;)
October 9, 2022
Afternoon Update:
Jennifer Solis of the Nevada Current: "In [a] speech [in rural Nevada] riddled with inaccuracies..., [Donald] Trump said, 'You know the biggest crowd I've ever seen? January 6. And you never hear that.'" ~~~
~~~ Marie: (1) The January 6 crowd was not the biggest he'd ever seen. (2) No one in his right mind would boast about the size of a crowd of insurrectionists. ~~~
~~~ Sen./Mr. Potato Head Goes Full Racist. Sarah Swetlik of AL.com: "U.S. Sen. Tommy Tuberville on Saturday said Democrats are in favor of 'reparations' because they are 'pro-crime.' Tuberville, R-Ala., made the comments while at a rally held by ... Donald Trump in Nevada. 'They want reparations because they think the people who do the crime are owed that,' Tuberville said as the crowd cheered behind him. 'Bullshit!' he added.... Reparations typically refer to 'financial recompense for African-Americans whose ancestors were slaves and lived through the Jim Crow era,' according to the NAACP." Thanks to Akhilleus for the lead. ~~~
~~~ BUT what do Trump's Black friends say? Here's one now. ~~~
~~~ Hannah Getahun of Insider, republished by Yahoo! News: "Rapper Kanye West faced more accusations of antisemitism on Saturday after posting a rant about Jewish people. In a tweet now removed by Twitter for violating its guidelines, the rapper and fashion designer said he was 'going death con 3 on JEWISH PEOPLE.' West defended himself by saying he could not be antisemitic because 'black people are actually Jew [sic].'... West returned to Twitter -- from which he had been on hiatus since Nov. 4, 2020 -- after his Instagram account was restricted amid a week of tirades on the platform. Instagram confirmed to Insider it had restricted West's account.... After photos and videos surfaced of West on Monday wearing a hoodie with the words "White Lives Matter," prominent Republicans like Candace Owens, former congressional candidate Lavern Spicer, and the GOP House Judiciary Committee came to his defense. West, a friend of ... Donald Trump, pulled the stunt as a part of his YZYSZN9 show at Paris Fashion Week. Critics pointed out that the phrase on West's hoodie is tied to white supremacist movements."
~~~~~~~~~~~
Maggie Haberman & Michael Schmidt of the New York Times: Donald "Trump spent a year and a half deflecting, delaying and sometimes leading aides to dissemble when it came to demands from the National Archives and ultimately the Justice Department to return the material he had taken, interviews and documents show. That pattern was strikingly similar to how Mr. Trump confronted inquiries into his conduct while in office: entertain or promote outlandish ideas, eschew the advice of lawyers and mislead them, then push lawyers and aides to impede investigators.... In the closing weeks of his presidency, the White House counsel, Pat A. Cipollone, flagged the need for Mr. Trump to return documents that had piled up in boxes in the White House residence, according to archives officials." MB: Mostly a review of what you already know, but entertaining/maddening. (Also linked yesterday.)
Danny Hakim & Richard Fausset of the New York Times: "Witnesses called to testify in a Georgia criminal investigation into ... Donald J. Trump and his allies have not always come willingly. A number of them have fought their subpoenas in their home-state courts, only to have local judges order them to cooperate.... But the state of Texas is proving to be an outlier, creating serious headaches for Fani T. Willis, the Fulton County district attorney, who is leading the investigation into efforts by Mr. Trump and others to overturn his 2020 election loss in Georgia. Last month, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, the state's highest criminal court, thwarted Ms. Willis's effort to force Jacki L. Pick, a Republican lawyer and pundit, to testify in Atlanta, saying that her subpoena had essentially expired. But in a pair of opinions, a majority of the judges on the all-Republican court went further, indicating that they believed the Georgia special grand jury conducting the inquiry may not have the legal standing to compel testimony from Texas witnesses.... It looks to some Georgia observers like a pattern of Texas Republicans meddling with Georgia when it comes to the fate of Mr. Trump." (Also linked yesterday.)
Judge Slaps Down Durham. Charlie Savage & Adam Goldman of the New York Times: "John H. Durham, the Trump-era special counsel, set off political reverberations last year when he unveiled a lengthy indictment of an analyst he accused of lying to the F.B.I. about sources for the so-called Steele dossier, a discredited compendium of political opposition research about purported ties between Donald J. Trump and Russia. But the trial of the analyst, Igor Danchenko, which opens on Tuesday with jury selection in federal court in Alexandria, Va., now appears likely to be shorter and less politically salient than the sprawling narrative in Mr. Durham's indictment had suggested the proceeding would be. In an 18-page order last week, the judge overseeing the case, Anthony J. Trenga of the Eastern District of Virginia, excluded from the trial large amounts of information that Mr. Durham had wanted to showcase -- including material that undercuts the credibility of the dossier's notorious rumor that Russia had a blackmail tape of Mr. Trump with prostitutes.... Judge Trenga, a George W. Bush appointee, almost always sided with Mr. Danchenko's defense lawyers. Mr. Durham, they said, had tried to inject irrelevant issues into the trial in 'an unnecessary and impermissible attempt to make this case about more than it is.'"
Mark Miller of the New York Times: "Social Security will soon announce the largest inflation adjustment to benefits in four decades -- a welcome development for millions of older Americans struggling to keep up with fast-rising living costs. The cost-of-living adjustment for 2023 is likely to be around 8.7 percent, based on the latest government inflation figures. The final COLA, as the adjustment is known, will be released Thursday, when the federal government announces inflation figures for September. Medicare enrollees can anticipate some additional good news: The standard Part B premium, which is typically deducted from Social Security benefits, will decline next year.... The New York Times examined the back story of Social Security's inflation adjustment -- how it works, how it could be revised -- and how it affects pocketbooks."
Reed Abelson & Margot Sanger-Katz of the New York Times: "Medicare Advantage, a private-sector alternative to traditional Medicare, was designed by Congress two decades ago to encourage health insurers to find innovative ways to provide better care at lower cost. If trends hold, by next year, more than half of Medicare recipients will be in a private plan.... But a New York Times review of dozens of fraud lawsuits, inspector general audits and investigations by watchdogs shows how major health insurers exploited the program to inflate their profits by billions of dollars.... The insurers, among the largest and most prosperous American companies, have developed elaborate systems to make their patients appear as sick as possible, often without providing additional treatment, according to the lawsuits. As a result, a program devised to help lower health care spending has instead become substantially more costly than the traditional government program it was meant to improve. Eight of the 10 biggest Medicare Advantage insurers ... have submitted inflated bills, according to the federal audits. And four of the five largest players -- UnitedHealth, Humana, Elevance and Kaiser -- have faced federal lawsuits alleging that efforts to overdiagnose their customers crossed the line into fraud."
Today in Fake Heiress News
Emily Palmer of the New York Times: "Anna Sorokin, who bilked banks and tricked New York's elite into believing she was a German heiress named Anna Delvey, was released from an immigration detention facility in Goshen, N.Y., on Friday and sent back to Manhattan. In May 2019, Ms. Sorokin was sentenced to four to 12 years in prison for financial crimes including grand larceny and stealing a private jet. After serving nearly four years, she spent 18 months behind bars in immigration detention for overstaying her visa, after a judge determined she was unrepentant. (Ms. Sorokin, 31, who was born in what was then the Soviet Union, has German citizenship.)... While in Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention, Ms. Sorokin accrued one million Instagram followers when her exploits were dramatized this year in a series on Netflix about her time, in her mid-20s, as Anna Delvey, the heiress persona she fabricated.” (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~
~~~ Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: "A close associate of a woman who posed as a member of a famous banking family and spent days at ... Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago home was shot Friday in a brazen attack outside a lakeside resort northwest of Montreal, the Canadian paper LaPresse reported. Quebec provincial police have launched a search for the shooter and other accomplices behind the midday attack on Valeriy Tarasenko, 44, in the upscale community of Esterel, according to LaPresse. Police said he suffered 'significant injuries' but was expected to survive. Mr. Tarasenko was a former business partner of Inna Yashchyshyn, a Russian-speaking Ukrainian immigrant who gained recent notoriety after an investigation by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project in August revealed that she masqueraded as a member of the Rothschild family and went to Mar-a-Lago, where she made inroads in the former president's inner circle."(Also linked yesterday.)
~~~ BTW, that part about Mehmet Oz's killing hundreds of dogs & giving a speech in front of a Hitlermobile are true (except, of course, for the joke parts). And, no, that picture of DeSantolini in the cheerleader boots is not Photoshopped. ~~~
November Elections
Maureen Dowd of the New York Times: "Conservatives have sacrificed any claim to principle. In an unholy transaction, they stuck with Trump because there was a Supreme Court seat and they were willing to tolerate his moral void in order to hijack the court. They didn't care how he treated women as long as he gave them the opportunity to rip away rights from women. They wanted to impose their warped morality, a 'Handmaid's Tale' world, on the rest of us.... Now, in Georgia, conservatives are turning a blind eye to sordid stories coming out about Herschel Walker, who demonstrates no qualifications for serving in the Senate. Mitch McConnell and his fellow Republicans should be ashamed to promote this troubled person for their own benefit. Privately, some Republicans are mortified by the Walker spiral, but they're going to brazen it out for the win." (Also linked yesterday.)
The Democrats want to destroy this country, and they will destroy anyone who gets in their way. Today, it's Herschel Walker, but tomorrow it's the American people.... I'm proud to stand with Herschel Walker and make sure Georgians know that he will always fight to protect them from the forces trying to destroy Georgia values. -- Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), statement to the Washington Post ~~~
~~~ Georgia Senate. Michael Scherer & Annie Linskey of the Washington Post: "National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman Rick Scott (Fla.) will travel to Georgia on Tuesday to demonstrate support for Herschel Walker, days after news reports in which a former girlfriend accused the Senate candidate of paying for one abortion and urging a second. Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) is also making the trip, as the party continues to treat the Georgia contest as a marquee race that could help determine control of the Senate in 2023.... Walker -- who is running for office on a platform that opposes abortion in all cases, without exceptions for rape or incest -- has denied that he paid for an abortion or knew about it at the time." ~~~
~~~ Marie: Walker has supported strict anti-abortion laws with no exceptions. However, it turns out he has carved out one acceptable exception: if you're a Republican candidate for public office.
Beyond the Beltway
New York. Such a Romantic Twist on Nepotism. Susan Edelman of the New York Post: New York City "Schools Chancellor David Banks quietly promoted Mayor [Eric] Adams' girlfriend to a top job at the Department of Education, just months after Adams hired Banks' girlfriend as a deputy mayor, The Post has learned. Banks named Tracey Collins -- Adams' longtime partner and NYC's unofficial First Lady -- the DOE's 'senior advisor to the deputy chancellor of school leadership,' Desmond Blackburn. She started the new job in July, and got a giant, 23% raise to $221,597 a year, records show. Hizzoner named Banks' girlfriend, Sheena Wright, and four other women deputy mayors last Dec. 21. Deputy mayors made $251,982 in FY 21."
New York. Hurubie Meko of the New York Times: "Columbia University and its affiliated hospitals on Friday announced a $165 million settlement with 147 patients of a former gynecologist accused of sexual abuse by dozens of women. Among the people who have accused him of abuse was Evelyn Yang, the wife of the former presidential candidate Andrew Yang. Robert A. Hadden, who according to the hospitals has not worked as a doctor since 2012, pleaded guilty in 2016 to abusing 19 women, but was spared prison time. Now, Mr. Hadden is awaiting trial on federal charges of enticing and inducing women, including a minor, to travel from outside New York State to his Manhattan offices to engage in illegal sex acts." MB: It's amazing how long it takes to catch some of these creeps. Why, it almost makes you think the institutions where they work don't care. (Also linked yesterday.)
Texas. Vimal Patel of the New York Times: "A rookie San Antonio police officer was fired after he shot a teenager who was eating in a McDonald's parking lot, leaving the 17-year-old in critical condition, the authorities said. The San Antonio Police Department said that the former officer, James Brennand, was fired because of his actions during the encounter on Oct. 2. Body camera footage showed him abruptly opening the door of a car the teenager was in and opening fire moments later.... [The Bexar County D.A., Joe] Gonzales said that he had not determined yet whether to file charges against Mr. Brennand, a newly hired officer who was still in a probationary period, and was awaiting 'all the evidence.'"
Way Beyond
Ukraine, et al.
The New York Times' live updates of developments Sunday in Russia's war on Ukraine are here. The Guardian's live updates are here. The Guardian's summary report is here. ~~~
~~~ The Washington Post's live briefings for Sunday are here: "Overnight airstrikes on the city of Zaporizhzhia killed at least 12 people and reduced high-rise apartment buildings and homes to rubble, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Sunday, branding the strikes' absolute evil.'... Ukraine hasn’t taken public credit for the Crimean Bridge explosion, which poses a strategic and symbolic disaster for ... Vladimir Putin, although a Ukrainian official told The Washington Post that the country's special services were behind the attack.... The Kremlin appointed Gen. Sergei Surovikin as the latest top commander in Ukraine, the Defense Ministry announced Saturday, as it grapples with strategic errors and a Ukrainian counteroffensive that has left its forces in disarray.... The International Monetary Fund has approved Ukraine's request for $1.3 billion in additional emergency funding as the war grinds into its eighth month...."
Missy Ryan, et al., of the Washington Post with more on the explosion on the Russia-Crimea bridge: "A giant explosion ripped across the Crimean Bridge, a strategic link between mainland Russia and Crimea, in what appeared to be a stunning blow early Saturday morning to a symbol of President Vladimir Putin's ambitions to control Ukraine.... The Ukrainian government provided no immediate official statement on the cause of the blast. But in a taunt, the government's official Twitter account posted: 'sick burn.' A Ukrainian government official told The Washington Post on Saturday that Ukrainian special services were behind the bridge attack." (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~
~~~ Putin's "Off-Ramp" ... Ends in the Waters of the Kerch Strait. Megan Specia of the New York Times: "Within hours of the explosion, several government agencies in Ukraine had posted some sort of meme or joke on social media to celebrate it, to poke fun at Mr. Putin or to hint at who might have been behind it.... Ukraine's postal service quickly came up with a mock stamp depicting the bridge in a scene from the movie 'Titanic.' One Ukrainian bank -- Monobank -- offered a new image for their virtual mobile bank cards that showed the destroyed surface of the Crimean bridge and the burning train. By midday, it had been downloaded more than 300,000 times. Oleksiy Danilov, head of the Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council, posted footage of the destruction alongside a video of Marilyn Monroe singing, 'Happy Birthday, Mr. President,' alluding to Mr. Putin's birthday a day earlier." ~~~
Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of #Ukraine Oleksiy Danilov published a video of a burning bridge, combining them with Marilyn Monroe singing "Happy Birthday, Mr. President". pic.twitter.com/jRJIeVS5Gt
— NEXTA (@nexta_tv) October 8, 2022
Andrew Higgins of the New York Times:"With the Kremlin distracted by its flagging war more than 1,500 miles away in Ukraine, Russia's dominium over its old Soviet empire shows signs of unraveling. Moscow has lost its aura and its grip, creating a disorderly vacuum that previously obedient former Soviet satraps, as well as China, are moving to fill.... Before President Vladimir V. Putin invaded Ukraine in February, Russia played an outsize role in the affairs of Central Asia and also the volatile Caucasus region, in what had passed for a far-flung Pax Russica.... Moscow's security alliance has long been touted by Mr. Putin as Russia's answer to NATO and an anchor of its role as the dominant (and often domineering) force across vast swaths of the former Soviet Union. But now the bloc is barely functioning. Five of its six members -- Armenia, Belarus, Russia, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan -- have been involved in wars this year, while the sixth, Kazakhstan, has seen violent internal strife."
Marie: Let's say you had set a goal for yourself. You believed it was a worthy goal & achieving it would benefit you but was not essential to your existence. Months or years into working toward that goal, you had miserably failed, and -- what's worse -- your attempts had many negative effects, like say, killing a lot of innocent people. Wouldn't you quit? Well, not if you were Vladimir Putin or most American presidents since Ike. Neither a totalitarian government nor a quasi-democratic one has a structure that incentivizes its leaders to act rationally & in the broader public good.
News Lede
New York Times: "Grace Glueck, a transformative journalist who broke new ground by making the art world a distinct beat at The New York Times, and who then helped bring an important sex-discrimination lawsuit against the paper, her employer of more than 60 years, died on Saturday at her home on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. She was 96."
Share Article
Reader Comments (11)
A good summary of Medicare Advantage plans costs and benefits:
https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/explainer/2022/may/medicare-advantage-policy-primer
Advantage plans have always cost the government (us) more than traditional Medicare, even without the cheating reported above.
Originating during the Clinton years, Advantage programs were a sop to Republicans who instinctually hate successful government programs, and IMO have since functioned as the camel's nose in the Medicare tent.
The dangers they present are more than philosophic. By trying/pretending to combine the goal of public service and private profit, they inevitably incentive cheating.
That's what capitalism does when it is not in the hands of saints.
And there aren't enough saints.
Call that last remark a short Sunday Sermon.
Last night we watched the film "Mudbound"; I found it gut wrenching and beautifully executed. When it first came out in 2012 A.O. Scott began his review like this:
"“Mudbound” is a movie about how things change — slowly, unevenly, painfully. It is also, as the title suggests, about how things don’t change, about the stubborn forces of custom, prejudice and power that lock people in place and impede social progress. Set mainly in the Mississippi Delta in the years just after World War II, when Jim Crow was still enshrined in law and practice, the film, directed by Dee Rees, tests and complicates William Faulkner’s much-quoted claim about the not-even-pastness of the past. It’s a work of historical imagination that lands in the present with disquieting, illuminating force."
What struck me about this film was exactly this "not-even pastness of the past" –––it's as though what we thought was settled comes back to kick us in the rear once again and sometimes with a greater ferocity.
@PD Pepe: I've avoided watching "Mudbound" because I knew it would make me mad, sad, or more likely, both. Your review doesn't change that, but if it's still on Netflix, maybe I'll try it later this week. Not much upside to sticking my head in the sand (or mud).
Still waiting for one of those reporters to follow up Walker's denial with the the logical "but you have been caught continually lying throughout this campaign so why should anyone believe you?"
@RAS: That's bit of magical thinking on your part. Implicit in your post is that Walker understands that actions have consequences, that past is prologue, that there's a lesson in the fable of the boy who cried "wolf."
I don't think so. I think Walker believes that every moment is a new moment, a gift from Jesus or something, and that the only things about the past that matter are "I can catch a football & run with it so everybody loves me" and "I did a lot of great things and I told everybody about them" (even tho most of those great things are honking big lies.
You cannot "trap" somebody with a question he doesn't remotely understand.
@Marie: But it might show me that a reporter there took a journalism class and didn't sleep through most of it. Just give me a little hope that someone out there kind of knows what they are supposed to be doing. And the word salad from Walker will give the late night guys a couple of minutes of material.
@RAS: Agreed.
For a minute there, I thought DeSantis was channeling Nancy
Sinatra, but she ain't deceased yet (only 82 years old).
Nancy owns a company called Boots Inc. Maybe that's where he
got his gogo boots.
Mr. Potato Head goes full KKK…
Wow. This isn’t a dog whistle, this is a klaxon.
Here’s a US senator on a rant about how black people are all criminals who want to “take what you have” THEN get reparations. He sez black Americans are “pro-crime”.
No wonder he was one of the first people Trump called on Jan. 6.
https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1578910976740536320?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1578910976740536320%7Ctwgr%5Ea845545116a767747130dec68185763333c2fe76%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.mediaite.com%2Fnews%2Fcnns-abby-phillip-shocked-by-tuberville-crime-reparations-rant-straight-up-racism-from-a-sitting-u-s-senator%2F
Love the Putin bday present video. Haha. But he hates looking like a loser. Wonder what he’ll come up with next. According to our despot wannabe, the Fat Fascist, the US (ie, Biden, a real president) forced Putin to invade Ukraine. Ol’ Joe has a lot more influence than I thought. Maybe Biden has a Putin pee-pee tape! “Okay, Vladdy, invade Ukraine or else…”
Speaking of BIG crowds for the Fat Fascist, a yuuuge rally planned in honor of sedition, anti-democracy, and Trumpism as the cure for why white supremacy is not allowed to triumph over all, 27 people showed up. In DC. 27. Which includes two paid security guards and the organizers. So really, we’re talking about 20 attendees. That’s one security guard for every ten people. Hey, at least they take security seriously. Just in case their were any trans kids with squirt guns hiding in the bushes. Damn kids!
The reason? Oh, REASONS! Okay, here’s a few:
1. The sun was out.
2. It was Friday.
3. My inbox got broke.
4. Poor PR (whose fault is that?)
AND…
5. ANTIFA! Because, sure, of course.
(And I didn’t have to make any of this up!)
They forgot “alien invasion”, “Hunter Biden’s laptop”, “Covid masks”, and THE EMAILS!!!
Losers.
https://www.salon.com/2022/10/08/followers-activists-for-low-attendance-at-dc-rally_partner/