;)
Sunday
Jun252023
June 25, 2023
Afternoon Update:
Kelly Garrity of Politico: "President Joe Biden spoke with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Sunday, a day after Russian mercenary forces reversed their plans to march on Moscow, Zelenskky said. The White House confirmed the call on Sunday afternoon. Zelenskyy and Biden discussed 'the course of hostilities and the processes taking place in Russia,' Zelenskyy said in a post on Twitter."
Ret. Judge Michael Luttig (Very-R) in a New York Times op-ed: Republicans' "fawning support since the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol has given Mr. Trump every reason to believe that he can ride these [espionage] charges and any others not just to the Republican nomination, but also to the White House in 2024.... As only the Republicans can do, they are already turning this ignominious moment into an even more ignominious moment -- and a self-immolating one at that -- by rushing to crown Mr. Trump their nominee before the primary season even begins.... It's finally time for [Republicans] to put the country before their party and pull back from the brink -- for the good of the party, as well as the nation."
Jesse Eisenger & Stephen Engelberg of Propublica examine Justice Sam Alito's Wall Street Journal "prebuttal" to their report on the gift of a luxury Alaska vacation by hedge-fund billionaire Paul Singer, who would soon have business before the Court. "It does not appear that the editors at the Journal made much of an effort to fact-check Alito's assertions.... Journalists [including former WSJ reporters] were ... sharply critical of the decision to help the subject of another news organization's investigation 'pre-but' the findings[,] especially since some of Alito's assertions didn't make much sense to the public who had not read ProPublica's report]." Moreover, Patricia McCabe, the Supreme Court's spokesperson, was cagey in her contacts with ProPublica, such as when she asked the reporters to tell her when their story would go to print. MB: Clearly, Alito has brought more shame upon a court that already was in trouble. How now, John Roberts? ~~~
~~~ Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post: "Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse has been arguing for years that a flood of 'dark money' flowing through right-wing front groups has corrupted the Supreme Court. Never has there been more evidence to bolster his claim.... [In a phone conversation with me,] the senator ticked off the problems with Alito's [WSJ] argument: factual omissions (e.g., the standard for exempt gifts does not include transportation); Alito's lame effort to turn an airplane into a 'facility' to jam it into an exempt-gift category ('It doesn't pass the laugh test,' Whitehouse said); Alito's plea that he couldn't possibly have known Singer had a financial stake ($2 billion) in the outcome of a case before the court (although it was widely reported in the media); and the insistence that yet another billionaire was a 'friend,' which somehow absolved him from his obligation to report gifts of 'hospitality.' And, Whitehouse argued, it strains credulity that Alito (like Justice Clarence Thomas) could be confused about reporting requirements when there is a Financial Disclosure Committee expressly set up to help judges navigate these issues.... The best argument for court reform comes from Alito, whose arrogant, slipshod and unconvincing defense makes him the poster boy for serious court reform."
Steve Contorno of CNN: "In his early outreach to Republican voters as a presidential candidate, [Gov. Ron] DeSantis [R-Fla.] has portrayed himself as a fighter and, crucially, a winner in the cultural battles increasingly important to conservatives. If elected to the White House, he'll take those fights to Washington, he has said.... But back in Florida, the agenda at the centerpiece of his pitch remains unsettled. Still ongoing are more than a dozen legal battles testing the constitutionality of many of the victories DeSantis has touted on the campaign trail. Critics say DeSantis has built his governorship around enacting laws that appeal to his conservative base but that, as a Harvard-trained lawyer, he knows are unconstitutional and not likely to take effect."
~~~~~~~~~~
The New York Times has a tick-tock of how the shortest revolution went. ~~~
~~~ Here's the New York Times liveblog for today on the shortlived insurrection of Yevgeny Prigozhin: "The strongest challenge to President Vladimir V. Putin's rule was defused, but there were new questions about his authority and the country's war in Ukraine. In many ways, Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, the Wagner chief who led an armed uprising against the military's leadership for nearly 24 hours, punctured Mr. Putin's strongman authority and aura of infallibility. His blistering criticism and brazen actions called into question Russia's justifications for its war in Ukraine and the competency of its military leadership.... Both Mr. Putin's and Mr. Prigozhin's current locations remain unknown.... The future of the Wagner group and Mr. Prigozhin's continued role in it remains unclear." ~~~
~~~ The Washington Post's live updates for today are here: "Some 12 hours after Russian President Vladimir Putin described the rebellion by Wagner mercenaries as 'a stab in the back' for Russia and a 'betrayal,' promising to crush them, group leader Yevgeniy Prigozhin left the southern town of Rostov-on-Don with a column of tanks and armored vehicles to cheering crowds.... On Saturday night, people dashed forward to shake Prigozhin's hand as he departed the city or clamored for selfies, an upwelling of what appeared to be spontaneous support of a kind rarely seen in Russia after more than 20 years of Putin's authoritarian rule.... Video also emerged of the return of Russian police to the streets of Rostov early Sunday to restore control after Wagner's departure. A crowd chanted 'Shame! Shame!' and some yelled that the police were 'Traitors!'" ~~~
~~~ The Guardian's liveblog for Sunday is here. The Guardian's main story is here. ~~~
~~~ From Saturday's the New York Times liveblog on the shortest Russian revolution, a skirmish which seems not to have lasted long: "The Russian mercenary leader Yevgeny V. Prigozhin announced that his troops marching toward Moscow would turn around, minutes after the leader of Belarus, Aleksandr G. Lukashenko, said he had successfully negotiated with the Wagner boss. The statements offered the possibility that the rapidly evolving security crisis embroiling President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia's government could be resolved without armed fighting between Russian authorities and Mr. Prigozhin's forces. But Mr. Prigozhin did not say whether his forces were leaving the southern city of Rostov-on-Don, a Russian military hub he has seized. In an audio statement posted to Telegram, Mr. Prigozhin said his forces were within 200 kilometers, or about 125 miles, of Moscow, and had reached that point without any bloodshed among his fighters. 'Now the moment has come when blood could be shed,' Mr. Prigozhin said. 'So, understanding all responsibility for the fact that Russian blood will be spilled, on one side, we are turning around our column and are leaving in the opposite direction to field camps in accordance with the plan.'" The liveblog includes a map that shows how far the Wagner troops had got on the road to Moscow before the stand-down. It appears they were more than half-way there. The AP's story is here. ~~~
~~~ NYT liveblog update: "... Kremlin spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, told reporters that under an agreement brokered by Aleksandr G. Lukashenko, the leader of Belarus, Mr. Prigozhin would go to Belarus and the criminal case opened against him for organizing an armed insurrection would be dropped. The Wagner fighters who didn't participate in the uprising would be given the option of signing Russian Defense Ministry contracts, Mr. Peskov said, and the rest would avoid prosecution, considering their 'heroic deeds on the front.'" (Also linked yesterday.)
David Sanger & Julian Barnes of the New York Times: "American intelligence officials briefed senior military and administration officials on Wednesday that Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of the mercenary Wagner Group, was preparing to take military action against senior Russian defense officials, according to officials familiar with the matter. U.S. spy agencies had indications days earlier that Mr. Prigozhin was planning something and worked to refine that material into a finished assessment, officials said.... The information that the long-running feud between Mr. Prigozhin, who got his start as 'Putin's chef' in St. Petersburg, and Russian defense officials was about to devolve into conflict was considered both solid and alarming. Mr. Prigozhin is known for his brutality, and had he succeeded in ousting the officials, he would likely have been an unpredictable leader. And the possibility that a major nuclear-armed rival of the United States could descend into internal chaos carried with it a new set of risks." CNN's story is here.
Peter Baker of the New York Times: "... even with the apparent end to the immediate threat posed by Yevgeny Prigozhin's rebellious mercenary army, the short-lived uprising suggested that Mr. Putin's hold on power is more tenuous than at any time since he took office more than two decades ago. The aftermath of the mutiny leaves President Biden and American policymakers with both opportunity and danger in perhaps the most volatile moment since the early days of the invasion of Ukraine. Disarray in Russia could lead to a breakdown of its war effort just as Ukrainian forces are mounting their long-awaited counteroffensive, but officials in Washington remained nervous about an unpredictable, nuclear-armed Mr. Putin feeling vulnerable.... The armed standoff on the road to Moscow, brief as it was, represented the most dramatic struggle for power in Russia since the 1991 failed hard-liner coup against Mikhail Gorbachev and the 1993 showdown between Boris Yeltsin and parliament....
"[President] Biden responded to the crisis by not responding, opting for caution rather than speaking out, which would risk giving Mr. Putin ammunition to claim this was all a foreign plot.... Mr. Biden delayed his departure for Camp David to convene a secure video briefing with top advisers in the Ward Room of the White House -- a makeshift Situation Room while the real one is being renovated -- and also spoke with the leaders of Britain, France and Germany."
Neil Vigdor of the New York Times: "Appearing at a Faith & Freedom Coalition gala in Washington on Saturday night, [Donald Trump] cited his appointment of three of the six justices who voted to strike down the law as a capstone of his presidency. And he cast himself as an unflinching crusader for the Christian right in a meandering speech that lasted nearly 90 minutes. 'No president has ever fought for Christians as hard as I have,' he said, adding, 'I got it done, and nobody thought it was even a possibility.'... Several times in his speech on Saturday night, Mr. Trump sought to align himself with the faith community and said that it was under attack, much like he was. 'Together, we're warriors in a righteous crusade to stop the arsonists, the atheists, globalists and the Marxists,' he said. In a speech at the gathering a day earlier, [Mike] Pence called on the entire 2024 Republican presidential field to pledge support for a national abortion ban at 15 weeks -- a ban more extreme than what Mr. Trump has backed so far." ~~~
~~~ Marie: Trump characterizes himself as "fighting for Christians," but a significant number of Christians oppose the repeal of Roe.
Eduardo Medina of the New York Times: "At least seven cars from a freight train tumbled into the Yellowstone River in Montana on Saturday after a derailment and a bridge collapse, causing asphalt and molten sulfur cargo to spill into the water, the authorities said. Officials were investigating whether the derailment or the bridge collapse happened first, as well as how much of the cargo had spread into the river." The ABC News story is here.
Beyond the Beltway
Texas. Colbi Edmonds of the New York Times: "Three San Antonio police officers were charged with murder on Friday after police shot and killed a 46-year-old woman, who swung a hammer in their direction and appeared to be in distress, in her home, officials said. The three officers, Sgt. Alfred Flores, Officer Eleazar Alejandro and Officer Nathaniel Villalobos, have been suspended without pay and were taken into custody on Friday. They have been with the San Antonio Police Department for 14, five and two years."
Way Beyond
Louisa Loveluck, et al., of the Washington Post: "The story of how as many as 750 migrants came to board a rickety blue fishing trawler and end up in one of the Mediterranean's deadliest shipwrecks is bigger than any one of the victims.... About half the passengers are believed to have been from Pakistan. The country's interior minister said Friday that an estimated 350 Pakistanis were on board, and that many may have died.... This account of what pushed them to risk a notoriously dangerous crossing is based on interviews with survivors in Greece and relatives of the dead in Pakistan, Jordan and Egypt...." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
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Reader Comments (14)
Fox News has the dope on the attempted coup in Russia.
Or is that: The dopes on Fox News are claiming Pres. Biden and his
friends are behind the coup.
https://www.mediate.com/news/just-in-fox-news-host-wildly-accuses-
us-government-of-orchestrating-attempted-coup-in-russia/
@Forrest Morris: Everything is Biden's fault. Just this week, wingers have revealed that his attempt at a Russian coup failed AND he destroyed the Titan. I might add that MTG & Boebert would not have gotten into a cat fight on the House floor if they had not had to impeach Biden.
From a poster on Democratic Underground:
Explain this, you hypocritical Republican shitweasels:
For decades you have been bleating that gun manufacturers and
sellers should be held totally blameless when their product is used
to shoot people, exactly as it was designed to do. Instead, only the
individual who uses the product is to be prosecuted.
But suddenly you have decided that it's the manufacturers and
distributors of abortion pills who are to be held criminally liable,
while the people who use the product as it was designed are not to be
charged, because that might cost you even more votes than your
already hugely unpopular attack on reproductive self-determination.
It's almost as if your every policy has fuck-all to do with sanctity
of life, and everything to do with exercising control over women's
bodies in a completely transactional attempt to garner votes from
and wildly politicized group of right-wing "Christians".
Steve M. Reads Douthat so You Don’t Have to
Sooo…pot-stirring loudmouth Joe Rogan is all in on Robert Kennedy’s anti-vaccine bullshit, mostly, one must assume, because such codswallop attracts the screamers, the droolers, and the MAGAts who flock to anyone saying experts in anything are evil, stupid, and out to get them. Because it’s the life mission of people like Fauci and other serious physicians and researchers to screw with people.
Anyway, Rogan, and other self-regarding idiots like Elon Musk, are demanding that Dr. Peter Hotez, a well known and highly regarded vaccine specialist at Baylor, “debate” Kennedy on Rogan’s show in a kind of steel cage death match to see which position is “right”, in other words which side can spit out the most incendiary, unsupported “holy shit!” “facts” the fastest.
That would be Kennedy. Douthat, of course is now in the camp of trying to bully Hotez into this “debate” with Kennedy, described by Steve M. as a “Gish gallop” expert. Had to look that one up. So here it is:
“The Gish gallop is a rhetorical technique in which a person in a debate attempts to overwhelm their opponent by providing an excessive number of arguments with no regard for the accuracy or strength of those arguments. Gish galloping prioritizes the quantity of the galloper's arguments at the expense of their quality. The term was coined in 1994 by anthropologist Eugenie Scott, who named it after American creationist Duane Gish and argued that Gish used the technique frequently when challenging the scientific fact of evolution.”
(Per Wikipedia.
Yeah, that makes sense. This is a Trump-KKKarlson specialty as well. Just a firehose of bullshit that would require a long time and a lot of effort to properly unpack and refute, which is the point.
Douthat sez Hotez must debate Kennedy because otherwise Kennedy “wins”. But this wouldn’t be a debate, it would be like a WWF wrestling match with the crowd cheering for their hero and booing the villain. Douthat says these people hate experts and love the anti-experts.
So what would be the point?
Here’s a suggestion. If Douthat is so concerned about the issue, why doesn’t he stop wasting valuable space on The NY Times op-Ed page complaining that Hotez should get in the ring with an idiot and explain why anti-vaxxers like Kennedy are dangerous dispensers of disinformation.
Because that would be hard work. Much easier, and more fun to join the bullies and screamers.
https://nomoremister.blogspot.com/2023/06/ross-douthats-column-about-debating.html?m=1
The "debate" initiated by anti-vaxxers (many of whom would not be alive had they not had their vaccines) reminds me of the lunatic interpretations of geologic history offered in the 1950s by Immanuel Velikovsky in his "Worlds in Collision" bestseller.
Wacky as it was, his theory had many adherents, even among the "educated." The uneducated, of course, didn't know enough to even enter into the debate. They just nodded their heads when they read the book or saw Velikovsky on TV. It just made sense to them, confirming as it did much of the "history" offered in the Bible.
The worlds of science and belief have been in collision for centuries. They still are.
In Douthat's case we know which side won long ago. Musk just wants to provoke the libs and increase traffic on his toy.
Forgot the link for the above, which might make more sense out of Velikovsky's nonsense.
https://skyandtelescope.org/sky-and-telescope-magazine/velikovskys-venus/#:~
A "debate" where one side must stick to facts and the other side can just make up stuff is not a debate. So you tell me that controlled, peer-reviewed studies show that 93 percent of people who got vaccines did not get severe cases of Covid, I tell you that proves that the vaccine kills seven percent of the people who get it. And even MIT professors agree! Then, to double down, I throw in some anecdotal evidence from a newspaper story I read once of a woman in Montana who died of Covid after having the vaccine. I win! Yay!
MSNBC just played a clip of Trump saying that he had a right under the presidential records act to take documents out of the White House (not true -- the PRA says the opposite), and that Biden & Pence didn't have that right because, unlike him, they were vice presidents and veeps are not governed by the PRA (not true -- veeps are). MSNBC pushed back by saying -- nothing. Not a damned thing. Aaargh!
Good news for railroad workers and Joe Biden,
"After months of negotiations, the IBEW’s Railroad members at four of the largest U.S. freight carriers finally have what they’ve long sought but that many working people take for granted: paid sick days."
“Biden deserves a lot of the credit for achieving this goal for us,” Russo said. “He and his team continued to work behind the scenes to get all of rail labor a fair agreement for paid sick leave.”
I do not care what happens to and with Russia. I used to be a supporter of good relations between our countries (in the 70s a young friend, Samantha Smith, was a folk heroine for advocating for mutual good will) but that has all cooled, it's all impossible and TFG's collusion and apparent love for Putin and his invasion have sealed the deal. Maybe we have to keep talking to them, although I don't see why, but that should be it. I also think we shouldn't knock ourselves out analyzing and writing and blowharding about this event, but the networks don't see it that way. They are still talking about it. Don't care. There is plenty of nongoodwill and evil swirling around the rotten-to-the-core people/goopers/deplorables here, so who cares whether Putin survives or doesn't. Ugh.
Ken,
I remember that Velikovksky theory of planets flying around, bumping into each other and flying off in some other direction. I remember picking up the book in the library. As I recall, he had an idea that Venus popped out of Jupiter, which even as an amateur astronomy fan (thanks, Mom and Dad, for that telescope!) I thought was weird because Jupiter is mostly gas and liquid. But hey! Presto! Rock planet!
But the thing that sealed it for me that this was a load of crap was his contention that these theories were proved by stories about Zeus flinging lightning bolts and something about Noah from the Bible.
Well gee, proof like that, who could argue?
But it’s another example of how you can convince millions of people of the whackiest stuff by saying “Says so in the Bible!”
That still works.
Marie,
You would think by now that even interns and PA’s at a place like MSNBC know what the Presidential Records Act says, never mind a reporter interviewing that lying sack of shit.
So either the reporter didn’t know enough to rebut Fatty or they were too scared by his standard bullying demeanor. Either way, MSNBC failed the public.
And one more thing about the Gish gallop. Does it surprise anyone that a technique designed to bury a debate opponent in bullshit and a flurry of unsupported claims was perfected by a religious nut job creationist?
Like the man says, If you have the facts, argue the facts. If you don’t have the facts, argue the law. If you have neither facts nor law, pound the table.
…and spout crap.
@Jeanne: There are a number of good reasons we keep diplomatic relations with most countries with whom we disagree. It is one way of reducing tensions in a crisis, especially with a nuclear-armed country like Russia. It's not impossible to get our citizens back from countries with whom we don't have relations -- like North Korea -- but it's easier to do so if we can negotiate directly with them and don't have to ask Sweden or some other country or individual to do the negotiating for us.
Diplomatic relations are in some way an extension of the vaunted concept of the "rule of law." Instead of fighting things out in a duel, we go to court where we have to behave with civility. Of course, with diplomatic relations, there is usually no arbiter who decides disagreements, but dispassionate diplomats are generally better at achieving compromise and de-escalation than are politicians.