The Wires
powered by Surfing Waves
Help!

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

Link Code:   <a href="URL">text</a>

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Click on photo to enlarge.

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

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

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

Washington Post: “An early Titian masterpiece — once looted by Napolean’s troops and a part of royal collections for centuries — caused a stir when it was stolen from the home of a British marquess in 1995. Seven years later, it was found inside an unassuming white and blue plastic bag at a bus stop in southwest London by an art detective, and returned. This week, the oil painting 'The Rest on the Flight into Egypt' sold for more than $22 million at Christie’s. It was a record for the Renaissance artist, whom museums describe as the greatest painter of 16th-century Venice. Ahead of the sale in April, the auction house billed it as 'the most important work by Titian to come to the auction market in more than a generation.'”

Washington Post: The Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., which houses the world's largest collection of Shakespeare material, has undergone a major renovation. "The change to the building is pervasive, both subtle and transformational."

Contact Marie

Click on this link to e-mail Marie.

Page Links
Thursday
Aug172023

The Conversation -- August 18, 2023

Peter Baker of the New York Times: "President Biden welcomed his counterparts from Japan and South Korea to Camp David on Friday morning as he seeks to cement a newly fortified three-way alliance, bridging generations of friction between the two Asian powers to forge mutual security arrangements in the face of an increasingly assertive China. Mr. Biden greeted Prime Minister Fumio Kishida of Japan and President Yoon Suk Yeol of South Korea at the presidential retreat in Maryland, the first time he has invited foreign leaders there and the first time the leaders of the three countries will have met in a stand-alone session rather than on the sidelines of larger international gatherings.... Biden administration officials said the leaders would sign off on a formal 'commitment to consult,' an understanding that the three nations would treat any security threat to one of them as a threat to all, requiring mutual discussion about how to respond. The pledge would not go as far as the NATO treaty's Article 5, which obligates allies to 'take action' in the event of an attack on any member, but it would reinforce the expectation that the three would act in tandem."

** The Architect, There at the Insurrection. Andrew Kaczynski, et al., of CNN: "When conspiracy theorist Alex Jones marched his way to the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, riling up his legion of supporters, an unassuming middle-aged man in a red 'Trump 2020' hat conspicuously tagged along.... The man dutifully recording Jones with his phone as the bombastic media personality ascended to the restricted area of the Capitol grounds where mobs of ... Donald Trump's supporters eventually broke in... The man ... is attorney Kenneth Chesebro, the alleged architect of the scheme to subvert the 2020 Electoral College process by using fake GOP electors in multiple states. When asked by the House select committee where he was the first week of January 2021 and on January 6, Chesebro invoked his Fifth Amendment rights. But a CNN investigation has placed him outside of the Capitol at the same time as his alleged plot to keep Trump in office unraveled inside it. There is no indication Chesebro entered the Capitol Building or was violent. Jones did not enter the Capitol on January 6, 2021, or engage in violence, but he had warned of a coming battle the day before and urged his supporters to converge on the Capitol." The New York Times story is here. ~~~

     ~~~ The Strange Career of a Latter-Day Revolutionary. Ken Chesebro went from a long post-doctoral gig as liberal Harvard Law Prof. Lawrence Tribe's aide to hanging out at the insurrection with crazed right-wing provocateur & conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. According to this report by Isaac Stanley-Becker of the Washington Post, what seems to have flipped Chesebro's politics was making several million dollars in a cryptocurrency investment. MB: Now, Ken may go from crypto king to inmate in the Fulton County Jail.

Jamelle Bouie of the New York Times: "It is not hard to find commentators asking a simple question about the events of the past few years:... How did 'America's mayor' -- the man who rocketed to national fame after the Sept. 11 attacks -- come to disgrace and debase himself in defense of Donald Trump?... But ... the line from 'America's mayor' to indicted co-conspirator is a straight one.... He is the same man he's always been.... If we think of Giuliani as the scowling demagogue who stoked the flames of chauvinism and racial hatred against New York's first Black mayor [David Dinkins] for his own gain, then there's little other than his carefully crafted image in the press that separates the Giuliani of '92 from the Giuliani of '23.... It is easy to see that [Giuliani & Trump] are of a type. They share the same demagogic instincts, the same boundless resentment, the same authoritarian manner -- it is not for nothing that Giuliani reportedly tried to get the 2001 mayoral election canceled so that he could stay in office beyond the limit on his term -- and the same willingness to indulge in racism and use it for their own political purposes." ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: I have long associated Giuliani with the racist police attack on Dinkins. But recently, when I looked for contemporaneous stories about the incident, I didn't find anything that mentioned Giuliani, so I thought I must have been mistaken. I was not. Bouie spells it out. The stories I read also hedged on the racism expressed during the police protest with language like, "reported to have used the N word." I lived in Manhattan then, and I saw the video on a local TV channel and the audio was replete with cops using the racial slur. It confused me for a moment because I had forgotten that Dinkins was Black. He never made his race a feature of his mayoralty and there was no reason for anyone else too, either.

On the Lam. Daniel Barnes & Ryan Reilly of NBC News: "Christopher Worrell, a Florida Proud Boy convicted on seven counts stemming from his actions during the Jan. 6 riot, was scheduled to be sentenced today in Washington, D.C, federal court but is now missing, according to a spokeswoman from the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia.... Worrell had been initially detained pre-trial following his arrest in March 2021. However, [Judge Royce] Lamberth ordered Worrell released to home detention in November 2021 after finding that DC jail officials had failed to provide Worrell with adequate treatment for his non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and a broken hand that may have required surgery. As part of his conditions of release, Worrell surrendered his passport and was subject to GPS monitoring."

Robert McFadden of the New York Times: "James L. Buckley, a conservative recruit from Connecticut who invaded the New York strongholds of Democrats and liberal Republicans in 1970 and against the odds won a United States Senate seat on the Conservative Party line, died early Friday in Washington. He was 100."

~~~~~~~~~~

Trump Family Crime Blotter

Seems Reasonable. Kyle Cheney of Politico: "Donald Trump says he'll be ready to go on trial on federal charges over his bid to subvert the last election ... in April 2026. Citing extraordinary amounts of evidence -- including a tranche of 11.5 million pages that prosecutors handed over earlier this month -- Trump lawyers John Lauro and Todd Blanche said in court papers filed Thursday that a 2.5-year delay before picking a jury would properly factor in the complexity of the case. The proposal stands in almost absurd contrast to prosecutors' call for a trial to begin on Jan. 2, 2024, a highly ambitious timeline.... [In their own filing last week, prosecutors] noted that Trump [has had access to and] is privy to large swaths of evidence arrayed against him as a result of the House Jan. 6 select committee's hearings and trove of public documents. And he also has access to millions of pages of records that overlap with the materials the government is producing to him -- such as documents from his White House, his campaign and his PAC." The New York Times story is here.

Katherine Faulders & Jonathan Karl of ABC News: "... Donald Trump's promised press conference to refute the allegations in the indictment handed up by the Fulton County District Attorney's Office is now very much in doubt.... Sources tell ABC News that Trump's legal advisers have told him that holding such a press conference with dubious claims of voter fraud will only complicate his legal problems and some of his attorneys have advised him to cancel it." MB: Darn, because I thought telling more of the same lies that led to federal and state indictments was a brilliant idea. Trump should fire his lawyers for taking away his First Amendment rights. And election interference! And whatever! (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~

     ~~~ Update. Soo Rin Kim & Lalee Ibssa of ABC News: "... Donald Trump says his press conference previously scheduled for Monday regarding Georgia's 2020 election results ... was canceled because his lawyers would prefer putting his allegations 'in formal Legal Filings.... Therefore, the News Conference is no longer necessary!' he wrote [on his social media platform]. MB: So even his reason for cancelling a presser is a lie: his lawyers are not planning to put his false charges in legal filings; they're trying to bury Trump's lies so nobody ever see them again.

Spirit Animals Are Attacking Jeff Clark. Josephine Harvey of the Huffington Post: "Jeffrey Clark, a former top Justice Department official under Donald Trump, is posting online about supernatural beings in the wake of his racketeering indictment in Georgia.... 'Today witches, spiritists, mediums, those with spirit animals, and Ukrainian NPCs resumed their attacks on me,' Clark wrote on X-...Twitter, on Wednesday." MB: Do you suppose Clark is working up an insanity defense? (Also linked yesterday.)

Anna Betts, et al., of the New York Times: "The Fulton County Sheriff's Office said Thursday that it was investigating online threats against the grand jurors who voted this week to indict ... Donald J. Trump and 18 others, accusing them of conspiring to overturn Georgia's 2020 election results. The jurors' names are listed early in the sprawling 98-page indictment, as required in Georgia, making the state an outlier among federal and state court systems. [Facebook took down a post that purported to reveal personal info about some of the grand jurors.] On Truth Social, the social media platform founded by Mr. Trump -- who has himself lashed out at prosecutors, judges and private citizens who have sued him -- many users reposted the names. In one response to a list of several jurors, a user urged others to make them 'infamous' and to 'make sure they can't walk down the street.'"

Jesus Jiménez of the New York Times: "A woman was sentenced on Thursday to more than 21 years in prison for mailing letters containing the lethal substance ricin to ... Donald J. Trump and eight Texas law enforcement officials in 2020, the Justice Department said. The woman, Pascale Cecile Veronique Ferrier, 55, of Quebec was sentenced in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. After she completes her prison term, she will be on supervised release for the rest of her life, the Justice Department said in a statement." CNN's report is here.


There's excellent commentary in yesterday's thread on a Fifth Circuit decision to limit access to the abortion drug mifepristone. Commentary centers of Judge James Ho's notion that a central purpose of procreation is to satisfy doctors' right to look at pictures of fetuses and babies. ~~~

     ~~~ Adorable ultrasound photos & baby pictures aside, you may best recall Judge Ho from this photo of his swearing-in in Harlan Crow's palatial library. The swearer-inner? "Justice" Clarence Thomas, who flew down to Dallas for the occasion in Crow's private jet.

Presidential Race 2024

Jonathan Swan, et al., of the New York Times: "Ron DeSantis needs 'to take a sledgehammer' to Vivek Ramaswamy, the political newcomer who is rising in the polls. He should 'defend Donald Trump' when Chris Christie inevitably attacks the former president. And he needs to 'attack Joe Biden and the media' no less than three to five times. A firm associated with the super PAC that has effectively taken over Mr. DeSantis's presidential campaign posted online hundreds of pages of blunt advice, research memos and internal polling in early nominating states to guide the Florida governor ahead of the high-stakes Republican presidential debate next Wednesday in Milwaukee.... Super PACs are barred by law from strategizing in private with political campaigns. To avoid running afoul of those rules, it is not unusual for the outside groups to post polling documents in the open, albeit in an obscure corner of the internet where insiders know to look.... But it is unusual, as appears to be the case, for a super PAC, or a consulting firm working for it, to post documents on its own website...." (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~

     ~~~ Religious Freedom for Me but Not for Thee. Jonathan Swan, et al., of the New York Times: An opposition research memo about the Republican presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy that was written by the super PAC supporting Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida invokes the entrepreneur's Hindu faith and family visits to India. The document's first paragraph, addressing Mr. Ramaswamy's past support for inheritance taxes, draws a link between that policy position and his Hindu upbringing as the son of Indian immigrants. 'Ramaswamy -- a Hindu who grew up visiting relatives in India and was very much ingrained in India's caste system -- supports this as a mechanism to preserve a meritocracy in America and ensure everyone starts on a level playing field,' the document states. Mr. Ramaswamy is the only candidate joining Mr. DeSantis on the debate stage whose national or religious backgrounds were mentioned in any of the documents posted on the Axiom Strategies website." ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: The underlying irony of this criticism is that DeSantis' backers seem to present as a bad thing a religion-based policy position -- ensuring a level playing field -- that is a democratic ideal. Uh, unless you're a Republican. So bigotry AND anti-democratic values.

~~~~~~~~~~

Arkansas. Dana Goldstein of the New York Times: "The Little Rock School District in Arkansas said on Wednesday that it would continue to offer Advanced Placement African American studies, over the objections of the administration of Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, a Republican who has limited instruction on race. The decision comes after the State Department of Education announced on Monday that the course's content might violate a new law banning 'indoctrination' in schools.... 'A.P. African American Studies will allow students to explore the complexities, contributions and narratives that have shaped the African American experience throughout history, including Central High School's integral connection,' the district said.... In 1957, a group of nine Black teenagers, escorted by the U.S. National Guard, integrated Little Rock Central High School as white protesters spit and jeered."

Comments Off

Reader Comments (19)

I have always enjoyed looking at the mock-up pictures of DiJiT in an orange jumpsuit. Would Judge Ho deny me the aesthetic pleasure of seeing that in real life?

August 18, 2023 | Unregistered CommenterPatrick

Sooo…Jeffrey Clark, the Trumpbot bobble head doll who almost became attorney general is being attacked by witches and spirit animal thingies and other creepy crawly things that go bump in the night (including “Ukrainian NPCs, whatever the Christ that is…I started looking it up—some kind of gamer role playing thing, or not—but realized I was wasting precious unrecoverable seconds of my life on something irredeemably stoopid, so…).

*sigh*

Here we go again. Just when you think Republicans can’t get any weirder, stupider, crazier, more violent, more dangerous, more hateful, more bigoted, more more, along comes a Jeffrey Clark.

So, three possibilities, none of them good. One, he really believes this shit, in which case Trump was ready to make a character from “Stranger Things” the AG; two, he’s shooting for an insanity defense, as Marie suggests; three, he’s telling the truth.

Hang on…hahahahahaha…just kidding. These fuckers would go into a coma if they came within three parsecs of the truth,

In any event, even if he’s lying or really believes this shit, we came within a hair of Donald Trump making this buffoon the Attorney General of the United States.

Just think what his cabinet might look like next time around:

Dr. Evil, Lex Luthor, Nurse Ratched, Hannibal Lecter, Norman Bates, Cruella DeVille…

Oh, wait…that was his last cabinet, right?

August 18, 2023 | Unregistered CommenterAkhilleus

I know it's early, and all my thought processes haven't kicked in yet
with only one cup of coffee, but:
"a tranche of 11,500,000 pages of evidence" is too much to process.
Wouldn't that be a pile of papers, like, a half mile high if piled up?
Just think of how many trees had to die for that BS.
And how many hours spent that could have been spent on things
productive instead of that BS.
Time for another cup of coffee.

August 18, 2023 | Unregistered CommenterForrestMorris

Let’s get right to the hangings…

When is rhetoric more than just words? When it spits out of traitor mouths.

Just recently, sex trafficker of underage girls, Matt Gaetz, stood next to the Fat Fascist on a stage in front of screaming droolers and said, flat out, that the only way for the traitors to get what they want is “through force”. Right-wing “pundit” Anne Coulter has been advocating shooting liberals for years. Sniveling little creep Kyle Rittenhouse murdered two protesters in cold blood and is now a revered hero to the right. New Hampshire governor Chris Sununu has declared that America has a problem with political violence “on both sides of the aisle”. No. No, it doesn’t. We have a problem with political violence on the right.

The Public Religion Research Institute, in 2021, said that three times more Republicans than Democrats believe that political violence is perfectly okay. Jan. 6, anyone?

For way too many people, with microphones in front of their pie holes, violence is always the answer.

A moron on BlazeTV, a far-right gibbering media outlet started by Nazi obsessed Glenn Beck, went on a rant recently about what should be done about the “vaccine hoax”: “Forget the trials, let’s go right to the hangings”.

I really hate to spend time deconstructing this crap, but take this apart.

First, it’s taken as a given that vaccines are insidious (specifically the Covid vaccines) and that those suggesting that getting vaccinated is a good idea are pure evil. No proof is required, natch. It’s the “Everyone knows this” canard favored by Faux heroes like TuKKKer KKKarlson. Second, forget a fair trial. “Everyone knows”. Third, the penalty is automatically death by hanging. Understand, at no point does this idiot claim that vaccines killed someone. Nonetheless, hanging is the desired outcome.

So…no proof, no trial, death.

See, this is not just some asshole flapping his lips (although it is that too). This is another assault on the idea of civic life, another sidle closer to authoritarian violence. And this guy isn’t saying “Take them out and kick their asses”, he’s saying “Hang ‘em high.”

And the lizard brains absorb all of these calls to violent action and pretty soon certain members of the right-wing horde hit their absorption point, the tipping point. And then they get the guns.

Right now, grand jury members in Georgia have a target on their backs. And I would be very worried, if I were them, especially ones with families, kids. Because the flood gates are opened.

It’s violence all the time now.

August 18, 2023 | Unregistered CommenterAkhilleus

Let’s get right to the hangings…

When is rhetoric more than just words? When it spits out of traitor mouths.

Just recently, sex trafficker of underage girls, Matt Gaetz, stood next to the Fat Fascist on a stage in front of screaming droolers and said, flat out, that the only way for the traitors to get what they want is “through force”. Right-wing “pundit” Anne Coulter has been advocating shooting liberals for years. Sniveling little creep Kyle Rittenhouse murdered two protesters in cold blood and is now a revered hero to the right. New Hampshire governor Chris Sununu has declared that America has a problem with political violence “on both sides of the aisle”. No. No, it doesn’t. We have a problem with political violence on the right.

The Public Religion Research Institute, in 2021, said that three times more Republicans than Democrats believe that political violence is perfectly okay. Jan. 6, anyone?

For way too many people, with microphones in front of their pie holes, violence is always the answer.

A moron on BlazeTV, a far-right gibbering media outlet started by Nazi obsessed Glenn Beck, went on a rant recently about what should be done about the “vaccine hoax”: “Forget the trials, let’s go right to the hangings”.

I really hate to spend time deconstructing this crap, but take this apart.

First, it’s taken as a given that vaccines are insidious (specifically the Covid vaccines) and that those suggesting that getting vaccinated is a good idea are pure evil. No proof is required, natch. It’s the “Everyone knows this” canard favored by Faux heroes like TuKKKer KKKarlson. Second, forget a fair trial. “Everyone knows”. Third, the penalty is automatically death by hanging. Understand, at no point does this idiot claim that vaccines killed someone. Nonetheless, hanging is the desired outcome.

So…no proof, no trial, death.

See, this is not just some asshole flapping his lips (although it is that too). This is another assault on the idea of civic life, another sidle closer to authoritarian violence. And this guy isn’t saying “Take them out and kick their asses”, he’s saying “Hang ‘em high.”

And the lizard brains absorb all of these calls to violent action and pretty soon certain members of the right-wing horde hit their absorption point, the tipping point. And then they get the guns.

Right now, grand jury members in Georgia have a target on their backs. And I would be very worried, if I were them, especially ones with families, kids. Because the flood gates are opened.

It’s violence all the time now.

August 18, 2023 | Unregistered CommenterAkhilleus

@Forrest Morris: According to Trump's lawyers' filing, the pile "would be a tower of paper stretching nearly 5,000 feet into the sky. That is taller than the Washington Monument, stacked on top of itself eight times, with nearly a million pages to spare."

Trumpy hyperbole notwithstanding, that does not mean that a lonely law clerk has to sit in a windowless room surrounded by piled-high boxes of papers and page through it all one-by-one. Rather, the docs are on computer, and there is software to do much of the sorting.

Moreover, Trump himself has theoretically seen much of what is in those 11MM pages, inasmuch as these are White House docs & his own tweets, for instance. I assume the reason the prosecution doesn't just send over the minuscule percentage of the 11M documents they'll actually produce at trial is that, in theory, there may be related docs among the discovery that are exculpatory. Not that I think there is any piece of evidence that would exculpate the Big Perp.

August 18, 2023 | Registered CommenterMarie Burns

The Little Rock story interests me in part because the news and photos of Central High School's forced school integration remain fresh in my mind even after the passage of nearly seventy years. Not yet in my teens, I knew then it was a momentous moment. And who can forget a southern politician with a name like Orval Faubus (a Democrat of his time).

Now, tho', I wondering about the sequel. Can't imagine an authoritarian Huckabee with God on her side will take this defiance lying down...

August 18, 2023 | Unregistered CommenterKen Winkes

In Mississippi, in this CNN article, a judge declared a mistrial. Two men (father & son, white) are accused of shooting at a FedEx driver (black). The local police failed to declare and provide to both prosecution and defense a video of a police intgerview with the FedEx driver. The defense moved for mistrial, granted by the judge. The prosecution believes that the police indentionally withheld the video to aide the defendants, but the judge said nothing about that possibility. And we wonder why people lose faith in the law.

August 18, 2023 | Unregistered CommenterPatrick

@Ken Winkes & @Patrick: Arkansas is still Arkansas and Mississippi is still Mississippi.

August 18, 2023 | Registered CommenterMarie Burns

His lawyers had to stop the press conference because it would end up being this.

August 18, 2023 | Unregistered CommenterRAS

AnotherGeorgia case
"There’s another 2020 election case percolating in Fulton County: The Georgia State Election Board is suing True the Vote—the group whose “data” makes up the lion’s share of Dinesh D’Souza’s 2000 Mules nonsense.

It’s a pretty wild example of FAFO.

The short version: True the Vote is a Texas-based group, which filed a complaint with Georgia’s State Election Board alleging fraud in the 2020 presidential campaign.

The Georgia State Election Board (we’ll just call it the SEB from here on out) investigated this complaint and found no fraud. So it asked True the Vote to share its evidence.

True the Vote’s response was:

[Nevermind]"

August 18, 2023 | Unregistered CommenterRAS

@RAS: I hadda look up "FAFO." For the un-cognoscenti like me, it's "Fuck Around and Find Out."

August 18, 2023 | Registered CommenterMarie Burns

Which Republican named that tropical storm in the Pacific
Hurricane Hilary. (With one L).
No tropical storm has made landfall in So. Cal. since 1939.
Hilary and Hillary, tough ones.
SOCKS.

August 18, 2023 | Unregistered CommenterForrestMorris

Regarding the idea that a black history course is nothing more than "indoctrination;" when I look back on my mostly 1950's education, it was definitely white history indoctrination except for one 5th grade teacher who read aloud a biography of Toussaint Louverture, the black slave liberator in Haiti. Looking back, I'm still amazed by her. Everything else was all manifest destiny and glorious pioneers and the Cold War. I managed to survive the shocks to my fragile self from learning that it wasn't quite like that. The right must be so afraid that their beliefs will not stand up to any scrutiny so only propaganda is allowed. Just hearing the words Tulsa Massacre or seeing one lynching postcard will sear young white (only white) children for life. It's like the idea that just seeing anyone in drag from
Dustin Hoffman in Tootsie to Bob Hope and Milton Berle will turn children gay. It must be miserable to be fueled by fear, always looking for threats to one's psyche.

August 18, 2023 | Unregistered CommenterDonna

@Donna: "The right must be so afraid that their beliefs will not stand up to any scrutiny so only propaganda is allowed." I think you've got it.

I find the premise behind DeSantolini's idea of "scholarship" to be absolutely ridiculous: trying to hide reality from white children because they will be made "uncomfortable" if they find out white people aren't perfect. Most white children know white adults, so by the time they can read, they've already figured that out. Besides, they watch teevee, play video games, see movies. The action stories and games usually have a fair share of white villains.

So it if isn't the children DeSantolini is trying to protect, um, it must be the parents. And other white adults. And himself. As you write, it's their own beliefs that won't stand up to scrutiny, not the beliefs of long-dead slaveholders or 20th-century racist politicians.

August 18, 2023 | Registered CommenterMarie Burns

@Forrest Morris: The name of Hurricane Hilary caught my attention, too. But it probably wasn't the spelling-challenged Donald Trump who came up with the name. It turns out the World Meteorological Association names hurricanes, and that's a U.N. subsidiary. So they're probably not thinking all that much about U.S. politics.

August 18, 2023 | Registered CommenterMarie Burns

Ken, we often talk about Nixon's Southern Strategy, but it was first test-driven by Barry Goldwater, who had serious conversations around 1962 with Orval Faubus, a Democrat, about forming a United Party of Evil, although they planned to call it something else. Remember that Nixon had lost the 1960 election, and Republicans were fed up with Democrats' ability to attract racist votes with a party that was, at least in some Northern areas, evolving away from racism.

August 18, 2023 | Unregistered CommenterJack Mahoney

My up the road son alerted me to this when I stopped by an hour ago:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/18/us/politics/trump-debate-tucker-carlson.html

Was not surprised. Had long ago concluded the Pretender had skipped all the earlier debates in the previous two presidential election cycles. He showed up but didn't debate. He lied, bullied and bragged.

To debate you have to know something.

August 18, 2023 | Unregistered CommenterKen Winkes

The rich are different from you and me

"The richest tenth of U.S. households are responsible for 40% of all the nation's greenhouse gas emissions, a [PLOS Climate] study published Thursday revealed

The study's findings are consistent with research published in 2021 by the Institute for European Environmental Policy and the Stockholm Environment Institute that estimated the wealthiest 1% of humanity was on track to produce 16% of all global CO2 emissions by 2030. Additionally, a 2022 Oxfam report found that a single billionaire produces a million times more carbon emissions than the average person.

Then there were "super-emitters" with extremely high overall greenhouse gas emissions, corresponding to about the top 0.1% of households. About 15 days of emissions from a super-emitter was equal to a lifetime of emissions for someone in the poorest 10% in America."

August 18, 2023 | Unregistered CommenterRAS
Comments for this entry have been disabled. Additional comments may not be added to this entry at this time.