The Ledes

Friday, October 11, 2024

Washington Post: “Floridians began returning to damaged and waterlogged homes on Thursday after Hurricane Milton carved a path of destruction and grief across the state, the second massive storm to strike Florida in as many weeks. At least 14 storm-related deaths were attributed to the hurricane, which made landfall south of Sarasota at 8:30 p.m. Wednesday, officials said. Six of them were killed when two tornadoes touched down ahead of the storm in St. Lucie County on Florida’s central Atlantic coast. The deadly tornadoes, rising waters, torrential rain and punishing winds battered the state from coast to coast as Milton churned eastward before heading out to sea early Thursday.”

Washington Post: “Twelve people were rescued from an inactive Colorado gold mine after they were trapped 1,000 feet underground for about six hours following an elevator malfunction. One person was killed in the accident, which happened about 500 feet underground at the Mollie Kathleen Gold Mine near Cripple Creek, Colo., Teller County Sheriff Jason Mikesell said at a Thursday news conference. The site is a tourist attraction. Eleven other people aboard the elevator at the time, including two children, were rescued shortly after the mechanical malfunction, which Mikesell said 'created a severe danger for the participants.' He said four suffered minor injuries.... Twelve others in a separate group remained trapped in a mine shaft 1,000 feet underground for several hours after the incident, before they were rescued Thursday evening, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis said.”

The Wires
powered by Surfing Waves
The Ledes

Thursday, October 10, 2024

CNBC: “The pace of price increases over the past year was higher than forecast in September while jobless claims posted an unexpected jump following Hurricane Helene and the Boeing strike, the Labor Department reported Thursday. The consumer price index, a broad gauge measuring the costs of goods and services across the U.S. economy, increased a seasonally adjusted 0.2% for the month, putting the annual inflation rate at 2.4%. Both readings were 0.1 percentage point above the Dow Jones consensus. The annual inflation rate was 0.1 percentage point lower than August and is the lowest since February 2021.”

The New York Times' live updates of Hurrucane Milton consequences Thursday are here: “Milton was still producing damaging hurricane-force winds and heavy rainfall to parts of East and Central Florida, forecasters said early Thursday, even as the powerful storm roared away from the Atlantic coast and left deaths and widespread damage across the state. Cities along Florida’s east coast are now facing flash flooding, damaging winds and storm surges. Some had already been battered by powerful tornadoes spun out by the storm before it made landfall on the Gulf Coast on Wednesday as a Category 3 hurricane. In [St. Lucie] county [Fort Pierce], several people in a retirement community were killed by a tornado, the police said.... More than three million customers were without power in Florida as of early Thursday.” ~~~

     ~~~ Here are the Weater Channel's live updates.

CNN: “The 2024 Nobel Prize in literature has been awarded to Han Kang, a South Korean author, for her 'intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life.' Han, 53, began her career with a group of poems in a South Korean magazine, before making her prose debut in 1995 with a short story collection. She later began writing longer prose works, most notably 'The Vegetarian,' one of her first books to be translated into English. The novel, which won the Man Booker International Prize in 2016, charts a young woman’s attempt to live a more 'plant-like' existence after suffering macabre nightmares about human cruelty. Han is the first South Korean author to win the literature prize, and just the 18th woman out of the 117 prizes awarded since 1901.” The New York Times story is here.

Help!

To keep the Conversation going, please help me by linking news articles, opinion pieces and other political content in today's Comments section.

Link Code:   <a href="URL">text</a>

OR here's a link generator. The one I had posted died, then Akhilleus found one, but it too bit the dust. He found yet another, which I've linked here, and as of September 23, 2024, it's working.

OR you can always just block, copy and paste to your comment the URL (Web address) of the page you want to link.

Note for Readers. It is not possible for commenters to "throw" their highlighted links to another window. But you can do that yourself. Right-click on the link and a drop-down box will give you choices as to where you want to open the link: in a new tab, new window or new private window.

Thank you to everyone who has been contributing links to articles & other content in the Comments section of each day's "Conversation." If you're missing the comments, you're missing some vital links.

Public Service Announcement

Washington Post: "Americans can again order free rapid coronavirus tests by mail, the Biden administration announced Thursday. People can request four free at-home tests per household through covidtests.gov. They will begin shipping Monday. The move comes ahead of an expected winter wave of coronavirus cases. The September revival of the free testing program is in line with the Biden administration’s strategy to respond to the coronavirus as part of a broader public health campaign to protect Americans from respiratory viruses, including influenza and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), that surge every fall and winter. But free tests were not mailed during the summer wave, which wastewater surveillance data shows is now receding."

Washington Post: “Comedy news outlet the Onion — reinvigorated by new ownership over this year — is bringing back its once-popular video parodies of cable news. But this time, there’s someone with real news anchor experience in the chair. When the first episodes appear online Monday, former WAMU and MSNBC host Joshua Johnson will be the face of the resurrected 'Onion News Network.' Playing an ONN anchor character named Dwight Richmond, Johnson says he’s bringing a real anchor’s sense of clarity — and self-importance — to the job. 'If ONN is anything, it’s a news organization that is so unaware of its own ridiculousness that it has the confidence of a serial killer,' says Johnson, 44.” ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: I'll be darned if I can figured out how to watch ONN. If anybody knows, do tell. Thanks.

Washington Post: “First came the surprising discovery that Earth’s atmosphere is leaking. But for roughly 60 years, the reason remained a mystery. Since the late 1960s, satellites over the poles detected an extremely fast flow of particles escaping into space — at speeds of 20 kilometers per second. Scientists suspected that gravity and the magnetic field alone could not fully explain the stream. There had to be another source creating this leaky faucet. It turns out the mysterious force is a previously undiscovered global electric field, a recent study found. The field is only about the strength of a watch battery — but it’s enough to thrust lighter ions from our atmosphere into space. It’s also generated unlike other electric fields on Earth. This newly discovered aspect of our planet provides clues about the evolution of our atmosphere, perhaps explaining why Earth is habitable. The electric field is 'an agent of chaos,' said Glyn Collinson, a NASA rocket scientist and lead author of the study. 'It undoes gravity.... Without it, Earth would be very different.'”

The New York Times lists Emmy winners. The AP has an overview story here.

New York Times: “Hvaldimir, a beluga whale who had captured the public’s imagination since 2019 after he was spotted wearing a harness seemingly designed for a camera, was found dead on Saturday in Norway, according to a nonprofit that worked to protect the whale.... [Hvaldimir] was wearing a harness that identified it as “equipment” from St. Petersburg. There also appeared to be a camera mount. Some wondered if the whale was on a Russian reconnaissance mission. Russia has never claimed ownership of the whale. If Hvaldimir was a spy, he was an exceptionally friendly one. The whale showed signs of domestication, and was comfortable around people. He remained in busier waters than are typical for belugas....” ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: Oh, Lord, do not let Bobby Kennedy, Jr., near that carcass. ~~~

     ~~~ AP Update: “There’s no evidence that a well-known beluga whale that lived off Norway’s coast and whose harness ignited speculation it was a Russian spy was shot to death last month as claimed by animal rights groups, Norwegian police said Monday.... Police said that the Norwegian Veterinary Institute conducted a preliminary autopsy on the animal, which was become known as 'Hvaldimir,' combining the Norwegian word for whale — hval — and the first name of Russian President Vladimir Putin. 'There are no findings from the autopsy that indicate that Hvaldimir has been shot,' police said in a statement.”

New York Times: Botswana's “President Mokgweetsi Masisi grinned as he lifted the diamond, a 2,492-carat stone that is the biggest diamond unearthed in more than a century and the second-largest ever found, according to the Vancouver-based mining operator Lucara, which owns the mine where it was found. This exceptional discovery could bring back the luster of the natural diamond mining industry, mining companies and experts say. The diamond was discovered in the same relatively small mine in northeastern Botswana that has produced several of the largest such stones in living memory. Such gemstones typically surface as a result of volcanic activity.... The diamond will likely sell in the range of tens of millions of dollars....”

Click on photo to enlarge.

~~~ Guardian: "On a distant reef 16,000km from Paris, surfer Gabriel Medina has given Olympic viewers one of the most memorable images of the Games yet, with an airborne celebration so well poised it looked too good to be true. The Brazilian took off a thundering wave at Teahupo’o in Tahiti on Monday, emerging from a barrelling section before soaring into the air and appearing to settle on a Pacific cloud, pointing to the sky with biblical serenity, his movements mirrored precisely by his surfboard. The shot was taken by Agence France-Presse photographer Jérôme Brouillet, who said “the conditions were perfect, the waves were taller than we expected”. He took the photo while aboard a boat nearby, capturing the surreal image with such accuracy that at first some suspected Photoshop or AI." 

Washington Post: “'Mary Cassatt at Work' is a large and mostly satisfying exhibition devoted to the career of the great American artist beloved for her sensitive and often sentimental views of family life. The 'at work' in the title of the Philadelphia Museum of Art show references the curators’ interest in Cassatt’s pioneering effort to establish herself as a professional artist within a male-dominated field. Throughout the show, which includes some 130 paintings, pastels, prints and drawings, the wall text and the art on view stresses Cassatt’s fixation on art as a career rather than a pastime.... Mary Cassatt at Work is on view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art through Sept. 8. philamuseum.org”

New York Times: “Bob Newhart, who died on Thursday at the age of 94, has been such a beloved giant of popular culture for so long that it’s easy to forget how unlikely it was that he became one of the founding fathers of stand-up comedy. Before basically inventing the hit stand-up special, with the 1960 Grammy-winning album 'The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart' — that doesn’t even count his pay-per-view event broadcast on Canadian television that some cite as the first filmed special — he was a soft-spoken accountant who had never done a set in a nightclub. That he made a classic with so little preparation is one of the great miracles in the history of comedy.... Bob Newhart holds up. In fact, it’s hard to think of a stand-up from that era who is a better argument against the commonplace idea that comedy does not age well.”

Contact Marie

Click on this link to e-mail Marie.

Page Links
Friday
Jun122020

The Commentariat -- June 13, 2020

Late Morning Update:

Matt Viser of the Washington Post: "Joe Biden ratcheted up some of his criticism of President Trump on Friday, saying that his handling of the coronavirus was 'almost criminal,' that he has 'bungled' the economic fallout, and that he has exacerbated racial tensions in the country. During an hour-long town hall with the labor union AFSCME, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee warned that the U.S. will likely see a resurgence of the coronavirus and that Trump isn't doing enough to prepare.... On Friday, Biden also criticized Senate Republicans, saying they need to pass the Heroes Act, which would provide another round of federal funding. 'They're so damn stupid,' he said. Biden, a longtime senator known for strong bipartisan relationships, does not typically go after Republican lawmakers in such stark terms."

Tal Axelrod of the Hill: "President Trump said he'll leave the White House peacefully if he loses this November's presidential election, addressing concerns he would try to hold onto power after a defeat. 'Certainly, if I don't win, I don't win,' he said in an interview that aired on Fox News Friday, adding that if he lost, he'd 'go on, do other things.' Trump has never given any indication that he would defy the results of an election that showed him losing to former Vice President Joe Biden, though his remarks Friday appear to be the first public comments he's given on the subject." Mrs. McC: We'll see.

~~~~~~~~~~

The New York Times' live updates of coronavirus developments Friday are here. "Two of the nation's most populous states, Texas and Florida, both reported this week their highest daily totals of new coronavirus infections, a concerning sign as all 50 states move to ease social distancing restrictions and allow more businesses to reopen. The nation's most populous state, California, hit a new daily high last week, when it recorded 3,593 new cases, a record it nearly matched ... again this week. The rise in cases helps explain why the nation continues to record more than 20,000 new cases a day even as some of the original hot spots, including New York, have seen dramatic declines." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) More on Florida's response to the pandemic linked below. ~~~

~~~ The Washington Post's live updates for Friday are here. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

The C.D.C. Revolts. Sort of. Lena Sun & Chelsea Janes of the Washington Post: "Federal health officials on Friday urged organizers of large gatherings that involve shouting, chanting or singing to 'strongly encourage' attendees use cloth face coverings to lower the risk of spreading the coronavirus. The guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention comes after more than a week of national protests against police brutality where many attendees and police did not wear masks. It also coincides with President Trump's plans to hit the campaign trail next week and to accept his party's nomination in Jacksonville, Fla. later this summer. The Republican National Committee has indicated it does not want to require participants to wear masks for the speech.... A similar recommendation for using cloth face coverings in settings that involve shouting, chanting, or singing, including choirs, was removed from the agency's guidance for reopening houses of worship two weeks ago after weeks of debate between the White House and the CDC.... CDC Director Robert Redfield began the agency's first full-fledged briefing in more than three months, saying he recognizes that Americans are eager to return to normal activities. But it's important for them to remember 'this situation is unprecedented and that the pandemic has not ended,' he said." The article is free to nonsubscribers. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) The New York Times story is here.

Kudlow Said It, So It's Wrong. Quint Forgey of Politico: "The White House's top economic advisers on Friday shrugged off concerns of a potential 'second wave' of the coronavirus, reflecting ... Donald Trump's eagerness to continue reopening broad swaths of the country even as cases of Covid-19 are spiking in more than a dozen states. 'There is no emergency. There is no second wave. I don't know where that got started on Wall Street,' Larry Kudlow, director of the National Economic Council, told 'Fox & Friends.' Kudlow previously claimed in late February that the federal government had 'contained' the threat of a domestic coronavirus outbreak 'pretty close to airtight' -- an assessment which proved to be direly wrong.... Kudlow ... said he had spoken with top public health officials 'at some length' Thursday evening. 'They are saying there is no second spike. Let me repeat that. There is no second spike,' he said." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Florida. Chris Persaud of the Palm Beach Post: "Florida's former top coronavirus data scientist has launched a website showing far more COVID-19 information than she said the state allowed her to report as an employee, including statistics contradicting Florida's official coronavirus numbers accompanying the push to reopen the state. Former Health Department geographic data scientist Rebekah Jones has created FloridaCOVIDAction.com, which asserts that the state's widely read public-facing dashboard under reports how many people have tested positive for the pathogen. Florida also overcounts how many have been tested, Jones said, to the benefit of Gov. Ron DeSantis' push to reopen the state after two months of quarantine. 'I decided to stop wallowing in self-pity and do something constructive, something useful with the skill set I've been using for so long,' Jones said. 'People have a right to know what's going on in a straightforward nonpolitical kind of way.'... Jones, who built the state dashboard, says she was fired May 18 after refusing to 'manipulate' COVID-19 data to justify reopening. [Gov. Ron] DeSantis [R] said she was fired because 'she didn't listen to the people who were her superiors.'"

Joshua Partlow, et al., of the Washington Post: Donald Trump's "company ... was already suffering from a tarnished brand before the novel coronavirus hit. The fresh wave of political anger directed toward Trump complicates an already difficult recovery for the company. Interviews with current and former Trump Organization employees and tenants, and emails obtained by The Washington Post, show the pandemic in particular has rattled operations at the company. With thousands of Trump's hotel rooms empty, the company laid off or furloughed more than 2,800 employees and scoured for even the smallest savings. It eliminated flowers, chocolates and newspapers at its New York hotel and turned off lights in common areas in its Chicago hotel to save on electricity.... After this story published Friday... , [Eric Trump] ... accused The Post of trying to harass the president and the company." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)


Trump Looks at Chokeholds from Both Sides of His Mouth Now. John Greve of the Guardian: "Donald Trump further stoked controversy over race issues and policing by remarking on Friday that chokeholds sounded 'so innocent and so perfect', and once again claimed he has been the best president for black Americans -- only partially conceding that Abraham Lincoln may have surpassed him. The US president also called his choice to resume rallies on 19 June, the Juneteenth day marking the end of slavery, 'a celebration', despite having picked a city known for a historic massacre of black Americans by white Americans and used divisive language over the anti-racism protests spurred by the police killing of George Floyd.... 'I think the concept of chokeholds sounds so innocent and so perfect,' Trump said, adding that 'you have to be careful. With that being said, it would be, I think, a very good thing that, generally speaking, it should be ended.'... Trump offered several equivocal answers on sensitive issues in a time of exceptional national tumult, with the coronavirus pandemic, the resulting economic nosedive and the blight of police brutality all falling disproportionately on black Americans.... In the Fox interview, Trump said the choice of Juneteenth for a partisan rally was not specific, but 'the fact that I'm having a rally on that day, you can really think about that very positively as a celebration because a rally, to me, is celebration.' Senator Kamala Harris of California remarked on Twitter on the implications, calling the move a 'welcome home party' for white supremacists."

Tom Hamburger of the Washington Post: "Former national security adviser John Bolton's forthcoming book will include descriptions of President Trump's 'inconsistent, scattershot decision-making' driven by 'reelection calculations' rather than national security, according to a news release from the book's publisher.... 'What Bolton saw astonished him: a president for whom getting reelected was the only thing that mattered, even if it meant endangering or weakening the nation,' the news release said.... 'Trump's Ukraine-like transgressions existed across the full range of his foreign policy -- and Bolton documents exactly what those were, and attempts by him and others in the Administration to raise alarms about them,' the Simon & Schuster news release states." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ~~~

~~~ Kyle Cheney & Quint Forgey of Politico: "... Donald Trump repeatedly endangered national security -- and committed a series of potentially impeachable offenses -- to boost his reelection prospects, former national security adviser John Bolton argues in a forthcoming White House memoir. Bolton writes that the House should have broadened its impeachment inquiry to other areas of his foreign policy.... Despite his swipe at the House, Bolton famously refused to cooperate with House investigators as they pursued allegations that Trump pressured Ukraine to investigate his Democratic adversaries." (Also linked yesterday.)

     ~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: While it's tempting to scream at Bolton, "Why didn't you say this stuff when it mattered?" the truth is that there are hundreds of knowledgeable people in the administration & Congress who decided to keep their heads down. They're all traitors to the Constitution & democratic principles. Bolton's voice would have made little difference: what? one or two more GOP senators voting for impeachment? ~~~

~~~ It Was About the Money. Jada Yuan of the Washington Post: "When Melania Trump stayed behind in New York after her husband's presidential inauguration, she said it was because she didn't want to interrupt their then-10-year-old son Barron's school year. News stories at the time concentrated on an apparent frostiness between the first couple and on the exorbitant taxpayer costs to protect Melania and Barron away from Washington. Those stories are true, but Washington Post reporter Mary Jordan reveals in a new book that the first lady was also using her delayed arrival to the White House as leverage for renegotiating her prenuptial agreement with President Trump." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) A New York Times story is here. A Guardian story is here. ~~~

     ~~~ The Non-denial Denial. Brett Samuels of the Hill: "'Yet another book about Mrs. Trump with false information and sources. This book belongs in the fiction genre,' Stephanie Grisham, the first lady's chief of staff, said in a statement. The statement did not address any specific claims in the book." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

All the Best People, Ctd. Em Steck, et al., of CNN: "The White House's nominee for a top position at the Pentagon has a history of making Islamophobic and inflammatory remarks against prominent Democratic politicians, including falsely calling former President Barack Obama a Muslim.Retired Army Brig. Gen. Anthony Tata, a frequent guest on Fox News and ardent defender of ... Donald Trump, was nominated to become the under secretary of defense for policy. If confirmed by the Senate, Tata would become the third highest official in the Pentagon overseeing the Defense Department's policy shop.... In several tweets from 2018, Tata said that Islam was the 'most oppressive violent religion I know of' and claimed Obama was a 'terrorist leader' who did more to harm the US 'and help Islamic countries than any president in history.' Following the publication of this story, Tata deleted several of his tweets, screenshots of which were captured by CNN's KFile." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Margot Sanger-Katz & Noah Weiland of the New York Times: "The Trump administration on Friday finalized a regulation that will erase protections for transgender patients against discrimination by doctors, hospitals and health insurance companies, a move announced on the four-year anniversary of the massacre at a gay nightclub in Orlando and in the middle of Pride Month. The rule, which does not differ much from a proposed version released last year, is part of a broad Trump administration effort across multiple areas of policy -- including education, housing, and employment, as well as health care -- to narrow the legal definition of sex discrimination so that it does not include protections for transgender people." A Guardian story is here. ~~~

~~~ Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: The title of the news release from Health & Human Services for this rules change, BTW, is Orwellian: "HHS Finalizes Rule on Section 1557 Protecting Civil Rights in Healthcare, Restoring the Rule of Law, and Relieving Americans of Billions in Excessive Costs" ~~~

~~~ Dan Avery of the Insider: "... Joe Biden said Donald Trump's cruelty 'truly knows no bounds' on Friday, after the Trump administration finalized a rule change removing Obama-era nondiscrimination protections in healthcare for transgender Americans.... Biden noted that the rule change was announced during LGBTQ Pride month, and on the fourth anniversary of the Pulse nightclub massacre, when 49 people were shot and killed at a gay club in Orlando."

Charlie Savage of the New York Times: "A federal appeals court panel appeared inclined on Friday to permit a trial judge to complete his review of the Justice Department's attempt to drop a criminal case against President Trump's former national security adviser Michael T. Flynn, as all three judges asked skeptical questions about a request that they intervene and order the case dismissed. The nearly two hours of oral arguments, conducted by telephone because of the coronavirus pandemic and live-streamed over YouTube, were the latest step in an extraordinary and politically charged case against Mr. Flynn. He had twice pleaded guilty to lying to the F.B.I. about his conversations in 2016 with the Russian ambassador before Attorney General William P. Barr decided last month to try to drop the case, a highly unusual intervention.... If the appeals court panel permits [the] process to play out, the Justice Department will have to respond to a scathing brief [former federal judge John] Gleeson submitted this week to Judge [Emmet] Sullivan that portrayed Mr. Barr's decision as a 'gross abuse' of power." An AP story is here. A Politico story is here. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Instead of calling them nonlethal, we now call these weapons 'less lethal', and that is in comparison to a standard bullet. -- Dr. Jeffrey M. Goodloe ~~

~~~ Knvul Sheikh & David Montgomery of the New York Times: "... rubber bullets -- as well as tear gas, flash-bangs and beanbag rounds -- that protesters around the country have faced in marches against racial injustice, have been deemed 'nonlethal weapons' by law enforcement officials and the military, who use them regularly around the world. But research increasingly shows they can seriously injure and disable people -- and sometimes even kill. A 2017 analysis published in the British Medical Journal of several decades of the use of rubber bullets, beanbag rounds and other projectiles during arrests and protests found that 15 percent of people who were injured were left with permanent disabilities and 3 percent of those who were injured died. Of those who survived, 71 percent had severe injuries, with their extremities most frequently impacted."

Elections 2020

Brett Samuels of the Hill: "President Trump will push back his planned rally for next week by one day to avoid overlapping with Juneteenth, he said Friday, citing widespread criticism that the campaign event would fall on the same day that marks the end of slavery. 'We had previously scheduled our #MAGA Rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, for June 19th -- a big deal. Unfortunately, however, this would fall on the Juneteenth Holiday,' Trump tweeted late Friday night. 'Many of my African American friends and supporters have reached out to suggest that we consider changing the date out of respect for this Holiday, and in observance of this important occasion and all that it represents,' he continued. 'I have therefore decided to move our rally to Saturday, June 20th, in order to honor their requests.'" This is a developing story @11:30 pm ET Friday. ~~~

     ~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: As the Guardian story by John Greve, linked near the top of the page, indicates, Trump had earlier defended his decision to hold the Tulsa rally on Juneteenth. AND there's this: ~~~

~~~ USA Today: "... Donald Trump said in an interview that aired Friday that his decision to hold a rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma -- the site of a horrific 1921 attack on African Americans, on the holiday marking the end of U.S. slavery -- was not deliberate. Fox News host Harris Faulkner asked Trump whether he chose the location and date on purpose, to which the president said 'no,' even though his campaign has trumpeted the Juneteenth holiday when asked about its timing.... Despite Trump denying the significance of Tulsa, he's never held a rally there and Oklahoma is a firmly red state he won by 36 percentage points in the 2016 election.... When asked about why the campaign decided to hold the rally in Tulsa and on Juneteenth, senior Trump campaign adviser Katrina Pierson said in a statement Thursday, 'as the party of Lincoln, Republicans are proud of the history of Juneteenth.' White House spokeswoman Kayleigh McEnany later told reporters Juneteenth was very 'meaningful' for Trump."

~~~ As we learned earlier this week, Donald Trump will be holding his first campaign rally in months in Tulsa, Oklahoma, this coming Friday Saturday. As CBS News (and others) reported Thursday, "Trump supporters who attend ... [the rally] must agree not to sue if they contract COVID-19.... The BOK Center ... seats more than 19,000 people. The president has emphasized he wants his rallies full of people and has made his distaste for masks clear. 'By clicking register below, you are acknowledging that an inherent risk of exposure to COVID-19 exists in any public place where people are present,' the campaign website says on the RSVP page for the rally." AND with good reason, people! ~~~

~~~ KJRH Tulsa: "The Tulsa Health Department is urging caution on gatherings to Tulsa County residents as COVID-19 cases reach record daily high. The Tulsa Health Department (THD) says Friday reports showed the new highest daily increase of coronavirus cases to day in the county.... Officials said the increase has been identified as an outbreak linked to indoor gatherings." You might say that yelling, screaming & singing while standing shoulder-to-shoulder indoors with thousands of people from places far & wide, few of whom are wearing masks, is not "using caution." But enjoy! you dimwitted bastids. ~~~

~~~ AND Joe Biden Can't Get Anything Straight. From the USA Today report linked above: "Former Vice President Joe Biden criticized Trump's scheduled rally in Tulsa during a teleconference call with thousands of AFSCME union members Friday. But a day after mistakenly saying the rally was in Texas, Biden said it was Arizona." Mrs. McC: Clearly, Biden is not getting the significance of the 1921 Tulsa massacre, which is central to the story of Trump's original plan to hold his rally on Juneteenth very near the site of the mass murder of black Americans as an in-your-face pushback against international "Black Lives Matter" protests. Biden's briefers really need to give him news quizzes before he speaks. And they need to test him till he passes. This is embarrassing.

Sam Levine of the Guardian: "The alarm bells have been going off for months, but the election fiasco in Georgia on Tuesday made it clear: America is ill-prepared to hold a fair presidential vote in November, and is dangerously close to having an election disaster. The Georgia contest offered the most alarming preview to date of what could happen in November without major overhauls, training and planning. Voters stood in line to vote for upwards of four hours, saying they never received mail-in ballots requested weeks ago. Local officials, forced to consolidate polling locations because of Covid-19, were unable to manage the influx of voters and struggled to operate new voting equipment.... 'We're just going to have a catastrophe in November,' said Michael McDonald, a professor at the University of Florida who studies elections. 'We've already passed the point of catastrophic failure.'"

Beyond the Beltway

New York. Luis Ferré-Sadurní & Jesse McKinley of the New York Times: "New York on Friday became the first state to take meaningful action to rein in police forces after the killing of George Floyd, banning the use of chokeholds by law enforcement and repealing a half-century-old law that has kept police disciplinary records secret in the state. Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo signed the expansive package of bills less than three weeks after Mr. Floyd's death at the hands of the police in Minneapolis, which has since sparked widespread civil unrest and demonstrations against police brutality and racism. New York City also took tentative steps toward meeting protesters' calls to 'defund the police.' On Friday, the City Council speaker, Corey Johnson, said the Council had identified $1 billion in cuts to the Police Department's $6 billion budget, and would urge Mayor Bill de Blasio to agree in advance of the July 1 budget deadline. Mr. de Blasio quickly rejected the proposal, while indicating that he was open to further negotiations over the size of the Police Department."

Oklahoma. Top Tulsa Cop Says Cops Should Shoot More Black People. David Li of NBC News: "Tulsa Mayor G.T. Bynum on Wednesday blasted one of his police department's top commanders after the officer denied there's systemic racism in law enforcement, then said African Americans 'probably ought to be' shot more. Tulsa Chief of Police Wendell Franklin, the first African American to hold that position, on Thursday also denounced the incendiary comments made by Major Travis Yates." Yates said on a KFAQ radio program called "Behind the Blue Line" that "All the research said -- including Roland Fryer, an African American Harvard professor -- ... we're shooting African Americans about 24 percent less than we probably ought to be based on the crimes being committed." "Fryer, an economics professor..., authored a 2016 paper on policing, published in The Journal of Political Economy. He found that African Americans and Hispanics were disproportionately targeted for use of force by officers -- but said there were 'no racial differences' in terms of officer-involved shootings."

Texas. Erin Ailworth of the Wall Street Journal: "Houston's top prosecutor has concluded that a scandal-ridden former Houston police officer likely lied when he arrested George Floyd on a minor drug offense for which Mr. Floyd served time in state jail. The Harris County District Attorney, Kim Ogg, also said that due to her office's examination of Mr. Floyd's case it could expand a continuing investigation to examine more arrests made by Gerald Goines, who was charged with murder after a botched drug raid in 2019 in which two people were killed. Mr. Goines -- who also is charged with tampering with a government record by lying to obtain the search warrant that authorized the deadly 2019 raid -- is the officer who arrested Mr. Floyd in 2004 over what Ms. Ogg described as a one-rock, $10 crack buy.... [Goines] has pleaded not guilty. Ms. Ogg's statements suggest that years before Mr. Floyd was killed by a former Minneapolis police officer with a history of complaints on his record, he may have been set up by a Houston officer with a notorious background. 'Goines was likely lying in this case,' she said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal, pointing to several red flags, including that the deal was 'very small time' and that Mr. Goines was the only police-officer witness. 'These are not cases that we would take or that we would accept for charges under my administration.'" ~~~

     ~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: The story is of course firewalled, but I went at it a few different times, and it accidentally came up. KPRC Houston has the story, too, but their report is less clear than the WSJ's. The point here is this: because Floyd was black, he was a mark for the cops & was arrested, convicted & jailed for nothing. I don't look at this as an anomaly but as an ideal example of the "systemic racism" which the Trump administration denies. Yo, Bill Barr, if you can show me your sheet & a photo of yourself in those slimming stripes exercising in the prison yard, then I'll amend my remarks. Sadly, multiple shocking videos have forced Trump himself to concede there are "a few bad apples" (as opposed to system-wide racism) among the police, tho as we know, Trump is quite capable of viewing video evidence of police abuse as likely the work of an antifa provocateur setting up innocent men in riot gear.

Comments Off

Reader Comments (13)

Hmmm...so Melanie was sticking it to Fatty in order to renegotiate her pre-nup? Looks like she really does care after all. About herself, that is.

I suppose we can’t blame her. She knows how shabbily Fatty treated all his other wives (Evangelicals, are you paying attention? What’s that? You really don’t care either? S’what we figured...) and she wants to at least make sure her nest is well feathered in case she gets the boot in favor of a new model or in case she’s decided she’s had enough of this First Lady bullshit and pretending to care about the insignificant losers beneath her. Jesus, these fucking people.

June 13, 2020 | Unregistered CommenterAkhilleus

@Akhilleus: Yeah, and I love the way the party line was that Melanie's stay in New York was all about being a good mom when it turns out it was all about making sure she could afford more designer shoes.

June 13, 2020 | Registered CommenterMarie Burns

Man, oh man. Ya gotta love how needle-pinning narcissism can warp the mind. It’s not crazy (and contemptible) enough that one of the most hateful racists ever to darken the White House linens demands that black Americans recognize his greatness as a fighter for their communities and acknowledge how much they owe him, but in order to be able to say “I am the greatest!” (pace, Muhammad Ali), he has to diss Lincoln by describing his achievements as “questionable”.

Questionable? The guy was assassinated for what he did for African-Americans. So what president, in the opinion of this self adoring fat blowhard would be able to withstand a comparison to his greatness? Washington? “I dunno, wooden teeth? Not a good look. And my wig is much better.” FDR? “It took him three terms to beat the depression and win a war. I’d have done it in one. Besides, I like presidents who don’t use crutches.”

What must it be like to truly believe no one in history your equal, when the mountain of evidence to the contrary towers miles above you?

A real sicko.

June 13, 2020 | Unregistered CommenterAkhilleus

"A real sicko." Yeah, one of many ways to describe this abhorrent, lying , dangerous deviant devil in a dark suit who has systemically corrupted this presidency along with the many agencies therein. And he hasn't been stopped. But then he told us that at the very beginning, didn't he? The fifth avenue shot would never graze his temple as he walked on by––he was that certain. So once again we conclude that here is something rotten in the system itself.

Last night I had trouble sleeping–-remembered beautifully carved wood figures on the desk of my favorite high school English teacher; the three monkeys––"see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil." When I asked where she got them she told me in South Africa during her trip the previous summer. Then she told me about the situation there and said the monkeys reminded her of how we keep denying certain truths. She probably couldn't elaborate, citing of course that in our backyard we had no blacks , that we were being raised in a white world where Doris Day sang love songs to Rock Hudson while Bing Crosby sang about blue skies.
And what I know now, but didn't then, was how this teacher helped me expand my world in small increments. Because I loved reading and writing this teacher took the time to spend some time with me after school and cleverly instilled that need to delve deeply ––"always ask questions"––"don't ever lose your curiosity." What SHE couldn't say, her monkeys said it for her.

This is all to say I am sick to death that this operation "What Trump Wants, Trump gets" continues full steam ahead. In Tulsa, too small a place to accommodate all the people who will be attending the rally, there will be cruise ships in the harbor to accomplish that job.

Let that sink in.

June 13, 2020 | Unregistered CommenterPD Pepe

Struck me last night when I heard the stumbling Lincoln remarks that maybe the most evident and certainly most frequent sign of the Pretender's terminal narcissism might be his eagerness to speak in public.

I'm no orator (yes, Henry Clay is still on my mind this morning) but I know that if I made as little sense, formed words as awkwardly, so often lost my train of thought--to the degree that I seemed bemused at what just came out of my own mouth-- and strung my hesitant words together like a brain-damaged child, I'd keep my mouth shut and say nothing at all.

June 13, 2020 | Unregistered CommenterKen Winkes

@PD Pepe: The cruise ship option, which is perfect for the Covid-19-bound, is for Jacksonville, not Tulsa. I seriously doubt the Arkansas River at Tulsa is navigable for large cruise ships, although it's been much-improved for river traffic since I lived in Tulsa several decades ago. The depth of the river channel is only 9 feet in places, & that was before a flood in 2019 silted up the channel. If somebody knows otherwise, please correct me.

June 13, 2020 | Registered CommenterMarie Burns

Ken,

As someone once said (and no one seems to know for sure who), it’s better to appear stupid and keep your mouth shut than to open it and erase all doubt.

Yet another piece of evidence in support of Trump’s onrushing senility, the fact that he can never keep the pie hole shut, thus providing daily examples of his stupidity which he firmly believes proves his stunning intellectual prowess. The only stunned thing, however, is the look on the faces of those listening to his quotidian gibberish.

June 13, 2020 | Unregistered CommenterAkhilleus

Irony Deficiency

This cruise ship business. Has no one in this administration heard of irony? We know they’ve never heard of idiocy, even though they’ve a plethora of examples on a daily basis from their waddling boss and his gurgling sycophants.

But, but...

A cruise ship? Do they not recall that some of the first, and most notorious cases of coronavirus infections sailed in on a cruise ship? So notorious in fact, that Dr. Fatty tried to work his scammy magic in reducing the number of cases then being tallied by pretending those on board were not actually countable.

So, sure. Let’s pile a whole passel or three of drooling, shouting, coughing, sneezing, unmasked MAGA morons onto a FUCKING CRUISE SHIP!!

On the other hand...Well, I’ll try to be nice. For a change.

June 13, 2020 | Unregistered CommenterAkhilleus

@Akhilleus: Another thing about Trump's stupidity is his assumption that what he thinks off the top of his head is not only the best policy but is the best way to formulate policy.

Let us assume that there's a valid argument for law enforcement's use of chokeholds. Here's what Trump said about chokeholds the other day in an interview he knew would be nationally televised:

From the Guardian story by John Greve, linked above: “'I don’t like chokeholds ... [but] sometimes, if you’re alone and you’re fighting someone, it’s tough....' He gave an example of a 'really bad person' confronting a police officer and said that situation had played out amid the protests.... 'You saw some very good people protesting, but you saw some bad people also. And you get somebody in a chokehold. What are you going to do now? Let go and say, “Oh, let’s start all over again”?'... I think the concept of chokeholds sounds so innocent and so perfect.... You have to be careful. With that being said, it would be, I think, a very good thing that, generally speaking, it should be ended.”

Clearly, he's riffing off the top of his head. As he blabbers along, he comes to a conclusion, a conclusion that is supposed to decide the issue for the thousands of police departments & other law enforcement agencies throughout the country.

A real president would have subordinates and Congressional subcommittees & so forth assemble panels of experts -- law enforcement practitioners & supervisors, medical doctors, scientists, pathologists, Congressional bill drafters, etc. -- study chokeholds. These panels or commissions would develop policy recommendations & draft legislation. It's true their recommendations might not be optimal & revisions might have to be made later, but the ultimate outcome would be based on facts & data, & the public would have some confidence that the best effort was made to arrive at the best solution for a national policy.

Instead, Trump thinks the "best solution" is something a dimwit with no expertise or experience whatsoever in chokeholds -- that is, Donald J. Trump -- dreams up on the fly. It's governance by Cliff Clavin. It's astounding.

June 13, 2020 | Registered CommenterMarie Burns

While the Jacksonville paper hasn't said anything yet about cruise ships one more time (they had to do that to meet NFL requirements for the super bowl) they did say that they would be booking hotels in the "entire metropolitan area" which stretches from Amelia Island to St Augustine and that some delegates might be "further out".

June 13, 2020 | Unregistered CommenterBobby Lee

Kill the messenger...

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/12/coronavirus-public-health-officials-face-political-pressure-threats-and-armed-protests.html

June 13, 2020 | Unregistered CommenterKen Winkes

The second of these may have already been reported and linked here, but I thought the pair neatly bookended the Mean and Dishonest Pretender administration.

The first an injunction against the DeVos Dept. of Miseducation for denying funding to Dreamers (and others)...

https://www.goskagit.com/news/local_news/skagit-valley-college-part-of-lawsuit/article_3a98ac96-87ba-5d90-80a6-301eb6e41a3e.html

The second, more of the same ole slime....

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/06/11/trump-administration-wont-say-who-got-511-billion-taxpayer-backed-coronavirus-loans/

June 13, 2020 | Unregistered CommenterKen Winkes

Not just a failing brain?

https://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/ny-trump-glass-water-west-point-20200613-dkioabuiirhz7pelj465p2j6he-story.html

June 13, 2020 | Unregistered CommenterKen Winkes
Comments for this entry have been disabled. Additional comments may not be added to this entry at this time.