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

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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."

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Monday
Oct092023

The Conversation -- October 10, 2023

** Michael Gold & Grace Ashford of the New York Times: Federal prosecutors on Tuesday filed a significant array of new charges against Representative George Santos of New York, accusing him of new criminal schemes, including stealing the identities and credit cards of donors to his campaign. The new accusations were made in a 23-count superseding indictment that laid out how Mr. Santos had charged his donors' credit cards 'repeatedly, without their authorization,' distributing the money to his and other candidates' campaigns and to his own bank account. The new indictment filed in the Eastern District of New York added 10 charges against Mr. Santos: conspiracy to commit offenses against the United States, wire fraud, aggravated identity theft, access device fraud, false statements to the Federal Election Commission and falsifying records to obstruct the commission." Politico's story is here.

Aamer Madhani, et al., of the AP: "President Joe Biden on Tuesday condemned the militant group Hamas for 'sheer evil' for its shocking multipronged attack on Israel launched from the Gaza Strip that has killed hundreds of civilians, including at least 14 American citizens. Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris spoke by phone earlier on Tuesday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to discuss the situation on the ground." The Washington Post story is here.

Kyle Cheney & Josh Gerstein of Politico: "Georgia prosecutors say a key Trump campaign legal adviser's memos -- which guided efforts to subvert the 2020 election despite ... Donald Trump's defeat -- cannot be shielded by attorney-client privilege because they were about politics, not law. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis argued Tuesday that the memos by Ken Chesebro, one of 18 defendants charged alongside Trump in a sprawling racketeering conspiracy related to the 2020 election, were not about a litigation strategy or legal advice, which would typically be protected by confidentiality rules.... Willis' argument hewed closely to the rulings of a federal judge in California, who found that many of [John] Eastman's emails in the aftermath of the 2020 election were not subject to attorney-client privilege because of their political character -- or because they were shared with non-lawyers and lost their confidentiality. That judge, U.S. District Judge David Carter, also found that some of Eastman's emails would be disclosed to the House Jan. 6 select committee because they constituted evidence of a likely conspiracy between Eastman and Trump."

Aaron Blake of the Washington Post: "While arguing against the motion by [Donald] Trump's lawyers to delay the May 20 trial, special counsel Jack Smith's lawyers ... said they are ready to prove ... why Trump allegedly took and kept [classified] documents.... The government apparently thinks it knows 'what Trump intended' with the documents.... Smith's team has clearly shown an interest in whether Trump used the documents for his personal advantage."

Mark Landler of the New York Times: "Donald J. Trump has claimed in a lawsuit in a London court that Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence officer, inflicted 'personal and reputational damage and distress' on him by leaking a dossier detailing unsavory, unproven accounts of links between him and Russia during the 2016 presidential campaign. Lawyers for Mr. Trump argue that Mr. Steele's firm, Orbis Business Intelligence, breached British data protection laws with the dossier, which triggered a political earthquake when it was published just before Mr. Trump's inauguration in 2017. The lawsuit, the first filed by Mr. Trump in Britain related to the dossier, could offer the former president more favorable legal terrain than the United States. Last year, a federal judge in Florida threw out his lawsuit claiming that Mr. Steele, as well as Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee, was involved in a concerted plot to spread false information about Mr. Trump's ties to Russia.' ~~~

~~~ MEANWHILE. Adam Liptak of the New York Times: "Justice Clarence Thomas renewed his call on Tuesday for the Supreme Court to reconsider New York Times v. Sullivan, the landmark 1964 ruling interpreting the First Amendment to make it more difficult for public officials to prevail in libel suits. Justice Thomas wrote that the decision had no basis in the Constitution as it was understood by the people who drafted and ratified it. He added, quoting an earlier opinion, that it 'comes at a heavy cost, allowing media organizations and interest groups "to cast false aspersions on public figures with near impunity."' Justice Thomas has been the subject of a series of news reports raising questions about whether he had violated ethics rules.... Justice Thomas's latest opinion came in a case brought by Don Blankenship, a former coal company executive and Senate candidate in West Virginia. He sued several news organizations for calling him a felon after he was convicted of conspiracy, a misdemeanor, in connection with the aftermath of a mine explosion." A related NBC News story, which concentrates on Blankenship's failed suit, is here.

North Carolina. Patrick Marley of the Washington Post: "North Carolina Republican lawmakers on Tuesday overrode the Democratic governor's veto of a bill that overhauls who runs elections and achieves a long-sought goal of the state's GOP. The legislation creates bipartisan boards that could deadlock on establishing early voting locations or certifying results in a state that may prove crucial in next year's presidential election. Democrats and election experts warn the changes risk creating dysfunction in 2024, with Gov. Roy Cooper saying they 'could doom our state's elections to gridlock and severely limit early voting.'"

Emma Farge & Gabrielle Tétrault-Farber of Reuters: "Russia failed in its bid to return to the United Nations' top human rights body on Tuesday, with rivals winning considerably more votes at the General Assembly in an election seen as a key test of Western efforts to keep Moscow isolated. In the secret ballot, Russia won 83 votes versus 160 for Bulgaria and 123 for Albania, which had competed against it in the same eastern Europe grouping for two seats on the Geneva-based Human Rights Council for a three-year term beginning on Jan. 1.... A U.N.-mandated investigative body said in March that Russia had committed a wide range of war crimes in Ukraine such as wilful killings, torture and the deportation of children."

~~~~~~~~~~

Charlie Savage of the New York Times: "President Biden met over the past two days with Robert K. Hur, the special counsel investigating how classified documents improperly ended up at Mr. Biden's home and an office he used after leaving the vice presidency, the White House disclosed on Monday. 'The voluntary interview was conducted at the White House over two days, Sunday and Monday, and concluded Monday,' Ian Sams, a White House spokesman, said in a statement.... The interview raises the possibility that Mr. Hur is nearing the end of his investigation, which the Justice Department began after Mr. Biden's lawyers reported that they had found several classified documents mixed in with other papers in a storage closet while packing up an office at a Washington think tank, the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement." Read on. Savage contrasts President Biden's cooperation with a special counsel to Trump's obstruction of everybody. CNN's report is here.

Yasmeen Abutaleb, et al., of the Washington Post: "The White House is considering a move to attach Ukraine funding to a request for urgent aid to Israel, according to several people familiar with the deliberations, in the hopes that such a pairing would increase the chance that Congress would approve aid to Kyiv despite growing opposition from House Republicans. No final decisions have been made on whether to link the requests.... One ... [White House official] said such a move could make sense because it 'jams the far right,' which is firmly opposed to more Ukraine aid but strongly supportive of aid to Israel." The NBC News story is here.

Republicans in Disarray, Ctd. Marianna Sotomayor & Maegan Vazquez of the Washington Post: "House Republicans are settling in for what many expect to be a drawn-out and contentious fight for the speaker's gavel this week, with simmering internal conflicts muddying the path forward for the two declared candidates.... Republicans returned to the Capitol on Monday under increased pressure to coalesce around a leader so that the House can begin work to provide aid to Israel.... Republican lawmakers met Monday evening to discuss the week ahead and air lingering grievances from last week's upheaval. It was a relatively staid meeting, according to lawmakers in attendance, but there was no clear consensus on the timing for choosing a leader. Republicans will hold a candidate forum Tuesday and internal votes to nominate a speaker starting Wednesday morning." CNN's report, by Manu Raju & others, is here. A Politico report is here. ~~~

~~~ Luke Broadwater of the New York Times: "Former Speaker Kevin McCarthy floated the possibility on Monday that he might be open to reclaiming the post from which he was ousted less than a week ago, even as two other Republicans vied to replace him in a contest that has highlighted the party's deep divisions. With the House rudderless and paralyzed following Mr. McCarthy's removal last week, the California Republican worked to project normalcy and leadership in the face of the war unfolding in Israel.... He summoned reporters to the Capitol to lay out a plan to defend Israel and rescue American captives. The appearance had all the trappings of the job he just lost; Mr. McCarthy spoke from behind a podium in the Rayburn Room, where the speaker often holds official ceremonies, and used the language of a party leader during a crisis."

David Pierson & Vivian Wang of the New York Times: "China's top leader, Xi Jinping, met with Senator Chuck Schumer, the majority leader, in Beijing on Monday and expressed hopes of 'peaceful coexistence' between China and the United States, even as escalating violence in the Middle East threatens to deepen a wedge between the two powers.... Mr. Xi's amicable tone is likely to increase expectations that he will attend the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation gathering in San Francisco in November and meet with President Biden. Doing so would cap a tumultuous year for U.S.-China relations that reached a low in February after the discovery of a Chinese surveillance balloon over the United States."

Smith Alleges Trump Team Is Lying Again. Matt Naham of Law & Crime: "Special counsel Jack Smith urged the federal judge presiding over Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago willful retention of classified information prosecution to reject 'distorted and exaggerated' arguments about access to classified discovery and deny the former president's bid to push the case past the 2024 election. In the Monday filing, Smith said that U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, should deny the bid to delay trial until after the election just as she did months before when setting trial for May 20, 2024.... 'To be sure, the extreme sensitivity of the special measures documents that Trump illegally retained at Mar-a-Lago presents logistical issues unique to this case,' the special counsel said in one part of his opposition to the Trump-requested trial adjournment. 'But the defendants' allegations that those logistical impediments are the fault of the SCO are wrong.'"

Jonathan O'Connell & Shayna Jacobs of the Washington Post: "... documents [prepared by New York Attorney General Letitia James] show how accounting, banking and real estate experts repeatedly informed [Donald] Trump how much his properties and businesses were really worth. But over and over again, the documents reveal that Trump, his adult sons and top executives allegedly ignored or sidelined those experts, exchanging their figures for numbers from another source: Trump's own intuition.... The civil trial against Trump's business that on Tuesday enters its second week threatens to reveal the internal workings of Trump's business in never-before-revealed detail.... A Forbes journalist asked him that year why he cared so much -- why had he gone to such great lengths to inflate his wealth? 'It was good for financing,' Trump said. Therein lies the crux of James's case: that Trump used his inflated financial statements to obtain preferential treatment from banks and insurers, conduct that she argues violates state law due to its 'capacity or tendency to deceive, or creates an atmosphere conductive to fraud.'" ~~~

~~~ Michael Sisak of the AP: "As Donald Trump's longtime finance chief, Allen Weisselberg helped spare the former president's real estate empire from its last existential threat, staving off insolvency after casino bankruptcies and an airline failure in the 1990s. Now, after a recent jail stint for tax fraud, Weisselberg is front and center again -- set to testify Tuesday in the civil trial in New York Attorney General Letitia James' fraud lawsuit against Trump and his company, the Trump Organization. Weisselberg, also a defendant in the lawsuit, is expected to testify about his role in preparing Trump's annual financial statements -- including conversations they had while finalizing the documents, which were given to banks, insurers and others to make deals and secure loans.

Ron Dicker of the Huffington Post, reprinted in Yahoo! News: "... on Monday..., [Donald Trump] found time to rant about Forbes omitting him from its list of the nation's 400 richest people last week. The 'very badly failing, Forbes "Magazine," which lost most of its relevance long ago, and which knows less about me than Stormy Daniels (who doesn't know me at all!) or Rosie O'Donnell, took me off their Fake Forbes 400 list, just by a "whisker," even though they know that I should be high up on that now very dated and discredited "antique'"' Trump wrote on Truth Social. The ex-president worked in attacks on New York Attorney General Letitia James, accused Forbes of participating in 'the Election Interference Scam.'..."

Presidential Race 2024

Bobby's Vanity Project, Ctd. Rebecca O'Brien of the New York Times: "In a move that could alter the dynamics of the 2024 election, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said on Monday that he would continue his presidential run as an independent candidate, ending his long-shot pursuit of the Democratic nomination against an incumbent president. Speaking to a crowd of supporters outside the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, Mr. Kennedy, a leading vaccine skeptic and purveyor of conspiracy theories, said he represented 'a populist movement that defies left-right division.... 'The Democrats are frightened that I'm going to spoil the election for President Biden, and the Republicans are frightened that I'm going to spoil it for Trump,' he said. 'The truth is, they're both right. My intention is to spoil it for both of them.'" CNN's report is here. ~~~

~~~ Michael Scherer of the Washington Post: "Attorney Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s pivot Monday to an independent run for president met immediate resistance from Republican leaders, who have concluded that his new effort threatens to cannibalize their vote share next year, helping to reelect President Biden. The Republican National Committee greeted his announcement with a press release that described Kennedy as 'just another radical, far-left Democrat,' with a number of talking points that could be used by the expansive network of conservative commentators who tend to take messaging cues from the party." An AP story is here.

Anjali Huynh of the New York Times: "Will Hurd, a Republican former congressman from Texas who was once seen as a rising star in the G.O.P., announced on Monday that he would suspend his campaign for president. He endorsed Nikki Haley, the former U.N. ambassador and governor of South Carolina."


Neal Boudette of the New York Times: "Nearly 4,000 members of the United Automobile Workers union went on strike against Mack Trucks on Monday after rejecting a tentative contract that union's leaders had worked out with the company. The union informed the truck maker on Sunday that members had opposed the contract by a 73 percent vote, and that a strike would begin at Mack's factories in Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Florida."

Jaclyn Peiser of the Washington Post: "Thousands of Walgreens pharmacy staff across the country are walking off work this week, alleging that poor working conditions are putting employees and patients at risk. The walkout could impact hundreds of stores starting Monday and going through Wednesday.... Pharmacists, technicians and support staff claim that increased demands on understaffed teams -- such as administering vaccines while battling hundreds of backlogged prescriptions -- have become untenable and are impeding their ability to do their jobs responsibly."

John Koblin of the New York Times: "Hollywood film and TV writers voted overwhelmingly to approve a new three-year contract with the major entertainment studios, the Writers Guild of America said on Monday, formally bringing to a close a bitter five-month labor dispute. During the one-week voting period, more than 8,500 writers submitted ballots, and the contract was ratified with 99 percent of the vote, according to the Writers Guild, which represents more than 11,000 screenwriters."

~~~~~~~~~~

Vermont. A Battery in Every Garage. Ivan Penn of the New York Times: "... a Vermont utility ... wants to install batteries at most homes to make sure its customers never go without electricity. The company, Green Mountain Power, proposed buying batteries, burying power lines and strengthening overhead cables in a filing with state regulators on Monday. It said its plan would be cheaper than building a lot of new lines and power plants. The plan is a big departure from how U.S. utilities normally do business. Most of them make money by building and operating power lines that deliver electricity from natural gas power plants or wind and solar farms to homes and businesses. Green Mountain -- a relatively small utility serving 270,000 homes and businesses -- would still use that infrastructure but build less of it by investing in television-size batteries that homeowners usually buy on their own.... Green Mountain's plan builds on a program it has run since 2015 to lease Tesla home batteries to customers."

~~~~~~~~~~

Israel/Palestine

Patrick Kingsley & Jin Yu Young of the New York Times: "Israel regained control over the towns near Gaza after days of fighting gunmen who had rushed across the border facing little resistance, the country's military said Tuesday morning.... The military is preparing for the next phase of the war, mobilizing 360,000 reservists, the most ever, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and military officials say they will now focus on destroying Hamas.... Facing one of the gravest crises in its history, Israel is turning to the United States for more weapons, asking for precision-guided munitions for combat aircraft and interceptors for its Iron Dome missile defense system." This is the top, pinned article of a liveblog. ~~~

     ~~~ The AP's live updates are here. CNN's live updates are here.

Arlette Saenz, et al., of CNN: “Eleven US citizens have died in the conflict in Israel, President Joe Biden said Monday, and an unknown number remain missing. 'As we continue to account for the horrors of the appalling terrorist assault against Israel this weekend and the hundreds of innocent civilians who were murdered, we are seeing the immense scale and reach of this tragedy,' Biden said in a statement. 'Sadly, we now know that at least 11 American citizens were among those killed -- many of whom made a second home in Israel.' It is 'likely,' Biden said, that American citizens may be among those being held hostage by Hamas, and that his administration is working with Israeli officials on 'every aspect of the hostage crisis.' Biden also noted that there are American citizens whose whereabouts remain unaccounted for. 'This is not some distant tragedy. The ties between Israel and the United States run deep,' he said. 'It is personal for so many American families who are feeling the pain of this attack as well as the scars inflicted through millennia of antisemitism and persecution of Jewish people.'" (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~

     ~~~ The New York Times story is here. President Biden's full statement, via the White House, is here.

President Biden also released a joint statement with President Macron of France, Chancellor Scholz of Germany, Prime Minister Meloni of Italy & Prime Minister Sunak of the U.K., "express[ing] our steadfast and united support to the State of Israel, and our unequivocal condemnation of Hamas and its appalling acts of terrorism." Via the White House. President Biden will speak about the attacks at 1:00 pm ET today.

Monica Alba, et al., of NBC News: "The White House has been working urgently in the past 24 hours to get a Senate confirmation process in motion for President Joe Biden's nominee to be U.S. ambassador to Israel, according to two White House officials. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee is now expected to hold a confirmation hearing for Jack Lew, a former Treasury secretary and White House chief of staff during the Obama administration, as early as Oct. 18, according to three people familiar with the plans. Biden nominated Lew more than a month ago. The Senate is not in session this week. But the White House officials said they hope lawmakers in both parties will agree with the president on the need to quickly confirm Lew amid the war between Israel and Hamas."

Joby Warrick, et al., of the Washington Post: "The Palestinian militants behind the surprise weekend attack on Israel began planning the assault at least a year ago, with key support from Iranian allies who provided military training and logistical help as well as tens of millions of dollars for weapons, current and former Western and Middle Eastern intelligence officials said Monday. While Iran's precise role in Saturday's violence remained unclear, the officials said, the assault reflected Tehran's years-long ambition to surround Israel with legions of paramilitary fighters armed with increasingly sophisticated weapons systems capable of striking deep inside the Jewish state. Hamas, the Gaza-based Palestinian militant organization that led the attack, has historically maintained a degree of independence from Tehran compared with true Iranian proxy groups such as the Lebanese-based Hezbollah. But in recent years, Hamas has benefited from massive infusions of Iranian cash as well as technical help for manufacturing rockets and drones with advanced guidance systems, in addition to training in military tactics -- some of which occurred in camps outside Gaza, the officials said."

David Gilbert of Wired: "While all major world events are now accompanied almost instantly by a deluge of disinformation aimed at controlling the narrative, the scale and speed at which disinformation was being seeded about the Israel-Hamas conflict is unprecedented -- particularly on X.... Rather than being shown verified and fact-checked information, X users were presented with video game footage passed off as footage of a Hamas attack and images of firework celebrations in Algeria presented as Israeli strikes on Hamas. There were faked pictures of soccer superstar Ronaldo holding the Palestinian flag, while a three-year-old video from the Syrian civil war repurposed to look like it was taken this weekend.... While some later featured a note from X's decimated community fact-checking system, many more remained untouched. And as Elon Musk has repeatedly done in recent incidents, the platform's CEO made the situation much worse.... The accounts Musk referenced [as 'good' sources] are well-known spreaders of disinformation.... Musk deleted his recommendation soon after posting it, but not before it was viewed over 11 million times." ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: I am still mystified as to why anyone would trust any social media outlets as news sources.

Comments Off

Reader Comments (3)

As the quotidian cluster fuck that is the Republican Party gets set for another circular firing squad surrounding the empty Speaker’s chair,
Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), finds herself third in the line of succession, the position normally held by an elected Speaker of the House.

Despite the fact that there is a Speaker Pro Tem (Patrick McHenry, the sniveling little prick who, in his first official act, booted Nancy Pelosi out of her office) Brian Kalt, who teaches Constitutional Law at Michigan, says third in line is now Murray, not McHenry:

“‘…the Succession Act of 1947, when it talks about the speaker, is talking about an elected speaker,’ Kalt told TPM. ‘Someone that the House has chosen as speaker, not someone who is just temporarily occupying the chair.’

There is a clear difference between a Speaker and a Speaker pro tempore, Kalt said. In simple words, one is elected by the House of Representatives and the other is occupying the vacant chair.

‘The Constitution says you have to be an officer to be in the line of succession. And the argument is that officers of the United States and members of Congress are specifically separate categories,’ Kalt explained. ‘The Constitution also says that the House chooses the speaker and its other officers. So if they haven’t chosen this person, then Speaker Pro Temp is not an officer.’”

All of which serves as a reminder that at some point, third in line to succeed the president could either be a KKK PoS or an insurrectionist thug.

Happy days.

October 10, 2023 | Unregistered CommenterAkhilleus

Vermont. A battery in every garage: I seem to recall articles about
Tesla battery powered autos advising owners to keep those autos out
of their garage and away from the house because they can explode
for no reason at any time.
So now we can have a Tesla battery to store solar power or store
electricity from the grid to use in case of a power failure. I hope they
will be safer than the auto batteries.
And this little utility company in Vermont has 270,000 customers.
The batteries cost, on average, $10,000.00. That's billions of dollars.
That's even more than Mar-a-Lardo was claimed to be worth by
you-know-who.
Seems to me that natural gas powered home generators are more
practical and probably safer. I don't need one since my neighbor had
one installed and put an outlet on her house near mine that I can plug
into.

October 10, 2023 | Unregistered CommenterForrestMorris

"Vietnam tried to hack U.S. officials, CNN with posts on X, probe finds

Vietnamese government agents tried to plant spyware on the phones of members of Congress, American policy experts and U.S. journalists this year in a brazen campaign that underscores the rapid proliferation of state-of-the-art hacking tools, according to forensic examination of links posted to Twitter and documents uncovered by a consortium of news outlets that includes The Washington Post.

Targeted were two of the most influential foreign policy voices on Capitol Hill: Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Tex.) and Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), a member of the Foreign Relations Committee and chair of its subcommittee on the Middle East."

October 10, 2023 | Unregistered CommenterRAS
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