;)
The Commentariat -- June 15, 2021
The Washington Post is live-updating President Biden's meetings with E.U. leaders.
The Amazing Presidency of Joe Biden, Ctd. Steven Erlanger & Michael Shear of the New York Times: "President Biden on Tuesday announced the end of a bitter, 17-year dispute with the European Union over aircraft subsidies for Boeing and Airbus, suspending the threat of billions of dollars in punitive tariffs on each other's economies for five years. The breakthrough came as Mr. Biden prepared to meet top European leaders in a U.S.-E.U. summit meeting. European officials said that two days of negotiations in Brussels between Katherine Tai, the U.S. trade representative, and Valdis Dombrovskis, the E.U. trade commissioner, had finally produced an agreement that member countries approved overnight. In a briefing for reporters, Ms. Tai said that both sides had agreed to extend a suspension of tariffs for another five years while working together to counter China's investment in the aircraft sector."
Michael Birnbaum, et al., of the Washington Post: "NATO leaders on Monday agreed to pivot their alliance to a more confrontational stance toward China, a landmark shift as President Biden sought to boost and reorient the organization after the eruptions and conflict that marked the Trump era. Biden, in public comments and private meetings at the midway point of his first overseas trip as president, worked to reassure dubious allies that America is back and to rally like-minded democracies in what he repeatedly cast as an existential battle against the world's autocracies. Monday's discussion was a sharp expansion of NATO's efforts to confront Beijing after years when China was outside the focus of the defensive alliance. The allies agreed in their closing communique that 'China's stated ambitions and assertive behavior present systemic challenges to the rules-based international order.'"
David Smith of the Guardian: "The White House has published its first ever national strategy for countering domestic terrorism five months after a violent mob stormed the US Capitol in Washington. The framework released on Tuesday by the National Security Council describes the threat as now more serious than potential attacks from overseas but emphasises the need to protect civil liberties. Anticipating Republican objections that Joe Biden could use counterterrorism tools to persecute supporters of Donald Trump, the strategy is also careful to state that domestic terrorism must be tackled in an 'ideologically neutral' manner." The New York Times story is here.
Matt Zapotosky of the Washington Post: "Attorney General Merrick Garland said Monday that the Justice Department would beef up its policies for obtaining lawmakers' records and vowed 'strict accountability' for officials who let politics affect their work, issuing a lengthy statement amid a metastasizing controversy over department efforts during the Trump administration to obtain the data of congressmen, journalists and even the White House counsel. Garland said in the statement that he had directed his deputy attorney general, Lisa Monaco, to 'evaluate and strengthen the department's existing policies and procedures for obtaining records of the Legislative branch,' and he noted that she was 'already working on surfacing potentially problematic matters deserving high-level review.'" (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~
~~~ Michael Balsamo of the AP: "The Justice Department's top national security official is resigning from his position after revelations that the department under ... Donald Trump secretly seized records from Democrats and members of the media. John Demers, a Trump appointee, will leave by the end of next week, a Justice Department official told The Associated Press on Monday. Demers, who was sworn in a few weeks after the subpoena for the Democrats' records, is one of the few Trump appointees who has remained in the Biden administration. He had planned for weeks to leave the department by the end of June, a second person familiar with the matter said.... Demers' resignation comes amid questions about what he knew about the Justice Department's efforts to secretly seize the phone data from House Democrats and reporters as part of the aggressive investigations into leaks." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ~~~
~~~ Katie Benner of the New York Times: "Mr. Demers and his top counterintelligence deputies in the division would typically be briefed and updated on ... efforts ... to secretly gather records from the press and lawmakers.... Mark J. Lesko, the acting top federal prosecutor in Brooklyn, will replace Mr. Demers on an interim basis...." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Coral Davenport of the New York Times: "Interior Secretary Deb Haaland has advised President Biden to restore sweeping environmental protections to three major national monuments that had been stripped away by ... Donald J. Trump. In a report sent to the White House earlier this month that has not been made public, Ms. Haaland recommended that Mr. Biden reinstate the original boundaries, which included millions of acres at Bears Ears National Monument and Grand Staircase-Escalante, two rugged and pristine expanses in Utah defined by red rock canyons, rich wildlife and archaeological treasures."
Carl Hulse of the New York Times: "The Senate confirmed Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson on Monday to the influential U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, giving President Biden his first pick on an appeals court even as the Senate Republican leader threatened future roadblocks for Biden administration judicial nominees. Following her approval by a bipartisan vote of 53 to 44, Judge Jackson, who served as a federal district judge, will join the court regarded as the second highest in the land, and considered an incubator for Supreme Court justices. She is widely considered a potential nominee for the Supreme Court should a vacancy occur during the tenure of Mr. Biden, who has promised to appoint the first African-American woman as a justice." A CBS News story is here. ~~~
~~~ Just a reminder to anybody Joe Manchin who wants to play fair with Mitch & the Gang is a fool Joe Manchin: ~~~
~~~ Jordain Carney of the Hill: "Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) signaled Monday that Republicans, if they win back control of the upper chamber, wouldn't advance a Supreme Court nominee if a vacancy occurred in 2024, the year of the next presidential election.... [After axing all consideration of President Obama's nominee Merrick Garland throughout 2016 & early 2017,] Republicans subsequently confirmed Amy Coney Barrett, then-President Trump's third Supreme Court nominee, in 2020.... The move, which sparked howls from Democrats, set a new record for how closely before a presidential election a Senate has confirmed a Supreme Court nominee." MB P.S. Wake up, Justice Breyer. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) According to Carl Hulse's report, linked directly above, McConnell said he might even block a Biden nominee in 2023.
Felicia Sonmez of the Washington Post: "Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene on Monday visited the Holocaust Museum and apologized for previously comparing coronavirus face-mask policies to the Nazi practice of labeling Jews with Star of David badges. But the Georgia Republican declined to walk back other controversial statements she has made, including one in which she compared the Democratic Party to Hitler's party, the National Socialist German Workers' Party. Greene's latest remarks come days before a fellow House member, Rep. Bradley Schneider (D-Ill.), is set to introduce a resolution to censure her over the Holocaust comparison." A CNN story is here. ~~~
~~~ Justin Rohrlich of the Daily Beast: Greene suddenly discovered that the Holocaust was really bad: after visiting Washington, D.C.'s Holocaust Museum, she said, in part, "It happened, you know, over 6 million Jewish people were murdered.... The horrors of the Holocaust are something that some people don't even believe happened, that some people deny, but there is no comparison to the Holocaust. There are words that I have said, remarks that I've made, that I know are offensive. And for that I want to apologize." ~~~
~~~ William Bredderman of the Daily Beast: "Rep. Louie Gohmert celebrated New Year's Eve 2020 by dropping several thousand dollars into the coffers of a vitriolically homophobic and antisemitic pastor, federal records indicate. But his office insists the whole thing was just a giant mistake. Team Gohmert claims it hired a Christian singer named Steve Amerson from Granada HIlls, California, but accidentally reported to the Federal Election Commission that the cash went to the Tempe, Arizona address of the Faithful Word Baptist Church, led by the infamous Pastor Steve Anderson. Yes, the pastor happens to embrace a more extreme form of Gohmert's homophobic rhetoric. And yes, the money was earmarked as a 'donation.' But it wasn't meant for Anderson, and wasn't a donation at all, in Team Gohmert's telling. They just screwed up the name, purpose, and address of the recipient of their largesse. Oops."
** How Trump Tried to Use the DOJ to Overturn the 2020 Election. Katie Benner of the New York Times: "An hour before ... Donald J. Trump announced in December that William P. Barr would step down as attorney general, the president began pressuring Mr. Barr's eventual replacement [Jeffrey Rosen] to have the Justice Department take up his false claims of election fraud.... [A series of] emails, turned over by the Justice Department to investigators on the House Oversight Committee..., show[s] how Mr. Trump pressured Mr. Rosen to put the power of the Justice Department behind lawsuits that had already failed to try to prove his false claims that extensive voter fraud had affected the election results.... The documents dovetail with emails around the same time from Mark Meadows, Mr. Trump's chief of staff, asking Mr. Rosen to examine unfounded conspiracy theories about the election.... Much of the correspondence also occurred during a tense week within the Justice Department, when Mr. Rosen and his top deputies realized that one of their peers had plotted with Mr. Trump to oust Mr. Rosen and then try to use federal law enforcement to force Georgia to overturn its election results."
Zachary Cohen & Whitney Wild of CNN: "The FBI has warned lawmakers that online QAnon conspiracy theorists may carry out more acts of violence as they move from serving as 'digital soldiers' to taking action in the real world following the January 6 US Capitol attack. The shift is fueled by a belief among some of the conspiracy's more militant followers that they 'can no longer "trust the plan"' set forth by its mysterious standard-bearer, known simply as 'Q,' according to an unclassified FBI threat assessment on QAnon sent to lawmakers last week, which was obtained by CNN. But the report suggests the failure of QAnon predictions to materialize has not led to followers abandoning the conspiracy. Instead, there's a belief that individuals need to take greater control of the direction of the movement than before."
Julian Barnes of the New York Times: "Reality L. Winner, a former National Security Agency contractor who was the first person prosecuted during the Trump administration on charges of leaking classified information, has been released to a halfway house, her lawyer announced on Monday. Ms. Winner's case was the subject of an intense public campaign to win her a pardon or clemency. But it was her good behavior in prison, not the outside advocacy or a compassionate release process, that shortened her 63-month sentence, her lawyer said." An NBC News story is here.
Jason Horowitz of the New York Times: "The Vatican has warned conservative American bishops to hit the brakes on their push to deny communion to politicians supportive of abortion rights -- including President Biden, a faithful churchgoer and the first Roman Catholic to occupy the Oval Office in 60 years. But despite the remarkably public stop sign from Rome, the American bishops are pressing ahead anyway and are expected to force a debate on the communion issue at a remote meeting that starts on Wednesday." MB: These celibate old men, not content with trying to control the lives of sexually-active young women, also want to curtail the religious liberty of everyone who supports these women.
The Pandemic, Ctd.
The New York Times' live updates of Covid-19 developments Tuesday are here. The Washington Post's live updates for Tuesday are here.
Dan Keating, et al., of the Washington Post: "States with higher vaccination rates now have markedly fewer coronavirus cases, as infections are dropping in places where most residents have been immunized and are rising in many places people have not, a Washington Post analysis has found. States with lower vaccination also have significantly higher hospitalization rates, The Post found."
Covid Keeps Making You Sick. Pam Belluck of the New York Times: "Hundreds of thousands of Americans have sought medical care for post-Covid health problems that they had not been diagnosed with before becoming infected with the coronavirus, according to the largest study to date of long-term symptoms in Covid-19 patients. The study, tracking the health insurance records of nearly 2 million people in the United States who contracted the coronavirus last year, found that one month or more after their infection, almost one-quarter -- 23 percent -- of them sought medical treatment for new conditions. Those affected were all ages, including children."
Georgia. A Mask, a Gun, a Murder. Azi Paybarah of the New York Times: "A customer who argued about wearing a face mask at a [Decatur,] Georgia supermarket shot and killed a cashier on Monday and wounded a deputy sheriff working off duty at the store, law enforcement officials said. The gunman was shot by the deputy, and both are expected to survive their injuries, according to law enforcement officials. A suspect, identified as Victor Lee Tucker Jr., 30, of Palmetto, Ga., was arrested by DeKalb County Police Department officers 'as he was attempting to crawl out the front door of the supermarket,' according to a statement from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation." MB: I lived in Florida. It's just as bad as Georgia. Stories like this one are why I don't believe the South can be saved. There are too many Southerners who are irredeemable -- and inherently dangerous. This story is more evidence of Abe Lincoln's Huge Mistake.
South Dakota. Devlin Barrett of the Washington Post: "A federal judge leveled criminal contempt charges Monday against senior federal law enforcement officials in a long-simmering standoff in South Dakota over the judge's insistence that he needs to know whether deputies guarding his courtroom have been vaccinated against the coronavirus. U.S. District Judge Charles Kornmann who sits in Aberdeen, tore into the U.S. Marshals Service for nearly an hour over their reaction to his decision at a hearing last month to question the deputy marshal in attendance about whether she had been vaccinated. The deputy marshal, according to the judge, refused to answer the question, at which point he ordered her out of his courtroom. The marshals, in turn, took three of the defendants scheduled for hearings that day out of the courthouse. That infuriated the judge, who describes that act as a 'kidnapping' that obstructed the work of the court."
Beyond the Beltway
Minnesota. Kim Bellware of the Washington Post: "One woman was killed and three people were injured after a man plowed his car into a group of protesters in Minneapolis late Sunday. The suspect is in police custody after demonstrators pulled him from his vehicle following the crash, police said.... Minneapolis police spokesman John Elder said that 'preliminary investigation indicates that the use of drugs or alcohol by the driver may be a contributing factor in this crash.' 'Based on the information available, it does not seem possible at this time to say if the crash was accidental or intentional,' Minneapolis City Council President Lisa Bender ... said in a newsletter to constituents Monday. 'This stretch of road, like many in our community, is one of the highest crash corridors in the City.'"
Share Article
Reader Comments (10)
Here's some unsolicited information for any RCer who happens to
have his Toyota Van rear ended by a 19 year old who is texting
and speeding. The van was totaled, but don't expect to get from
the insurance company what it was worth to you.
Also, what a surprise trying to buy a new car. There is one new
Toyota for sale in West Michigan. A dealer 60 miles away has
a couple of new ones coming in, maybe in August. Their advice:
send us money today and we'll be sure to save you one.
Also, the auto rental agency which works with our insurance
company had only one vehicle on the lot. It's like learning to
operate a space ship with all the gizmos and buttons that I didn't
know existed. Fortunately it goes back today, and we have the
truck that's used for the business.
Do I sound old?
@Forrest Morris: I am really sorry about your van and insurance troubles. Your insurance company should be willing to sue the kid's insurance company (assuming there is one) to get you total compensation. If Text Boy has insurance or other means, it sure seems like he is liable for all of your expenses and your insurance company should collect for both you and itself. I would press them on this. Just because your own insurance company won't pay what this is costing you, his should.
Anyway, I'm glad you weren't hurt or at least badly hurt. I have a 2014 Toyota Siena van, and I really like it. It rides well, has a tight turning radius, and so far is holding up fairly well.
BTW, when I was looking for a new "regular" car a couple of years ago, I had to look all over the East Coast -- via the Internets, of course, and a lot of phone calls, as I remember -- (and that was before the pandemic did whatever it did to the auto industry). I never found exactly what I wanted, but I did get closer than I could have got locally and I ended up buying a vehicle from another state & having it driven here. Seems that maybe if you and your husband found a replacement vehicle in, say, Chicago, you could drive down in one vehicle and drive back in two, saving the cost of having the new car driven to you.
Given the blatant threats of the Evil Turtle, the pell Mel rush to destroy democracy, and the narcissistic twaddle being peddled by the Sinema-Manchin monster, holding on to the Senate should not be the goal in 2022. Picking up any possible seats should be the goal for proponents of constitutional government and democracy.
McConnell will never quit his evil but if we can make Manchin a non-factor, we can move ahead.
Democrats need to forget about trying to reason with Manchin. Every headline he gets just tickles his inactive brain stem a little more. Full consciousness and an appreciation of the dangers he supports by lending a hand to the barbarians are offset by all the mirrors he has arranged around him, the better to marvel at his own bipartisan wonderfulness.
Insignificance is what he deserves. Make it so.
Moscow Mitch and his Manchin probably have some side deal should the GOP get soon into the majority. Also, when Moscow Mitch publically announces he won't consider Democrat chosen justices, what does he not want us to think about by offering us rubes such low hanging click-bait? For one, the last president has less exposure in the news cycle. Mitch thus asserts to his base who still has power. That's good for Moscow Mitch.
@Forest: Who is your insurance company? Marie is right on about having them get on the tail end of that kid's––- whose eyes were the off the road and glued else where–-insurance company. My sympathies to you for having to go through such rigamarole ––-if all else fails, "CAll Carter"----but Carter doesn't say how much you'all gotta pay HIM!
@Marie and PD: Michigan has what is known as "no fault insurance."
Our insurance company handles our problems and the kids
insurance company (or his parent's insurance) deals with his
problems. We'll be paid what our insurance says the Toyota
Siena Van was worth, age and mileage taken into account.
His insurance will pay for his damage, but his rates will no doubt
go up lot$. And he will lose his license for a while and in the
case of texting, there's a record of that, so he could be de-phoned
for a while.
I guess that without this no fault thing, the courts would be
overwhelmed and we'd need thousands more lawyers.
We live in a tourist town where our 1,000 population goes up to
about 10,000 in the summer with out-of-state drivers gawking and
window shopping from their cars, skipping stop signs, etc.
It's frightening every time you have to leave your driveway.
We had planned to keep that van forever. The most comfortable
car ever made as far as I'm concerned.
So…some uppity cashier in Georgia tried to cancel the freeeeedom of a Trumpist “patriot” by asking him to put on a commie-Nazi mask. Of course she needed to die. But isn’t murdering an innocent person out of personal pique and ignorance a way to permanently cancel someone? Of course not. Only libruls indulge in cancel culture.
This guy was just standing up for what’s “right”. As in right-wing.
This, in a nutshell, is what Joe Manchin is allowing. The group he sided with has promoted lies and violence to maintain power. But he wants we should all invite them over for tea.
So they can shoot us too.
@Forrest Morris; Wow! I think I'll drive around Michigan ramming into cars with Trumper stickers, because I can skate!
More seriously, you should look into Michigan's "mini-tort" law, which may allow you to collect up to $3,000 from the kid, as long as you have evidence he was at fault. The way I understand it -- and I don't understand much -- you might be able to collect even more if he does NOT have auto liability insurance. I think your insurance person should help you with this. If s/he never heard of the mini-tort law or brushes you off, (which expanded the max award last July from $1K to $3K), just tell him you'd like to speak to someone in the office who can be more helpful.
Meanwhile, that crash-bang you hear is me rear-ending Miss Betsy.
ALERT! Joe just received the same kind of bogus email from an old friend of ours–-a colleague from teaching times–-that Marie, David Clark and I received from Haley Simon. The Hallmark request was the same but reason for our help was different: Our friend supposedly broke her leg due to a car accident and was unable to function properly. What was amusing to us was that the syntax was a give-away–-our friend is a Latin scholar. Obviously they ( and who ARE THEY?)– hacked her emails ( she told us) and sent this email to everyone on her listing–-which in my estimation is a pretty stupid thing to do if you are trying to get away with this kind of thing. At least now we know it isn't just R.C.people they are after.
@PD Pepe: To be clear, these scam emails are almost certainly NOT from Haley Simon -- a former Reality Chex contributor -- or Joe's old friend, but from someone who stole the addresses from people like Haley & Joe's friend as well as the addresses of people to whom Haley & Joe's friend had sent emails.
I purposely did not reveal Haley's name, as I didn't want her to seem at all implicated in a scam. She's a victim, not a scammer, as far as I can tell.
A contributor wrote that this was a well-worn scam, so lots of people have received these same emails, supposedly from "friends" in some kind of distress. I warned about them only because (a) they were new to me, and (b) several current and former Reality Chex readers had received them.