalie Allison of the Tennessean: "Gov. Bill Lee [R] has proclaimed Saturday as Nathan Bedford Forrest Day in Tennessee, a day of observation to honor the former Confederate general and early Ku Klux Klan leader whose bust is on display in the state Capitol. Per state law, the Tennessee governor is tasked with issuing proclamations for six separate days of special observation, three of which, including the July 13 Forrest Day, pertain to the Confederacy. Lee -- and governors who have come before him -- are also required by state law to proclaim Jan. 19 as Robert E. Lee Day, honoring the commander of the Confederate Army, as well as June 3 Confederate Decoration Day, otherwise known as Confederate Memorial Day and the birthday of Confederate President Jefferson Davis. 'I signed the bill because the law requires that I do that and I haven't looked at changing that law,' Lee said Thursday. He declined to say whether he believed state law should be changed to no longer require the governor to issue such proclamations or whether he had reservations about doing so." Mrs. McC: Obviously a governor with any guts & moral standards would just say no.

Way Beyond

Brazil. Dom Phillips of the Guardian: "Brazilian diplomats have reacted with scorn and dismay to reports that Jair Bolsonaro wants to make his son Eduardo the country's ambassador to the US, despite his lack of diplomatic experience.... On Friday Bolsonaro said the appointment would not constitute nepotism. 'That's for the supreme court to decide. It is not nepotism, I would never do that,' Bolsonaro said [sic]. That argument has failed to convince many in Brazil. 'If it's confirmed, the nomination will bring Brazil closer to becoming a banana republic,' wrote Bernardo Mello Franco in his blog for Rio's O Globo newspaper." --s

Casey Michel of ThinkProgress: "A series of reports over the past few months have [Mrs. McC: has!] pulled back the curtain on discussions about secret funding from Russia to far-right forces in Europe. Now, there are new questions about the connection the funding has with perhaps the most notorious international anti-LGBTQ group in existence -- a joint Russian-American brainchild called the World Congress of Families (WCF).... For years, the WCF has acted as the primary bridge between American Christian fundamentalists and Russian partners.... The WCF's Russian representative, Alexey Komov ... is at the heart of the burgeoning relationship between America's Christian fundamentalist contingent that looks warmly at the Kremlin and the financiers behind Russian designs, and the cultivation of far-right forces abroad. As such, it's unsurprising that Komov is also directly implicated in the new revelations [see BuzzFeed article linked yesterday] out of Italy." --s

Tom Miles of Reuters: "Saudi Arabia, Russia and 35 other states have written to the United Nations supporting China's policies in its western region of Xinjiang, according to a copy of the letter seen by Reuters on Friday, in contrast to strong Western criticism. China has been accused of detaining a million Muslims and persecuting ethnic Uighurs in Xinjiang, and 22 ambassadors signed a letter to the U.N. Human Rights Council this week criticizing its policies.... The letter supporting China commended what it called China's remarkable achievements in the field of human rights ... [and was] signed by ambassadors from many African countries, North Korea, Venezuela, Cuba, Belarus, Myanmar, the Philippines, Syria, Pakistan, Oman, Kuwait, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain." --safari: All these Muslim-majority countries supporting ethnic cleansing of Muslim minorities. Incredible.

News Ledes

New York Times: "A power failure plunged a stretch of the West Side of Manhattan into darkness on Saturday night, trapping thousands of people in subways and elevators for a time, leaving drivers to fend for themselves at intersections with no traffic signals and eerily dimming the lights of a swath of Times Square.... Con Edison said that the power failed 6:47 p.m. and that 73,000 customers were in the dark for at least two hours, mainly on the West Side. The Fire Department said the failures stretched from 72nd Street to the West 40s, and from Fifth Avenue to the Hudson River. Shortly after 10:30 p.m., Con Edison announced that six power networks had been knocked out, but that five had been restored. One between 32th and 42nd Streets still remained out, the utility said.... Mayor Bill de Blasio ... said Con Edison believed that the blackout was caused by a mechanical issue. Mr. de Blasio was speaking from Iowa, where he was campaigning for president."

The New York Times has live updates of developments re: Hurricane Barry. ...

... Weather Channel: "Tropical Storm Barry will make landfall today, possibly as a hurricane, along the northern Gulf Coast, spreading torrential rain up the lower Mississippi Valley, leading to major river flooding and flash flooding in parts of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas and Tennessee, along with storm-surge flooding and strong winds.... While Barry may become a hurricane before landfall, its water (rain, surge) impacts are bigger concerns than wind. Let's begin by listing current watches and warnings in effect.... Regardless of whether Barry is a tropical storm or hurricane, a major threat of heavy rain and flash flooding is in play the next few days in the lower Mississippi Valley, due to Barry's slow movement."

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