;)
October 16, 2021
Afternoon Update:
Jonathan Lemire of the AP: "Framed by the Capitol, President Joe Biden paid tribute Saturday to fallen law enforcement officers and honored those who fought off the Jan. 6 insurrection at that very site by declaring 'because of you, democracy survived.' Biden spoke at the 40th Annual National Peace Officers' Memorial Service to remember the 491 law enforcement officers who died in the line of duty in 2019 and 2020. Standing where the violent mob tried to block his own ascension to the presidency, Biden singled out the 150 officers who were injured and the five wh died in the attack's aftermath.... Biden also underscored the heavy burden placed on law enforcement officers, and rebuked the 'defund the police' political movement, saying that those gathered before him would get 'more resources, not fewer, so you can do your job.'... At the ceremony, Biden expressed concerns for all officers in the line of duty and mentioned the three constable deputies shot in an ambush early Saturday while working at a Houston bar. One deputy was killed." ~~~
~~~ Marie: This might be a good place to mention that "COVID-19 has killed nearly 500 law enforcement officers, between 2020 and 2021, according to the Officer Down Memorial Page, a database that tracks line of duty officer deaths.... COVID-19 accounts for 65% of law enforcement officer deaths since 2020, data shows." This makes police unions' opposition to vaccine mandates seem all the more stupid.
Shawna Chen of Axios: "The Pentagon has offered unspecified payments as a condolence to the families of 10 Afghan civilians, including seven children, who were killed in an Aug. 29 U.S. drone strike in Kabul.... The U.S. offered the payments in a virtual meeting on Thursday between Colin Kahl, the under secretary of defense for policy, and Steven Kwon, the founder and president of Nutrition & Education International, a nonprofit focused on women in children in Afghanistan that had employed [Zemari] Ahmadi before he was killed [in the drone strike].
Beth Reinhard, et al., of the Washington Post: "A wealthy Trump donor who helped finance the rally in Washington on Jan. 6 also gave $150,000 to the nonprofit arm of the Republican Attorneys General Association, records show, funds that a person familiar with the contribution said were intended in part to promote the rally. The nonprofit organization paid for a robocall touting a march that afternoon to the U.S. Capitol to 'call on Congress to stop the steal.' On Dec. 29, Julie Jenkins Fancelli, daughter of the founder of the Publix grocery store chain, gave the previously undisclosed contribution to RAGA's nonprofit Rule of Law Defense Fund, or RLDF.... Funding for the events in Washington that day is a focus of the House select committee investigating the violent riot at the U.S. Capitol that followed the rally.... The leaders of Women for America First have been subpoenaed by the committee, as has Caroline Wren, a Republican fundraiser who was listed on that group's permit as a 'VIP ADVISOR.' Both of Fancelli's donations were arranged by Wren.... Fancelli ... is not involved in Publix business operations...."
Robert Reich, in a Guardian op-ed (Oct. 13): "... American workers are now flexing their muscles for the first time in decades. You might say workers have declared a national general strike until they get better pay and improved working conditions.... In its own disorganized way it's related to the organized strikes breaking out across the land -- Hollywood TV and film crews, John Deere workers, Alabama coal miners, Nabisco workers, Kellogg workers, nurses in California, healthcare workers in Buffalo. Disorganized or organized, American workers now have bargaining leverage to do better. After a year and a half of the pandemic, consumers have pent-up demand for all sorts of goods and services. But employers are finding it hard to fill positions.... Corporate America wants to frame this as a 'labor shortage.' Wrong. What's really going on is more accurately described as a living-wage shortage, a hazard pay shortage, a childcare shortage, a paid sick leave shortage, and a healthcare shortage."
The New York Times' live updates of Covid-19 developments Saturday are here.
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Cleve Wootson of the Washington Post: "President Biden on Friday sought to reassert America's leadership in the fight for human rights around the world, but he acknowledged that depends in part on the country's performance at home and said the best course is for the United States to be honest about its flaws. Speaking at a center dedicated to Thomas Dodd, a prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials of Nazi leaders after World War II, Biden tied the horrors unveiled there to current human rights violations around the world. 'We see human rights and democratic principles increasingly under assault, and we feel the same charge of history upon our own shoulder to act,' Biden said. 'We have fewer democracies today than we did 15 years ago. Fewer. Not more -- fewer. It cannot be sustained.'" ~~~
Ann Marimow & Robert Barnes of the Washington Post: "The Department of Justice said Friday that it will go back to the Supreme Court to request that it put on hold Texas's restrictive abortion law while legal battles continue. In a different case, the Supreme Court last month allowed the law to go into effect on a divisive 5 to 4 vote. The DOJ has filed a separate challenge to halt the law, which bars abortion as early as six weeks into the pregnancy and makes no exceptions for rape or incest.... Last week, a federal judge in Austin temporarily suspended enforcement of the abortion ban.... But the U.S. Court of Appeals of the 5th Circuit quickly put Pitman's order on hold, and on Thursday said the law would remain in effect, setting a hearing the week of Dec. 6. and reinstated the law pending further review.... 'The Justice Department intends to ask the Supreme Court to vacate the Fifth Circuit's stay of the preliminary injunction against Texas Senate Bill 8,' Justice Department spokesman Anthony Coley said in a brief statement Friday." The AP's report is here. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Betsy Klein & Kate Sullivan of CNN: "Foreign visitors who are fully vaccinated against Covid-19 will be able to travel to the United States starting on November 8, the White House said Friday.... The move would relax a patchwork of bans that had begun to cause fury abroad and replacing them with more uniform requirements for inbound international air passengers." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Donald Judd of CNN: "Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington has filed a Hatch Act complaint against White House press secretary Jen Psaki, alleging that she appeared to have endorsed Terry McAuliffe during a White House press briefing on Thursday. According to the US Office of Special Counsel, the agency charged with investigating Hatch Act violations, the law prohibits federal employees from 'using their official titles or positions while engaged in political activity,' including 'any activity directed at the success or failure of a political party, candidate for partisan political office, or partisan political group.' During the briefing, Psaki acknowledged that she could not make an endorsement from the podium, saying, 'I have to be a little careful about how much political analysis I do from here, and not, not traipse into that too much.' She then told reporters: 'We're going to do everything we can to help former Governor McAuliffe, and we believe in the agenda he's representing.'"
Coral Davenport of the New York Times: "The most powerful part of President Biden's climate agenda -- a program to rapidly replace the nation's coal- and gas-fired power plants with wind, solar and nuclear energy -- will likely be dropped from the massive budget bill pending in Congress, according to congressional staffers and lobbyists familiar with the matter. Senator Joe Manchin III, the Democrat from coal-rich West Virginia whose vote is crucial to passage of the bill, has told the White House that he strongly opposes the clean electricity program, according to three of those people. As a result, White House staffers are now rewriting the legislation without that climate provision, and are trying to cobble together a mix of other policies that could also cut emissions." ~~~
~~~ Hailey Fuchs of Politico: "Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) raised more campaign money in the last three months than in any quarter since she became a senator. And she hit that $1.1 million haul with a big assist from the pharmaceutical and financial industries, whose political action committees and top executives stuffed her coffers in the middle of negotiations on Democrats' massive infrastructure and social spending bills.... Little of the $1.1 million Sinema raised came from her constituents. Nearly 90 percent of Sinema's cash from individual contributors came from outside Arizona." ~~~
~~~ Dana Milbank of the Washington Post: Sen. Krysten Sinema (D-Az.) "and Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) are the two holdouts keeping President Biden's 'Build Back Better' agenda (and with it a $1 trillion infrastructure bill) from passage. But while Manchin has consistent (conservative) positions and has been negotiating in good faith with the White House, Sinema chose this week to fly off to the land of Marie Antoinette. Yes, Sinema is in Paris -- doing a fundraiser.... The peasants need a child tax credit, Internet access and tuition assistance, and Sinema responds: Qu'ils mangent de la brioche. Alas, we have seen entirely too much Sinema vérité of late.... Her staff says she's conducting 'remote' legislative negotiations while this is going on. Very remote. Biden, CNN reported, complained to progressives that Sinema didn't reliably return phone calls from the White House.... The person who poses the greatest threat to the Democrats' agenda -- and the democratic agenda -- appears to be dangerously irrational." ~~~
~~~ Marie: Milbank is right. I think the "solution" would be for Senate Democrats to corner Sinema and hold an intervention. She needs help. And so does the nation.
Michael Balsamo & Colleen Long of the AP: "A U.S. Capitol Police officer has been indicted on obstruction of justice charges after prosecutors say he helped to hide evidence of a rioter's involvement in the Jan. 6 insurrection. The officer, Michael A. Riley, is accused of tipping off someone who participated in the riot by telling them to remove posts from Facebook that had showed the person inside the Capitol during the Jan. 6 attack, according to court documents.... Riley, who responded to a report of a pipe bomb on Jan. 6 and has been a Capitol Police officer for about 25 years, had sent the person a message telling them that he was an officer with the police force who 'agrees with your political stance,' an indictment against him says." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Ellie Kaufman of CNN: "A Marine who was found guilty after posting a series of videos on social media criticizing top military leaders' handling of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan received a sentence of one month forfeiture of $5,000 in pay and a direction to receive a letter of reprimand from a military judge on Friday. Marine Corps Judge Col. Glen Hines said he was considering giving Lt. Col. Stuart Scheller two months of docked pay but decided to limit it to one month because Scheller spent nine days in pre-trial confinement.... On Thursday, Hines found Scheller guilty after he entered guilty pleas to all five charges he faced -- including 'contempt towards officials,' 'disrespect toward superior commissioned officers' and 'failure to obey order or regulation' -- after videos of Scheller criticizing military leaders about their handling of the withdrawal went viral.... Scheller has yet to receive his characterization of discharge. As a part of the plea deal, he will likely receive either an honorable discharge or a general discharge under honorable conditions. The characterization of discharge will be decided by the secretary of the Navy, the military judge said in court on Thursday."
Matt Gertz of Media Matters: "Fox News host Tucker Carlson dismissed the importance of paternity leave while taking an anti-gay swing at Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg on Thursday. But in corporate materials his employer touts its parental leave policy, which his male Fox colleagues have praised for allowing them to take time off to care for their spouses and infants.... 'Pete Buttigieg has been on leave from his job since August after adopting a child. Paternity leave, they call it, trying to figure out how to breastfeed. No word on how that went,' he snarled on his prime-time show, mocking both fathers who take paternity leave and gay fathers." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
The Pandemic, Ctd.
Carolyn Johnson & Yasmeen Abutaleb of the Washington Post: "A panel of outside experts on Friday advised the Food and Drug Administration to authorize a booster dose of the Johnson & Johnson coronavirus vaccine for people 18 and older, with a recommendation it be given at least two months after the first shot. The unanimous recommendation on the Johnson & Johnson booster will be taken up by the FDA, which is expected to make a decision within days. The move will chart a path forward for the 14 million people in the United States who have received the vaccine, many of whom have felt left behind as widely used shots employing a different technology garner greater attention from researchers and the public."
Beyond the Beltway
Florida. Michael Levenson & Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs of the New York Times: "The former student who was accused of shooting and killing 17 people at his high school in Parkland, Fla., in 2018 plans to plead guilty to 17 counts of premeditated murder and 17 counts of attempted murder, one of his lawyers said on Friday. The rampage at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on Feb. 14, 2018, killed 14 students and three faculty members and wounded 17 and was one of the deadliest school shootings in American history. The former student, Nikolas Cruz, who was 19 at the time and had a history of mental health and behavior problems, used a semiautomatic rifle that he had legally bought to carry out the assault, according to the police.... Prosecutors have vowed to pursue the death penalty and said that no agreement on a sentence had been reached." The AP report is here. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Way Beyond
U.K. Megan Specia, et al., of the New York Times: "A Conservative Party lawmaker was stabbed to death on Friday afternoon as he was meeting with local constituents in southeast England.... Essex Police, the force that covers the area where the attack took place, identified the lawmaker as David Amess, 69, a long-serving member of the House of Commons. He was killed in the town of Leigh-on-Sea on the mouth of the Thames River, about 40 miles east of London.... A 25 year-old man had been arrested on suspicion of murder and was currently in custody." Update: "... the authorities declared [the murder] a terrorist attack early Saturday...."
~~~ The BBC News report is here.(Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ~~~
~~~ Marie: In case you're inclined to feel, "Wow, they're just as bad in Britain as in the U.S.," there is a stark contrast here. You're right, per capita, there probably are as many murderous nut cases in the U.K. as in the U.S. But the Florida boy was about to murder 17 people & wound 17 more because he had legal access to a semi-automatic weapon; the U.K. man was able to senselessly murder only one person. On the other hand, I don't suppose many countries limit bow-and-arrow sales. ...
~~~ Norway. Cora Engelbrecht & Henrik Pryser Libell of the New York Times: "The man accused of killing five people and wounding two others with a bow and arrow in the small Scandinavian town of Kongsberg has confessed to the rampage, his defense lawyer said in an interview on Friday. Espen Anderson Brathen, 37, a Danish citizen and local convert to Islam, 'admits to committing the acts he is charged with,' said his lawyer, Fredrick Neumann, adding that his client was also undergoing a mental health evaluation 'by doctors and health personnel.'" (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Afghanistan. Taimoor Shah & Thomas Gibbons-Neff of the New York Times: "A blast at a mosque in southern Afghanistan killed dozens of people and wounded dozens more during Friday Prayer, officials said, the second such attack on a Shiite place of worship on successive Fridays in the country. The attack, which witnesses said involved multiple explosions, took place in Kandahar city -- considered the heart of the re-established Taliban government. And though no group has yet claimed responsibility, the Islamic State said it was behind a similar strike last week on a Shiite mosque in Kunduz Province, in the north, that left more than 40 people dead. Hafiz Saidullah, a Taliban official in charge of the culture and information department in Kandahar, said that the latest attack killed 47 people and injured at least 68." An AP report is here. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
News Ledes
New York Times: "As many as 17 Christian missionaries from the United States and their family members, including children, were kidnapped on Saturday by a gang in Port-au-Prince as they were leaving an orphanage, according to Haitian security officials."
So Then. Washington Post: "Robert Durst has tested positive for the coronavirus just days after the real estate heir was sentenced to life in prison for the murder of a close friend, his attorney told The Washington Post on Saturday. Durst, 78, was reportedly placed on a ventilator shortly after his Thursday sentencing to life without parole for the 2000 murder of Susan Berman, 55, according to the Los Angeles Times, the first to report the story."
New York Times: "One Texas deputy was killed and two others were injured in an early-morning shooting outside a Houston bar, law enforcement officials said at a news conference on Saturday. Just after 2 a.m., three deputies with the Harris County Precinct 4 Constable's Office working in a police-related job at the 45 Norte Sports Bar went outside to address a disturbance, according to Jim Jones, executive assistant chief of the Houston Police Department."
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Reader Comments (10)
Here is a story about Thomas Dodd that Joe Biden likely doesn't know. I doubt Chris Dodd knows it, either. I can't attest to the veracity of the story, as it was before my time, but the tellers were good Catholic ladies, not given to lies but tending toward understatement.
When my three great aunts were young women, they lived in a modest flat in a working-class neighborhood on Triangle Street in Danbury, Connecticut. Their flat was on the first floor of a two-storey building, and a married couple lived upstairs with their daughter. The daughter was engaged to marry Thomas Dodd, who was then attending Yale Law School.
Nearly every evening for the three years he was in law school, Thomas Dodd drove up from New Haven to have dinner with the family. In my aunts' telling, these provisions were a boon to young Dodd, who was not wealthy.
As soon as Dodd was graduated from the law school -- and no longer in need of the Danbury family's support -- he broke his engagement to the young lady who lived on Triangle Street, then turned around and proposed to a young woman from a wealthy family. My aunts had a low opinion of Thomas Dodd.
Joe Manchin has been working too hard, I think it’s time for him to take a well earned vacation to Hawaii. While there, he can practice his backflips on the Kilauea caldera. I’ll even chip in for his ticket.
Marie,
Sounds like one of those villains from a Jane Austen novel, the kind of selfish, opportunistic creeps you love to hate, like Wickham in P&P and Willoughby in S&S. Unfortunately creeps aren’t limited to the written page. Nonetheless, like Marianne in S&S, it is to be hoped that the young lady in your story benefitted from being spared marital connection to an asshole.
@Akhilleus: Thanks for the idea. I was looking for some kind of character tag to attach to one of the minor characters in my novel, and young Thomas Dodd does it. I wouldn't have thought of that on my own.
Dodd's behavior has a name: Fuckin' the townies. The "upper caste" loves disposable people. Ask Brett Kavanaugh.
Reflecting this morning on the deep well of arrogance the R's have fallen into. They are so certain they are right about everything they even believe they can legislate reality...
I remember my father repeating the conservative line about the impossibility of taxing corporations. Heard it again the other day on the TV: They'll just pass the tax on to the consumer, the smug voice said, and I thought of my dad, who right or wrong on that subject, also adhered to the equally conservative mantra that "you can't legislate morality."
That one got to me even when I was in my teens. Seemed to me that in our own little family-sized political unit, that's exactly what he did. Of course in our household he was the only legislator.
But right or wrong as he might have been about the reach of legislative power, there was an element of bedrock humility to his pronouncements, which said you can't make sometime come true just by wishing or saying it was so.
All that came back to me this morning when I read of the latest Texas law assigning transgender student athletes to teams according to their gender at birth. Seemed to me that was going a little too far, ignoring as it does all we know about the immense complexity of gender mutability and identification as it develops in the years following one's birth.
Today's Republicans have no problem legislating not just sexual morality but even what they see (or fail to see) as its genetic basis, not unlike the legislation they have passed in many states that denies the overwhelming evidence for the environmental damage done by fossil fuel use or the political and social carnage wreaked by tax laws that bless and encourage our growing class divisions.
It seems that Republicans now truly believe they live in a world where their fiat trumps fact, and that reality will acknowledge they ways in which they think the world should be arranged and will sit up straight like a good little boy, say "yessir" and do as it's told.
I wonder what my conservative father would think of such supreme arrogance.
I know what I do.
After reading here about Thomas Dodd I couldn't get him out of my mind. Even after Ak's comparison to the formulaic villains in Austin's novels I thought surely he didn't fit. I thought, too, of him driving to Danbury from New Haven EVERY? evening for dinner with his sweetie and her parents: It's a bit of a slog from N.H. to Danbury and since this took place in the thirties his car must have taken a beating. As for his change of lovers, well, heck, I thought, back to Betty Buckley's "love is rare, love is strange, people change." But I was still curious so I looked him up. Looks like M.B. and Ak were on the right track and my apologies to Jane and the great aunts.
"In 1967 Dodd became the first Senator censured by the US Senate since Joseph McCarthy in 1954,[26] and was one of only six people censured by the Senate in the 20th century. The resulting censure was a condemnation and finding that he had converted campaign funds to his personal accounts and spent the money.[27][28] Beyond the Senate Ethics Committee's formal disciplinary action, other sources (such as investigative journalist Drew Pearson and Jack Anderson's Congress in Crisis) suggest[29] Dodd's corruption was far broader in scope, and there were accusations of alcoholism."
Favorite line about a not so favorite person, from Dana Millbank’s column about a visit to gay Paree by a certain imbecilic DINO: Sinema vérité. What we could use now would be done good old fashioned Jean Luc Godard New Wave jump cuts.
@PD Pepe: Yes, I wondered about that long drive, too, and I thought maybe my aunts had exaggerated (unlike them to do so, but maybe). I looked it up on the Googles, and it turns out it's only 35 driving miles between Danbury & New Haven. This was the early 1930s -- i.e., just as the Depression was beginning -- and I doubt there were many cars on the road at that time, so the better part of the commute was probably a breeze to drive. Also, gas was really cheap. You no doubt have driven from New Haven to Danbury or thereabouts, and it takes forever because of traffic. Danbury was a small city in 1930 (pop. 27,000), and I expect New Haven has grown a lot, too.
Several years ago, I had to get off a jammed I-95 at Danbury, and I didn't recognize the town. At all. When I was a child, I used to go downtown with my father and he would stop and chat with all the people he knew, even though he hadn't lived there for more than a decade. It doesn't strike me as that kind of a town now.
Anyway, I believe the story, mostly because my aunts probably would have thought it a mortal sin to lie, especially about a Catholic man!
@Marie: Yes, times have changed––along with Dodd's love for his dinner companion. Our son and family live in Ridgefield which is one town over from Danbury. It takes us a good hour from Wallingford and many times the traffic is so bad around Waterbury it has taken us two hours. And yes, Dodd was Irish Catholic and I can imagine your aunt's chagrin at the very notion he would lie.
P.S. And on our way to Ridgefield we always pass the large sign "Sandy Hook" which always brings back the horror.
And some thoughts re: Manchin: When Hillary was last running for President she went down to W. Virginia and said the days of coal were over but she implemented funds for these coal workers to go to community college and get trained for another field. Fox, of course, quickly spread the first part of her message and not the last. So I ask Manchin why the hell don't you do what Hillary started???? And stop putting our environment in jeopardy!