The Commentariat -- Sept. 12, 2020

Late Morning Update:

William Rashbaum & Benjamin Weiser of the New York Times: President Trump's lawyers on Friday accused a federal judge of 'stacking the deck' against Mr. Trump in his long-running fight to block the Manhattan district attorney from getting his tax returns. The assertion came in a legal filing in which Mr. Trump's lawyers asked a federal appeals court to scrap a lower court's decision that would allow the district attorney to obtain the returns and other financial records.... The appeal was the latest turn in a protracted legal battle that began in August 2019, when the office of the district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., a Democrat, issued the subpoena to Mr. Trump's accounting firm seeking eight years of the president's personal and corporate tax returns and other financial records as part of a criminal investigation."

Maureen Dowd reports some anecdotes about Trump's desire to impress the elite journalists he knocks as part of the "fake news," "failing" media elite. "Even though [Bob] Woodward keeps writing books about Trump with titles that sound like Hitchcock horror flicks -- first 'Fear' and now 'Rage' -- Trump somehow thought he could win over the pillar of the Washington establishment.... At least with Nixon, Woodward had to follow the money to expose the venality. With Donald Trump, he simply had to turn on a recorder."

Rosie Gray & Ryan Mack of BuzzFeed News: "Four years ago, billionaire venture capitalist and Facebook board member Peter Thiel made one of his biggest bets: He went all in on Donald Trump ... tying his reputation as one of the most successful figures in modern tech to a presidential candidate despised throughout Silicon Valley.... Even as Thiel staked his reputation on the candidate in public, he met in private with the racist fringe that felt emboldened by Trump's rise to power.... [D]uring the summer of 2016, Thiel hosted a dinner with one of the most influential and vocal white nationalists in modern-day America [Kevin DeAnna] -- a man who has called for the creation of a white ethnostate and played a key role in an effort to mainstream white nationalism as the 'alt-right.'... Thiel emailed the next day to say how much he'd enjoyed his company.... The people he met or had had plans with ... were for a time key figures pushing racist ideology and white nationalism toward a place of greater acceptability within the hard-right world of Trumpism.... Newly uncovered emails seen by BuzzFeed News show white nationalist leaders were chattering about plans with Thiel in the summer of 2016.... Thiel's dinner coincided with the apex of the alt-right movement's influence in mainstream political discourse." --s

Common Dreams in RawStory: "Conservation groups on Friday raised alarm about the Trump administration's push to lift protections for gray wolves across the country after an analysis revealed how a record-breaking 570 wolves, including dozens of pups, were brutally killed in Idaho over a recent one-year period.... Wolves no longer have Endangered Species Act (ESA) protections in Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, and parts of Oregon, Utah, and Washington state but are still protected elsewhere. However, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director Aurelia Skipwith told the Associated Press last week that her agency is 'working hard' to delist wolves nationwide by the end of the year, calling the policy change 'very imminent.'" --s

Bob Brigham of RawStory: "The FBI on Friday denounced numerous false claims that 'extremists' are intentionally setting fires in Oregon, saying the misinformation is hampering efforts to bring devastating wildfires under control.... One of the false claims about Antifa arsonists appears to have originated with Paul Romero Jr, who unsuccessfully ran as a Republican to be one of Oregon's US senators." --s

Lois Beckett & Maanvi Singh of the Guardian: "Most news coverage of the wildfires raging in California, Washington and Oregon on American TV channels made no mention of the connection between the historic fires and climate crisis, according to a new analysis from Media Matters. Reviewing coverage aired over the 5-8 September holiday weekend, the progressive media watchdog group found that only 15% of corporate TV news segments on the fires mentioned the climate crisis. A separate analysis found that during the entire month of August only 4% of broadcast news wildfire coverage mentioned climate crisis.... A consensus of research has made clear that extreme heat and drought fueled by global heating has left the American west tinder-dry and especially vulnerable to runaway fires." --s

Peter Gleick in the Guardian: "My own work on climate and water 35 years ago found that rising temperatures would alter California's snowpack, water availability, and soil moisture in ways we're now seeing in our mountains and rivers.... Projections have turned to reality. The future has arrived. What we're seeing now, with massive wildfires, worsening storms, unprecedented heat, and record droughts and floods is just the beginning of the climate changes to come. On top of rising oceans, the accelerating destruction of the Arctic ice cap, expanding water crises, and new health disasters, these climate impacts are something no human society has ever experienced and for which we remain woefully unprepared." --s

~~~~~~~~~~

Presidential Race, Etc.

Planning Ahead -- What a Concept! Yasmeen Abutaleb & Laurie McGinley of the Washington Post: "Joe Biden has created a war-cabinet-in-waiting on the coronavirus pandemic, with major figures from the Obama, Clinton and George H.W. Bush administrations drafting plans for distributing vaccines and personal protective gear, dramatically ramping up testing, reopening schools and addressing health-care disparities. The effort began six months ago when the campaign consulted David Kessler, a former Food and Drug Administration commissioner under Presidents Bush and Bill Clinton, and Vivek H. Murthy, surgeon general under President Barack Obama, on how to run a presidential campaign during a pandemic. The pair, along with a growing cadre of volunteer health experts, has been working behind the scenes to craft plans that could take effect Jan. 20, when the next president will take the oath of office, said Jake Sullivan, a senior policy adviser on the Biden campaign."

Annie Karni, et al., of the New York Times: "The two presidential contenders put their acrimonious political sparring on hold* on Friday to pay their respects to the Americans killed in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, a pause in an extraordinarily polarizing race in which the candidates have offered drastically different visions on virtually every issue, including what it means to comfort a grieving nation. President Trump offered somber remarks in Shanksville, Pa., honoring those who died on Flight 93, the plane that was hijacked and headed for Washington but instead crashed into a field after passengers fought back. Joseph R. Biden Jr., the Democratic nominee, traveled to New York before visiting Shanksville to commemorate the 19th anniversary of the attacks, speaking with family members of the victims but not making a formal address." ~~~

     ~~~ * Not Quite. Meghan Roos of Newsweek: "... Donald Trump suggested in a new interview with Fox News that... Joe Biden 'probably' uses drugs to amplify his debate performance. Fox News shared a clip of the interview online before its scheduled airtime on Saturday night. 'There's probably, possibly drugs involved. That's what I hear,' Trump told Fox News host Jeanine Pirro." ~~~

~~~ Lia Eustachewich of the New York Post: "Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden and Vice President Mike Pence shared an elbow bump Friday at the annual 9/11 memorial ceremony in New York City. The 2020 presidential ticket foes, each wearing face masks, greeted one another according to coronavirus pandemic protocol and briefly chatted at Ground Zero just before the 19th annual commemoration kicked off. They were among a number of elected officials and dignitaries to attend the event, including Gov. Andrew Cuomo, Mayor Bill de Blasio, NYPD Police Commissioner Dermot Shea, George Pataki, who was governor of New York during 9/11, New York Sens. Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand and New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy." (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~

     ~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: Why didn't Trump go to New York, the city of his birth? Was he afraid of being ambushed by a subpoena-server? Or of being booed? Did he not want to go to his apartment where he would have to look down upon a "Black Lives Matter" street mural? Probably he just thought he'd get more of a campaign boost from going to Shanksville, and unlike Biden, Trump does not have the strength to attend two memorial services.

The Truth Shall Get Ye Ousted. Todd Spangler of the Detroit Free Press: "Kathleen Gray, a longtime political reporter for the Detroit Free Press who now works for the New York Times, said she was removed from ... Donald Trump's Michigan rally on Thursday after tweeting that few in the crowd appeared to be wearing masks. 'First for me: Trump campaign tracked me down from pics i tweeted and escorted me out,' Gray said in a post on Twitter. Earlier she had posted photos of the crowd and said 'Maybe 10% have masks.' National media reported that Trump campaign officials said she was removed from the rally at MBS International Airport in Freeland because she did not have campaign-issued credentials and was working in the general audience area rather than in a designated press area. Gray told Bridge Magazine that she had missed the deadline to get credentials but had tried multiple times to contact the campaign to get them after that and received no response. She acknowledged that she entered the general admission section of the rally because she didn't have the campaign-issued media credentials." (Also linked yesterday.)

Russian Election Interference, Brought to You by Donald Trump. S.V. Date of the Huffington Post: "An anti-Joe Biden conspiracy theory pushed by ... Donald Trump, his personal lawyer and his favorite television network has been labeled Russian interference into the coming U.S. election -- by Trump's own administration.... [Andrii] Derkach had been working with Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani and One America News network, which Trump has come to favor in the past year, to push the falsehood that ... [Biden] acted improperly when, as vice president, he worked to remove a corrupt Ukrainian prosecutor, supposedly to protect a company his son, Hunter, had been working for.... Trump, who was impeached last year for his efforts to extort Ukraine's new president into opening an investigation into Biden, has nevertheless continued to push that conspiracy theory. 'Where is Hunter? -- Where is Hunter? -- I call him "Where is Hunter?"' Trump said at a White House news conference Monday. 'He walked away with a fortune from Ukraine.' His own handpicked Cabinet members, however, on Thursday, issued statements that describe Derkach's work as part of ongoing Russian attempts to sway the outcome of the coming election." As Date's headline writer puts it, "Trump's Own Officials Label His Ukraine Theory As Russian Election Interference." ~~~

~~~ Anna Nemtsova, et al., of the Daily Beast: Rudy Giuliani "and a key Ukrainian ally [Andriy Telizhenko] in their plot to smear Former Vice President Joe Biden have both tried to distance themselves from collaborator Andriy Derkach after he was sanctioned and outed as an 'active Russian agent' by the U.S. Treasury Department.... Giuliani, who worked with Derkach and whose work as Trump's lawyer and top Biden-dirt-digger culminated in his own client's impeachment, told The Daily Beast on Friday that he was no longer in touch with the Russian intelligence asset. Asked if he was going to continue communicating with Derkach, Giuliani -- who has since started working with the Trump 2020 campaign -- simply replied, 'Haven't talk[ed] to him in months.' Asked if this week's news means his friendship and collaborations with Derkach are over, Giuliani tersely responded, 'No idea.'... Although Telizhenko claims not to have been a close ally of Derkach, the pair have a history of working with Giuliani on propagating debunked conspiracy theories about Ukraine's interference in the 2016 presidential election."

Florida. Appeals Court Upholds Racist Florida Poll Tax. Lori Rozsa of the Washington Post: "A federal appeals court on Friday blocked hundreds of thousands of felons in Florida who still owe fines and fees from registering to vote, putting a halt to what was potentially the nation's largest re-enfranchisement of voters in more than 50 years. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit in Atlanta agreed with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) that the payment of fines and fees by ex-felons is part of their 'terms of sentence' and must be satisfied before they can register. The decision comes less than a month before the presidential swing state's Oct. 5 deadline to register to vote for November's general election." Mrs. McC: This is, @ 4:45 pm ET, a fairly incomplete report. There's no link to the decision, no information on who the judges were or if the vote was split. (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~

     ~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: I did two things Tuesday. I voted. And I convinced the IRS that I did not owe them thousands of dollars. But the first was not dependent upon the second. Whether or not I owed the government a bundle made no difference to my right to vote. The same is true for almost every voter. Being in arrears on property taxes or school taxes or traffic fines or state taxes or federal taxes or whatever does not disenfranchise most Americans.

Chutzpah, Corruption. Laziness & Lies

Nicole Wallace of MSNBC pointed out that Donald Trump was obsessed with protecting a federal building in Portland, Oregon, but he has not said word one about protecting Americans from the fires engulfing the West, including Oregon. L.A. Times reporter Eli Stokols said that on Thursday, Trump said he had watched 8 hours of television over the previous 24 hours, yet the governor of Oregon said she could not get through to him about the fires in her state. ~~~

~~~ Carla Marinucci of Politico: "California and the West have been on fire, but ... Donald Trump went more than three weeks without mentioning it. During that time, Trump tweeted, golfed, held news conferences and appeared at campaign rallies. He visited Louisiana in late August after Hurricane Laura killed 27 people, saying he wanted 'to support the great people of Louisiana, it's been a tremendous state for me.' But as wildfires ravaged Western states with a similar number of deaths, Trump waited until Friday night to reference it publicly after coming under growing criticism for his silence. 'THANK YOU to the 28,000+ Firefighters and other First Responders who are battling wildfires across California, Oregon, and Washington,' he wrote. 'I have approved 37 Stafford Act Declarations, including Fire Management Grants to support their brave work....' The Trump administration has behind the scenes approved emergency declarations and pledged federal relief to states trying to contain fast-moving fires. California Gov. Gavin Newsom said he spoke to Trump for 30 minutes Thursday.... Last month, when California was under siege by hundreds of lightning-caused fires, Trump held up the state as an example of liberal excess in a speech to Pennsylvania rallygoers. 'I see again the forest fires are starting,' he told supporters. 'I said, you gotta clean your floors you gotta clean your forests -- there are many, many years of leaves and broken trees and they're like, like, so flammable, you touch them and it goes up.'"

** CDC Pressured to Mimic Trump's Lies about Covid-19. Dan Diamond of Politico: "The health department’s politically appointed communications aides have demanded the right to review and seek changes to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's weekly scientific reports charting the progress of the coronavirus pandemic, in what officials characterized as an attempt to intimidate the reports' authors and water down their communications to health professionals. In some cases, emails from communications aides to CDC Director Robert Redfield and other senior officials openly complained that the agency's reports would undermine ... Donald Trump's optimistic messages about the outbreak, according to emails reviewed by Politico and three people familiar with the situation.... Since Michael Caputo, a former Trump campaign official with no medical or scientific background, was installed in April as the health department's new spokesperson, there have been substantial efforts to align the reports with Trump's statements, including the president's claims that fears about the outbreak are overstated, or stop the reports altogether.... CDC officials have fought back against the most sweeping changes, but have increasingly agreed to allow the political officials to review the reports and, in a few cases, compromised on the wording, according to three people familiar with the exchanges. The communications aides' efforts to change the language in the CDC's reports have been constant across the summer and continued as recently as Friday afternoon."

Imagine you were an alien who landed on planet Earth, and you saw that our planet was afflicted by an infectious disease and that masks were an effective way to prevent the spread. And yet, when you went around, you saw some people not wearing them and some people wearing them. And you tried to figure out why, and it turned out it was their political party. And you would scratch your head and think, 'This is just not a planet that has much promise for the future, if something that is so straightforward can somehow get twisted into decision-making that really makes no sense.' -- NIH Director Francis Collins on CNN Thursday ~~~

~~~ NIH Director Implies Trump Rally Was an Indicator Trump Has Doomed Earth. Alternate Headline: Scientist Discovers Earth's Biggest Asshole. Quint Forgey of Politico: "Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, said Thursday he was 'pretty puzzled' and 'rather disheartened by ... Donald Trump's crowded campaign rally in Michigan -- at which few of the several thousand attendees could be seen wearing face masks and virtually none appeared to be practicing social distancing. In unusually frank remarks during a CNN town hall event focused on the novel coronavirus, the nation's top public health official lamented that commonsense mitigation measures had become politicized and claimed that aliens from far-off worlds viewing Americans' behavior amid the pandemic would conclude that Earth was all but doomed." (Also linked yesterday.)

Rick Wilson & Molly Jong-Fast discuss "The New Abnormal." Daily Beast: "'No American has killed more of their fellow Americans in this country than Donald Trump, except for Robert E. Lee and Jefferson fucking Davis,' [Wilson] says. 'No one has a body count to rival Trump's. He knew it. He knew it was there. He did it. He let it happen. It is the most unbelievable and horrifying outcome that we can imagine.' Molly adds, 'Mike Pence was at a pro-life event the other day. And I was thinking about the irony, right? This administration has killed 100,000 plus plus plus people. And they're talking about embryos. Like, it's almost beyond parody'" (Also linked yesterday.) :

Bill Barr's Bad Day

** Sky Palma of the Raw Story: "Nora Dannehy, a federal prosecutor who is a top aide to U.S. Attorney John H. Durham in his Russia investigation, has quietly resigned from the probe, the Hartford Courant reports. Dannehy's resignation was at least partly out of concern that the investigative team is 'being pressed for political reasons to produce a report before its work is done,' her colleagues tell the Courant." Includes commentary from legal pundits. The Courant report, which is firewalled, is here. (Also linked yesterday.)

Adam Silverman of Balloon Juice reprints a chunk of the Courant report. ~~~

     ~~~ Josh Kovensky of TPM: "... Nora R. Dannehy's ... decision, the [Hartford Courant] says, was at least partly motivated by alleged attempts at speeding up the investigation for political reasons by Attorney General Bill Barr. The report cites colleagues of Dannehy's, who told the paper that, in the Courant's words, she 'has been concerned in recent weeks by what she believed was pressure from Barr -- who appointed Durham -- to produce results before the election.' Citing the same anonymous colleagues, the paper also reports that Dannehy has been considering resignation in recent weeks amid 'concern about politics.' The report offered few specifics about the reasons for Dannehy's concerns. But it notes that other 'Durham associates' believe that Barr has been pressuring him to produce some sort of result before the November election." A breaking CNN story is here. (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~

     ~~~ Update: The Washington Post story, by Devlin Barrett & Matt Zapotosky, is here. A New York Times report, by Charlie Savage & others, is here. ~~~

     ~~~ Former U.S. prosecutor Andrew Weissmann said on MSNBC Friday that Dannehy would have announced the reason for her resignation had it been for, say, personal family considerations, so as not to hurt the investigation. IOW, something is rotten in Connecticut.

** "A Corrupt Political Errand for the President." Jan Wolfe of Reuters: "A retired judge blasted the U.S. Justice Department's plan to drop the criminal case against ... Donald Trump's former national security adviser Michael Flynn as corrupt on Friday and urged the judge presiding over the case to reject the move. John Gleeson, a former trial judge and prosecutor, was named by U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan to argue against the department's stance in the high-profile case in Washington. Critics have accused the department and Attorney General William Barr of going light on Flynn, a Trump ally who twice pleaded guilty in the case to lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russia's former ambassador in Washington. In a court filing, Gleeson said ... the department's effort to [drop the case] was a 'corrupt and politically motivated favor unworthy of our justice system.'... The department unsuccessfully sought to force Sullivan to drop the charges, but an appeals court allowed the judge to consider the matter further." (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~

The government makes virtually no effort to deny or rebut the powerful evidence that its ... motion improperly seeks to place this Court's imprimatur on a corrupt, politically motivated favor for the president's friend and ally. -- John Gleeson, brief re: Michael Flynn case ~~~

     ~~~ Kyle Cheney & Josh Gerstein of Politico: "In an unsparing, 30-page brief, John Gleeson ... suggests that the Justice Department's arguments for letting Flynn off the hook conflict with its positions in other cases -- and even in earlier rounds of the Flynn case itself -- and therefore can only be chalked up to Trump's pressure campaign. Gleeson's brief is here, via Politico. (Also linked yesterday.)

Ryan Reilly of the Huffington Post: "An elected prosecutor [-- John Choi --] who took a role in Donald Trump's presidential commission on law enforcement has resigned, telling Attorney General William Barr that he is concerned the commission was 'intent on providing cover for a predetermined agenda that ignores the lessons of the past' and will issue a final report that 'will only widen the divisions in our nation.' Trump formed the Presidential Commission on Law Enforcement and the Administration of Justice late last October, announcing its formation at the International Association of Chiefs of Polices annual meeting. Trumps order mandated that the commission issue a report within one year ― a deadline that falls just days ahead of the 2020 presidential election. The commission is stacked with members of law enforcement, and the American Civil Liberties Union has questioned whether it is a 'sham commission formed only for the purposes of advancing a Thin Blue Line' law and order agenda.'" The Justice Department & two commission members then trashed Choi.

Trump Treasury Stealing from 9/11 Heroes Fund. Michael McAuliff of the New York Daily News (Sept. 10): "The Trump administration has secretly siphoned nearly $4 million away from a program that tracks and treats FDNY firefighters and medics suffering from 9/11 related illnesses, the Daily News has learned. The Treasury Department mysteriously started withholding parts of payments -- nearly four years ago -- meant to cover medical services for firefighters, emergency medical technicians and paramedics treated by the FDNY World Trade Center Health Program, documents obtained by The News reveal. The payments were authorized and made by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, which oversees the program. But instead of sending the funds to the city, the Treasury started keeping some of the money. 'This was just disappearing,' the program's director, Dr. David Prezant, told The News. 'This is the most amazing thing. This was disappearing -- without any notification.'"

Donna Cassata of the Washington Post: "The chairman of a House committee issued a subpoena Friday to compel Chad Wolf to testify next week after the acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security declined to appear at a hearing on worldwide threats. Rep. Bennie G. Thompson (D-Miss.), chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said the panel had been in contact with the department since June to secure Wolf's testimony along with that of FBI Director Christopher A. Wray and Chris Miller, director of the National Counterterrorism Center.... In a Sept. 8 letter to Thompson, the department's assistant secretary for legislative affairs, Beth Spivey, said Wolf's appearance before the committee would be inappropriate as officials formally nominated typically do not testify to Congress before they have been confirmed by the Senate. Wolf was installed to run the department about 10 months ago on an interim basis, a move that a government watchdog has called unlawful. Trump formally nominated Wolf Thursday." ~~~

~~~ Mark Hosenball of Reuters: "The Senate intelligence committee is investigating a whistleblower complaint filed by a former top U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) official alleging he was pressed to skew official intelligence reports for political purposes, according to a letter seen by Reuters. Senators Marco Rubio and Mark Warner, the committee's Republican acting chair and Democrat vice chair, wrote to DHS deputy general counsel Joseph Maher on Thursday, saying they had received the complaint and asking for related documents. Brian Murphy, who until recently was acting chief of DHS' intelligence and analysis (I&A) office, alleged in the complaint that acting DHS chief Chad Wolf asked him to stop providing assessments on Russian election interference and to play down U.S. white supremacist activity." ~~~

~~~ Zolan Kanno-Youngs & Adam Goldman of the New York Times profile Brian Murphy the DHS whistleblower who is scheduled to testify before House committees in the coming weeks regarding his complaint that he was ordered to "play down the primary national security threats of white supremacy and Russian election interference, thus distorting intelligence to mirror President Trump's messaging." Murphy is, according to the report, a loose cannon.

The Trumpidemic, Ctd.

The New York Times' live updates of coronoavirus developments Saturday are here: "The United States should not expect a return to regular life until 'well into 2021, maybe even towards the end of 2021,' Dr. Anthony S. Fauci ... said on Friday.... I have to disagree,' Dr. Fauci said of Mr. Trump's read on the situation. 'We're plateauing at around 40,000 cases a day, and the deaths are around 1,000.'"

The New York Times' live updates of coronoavirus developments Friday are here.

DHS Caused Virginia Covid-19 Outbreak as Part of Effort to Police D.C. Protests. Antonio Olivo & Nick Miroff of the Washington Post: "The Trump administration flew immigrant detainees to Virginia this summer to facilitate the rapid deployment of Homeland Security tactical teams to quell protests in Washington, circumventing restrictions on the use of charter flights for employee travel, according to a current and a former U.S. official. After the transfer, dozens of the new arrivals tested positive for the novel coronavirus, fueling an outbreak at the Farmville, Va., immigration jail that infected more than 300 inmates, one of whom died.... A former ICE official who learned about [the travel arrangements] from other personnel, said the primary reason for the June 2 transfers was to skirt rules that bar ICE employees from traveling on the charter flights unless detainees are also aboard. The transfers took place over the objections of ICE officials in the Washington field office, according to testimony at a Farmville town council meeting in August, and at a time when immigration jails elsewhere in the country had plenty of beds available because of a dramatic decrease in border crossings and in-country arrests." (Also linked yesterday.)

About Trump's Article II. Jim Tankersley of the New York Times: "More than a month after Mr. Trump signed an executive memorandum to defer the collection of the payroll taxes that workers pay to help fund Social Security, few companies or people are taking part. Trade groups and tax experts say they know of no large corporations that plan to stop withholding employees' payroll taxes this fall. As a result, economic policy experts now say they expect the deferral to have little to no effect on economic growth this year. The fizzling of the payroll plan is the most prominent example of the difficulties Mr. Trump has encountered in trying to stimulate the economy while bypassing Congress. Another of his executive actions, to repurpose disaster funds to create a temporary lift in unemployment benefits, has quickly lost steam: Federal officials told states this week that the benefits would run out after six weeks for workers. Still, Mr. Trump has told reporters he believes he has the power to do more on his own, and might try to if Congress does not approve new stimulus."

Michael Crowley & David Halbfinger of the New York Times: "President Trump announced on Friday that Bahrain would establish full diplomatic relations with Israel, following the United Arab Emirates, in another sign of shifting Middle East dynamics that are bringing Arab nations closer to Israel. Mr. Trump announced the news on Twitter, releasing a joint statement with Bahrain and Israel and calling the move 'a historic breakthrough to further peace in the Middle East.' Speaking to reporters, the president said the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks was a fitting day for the announcement. 'There's no more powerful response to the hatred that spawned 9/11,' he said.... The deal, which isolates the Palestinians, comes as Mr. Trump tries to position himself as a peacemaker before the elections in November."

Alex Horton of the Washington Post: Army First Sgt. Thomas P. "Payne, now a sergeant major, received the highest award for valor, the Medal of Honor, in a White House ceremony Friday for his role in the operation to free about 70 captives [from ISIS], a mission in which he led many out of the compound and went back in for one last man.... The Army has said the mission was one of the largest hostage rescue operations in history. It was partially captured on the helmet camera of a Kurdish soldier, which shows Payne in a doorway leading a stream of captives out before going back to look for other survivors."

Kate Conger, et al., of the New York Times: "Officials dealing with catastrophic fires on the West Coast have had to counter social media rumors that the blazes were set by antifascist activists, publicly pleading that people verify information before sharing it. Despite their efforts, misinformation about the origin of the fires -- which have killed at least 15 people and consumed millions of acres -- continues to spread on Facebook and Twitter. Several law enforcement agencies in Oregon said they had been flooded with inquiries about rumors that activists were responsible. On Thursday, several journalists reporting on fires near the city of Molalla, Ore., said they had been confronted by a group of armed people who were worried about unverified reports of arsonists in the area." A CNN story is here. (Also linked yesterday.)

News Ledes

New York Times: "A 36-mile-wide line of flames edged into the towns around Portland, Ore., and cities along the West Coast were smothered in acrid smoke and ash on Friday as history-making wildfires remained unchecked, killing at least 17 and leaving dozens of people missing. 'We are preparing for a mass fatality incident based on what we know and the numbers of structures that have been lost,' Andrew Phelps, director of the Oregon Office of Emergency Management, said as firefighters struggled to contain blazes that have spread across millions of acres of the Pacific Northwest." ~~~

~~~ The New York Times' live updates of West Coast wildfire developments are here.

Comments

[NiskyGuy]

When the Justice Department pursues actions to benefit one party or person, rather than the ideals of our country, we have lost the most admired quality of our country.

[unwashed]

George Conway reads from the DSM-5 to tick off the ways OM fits a NPD diagnosis in the film UNFIT.

[Bobby Lee]

An added burden in the Florida felons case is that there is no central record file of fines and fees owed. They have to deal with the 67 counties, with varying record keeping systems, many of which have no idea what these people owe, if anything.

[PD Pepe]

Roger Cohen, one of my favorite NYT's journalist, has recovered from an awful bout with the Corona virus. He can now smell, taste and begin to feel like his old self. But the thing that he calls a "mixed blessing" is the return of his memory because it turns back to familiar obsessions like Trump's ego which he describes in telling detail.

He ends by stating that a second Trump term may not survive without disaster nor will the oldest democracy on earth. That, too, has been my fear as I see it wobbly and beginning to need a cane made of sturdy stuff that will not easily break.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/11/opinion/trump-lies-military-coronavirus.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage

[Bobby Lee]

Trump can accuse Vance of stacking the deck, but he's the one who cut the cards. Now he doesn't like the cards he was dealt but one thing this game doesn't have is a mulligan.

Got a feeling those records are going to smell worse than lutefisk when we finally see them.

[Whyte Owen]

Politicians and journalists are making a well-intentioned but naive and, in the present political climate, counterproductive mistake of linking our fires to climate change. While it may contribute in the long run, this paper:

https://www.sierraforestlegacy.org/Resources/Conservation/FireForestEcology/FireScienceResearch/FireHistory/FireHistory-Stephens07.pdf

illustrates how much more complex the issue is. Unfortunately there are no data for estimates on prehuman fires. The American West has a long history of megadroughts, during which fires have ensued. That said, I noted in the paper that crown fires were not common prehistorically, and remain uncommon in climax forests. While fire suppression has been a factor, the problem has roots in the 17th century, when colonial kahunas granted vast tracts of looted and de-peopled land to those with connexions, later subdivided to later arrivals with connexions, who became the timber barons, railroad barons, oil barons, and so on, who deforested all but a tithe or less of the Northwest. Still today robber barons own or control 100's of 1000's of looted land, which they continue to log (Fisher, head of the Gap group, "owns" almost a half million acres of Mendocino and Humboldt counties, and the Koch bros' abandoned lumber mills have yielded one of the largest superfund site in California). Save the sacred cow of property rights, we'd have far fewer catastrophic fires. Or wooden houses. I cringe every time I hear or read "living lightly on the land," a mantra in our neck of the woods. Puleeze.

[Ken Winkes]

Short aftertnoon report from the Washinhgton West.

Have a friend on a farm south of Spokane, near where that small community was destroyed by fire earlier week.

Sent him a mail and told him to keep his damn smoke.

He told me today that while the fires have not approached him (he lives in the middle of wheat, soybean and lentil fields) the smoke is intense and he has been without power for a number of days. Had to put a generator on a credit card to keep the refrigeraors and freezers working; then, unplug one refrigerator to plug in the wi-fi so he could respond briefly to my churlish greeting and get back to work hauling water for the animals, since the pump is without power too.

I must have really pissed him off, since we have even more smoke today here one the west side next to Puget Sound, that mixed with eerily still, damp air this morning obscured the sun to no more than a dim, pinkish blur.

To someone else, I put it this way:

Today’s light has an appropriately apocalyptic orange cast, since we're living in the shadow of the (not original to me. Was it Akhilleus?) Orange Menace.

[unwashed]

@Bobby Lee, lutefisk would be mild. It'll be more like surströmming.

[Bobby Lee]

@unwashed: I'll take your word for it, never have encountered the stuff. Whatever it smells like, it's gotta be rotten the way he's fighting to keep it hidden.

[unwashed]

Corrected link.

For those not aware, lutefisk is a Scandinavian dish of dried salted cod that is reconstituted using lye and then boiling it in multiple rinses of water, resulting in a gelatinous whitish mass. I've gone to dinners sponsored by Norwegian Lutheran churches where you'd get plates of lutefisk and potato lefse.

I've never tried surstromming, but have seen cans that are so bloated that the seams appear to be close to bursting.

[Whyte Owen]

Had a visiting scientist from Upsalla in my lab for a year. Brought a tin of surstromming. We watched it swell until July when, thankfully, I was away for the untinning. One colleague said she almost fainted. His technician, also from Upsalla, said she'd never go near the stuff. Like durian, an eclectic taste.