;)
The Commentariat -- June 30, 2020
Late Morning Update:
The New York Times' live updates of coronavirus developments Tuesday are here. The Washington Post's live updates for Tuesday are here.
Eric Bradner of CNN: "... Joe Biden lambasted ... Donald Trump's handling of the coronavirus pandemic Tuesday, saying that Trump is 'in retreat' with more 125,000 Americans dead and the virus worsening in many states. In a speech in Wilmington, Delaware, the former vice president recounted what he cast as Trump's missteps, from Trump's early dismissals of the virus to his more recent refusals to wear a mask in public appearances. Pointing to Trump in March declaring himself a wartime president in battling the coronavirus, Biden said: 'What happened? Now it's almost July, and it seems like our wartime president has surrendered -- waved the white flag and left the battlefield.' Biden's speech tied together proposals he has issued in recent months, including calls for a national board to oversee a "massive surge" in coronavirus testing.He framed most of his remarks as directly addressing Trump, urging the President to adopt Biden's proposals immediately."
Jessie Hellmann of the Hill: "Anthony Fauci, the nation's top infectious disease expert, warned members of Congress on Monday that the U.S. could reach 100,000 new COVID-19 cases per day if the country does not get a handle on the pandemic. Speaking before the Senate health committee, Fauci said..., 'We're going in the wrong direction if you look at the curves of the new cases.... We need to do something about that and we need to do it very quickly.'"
Your European Vacation Has Been Cancelled. Bill Chappell of NPR: "U.S. travelers won't be among those allowed to visit the European Union when the bloc begins opening its external borders on July 1. EU ambassadors endorsed a list of 15 travel partners on Tuesday, including South Korea, Japan and China -- countries that were hit early by the pandemic but have been able to bring the coronavirus under control. The U.S. was seen as a long shot to make the travel list, which requires that only those countries with epidemiological situations -- taking into account both the infection rate and current trends -- that are equal to or better than the EU's can send tourists and other nonessential visitors to the open-border region." ~~~
~~~ CNN has the graph that explains why.
Kentucky Senate Race. James Arkin of Politico: "Amy McGrath has fended off Charles Booker to clinch the Democratic nomination for Senate in Kentucky, setting up an expensive showdown with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in November. McGrath had 45 percent of the vote, compared to 43 percent for Booker when The Associated Press called the race on Tuesday -- a week after the primary which saw historic turnout and significant use of absentee ballots. Though she was the frontrunner throughout the race, McGrath faced a spirited challenge from Booker, a liberal first-term state representative who surged in momentum in just three short weeks to turn the race from a sleepy affair into one of the most closely-watched Senate primaries this year. Booker's rise began late last month as he took part in protests against police brutality in his hometown of Louisville." The New York Times report is here.
** They Followed the Money. Charlie Savage, et al., of the New York Times: "American officials intercepted electronic data showing large financial transfers from a bank account controlled by Russia's military intelligence agency to a Taliban-linked account, which was among the evidence that supported their conclusion that Russia covertly offered bounties for killing U.S. and coalition troops in Afghanistan, according to three officials familiar with the intelligence. Though the United States has accused Russia of providing general support to the Taliban before, analysts concluded from other intelligence that the transfers were most likely part of a bounty program that detainees described during interrogations."
Adam Liptak of the New York Times: "The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that states must allow religious schools to participate in programs that provide scholarships to students attending private schools. The decision, a victory for conservatives, was the latest in a series of Supreme Court rulings that the free exercise of religion bars the government from treating religious groups differently from secular ones. It opens the door to more public funding of religious education. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote the majority opinion in the 5-to-4 ruling. The court's four more liberal members dissented.... At the same time, writing for four justices, Chief Justice Roberts emphasized the narrowness of the court's decision. 'This case involves express discrimination based on religious identity with respect to playground resurfacing,' he wrote. 'We do not address religious uses of funding or other forms of discrimination.'"
Heather Caygle, et al., of Politico: "Senior House Democrats left a White House briefing on Russian bounties disappointed on Tuesday, saying they were given 'no substantive information' about allegations that the Kremlin paid Taliban militants to kill U.S. troops -- and that ... Donald Trump sat on the information for months. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), who led a group of nearly a dozen Democrats to the White House early Tuesday, said Congress still needs to hear from the heads of various Intelligence agencies -- not White House officials -- on the stunning allegations. The Trump administration officials tasked with briefing the Democrats, Hoyer said, expressed their opinion of the allegations but didn't share the underlying evidence."
~~~~~~~~~~
** Carl Bernstein of CNN: "In hundreds of highly classified phone calls with foreign heads of state..., Donald Trump was so consistently unprepared for discussion of serious issues, so often outplayed in his conversations with powerful leaders like Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Erdogan, and so abusive to leaders of America's principal allies, that the calls helped convince some senior US officials -- including his former secretaries of state and defense, two national security advisers and his longest-serving chief of staff -- that the President himself posed a danger to the national security of the United States, according to White House and intelligence officials intimately familiar with the contents of the conversations."
James LaPorta of the AP: "Top officials in the White House were aware in early 2019 of classified intelligence indicating Russia was secretly offering bounties to the Taliban for the deaths of Americans, a full year earlier than has been previously reported, according to U.S. officials with direct knowledge of the intelligence. The assessment was included in at least one of ... Donald Trump's written daily intelligence briefings at the time, according to the officials. Then-national security adviser John Bolton also told colleagues he briefed Trump on the intelligence assessment in March 2019. Bolton declined to comment.... The AP reported Sunday that concerns about Russian bounties were also included in a second written presidential daily briefing earlier this year and that current national security adviser Robert O'Brien had discussed the matter with Trump. O'Brien denies he did so."
** Charlie Savage, et al., of the New York Times: "American officials provided a written briefing in late February to President Trump laying out their conclusion that a Russian military intelligence unit offered and paid bounties to Taliban-linked militants to kill U.S. and coalition troops in Afghanistan, two officials familiar with the matter said. The investigation into the suspected Russian covert operation to incentivize such killings has focused in part on an April 2019 car bombing that killed three Marines as one such potential attack.... Moreover, a description of the intelligence assessment that the Russian unit had carried out the bounties plot was also seen as serious and solid enough to disseminate more broadly across the intelligence community in a May 4 article in the C.I.A.'s World Intelligence Review, a classified compendium commonly referred to as The Wire, two officials said.... The new information emerged as the White House tried on Monday to play down the intelligence assessment that Russia sought to encourage and reward killings -- including reiterating a claim that Mr. Trump was never briefed about the matter and portraying the conclusion as disputed and dubious....
"Top Democrats in the House and Senate demanded all members of Congress be briefed, and the White House summoned a small group of House Republicans friendly to the president to begin explaining its position. The lawmakers emerged saying that they were told the administration was reviewing reporting about the suspected Russian plot to assess its credibility, and that the underlying intelligence was conflicting, echoing comments from the White House press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany.... Late on Monday, John Ratcliffe, the recently confirmed director of national intelligence, issued a statement warning that leaks about the matter were a crime." Mrs. McC: Notice that Ratcliffe is effective confirming the multiple stories about the intelligence.
Barbara Starr & Paul LeBlanc of CNN: "The intelligence that assessed there was an effort by a Russian military intelligence unit to pay the Taliban to kill US soldiers was included in one of ... Donald Trump's daily briefings on intelligence matters sometime in the spring, according to a US official with direct knowledge of the latest information. That assessment, the source said, was backed up by 'several pieces of information' that supported the view that there was an effort by the Russian intelligence unit -- the GRU -- to pay bounties to kill US soldiers, including interrogation of Taliban detainees and electronic eavesdropping. The source said there was some other information that did not corroborate this view but said, nonetheless, 'This was a big deal. When it's about US troops you go after it 100%, with everything you got.'"
Jason Slotkin & Mark Katkov of NPR: "In a tweet late Sunday night, President Trump said the intelligence community told him he was not briefed about allegations Russia had offered the Taliban bounty payments to kill Western forces -- including U.S. troops -- because it did not find the reports credible[:] 'Intel just reported to me that they did not find this info credible, and therefore did not report it to me or @VP. Possibly another fabricated Russia Hoax, maybe by the Fake News @nytimesbooks, wanting to make Republicans look bad!!!'" Mrs. McC: What's "not credible" is Trump's tweet. In various, and sometimes multiple, forms, the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, NBC News and CNN all have confirmed the reports. And the U.K.'s Sky News, relying on British intel sources, also has confirmed the story (linked below). There may be others. Moreover, the WashPo (story linked below) also has confirmed that American soldiers were killed for the Russian bounties. Flag-draped coffins are tragically "credible." (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~
~~~ Tell Everybody But Trump. Aaron Blake of the Washington Post: "White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany held a briefing Monday amid a growing furor over bounties that U.S. intelligence says Russia placed on U.S. troops in Afghanistan.... But her answers didn't match up with President Trump's, nor did they jibe with basic logic.... Rather than say that the information wasn't credible [as Trump claimed], she instead suggested that it was merely unconfirmed.... Second, McEnany was asked whether Trump had a message for Russia.... 'No, because he has not been briefed on the matter.'... [Trump claimed] he had spoken with 'intel' about the matter and heard back that the intelligence wasn't credible.... Wouldn't speaking to 'intel' constitute a briefing of some sort?... Third..., McEnany ... said that intelligence ... needs to be verified before it will be shared with the president. But that's not generally accurate; the President's Daily Brief, or PDB, has historically shared unconfirmed or even raw intelligence with the president.... At the same time, McEnany confirmed reports that congressional leaders are being briefed on the intelligence. In addition, The Washington Post and others have reported that this intelligence was shared with British officials last week. In other words..., this is information that is being shared with plenty of people who aren't the chief executive of the United States government but for some reason not with him."
Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: Nancy Pelosi, speaking to Jake Tapper Monday afternoon, posed one plausible reason intel agencies might not have briefed Trump: they feared he would alert Putin to U.S. intel that should remain secret, like sources & methods. (See also Carl Bernstein's report, linked above.)
Jeremy Herb & Lauren Fox of CNN: "A bipartisan group of congressional leaders is demanding the Trump administration explain what it knew about reports US intelligence concluded Russia offered bounties to Taliban fighters to kill US troops.... The swift response underscored the congressional push for information about the US intelligence -- and whether ... Donald Trump was briefed on the matter, which Trump denied. [Speaker] Pelosi also said that the 'Gang of Eight,' the congressional leaders who are briefed on sensitive intelligence matters, were not told about the bounties offered to the Taliban." (Also linked yesterday.)
Adam Silverman of Balloon Juice explains the obvious to Trump's toadies: "... while we now know that the Democrats in Congress will get a briefing on this [Tuesday], doing it this way is a SERIOUS PROBLEM!!!! The reason we have a Gang of 8 -- the Speaker and Minority Leader in House, the Majority and Minority Leaders in the Senate, and the chairs and ranking members of the intelligence committees in each chamber -- is to ensure that everyone gets briefed on this stuff at the same time. This is also the reason we are supposed to have a bipartisan intelligence oversight process within both the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI).... And the reason that the Gang of 8 or the members of both parties on the intelligence committees get briefed at the same time is to prevent ... one side [from] being told something the other side isn't. To avoid the politicization of intelligence." Read on. Silverman has much more to say.
MEANWHILE. Martin Matishak of Politico: "... GOP members of the House Intelligence Committee have skipped all but one of the panel's proceedings, public and private, since before Congress went into its coronavirus-lockdown in early March. And that impasse shows no signs of ending, even as the panel takes up issues like China, Covid-19 and the annual intelligence policy bill.... Democrats say the Republicans haven't provided a good explanation about why they've withdrawn or indicated what could get them back to the table."
David Ignatius of the Washington Post: "... starting in 2018, U.S. commanders noticed ... the Russians appeared to be helping the Taliban. Gen. John 'Mick' Nicholson Jr., who commanded U.S. forces in Afghanistan for more than two years, revealed the secret Russian aid for the Taliban in a March 23, 2018, interview with the BBC. He said Afghan leaders had showed U.S. commanders Russian-supplied weapons that had been smuggled across the border to Taliban fighters. Nicholson's 2018 interview was a rare public protest by a U.S. official. Trump didn't press the Russians to stop, and so they continued.... [As] U.S. military and intelligence officials became increasingly concerned..., Trump kept up a buzz of happy talk about improving relations with Putin.... Trump is an obstacle to good policy. Either people don';t tell him the truth, or he doesn't want to hear it. Whichever way, he’s defaulting on his most basic responsibility as commander in chief."
The New York Times' live updates for coronavirus developments Monday are here. The Washington Post's live updates for Monday are here: "Jacksonville, the largest city in Florida and host of the Republican National Convention in August, announced Monday that masks will be mandatory in public and indoor locations, as the World Health Organization warned that the outbreak is far from over. The news comes as the global community marked yet another grim milestone on Sunday, with the confirmed worldwide death count from the novel coronavirus surpassing 500,000, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University." Mrs. McC: Hope the Jax police arrest Trump mid-speech, cuff him & throw him in the tank with the usual riffraff. Ugliest mugshot ever. (Also linked yesterday.)
William Feuer of CNBC: "The coronavirus is spreading too rapidly and too broadly for the U.S. to bring it under control, Dr. Anne Schuchat, principal deputy director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said Monday. The U.S. has set records for daily new infections in recent days as outbreaks surge mostly across the South and West. The recent spike in new cases has outpaced daily infections in April when the virus rocked Washington state and the northeast, and when public officials thought the outbreak was hitting its peak in the U.S."
The Art of the Deal: Trump Administration Pays about 5 Times a Fair Price for Covid-19 Drug. Hannah Denham, et al., of the Washington Post: "Gilead Sciences, the maker of the first covid-19 treatment found to have worked in clinical trials, remdesivir, said Monday it will charge U.S. hospitals $3,120 for the typical patient with private insurance. Soon after the announcement, the Trump administration said it had secured nearly all of the company's supply of the drug for use in U.S. hospitals through September, with a contract for 500,000 treatment courses, which it will make available to hospitals at Gilead's price. Other developed countries will pay 25 percent less than the United States, a discount Gilead said reflects a need to make the drug as widely available as possible throughout the world.... An independent analysis last week by the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review said Gilead could recover its costs by distributing the drug for as little as $1 to $60 per dose, or $100 to $160 per dose if all of the company's 2020 costs are taken into account. Under Monday's pricing, Gilead set the price at $520 per dose in the United States and $390 per dose in other developed countries."
California. Shawn Hubler & Thomas Fuller of the New York Times: "Over the past week California’s case count has exploded, surpassing 200,000 known infections, and forcing [Gov. Gavin] Newsom [D] to roll back the state's reopening in some counties. On Monday, he said the number of people hospitalized in California had risen 43 percent over the past two weeks. Los Angeles County, which has been averaging more than 2,000 new cases each day, surpassed 100,000 total cases on Monday, with the virus actively infecting one in every 140 people, according to local health officials.... On Sunday, Mr. Newsom shut down the bars in a half-dozen counties, including Los Angeles County and in the Central Valley, and recommended that another eight counties voluntarily close their nightspots and gathering places. On Friday, Imperial County, along the Mexican border, was told to return to a stay-at-home order.... The head start that California appeared to enjoy -- the companies that allowed employees to work from home as early as February, the governor who warned residents in daily briefings to stay home and appeared to be listened to -- was not protective enough in the long run. Younger people appear to account for the large surge in new cases, as they have in many other states."
Trump, an Unapologetic Racist. Ashley Parker & Toluse Olorunnipa of the Washington Post: Sunday morning, Donald Trump "shared a video on Twitter that included a Trump supporter shouting 'white power' at counterprotesters during a demonstration at the Villages, a retirement community in central Florida, and had called his supporters there 'great people.' Senior staffers ... began trying to reach the president to convey their concerns about the tweet. White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, son-in-law Jared Kushner and other senior advisers spoke with [the] president.... Roughly three hours later, the president gave the go-ahead to delete his incendiary tweet -- moved, in large part, by the public calls from Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, the Senate's only black Republican, to do just that, aides said.... But neither the president nor his team publicly condemned the racist phrase.... As protests over police brutality and racial injustice have erupted across the country in recent weeks, Trump has dialed up his inflammatory rhetoric, repeatedly turning to racist tropes."
Marissa Lang of the Washington Post: "Congress on Monday began to investigate tactics used by federal law enforcement officers to clear protesters near Lafayette Square ahead of President Trump's photo op in front of the pale yellow facade of St. John's Episcopal Church. Protesters, journalists and witnesses who were caught in clouds of chemical irritants, hit with police batons, pelted by projectiles and shoved with riot shields described their experiences and injuries to lawmakers, whose confidence in police officers' tactics seemed to splinter along party lines.... None of the witnesses heard verbal warnings issued, they testified.... No members of the Trump administration were called to testify. Park Police officials, who led the charge against protesters on June 1, declined to attend, lawmakers said, because one protester called to speak is part of a federal lawsuit alleging the administration authorized an 'unprovoked and frankly criminal attack' on demonstrators engaging in their First Amendment right to protest."
Brian Kilmeade of Fox "News" to Donald Trump: Since you have done a lot for the African-American community, what is your message to them who say, 'my ancestors were enslaved because of their...
Donald Trump: My message is that we have a great country. We have the greatest country on Earth. We have a heritage, we have a history. We should learn from the history. And if you don't understand your history, you'll go back to it again. You will go right back to it. You have to learn. Think of it -- take away that whole era, and you'll go back to it sometime -- people won't know about it. ~~~
~~~ Donald Trump, History Professor. Matt Novak of Gizmodo: "In a bizarre interview with Fox News [Sunday] night, President Trump stood next to a sculpture in the Oval Office that he said depicts former president Teddy Roosevelt, and explained that statues are vital to learning about history. Trump went on to complain that some people want to tear down statues of President Roosevelt, just like the art in his office. The only problem? The sculpture Trump was talking about isn't Teddy Roosevelt. It's an anonymous cowboy from the 1890s.... The sculpture in the Oval Office of the White House is called The Bronco Buster and was originally designed in 1895 by Frederic Remington.... Trump appears to be saying that if you don't leave up statues of slaveholders then slavery will somehow become legal again in the United States. Or something. Who knows at this point?" Mrs. McC: The Bronco Buster is well-known, and many people of Trump's generation are familiar with it.
Karoun Demirjian of the Washington Post: "The Senate is poised to challenge President Trump this week with legislation requiring the military to rename bases bearing the names of Confederate generals, a proposal that is shaping up to be one of the most contentious items in this year's annual defense bill.... The bill that emerged from the Republican-led Senate Armed Services Committee included a provision giving the Pentagon three years to come up with new names, while an amendment filed by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and 35 other Senate Democrats last week would speed up that process, requiring the name changes within a year. Although there is still vocal opposition to removing the Confederate names -- Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) has proposed an amendment to strip the renaming requirement -- Republican support for the measure suggests that it will survive any challenges during this week's floor debate."
Kansas. The Kansas City Star: "Kansas City's mayor [Quinton Lucas, an African American] was sent text messages calling him a racial slur and saying he 'should swing from a tree' because of his order requiring face coverings to be worn in public." --s
Michigan. Timothy Bella of the Washington Post: "A largely peaceful protest in Detroit against systemic racism and police brutality turned violent on Sunday night as a police SUV plowed through a group of protesters, striking multiple people and sending a couple of demonstrators who had climbed on the hood flying from the vehicle. Police accelerated the vehicle multiple times as dozens of protesters surrounded it, according to videos of the incident posted to social media. After each acceleration, protesters could be heard shrieking in shock, pleading for the driver to stop hitting the gas while people were in front of the vehicle and being thrown from its hood.... [Ethan Ketner, a protester who filmed the scene,] wrote that 'multiple people injured' were receiving treatment at local hospitals." (Also linked yesterday.)
Missouri. Teo Armus of the Washington Post: "... as [a] peaceful crowd of about 500 [protesters calling for the removal of the city's mayor] walked along a private, gated street, a white couple ... emerged from a marble mansion.... A barefoot man in a pink collared shirt walked out from the five-story house, carrying a semiautomatic rifle as he appeared to threaten the group. A few feet away, a woman pointed a pistol at the crowd, her finger directly on the trigger.... A video of the scene on social media had been viewed almost 9 million times. President Trump retweeted it without explanation on Monday morning. The White House later declined to say why he did so." (Also linked yesterday.)
~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: Allow me to answer for "the White House": "President Trump retweeted the video of rich white people pointing guns at peaceful protesters because he wants everyone to know that he approves of vigilantes threatening lethal force & perhaps shooting you dead for exercising your First Amendment rights. SECOND AMENDMENT!" (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~
~~~ An AP story is here. "Police said they were still investigating but labeled it a case of trespassing and assault by intimidation against the couple by protesters in the racially diverse crowd.... [The barefoot man in the pink shirt] Mark McCloskey told KMOV-TV that a mob rushed toward the home as the family was having dinner and 'put us in fear of our lives.'" Mrs. McC: Well, of course the McCloskeys were in fear of their lives. They were dining at home when a 'racially diverse crowd' happened by. (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~
~~~ Annie Karni of the New York Times pulls no punches in her straight report on Trump's retweet: "Mr. Trump's promotion of the St. Louis confrontation was the second time in two days that the president used his social media platforms ... to exacerbate racial divisions.... The protesters were participating in a peaceful march to the home of Lyda Krewson, the Democratic mayor of St. Louis, in order to demand her resignation after she released the names and identifying details of individuals who supported defunding the police.... The confrontation, which looked like something out of a Quentin Tarantino film, was captured on video and quickly drew more than 10 million views online.... The White House did not respond to requests for comment about the president's decision to promote the clip. But in the past, Mr. Trump has positioned himself as a strong defender of Second Amendment rights. He has also failed to distinguish between peaceful protesters, whose right to assemble is protected by the Constitution, and violent looters...."
All the Best People, Ctd.
Jonathan Swan of Axios: "President Trump intends to nominate John Gibbs to run the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), according to two sources with direct knowledge of the decision.... Gibbs is a former conservative commentator who currently serves as a senior official at the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Gibbs received national media attention when CNN reported, in 2018, that he 'spread a false conspiracy theory that claimed Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign chairman took part in a Satanic ritual.'" --s
Chris D'Angelo of the Huffington Post: "...Donald Trump will formally nominate William Perry Pendley, a self-proclaimed 'sagebrush rebel' with extreme anti-environmental views and a long history of advocating for the sale of federal lands in the West, to serve as director of the Bureau of Land Management.... Pendley's first stint in government was under James Watt, President Ronald Reagan's Interior Department chief, who is widely considered among the most anti-environment Cabinet appointees in U.S. history.... Along with extreme views on federal land policy, Pendley detests the Endangered Species Act, once writing the conservation law seeks 'to kill or prevent anybody from making a living on federal land.' He has sued the federal government numerous times in the last three decades, railed often against environmental 'terrorists' and 'eco-fascists,' and compared the climate crisis to a 'unicorn' because 'neither exists.'" --s
Andrew Kaczynski & Nathan McDermott of CNN: "A Trump administration appointee at the United States' agency responsible for foreign aid has a history of inflammatory rhetoric aimed at refugees, the LGBTQ community and women. The comments come from Merritt Corrigan, the recently appointed deputy White House liaison at the US Agency for International Development, in tweets in 2019 and 2020.... Axios reported Wednesday that USAID employee groups requested to meet with John Barsa, the acting administrator of USAID, over concerns about Corrigan and several other recent appointees. On June 8, Barsa defended Corrigan and two other appointees with a history of anti-LGBTQ and anti-Muslim remarks, saying in a statement articles on their comments were 'unwarranted and malicious attacks.'"
Amy Goldstein of the Washington Post: "The House Monday passed the first significant expansion of the Affordable Care Act since its birth a decade ago, providing Democrats a high-wattage platform to castigate President Trump for his efforts to overturn the landmark law during a pandemic and an election year. The 234-179 vote, almost entirely along party lines, was a hollow exercise in terms of any chance the bill would become law and reshape federal health policy. Moments after the debate began, the White House announced the president would veto the legislation if it reached his desk, though a wall of Senate Republican opposition to the measure makes that a moot point. Still, the vote ... forced Republicans to go on the record about the ACA and showed anew the parties' highly charged ideological differences on health care -- an issue that consistently polls as a prime concern among U.S. voters."
Elections 2020
Alex Kaplan of Media Matters: "Multiple supporters of the QAnon conspiracy theory, which got its start on far-right message boards, are running campaigns for Congress in 2020.... Here are 58 current or former congressional candidates who embrace it." --safari: Surprise, they're almost all Republicans.
** Ave, Ave Stare Decisis! Adam Liptak of the New York Times: "The Supreme Court on Monday struck down a Louisiana law that could have left the state with a single abortion clinic. The vote was 5 to 4, with Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. voting with the court's four-member liberal wing but not adopting its reasoning. The chief justice said respect for precedent compelled him to vote with the majority. The case was the court's first on abortion since President Trump's appointments of two justices shifted the court to the right. The Louisiana law, which was enacted in 2014, requires doctors performing abortions to have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals." An NBC News story is here. The AP story is here. Mrs. McC: Gosh, I seem to remember when Sen. Susan Collins (Gullible-Maine) voted to put Cowardly Liar Brett Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court because he assured her that he would preserve abortion rights. (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~
~~~ Dahlia Lithwick of Slate: "Roberts' concurrence is classic Roberts -- cloak a major blow to the left in what appears to be a small victory for it.... He ... does essentially what he did in last year's census case and last week's challenge to the DACA rescission: He hints that essentially any old pretextual defense of an abortion law will serve; he just doesn't like when lazy litigants offer up sloppy pretexts.... As was the case in the census litigation, and the DACA litigation, the outcome here is correct, but one can easily reverse-engineer the chief justice's opinion to say, 'Come back to me with the right road map and I&'m all yours,' and in fact, he actually grabs your pencil, flips over the napkin, and sketches the map out at no extra cost.... To be sure, nobody is more grateful than I am that the chief justice has opted, yet again, this week, not to tether himself to a conservative legal project that seeks to return women's rights to the Paleozoic era (thanks, Clarence Thomas! And thanks, Susan Collins, for Brett Kavanaugh!).... But the drumbeat that fêtes Roberts as a 'liberal' or a 'moderate' or 'evolving' fails to capture what he is."~~~
~~~ Ian Millhiser of Vox: "The Supreme Court just delivered the narrowest, most temporary victory for abortion rights. Though Chief Justice John Roberts, a conservative who votes fairly consistently to uphold abortion restrictions, cast the key fifth vote to strike down a Louisiana anti-abortion law, his opinion makes it clear that his views about abortion haven't changed. The best reading of the Court's decision in June Medical Services v. Russo is that Roberts just gave the constitutional right to an abortion a potentially very brief reprieve. And he did so largely because Louisiana presented the weakest possible case in June Medical. As Justice Stephen Breyer notes in his plurality opinion, June Medical involves a Louisiana law that is 'almost word-for-word identical' to a Texas law the Supreme Court struck down four years ago in Whole Woman's Health v. Hellerstedt (2016).... 'I joined the dissent in Whole Woman's Health and continue to believe that the case was wrongly decided,' the chief justice writes. Nevertheless, 'the question today however is not whether Whole Woman's Health was right or wrong, but whether to adhere to it in deciding the present case.'... But Roberts also signals that he's open to a lawsuit challenging this right on other grounds." (Also linked yesterday.)
Adam Liptak of the New York Times: "The Supreme Court ruled Monday that the president is free to fire the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau without cause. The decision, rejecting a federal law that sought to place limits on presidential oversight of independent agencies, was a victory for the conservative movement to curb the administrative state. The vote was 5 to 4, with the court's five more conservative justices in the majority." (Also linked yesterday.)
Robert Barnes of the Washington Post: "The Supreme Court will not take up a challenge to new federal death penalty protocols proposed by the Justice Department, which wants to resume executions as early as July for the first time since 2003. The court, without comment, declined Monday to take up the lawsuit filed by four death row inmates. As is customary, it gave no reason. Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor said they would have accepted the case." Mrs. McC: Barr's purpose here, I suppose, is to make Trump look tough on heinous crime. (Also linked yesterday.)
Cristiano Lima of Politico: "Video streaming platform Twitch temporarily suspended ... Donald Trump's channel and social media site Reddit banned a longtime forum used by his supporters in separate actions Monday aimed at curtailing hateful content that come as the tech industry grapples with its handling of the president. Reddit CEO Steve Huffman announced in a post that the r/The_Donald forum, which boasted over 790,000 subscribers as of earlier Monday.... Twitch, a subsidiary of the e-commerce giant Amazon, confirmed on Monday that it has separately suspended Trump's campaign channel on the platform for posting videos that ran afoul of its rules against content that 'promotes, encourages or facilitates discrimination, denigration, objectification, harassment or violence' based on an individual's identity. A company spokesperson said the channel violated its rules by rebroadcasting a video of Trump's 2015 event kicking off his presidential candidacy, in which he referred to Mexican immigrants as 'rapists.'" ~~~
~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: IOW, Twitch is affirming that Donald Trump was unacceptable from the git-go.
Jared Holt of Right Wing Watch: "YouTube banned six accounts used by high-profile white nationalists on Monday. According to YouTube, the respective channels 'repeatedly or egregiously violated our policies by alleging that members of protected groups were innately inferior to others, among other violations.' The removed accounts include those owned by far-right political entertainer Stefan Molyneux, white nationalist outlets American Renaissance and Radix Journal, as well as longtime Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke. YouTube also removed two associated channels: one belonging to alt-right poster boy Richard Spencer and another hosting American Renaissance podcasts."
Beyond the Beltway
California. Justin Juvenal of the Washington Post: "The man accused of being the 'Golden State Killer' pleaded guilty to 13 murders and admitted to other crimes Monday, finally bringing to a close an infamous string of long-unsolved slayings, rapes and burglaries that terrorized California during the 1970s and 1980s. Joseph James DeAngelo Jr., 74, admitted he was one of the nation's worst serial predators, as part of deal with prosecutors in a handful of California counties that spared him the death penalty. The deal calls for him to serve life in prison without parole."
Way Beyond
China/Hong Kong. Eva Dou & Shibani Mahtani of the Washington Post: "China on Tuesday adopted a contentious national security law that will allow Beijing to override Hong Kong's judicial system and target political opponents in the city, stripping the territory of autonomy promised under the handover agreement with Britain and raising the prospect of further retaliation from Washington. The move has strained China's relations with the United States and other Western nations, with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo saying on Friday that Washington would place visa restrictions on Chinese officials responsible for curtailing freedoms in Hong Kong. On Monday, China said it would impose reciprocal measures on unspecified American officials, while the U.S. Commerce Department suspended some of Hong Kong's preferential trade treatment under U.S. law."
News Lede
New York Times: "Carl Reiner, who as performer, writer and director earned a place in comedy history several times over, died on Monday night at his home in Beverly Hills. He was 98." Mrs. McC: My favorite sentence in the obit: "A photo showing Mr. Reiner, [Mel] Brooks and Annie Reiner [-- Carl's daughter]] wearing 'Black Lives Matter T-shirts' was posted on Twitter this week." A mensch till he died.
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I'm more and more convinced that the entire Republican Party is in a permanent brain freeze on their own Kool-Aid right wing messaging apparatus. Frozen in place. Decapacitated.
There has always been the debate to what extent these white male geriatrics really believed all the bullshit spouting out of their surrogates in the media, or were just conniving power grabbers willing to leave the country destitute in their quest for the levers of power. This latest Russian bounty story has ended that thought experiment for me. They're all in. They've lost the notions of what's real, what's spin. They've long sold their souls and moral cores, but not they've completely lost their brains. It's not just cravenness. It's a new belief system, reset by decades of hard-core Fox News political propaganda porn.
Verified Liars
The Fatty Paradigm proves true to form, as usual.
1. It never happened.
2. If it happened, we didn’t do it! Never!
3. It’s all fake news!
4. SomeOne else did it.
5. Okay, we did it, but we didn’t realize we did it (or...)
5a. It was a joke.
6. Yeah, we did it, so what?
He’s not even a good liar. And with all that practice, too!
So first, this business about Putin paying for American scalps was all made up...to “make Republicans look bad!!!” Then, it’s “well, we never heard about it”. Then it’s well, okay, yeah, we heard about it but we didn’t believe it. It wasn’t “verified”, so we didn’t tell Fatty. And on and on.
First, it wasn’t verified? Since when is a president not told something because the intel is not “verified“? It’s like saying “We didn’t tell the police chief about that mass murder at the mall because we don’t have 100% proof that it happened, plus the signed confession of the killer.”
Maybe you don’t bother the president if the intel is about a Taliban operative who may or may not have stolen a box of candy bars bound for the PX, but American soldiers being murdered by paid assassins working for the Russians you don’t mention?
I certainly buy the possibility that no one wanted to clue in the Traitor in Chief for fear that he’d run to Daddy Vlad and hope for a pat on the back for spilling state secrets. This is NOT a hypothetical. He’s done it before. Maybe many times before.
But now we have reports that he WAS informed via at least two reports. And because he doesn’t read anything but tweets from white supremacists or glowing encomiums from flunkies about his greatness, maybe we have another “Bin Laden set to fly planes into tall buildings” scenario. That would be ANOTHER disaster blithely ignited by ANOTHER R president*, but even that’s not entirely believable. Why? Intel like “Putin paying Taliban to Murder Americans” is incredibly explosive stuff and way more explicit than someone flying planes into some buildings somewhere in the US. You wouldn’t just bury it in briefing papers you know he’s never gonna read.
He knew. They all knew.
And did nothing.
How many impeachable offenses are they gonna let this traitor get away with?
Never mind. Rhetorical question, that.
Bernstein's CNN article on Trump's fawning over our adversaries and abusing our allies are as baffling and infuriating as they were when the first ones were written in 2016. The only time national interest is even a thought is if it aligns with Trumps personal interest.
Several days ago Marie said something to the effect that no one could have predicted, back in November 2016, how dangerous Trump would be. And I thought, gee, we and many others were trouncing him from the get-go––but after learning about the Russia bounty scandal her comment has been solidified. This is major– this IS dangerous– this should fry his fat ass to a delectable crisp ––he should be removed. We have a president that has allowed a foreign enemy by way of a bounty to kill American soldiers––-period–-full stop.
But Akhilleus spells it out–––nothing will change–-nothing will be done–-saner heads were rolling last night on MSNBC––beyond the pale, he is completely inept in handling foreign policy, etc, etc. And I recall what Schiff said at the end of the impeachment hearings:
"If Trump remains in office there is no telling what he could do."
P.S. I want to thank Marie for addressing that "dumb as a rock" buddy of my brother's yesterday. I could add that since brother Bill sent that to me, he, too, might be graced with that same label. One could say that; I couldn't possibly.
Meant to add that safari's conclusion on the mindset of the GOPee populace would make a dandy campaign video to add with The Lincoln Project and the newest Veteran videos.
" This latest Russian bounty story has ended that thought experiment for me. They're all in. They've lost the notions of what's real, what's spin. They've long sold their souls and moral cores, but not they've completely lost their brains. It's not just cravenness. It's a new belief system, reset by decades of hard-core Fox News political propaganda porn."
Maybe Stormy Daniels could be the voice over.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/30/opinion/woodrow-wilson-princeton.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage
Ross Douthat isn't much of a history professor either--with even less excuse than the Pretender.
He can string reasonable sounding sentences together into an argument, but the arguments he makes are no less flawed than the Pretender’s basic speech.
I've concluded it's a problem with all conservatives. Since their beliefs don't make sense to begin with, they can’t make sense when attempting to justify the fundamentally unjustifiable.
As I said to Ross, "Your examples of Jefferson and Yale to explain/excuse Wilson' racism are a bit off kilter. Both lived in significantly different contexts. Slavery was a part of their time. Not Ok by present thinking, but Ok-ed by custom then.
Wilson was post Civil War and post Constitutional amendments that freed and granted rights to former American slaves. Nonetheless, he used his position to countermand that historic change, paid for with more than a half a million lives. Wilson was a man not standing on history's sidelines, not standing still, but deliberately regressive.
Would also point out those who think human progress is possible might support some statue toppling and building re-naming as more than superficially symbolic. Consider those action an announcement that we are past that, we are better than that, we will honor those who deserve honor, those who represent the best of humanity, not the worst.
(One change that would please me. In a world where the accumulation of wealth is seldom associated with any kind of virture or moral progress, dissociating bulding's names--expressions of unbridled ego as they are--from those who paid for them would be an uplifting change.)
But I dream, Ross, don't I?
The essence of conservatism is that progress is not possible. And thank the Lord--always the Lord-- because conservatives like things the way they are, no matter how ugly He might have ordained them to be."
For those who thought the Roberts' court might have been heading in the right direction, here's more on the thin majority of Supremes rushing to the rear.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/supreme-court-says-montana-program-aiding-private-schools-must-be-open-to-religious-schools/2020/06/30/4d0af7e6-bad7-11ea-bdaf-a129f921026f_story.html
I get the reasoning, but it's another case of the conclusion preceding the argument: if it fits our agenda, any little excuse will do.
Will be interesting to see how the Court chops logic on the Pretender's tax returns and financial records.
May tell us how desperate the conservatives are to protect their religious and crony capitalist interests. Desperate enough to protect the anti-Christ Pretender from all consequence?
@Ken Winkes: According to Roberts, they're only protecting the rights of religious kids to asphalt.
The mister and I got into a small spat last night; he said he blames Dumpface for everything, and I was more expansive. I feel like Dumpiepants/RightieWhitie is the result of inexcusable behavior long in the wheelhouse of the Party of Traitors. So, although he is permitting and causing and ignoring everything important because dumb/selfish/authoritarian/mentally deficient/crafty/stupid etc, they have built a vast machine of like individuals. I write letter after letter to our "men" in the House and Senate, Lloyd (Sm)Fucker and Terrible Toomey, and nothing occurs to them. I guess I should quit writing in Andalorean and Esperanto. Right now, it apparently is not clear to them that they are killing people, and as long as no one says it in large headlines, well, all is well. There is not a Greedy Old Person alive worth saving from a forest fire, I swear...
The "Heritage" argument.
Let's all get the family together at Thanksgiving again this year so we can perform our annual ritual of remembering all the awful things our ancestors and relatives have done.
You remember mother's great grandfather who spent the rest of his life in prison after he raped and murdered that little girl who lived down the block? Wouldn't want to forget that.
Then there was that uncle twice removed on dad's side. He made his money, and we heard there was a pile of it, selling nutritional supplements to cancer patients. He eventually had to stop when he ran afoul of that silly law, but you have to admire his enterprise, not letting a silly law get in his way.
How about Aunt Sally? Too bad she's not here to give us some of the details, but we know she convinced her third husband to change his will and give all he had to her and nothing to his children by his previous two wives. Have to admire the way she took care of number one. She can't be here because she's in Bali now but she sent her best wishes.
And most of all we can't forget dad's great grandfather, Burt. He's the one we should be most proud of.
Remember the stories about him getting those Indians drunk and getting title to all that Indian land and ending up with that gold mine? It was long ago, but he was the one responsible for establishing the family fortune.
Time to raise a glass to Burt again, I'd say.
"Here's to Burt and all those who went before us and who every year at this time enfold us in such heartwarming memories."
More winning.
Now thirty five states with Rt rate at 1.0 or above.
"Citizens from these countries can come to the EU tomorrow: Algeria, Australia, Canada, Georgia, Japan, Montenegro, Morocco, New Zealand, Rwanda, Serbia, S Korea, Thailand, Tunisia, Uruguay & China when it drops restrictions on EU nationals." -Teri Schultz
So, England and the UK not welcome in Europe. That has got to sting.
@RAS: You raise a good point, & it took me a while to check it out. However, according to Politico Europe, U.K. citizens "are still to be treated in the same way as EU citizens until the end of 2020. They can therefore continue traveling to the Continent." Guess we'll have to wait to see what happens January 1.