Sunday
May052024
Cinco de Mayo 2024
What is Cinco de Mayo anyway?
** Gaby Del Valle of the New York Times profiles Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.)
Michael Schwartz, et al., of CNN: "Israel has ordered the closure of Al Jazeera in the country, a move the Qatar-based news network called a 'criminal act.' Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a post on X: 'The government headed by me unanimously decided: the incitement channel Al Jazeera will be closed in Israel.'... In a post on X, [Netanyahu's spokesman] said that the network's 'broadcast equipment will be confiscated, the channel's correspondents will be prevented from working, the channel will be removed from cable and satellite television companies, and Al Jazeera's websites will be blocked on the Internet.' Israeli cable providers ceased carrying the Al Jazeera networks by late Sunday afternoon.... Several of the network's journalists working in Gaza have been injured or killed since October 7."
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Maggie Haberman & Shane Goldmacher of the New York Times: "Fresh from his criminal trial in New York, Donald J. Trump delivered a frustrated and often obscene speech, lasting roughly 75 minutes, at a Republican National Committee donor retreat in Florida on Saturday, attacking one of the prosecutors pursuing him and comparing President Biden's administration to the Nazis. 'These people are running a Gestapo administration,' Mr. Trump told donors who attended the event at Mar-a-Lago.... Before making the comparison, Mr. Trump baselessly insisted that the various indictments against him and his allies in several states were being orchestrated by the Biden administration.... Mr. Trump entered the event to the recording of the national anthem that he made with a group of people arrested in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.... Mr. Trump also mocked the physical appearance of Jack Smith, the special counsel who has indicted him twice. 'He's unattractive both inside and out,' Mr. Trump said. 'This is one unattractive dude.' He then used two expletives to describe Mr. Smith." The NBC News report is here.
Donald Trump Has Been Asking, "Are You Better Off Than You Were Four Years Ago?" Let's Check. Top News in the New York Times, May 5, 2020: "As President Trump presses states to reopen their economies, his administration is privately projecting a steady rise in coronavirus infections and deaths over the next several weeks, reaching about 3,000 daily deaths on June 1 -- nearly double the current level."
Maegan Vazquez of the Washington Post: "The D.C. Court of Appeals has temporarily suspended John Eastman's law license after a similar decision in California, which did so over his role in a legal strategy to help Donald Trump stay in power after his 2020 election loss.... Anna Blackburne-Rigsby, chief judge of the D.C. Court of Appeals, wrote in an order filed Friday that Eastman's license is suspended in D.C. until there's a final decision in the California proceeding. Eastman also faces potential disbarment in D.C.; that challenge to his license is also on hold during the California litigation." ~~~
~~~ Marie: It occurs to me that the Trumpist lawyers who are getting their licenses suspended don't have much recourse. Even if Trump becomes king, I doubt he can force law bars to reinstate their law licenses.
Maggie Haberman of the New York Times: "Charlie Spies, the Republican National Committee's chief counsel, was pushed out of his new role just two months after taking the job, amid a storm of controversy over conflicts involving other clients at the firm where he still works, according to two people briefed on the matter.... In the last few weeks, the fact that Mr. Spies's firm -- from which he did not take a leave when he accepted the R.N.C. job -- still has ties to [Ron] DeSantis became a particular point of concern for Trump officials, the two people said." ~~~
~~~ The Rest of the Story. Josh Dawsey & Michael Scherer of the Washington Post: "The top lawyer at the Republican Party is resigning after he cited conflicts with his other work obligations and after Donald Trump grew angry about his criticism of the former president's false claims that the 2020 election was stolen, people familiar with the situation said Saturday night. The lawyer, Charlie Spies, is a long-respected GOP election operative who was hired by Trump's top lieutenants in March after the former president engineered a takeover of the Republican National Committee, which in recent years has been the party's main operation in both fundraising and field operations. Trump had approved of the hiring but later learned about additional comments the lawyer had made." MB: I thought Haberman's report was thin. Odd she didn't seem to know about the only thing that matters at the RNC: the mercurial mood swings of Trumplethinskin. All Retribution Roads lead to Trump. ~~~
~~~ The NBC News report is here.
CNN is live-updating developments related to U.S. college campus protests: "Colleges and universities are holding graduation ceremonies this weekend as pro-Palestinian protests continue on campuses across the US. Several schools enhanced security measures as they prepared for commencement. At the University of Michigan, banners with opposing messages flew overhead and some protesters were removed during the school's main graduation ceremony on Saturday. A smaller ceremony held Friday at the school was also interrupted. At the University of Virginia, police took down tents and cleared out protesters Saturday after declaring an unlawful assembly near the center of campus. UVA said 25 people were arrested. The US ambassador to the United Nations will no longer deliver the commencement address at the University of Vermont following calls by protesters for the school to rescind its invitation."
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Ellen Knickmeyer & Russ Bynum of the AP: "A top U.N. official said Friday that hard-hit northern Gaza was now in 'full-blown famine' after more than six months of war between Israel and Hamas and severe Israeli restrictions on food deliveries to the Palestinian territory. Cindy McCain, the American director of the U.N. World Food Program, became the most prominent international official so far to declare that trapped civilians in the most cut-off part of Gaza had gone over the brink into famine. 'It's horror,' McCain told NBC's 'Meet the Press' in an interview to air Sunday. 'There is famine -- full-blown famine -- in the north, and it's moving its way south.'" ~~~
~~~ José Andrés in a Washington Post op-ed: "... barely a month has passed since Israeli forces killed seven of our World Central Kitchen family, despite knowing their location, movements and the nature of their essential work. Our colleagues risked everything to feed people they did not know. Yet ... we cannot stand by while so many people are so desperate for the essentials of life. Food is a universal human right, and we will not cease until those basic human rights are respected. This week, we are restarting our operations at scale: We have 276 trucks, representing almost 8 million meals, ready to enter Gaza through the Rafah crossing in the south. We are also sending trucks from Jordan as we push to distribute food into northern Gaza, where the situation is most dire." outlines the Israel Defense Forces' mistreatment of World Central Kitchen workers and the IDF's failure to provide security.
News Lede
New York Times: "Frank Stella, whose laconic pinstripe 'black paintings' of the late 1950s closed the door on Abstract Expressionism and pointed the way to an era of cool minimalism, died on Saturday at his home in the West Village of Manhattan. He was 87." MB: It wasn't only Stella's paintings that were laconic; he was a man of few words, so when I ran into him at events, I enjoyed "bringing him out." How? I never once tried to discuss art with him.
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Oil price fixing
Alabama
"The Alabama Supreme Court today denied a rehearing request on its most controversial ruling of the year, which granted frozen embryos the status of unborn children under state law."
Food Waste
"A billion meals are wasted every single day, according to a recent report from the United Nations. And that’s a conservative estimate.
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It’s not just food down the drain, but money, too. The 2024 UN Food Waste Index report — which measured food waste at the consumer and retail level across more than 100 countries — found that over a trillion dollars worth of food gets thrown out every year, from households to grocery stores to farms, all across the globe.
Such waste takes a significant toll on the environment. The process of producing food — the raising of animals, the land and water use, and the subsequent pollution that goes with it — is horribly intensive on the planet. Food waste squanders those efforts, and then makes it worse: as it rots in landfills, it creates methane, a powerful greenhouse gas. Food waste alone is responsible for an estimated 8 to 10 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, according to the report. To put that into perspective, if food waste were a country, it would be third in emissions produced, behind only the United States and China."
Netanyahu goes full dictator. Not only shutting down Al Jazeera, but “confiscating” its equipment. Wow. He’s doing everything he can to avoid jail.
The Orange Monster calls Jack Smith “unattractive, inside and out”.
The projection never stops.
As is way too often the case with Trump, the horrible stuff spewing out of a network that pretends to be a news outlet, but is in fact a propaganda toilet—Fox—is given a pass because, well, “It’s Fox, what do you expect?”
But that reaction let’s them (and the Fat Fascist) skate away unscathed and with zero consequences when they say and do completely unconscionable things.
Two Fox idiots, on another Fox idiot’s show (Jesse Watters’ program), opining on the Medal of Freedom awards, attacked the current recipients as undeserving, suggesting that the people who really needed that award were Trump (incipient, freedom hating dictator), and Elon Musk (for his—don’t laugh—support of free speech).
Instead, they said, it would probably go to people like Paul Pelosi. Laughing at that idea, they then went on to declare that what Mr. Pelosi really needs is to be hit with another hammer.
The idea of laughing about a man, who had already been nearly killed in a hammer attack by a Fox imbiber of their hateful propaganda, and should be attacked again in the same way is reprehensible beyond words.
But these are the same assholes who whine about how horrible it is to make the Dear Leader sit in a courtroom, on trial for just some of his many crimes.
But Paul Pelosi? “Hit ‘im again! Get the hammer out! Yeah! Hahaha!”
Jesus Christ!
@Akhilleus: And Trump gave the presidential medal to Rush Limbaugh.
Marie,
QED.