;)
The Commentariat -- March 28, 2021
Afternoon Update:
The New York Times' live updates of Covid-19 developments Sunday are here: "After weeks of decline followed by a steady plateau, coronavirus cases are rising again in the United States. Deaths are still decreasing, but the country averaged 61,545 cases last week, 11 percent more than the average two weeks earlier. Scientists predicted weeks ago that the number of infections would curve upward again in late March, at least in part because of the rise of variants of the coronavirus across the country. The variant that walloped Britain, called B.1.1.7, has led to a new wave of cases across most of Europe. Some scientists warned that it may lead to a new wave in the United States. The rise in infections is also a result of state leaders pulling back on mitigation measures, and large social interactions, like spring break gatherings in Florida, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the Biden administration's chief science adviser, said on the CBS program 'Face the Nation' on Sunday."
Dan Diamond, et al., of the Washington Post: "The Biden administration and private companies are working to develop a standard way of handling credentials -- often referred to as 'vaccine passports' -- that would allow Americans to prove they have been vaccinated against the novel coronavirus as businesses try to reopen. The effort has gained momentum amid President Biden's pledge that the nation will start to regain normalcy this summer and with a growing number of companies -- from cruise lines to sports teams -- saying they will require proof of vaccination before opening their doors again.... The passports are expected to be free and available through applications for smartphones, which could display a scannable code similar to an airline boarding pass. Americans without smartphone access should be able to print out the passports, developers have said."
Michelle Au, a Georgia state senator, in a Washington Post op-ed, describes the scene as the state Senate was debating the voter suppression bill: most Republican senators could not be bothered to even show up to hear the debate, but in a "small, clubby" anteroom off the chamber, GOP senators could be heard laughing & chortling among themselves. MB: May the people have the last laugh.
Slowly, Slowly, She Turns. The New York Times is liveblogging the progress of the attempts to move a huge Japanese cargo ship that has been grounded for nearly a week in the Suez Canal and is completely blocking the vital international shipping lane. "Late Saturday, tugboat drivers sounded their horns in celebration of the most visible sign of progress since the ship ran aground late Tuesday. The 220,000-ton ship moved ... just two degrees, or about 100 feet...." ~~~
~~~ Sudarsan Raghavan & Jennifer Hassan of the Washington Post: "Egyptian President Abdel Fatah al-Sissi ordered preparations to be made for the unloading of the Ever Given cargo carrier that is blocking the Suez Canal, the head of the canal authority said Sunday. Lt. Gen. Osama Rabie, chairman of the Suez Canal Authority, told Egyptian television that officials were preparing for the 'third scenario' of unloading containers from the massive ship so it can be refloated, opening up one of the world's busiest waterways. The canal has been blocked since Tuesday, leaving more than 300 ships waiting to pass through. Unloading some of the 18,000 containers from the towering ship would require special equipment, so the president authorized its acquisition even as dredging continued, Rabie said. So far, 27,000 cubic feet of sand have been removed from around the vessel to a depth of 18 meters, or about 59 feet."
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Maureen Dowd of the New York Times: President "Biden should do what he can to help Senate Democrats dilute the filibuster. And he should insist on the passage of the voting rights bill the Senate designed to target the voter suppression efforts enacted in Georgia, just a preview of what's to come in other states. Nine years after first graders were mowed down at Sandy Hook, couldn't he finally make progress on the nation's most shameful issue -- blind worship of the AR-15?... As Fintan O'Toole wrote in The New York Review of Books in a piece titled 'To Hell With Unity,' it must be dawning on Biden that 'the willingness of most congressional Republicans to endorse Donald Trump's attempts to overturn the November election and their unwillingness to convict Trump for his role in the violent putsch of January 6' proves 'there can be no illusions of accord, or even of civilized dispute.'"
Sheryl Stolberg of the New York Times: "... public health experts say a new round of research could pave the way for gun policies that avoid partisan gridlock -- and ultimately save thousands of lives. The studies ... are being paid for by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which is once again funding research into gun violence after a nearly 25-year hiatus imposed by Congress.... Federal money for gun research all but disappeared after Congress in 1996 enacted the so-called Dickey Amendment, which barred the C.D.C. from spending money to 'advocate or promote gun control.'... In an extraordinary turn of events, [Rep. Jay] Dickey [R-Ark.], who died in 2017 [and for whom the amendment is name], befriended the man whose [gun research] work he had cut off, Dr. [Mark] Rosenberg.... In 2019, Dr. Rosenberg and Mr. Dickey's former wife, Betty, a retired former prosecutor and chief justice of the Arkansas Supreme Court, helped persuade Congress to restore the funding; lawmakers appropriated $25 million, split between the C.D.C. and the National Institutes of Health, for firearm injury prevention research. The agencies are now financing nearly two dozen studies, though backers of the research say the money is a pittance compared with the breadth of the problem."
Kate Bennett of CNN: "t has been more than two months since Kamala Harris was sworn in as vice president of the United States.... Yet, Harris -- along with her husband, Georgetown Law professor Douglas Emhoff -- is still, ostensibly, living out of suitcases, unable to move into the private residence reserved for the vice president because it's still undergoing renovations. It's unclear why the renovations are taking so long, said one administration official, but it's a situation that has left Harris increasingly and understandably bothered, according to several people who spoke to CNN about her situation.... The second couple continues to live in temporary housing at Blair House, the President's official guest quarters, just across Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House." MB: Blair House is not exactly a dump.
Jason Hoffman & Jasmine Wright of CNN: "'Now this is a moment of many firsts,' [Doug] Emhoff declared, sitting solo in front of the White House logo, at a virtual Passover celebration at the White House on Thursday. It's a nod not only to his wife's historic role as the first woman, first Black and South Asian vice president. But also, his own, as the first Jewish spouse in the White House, leading its first Passover event live streamed for the masses, days before the actual holiday. 'We are gathered today for the first Passover celebration of the Biden-Harris administration and I'm excited to join you as the first ever second gentleman, married to the first woman to serve as vice president of the United States. And as the first Jewish spouse of a president or a vice president,' Emhoff added.... The Obamas [held] Seders every year they were in the White House. However once they left office, the official White House Seder went by the wayside."
Yes, He's a Lying SOS, But I'd Vote for Him! Kelly Mena of CNN: "The former chief of staff to ... Donald Trump on Saturday pushed back against his former boss' recent attempt to whitewash the history of the January 6 Capitol riot. Mick Mulvaney, who stepped down as Trump's special envoy to Northern Ireland after the insurrection, called Trump's comments that his supporters were 'hugging and kissing' police officers and posed 'zero threat,' despite widespread violence, 'manifestly false.'... 'It's not right to say there was no risk, I don't know how you can say that when people were killed,' he added.... Still, Mulvaney said he 'absolutely would' still vote for Trump if he were to win the Republican presidential nomination in 2024." MB: I'd like to thank Mulvaney for voicing the moral position endemic to his party: provoking murder, mayhem, inciting terrorism and treason, are of no consequence as long as a person has an "R" after his name.
The Pandemic, Ctd.
Dan Keating, et al., of the Washington Post: "The first nationwide look at vaccination across counties reveals vast differences in the rate that people are receiving protection from the coronavirus, with notably lower rates in predominantly Black areas and counties that voted most heavily for ... Donald Trump in 2020." There's an interactive map as well as a search box so you can check your how your county is doing ... unless you live in one of the states that has provided "insufficient data." MB: If I didn't live in one of those "insufficient data" states, I'd use the info to gauge how safe it was to go out & about.
Maeve Reston of CNN: "Dr. Deborah Birx, who served as the White House coronavirus response coordinator under the Trump administration..., [says] in a new CNN documentary that the number of coronavirus deaths could have been 'decreased substantially' if cities and states across the country had aggressively applied the lessons of the first surge toward mitigation last spring, potentially preventing the surges that followed.... Birx ... stat[ed] that the vast majority of America's deaths could have been prevented.... 'I look at it this way. The first time we have an excuse,' Birx says. 'There were about a hundred thousand deaths that came from that original surge. All of the rest of them, in my mind, could have been mitigated or decreased substantially.' A key study from Columbia University released last year underscored the devastating conclusion that earlier intervention could have saved tens of thousands of lives." ~~~
~~~ Amy Wang of the Washington Post: "Birx ... has been criticized for not speaking more frequently and more forcefully against Trump. Last March, Birx praised Trump for being 'so attentive to the scientific literature and the details and the data' with regards to the outbreak. As The Washington Post's Philip Bump reported, Birx had presented overly optimistic data several times[.]... Birx also sat quietly at a news conference last April when Trump pondered whether people could be injected with disinfectant to 'knock out' the coronavirus."
Beyond the Beltway
Kansas. John Hanna of the AP: "One of the Kansas Legislature's most powerful lawmakers was charged Friday with driving under the influence and a felony offense for trying to elude law enforcement while speeding the wrong way on highways in Topeka. Senate Majority Leader Gene Suellentrop faces five criminal charges, including the felony count, the misdemeanor DUI count and a misdemeanor count of reckless driving. The Wichita Republican turned himself in at the local jail Friday evening, and his bond has been set at $5,000.... Suellentrop announced last week that he was stepping away from most of the majority leader's duties until matters surrounding his arrest are resolved."
Michigan. Laina Stebbins of Michigan Advance: "Michigan GOP Chair and University of Michigan Regent Ron Weiser told attendees of a local Republican club on Thursday that the state's top three female Democratic leaders ... Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Attorney General Dana Nessel and Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson ... are 'witches' that Republicans need to defeat in 2022 by 'burning at the stake,' and made a casual reference to assassinating two sitting Republican members of Congress [because they voted to impeach Donald Trump].... Last fall, a group of right-wing, anti-government extremists were foiled in their plan to allegedly kidnap and publicly execute Whitmer, take public officials hostage in the state Capitol and burn the Capitol down. Leading up to that point were months of misogynistic, violent rhetoric directed toward Whitmer and other top Democratic officials from Republicans protesting COVID-19 health restrictions." Weiser said his remarks were "taken out of context." ~~~
~~~ Marie: Because you really have to understand the context in which someone recommends burning public figures alive or otherwise assassinating them. I believe what Weiser said "in context" was, "I disagree with their politics, so they should suffer violent, painful deaths." ~~~
~~~ Update: Apparently, Weiser discovered that the "out of context" excuse wasn't working for some overly-touchy people, because Hannah Knowles of the Washington Post reports, "On Saturday he issued a more regretful statement. 'In an increasingly vitriolic political environment, we should all do better to treat each other with respect, myself included," etc.
North Carolina. Armed White Vigilantes Want Black Family They Terrorized to Apologize to Them. Eliott McLaughlin of CNN: "... lawyers for the two [armed white men who came with 13 others to the home of a black family] say they ... want an apology from Monica Shepard and her teen son, Dameon, as well as from their family's lawyers, for comments they feel painted their clients as racists. A 'Kumbaya' moment seems unlikely. As the criminal cases against Jordan Kita and Austin Wood unfolded, the Shepards filed a civil lawsuit likening the group to Ku Klux Klan night riders.... The attorneys acknowledge that their clients, Kita and Wood, were armed, that Kita was wearing his law enforcement uniform outside his jurisdiction and the pair were among 15 people who went to the wrong home in the middle of the night wanting to know the whereabouts of a missing girl." The judge who acquitted Kita & Wood did not explain his ruling. MB: Living in the South is terrifying. I'm white, and if this had happened to me, I'd have a hard time getting over it.
Ohio. Timothy Bella of the Washington Post: "Ever since he moved to the United States from China more than a half-century ago, Lee Wong has been told he doesn't look American enough. Despite his 20 years of service in the U.S. Army, he says his patriotism has also been questioned by people who 'can't get over this face.' So when Wong called out the uptick in violence and discrimination against Asian Americans during a meeting of the board of trustees in West Chester Township, Ohio, the board chairman calmly unbuttoned his dress shirt to show those in attendance at the Tuesday meeting what patriotism looked like: red scars across his chest from his military service. 'Here is my proof,' said Wong, 69, who last year ran as a Republican candidate for the state Senate. 'Now, is this patriot enough?' Wong's impassioned speech on Tuesday, captured in a video that's been viewed by millions as of early Saturday, has resonated at a time when hate crimes against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPI) have become a regular occurrence...." Includes video.
Way Beyond
Richard Paddock of the New York Times: "At a military parade on Saturday, the general who led the overthrow of Myanmar's civilian government last month said the army was determined 'to protect people from all danger.' Before the day was over, the security forces under his command had shot and killed a 5-year-old boy, two 13-year-old boys and a 14-year-old girl. A baby girl in Yangon, Myanmar's largest city, was struck in the eye with a rubber bullet, although her parents said she was expected to live. The slain children were among dozens of people killed on Saturday as the security forces cracked down on protests across Myanmar, in what appeared to be one of the deadliest days since the Feb. 1 coup led by Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, commander of the Tatmadaw, as the military is known. One news outlet, Myanmar Now, put Saturday's death toll as high as 100." The AP's story is here. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
News Lede
Weather Channel: "At least four people are dead and rescues went on through the night as heavy rainfall swamped middle Tennessee and triggered major flooding of homes and roads, including in the south Nashville area.... At least four people are dead and rescues went on through the night as heavy rainfall swamped middle Tennessee and triggered major flooding of homes and roads, including in the south Nashville area."
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Reader Comments (11)
Another Sunday. Another 300 word sermon.
Right Wing crazy didn’t start with Q-Anon.
The United States Postal Service and the Internal Revenue Service are floundering. First-class mail delivery is still slower than before Covid; Republicans fret the USPS is bleeding billions; and the overburdened IRS has had to delay tax filing day yet again.
Some would shrug, say that government can’t do anything right and leave it at that.
But what’s really going on? It’s not that hard to tell.
Over the last decade with the Senate in Republican control, congress cut the IRS budget by twenty percent while the number of tax filings increased seventeen percent. (propubica.com). As a result, audit rates declined by half between 2010-2019 (accountingtoday.com) and eleven million 2020 tax returns remain unprocessed. Further tasked with hundreds of millions of stimulus payments to Americans, the IRS has now been met with predictable Republican complaints about all those unprocessed tax returns (foxbusiness.com).
The post office situation is even more complicated. The internet has cut into first-class mail demand, but most of the USPS deficit was created by a 2006 Bush administration law which required it to pre-fund employee healthcare and retirement costs. No other public or private organization has the same burden. Without it, the USPS would have operated at a profit through most of the last decade(ips-dc.org). Trump’s Postmaster DeJoy sees no solution to its Congress-created financial woes other than to further cut postal services and raise rates (npr.org).
But public services like the post office weren’t intended to be money makers. Tax-supported services are supposed to benefit the whole nation, not individuals. Preferring the pursuit of private profit over the public good, Republicans have naturally declared war against them.
Hamstring the horse; then complain it can’t run.
Makes great sense to Republicans, but for the nation, it’s even crazier than Q-Anon.
@Ken - what you describe is SOP for the GOP. When you put people who don’t believe in government in charge of the government, you get shitty government - which of course is the point.
@Rockygirl
Yeah, the challenge is trying to find different ways to say the same old thing.
Admittedly nothing new in this one, but I would phrase the Republican approach to government a little differently: They have no use for government that does not serve them, but plenty for government that does. All those personal percs, all those cost plus contracts, those billions upon billions in subsidies, the entire Fed, the world's biggest piggy bank, they hold in reserve, ready to come to their rescue when they totally screw up the economy they claim to be masters of. Oh yes, there's a lot for contemporary Republicans to like about the right kind of government.*
I've been writing these LTTE about twice a month over the last four years (longer, really). Now that the Pretender is no longer in office, saying one dumb thing and promugating one dumb policy after another, I've had to widen my focus a bit.
Next one: the federal income tax scam.
* An old man's cranky thought:
The Republican Party today seems more thoroughly and brazenly corrupt and more obviously and belligerently racist than it was forty years ago. Don't know if that's a real change in its composition that reflects a national. moral devolution or if the disgusting elements of the GOP have been there all along in both the nation and the party and are just now closer to the surface of both.
Drawn out into the public eye by the internet perhaps?
Or has my healthy skepticism been overtaken and replaced by its faith-devouring cousin--cynicism?
Perfectly put, Rocky. About Birx: generationally she is of the go along to get along generation of women. Practically, go along to get along with Orange Turd is SOP for him. "Lording it over"...is a way of life for his whole crowd of NY grifters. We all should have a better understanding that way too many people like and are most comfortable being told what to do. Thinking for oneself takes effort as well as it can be uncomfortable. Besides the (new) norm for the GOP is 'what's a few hundred thousand lives here or there'? After all we're all dead in the end anyway.
MB: in the absence of data, I was immediately struck by what I used to tell my child: if you feel uncomfortable, it's real. Act on and trust that feeling.
OUR DAY IN GOD:
Meet the Rev. Rick Joyner, the Evangelical everyman who claims liberals are in league with Satan and Democrats are plotting to criminalize Christianity and very soon we will have another Civil War and blood will be spilled ( he has his guns ready). But Ricky has a problem: all five of his children ain't joining Joyner in his cockamamie proclamations. None identify as Evangelical and all deplore his politics ( he's a Donald devotee). A family crisis, for sure.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/27/opinion/sunday/evangelical-rick-joyner-family.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage
And I got to thinking after reading about this family how it illustrates the profound division in this country that if once kept somewhat under thinly veiled wraps is now shouted out loud and clear so there can be no mistake its message. When Ron Weiser, Michigan's GOP chair calls the Governor, the A.G., and the S.O.S.–-all females--"Witches––burn them at the stake" ( see story above) and then can excuse his remarks as being "taken out of context" and many will agree then... When the Republican Party is essentially moribund and "crackers" so that only one party is operating then...our system is failing. Parliamentary procedure in the offing? Same as our Mother country?
We have reached the high level–-gone beyond the ropes that lifeguards string across the waters to prevent swimmers from going beyond a safe zone: What ––not whom–-will save us from ourselves?
I think both Ken and Rockygirl make good points. I’ve been saying since St. Ronnie of Raygun was blaming everything but inconvenient red lights on the government, that no operation runs well when the people in charge don’t believe in it, don’t get it, and, basically, despise it.
I used to marvel at the fact that so many Reagan lovers back then had forgotten that if it wasn’t for the government (really the Democrats) during the (First Republican) Great Depression, their parents might have starved, or been destitute their whole lives, might actually have died early and never become parents, given the dire straits a Republican administration had left the country in, which therefore meant that these people might never have existed WITHOUT THE GOVERNMENT they were now lining up to stone.
But this was the beginning of the end of any sort of general agreement about the responsibility of citizens to their country and to its founding principles. I mentioned the other day that the present day R’s opened their mouths as soon as they learned to talk and their first word was ME! What’s in it for ME? Reagan promoted the idea of “Fuck you, Charlie, I got mine” which made greed and selfishness virtues. But right around this time they also realized that the right kind of government, as Ken posits, could do very well by them, while at the same time, be used to step on those they hated.
Thus we ended up with a self righteous lying POS as Speaker of the House, a smirking granny starver who owed everything he had in life to the government, but strove every day of his baleful career to pull that ladder up as fast as he could, to make sure those his party considered undeserving didn’t get the same benefits he and they did.
Which eventually gave us Trump, and the apotheosis of Reagan’s “Fuck you, Charlie, I got mine” mantra. Only with Trump, it also became “Fuck you, Charlie, I got yours too”.
Soon after, they realized that they could lose all their wonderful “white Republicans only” perks, and that democracy, if left unchecked, could allow others, their enemies, to also enjoy the protection and benefits of a stable, working government. So then we see a nasty, mean-ass turtle screaming against a new voting rights bill, proclaiming that allowing everyone to vote would be terrible for country, which is really like complaining, in a basketball game, that allowing the other side to shoot would be horribly unfair to your team.
But their Orange Leader put it more succinctly: if we let all these people vote, Republicans might never win another national election!
Exactly. Which takes us from government hating, to government abuse, into government corruption, and finally...
Treason.
The path of the Party of Traitors.
Agree wholeheartedly with everyone. Also find it totally annoying and confounding to see that Dr. Birx of the Scarves is whining that she thinks lots of people just should not have died... duh. Some Christian she is. We all watched her sit mutely while the National Disgrace opined about disinfectants for the body... She was on the "task force" (task being agree with Fatstuff about everything and turn into robots and nondeciders--) for almost a year and never once that I remember voiced a disgruntled word with either Fatso or the supposed head of the CDC last year. She wore her scarves and pointed at fake statistics on occasion. She's a beast. I hear she is now with some company-- maybe she can spend more time with the grandchildren she took to the beach house when she was supposed to be quarantining...
Heard bits and pieces of the "interview" on Fox featuring Fatty. Rehashed the same ol' lies. F*** f***ing Mulvaney. He began as an idiot and he ends as one. There must be a factory somewhere churning out these people. So far, most legislatures seem to be furnished with them. The signature model rules Georgia, but any of them could unseat him as Worst Slime Governor-Lege Member. There is no shortage. The warehouses are full of these fully functioning wingnut "people."
They truly are not actual people. Another one was arrested in PA yesterday. So far we hold the title of most monsters in DC Jan. 6.
Akhilleus : "present day R’s opened their mouths as soon as they learned to talk and their first word was ME! What’s in it for ME? Reagan promoted the idea of “Fuck you, Charlie, I got mine” which made greed and selfishness virtues."
I guess this guy is a Republican, takes everything for himself and leaves nothing for everyone else who did all the work.
A useful and informative website for those who would like to understand the USPS situation. The site links to a wide array of official reports and analyses, and historical material. USPS issues are likely to be with us for some time. I'd suggest adding this site to reading lists. Best regards,
Keith Howard
https://www.savethepostoffice.com/
Beg a little literary license here, likely undeserved.
Keith properly points out that I am guilty of simplifying the USPS situation. Though the Senate was in Republican control then, the Dems were complicit the the postal reorganization act for reasons that remain a bit unclear to me (maybe the distraction of Iraq, maybe the neo-liberal virus then infecting both parties?)...but as my letter suggests I was more willing to let them off the hook (because I like them better and because the parallel between the IRS and the USPS funding situation was too tempting to pass up).
Since R's are only good at counting their own clutch of nickels: https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2021/03/28/mlb-all-star-game-atlanta-georgia-voting-law/. This is a nice consideration of what sports can do to pressure the racist Republicans sooner as opposed to later.