;)
December 12, 2022
Afternoon Update:
Adam Liptak of the New York Times: "The Supreme Court on Monday refused to block a California law banning flavored tobacco, clearing the way for the ban to take effect next week. As is the court's practice when it rules on emergency applications, its brief order gave no reasons. There were no noted dissents. R.J. Reynolds, the maker of Newport menthol cigarettes, had asked the justices to intervene before next Wednesday, when the law is set to go into effect. The company, joined by several smaller ones, argued that a federal law, the Tobacco Control Act of 2009, allows states to regulate tobacco products but prohibits banning them."
Matina Stevis-Gridneff & Monika Pronczuk of the New York Times: "As the Belgian authorities broadened their investigation into allegations that European Parliament lawmakers and others may have taken bribes from Qatar, the assembly's president warned on Monday that illegal lobbying posed a major threat to the institution. 'European democracy is under attack,' the president, Roberta Metsola, said in an emotional speech to fellow lawmakers.' Days after raiding residences and official offices and seizing evidence that included hundreds of thousands of euros in cash, the Belgian police on Monday launched new searches at European Parliament offices."
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Evan Halper & Pranshu Verma of the Washington Post: "The Department of Energy plans to announce Tuesday that scientists have been able for the first time to produce a fusion reaction that creates a net energy gain -- a major milestone in the decades-long, multibillion dollar quest to develop a technology that provides unlimited, cheap, clean power. The aim of fusion research is to replicate the nuclear reaction through which energy is created on the sun. It is a 'holy grail' of carbon-free power that scientists have been chasing since the 1950s. It is still at least a decade -- maybe decades -- away from commercial use, but the latest development is likely to be touted by the Biden administration as an affirmation of a massive investment by the government over the years."
"Splashdown!" Ed Pilkington of the Guardian: "Fifty years to the day after astronauts last walked on the moon, Nasa&'s uncrewed Orion capsule splashed down in the Pacific on Sunday at the end of a mission that should clear the way for a possible lunar landing of astronauts by 2025. The US space agency rejoiced in a near-perfect re-entry of the capsule which splashed down to the west of Mexico's Baja California near Guadalupe Island. Though it carried no astronauts, the spacecraft did contain three test dummies wired with vibration sensors and radiation monitors to divine how humans would have fared."
Katelyn Polantz, et al., of CNN: "Newly-appointed special counsel Jack Smith is moving fast on a pair of criminal probes around Donald Trump that in recent months have focused on the former president's state of mind after the 2020 election, including what he knew about plans to impede the transfer of power, people familiar with the matter tell CNN. Though he remains in Europe recovering from a biking accident, Smith has made a series of high-profile moves since he was put in charge last month, including asking a federal judge to hold Trump in contempt for failing to comply with a subpoena ordering him to turn over records marked classified. Since Thanksgiving, Smith has brought a number of close Trump associates before a grand jury in Washington, including two former White House lawyers, three of Trump's closest aides, and his former speechwriter Stephen Miller. He has also issued a flurry of subpoenas, including to election officials in battleground states where Trump tried to overturn his loss in 2020."
Welcome to the 2022 Republican Terrorist Party
... if Steve Bannon and I had organized [the January 6 attack on the Capitol], we would have won. Not to mention, it would've been armed. -- Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), to the New York Young Republicans Club, Saturday
We want to cross the Rubicon. We want total war. We must be prepared to do battle in every arena. In the media. In the courtroom. At the ballot box. And in the streets. This is the only language the left understands. The language of pure and unadulterated power. -- NYYRC President Gavin Wax, Saturday
Okay, here a Fox "News" headline: "Kevin McCarthy pledges subpoenas for 51 intel agents in wake of Hunter Biden 'Twitter Files' revelations." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ~~~
~~~ Marie: Akhilleus was wondering in yesterday's thread how it was that My Kevin was so intent on passing out dozens of subpoenaes when he and his friends were unwilling to answer the subpoenas of the committee investigating an attack on our Capitol, a/k/a My Kevin's workplace.
Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post shares some ideas for reforming the Supreme Court. The reforms have popular support. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Brittany Shammas, et al., of the Washington Post: "A Libyan man accused of making a bomb that killed hundreds of people aboard an American passenger plane over Lockerbie, Scotland, almost 34 years ago is in U.S. custody, officials said Sunday. A spokesman for the Justice Department said Abu Agila Masud is expected to make his first court appearance in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.... The former Libyan intelligence operative is accused of making the explosive device that destroyed a Pan Am jet on Dec. 21, 1988, killing all 259 people on board the Boeing 747 and 11 others on the ground. The Justice Department charged Masud in 2020 with helping make the bomb. In announcing the charges on the 32nd anniversary of the attack, then-Attorney General William P. Barr said that the operation was ordered by the leadership of Libyan intelligence and that Moammar Gaddafi, Libya's leader from 1969 to 2011, had personally thanked Masud for his work. It was unclear how authorities took Masud into custody." The AP's report is here. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Musk Goes Full Winger Loon. Julia Mueller of the Hill: "'My pronouns are Prosecute/Fauci,' [Elon] Musk said on Twitter [on Sunday]. He later shared a meme edited to show Fauci telling Biden, 'Just one more lockdown, my king.'" ~~~
~~~ Marie: On top of the anti-vax thang, Musk also seems to be making fun of nonbinary people. So he's not just loony; he's mean. BTW, I have always disliked the way "they" and "them" have traditionally been misapplied to a single person. So I also dislike "they" & "them" when these pronouns are intentionally applied to a single person. Nonetheless, I do see the pressing need for a nonbinary set of English-language pronouns. So it occurs to me that "thou, thee, thy & thine" would work well. These are already real words that are singular. Okay, second-person singular, but we can adapt: "When I saw Morgan at the grocery store, thou was buying potatoes. I pointed out to thee that the fingerlings were on sale as I recall fingerlings were thy favorites and thine only choice to serve with roast beef."
Beyond the Beltway
Arizona. The Great Wall of Ducey ... Is (a) Hilarious (b) an Eyesore (c) Illegal (d) All of the Above. Melissa del Bosque of the Guardian: "A makeshift new barrier built with shipping containers is being illegally erected along part of the US-Mexico border by Arizona's Republican governor -- before he has to hand over the keys of his office to his Democratic successor in January. Doug Ducey is driving a project that is placing double-stacked old shipping containers through several miles of national forest, attempting to fill gaps in Donald Trump's intermittent border fencing. The rusting hulks, topped with razor wire and with bits of metal jammed into gaps, stretch for more than three miles through Coronado national forest land, south of Tucson, and the governor has announced plans to extend that up to 10 miles, at a cost of $95m.... The US Bureau of Reclamation and the Cocopah tribal nation said that Ducey was violating federal law by placing the containers on federal and tribal land there."
California. Soumya Karlamangla & Katie Rogers of the New York Times: "Karen Bass was sworn in as the first female mayor of Los Angeles on Sunday and vowed to build consensus among elected leaders as Angelenos contend with racial tensions, surging homelessness and a new rise in coronavirus cases. Vice President Kamala Harris swore in Ms. Bass in a ceremony that celebrated her historic win but also underscored the obstacles she will face. Ms. Bass said that her first act as mayor on Monday would be to declare a state of emergency on homelessness." CNN's story is here.
Way Beyond
Ukraine, et al. The New York Times' live updates of developments Monday in Russia's war on Ukraine are here. The Guardian's live updates for Monday are here. The Guardian's summary report is here. ~~~
~~~ The Washington Post's live briefings for Monday are here: "President Biden underlined the United States' ongoing support for Ukraine during a weekend call with President Volodymyr Zelensky, as well as efforts to strengthen Kyiv's air defenses against tactical strikes by Russia on civilian infrastructure. Biden vowed during the call to hold Russia accountable for war crimes and atrocities, and impose 'costs on Russia for its aggression,' according to an official White House readout. He welcomed Zelensky's stated openness to a 'just peace.'... Western military experts say Russia is firing larger batches of missiles against Ukraine, which risks depleting Kyiv's stockpiles of interceptor missiles.... Moscow is unlikely to make significant advances in the next few months, Britain's Ministry of Defense said in its Monday update."
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Reader Comments (18)
I’m imagining the coup planned by MTG: an armed mob of MAGA morons successfully invades the Capitol. Greene is discovered rifling the desk in Nancy Pelosi’s office. The morons rush in, hit her over the head and drag her off, shouting “We’ve got Pelosi! String-her-up!”
Just imagine your political cri de coeur being “I’d have overthrown the government and strung up mike pence in a jiffy! We’d have our authoritarian fascist state in no time. Concentration camps would be full of Democrats and liberals. Everyone would have guns, and I’d be in charge of the morality police!”
Show me who your friends are…
I was thinking about Griner and Whelan and the guys Putin wants in return for their release. Now I’m not saying US citizens abroad are all and always squeaky clean, but it often seems like our people are typically innocent, arrested and held on trumped up charges, while Putin’s pals are almost always dangerous psychotics, murderers and terrorists.
As my mother used to say, you can learn a lot about someone by seeing who their friends are.
Same thing in this country. A few weeks ago, I read a New Yorker piece by Evan Osnos about this guy Guo Wengui, who is currently aligned with Bannon and Trump. The guy is a piece of work. As a Chinese developer, he had close ties to the security apparatus. You give him trouble, he sics the secret police on you and you’re imprisoned, and beaten every day for twenty years, while he takes your land and makes a fortune.
At some point he ran afoul of the government, so he claims, and fled to the US, as billionaire oligarch assholes are wont to do. He got in tight with the ultra right-wing here (as billionaire oligarch assholes are wont to do) pretending to be a champion of freeedom, talking about how he was going to single-handedly destroy Xi Xinping and his government. He became a member of Marred-a-Lardo. Hobnobbed with the traitors. He made hundreds of millions off various grifts, then started making Trump-like videos of himself in front of private jets and lounging on luxury yachts with dancing girls, singing crap about how great he was. Very Trumpian.
Then he started going after actual Chinese dissidents, doxing them and having his followers show up at their homes, threatening them. The idea is that he may very well be a sort of double agent still in the pay of the People’s Republic (remember all those spies who frequented Fatty’s gaudy mausoleum down in Florida?).
Whatever. Nonetheless, he’s a highly sketchy, self-dealing, bad dude, just the sort of creepy asshole you’d expect to find hanging around with Steve Bannon (by the way, why is he still walking around causing trouble? Shouldn’t he be in jail?).
Same with the entire right wing. Trump hangs out with Nazis, antisemites, crooks, grifters, and slippery sycophants. MTG? She brags about what a great terrorist she is. DeSantis goes after ex-cons who voted, has them arrested, then, off camera, has to let them go cuz it was all a publicity stunt. He attacks Disney for showing an ounce of backbone. He hazes teachers about teaching actual history and threatens to have them fired. Cruz, Abbott, Graham, the grifting Trump spawn…Just go down the list. Not a halfway decent person in the bunch. No one you’d let house-sit your cat, that’s for sure. A pack of fucking criminals, traitors, and con artists.
But that’s what we have running large swaths of the country. No wonder they love Putin.
Speaking of crooks, con artists, grifters, and assholes, I’m thinking it’s about time that the littlest asshole, Senator* What About Meeeee? opens his trap and spouts off some of his usual self-dealing bullshit about how he’s the most principled guy in history and why aren’t we making HIM president*?
Not hoping, y’understand, just wondering…
Re your: “Okay, second-person singular, but we can adapt: ‘When I saw Morgan at the grocery store, thou was buying potatoes. I pointed out to thee that the fingerlings were on sale as I recall fingerlings were thy favorites and thine only choice to serve with roast beef.’ ”
This sentence structure indicates the speaker is speaking to someone other than Morgan—‘when I saw Morgan at the store, you were buying potatoes, your favorite side dish with roast beef.’
There has been much recent (+/- 30 years) discussion, academic and public, over the use of “singular they”. It can be justified socially and linguistically, and there are hundreds of years’ examples of its use in English literature.
I know it can be unsettling to the language-conservative ear, but it is not a new creation.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/11/us/jrotc-schools-mandatory-automatic-enrollment.html
With MTG as guest lecturer?
I suggested "Tough Guys" as the title of yesterday's sermon but the local newspaper didn't use it.
Sure a lot of inadequacy going around on the Right, isn't there?
I see this Junior Rot-cee business as an effort to share it as widely as possible.
In the midst of the container shortage at the center of the supply chain bottlenecks of a year or so back I wondered where all the shipping containers had gone.
Now I know.
Instead of “'My pronouns are Prosecute/Fauci,' [Elon] Musk said on Twitter [on Sunday]. He later shared a meme edited to show Fauci telling Biden, 'Just one more lockdown, my king.'”
Shouldn't it be, “'My pronouns are Prosecute/Fauci,' [Elon] Musk said on Twitter [on Sunday]. Prosecute later shared a meme edited to show Fauci telling Biden, 'Just one more lockdown, my king.'”
That is unless prosecute was just being his usual dimwitted, obnoxious self and once again didn't know what the hell prosecute was actually talking about, again.
Nothing original, nothing clever, they contribute so little to culture or society. No wonder they are all such hateful little bigots.
RAS: usually I mark their ungrammatical noncleverness up to lack of education or critical thinking, but some of these pea-brains have degrees, some from "elite" (now that word has been trashed--) universities. Now I figure they are just plain ignorant, stupid, narrow slimeballs trying to be funny. Their education has been misused and co-opted by the right, so we can now place blame (s/) with teachers who didn't know their students were going to grow up into coup leaders and power-hungry mongrels. Perjury Traitor Green probably doesn't fall into the "elite" category, behaving more like the trailer trash she is. She is the golden light of the stupids. I refuse to call her MTG, as the right borrowed that from RBG, someone that really made a difference, unlike the podwoman with three names.
Does it show that I bitterly resent all the fawning over nasty oligarchs and idiots by the media. (Not you, Marie-- you're good people--)
From personal experience, I can say it is really hard adjusting to the pronouns. As a supportive, 92-year-old grandmother, I'm working hard to call my grandchild (formerly granddaughter) "they". I struggle talking to and about "them" (her) - but trying.
Jeanne: You aren't alone in resenting these rich assholes and all the attention paid to them. Dave Chappelle and his friend Elon thought it would be fun to bring him on stage at his latest show in San Francisco. It did not go well with much of the audience booing Musk. Chappelle thought it would be funny to joke about Musk's mass layoffs and how the over priced "cheap seats" with the ungrateful poor are where he heard the most boos coming from. Also, the free speech advocate apparently deleted the video of his humiliation that was posted on Twitter by a user, but nothing on the internet ever dies so the videos are everywhere now.
Maybe because I’m on the youngish end of the scale here, I have no problem with they etc as singular pronouns. I also believe that people should be called by their preferred terms, and if they prefer “they,” then that works for me.
But Elmo’s tweet is just stupid and mean-spirited, which I suppose is the whole point. What a dick.
Re: RockyGirl’s comment:
What she said.
It is impressive how many levels of awful these right-wing jerks can put into a five word sentence. Attacks against the trans and non-binary community, more threats of violence against Dr. Fauci, and more anti-science and covid denial BS that the knuckle draggers froth over.
TPM got a hold of Mark Meadows text logs he gave to the J6 committee.
"Meadows’ exchanges shed new light on the extent of congressional involvement in Trump’s efforts to spread baseless conspiracy theories about his defeat and his attempts to reverse it. The messages document the role members played in the campaign to subvert the election as it was conceived, built, and reached its violent climax on Jan. 6, 2021. The texts are rife with links to far-right websites, questionable legal theories, violent rhetoric, and advocacy for authoritarian power grabs."
@RockyGirl: To me, it's perfectly reasonable & sensible to change your personal pronouns from "she to "he" -- and, for that matter, back again, if you prefer. "She" and "he" are singular nouns. "She" or "he" designates a single person.
But there is no rationale for changing your pronoun from "she" to "they." "They" is plural and therefore denotes more than one person. You get to pick your personal identity, but you don't get to pick how many people you are. I realize my position is offensive to liberals who believe we all have a right to be ourselves. I believe that, too; I just don't believe a person gets to double her presence. The presumption that someone's sexual designation makes "them" twice the person I am is offensive to me, too. To give in to an individual who wants to be "they" is to diminish your singular self.
In fact, that is the joke of the royal "we." We make fun of people who refer to themselves. What's the difference (other than first- and third-person) between "We are not amused" and "They are not amused"? One sentence is a smirk-worthy as the other.
BTW, in response to J's comment this morning, there is one circumstance in which I probably regularly use "they" to refer to a single person. If I come home and my partner says, "Macy's called," I very well might ask, "What did they want?" It's unlikely I think a group of people called to tell me my dress was ready for pick-up. And "Macy" was, after all, one guy. By using "they," I'm tacitly indicating that the sex of the caller is of no importance. It's a sloppy construction, but it's commonly-used.
Wow. Corruption connected to the World Cup being held in Qatar? Shocking.