;)
Saturday
Jul222023
July 23, 2023
Afternoon Update:
Kelly Garrity of Politico: "Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. blamed the media for dragging his campaign Sunday, saying he has been slammed 'even more than President Trump was slammed' by mainstream media outlets. 'I've been really, you know, slammed in a way that I think is unprecedented,' Kennedy said during an interview on Fox News" 'Sunday Morning Futures.'"
~~~~~~~~~~
Kevin Liptak of CNN: "President Joe Biden plans to name a new national monument next week after Emmett Till, a White House official told CNN, honoring the Black teenager whose murder in 1955 helped galvanize the civil rights movement. Biden will designate the monument on Tuesday, which would have been Till's 82nd birthday. 'The new monument will protect places that tell the story of Emmett Till's too-short life and racially-motivated murder, the unjust acquittal of his murderers, and the activism of his mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, who courageously brought the world's attention to the brutal injustices and racism of the time, catalyzing the civil rights movement,' a White House official said. The Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument will be centered in Illinois and Mississippi, the states where Till was from and killed, respectively."
WWJD? Shera Avi-Yonah of the Washington Post: "A three-star Air Force general said the U.S. military's approach to artificial intelligence is more ethical than adversaries' because it is a 'Judeo-Christian society.'... Lt. Gen. Richard G. Moore Jr. made the comment at a Hudson Institute event Thursday while answering a question.... 'Regardless of what your beliefs are, our society is a Judeo-Christian society, and we have a moral compass. Not everybody does,' Moore said." MB: I hope Moore is one of the general officers whose promotion Tommy Tuberville is sitting on.
Josh Dawsey of the Washington Post: "In a text message [sent before January 6, 2021,] that has been scrutinized by federal prosecutors, [Trump Chief-of-Staff Mark] Meadows wrote to a White House lawyer that his son, Atlanta-area attorney Blake Meadows, had been probing possible fraud and had found only a handful of possible votes cast in dead voters' names, far short of what Trump was alleging.... [At the time, numerous] Trump aides and other Republican officials expressed deep skepticism or even openly mocked the election claims being made publicly by Trump.... Days after Meadows sent the text, he organized the [Jan. 3 call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad] Raffensperger..., in which Trump pressed to 'find' the votes in the state necessary to overturn Biden's win.... A person close to Meadows said he knows his relationship with Trump is permanently ruptured and has told others he does not seek to antagonize Trump and his supporters but concluded he had to cooperate with Smith's office as required by law." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Maureen Dowd of the New York Times: "A man is running to run the government he tried to overthrow while he was running it, even as he is running to stay ahead of the law.... On an Iowa radio show on Tuesday, Trump warned it would be 'very dangerous' if [Jack] Smith jailed him, since his supporters have 'much more passion than they had in 2020.'... Meanwhile, Ron DeSantis, Trump's closest Republican challenger, defended Trump on Russell Brand's podcast Friday, dismissing the idea that there was an overt effort to upend the 2020 election. 'The idea that this was a plan to somehow overthrow the government of the United States is not true,' DeSantis said, 'and it's something that the media had spun up just to try to basically get as much mileage out of it and use it for partisan and political aims.' DeSantis seems almost as delusional as Trump...." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
I Can't Believe I Read It on Fox "News": "In an article for the Bulletin of Applied Transgender Studies, academics from Oregon State University wrote about their shock at receiving sarcasm and mockery in response to their research into undergraduate LGBTQ students studying in STEM fields. The team claimed 50 of 349 responses to their questionnaire on the topic contained 'slurs, hate speech, or direct targeting of the research team.' Labeling them 'malicious respondents,' they adapted their project to examine how the joke responses 'relate to engineering culture by framing them within larger social contexts -- namely, the rise of online fascism.'... Several answers contained profanity and other offensive and obscene language and many referenced memes. 'Online memes associated with white nationalist and fascist movements were present throughout the data, alongside memes and content referencing gaming and "nerd" culture,' the researchers further claimed." MB: The one tell that this is a Fox story is that the writer repeatedly reports that researchers "claimed" this and that; an MSM report would likely says researchers "found" those results. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Presidential Race 2024
How to Lose Younger Voters. Jeff Stein of the Washington Post: "Three of Donald Trump's rivals for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination are pushing for cuts to Social Security benefits that would only affect younger Americans, as the party's leaders grapple with the explosive politics of the retirement program. In comments on Sunday as well as in interviews earlier this year, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) said Social Security will need to be revamped -- but not for people who are near or in retirement. Former vice president Mike Pence and former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley have taken similar positions since launching their presidential campaigns. From the earliest days of his 2016 run, Trump has vowed not to touch either Social Security or Medicare -- a break from GOP orthodoxy that has shifted the party's views...."
The Killer Governor. Sharon LaFraniere, et al., of the New York Times: "Once a vaccine advocate, [Gov. Ron DeSantis] lost his enthusiasm for the shot before the Delta wave sent Covid hospitalizations and deaths soaring. It's a grim chapter he now leaves out of his rosy retelling of his pandemic response.... The governor now presents his Covid strategy not only as his biggest accomplishment, but as the foundation for his presidential campaign. Mr. DeSantis argues that 'Florida got it right' because he was willing to stand up for the rights of individuals despite pressure from health 'bureaucrats.'... On the single factor that ... experts say mattered most in fighting Covid -- widespread vaccinations -- Mr. DeSantis's approach proved deeply flawed. While the governor personally crusaded for Floridians 65 and older to get shots, he laid off once younger age groups became eligible. Tapping into suspicion of public health authorities, which the Republican right was fanning, he effectively stopped preaching the virtues of Covid vaccines. Instead, he emphasized his opposition to requiring anyone to get shots, from hospital workers to cruise ship guests.... Floridians died at a higher rate, adjusted for age, than residents of almost any other state during the Delta wave, according to the Times analysis." MB: People died because Ron DeSantis of Ron DeSantis' personal vanity project. And it appears that the project itself has failed. It doesn't seem this cruel, creepy opportunist will become president*. ~~~
~~~ OR, as Paul Campos put it in LG&$, "Ron DeSantis killed tens of thousand of Floridians because he thought opposing vaccines would help make him president. I mean 'killed' is such a harsh word -- maybe 'helped kill via reckless indifference to their potential deaths' would be fairer." Campos also notes that DeSantis is unlikely to win the GOP presidential nomination, unless a recent Michigan poll, ferinstance, has "a margin of error of 56 points."
Kevin Sullivan & Lori Rozsa of the Washington Post: "Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is intensifying his efforts to de-emphasize racism in his state's public school curriculum by arguing that some Black people benefited from being enslaved and defending his state's new African American history standards.... 'They're probably going to show that some of the folks that eventually parlayed, you know, being a blacksmith into doing things later in life,' DeSantis said on Friday in response to reporters' questions while standing in front of a nearly all-White crowd of supporters.... Civil rights leaders, educators and others have expressed revulsion at the idea that enslaved people benefited from the experience.... DeSantis said he 'wasn't involved in writing the new teaching materials, which took effect this week. But he credited 'a lot of scholars' with creating 'the most robust standards in African American history probably anywhere in the country.'" MB: I wonder if DeSantis wishes he were a slave so he too could learn blacksmithing or how to pick cotton in the noonday sun. He should try it out. Sure hope the master doesn't beat DeSantis with a whip or sell his children at the St. Augustine slave market.
Hannah Natanson of the Washington Post: "For many educational publishing companies and book sellers, sales are plunging as districts shy from purchasing content they fear might fall afoul of state laws restricting education on race, sex and gender -- or draw complaints amid a historic surge in book challenges. Meanwhile, frazzled firms are spending months negotiating with education departments, politicians and school officials to ensure the books they sell won't leave them imprisoned, slapped with onerous fines or banned from doing business in a state under the raft of new legislation." MB: I don't see what the problem is. The publishing companies could just copy the books they printed when I was a schoolgirl; those sanitized "histories" were so Rah-Rah-You-Ess-Ay and devoid of meaningful social content that they would not offend any white evangelical nationalists. I'm not sure they even mentioned slavery, for instance, although that would mean they didn't tout the benefits slaves enjoyed as a result of forced servitude.
Rebecca Robbins & Sheryl Stolberg of the New York Times: "In 2004, Gilead Sciences decided to stop pursuing a new H.I.V. drug. The public explanation was that it wasn't sufficiently different from an existing treatment to warrant further development. In private, though..., Gilead had devised a plan to delay the new drug's release to maximize profits, even though executives had reason to believe it might turn out to be safer for patients, according to a trove of internal documents made public in litigation against the company. Gilead, one of the world's largest drugmakers, appeared to be embracing a well-worn industry tactic: gaming the U.S. patent system to protect lucrative monopolies on best-selling drugs.... The 'patent extension strategy,' as the Gilead documents repeatedly called it, would allow the company to keep prices high for its tenofovir-based drugs.... The [decade-long] delayed release of the new treatment is now the subject of state and federal lawsuits in which some 26,000 patients who took Gilead's older H.I.V. drugs claim that the company unnecessarily exposed them to kidney and bone problems.... Gilead's apparent maneuver ... is so common in the pharmaceutical industry that it has a name: product hopping." MB: I hope those greedy bastards have to pay a high cruelty premium.
Dave Kindy of the Washington Post: On Thanksgiving Day 1945, Tony Bennett was stationed in Mannheim, Germany, when he bumped into a high school friend. The two young men were delighted to see each other and decided to spend the day together. It didn't work out. "An Army officer blasted the two soldiers -- one Black and the other White -- with a hate-filled rant for being together in public. In the segregated military of the day, the two men were not allowed to socialize. Back then, the punishment for Black and White soldiers associating with one another was more severe than if they fraternized with civilians in occupied Germany.... The 19-year-old corporal -- who also survived the horrors of combat and witnessed unspeakable atrocities while liberating Nazi death camps -- vowed to become a pacifist and to work for racial harmony." And he did. ~~~
~~~ At least a decade later and long after President Harry Truman desegregated the armed services in 1948, my uncle was a SAC pilot who, with three other officers, had to stop in some town in Florida. The Air Force chose their hotels: one for the three white guys and a different one for the Black officer, who was not permitted to stay in the nice white folks' hotel. Later, my uncle told his C.O. he wasn't going on any jaunts where AF personnel didn't receive equal accommodations. So put these stories in your school books, Ron DeSantis. Oh wait, your anti-woke legislation does not permit any text that might make some white students "feel uncomfortable."
Beyond the Beltway
California. A Bigoted Protest Backfires. Jill Cowan of the New York Times: Adrianne "Peterson, who has run [a San Diego L]ibrary branch since 2012 and highlighted books for Pride Month for the better part of a decade, was taken aback when she read an email last month from two neighborhood residents. They informed her that they had gotten nearly all of the books in the Pride display checked out and would not return them unless the library permanently removed what they considered 'inappropriate content.'... The text of their email was identical to a template posted online by a right-wing group called CatholicVote, which has an office in Indiana and is not affiliated with the Catholic church.... Soon..., stacks of Amazon boxes containing new copies of the books the protesters checked out started to arrive at the library after The San Diego Union-Tribune reported on the protest."
Florida Voter Suppression. Jane Timm of NBC News: "Florida Democrats say they're spending and organizing to chase down people who vote by mail after election officials across the state canceled all standing mail ballot requests this year. The mass cancellations were to comply with a 2021 election law that added new restrictions to mail-in voting. The legislation -- which was celebrated by Gov. Ron DeSantis and slammed by voting rights advocates as discriminatory -- cut the duration of mail-in ballot requests in half from four years to two. It also required that existing requests for mail ballots be canceled at the end of 2022, forcing election workers to cancel millions of requests and start their lists of vote-by-mail voters from scratch."
Way Beyond
Reuters: "The G20 bloc of wealthy economies meeting in India failed to reach a consensus on phasing down fossil fuels on Saturday after objections by some producer nations. Scientists and campaigners are exasperated by international bodies' foot-dragging on action to curb global heating even as extreme weather across the northern hemisphere underlined the climate crisis facing the world. The G20 member countries together account for more than three-quarters of global emissions and gross domestic product, so a cumulative effort by the group to decarbonise is crucial in the global fight against climate breakdown.... Saudi Arabia, Russia, China, South Africa and Indonesia are all known to oppose the goal of tripling renewable energy capacity this decade."
Israel. Patrick Kingsley & Isabel Kershner of the New York Times:"Thousands of demonstrators were camped outside Israel's Parliament on Sunday as lawmakers debated a key part of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's plan to overhaul the judiciary, a proposal that has sparked perhaps the country's gravest domestic crisis since its founding 75 years ago. Talks were ongoing to reach an 11th-hour compromise over the judicial dispute, which centers on Mr. Netanyahu's plan to limit the ways in which the Supreme Court can overturn government decisions. But for now, lawmakers are expected to hold a binding vote on the law on Monday in Parliament, where Mr. Netanyahu's far-right and religiously conservative ruling coalition holds a four-seat majority." This is a liveblog. ~~~
~~~ Tia Goldenberg of the AP: "Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was recovering in a hospital on Sunday after an emergency heart procedure while opposition to his government's contentious judicial overhaul plan reached a fever pitch and unrest gripped the country. Netanyahu's doctors said on Sunday the heart pacemaker implantation went smoothly and that Netanyahu, 73, felt fine. According to his office, he was expected to be discharged later in the day."
Ukraine, et al. The Washington Post's live briefing of developments Sunday in Russia's war on Ukraine is here: "Russia struck Odessa with a barrage of missiles overnight == the fifth day of attacks in a week for the embattled port city -- killing one civilian and injuring 19 others, including four children, Ukrainian officials said early Sunday. The strikes destroyed a historic cathedral in the city and damaged residential buildings, officials added. Russia has continuously bombed Odessa, home to Ukraine's biggest port, since backing out of a deal to allow the export of Ukrainian grain to the rest of the world.... The U.S. ambassador to Ukraine said the Odessa attack had 'terrible costs.' Bridget A. Brink said that the city, 'a world heritage site and a vital port for global food security,' was left with 'a destroyed cathedral, ruined homes, and burning grain silos.'... [President] Zelensky discussed steps with NATO's secretary general to unblock grain export routes outlined in the Black Sea Grain Initiative..., [he] said in his evening address.... 'Many may die' from starvation without an active Black Sea grain deal in place, said U.N. aid chief Martin Griffiths." ~~~
~~~ The Guardian's live updates for Sunday are here. The Guardian's summary report is here.
News Lede
CNN: "A large wildfire tearing through the Greek island of Rhodes forced thousands of tourists to flee their hotels in what Greek officials said was the largest evacuation effort in the country's history. Those caught up in the blaze described chaotic and frightening scenes, with some having to leave on foot or find their own transport after being told to leave.The wildfire in the central and south part of Rhodes -- a hugely popular island for holidaymakers -- has been burning since Tuesday. It is the largest of a number of blazes in Greece, which is sweltering due to a heat wave that experts say is likely to become the country's longest on record."
Share Article
Comments for this entry have been disabled. Additional comments may not be added to this entry at this time.
Reader Comments (18)
Another book to ban…
Yesterday on the NPR news quiz show “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me”, one of the questions involved a recently published discovery about the mating habits of rhesus macaques on Puerto Rico. A three year study of the population of these monkeys seems to indicate that male monkeys who mate with other males might have better reproductive success when eventually mating with females.
This surprising news prompted host Peter Sagal to quip that a children’s book explaining this phenomenon (and one instantly banned were it to actually be published) might be called “Bi-Curious George”.
Hahaha…
If winger bigots ever listened to this show (highly doubtful), this might give them the idea of pre-banning books. Which would lead to pre-banning thought…oh, wait. They already do that.
Never mind.
But if you want to know more about Bi-Curious George, you could look it up, as James Thurber used to say:
https://cosmosmagazine.com/nature/macaque-monkeys-bisexual-benefits/
@Akhilleus: I wish the yet-to-be published "Bi-Curious George" were about George Washington's youthful sexual experimentation. The right would really lose it. How do you do a pre-book burning?
Stop the presses!
You learn the most amazing stuff out here in RC World. I just read that Netanyahu is in the hospital for a heart procedure.
Bibi has a heart? Who knew? I’m guessing Palestinians—and plenty of Israelis—are chalking this up as fake news.
Marie,
Re: Bi-curious George Washington…I’m not sure Party of Traitor members are all that keen on old George to begin with. After all, he started the business of peaceful transfer of power. They are definitely not cool with that.
He didn’t want to be a king. Their guy, the short-fingered vulgarian, wants nothing less.
He was not big on lying. Immediate expulsion from the Freedom Caucus!
Washington’s face is on the one dollar bill. Pshaw…a measly dollar bill. If it ain’t at least a Grant ($50), or a Franklin ($100), who cares?
Washington freed his slaves. Granted, it was after his death…still. And I’m sure the right would criticize him for letting them go, thereby depriving them of all the wonderful edumacation opportunities that slaves were given.
Also, Washington had no children. That means he and Martha were doing the nasty for reasons other than procreation, like Jesus sez.
Finally, I’ve read at least three bios of the big guy over the years, and never once did I run across a single mention of him tanning his testicles. Not a real man.
Now, a bi-curious Andy Jackson…that would really mash their medullas.
You know how you sometimes revisit a place you haven't been in a long time and you are amazed to find that "everything has changed"? Well, what if everything really had changed? This morning I came upon a recent photo of a beach I used to go to when I was in high school. My first thought was, "Oh, there's a place I've been before." Really?
Every grain of sand on that beach, every drop of water in the sea is different. There's a lifeguard stand in the picture, and although it's of an ole-timey style, I doubt that same wooden structure has been standing since the 1960s. The single palm tree in the photo is far younger than 60 years. The gulls in the sky are not the same gulls that were there in 1960. The few people on the beach are highly unlikely to have been there when I was.
Of course the map coordinates are the same as when I was there and by chance the beach is still in the same city it was back then. But what I wonder is,
If everything has changed, have I ever been there before?
It's not the same beach and you are not the same you. Every cell in your body has changed in the intervening years.
Whoa, have you ever really looked at your hands, man?
@Akhilleus: Your points on the man who refused to become George I are well-taken. And the "Father of the Country" with no natural children? Yes, indeedy, something's way wrong there.
@Patrick: Dude, so unless I've been someplace really, really recently, I haven't been there at all. Maybe when RFK Jr. lied to Congress the other day and claimed he'd never been an anti-vaxxer, he was waxing philosophical; after all, practically his whole body is made up of cells he didn't have when the "former" RFK Jr. made anti-vax remarks. This could work as a great defense for any bad acts. Donald Trump is definitely not the same guy he was when he sat watching teevee while his troops were wreaking havoc down the avenue.
So I guess I haven't been to Italy, and haven't had real gelato and
haven't toured Lake Como and didn't see how liberal things were in
Bologna. I'll have to quit lying to people about that, I guess.
And speaking of liberal, Italy's new right wing ruling party is much
worse than ours.
They're getting involved in LGBTQ issues, starting with gay women
who have invitro fertilization and use their own last name on birth
certificates. Those birth certificates are being cleansed of their names
now, so what name does the baby get? Jane Doe, John Doe?
Sounds like something Ron DeSantis can run on.
AK: Your comments reminded me of an incident years ago when I was training to become a Med Tech at the U. of Mo. I was expressing my anxiety regarding drawing blood from a very young black boy whose arms were terribly thin and I was afraid of hurting him. The Intern in question said: "Aw, don't worry––-Black folk don't feel pain like we do." I never questioned that statement nor, if I recall correctly, did I find it incomprehensible.
And Forest: Thanks for the info on Italy's Big Foot on women who undergo IF–--I was not aware of that.
Marie,
Heraclitus famously observed that no one can step into the same river twice. It is not the same river and he/she is not same man/woman.
Heraclitus was big on the idea of change and everything being in flux. If he were around today, he’d probably observe how the MAGAts have fluxed it all up.
But then again, he also came up with the idea that things in the world (including us) are always in a state of becoming, but never actually being (as in a finished, completed state).
Considering his rep as a pessimistic old fart, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. It might point to the unlikelihood of R’s achieving their goal of an authoritarian, white, Christian nationalist country.
But it could just as easily be interpreted to mean that the ideals expressed by the founders will never be completely realized. Another reason more people don’t read philosophy…
But the idea that you are not now the same person you were on that beach many years ago is useful, and indicative of the changes, physical, philosophical, experiential, and moral you’ve undergone since then. Heraclitus would say “Yup. And not necessarily years ago. You’re different now than you were hours or minutes ago.”
Every time I scan through the stories on RC, finish a book, listen to a new poem or song, or eat something new, I’m changing. Hopefully for the better.
I recall reading, with not a small amount of alarm, something written by a guy who roomed with Cancun Ted Cruz in college. He said that Ted was exactly the same as he was in college, an arrogant know it all. I found it somewhat disturbing that someone could live an extra 20 or 30 years and still be the same person.
One of the most interesting qualities of the great fictional characters (and real life characters as well) is their dynamism, their ability to change over time. But change is not what most PoT adherents want. They want things exactly the same…the same as they were a hundred years ago, that is. Remember the snarky, snarling comment Sarah Palin once made? “How’s that changey thing workin’ for ya?” to cheers from the winger mob?
Well, change comes whether we want it or not. Palin, today, is a largely forgotten loser. Cruz is stupider and worse than he was just a year ago. Trump will have more indictments in six months than he’s ever had in his life. And RC will be gone. But you’ll finally have (hopefully), the house you planned for.
Embrace the change. Some days that’s all we can count on.
PD,
I’ve read that such wildly racist ideas were not uncommon in medical fields(!) not all that long ago. But racism is nothing if not flexible. Back in high school, I remember an upper class guy on our football team telling me, whenever we’d play a team with black kids, to hit ‘em hard. “They don’t like pain” he assured me. So which is it? They don’t feel pain or they feel it too much? Growing up in a neighborhood with black kids, my experience was just the opposite. Most of those kids were tough. I guess they had to be.
I expect to hear something about the Holocaust from all those nutjobs
who claim that slavery taught job skills to slaves who otherwise
would have no skills.
Those weren't Nazi death camps. They were health spas. People
came there (mostly Jewish) who were overweight and it worked.
Some got down to 60 lbs or less on that great diet of water and dirt.
What a gas!
Forrest,
C’mon now…are you really an undercover producer for TuKKKer KKKarlson? I expect to see MTG repeat your idea any day now, along with additional embroideries, such as…hmmm…let’s see….oh yeah, for some reason (no one knows), all those Jews were suddenly homeless. They needed a place to stay. Those very good people, the Nazis, gave them all a place to live! And didn’t charge them a penny! And to help everyone get better acquainted, they gave them all a number, tattooed on their arms. “Hello, Mrs. 28674, meet Mr. 67521.
Those Nazis were very efficient.
@Akhilleus & @P.D. Pepe: Akhilleus, you must be right. When my cousin was an intern at Baltimore hospital, probably in the 1940s, he told me that when Black mothers gave birth, they sometimes could not think of a name for the baby. So the interns & med students would suggest Latin names for parts of the body, ensuring that there was somewhere in Baltimore an Esophagus Brown & Oculus Washington.
He thought that was hilarious, and I was young enough when he told the story that I thought it was funny, too. There was no shame in ridiculing Black people.
And those Jews got free dental. If there were any gold fillings in their
teeth, they were immediately yanked out and they didn't even have
to go through that painful shot of pain killer.
RIP Tony Bennett, a voice that milked every iota of musicality out of a song. A wonderful mix of passion and control. I’d like to pass on to my RC brothers and sisters a clip from his astounding work with jazz pianist Bill Evans, from the double album they recorded in 1975, “Some other time”. Bennett’s gorgeous phrasing is complemented by Evans’ perfectly crafted eighth note runs and surprising, but never ostentatious, choice of substitute chords underneath. Pure magic, baby.
The song also considers something we’ve been tossing around this morning, the idea of how things change without us noticing.
https://youtu.be/8xVRVfqAV0s
@Akhilleus & @Forrest Morris: To be fair to Miss Margie, she is already up on her Holocaust heritage: besides positing that Jewish space lasers caused California's wildfires, she equated the requirement to wear face masks during the pandemic with forced wearing of the Star of David in Nazi Germany (after an outcry, she apologized for this last remark). Although she recently (okay, accidentally) cut a campaign ad for Joe Biden, she has been comparing him to Hitler in social media posts. So what with the campaign ad, I'm thinking the comparison is meant as a compliment to Biden.