;)
July 21, 2022
Late Morning/Afternoon Update:
Morgan Chalfant of the Hill: "President Biden tested positive for the coronavirus on Thursday and is experiencing mild symptoms, the White House announced in a statement.... 'This morning, President Biden tested positive for COVID-19. He is fully vaccinated and twice boosted and experiencing very mild symptoms. He has begun taking Paxlovid. Consistent with CDC guidelines, he will isolate at the White House and will continue to carry out all of his duties fully during that time,' White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement." A Washington Post story is here. ~~~
~~~ Dr. Jill Biden told the press Thursday morning that she had tested negative for the virus. ~~~
~~~ The New York Times' live updates of Covid-19 developments Thursday are here. Included are updates on the President's health.
Mark Mazzetti & Maggie Haberman of the New York Times: "As the House committee investigating Jan. 6 uses its prime-time hearing on Thursday to document ... Donald J. Trump's lack of forceful response to the attack on the Capitol by his supporters, it will again raise one of the enduring mysteries of that day: Why did it take so long to deploy the National Guard? The hearing is unlikely to answer that question, but it could shed light on what Mr. Trump and his top aides did or did not do to send troops to assist police officers who were overrun by an angry mob determined to halt the certification of the 2020 presidential election. The mobilization and deployment of National Guard troops from an armory just two miles away from the Capitol was hung up by confusion, communications breakdowns and concern over the wisdom of dispatching armed soldiers to quell the riot. It took more than four hours from the time the Capitol Police chief made the call for backup to when the D.C. National Guard troops arrived, a gap that remains the subject of dueling narratives and finger-pointing."
Annie Karni of the New York Times: "The House on Thursday passed legislation to codify access to contraception nationwide, moving over almost unanimous Republican opposition to protect a right that is regarded as newly under threat after the Supreme Court's overturning of Roe v. Wade. The measure is almost certain to fail in the evenly divided Senate, where most Republicans are also likely to be opposed.... The measure passed 228 to 195, with eight Republicans joining Democrats in support. It would protect the right to purchase and use contraception without government restriction. The legislation drew only slightly more Republican support than two bills that the House passed last week, which aimed to ensure access to abortion in the post-Roe era; almost all Republicans were united in opposition." ~~~
~~~ Marie: Are Republicans now asserting that life begins with a twinkle of a man's eye? Why the hell would they be opposed to contraception? (Yeah, I scanned the whole article, and the excuses Republicans gave were ridiculous.)
~~~~~~~~~~
Carl Hulse of the New York Times: "A bipartisan group of senators proposed new legislation on Wednesday to modernize the 135-year-old Electoral Count Act, working to overhaul a law that ... Donald J. Trump tried to abuse on Jan. 6, 2021, to interfere with Congress's certification of his election defeat. The legislation aims to guarantee a peaceful transition from one president to the next, after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol exposed how the current law could be manipulated to disrupt the process. One measure would make it more difficult for lawmakers to challenge a state's electoral votes when Congress meets to count them. It would also clarify that the vice president has no discretion over the results, and it would set out the steps to begin a presidential transition. A second bill would increase penalties for threats and intimidation of election officials, seek to improve the Postal Service's handling of mail-in ballots and renew for five years an independent federal agency that helps states administer and secure federal elections." Lead negotiators were Susan Collins & Joe Manchin. An NBC News report is here.
Rosalind Helderman of the Washington Post summarizes the findings, so far, that the House January 6 committee has presented to the public. "At each moment [in the weeks leading up to January 6, 2021,] when Trump could have soothed an agitated nation, he escalated tensions instead, the committee has illustrated through its presentation of 18 live witnesses, scores of videotaped depositions and vast documentary evidence. At each moment when longtime loyal advisers offered their view that his election loss was real, he refused to listen and found newcomers and outsiders willing to tell him otherwise. On at least 15 different occasions, the president barreled over those who told him to accept his loss and instead took actions that sought to circumvent the democratic process and set the nation on the path to violence, according to the committee's evidence." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Amy Gardner, et al., of the Washington Post: Thursday night's hearing of the January 6 select committee "will focus heavily on Trump's inaction in the White House during [the 187-minute period when he did nothing to stop the insurrection, committee] aides said on a background call with reporters.... One day after the last rioter had left the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021..., Donald Trump's advisers urged him to give an address to the nation to condemn the violence, demand accountability for those who had stormed the halls of Congress and declare the 2020 election to be decided. He struggled to do it. Over the course of an hour of trying to tape the message, Trump resisted holding the rioters to account, trying to call them patriots, and refused to say the election was over, according to individuals familiar with the work of the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack.... Not only did Trump do nothing despite repeated entreaties by senior aides to help end the violence, but he sat back and enjoyed watching it. He reluctantly condemned it -- in a three-minute speech the evening of Jan. 7 -- only after the efforts to overturn the 2020 election had failed and after aides told him that members of his own Cabinet were discussing invoking the 25th Amendment to remove him from office." ~~~
~~~ Luke Broadwater of the New York Times: "In an interview previewing the hearing, which is scheduled for 8 p.m. on July 21, [Rep. Elaine] Luria [(D-Va.), who will co-lead the hearing with Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.),] said the panel planned to document in great detail how Mr. Trump did nothing for more than three hours while his supporters stormed the Capitol, raising ethical, moral and legal questions around the former president.... The committee plans to demonstrate that Mr. Trump had the power to call off the mob but refused to do so until after 4 p.m. that day -- and then only after hundreds of officers had responded to the Capitol to support the overrun Capitol Police force, and had begun to turn the tide against the mob, making it clear that the siege would fail, according to committee aides.... Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi and the chairman of the committee, plans to preside over the hearing remotely, after having tested positive for Covid-19 this week." A Guardian story is here.
** Julia Ainsley of NBC News: "A senior Secret Service official said agency employees received two emails -- at least one prior to Jan. 6, 2021 -- reminding -- them to preserve records on their cellphones, including text messages, -- before their devices were essentially 'restored to factory settings' and texts were lost as part of a planned reset and replacement program across the agency. The senior official said employees received a third email on Feb. 4, 2021, instructing them to preserve all communications specific to Jan. 6. At that point, several Congressional committees had asked for Secret Service communications from the day of the insurrection on the Capitol.... [The first two] emails included reminders that federal employees have the responsibility to preserve their records and included instructions on how to do so, the senior Secret Service official said.... The Secret Service official said that by the time the Inspector General asked for the records more than a month after the attack on the Capitol, that information was already lost." ~~~
~~~ Covering Up the Cover-up. Carol Leonnig & Maria Sacchetti of the Washington Post: "A watchdog agency learned in February that the Secret Service had purged nearly all cellphone texts from around the time of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, but chose not to alert Congress, according to three people briefed on the internal discussions. That watchdog agency, the Department of Homeland Security's Office of Inspector General, also prepared in October 2021 to issue a public alert that the Secret Service and other department divisions were stonewalling it on requests for records and texts surrounding the attack on the Capitol, but did not do so.... The previously unreported revelation about the inspector general's months-long delay in flagging the now-vanished Secret Service texts came from two whistleblowers who have worked with Inspector General Joseph V. Cuffari.... 'It's a dereliction of duty to keep the public and Congress in the dark for months,' said POGO [-- Project on Government Oversight --] senior investigator Nick Schwellenbach. 'Digital forensics experts could have been working to recover these lost texts a long time ago.'"
David Siders of Politico: "The conventional wisdom about the Jan. 6 committee hearings was that no single revelation was going to change Republican minds about Donald Trump. What happened instead, a slow drip of negative coverage, may be just as damaging to the former president. Six weeks into the committee's public hearing schedule, an emerging consensus is forming in Republican Party circles -- including in Trump's orbit -- that a significant portion of the rank-and-file may be tiring of the non-stop series of revelations about Trump.... The cumulative effect of the hearings, according to interviews with more than 20 Republican strategists, party officials and pollsters in recent days, has been to at least marginally weaken his support." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ~~~
~~~ Oh Yeah? This guy is still a fan: ~~~
~~~ Jordan Green of the Raw Story: "After invoking the Fifth Amendment and executive privilege more than 100 times to refuse to answer questions from the January 6th Committee on Tuesday, former White House aide Garrett Ziegler opened a livestream to vent his frustrations to his followers in a nearly 30-minute rant laden with white nationalist grievance on Telegram. Ziegler complained that he has less resources to fight the committee than his older cohorts, including his boss former Trade Advisor Peter Navarro, who is suing the committee, and former White House strategist Steve Bannon, who is being prosecuted for contempt.... '[The committee members are] Bolsheviks so they probably do hate the Fifth Amendment, and most white people in general,' he said. 'This is a Bolshevist, anti-white campaign.... They see me as a young Christian who they can basically try to scare.'... I'm the least racist person that many of you have ever met, by the way. I have no bigotry. I just try to see the world for where it is.' Then, his rant veered into misogyny when he lamented that no one else in his generation was defying the January 6th committee, because 'the other people in the White House are total hos and thots.'" (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) Update: CNN's story is here.
Zach Montague of the New York Times: "The prosecution rested its case on Wednesday in the trial of Stephen K. Bannon, a former top adviser to ... Donald J. Trump, as government lawyers sought to show that Mr. Bannon had repeatedly ignored warnings that he risked facing criminal charges in flouting a subpoena.... The trial on Wednesday largely centered on the testimony of Kristin Amerling, the deputy staff director and chief counsel to the Jan. 6 committee, who offered a detailed accounting of the committee's attempts to compel Mr. Bannon to testify last year.... During questioning, Ms. Amerling told the court that Mr. Bannon would not acquiesce to the committee's requests for emails and other documents even after receiving a letter threatening legal action. Mr. Bannon never asked that the deadline for the subpoena be extended, nor did the committee consider his claim of executive privilege to be valid, Ms. Amerling added.... Prosecutors also called Stephen Hart, an F.B.I. special agent, as a second witness. Mr. Hart, who had met with Mr. Bannon's former lawyer about the subpoena last year, presented social media posts in which Mr. Bannon appeared to celebrate his decision to flout the subpoena." An AP report is here.
Kate Brumback of the AP: "A judge in New York has ordered Rudy Giuliani to appear next month before a special grand jury in Atlanta that's investigating whether ... Donald Trump and others illegally tried to interfere in the 2020 general election in Georgia. New York Supreme Court Justice Thomas Farber on July 13 issued an order directing Giuliani, a Trump lawyer and former New York City mayor, to appear before the special grand jury on Aug. 9 and on any other dates ordered by the court in Atlanta, according to documents filed Wednesday in Fulton County Superior Court." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ~~~
~~~ Danny Hakim & Richard Fausset of the New York Times: "A Georgia judge ordered Rudolph W. Giuliani to testify in Atlanta next month in an ongoing criminal investigation into election interference by ... Donald J. Trump and his advisers and allies, according to court filings released on Wednesday.... After Mr. Giuliani failed to show for a hearing last week in Manhattan, where the matter was to have been adjudicated, Judge Robert C. I. McBurney of the Superior Court of Fulton County ordered him to appear before a special grand jury in Atlanta on Aug. 9.... Mr. Giuliani appears to be of interest for a number of reasons, including his participation in a scheme to create slates of pro-Trump presidential electors.... Mr. Giuliani also appeared in person before two Georgia state legislative committees in December 2020, where he spent hours peddling false conspiracy theories about secret suitcases of Democratic ballots and corrupted voting machines."
Didn't We Just Find Out Arizona Is the Worst State to Live In? Martin Pengelly of the Guardian: "Rusty Bowers, the Arizona house speaker who testified to the January 6 committee about how he resisted Donald Trump's attempt to overturn his defeat by Joe Biden in the sun belt state, has been formally censured by his own Republican party. Kelli Ward, chair of the Arizona Republican party, said on Tuesday its 'executive committee formally censured Rusty Bowers tonight -- he is no longer a Republican in good standing and we call on Republicans to replace him at the ballot box in the August primary'."
We Did It for Trump. Ben Collins, et al., of NBC News: "Researchers at Harvard University who conducted the largest study yet of what motivated Jan. 6 rioters say the data is clear: The most common responses focused on ... Donald Trump and his lies about the election.... The researchers ... wrote that the documents make clear that Jan. 6 committee member Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., 'was mostly correct in her assessment' that 'Trump summoned the mob, assembled the mob and lit the flame of this attack.'... 'Far and away, we find that the two most commonly-cited reasons for breaching the US Capitol were a desire to support Trump on January 6th in DC and concerns about election integrity,' the report reads."
Maggie Haberman of the New York Times: "A Democratic super PAC filed a lawsuit against the Federal Election Commission on Wednesday, seeking to force officials to take action against Donald J. Trump for all but running for president in 2024 without having declared himself a candidate. The suit comes more than four months after the group, American Bridge, lodged a complaint with the F.E.C. against Mr. Trump. The complaint argues that he has been behaving like a 2024 presidential candidate while avoiding the oversight of the commission by not filing a statement of candidacy. For a year, Mr. Trump has held rallies across the country that are ostensibly for Republicans running in local, statewide and congressional races, but during which he talks about himself. He has also given several interviews in which he has sounded like a candidate. When Mr. Trump will make a formal announcement remains uncertain, but he has accelerated his campaign planning in hopes of blunting damaging revelations from investigations into his attempts to overturn his defeat in the 2020 election." A CNN story is here.
Today's committee memo pulls back the curtain on this shameful conduct and shows clearly how the Trump administration secretly tried to manipulate the census for political gain while lying to the public and Congress about their goals. -- Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.), Oversight Committee chair ~~~
~~~ Miriam Jordan of the New York Times: "A new stash of documents obtained by Congress has confirmed that the Trump administration pushed to add a citizenship question to the census to help Republicans win elections..., a House committee report concluded on Wednesday. The report from the Committee on Oversight and Reform, the culmination of a yearslong investigation, detailed new findings based on drafts of internal memos and secret email communications between political appointees at the Commerce Department, which oversees the Census Bureau, and counterparts in the Justice Department. The documents provided the most definitive evidence yet that the Trump administration aimed to exclude noncitizens from the count to influence congressional apportionment that would benefit the Republican Party, the report concluded, and that senior officials used a false pretext to build a legal case for asking all residents of the United States whether they were American citizens.... The committee was expected on Wednesday to mark up a bill to enhance the institutional independence of the Census Bureau in order to prevent political interference in the agency." NPR's story is here. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Coral Davenport, et al., of the New York Times: "President Biden said on Wednesday that he would expand existing federal programs to help Americans cope with the extreme heat wrought by climate change, even as he faces intensifying pressure to take aggressive action to cut the fossil fuel emissions that are dangerously warming the planet. The measures fell short of the types of executive action an increasing number of Democrats have called on Mr. Biden to take in the wake of last week's decision by Sen. Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia, to walk away from clean energy legislation.... Mr. Manchin's move followed a June decision by the Supreme Court to limit the Environmental Protection Agency's authority to regulate climate-warming pollution from power plants.... Speaking at a shuttered coal plant in Somerset, Mass., that is being converted into a facility to make wind power components, Mr. Biden insisted that even after the two cornerstones of his climate agenda had crashed and burned, he would use executive authority to rein in heat-trapping fossil fuels." A Politico report is here.
Louis Caved. Somewhat. Jacob Bogage of the Washington Post: "The U.S. Postal Service pledged Wednesday to electrify at least 40 percent of its new delivery fleet, an increase that climate activists hailed as a major step toward reducing the government's environmental footprint. The Postal Service had been set to purchase as many as 165,000 vehicles from Oshkosh Defense, of which 10 percent would be electric under the original procurement plan. Now it will acquire 50,000 trucks from Oshkosh, half of which will be EVs, plus another 34,500 commercially available vehicles, 40 percent of which will be electric. The combined 84,500 trucks -- which begin making deliveries in late 2023 -- will go a long way toward meeting President Biden's goal for the entire government fleet to be EV-powered by 2035. The Postal Service's more than 217,000 vehicles make up the largest share of federal civilian vehicles.... Sixteen states plus four of the U.S.'s top environmental groups sued to stop the [original 10%-electric] contract in April." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ~~~
~~~ Marie: You just have to drag Republicans kicking & screaming to do every partly the right thing.
Joe Davidson of the Washington Post: "A Labor Department employee uncovered almost a half-billion dollars in federal government waste. All he got was a plaque. The former Occupational Safety and Health Administration staffer alerted officials nearly three years ago to unpaid fines owed the agency from companies with workplace safety violations. The Treasury Department, which did not collect the money because of a computer software error, soon found millions were owed to OSHA. Now, it's clear the glitch created a much larger problem than anyone -- including the anonymous whistleblower -- realized. As a result of his complaint to the Office of Special Counsel (OSC), a new audit has found that the government didn't collect almost $473 million owed to 28 federal offices, including the House, through June 27. Problems apparently began in October 2017, when Treasury's Bureau of the Fiscal Service installed 'a commercial off-the-shelf' computer program for government-wide debt collection, according to July 7 report from the Bureau.... As of June 27, the report said, only 10 percent of the $96.9 million owed to OSHA was collected. The problem for the other agencies is much worse. They have collected just $3.2 million, less than 1 percent of the $376 million due."
A Ray of Hope. Annie Karni of the New York Times: "... when the House called its vote this week on the Respect for Marriage Act, which would codify federal protections for same-sex couples that were put in place in a 2015 ruling, 47 Republicans voted 'yes.' That raised the possibility that there could be a narrow bipartisan path for the legislation to move ahead in the Senate and make its way to President Biden's desk to be signed into law. Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the minority leader, who has positioned himself as an obstacle to most of the Democrats' agenda, declined to reveal a stance on the bill. And on Wednesday, four Republican senators -- Susan Collins of Maine, Rob Portman of Ohio, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Thom Tillis of North Carolina -- said they supported it." ~~~
~~~ Marie: Funny thing is, I would have said a few years ago that a law was not as sure a thing as a Constitutional right because a new Congress can always overturn a law where as a right is a right is a right. But now it turns out, the confederate Supreme Court is just as, if not more, fickle than Congress. So I sure hope this law passes -- not that Clarence Thomas & the gang couldn't declare it unconstitutional on some flimsy, fake "rationale."
Amy Wang of the Washington Post: "Ukrainian first lady Olena Zelenska addressed Congress on Wednesday, making a rare personal appeal as the wife of a foreign leader for the United States to provide Ukraine with air defense systems, as the Russian invasion of Ukraine enters its sixth month. In a brief but emotional speech, Zelenska spoke about the increasingly dire security, economic and humanitarian conditions in Ukraine. 'I want to address you not as first lady, but as a daughter and as a mother,' Zelenska said in Ukrainian, as a woman interpreted her speech in English, their voices breaking at times.... She closed her speech with an appeal for more weapons, saying the war in Ukraine is not over and that the answer lies in Washington.... Zelenska received a standing ovation from members of Congress from both sides of the aisle when she took the stage of the main auditorium at the Capitol Visitor Center shortly after 11:10 a.m., as well as when she concluded her remarks about 10 minutes later."
Dan Diamond of the Washington Post: "The Biden administration is reorganizing the federal health department to create an independent division that would lead the nation's pandemic response, amid frustrations with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The move elevates a roughly 1,000-person team -- known as the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response, or ASPR -- into a separate division, charged with coordinating the nation's response t health emergencies...." The article is free to nonsubscribers.
Beyond the Beltway
Georgia. Eliza Fawcett of the New York Times: "A federal appeals court panel immediately allowed a Georgia law that bans abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy to go into effect on Wednesday, ending a yearslong battle over one of the country's most restrictive laws. The law, signed by Gov. Brian Kemp in 2019, prohibits most abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, which is typically when doctors can begin to detect a fetus's cardiac activity. Exceptions to the law are allowed if a woman faces serious harm or death in pregnancy, or in cases of rape or incest, so long as a police report has been filed. Georgia law previously allowed abortions until at least 20 weeks of pregnancy."
Pennsylvania Senate Race. Mariana Alfaro of the Washington Post: "Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, the Democratic nominee for Senate who suffered a stroke in May, said he has 'nothing to hide' about his health and called the lingering effects of his illness minor and infrequent, as he vowed to be back on the campaign trail 'very soon.'"
Texas. Edgar Sandoval of the New York Times: "Facing widespread public pressure, the school superintendent in Uvalde, Texas, has recommended firing the school district police chief, Pete Arredondo, for his role in the delayed response to a mass shooting that allowed a gunman to remain in two classrooms full of surviving students for more than an hour. A school board meeting set for Saturday will include a closed session with the district's lawyer to discuss 'possible action regarding termination for good cause' of Chief Arredondo based on a recommendation from the superintendent, Hal Harrell, according to a board agenda made public on Monday."
Way Beyond
Ukraine, et al. The New York Times' live updates of developments Thursday in Russia's war on Ukraine are here. The Guardian's live updates for Thursday are here. The Guardian's summary report is here. ~~~
~~~ The Washington Post's live updates for Thursday are here: "Russian state company Gazprom resumed gas flows to Germany on Thursday. The move eases European fears that a planned maintenance shutdown on the Nord Stream 1 pipeline would become permanent. But wider concerns about the energy crisis remain high, and the European Union has asked countries to ration gas before winter. CIA Director William J. Burns said there is no intelligence suggesting ... Vladimir Putin is ill. After widespread speculation that the Russian leader is sick, possibly with cancer, Burns quipped that Putin remains 'entirely too healthy.'... Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov indicated that Moscow's ambitions go beyond Ukraine's east, which has been ravaged by fighting. He told a state media outlet that it makes no sense to revive peace talks at this stage and said Russia would expand its territorial goals if Western weapons keep arriving in Ukraine."
Annabelle Timsit of the Washington Post: "Daria Kasatkina, Russia's highest-ranked female tennis player, came out as gay and criticized the war in Ukraine in an unusually candid interview.... Kasatkina, 25, touched on two of the most sensitive topics in Russia -- Ukraine and LGBTQ rights -- in a wide-ranging conversation with Russia blogger Vitya Kravchenko that was recorded in Barcelona and released Monday on YouTube. Kasatkina -- the No. 12 in the world -- said she wanted 'the war to end' and described the conflict as 'a full-blown nightmare.' She said there 'hadn't been a single day since February 24,' when Russia invaded Ukraine, that she hadn't read or thought about the war. She expressed empathy for Ukrainian players affected by the war." Both criticizing the war and being openly gay are illegal in Russia.
Italy. Jason Horowitz of the New York Times: "The national unity government of Prime Minister Mario Draghi, who restored Italy's influence and credibility, fell apart on Wednesday, leaving the country careening toward a new season of political chaos at a critical moment when the European Union is struggling to hold together a united front against Russia and revive its economies. After key parts of Mr. Draghi's coalition excoriated him on the Senate floor and abandoned him in a confidence vote on Wednesday evening, the prime minister was expected to discuss his resignation Thursday for a second, and almost certainly final, time in a week with the country's president, Sergio Mattarella." ~~~
~~~ Update. Angela Giuffrida of the Guardian: "Mario Draghi has confirmed his resignation as Italy's prime minister after an attempt to salvage his broad coalition failed when three key parties snubbed a confidence vote, paving the way for snap elections that could take place as early as late September.... Draghi formally handed his resignation to President Sergio Mattarella on Thursday morning and it was accepted. However, the populist Five Star Movement (M5S), Matteo Salvini's far-right League and Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia did not participate in a confidence vote in the senate on Thursday night that essentially called for parties to approve a spirit of cooperation.
U.K. The New PM Will Not Be a White Guy. Mark Landler & Stephen Castle of the New York Times: "Britain's Conservative Party narrowed the field for its next leader on Wednesday, advancing two candidates to replace Prime Minister Boris Johnson after a scandal-scarred tenure that ended with his government in disarray and the country adrift at a time of deepening economic crisis. Rishi Sunak, a former chancellor of the Exchequer, and Liz Truss, the current foreign secretary, emerged as the two finalists after five rounds of voting by Conservative lawmakers whittled the original field of 11 candidates. The two will now compete to succeed Prime Minister Boris Johnson in a vote of the party's rank-and-file membership, with the results announced in early September." An AP report is here. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
News Lede
Washington Post: "Extreme temperatures haunted two continents on Wednesday, with more than 100 million people in the United States facing excessive heat conditions and a heat wave that had scorched Western Europe taking aim at Central Europe.... In the United States, temperature records were obliterated in the Great Plains, where thermometers recorded 115 degrees in Texas and Oklahoma. More than 60 million Americans will probably experience triple-digit heat over the next week. Heat advisories and excessive heat warnings were issued affecting more than 105 million people in 28 states across the central United States and the Northeast, where the combination of hot weather and high humidity will lead to conditions ripe for heat-related illness or heatstroke."
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Reader Comments (8)
Leaving town and country again early tomorrow so can't call this one a Sunday Sermon. Maybe more a parting shot. Back at the end of the month. Presume the Secret Service will have revealed all it secrets and everything will be copasetic by then.
I called it "The Laws of Gravity." The paper didn't.
"Complications are everywhere, but sometimes there’s a simple explanation for them.
For centuries, people, confounded by the motion of stars and planets, accepted a wildly wrong explanation of why they appeared to move the way they did. Before Christ, the Egyptian Ptolemy said they circled the Earth, the obvious center of the universe.
It wasn’t until Newton grasped gravity and proposed his laws of motion in the late 1600’s that an accurate model of the universe began to emerge.
In a few equations, Newton explained much of what humans had not understood for over a thousand years.
One of today’s great puzzles might have a similarly simple explanation.
Repeated polls show most Americans don’t believe their government is working for them.
The history of Gallup polls on people’s satisfaction with the federal government reveals that since the 1980’s the trend has been mostly downward. This year their expressed dissatisfaction set new low marks for all three branches of government (news.gallup.com).
Why?
One factor explains much of that decline: The influence of Neo-liberal economic principles extolling free markets, deregulation, privatization, cutting public expenditures for social services-- all scorning the goal of pursuing any public or community good (corpwatch.org).
Such Neo-liberal policies began to take hold in the 1980’s. With them came NAFTA, an explosion of corporate lobbying expenditures (wikipedia.org), a Supreme Court increasingly friendly to business interests, more money in elections, lower taxes on the wealthy and rising inequality.
Even during Covid, with the economy at a virtual standstill, the number of billionaires continued to grow worldwide, with American billionaires possessing an astonishing 37% of the world’s billionaire wealth by 2020 (foxbusiness.com).
Over the last forty years recorded dissatisfaction with our government neatly tracks Neo-liberalism’s grip on government behavior.
The connection between the two is as certain as gravity."
ONE FOOT IN––ONE FOOT OUT:
Isaac Chotiner listens to Alan Dershowitz explain how he has felt shunned at his usual Martha Vineyard's haunts. A perfect exchange with an interviewer who follows through by checking these allegations and proving them to be untrue. It's a hoot!
https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/alan-dershowitzs-marthas-vineyard-cancellation
All this coverage re: the Secret Service is troubling. Lawrence last night brought out the name James Murry (am not sure of the spelling) who Trump installed as director late in the day to be his loyal foot soldier and who, Lawrence thinks, should be the main man to be questioned but so far not a peep from him.
The following information should be sent to all legislators in all the states that are banning abortions. It is searing and horrific and will inform ( although for some it's not clear there's a brain intact or a heart somewhere). It's a comprehensive paper on what pregnancy and childbirth does to bodies of young girls.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/18/health/young-girls-pregnancy-childbirth.html
And the fact that we are back in the alley that we vowed we'd never go back to makes me sick with fury and we better fight like hell to turn it around or once again we will be pawns in the hands of those who regulate our very bodies/ ourselves.
BTW, just remembered that Marie wondered if my absences might be linked to a further decline in our polity and admit I am a little worried about it.
Ignoring Cassandra has its perils.
So, if things really fall apart (aparter?) in my absence, please accept my apologies in advance.
That said, I'm leaving anyway.
Wait…Merrick Garland …was…animated? Visibly so? Wow.
Often when I think of ol’ Merrick I’m reminded of H.L. Mencken’s reaction when he was told that Calvin Coolidge was dead.
“How can they tell?”
So news of visible animation is a step in the right direction. I hope.
@ Akhilleus
Love Mencken, but Dorothy Parker maybe?
Ken and AK: I am still laughing–– you two should go on the road. Poor Merrick–--patience people. PATIENCE!
Ken,
Well whadaya know?
I had always thought that was a Mencken line. Even without looking it certainly sounds Parkerish, but upon checking it appears that it was indeed Dorothy who brought the pith in this case.
In doing a quick check, I ran across another Parker-Coolidge connection. At a dinner of some sort, Dorothy found herself seated next to the Silent One. She turned to the president and told him that she had bet some friends that she could get to say more than five words. To which Coolidge responded “You lose.” Hahaha. He might have been largely silent but he wasn’t lacking in pithy responses himself.
While we’re on the subject, and with my ears still ringing from the constant whining and bellowing of the Fat Fascist, what a great relief it would be to have a president who spoke only when necessary, and then in abbreviated fashion.
By the way, I’ve already got my response ready for when someone tells me that Trump was dead. Well, there are a few. You can imagine what those might be.