;)
September 18, 2022
Late Morning Update:
Ellen Barry of the New York Times: "... organizations linked to the Russian government had assigned teams to the Women's March [of January 2017]. At desks in bland offices in St. Petersburg, using models derived from advertising and public relations, copywriters were testing out social media messages critical of the Women's March movement, adopting the personas of fictional Americans." The article goes into detail about how the trolls operated, particularly on how they attacked one leader of the march movement, Linda Sarsour.
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** David Leonhardt of the New York Times: "... the United States today finds itself in a situation with little historical precedent. American democracy is facing two distinct threats, which together represent the most serious challenge to the country's governing ideals in decades. The first threat is acute: a growing movement inside one of the country's two major parties -- the Republican Party -- to refuse to accept defeat in an election.... The second threat to democracy is chronic but also growing: The power to set government policy is becoming increasingly disconnected from public opinion. The run of recent Supreme Court decisions -- both sweeping and, according to polls, unpopular -- highlight this disconnect.... Senators representing a majority of Americans are often unable to pass bills, partly because of the increasing use of the filibuster. Even the House, intended as the branch of the government that most reflects the popular will, does not always do so, because of the way districts are drawn. 'We are far and away the most countermajoritarian democracy in the world,' said Steven Levitsky, a professor of government at Harvard University.... '... the Republican Party -- upper level, midlevel and grass roots -- is a party that can only be described as not committed to democracy,' Mr. Levitsky said." Leonhardt goes into the reasons for the crisis. You probably know most of them, but you may not know all of them. A worthwhile read. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
The rule of law means that the law treats each of us alike: There is not one rule for friends, another for foes; one rule for the powerful, another for the powerless; a rule for the rich, another for the poor.... [The rule of law] is fragile, it demands constant effort and vigilance. -- Attorney General Merrick Garland, at a naturalization ceremony Saturday ~~~
~~~ Glenn Thrush of the New York Times: "An emotional Attorney General Merrick B. Garland addressed new citizens on Saturday at Ellis Island, the site of his family's American origin story, and warned that the country had become dangerously divided by political factionalism, which has imperiled the democracy and the rule of law. Mr. Garland was presiding over the oath of allegiance for 250 naturalized citizens at the iconic immigration processing center, on the anniversary of the signing of the Constitution in 1787. As the new Americans rose to recognize their home countries -- about 60 of them, with origins from Albania to Yemen -- he told them that the United States 'wholeheartedly welcomes you.' During a 10-minute speech in which he repeatedly stopped to collect himself, the attorney general recounted the tale of his grandmother's flight from antisemitism in what is now Belarus before World War II, and the narrow escape to New York made by his wife's mother, who fled Austria after Nazis annexed the country in 1938." ~~~
~~~ MEANWHILE. DeSantis, Stuntman Not Ready for Trump Time. Jamelle Bouie of the New York Times: Ron DeSantis' Martha's Vineyard "stunt failed to make its intended point [that liberals don't care about poor people]. The same was true of a previous stunt, in which DeSantis touted the arrests of 20 former felons for election fraud. The intended message was that Florida, and presumably the entire country, needed to be on constant alert to block fraudulent voters. But in the days and weeks after the arrests, an investigation by The Tampa Bay Times found that the state had actually cleared those residents to vote. As far as they knew, they hadn't broken the law. If anything, they had been entrapped as part of a scheme to make DeSantis a more attractive candidate for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.... To a typical person ... he looks a lot like a bully, someone willing to play high-stakes games with people's lives for the sake of his own ego and advancement." ~~~
~~~ Marie: BTW, I heard on the teevee that Fox "News" & other right-wing outlets are characterizing Gov. Charlie Baker's effort to relocate the asylum-seekers at a Cape Cod military facility is evidence that the liberals on Martha Vineyard got rid of the Venezuelans as quickly as they could. Apparently, liberals have to permanently adopt an immigrant family or two to prove they care.
Luke Broadwater of the New York Times: "Mazars USA, the longtime accounting firm for ... Donald J. Trump that cut ties with him and his family business this year, has begun turning over documents related to his financial dealings to Congress. After a yearslong legal fight, the House Oversight Committee has received a first trove of documents from the firm, which recently entered into a legal settlement agreeing to produce a range of financial documents from several years before Mr. Trump took office and during his early presidency. Mazars said in February it could no longer stand behind a decade of annual financial statements it had prepared for the Trump Organization. More tranches of documents are expected to follow."
Jacqueline Alemany & Amy Gardner of the Washington Post: "Congressman Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) told a former White House aide that he was seeking a preemptive pardon from President Donald Trump regarding an investigation in which he is a target, according to testimony given to the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. Johnny McEntee, according to people familiar with his testimony, told investigators that Gaetz told him during a brief meeting 'that they are launching an investigation into him or that there's an investigation into him,' without specifying who was investigating Gaetz. McEntee added that Gaetz told him 'he did not do anything wrong but they are trying to make his life hell, and you know, if the president could give him a pardon, that would be great.' Gaetz told McEntee that he had asked White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows for a pardon.... [A spokesman for Gaetz wrote in an email,] '... President Trump addressed this malicious rumor more than a year ago stating, "Congressman Matt Gaetz has never asked me for a pardon." Rep. Gaetz continues to stand by President Trump's statement.'"
Mike Masnick of Tech Dirt: "As far as I can tell, in the area the 5th Circuit appeals court has jurisdiction, websites no longer have any 1st Amendment editorial rights. That's the result of what appears to me to be the single dumbest court ruling I've seen in a long, long time.... However, thanks to judge Andy Oldham, internet companies no longer have 1st Amendment rights regarding their editorial decision making.... Without giving any reason or explanation at all, it reinstated the [Texas] law and promised a ruling at some future date. This was procedurally problematic, leading the social media companies (represented by two of their trade groups, NetChoice and CCIA) to ask the Supreme Court to slow things down a bit, which is exactly what the Supreme Court did. Parallel to all of this, Florida had passed a similar law, and again a district court had found it obviously unconstitutional. That, too, was appealed, yet in the 11th Circuit the court rightly agreed with the lower court that the law was (mostly) unconstitutional. That teed things up for Florida to ask the Supreme Court to review the issue.... I wish I had confidence that [the Supremes] would not contradict themselves, but I'm not sure I do.... The future of how the internet works is very much at stake with this one." ~~~
~~~ Scott Lemieux in LG&$: "In addition to being substantively ridiculous, [the Fifth Circuit Court] literally chides the companies for citing Supreme Court precedents that are, you know, fully binding on the court rather than starting with 4Chan historical analysis...["] 'Rather than mount any challenge under the original public meaning of the First Amendment, the Platforms instead focus their attention on Supreme Court doctrine.'... This [opinion] is by no means an outlier for the Fifth Circuit -- it is not a 'court of law' in any meaningful sense."
Ann Marimow of the Washington Post: "Federal judges voted not to reappoint a New Mexico jurist after an internal investigation showed she subjected employees to insults, outbursts and threats of termination, according to a court order published Wednesday. A court committee that reviewed the allegations said the judge, Carmen E. Garza, created what seemed to be 'an abusive and hostile work environment' in her chambers for more than a decade, behavior that included manipulating staff to undermine fellow judges and courthouse employees, and making 'derogatory and egregious statements' about colleagues. There was also some evidence, the order states, that Garza 'engaged in retaliatory conduct' after the vote against her reappointment.... It was remarkable for court leaders to publicize their preliminary findings and to identify the judge by name.... The judiciary's 30,000 employees lack the same workplace rights afforded to other government and private-sector workers.... Unlike Senate-confirmed District Court judges, magistrates are appointed to eight-year terms."
Way Beyond the Beltway
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 for Sunday are here. The Guardian's summary report is here.
U.K. Mark Landler of the New York Times: "Tens of thousands of people waited up to 24 hours to pay their final respects to Queen Elizabeth II on Saturday, their individual acts of mourning commingling into a vast national expression of bereavement.... With foreign leaders and royalty arriving in London for her funeral on Monday, the endless river of ordinary people was joined by dignitaries from the sovereign's far-flung realms: Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese of Australia.... The Queue, which snakes across the Thames and winds for miles along the river's south bank to Southwark Park, has quickly become a kind of cultural phenomenon.... At 6 p.m., Prince William and Prince Harry took up positions next to the catafalque to stand vigil over their grandmother, who died on Sept. 8.... The brothers were joined at the catafalque by their six cousins, the children of Princess Anne, Prince Andrew and Prince Edward.... The queen's coffin will lie in state at the Palace of Westminster until Monday morning, when it will be carried to Westminster Abbey for the funeral service."
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Reader Comments (12)
It's Sunday:
Will submit this to the local paper before I leave town again next week (per Marie, leaving chaos in my wake?):
Two recent letters to the editor have me thinking of evolution.
In Republican circles, where the reality of Darwinian evolution is often questioned, there is evolution of another kind. Particularly as elections approach, the positions of many Republican candidates definitely “evolve.”
Washington Senate candidate Tiffany Smiley’s position on abortion offers a case in point. Once firmly pro-fetal-life, she has softened her position considerably (cnn.com), saying that while she is still pro-life, she now supports the Washington State law guaranteeing abortion rights.
Ms. Smiley is hardly alone in her evolution. As the unpopularity of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision sets in, Republican candidates across the nation are scrubbing their websites of former pro-life positions, modifying their public remarks on the subject, or saying nothing at all (washintonpost.com).
It’s not surprising, really. For Republicans, the meaning of words is often fleeting. To them, election “fraud" now means any results they don’t like. For Trump, “hoax” has long meant proven fact. And recently we learned the National Archives were told those boxes of government documents that ended up at Mar-a-Lago were only “newspaper clippings” (Forbes.com).
When it comes to the meaning of words or even past policy positions, Republicans have no problem letting them “evolve.”
A recent letter cited the Dublin Declaration on Maternal Healthcare, which exhibited another face of such flexibility: A tendency to fudge the facts (ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5473037/). Tellingly, the 2012 Dublin Declaration’s assertion that there are no medical reasons for abortion appeared the same year a pregnant 31-year-old Indian-Irish woman tragically died from sepsis because Ireland’s anti-abortion laws didn’t allow doctors to treat her medical condition(nyreview.com).
Her death, which highlighted only one of the many medical and personal complications of pregnancy, was one of the factors that pushed Ireland forward (nbcnews.com).
It seems Ireland really evolved.
In 2018 Ireland legalized abortion.
@Ken Winkes: I've never seen anything wrong with being personally pro-life but publicly pro-choice. I see nothing wrong with deciding against an abortion for yourself even when giving childbirth is inconvenient or maybe even urging a good friend not to get an abortion if she seems to be planning one for what seems like a frivolous reason. But if she, or anybody else, decides to get an abortion, it's just none of my business, and it definitely is not a decision that politicians should legislate on the theory that all abortions are in all likelihood very bad ideas. Because they're not.
Agreed, Marie.
No problem with the it's up to you approach. That's a mostly sane definition of freedom.
But Smiley has clearly shifted her position for political reasons, not out of conviction. It's a primary to general election transition being repeated among Republicans across the country. See the CNN cite...
@Ken Winkes: Yeah, I got that. I just wish more politicians would understand that abortion is, like many other health issues, a personal matter. Mitch acts as if he's being all pro-woman by saying, "I think we should leave it up to the states." But he's not. We should leave it up to the women, not to some gerrymandered-in old dudes from Northern Wisconsin.
Ken: If I recall you subscribe to the NYRB and in an issue, I think, in March or April of this year Fintan O'Toole covered the whole Irish history of what they went through with abortion and the abhorrent treatment of women in general. So much of that history, of course, has to do with the Catholic Church. The death of that woman you cite was the beginning of the end and Ireland has had one of the best face lifts ever while we are going backwards facing the worst wrinkles in our history.
I'm fascinated by the overwhelming homage to the Queen. People standing in long lines for hours and hours. I cannot visualize me ever doing that for anyone! And have we ever had this kind of display in this country? The death of FDR brought out thousands of mourners but not like what we are seeing across the pond. And I'm wondering about the need of humans to have "a higher power" to be "ruled" in a way that makes them feel protected–-loved–-which, of course, brings us back---or forward––to religion again and perhaps explains why so many cling to that star figure in the sky.
P.D.
Yes, I read and learned from the NYRB O'Toole piece. The other cite I give
from the NIH is also informative, particularly about the consequences of the Declaration in Central and South America...
And on that idolization thing: I don't get it either. Might have something to do with my ego structure. I do admire some people, but my own sense of self is laden with enough personal uncertainty that I likely project some of it to others, leaving me with the impression that they too have their imperfections, even if they display flawless skin.
Methinks the same sex marriage issue will be going down the same
path as the abortion issue.
Leave it up to each of the 50 states. That should confuse things, like
joint property issues. I could inherit the house in Michigan but not
the condo in Palm Springs or wherever because that particular state
doesn't recognize the marriage.
Sounds like a lawyers paradise. And that is exactly why my in-laws
are so negative on the issue. They're out of the will.
Praise be.
@P.D, Pepe: It may depend on where you live. When I lived in L.A., another big city of course, people routinely waited in line 48 hours to get tickets for some rock concert.
When I lived in Florida, I waited in line for several hours (like 3) to see President Obama -- and that was when I knew I wouldn't get close. I even waited some time for Hillary & Bernie in Portsmouth, N.H.! And for a few other politicians over the years.
And you do sort of, at least temporarily, bond with the people around you, because no matter what the event is you're waiting for, you all have at least one thing in common.
But if you live in a small town, "queues" may not be your thing. Years ago, my sister told me she had seen Neil Diamond when he came to Albuquerque on tour. I lived in L.A. then, and I said he'd been at the Hollywood Bowl, too, but there was no way I would wait two days for tickets, then go through the hassle of getting to the Bowl (and getting out! even worse!) She said she wouldn't, either. But in Albuquerque, she breezed right into the concert venue with no waiting.
So there are some advantages to living in the boonies. Still, I would recommend to every young person that they live, at least for a while, in a big city. Big-city living, for whatever reasons (and I doubt waiting in line is one of them), just seems to give you a broader outlook on life.
@Forrest Morris: As you point out, the same-sex marriage issue is even worse than the abortion ban, at least in some ways. A person may have to go through the expense & inconvenience of traveling to another state to get an abortion (unless Lindsey has his way, in which case that's out, too).
But couples would have to live forever with the consequences of lifting the marriage equality guarantee. Hardly a temporary inconvenience. I guess we just have to pray that Clarence & the Snidely Supremes don't mess with Obergefell.
Forest: One of my daughters- in law has a brother who has been in a same sex marriage for about ten years––both are in academia but the brother's husband is also in real estate and has condos in Colorado Florida and here in CT. and they are in both spouse's names. They, too, could run into the same issues you might face if the monsters/mobsters get their way.
I just remembered an incident some years back when the above mentioned couple and I were watching my grandson's basketball game. I was relating a real estate story told by one of my friends who, when selling her former home had a professor from Yale come to the house as a prospective buyer. Now I have a voice–--drama training perhaps–-that carries and at the point of the story where I say what my friend told me–––
"so as I was sitting on the ledge near the kitchen window he sat down next to me and before I knew it he had his hand up my skirt–-you know the one––with the little pink flowers---and I said, whoa, there, mister I sure as hell don't come with the purchase."
At this very point in the story a player was poised to put the ball through the net so it was quite quiet–- most within ear shot are listening to me––stunned silence––-the kid looks up at me, smiles and puts the ball through the hoop. I felt embarrassed but "our team loved it," said my grandson afterwards.
We're in the beginning of Hispanic Heritage Month. Just wondering
how DeDantis and Abbott are celebrating it.
Oh, I think I know the answer. Let's load some more on planes and
busses with promises of jobs and papers.
Kant sez…
Pretty sure you won’t find Kant on the DeSantis or Abbott bookshelves. His thinking does in no way jibe with the right-wing mantra of “Me, me, me, what’s in it for me?” otherwise known as “I can do whatever the holy hell I want as long as I benefit”, also a central precept of Trumpian ethics (I know, go ahead and laugh…).
But Kant thinks differently. His philosophy of moral and ethical behavior (specifically laid out in “Groundwork for Metaphysics of Morals”, among other works) boils down to some simple rules, often referred to by the term categorical imperative. Basically, he says that our actions in the world should be based on reason, on what’s the best outcome for humanity, what could be considered universal laws, not what’s best for me to achieve a personal goal at the expense of others.
Simply put, Kant says that people should never be treated as a means to and end. People are ends in and of themselves, and deserving of respect and proper treatment.
But Kant (here’s that Kantian deontology thing again) also says that people shouldn’t lie. Ever. So, DeSantis and Abbott, lying to immigrants about how they’re gonna help them and yada, yada, yada, puts them in double Dutch with Kant. They use other human beings as a means to an end, for their own benefit, and they lie about it.
They get an F for philosophy. And an Incomplete for Humanity 101. They never bothered to show up after the class that instructed them to not be inhumane assholes. Of course neither will ever bother to finish the course. Inhumane assholes for life.