June 18, 2023

Late Morning Update:

Zolan Kanno-Youngs of the New York Times: "As President Biden ramps up his re-election campaign, his team is focused not on the various investigations into ... Donald J. Trump but rather on spotlighting the ways, however mundane, his administration can assist Americans in their daily lives.... While Republican candidates bicker over the case of Mr. Trump, Mr. Biden hopes to showcase his governing. While his opponents attack -- or promise to pardon -- Mr. Trump, Mr. Biden would rather discuss infrastructure and cracking down on undisclosed fees."

Jonathan Landay of Reuters: "Even when he was president, Donald Trump lacked the legal authority to declassify a U.S. nuclear weapons-related document that he is charged with illegally possessing, security experts said, contrary to the former U.S. president's claim. The secret document, listed as No. 19 in the indictment charging Trump with endangering national security, can under the Atomic Energy Act only be declassified through a process that by the statute involves the Department of Energy and the Department of Defense.... The special status of nuclear-related information further erodes what many legal experts say is a weak defense centered around declassification. Without providing evidence, Trump has claimed he declassified the documents before removing them from the White House.... Not everyone agrees that the president lacks the power to declassify nuclear data." ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: According to some (mostly right-wing, I think) experts, the Congress cannot constrain the president. Evidently, this is what Trump meant when he said, "Then I have an Article 2, where I have the right to do whatever I want as president."

~~~~~~~~~~

Matthew Lee of the AP: "U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Sunday kicked off two days of high-stakes diplomatic talks in Beijing aimed at trying to cool exploding U.S.-China tensions that have set many around the world on edge. Blinken opened his program by meeting Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang for an extended discussion to be followed by a working dinner. He'll have additional talks with Qin, as well as China's top diplomat Wang Yi and possibly President Xi Jinping, on Monday."

Being a sociopath really works for him. -- David Axelrod, on Donald Trump ~~~

~~~ Maureen Dowd of the New York Times on the mad king Donald. Dowd posits that "my boxes" are a security blanket.

Dan Balz, et al., of the Washington Post: "Not since the Vietnam War in the 1960s or perhaps the mid-19th century before the Civil War has the country's governing structure faced such disunity and peril, given the unprecedented nature of a federal criminal indictment of a former president compounded by the fact that Trump has been charged by the Justice Department in the administration of the Democrat who defeated him in 2020 and who is his likeliest general election opponent in 2024, if Trump is nominated again by the Republican Party." ~~~

"When law enforcement officials searched Trump's Mar-a-Lago property in August 2022, the warrant listed three crimes that may have been committed to justify the search of the former president's residence. The law that bars someone from being president, U.S. Code 2071, was one of them. Ultimately, however, in the indictment, federal prosecutors did not accuse Trump of committing this crime. None of the crimes that federal prosecutors formally accused Trump of committing would prevent him from being president." The article goes on, in characteristic Balzian fashion, to treat right-wing radicalism as a rather normal reaction to a political schism and takes Balz's usual dip into both-siderism: see, liberals are mad at the Supreme Court, too. But it also covers a few legal issues, one of which are interesting.

David Bauder of the AP (June 16): "A longtime producer for Tucker Carlson is out at Fox News after he was deemed responsible for the on-air headline that referred to President Joe Biden as a 'wannabe dictator' because of the indictment of ... Donald Trump. The producer, Alex McCaskill, confirmed his exit in an Instagram post. Fox News did not comment on Friday.... The producer offered to resign with two weeks' notice, but was told to clean out his desk and leave immediately, he said.... McCaskill was named this spring in a lawsuit filed by a former Fox producer, Abby Grossberg, who also worked on Carlson's staff. Her lawsuit said McCaskill 'habitually belittled female employees' at Fox."

Presidential Race 2024

Kevin Liptak of CNN: “President Joe Biden kicked off his reelection campaign Saturday at a union rally in his frequent haunt of Pennsylvania, the state that remains an intersection of his personal and political identities that he hopes can propel him to a second term. The first official rally of his final political campaign was a moment for Biden to underscore recent economic wins that undergird his argument for another four years in the White House.... To a roaring crowd, who repeatedly cheered 'four more years,' the president touted several accomplishments, including the bipartisan infrastructure law, a coronavirus relief package, a bipartisan semiconductor chip manufacturing law and the recently negotiated debt ceiling deal that helped avert a US default.... First lady Jill Biden, who spoke shortly before her husband, highlighted the president's optimism."

GOP Candidates Honor "Merciless Tyrant." Ronald Shafer of the Washington Post: "The enslaving Confederate Gen. Braxton Bragg suddenly has become a Republican primary rallying cry, after Fort Bragg in North Carolina was renamed to Fort Liberty earlier this month. 'We will end the political correctness in the hallways of the Pentagon, and North Carolina will once again be home to Fort Bragg,' former vice president Mike Pence told a state GOP convention. 'It's an iconic name and iconic base, and we're not gonna let political correctness run amok in North Carolina,' vowed Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.... Bragg was a 'merciless tyrant...,' wrote Sam Watkins, who served under the man historians call the South's worst and most hated general." Shafer goes on to provide numerous examples of Bragg's cruelty, hubris and stupidity. This is what Republicans want.

Nick Robertson of the Hill: "Former Vice President and 2024 candidate Mike Pence said he would 'clean house' in federal law enforcement if he was elected president.... Alongside a wave of new hires at the Justice Department, Pence said the first person he would fire would be FBI Director Christopher Wray." MB: Donald Trump appointed Wray, a Republican.

Marie: In case you didn't notice, Biden is appealing to all Americans. Pence & DeSantis are appealing to racists & right-wing fantasists.

Beyond the Beltway

Arizona. Kim Bellware of the Washington Post: Barry Lee "Jones, who denied guilt for the nearly 28 years he was on death row in Arizona, was freed Thursday after a judge tossed out his 1994 conviction on charges that he sexually assaulted and murdered his girlfriend's 4-year-old daughter, Rachel Yvonne Gray. Jones ... was surrounded by family on his release from death row, which comes just over a year after the Supreme Court issued a polarizing decision that would have allowed Arizona to execute him despite strong evidence to support his innocence claims. Federal public defenders said he was wrongfully convicted due to the ineffectiveness of his court-appointed and state-appointed lawyers in his 1994 criminal trial and appeal. His murder conviction and death sentence were tossed as part of an agreement with prosecutors to plead guilty to a lesser charge of second-degree murder for not taking Gray to the hospital the night before she died. He was resentenced on the lesser charge and released on time served."

Pennsylvania. Colbi Edmonds of the New York Times: "Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania said on Saturday he was 'confident' the portion of Interstate 95 in Philadelphia that collapsed last weekend will open within the next two weeks. 'We are going to get traffic moving again,' Mr. Shapiro said on Twitter, crediting an 'all hands on deck approach.' Initially, he had said he expected the repairs to take months.... On Saturday, President Biden took a helicopter tour of the collapsed portion of the highway and met with construction crews and emergency workers who responded to the crash. Mr. Biden said that people were working to get the project done 'in record time' and that I-95 was critical to the local economy and quality of life. He added that the federal government had released $3 million in emergency funds to offset the cost of repairs and that 'a lot more' federal funding was coming."

Texas. Cruelty Is of the Essence of the Scheme. Francisco Uranda & Erin Douglas of the Texas Tribune: "In a week when parts of the state are getting triple-digit temperatures and weather officials urge Texans to stay cool and hydrated, Gov. Greg Abbott gave final approval to a law that will eliminate local rules mandating water breaks for construction workers.... The law will nullify ordinances enacted by Austin in 2010 and Dallas in 2015 that established 10-minute breaks every four hours so that construction workers can drink water and protect themselves from the sun. It also prevents other cities from passing such rules in the future.... Texas is the state where the most workers die from high temperatures, government data shows. At least 42 workers died in Texas between 2011 and 2021 from environmental heat exposure, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.... This problem particularly affects Latinos because they represent six out of every 10 construction workers, according to U.S. Census Bureau data."

Way Beyond

Uganda. Abdi Dahir of the New York Times: "At least 37 people were killed — many of them students -- and eight others were wounded when militants with an extremist group attacked a secondary school in western Uganda, the authorities said on Saturday, in one of the deadliest terrorist attacks in the East African nation in years.... Three people were rescued, but six students were abducted, a military spokesman, Brig. Gen. Felix Kulayigye, said in a statement. The attack, which began around 11:30 p.m. on Friday, was carried out by about five militants.... Militants from the same group staged an attack in Uganda in late 2021, when suicide bombers set off coordinated explosions in the capital, Kampala, that killed three people, sowing fears about the Allied Democratic Forces' reach and posing a vexing challenge for the Ugandan authorities."

Ukraine, et al. The Washington Post's live briefing of developments Sunday in Russia's war on Ukraine is here: "Ukrainian fighters driving Kyiv's counteroffensive operations are making 'small advances' in several areas, including the Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk regions and around Bakhmut, Britain's Defense Ministry said Sunday, noting that both sides are experiencing high casualties.... African leaders met Putin with a plea for peace after a trip to Kyiv to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.... Ukraine and Russia's conditions for peace talks are vastly different: Kyiv wants Russia to withdraw all troops from all occupied territories, while Moscow wants Ukraine to accept Russia's illegal claim to some Ukrainian territories. Russia's deployment of tactical nuclear weapons to Belarus is 'totally irresponsible,' President Biden said as he boarded Air Force One Saturday, one day after Putin confirmed that Russia has transferred some of the weapons."

Comments

[P.D.Pepe]

I was going to elaborate on Dowd's excellent dump on Donald--citing David K. Johnson's riff about Trump not being loved by his mother and like "Citizen Kane," his "Rosebud" was taken from him hence he needs to hang onto anything he deems to he HIS. He also refers to people as his property---"My Kevin"––"My General" My documents and so forth and I was also going to wish all the fathers here a happy day but after I read what that Simon Legree in Texas has wrought I became so enraged I'm sitting here spitting nails. How on earth can that law go nto effect? We treat animals better than that–--I truly do not understand.

[Victoria]

@PD: One wonders what is going on in Abbott's mind when he prevents the water breaks. What does he think the titans of industry or the military will do when they find out about this plan of Abbott's, since it has been known for decades that workers drop like flies when they become dehydrated. For instance, it is a court martial offense in the Army if the junior officer refuses to allow adequate hydration for the troops during training exercises. Hydration = better work performance. Business loses money if they kill off their workers.

[Ken Winkes]

Think it might have been as long ago as my high school years when I stumbled on a simple means of clarifying the import of certain words and phrases and my own attitude toward their use.

Just try on their opposite for size.

Would you rather be "woke" or asleep?

"Politically correct" or incorrect?

I get the implication of weakness, that those "woke" and "politically correct" are just not tough enough to get along in the "real" world, but since survival in that world demands that one be alert and avoid unnecessary conflict, aren't "woke-ness" and the sensitivity implied by "political correctness" both good qualities in both a moral and evolutionary sense--and their opposites, which imply blindness, nastiness and stupidity, best avoided?

And P.D., I'm with you on that Abbott story. Whatever it is cruelty sure ain't woke.

[Marie Burns]

@P.D.Pepe: I had the same reaction you did to Republican legislators/Greg Abbott's bill. You're right about animals, too. If a dog or other pets or farm animals were left without water, the cops would arrest the animals' owner. And here I thought the Georgia law making people stand in long voting lines without water in November was the ultimate inhumane law Republicans could think up. Hats off to Texas for writing/signing a law that violates the Geneva Conventions. AND

@Victoria: I hadn't even thought of the sheer stupidity of the bill from a productivity standpoint, though this is obvious to me now that you point it out.

The one thing I'll say is that if the bill gets to the Supreme Court, Neil Gorsuch -- who once ruled that a trucker was obligated to actually freeze to death in his truck if that's what his boss ordered him to do -- will love it. Maybe Roberts will have Gorsuch write the majority opinion.

I don't think these people are thoughtless and it just didn't occur to them that people working outside in the noonday sun must hydrate regularly. I think they're hateful and sadistic.

BTW, while Greg was framing his copy of the kill-the-roads-crew bill, President Biden began his campaign by emphasizing his support for union workers.

[unwashed]

His rationale is probably something like - if they aren't given any water breaks, then they won't need any potty breaks.

[Akhilleus]

Hateful, sadistic, and out for revenge. Revenge on Democrats, minorities, anyone Fox and Trump and DeSantis and Abbott and Cruz and Greene and Hawley have told them to hate, to get, to beat down.

Why?

How does it injure some MAGA asshole drinking beer in a Texas bar if some guy working in triple degree temperatures takes a drink of water once every four hours?

It doesn’t. But inhuman, evil pricks like Abbott tell them they can’t let those bleeding heart liberals get away with passing laws. Any laws. You see, Democrats passing a law helping people to maybe keep from dying is guv’mint overreach, it’s tyrannical. But Republicans passing a law to prevent people from being helped isn’t overreach, it’s the Right Thing.

And, as Victoria points out, a dehydrated work force isn’t just inhumane, it’s antithetical to the work. Work slows down when someone dies of heat exhaustion and dehydration, even if they are “dirty Messicans”. And that costs money.

But just like the conniption they’re having about Anthony Blinken going to China to cool things off between two superpowers and helping to prevent things from becoming more and more antagonistic, improving lines of communication so a mistake or simple misunderstanding doesn’t turn into a deadly conflict, depriving workers, straining under 100 plus degree temperatures, of water breaks, in a state that leads the nation in heat related deaths, is not about national interests or personal health, it’s all about showing who’s in charge and owning the libs.

The sheer ferocity of this idiocy is a clear indication of the levels of insane rage the Party of Traitors relies on for its survival. They have nothing else. No policies, no great ideas…they don’t even have that core of actual conservatism that once (supposedly) animated the party (although my sense is, and always has been, that most of that was a pile of bullshit employed to keep minorities and the poor in their place).

But this is the party that looks out for the little guy, right? Protects them from big bad “wannabe dictators” like Joe Biden.

And one more thing. Their phony religiosity which they trot out ONLY to step on others. What about the instructions to care for those less fortunate? In the gospel of John, Jesus asks a Samaritan woman for a drink of water. Would Greg Abbott come running up to say “No water for him!”?

You bet he would.

How about “Whatever you do for the least of my brothers and sisters, you do for me”? I’m sure they have plenty of con artist, carny barker preachers who will say, “Oh, Jesus only meant white Christians who vote for Trump.”

But the opposite should be true as well. Whatever you do TO the least of my brothers and sisters, you do to me.

If they truly believed such things, they would tell Greg Abbott to stick his law and vote his rat bastard ass out of office. But they won’t. He’s a hero. Owning the libs is a much higher calling than the teachings of their Bible. Or human health, safety, and life.

Think about that. Think about it! These people would rather see someone drop dead than give them a sip of water mandated by a law supported by Democrats.

That is some truly evil shit.

Rat bastard hypocrites, all.

[Akhilleus]

When I was in high school, playing football, we’d have what were called double sessions in the summer, practices in the morning and the afternoon. It was hot. We didn’t get water breaks but we were given salt tablets to replace the salt lost through sweat. This was back in the late 60’s, early 70’s. Every now and then a kid would pass out. But no biggie. He didn’t die. Since then, it’s become clear that depriving someone engaged in physical activity out in hot weather is dangerous.

Every now and then you’d hear about some kid on a football team dying from heat exhaustion and dehydration. Not a good look. So now, water breaks are important.

Last year I took my kid to a football clinic put on by the local university. He went with all his buds from school. They had fun. It was very well run. They had multiple water stations with students and guys from the football team there to make sure all the kids stayed hydrated. I’m guessing they do the same sort of thing now at big football factories like Alabama and Texas and LSU. Because dead players don’t improve team morale.

Just imagine the outrage if a law was passed saying one sip of water only every four hours for the Texas football team. The screams would register in space.

And that’s for kids playing a game.

But men and women working hard under the sun—and not for a two hour practice, but for eight or nine hours?

Fuck ‘em.

[Jeanne]

I don't think any of us should feel untoward guilt for despising and detesting anyone with R after their names. They prove their inhumanity every single minute of every single day. Abbott is only the personification of their hatred and despicableness. I'm proud to have been a liberal all my life, and I refuse to interract with these "geniuses." It may shorten all our lives if we do. It IS a matter of life or death to live among the wretched Rs.

[RockyGirl]

@Jeanne - I’m right with you.

[RAS]

Unfortunately many of the construction workers are the wrong color and the people trying to keep them alive don't vote for Abbott and his pro-death party. He and his friends needed to reiterate to Austin and any liberals still hanging around in Texas knew who has the power. Sweat Under Cloudless sKies In Texas Lay down In pine BoxeS or The Suck it Libs legislation.

[Marie Burns]

@RAS: It would seem you got right to the heart of the motivation.