;)
Sunday
Feb122023
February 12, 2023
Afternoon Update:
Helene Cooper of the New York Times: "The United States shot down a fourth flying object over North America on Sunday, this one over Lake Huron in Michigan, U.S. officials said. The Pentagon used an F-16 fighter jet that shot the object with a Sidewinder air-to-air missile. This object was unidentified, as was an object shot down over the Yukon Territory in Canada on Saturday and another shot down over the Arctic Ocean near Alaska on Friday."
~~~~~~~~~~~
Paula Newton of CNN: "Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Saturday that an 'unidentified object' had been shot down over Canadian airspace on his orders. 'I ordered the take down of an unidentified object that violated Canadian airspace. @NORADCommand shot down the object over the Yukon. Canadian and U.S. aircraft were scrambled, and a U.S. F-22 successfully fired at the object,' Trudeau said on Twitter. Trudeau said that he spoke with US President Joe Biden on Saturday and that Canadian forces will lead the object recovery operation. Canadian Defense Minister Anita Anand tweeted Saturday that she had discussed the incident with US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin 'and reaffirmed that we'll always defend our sovereignty together.'" MB: It will be fun to find out just who is giving every world leader a chance to shoot down his very own UFO. (Also linked yesterday.) The New York Times story is here. ~~~
~~~ Reality Chex Exclusive. Marie Burns: Case closed. I've identified the UFO: ~~~
Evan Perez & Kristen Holmes of CNN: "Trump attorney Christina Bobb appeared before a federal grand jury in Washington, DC, in recent weeks in connection with the investigation into ... Donald Trump's handling of classified documents, two sources have told CNN. Bobb's appearance marks the second Trump lawyer involved with Trump's handling of government documents to meet with the grand jury recently. CNN reported that Trump attorney Evan Corcoran appeared before the grand jury last month."
Hugo Lowell of the Guardian: "Donald Trump's lawyers turned over an empty manilla folder marked 'Classified Evening Briefing' after the US justice department issued a subpoena for its surrender once prosecutors became aware that it was located inside the private quarters of the former president's Mar-a-Lago resort, two sources familiar with the matter said. The previously unreported subpoena was issued last month, the sources said, as the recently appointed special counsel [Jack Smith] escalates the inquiry into Trump's possible unauthorized retention of national security materials and obstruction of justice."
Oh, He Knew. Josh Dawsey of the Washington Post: "... Donald Trump's 2020 campaign commissioned an outside research firm in a bid to prove electoral-fraud claims but never released the findings because the firm disputed many of his theories and could not offer any proof that he was the rightful winner of the election, according to four people familiar with the matter. The campaign paid researchers from Berkeley Research Group, the people said, to study 2020 election results in six states, looking for fraud and irregularities to highlight in public and in the courts.... The work was carried out in the final weeks of 2020, before the Jan. 6 riot of Trump supporters at the U.S. Capitol.... The research also contradicted some of Trump's more conspiratorial theories, such as his baseless allegations about rigged voting machines and large numbers of dead people voting." A CNN report, based on the WashPo story, is here.
It Was Always About the Money. Michael Kranish of the Washington Post: "In early 2021, as Donald Trump exited the White House, he and his son-in-law Jared Kushner faced unprecedented business challenges. Revenue at Trump's properties had plummeted during his presidency, and the attack on the U.S. Capitol by his supporters made his brand even more polarizing. Kushner, whose last major business foray had left his family firm needing a $1.2 billion bailout, faced his own political fallout as a senior Trump aide.But one ally moved quickly to the rescue. The day after leaving the White House, Kushner created a company that he transformed months later into a private equity firm with $2 billion from a sovereign wealth fund chaired by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.... A year after his presidency, Trump's golf courses began hosting tournaments for the Saudi fund-backed LIV Golf. Separately, the former president's family company, the Trump Organization, secured an agreement with a Saudi real estate company that plans to build a Trump hotel as part of a $4 billion golf resort in Oman. The substantial investments by the Saudis in enterprises that benefited both men came after they cultivated close ties with Mohammed while Trump was in office -- helping the crown prince's standing by scheduling Trump's first presidential trip to Saudi Arabia, backing him amid numerous international crises and meeting with him repeatedly in D.C. and the kingdom...."
2024 Presidential Race. Maureen Dowd of the New York Times argues that President Biden will run for re-election.
Marie: Here's a chicken-and-egg question: (1) Does the GOP not know how to govern because they don't believe in government, or (2) do they not believe in government because they have no idea how to govern? Whichever the answer, Matt Gaetz's latest screw-up is emblematic of the incompetence of the House's so-called GOP "leadership": ~~~
~~~ Sara Boboltz of the Huffington Post: "Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) kicked off the first meeting of the House Judiciary Committee last week by cordially inviting an accused murderer to lead the Pledge of Allegiance. Under its new Republican leadership, the 118th Congress' judiciary committee may choose to start each hearing with the pledge ― an amendment to the rules put forth by Gaetz, who said it allowed members to invite 'inspirational constituents' to lead it. The first honor went to Corey Beekman, a retired National Guard member accused of killing a man in 2019 whose case has not gone to trial.... Beekman ... allegedly shot and killed 32-year-old William Buchanan at a home in northern Michigan in April 2019.... The Buchanan family told multiple news outlets that they were horrified to hear about Gaetz honoring Beekman.... The Buchanans said they received a U.S. flag that had flown over the Capitol from Gaetz's office, alongside a signed letter from the congressman with his condolences and an apology.... Gaetz told the outlet that Beekman had reached out to his office for assistance and that no one in his office thought to conduct a thorough background check on a veteran in need.... '... A simple Google search would have shown that Mr. Beekman killed a man in rural Mason County,' [said Mason County, Michigan, Sheriff Kim Cole]."
Way Beyond the Beltway
Florida. It's Come to This. Nicole Acevedo of NBC News: "A book about late Afro-Puerto Rican MLB legend Roberto Clemente can't be found in the shelves of public school libraries in Florida's Duval County these days. 'Roberto Clemente: Pride of the Pittsburgh Pirates' by Jonah Winter and Raúl Colón -- and other books about Latino figures such as the late Afro-Cuban salsa singer Celia Cruz and Justice Sonia Sotomayor -- are among the more than 1 million titles that have been 'covered or stored and paused for student use' at the Duval County Public Schools District, according to Chief Academic Officer Paula Renfro. School officials are in the process of determining if such books comply with state laws [promoted and signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis (R)] and can be included in school libraries.... Books must align with state standards such as not teach ... critical race theory, which examines systemic racism in American society, in public grade schools; and not include references to pornography and discrimination, according to the school district." ~~~
~~~ Marie: Well, you wouldn't want any little white children to feel uncomfortable when they found out their heroes had to overcome racism.
Florida. Lori Rozsa of the Washington Post: "Florida lawmakers granted Gov. Ron DeSantis new power over Disney on Friday during a special session aimed at fixing problems with some of the rising Republican leader's most controversial signature initiatives. Legislators approved a bill that creates a new special tax district entirely composed of DeSantis appointees to oversee the land on which Disney's amusement parks operate in Florida -- effectively giving the governor influence over operations ranging from tax collection and garbage pickup to construction and planning. The takeover comes nearly a year after DeSantis demanded the state dissolve the Reedy Creek Improvement District, the Disney-controlled board i place since 1967."
Turkey. Ben Hubbard, et al., of the New York Times: "Turkish officials on Saturday began detaining dozens of contractors they blamed for some of the building collapses in Monday's devastating earthquake, as anger swelled over the government's slow rescue effort and the death toll in the country surpassed 24,000. More than 100 people were detained across the 10 provinces affected by the quake, the state-run Anadolu News Agency reported on Saturday, as the Turkish Justice Ministry ordered officials in those provinces to set up 'Earthquake Crimes Investigation Units.' It also directed them to appoint prosecutors to bring criminal charges against all the 'constructors and those responsible' for the collapse of buildings that failed to meet existing codes, which had been put in place after a similar disaster in 1999." An AP story is here.
Ukraine, et al. The Washington Post's live briefing of developments Sunday in Russia's war on Ukraine is here: "Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is ramping up efforts to stamp out corruption in Ukraine's public institutions, following his recent visit with European Union leaders -- a key requirement of Kyiv's aspiration to join the bloc. In his nightly address, Zelensky said he met with defense and legal officials to discuss how to protect government agencies from 'any attempts from outside or inside to reduce their effectiveness and efficiency.'... Ukraine continues to rule out peace talks with Russia.Only a Ukrainian victory would end 'the war in Europe,' presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak said Saturday, adding that otherwise Russia will 'criminally dominate the world.' The head of the Russian mercenary group Wagner said it could take Moscow up to two years to seize the regions of eastern Ukraine it illegally claimed annexation of in September, and three years if it wants to occupy areas east of the Dnieper River." ~~~
~~~ The Guardian's live updates for Sunday are here. The Guardian's summary report is here.
News Lede
The Guardian's live updates of developments in search, rescue & recovery efforts in Turkey & Syria are here.
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Reader Comments (13)
When I was in grade school in Florida, I read nearly every book in a series called "The Childhood of Famous Americans Series." The books all had orange covers. I borrowed them from our little elementary school library. I specifically remember reading about Thomas Edison, Clara Barton, the Wright brothers, Abe Lincoln & Booker T. Washington. As the series title implies, each book centered on the subject's childhood. Only the last chapter of each book covered what the person had accomplished as an adult.
Just now, I turned to the Googles and found that some of these books are still around and are for sale on sites like eBay. This page contains close-ups of some of the pages of the book on Booker T. Washington.
Since I read these stories 70 years ago, I cannot remember how the stories presented racism, but from the few pages that are reproduced, the Booker T. Washington story must have painted a rose-colored picture of slavery. The Table of Contents page includes one chapter (X) titled "The War Between the States Was Over!" Not the "Civil War." Chapter I begins, "Every slave on the Burroughs plantation knew that something was going on up in the big house.... Jane, the cook..., was mighty fond of her mistress." Yeah, I'll bet. The series is called, in some modern ads for the books, "fictionalized biographies."
I checked to see what I could find out about the author, Augusta Stevenson. Not much. There is a photo of her, and I'm not 100 percent sure she was white. The first of the series she wrote was titled, "Abraham Lincoln: the Great Emancipator." I can't find any facsimile pages of this one to see what it says about the-great-emancipator part of the book, which I suspect is covered only in the last chapter.
What I do know is that neither of these books made me "feel uncomfortable." It would take first-hand observations and, a few years later -- the newspapers -- to do that. I'm not sure learning new information causes little children to be "uncomfortable." Rather, we're trying to figure out how the world works, not the right-and-wrong of it.
I'm planning to petition our local library to refrain from paying good
money for this book by Ron DeSantis, explaining how he saved
Florida from evil Democrats. I guess he saved it by banning books.
Can't think of anything else he's known for.
First you ban books. Then you burn books. Then you ban certain
types of people. And we all know what comes next if we've read
anything about WWII Nazis.
https://www.harpercollins.com/products/the-courage-to-be-free-
ron-desantis?variant=40977857544226
Marie: Seems to me Liz Cheney's mother either wrote these kinds of historical-fiction books for children or was promoting someone who did.
As I have mentioned before I had the great luck of living next door to the Superintendent of Schools, a man who believed in teaching children the truth at an early age. He had a vast library and allowed me to borrow any book I wanted without question and after I had read said book and returned it he'd sit me down and ask me questions about what I had read. I owe a great debt to this man. Henry Earl Smith was also a great cook which my father, if seeing Henry out back in his apron, would laugh and refer to him as Mrs. Smithy. That says a lot about my father as much as it does about Henry Earl, don't it?
A sermon that appeared in todays's Sunday edition of our local newspaper:
"Well, that shotgun wedding didn’t last long.
In the Sunday Skagit Valley Herald national columnist Cynthia Allen hailed conservatives rushing to a progressive journalist’s defense, suggesting that when it comes to defending Constitutional rights like speech and press freedom, conservatives and progressive are really on the same side.
After Republicans’ display at the State of the Union address and the opening of the House Republicans’ hearings on how unfairly conservatives are treated by social media, I wonder what Ms. Allen thinks now.
Doubling down on the general rudeness they exhibited throughout Biden’s speech, Republicans called Biden a liar when he said they wished to scuttle Social Security and Medicare. Utah Senator Mike Lee was one of the loudest who did so, though he and other Republicans have said exactly that, their past remarks recorded both in print and on tape (politico.com).
The recent House hearing on purported social media bias against conservatives also stumbled on the facts. Testimony revealed that Twitter’s decision to delay re-tweeting a story about Hunter Biden’s laptop so close to the 2020 election stemmed from understandable caution in the wake of 2016’s documented Russian interference, not from a conspiracy. The testimony also highlighted the immense challenges private social media platforms confront determining which posts, like those conveying misinformation about Covid vaccines or Trump’s posts leading up to the January 6th insurrection, might cause such great physical or social harm they should not be further spread (politico.com).
The problem with Ms. Allen’s forced matchmaking was the essential incompatibility of conservatives and progressives. While both may be defenders of the freedoms guaranteed by our Constitution, how they employ those freedoms tells how very different they are.
People not equally comfortable with conspiracies, lies and disinformation will never make good bedmates.
A conservative columnist like Cynthia Allen certainly knows that."
Ken: Good show! You just may have spoiled Ms Allen's Sunday––a wee bit.
Claire McCaskill must be pounding on her kitchen table today after learning that the Missouri lawmakers voted against banning children from carrying guns in public. I, myself, had to read this news over a couple of times to understand the insanity of it. This "show me state" says it's just fine and dandy to have young children armed with weapons walking the streets––what possibly could go wrong? This is the same body of nitwits that ordered women in the Ledge to COVER their arms but arming their youth is perfectly fine.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/missouri-votes-against-children-carrying-guns_n_63e71736e4b022eb3e305904
Fortunately, with its panoply of available skin colors to choose from, kids in Florida today likely have other ways than from books to learn about racism.
I was not so lucky, tho' as yet of tender age the sight of people mistreating other people was still available to me in the small white town of my youth. It just wasn't color-coded.
But, like for Marie, the books were there, and I think I began to find them somewhere around fifth and sixth grade. The Landmark series we've remarked on here before, sanitized as they likely were, nonetheless did not wholly deny race issues when they presented the lives of Americans like George Washington Carver, who I believe occupied a space on Landmark shelf.
Sometime later, sports heroes caught my attention. I remember particularly the autobiography of George Campanella, the great Brooklyn Dodger catcher, who had moved from the Negro Leagues to the Big Time and whose career was cut short by a car accident that left him a quadriplegic. Must have read that one about the time I entered high school. So, why a Negro League at all? The lesson was obvious even to my small white brain in my small white town.
So I did have books. But behind the books and surrounding me were white people and the white people who were assholes made me uncomfortable enough all by themselves.
So looking back on my young life, the few books I read that treated, even peripherally, of racism are not what made me uncomfortable. Why would they? I didn't treat other people that way.
Assholes did, and I knew from my own experience, they were the ones that made me feel uncomfortable.
They still do.
P.D.,
Thanks, but only maybe.
I'd like to think I ruined Ms. Allen's Sunday, but if I did, I did so retrospectively. The column I used as a leg up to what I wished to say by Fort Worth Star columnist Allen appeared in our local paper a week ago today.
The way the paper edited my letter's into did not make that obvious...and I should have caught it.
But ruining any of her Sunday's is OK with me.
@Ken Winkes: That's Roy Campanella, not George Campanella.
And allow me to say that anyone whom I, Marie Burns, can correct on anything remotely related to professional sports is really, really out of it!
Anyway, enjoy the Super Bowl!
Way back when, the Super Bowl was sometimes (or maybe always) played in the afternoon, so I did enjoy it then. The stores were all still open, and they were nearly empty, so the Super Bowl gave me a great opportunity to "own the store" and shop without having to wait in line. Now that the games seem always to be played at night, so my Queen of the Store gig is but a distant memory.
Ken: I, too. grew up in all white surroundings and it wasn't until we spent a half year in Arizona (because of my father's T.B.) was I introduced to Black and Brown kids in the High School I attended in my sophomore year. I was not only excited by this but loved the diversity. But there I found the hatred and prejudice of those as you coined-- "Assholes ..., and I knew from my own experience, they were the ones that made me feel uncomfortable." Would we have had a different perspective if we had lived in the South? How much does environment play in this.
I knew that and am sooo embarrassed...but pleased I could make your day Super.
Hope my error is not a harbinger of a flood of more dimwittery to come.
PD makes an excellent point. What about children, adults, and families being made uncomfortable by racist assholes? By white supremacist politicians who ban books about races other whites, who denigrate the experience of enormous swaths of the earth’s population in order to ramp up fear and hatred for political gain.
Where are the cries against all of those things DESIGNED to make everyone uncomfortable, those who believe that whites are being replaced (thank you TuKKKer), those attacked simply for being who they are, and white children and families who are simply curious about a world outside the GQP hate bubble?
Racism is, by its very nature, simply unable to supply any form of comfort. It’s like living in a house with a locked room. “Children! Stay away from that room! What’s in there will make you UNCOMFORTABLE!! Understand? Never go in there!”
Is that a comfortable place to live?
@Akhilleus: For decades, I allowed racists to "make me uncomfortable." But for the past several decades, I have turned the tables on them and made them uncomfortable. Sternly, and perhaps without visible signs of anger, I tell them they cannot speak that way around me. And damned if that doesn't shut up even the worst of them. Everyone, whether it's a relative or someone I don't know at all, just shuts the fuck up -- and looks embarrassed.