;)
The Commentariat -- May 16, 2021
Afternoon Update:
David Holtgrave & Eli Rosenberg, public health experts, in a CNN opinion piece: "Unfortunately, we are still not across the finish line in the US pandemic. There is still a Covid-19 death about every 2.5 minutes in the nation, and serious racial and ethnic disparities exists (e.g., in disproportionate access to vaccination services). There are six major concerns about the decision to roll back some key safety measures when in fact we need all of the tools we have in the Covid-19 prevention toolbox for perhaps just a short time longer.... We are going to keep wearing our masks." MB: Me, too, although I've liberalized that a lot. For instance, a friend -- who like me is fully vaccinated -- stopped by yesterday. We chatted outside, and neither of us wore masks. I have a couple of nearly immovable iron benches that are, by happenstance, set about six feet apart, so they provide just the right "social distancing." A couple of weeks ago, we both would have masked up.
Aubree Weaver of Politico: "While Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hopes that the escalating violence between Israeli and Palestinian forces doesn't continue for very long, he acknowledged Sunday morning that he doesn't foresee an 'immediate' end to the conflict. [Speaking on CBS' 'Face the Nation,'] Netanyahu also denied reports that he had rejected a truce offered by Egypt, which also borders on Gaza, and accepted by Hamas. 'That's not what I know,' he said of the suggested truce."
Henry Gomez of NBC News: “Rep. Matt Gaetz, the Florida Republican mired in controversy, told a crowd of Republican activists Saturday that sexual misconduct allegations involving him are as benign as legislative earmarks. 'I'm being falsely accused of exchanging money for naughty favors,' Gaetz said at the Ohio Political Summit, a gathering sponsored by the Strongsville GOP in suburban Cleveland. 'Yet, Congress has reinstituted a process that legalizes the corrupt act of exchanging money for favors, through earmarks, and everybody knows that that's the corruption.'" MB: Earmarks are sometimes useful in obtaining the votes of reluctant MOCs, yet Congress, in its wisdom, is unlikely to approve legislation providing MOCs with hookups with underaged prostitutes and rentboys in exchange for their votes on an infrastructure bill. As far as I know. But nice try, Matt. Maybe you could introduce a sex-for-votes bill?
Emily Flitter & Matthew Goldstein of the New York Times: "By the time Melinda French Gates decided to end her 27-year marriage, her husband was known globally as a software pioneer, a billionaire and a leading philanthropist. But in some circles, Bill Gates had also developed a reputation for questionable conduct in work-related settings. That is attracting new scrutiny amid the breakup of one of the world’s richest, most powerful couples." The report details some of Bill's "questionable conduct." MB: This doesn't surprise me. Not long after his marriage, my daughter told me she observed Bill "behaving inappropriately" at an industry party.
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Pay-to-Play. Because Everything They Did Was Crooked. Jeff McDonald of the San Diego Union-Tribune: "A federal grand jury in Washington, D.C., has begun issuing subpoenas in a criminal investigation into the nomination of San Diego developer Douglas F. Manchester as ambassador to the Bahamas by ... Donald Trump. The case appears to focus on the Republican National Committee and its two senior leaders, and possibly members of Congress. Manchester, a well-known contributor to the Republican Party and to GOP elected officials and candidates, was nominated to become the U.S. ambassador to the Bahamas in May 2017, just months into the Trump administration. But the nomination stalled in the U.S. Senate, prompting Trump to re-nominate Manchester to the post early in 2018. That nomination also was held up from Senate approval. Manchester withdrew his nomination in October 2019, saying that he was removing his name from consideration due to threats to his family.... Weeks after Manchester withdrew his nomination, emails surfaced indicating that Manchester was at the center of a possible 'pay-to-play' arrangement with the Republican National Committee."
Space Farce. Oriana Pawlyk of Military.com: "A commander of a U.S. Space Force unit tasked with detecting ballistic missile launches has been fired for comments made during a podcast promoting his new book, which claims Marxist ideologies are becoming prevalent in the United States military. Lt Col. Matthew Lohmeier, commander of 11th Space Warning Squadron at Buckley Air Force Base, Colorado, was relieved from his post Friday by Lt. Gen. Stephen Whiting, the head of Space Operations Command, over a loss of confidence in his ability to lead, Military.com has exclusively learned.... [Lohmeier] spoke about U.S. institutions, including universities, media and federal agencies including the military, that he said are increasingly adopting leftist practices. These practices -- such as diversity and inclusion training -- are the systemic cause for the divisive climate across America today, he said."
Jennifer Jacquet in a Washington Post op-ed: "Since at least 2006, when the United Nations published a report, 'Livestock's Long Shadow,' cataloguing the sector's global environmental impacts, the industry has been borrowing tactics from the fossil fuel playbook. While meat and dairy producers have not claimed that climate change is a liberal hoax, as oil and gas producers did starting in the 1990s, companies have been downplaying the industry's environmental footprint and undermining climate policy, as my colleagues Oliver Lazarus and Sonali McDermid and I have written in a recent study. For decades, the meat industry, acting through major agricultural trade groups such as the Farm Bureau, has pressured lawmakers to prevent environmental regulations. More recently, that's taken the form of resisting climate regulations, including rules on greenhouse gases and emissions reporting."
Beyond the Beltway
Philip Bump of the Washington Post: Voter suppression "is not the only arena in which states -- meaning largely Republican legislators in states -- are responding to the events of 2020 with new legislation. New analysis from the nonprofit organization PEN America has identified 100 pieces of legislation that in some way aim to amplify or introduce penalties associated with what the group calls 'protest-related activity.' A number of those bills have been abandoned, as is the case with the voting legislation tracked by the Brennan Center. But six have been signed into law.... The intent of the restrictions is generally obvious. Many of the bills targeting protest, for example, both increase penalties for rioting and adjust the threshold for declaring a riot downward, as is the case with legislation signed into law in Florida. Many increase penalties for acts of vandalism or for obstructing traffic. Others introduce new trespassing rules, including, as a bill proposed in South Carolina would do, making it a felony to camp on state property without authorization. Another common component of these bills reduces penalties for drivers who strike protesters if the driver feels as though his or her life is at risk."
Arizona. James Arkin of Politico: "Republicans in the state are still divided over the results of the last election, months after President Joe Biden was sworn into office. An ongoing and extraordinary audit of the 2020 vote count in the state's largest county -- rooted in conspiracy theories and the false belief that Biden's election was not legitimate -- is deepening the schism six months after the election, with no clear end in sight.... [Some] Republicans are speaking out to warn that the amateurish conduct of the audit and the conspiracy theories it has amplified could cause lasting damage to the party." ~~~
~~~ Bob Christie of the AP: "The Republican who now leads the Arizona county elections department targeted by a GOP audit of the 2020 election results is slamming ... Donald Trump and others in his party for their continued falsehoods about how the election was run. Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer on Saturday called a Trump statement accusing the county of deleting an elections database 'unhinged' and called on other Republicans to stop the unfounded accusations. 'We can't indulge these insane lies any longer. As a party. As a state. As a country,' Richer tweeted. Richer became recorder in January, after defeating the Democratic incumbent. The former president's statement came as Republican Senate President Karen Fann has demanded the Republican-dominated Maricopa County Board of Supervisors come to the Senate to answer questions raised by the private auditors she has hired."
Georgia. Marc Caputo of Politico: "Pro-Trump lawyer Lin Wood's bid to bring 'chaos' to South Carolina's GOP was halted on Saturday when he failed to unseat the party's chairman after baselessly accusing the incumbent of voter fraud and a host of other slurs. Chairman Drew McKissick's reelection was not in doubt among knowledgeable Republicans who say the party delegate rules favor longtime insiders. Wood, an accomplished trial lawyer from Georgia who turned into a conspiracy theorist, moved this year from Georgia and mounted an unexpectedly strong candidacy for a complete outsider."
New Mexico. Pilar Melendez of the Daily Beast, republished in Yahoo! News: "A suspected white supremacist is facing charges after allegedly ditching a bullet-riddled car containing three dead men in the parking lot of an Albuquerque hospital this week. Richard Kuykendall, a 41-year-old with an 'apparent association' with the Aryan Brotherhood prison gang, was charged Friday with being a convicted felon in possession of a firearm and ammunition for his role in the Wednesday triple homicide, according to a criminal complaint filed Friday in the U.S. District Court for New Mexico. Prosecutors allege that after a deadly shootout in a nearby alley, Kuykendall drove to Presbyterian Kaseman Hospital with the victims, removed his shirt and told a security officer 'that there were three dead guys in the Chevy' before he walked away." ~~~
~~~ Marie: Not sure what the idea was to dropping dead bodies at a hospital. Maybe Kookendall thought the coronor's office was too creepy. Or maybe it's just that your average Nazi is none too bright.
Texas. Derek Hawkins of the Washington Post: "When former Dallas County prosecutor Richard E. Jackson put two homeless Black men on trial in 2000 for the murder of a local pastor, he allegedly withheld a heap of evidence that could have cleared them. Witnesses couldn't pick the suspects out of a lineup, neither of the men matched descriptions provided to investigators, and prosecutors had brokered secret deals with jailhouse informants for favorable testimony, appeals court papers would later show. In separate trials, jurors heard none of it. Jackson got his convictions, and Dennis Allen and Stanley Mozee were sentenced to life in prison. Only after an extensive review by the Innocence Project and Jackson's successors were the men exonerated -- 14 years later. Now, after two decades of legal wrangling, Jackson has been disbarred from practicing law in Texas, in a rare example of severe punishment for misconduct in a wrongful conviction case.... One recent study found more than half of wrongfully convicted defendants were victimized by government misconduct -- but prosecutors almost never face consequences as serious as disbarment."
Texas. The Lady & the Tiger. Juan Lozano of the AP: "A tiger that frightened residents after it was last seen briefly wandering around a Houston neighborhood has been found after a nearly week-long search and appears to be unharmed, police announced Saturday evening.... The tiger was being held at BARC, the city of Houston's animal shelter, but was expected to be taken Sunday morning to ... an animal sanctuary in Murchison, Texas, located southeast of Dallas." Cmdr. Ron Borza of the Houston Police said "that the tiger was passed around to different people but that [the wife of the tiger's owner] knew where the tiger was at all times this week as authorities searched for it. Police are still trying to determine ... if any charges related to having the tiger will be filed." Victor Hugo Cuevas, the tiger's owner, "was arrested Monday by Houston police ... for allegedly fleeing his home with the tiger after officers had responded to a call about a dangerous animal. At the time of his arrest by Houston police, Cuevas was already out on bond for a murder charge in a 2017 fatal shooting in neighboring Fort Bend County." ~~~
~~~ Marie: The lovely Mr. and Mrs. Cuevas should be charged with something. The story of the misisng tiger went national. So they certainly knew public funds were being spent to search for a big cat that was in their custody, even as Houston residents must have been terrified that the tiger was roaming about their neighborhoods.
Way Beyond
Israel. The New York Times' liveblog of developments Sunday in the deadly conflict are here.
~~~ Shira Rubin of the Washington Post: "Predawn Israeli airstrikes on several homes along a main road leading to Shifa Hospital in Gaza City killed 26 people, including eight children, said Gaza's Ministry of Health -- a number expected to rise. It is believed to be the single deadliest attack since the current bout of violence began last week. Diplomatic efforts by President Biden and U.S. regional allies to reach a cease-fire have had little impact on the escalation between Israel and Hamas, which on Sunday trudged into its seventh day, and has spilled over into mass protests in Israeli towns and in the West Bank." ~~~
~~~ Fares Akram & Lee Keath of the AP: "With a U.S. envoy on the ground, calls increased for a cease-fire after five days of mayhem that have left at least 145 Palestinians dead in Gaza -- including 41 children and 23 women -- and eight dead on the Israeli side, all but one of them civilians, including a 5-year-old. President Joe Biden, who has called for a de-escalation but has backed Israel's campaign, spoke separately by phone with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. Still, Israel stepped up its assault, vowing to shatter the capabilities of Gaza's Hamas rulers. The week of deadly violence, set off by a Hamas rocket Monday, came after weeks of mounting tensions and heavy-handed Israeli measures in contested Jerusalem. Early Sunday, Israeli warplanes struck several buildings and roads in a vital part of Gaza City. Photos circulated by residents and journalists showed the airstrikes created a crater that blocked one of the main roads leading to Shifa, the largest hospital in the strip." ~~~
~~~ Fares Akram & Joseph Krauss of the AP: "An Israeli airstrike targeted and destroyed a high-rise building in Gaza City that housed offices of The Associated Press and other media outlets hours after another Israeli airraid on a densely populated refugee camp killed at least 10 Palestinians from an extended family, mostly children, on Saturday. The strike on the high-rise came nearly an hour after the military ordered people to evacuate the 12-story building, which also housed Al-Jazeera, other offices and residential apartments. The strike brought down the entire structure, which collapsed in a gigantic cloud of dust. There was no immediate explanation for why it was attacked. The earlier Israeli airstrike on the Gaza City refugee camp was the deadliest single strike of the current conflict between Israel and the militant group Hamas. Both sides are pressing for an advantage as cease-fire efforts gather strength." MB: Gosh, just can't think why Israel would destroy a building housing media outlets. (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~
~~~ In a statement, AP President and CEO Gary Pruitt said, "We are shocked and horrified that the Israeli military would target and destroy the building housing AP's bureau and other news organizations in Gaza. They have long known the location of our bureau and knew journalists were there. We received a warning that the building would be hit.... The world will know less about what is happening in Gaza because of what happened today." (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~
~~~ Paul Shinkman of U.S. News: Donald "Trump's attempts to sell the world on the merits of the so-called Abraham Accords -- access to a revered holy site and better conditions for Palestinians -- have come undone.... The U.S.-brokered Abraham Accords ... involving the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan have undercut Palestinians' traditional supporters and empowered Israel, which has capitalized in recent months on a policy that appears to persist under the Biden administration of not imposing pressure on the Jewish state.... The accords ... essentially muzzl[ed] signatory countries from providing anything but token criticism of the violence."
News Lede
New York Times: "Damon Weaver, who at age 11 became one of the youngest people to interview a sitting president [-- Barack Obama --], and who later gained attention for scoring other high-profile interviews with celebrities like Dwyane Wade and Oprah Winfrey, died on May 1. He was 23.... The cause was not made known.... Before his meeting with Mr. Obama, Mr. Weaver gained sizable attention from an interview in 2008 with Joseph R. Biden Jr., then Mr. Obama's running mate."
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Reader Comments (11)
I love the bit about how some Republicans are worried that the clusterfuck fraudit in Arizona might make the party look bad. That’s like warning neighborhood kids not to throw rocks through the few remaining windows in a burned out house cuz it might affect the curb appeal.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan was often right says Joe Klein on why it still matters:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/15/books/review/daniel-patrick-moynihan-was-often-right-joe-klein-on-why-it-still-matters.html?action=click&module=Editors%20Picks&pgtype=Homepage
"The central conservative truth is that it is culture, not politics, that determines the success of a society; the central liberal truth is that politics can change a culture and save it from itself."
An interesting piece on a man who stepped into controversial waters from time to time but was extremely prescient about his time and ours at this time.
I don't have to go too far today to have an opinion, to wit: nowhere in the article is the word "community". Jacquet and the bright lights can't think to use a term describing who will be decimated when insurmountable governmental barriers to entry for raising livestock are erected. The highest margin food businesses are plant based protein and marketing: Cargill and Tyson are leaders of this. So, one of the biggest reasons the Democrats have lost the fly-over states is 'laws restricting, without compensatory retraining'. If you take away well paying ag, timber, or mining jobs due to environmental regulation (off-shoring the shit and Green washing your reputation), you're not left with much economic heft out here. That shallow lack of consideration for me and my family's well-being, by non-locals who for instance think Boston and LA are "clean" cities, in favor of their favored course is at the heart of why Democrats lost Idaho. Or remember Mike Mansfield was a Democrat from Butte, Montana. Or Heidi in North Dakota. Or Tom Daschle in South Dakota. The fly-over folk are perceptive enough to detect that those with coastal myopia care more for free range bison than the locals. Democrats unable to develop and calibrate their message are doomed to repeat their negative outcomes. And by the way in Jacquet's article, where the fuck is consideration for the Native American views? Probably those considerations got dropped out of notebook on a leaf lined campus somewhere not near Browning, Standing Rock, or Window Rock.
Where is Jared Kushner these days, and why isn’t he trumpeting the success of his famous peace plan? Didn’t he arrange for Bibi and Fatty to play kissy-face at a big White House whoop-de-do celebrating Peace At Last in the Middle East? Wha’ hoppen?
Oh wait, I know. It was all a con job from the start. A con to rig Fatty’s political “stock price” heading into an election, to make Bibi look less like a scheming butcher, and to allow Young Jared to beat his chest and pretend to have done a great thing.
Real plans of any kind, peace or otherwise, don’t explode with the first stiff breeze, but Trump plans do. Everything these people touch goes to shit. Everything is a scam, a con job, a grift of some kind. This bullshit Potemkin peace plan was just another in the long line of Trump cons.
And as with all other Trump cons, others pay the price. In this case, with their lives. But what does that matter? Fatty is in his castle, golfing every day, Jared is in his Florida mansion working on his next scam.
Palestinian babies are in their little coffins.
All is right in Trump World.
@Citizen: Since I can't access the Wash-po I appreciated your take on Jacquet's article. You make serious, excellent points.
@citizen625: But isn't offshoring promoted mostly by Republicans, who bow to corporations? I'm definitely no expert, but I don't know that Democratic "regulations" are responsible for much in the way of job loss in agricultural areas. I do realize that regulations are a pain for producers of, well, anything. Regulations, as far as I know, aren't pricing farmers out of business; farmers & ranchers pass the costs of complying with regs on to consumers. (And that is fair; we are, after all, the beneficiaries of the regs: our food is safe (or safer); our forests are preserved & maybe the soil isn't eroding into waterways. What traditionally has priced ordinary farmers out of business is big ag, and big ag is primarily Republicans who promote big corporations.
Regulations are a pain for all of us. I'm building a house, and the reason I'm building a house instead of living in it is that it took me a year to get state & local permissions. And that, of course, was because I had to prove that I was complying with a boatload of "regulations." I don't blame the regulators, either. They didn't rush to send my approvals, but they didn't slow-walk anything, either. They did their jobs well, as far as I can tell. We live in a regulated country, whether we live in Michigan or Massachusetts, and people in Michigan need to get used to it instead of toting guns into the state capitol and whining about their freeedumbs.
I have lived almost totally alone for more than a year now, making me probably more isolated than most of those "rugged individuals" who live in fly-over country and bitch about the gummit. But I see myself as a citizen, and I understand that as such that I have responsibilities, whether I like fulfilling those responsibilities or not. (My next round of property taxes is coming due in a couple of weeks. I'll pay them without running over to the capitol & parading around toting a protest sign, much less a firearm.)
Another thing about Jacquet's article: I agree with almost everything she says. I've said for years that the modern food industry (and dietary supplements) business is run by displaced tobacco MBAs. That translates to no soul, no art, no institutional knowledge, just the pursuit of quarterly profits. The mammal killing business is why some of the biggest Covid outbreaks have been in the mammal killing business. The spokespeople like Jacquet haven't spent decades in the food industry trenches and don't have much nuance toward the poor, minority, women, immigrants, and young people who are directly impacted by food policies. I hope she appreciates the Wapo platform given to her as an associate professor of Environmental Studies at NYU; she has only begun to inform on this topic.
Here's an article about the ignorance and arrogance that helped covid to spread around the world. Also why the mask recommendations were so confusing at the beginning of the pandemic. Sixty years ago the CDC misinterpreted data about aerosols and the so called facts have been blindly repeated until they became canon. Most of the scientific community and the WHO took their numbers on faith and repeated them back to everyone for decades. They dismissed evidence of airborn disease because they "knew" that particles larger than 5 microns couldn't hang in the air for more than 6 feet. In original work said that the threshold should be 100 micron particles. Hopefully now that they know and are quietly updating their textbooks we can see this new improved information lead to further scientific advancements and understandings.
Now and then we all run across books in the library or the bookstore with titles that demand they be pulled for a prompt peruse and perhaps a purchase: “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat”, or “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?”. How about “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime”? AND if you are of a particular bent, “Will Holding in Farts Kill You?”. The answer to that, of course, is “Not in my presence, no.” But I digress.
So, recently I came across a title that demanded my return to that aisle several times resulting in a decision to fork over my hard earned shekels: “Assholes. A theory”. And lest you think it an obvious or potentially silly thing, any book that opens with a quote from Kant gets my immediate attention. Others may, and not unjustifiably, react with a “brrrrr...”, a quick return to the shelf and departure, post haste, from that aisle.
But it’s a fairly serious look at what it is to be an asshole, and the deleterious impact of assholes on society and democracy but not so serious as to trigger lengthy chin stroking.
ANYWAY...the book was published in 2012, and 300 or so words into the preface, with an exempli gratia listing of well known assholes, are the words “Donald Trump”.
A well known asshole from years back.
And the party that worships this arrogant, narcissistic asshole must, by extension, be comprised largely of assholes as well.
My contribution on a rainy Sunday. You’re welcome.
RAS,
The very nature of science, and the calling card of thoughtful people: the ability to consider new information and adjust responses accordingly. This is not, however, SOP in right-wing world where they are never wrong, never make mistakes, and have no use for new information or facts that challenge their worldview.
@Akhilleus: Your rainy-day contribution is much appreciated. I especially like your answer to that last titular query. We should all remember to repeat your response should the author happen by still seeking, Diogenes-style, the answer to his greatest question. Yours is the greatest wisdom, my friend.