The Conversation -- September 24, 2023
Ashley Strickland of CNN: "Seven years after launching to space, the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft flew by Earth Sunday to deliver a pristine sample collected from the near-Earth asteroid Bennu. It's NASA's first time returning an asteroid sample from space.... OSIRIS-REx, which stands for Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer, lifted off in 2016 and began orbiting Bennu in 2018. The spacecraft collected the sample in 2020 and set off on its lengthy return trip to Earth in May 2021.... NASA is providing a livestream of the delivery." ~~~
~~~ Marie: The plan was for OSIRIS to return to earth in December 2020, but NASA scientists were afraid Trump would confiscate the asteroid sample, dump it in a file box and store it in a bathroom at Mar-a-Lardo alongside a pair of his golf shoes and a classified file of naughty photos of Boris Johnson.
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AP: "President Joe Biden has gotten the updated COVID-19 vaccine and annual flu shot, the White House said Saturday. The White House physician, Dr. Kevin O'Connor, said in a memo that Biden received both shots on Friday. O'Connor said Biden, 80, also was vaccinated several weeks ago against the respiratory illness known as RSV.... Experts worry that immunity from previous vaccinations and infections is fading in many people, and a new shot would save many lives."
Julian Barnes & Ian Austen of the New York Times: "American spy agencies provided information to Ottawa after the killing of a Sikh separatist leader in the Vancouver area, but Canada developed the most definitive intelligence that led it to accuse India of orchestrating the plot, according to Western allied officials. In the aftermath of the killing, U.S. intelligence agencies offered their Canadian counterparts context that helped Canada conclude that India had been involved. Yet what appears to be the 'smoking gun,' intercepted communications of Indian diplomats in Canada indicating involvement in the plot, was gathered by Canadian officials, allied officials said. While Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken has called on India to cooperate with the Canadian investigation, American officials have largely tried to avoid triggering any diplomatic blowback from India. But the disclosure of the involvement of U.S. intelligence risks ensnaring Washington in the diplomatic battle between Canada and India at a time when it is keen to develop New Delhi as a closer partner."
Haley Talbot & Kristen Wilson of CNN: "House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said Saturday he still lacks support from a handful of GOP hardliners to put a Republican stopgap measure on the floor next week, making a government shutdown likely with just one week until the deadline.... 'I think when it gets to crunch time, people ... that have been holding off all this time, blaming everybody else, will finally hopefully move off because shutting down and having border agents not be paid, your Coast Guard not get paid; I don't see how that's a victory,' he said." MB: Yeah, Kev, I'm pretty sure Matt Gaetz will get to reasonable for the first time in his life. ~~~
~~~ Jordain Carney & Olivia Beavers of Politico: "Speaker Kevin McCarthy is backtracking on his plan to remove Ukraine aid from a massive military spending bill as Republicans scramble to find a way forward on funding the government. The California Republican's U-turn comes a day after he told reporters he would remove the roughly $300 million from the Pentagon bill and give it a separate vote as he faced GOP pushback on its inclusion.... The decision injects fresh doubt into whether the Pentagon spending bill will come up for debate at all after failing twice in recent weeks. 'It became too difficult to do that, so we're leaving it in,' McCarthy told reporters about the Ukraine funds." MB: Maybe the cut-and-paste function doesn't work on the House's computer software. And maybe that's a good thing. ~~~
~~~ Carl Hulse of the New York Times: "With a disruptive government shutdown just days away, Washington is in the grip of an ultraconservative minority that sees the federal government as a threat to the republic, a dangerous monolith to be broken apart with little regard for the consequences. They have styled themselves as a wrecking crew aimed at the nation's institutions on a variety of fronts. They are eager to impeach the president and even oust their own speaker if he doesn't accede to their every demand. They have refused to allow their own party to debate a Pentagon spending bill or approve routine military promotions -- a striking posture given that unflinching support for the armed forces has long been a bedrock of Republican orthodoxy. Defying the G.O.P.'s longstanding reputation as the party of law and order, they have pledged to handcuff the F.B.I. and throttle the Justice Department. Members of the party of Ronald Reagan refused to meet with a wartime ally, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, this week when he visited the Capitol and want to eliminate assistance to his country, a democratic nation under siege from an autocratic aggressor. And they are unbowed by guardrails that in past decades forced consensus even in the most extreme of conflicts...."
Nicole Hong of the New York Times: "The 39-page indictment [against Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), his wife and three others] -- which laid out in painstaking detail a series of deleted text messages, encrypted phone calls and shell company payments -- painted a portrait of a couple motivated by relentless greed. Ms. Menendez, 56, often pestered her associates for more bribe payments, prosecutors said, and did not hesitate to peacock her husband's influence, once sending a news article to Mr. Hana about $2.5 billion of military sales to Egypt and writing, 'Bob had to sign off on this.' The business associates around [Wael] Hana [an Egyptian-American businessman and long-time friend of Mrs. M. --] seemed to find more and more ways to extract what they needed from Mr. Menendez, as long as they could deliver the cash.... An F.B.I. search last year of the couple's New Jersey home revealed some of the fruits of their scheme, prosecutors said. Federal agents found more than $480,000 in cash stuffed throughout the house in envelopes and in the pockets of jackets that were embroidered with the senator's name. Inside the home were more than $100,000 worth of gold bars, some of which had unique serial numbers that traced back to Mr. Hana. A shiny Mercedes-Benz convertible sat in the garage." Read on. ~~~
~~~ Marie: And may I add here that the lovely Mrs. M. is a flagrant body-boaster. In the photo accompanying the NYT story, she is wearing a short-skirted, low-neckline dress with tassels hanging from where a younger woman's nipples would be. The photo suggests a White House setting. I've seen other photos of her wearing similar low-cut dresses and short skirts. Oh, and she's a badly-bleached blonde. Totally tacky. ~~~
~~~ A Washington Post story, by Isaac Stanley-Becker, lays out some of the same details of the (alleged!) crimes the couple and their associates committed. ~~~
~~~ Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post is not amused: "The presumption of innocence does not mandate the willing suspension of disbelief.... The Menendez indictment ... is jaw-dropping." Marcus does remind us that, thanks to the Supremes, it's no longer easy to make a bribery case, but the prosecutors here seem to have the goods on Menendez crime family. ~~~
~~~ Senate Race 2024. Mary Jalonick of the AP: "Rep. Andy Kim of New Jersey announced on Saturday that he will run against Sen. Robert Menendez in the state's Democratic primary for Senate next year, saying he feels compelled to run against the three-term senator after he and his wife were indicted on sweeping corruption charges. Kim's surprise announcement came as a growing number of Democrats are calling for Menendez to step down. Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman became the first Democratic senator to do so, and several members of New Jersey's congressional delegation, along with the state's Democratic governor, have said he should resign."
When the Apology Is Worse than the Offense. David Brooks makes a piss-poor "apology" when asked by guest-host William Brangham during Friday's "PBS Newshour" about that $78 tab for a boozy airport meal. Brooks does say, "I made a mistake. It was stupid." But what was stupid, according to Brooks, is that he was insensitive to the little people "who are less fortunate than I am...." He never mentions the three double bourbons that prove the lie of his fake inflation thesis. He is sorry for tweeting, but he doesn't let on that he was likely drunk-tweeting. And he isn't sorry at all for being a supercilious snob. In fact, the point of his "apology" seems to be that he's richer than you are. Thanks to Akhilleus for the link.
News Lede
AP: "Tropical Storm Ophelia was downgraded to a post-tropical low on Saturday night but continued to pose a threat of coastal flooding and flash floods in the mid-Atlantic region, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said. Residents in parts of coastal North Carolina and Virginia experienced flooding Saturday after the storm made landfall near a North Carolina barrier island, bringing rain, damaging winds and dangerous surges."
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Reader Comments (11)
Hey! I got it!
You know how Party of Traitors asshats typically only try to shut down the government when a Democrat is in the White House? Well Biden, like that Dallas mayor, should announce that he’s switching party affiliations from Democrat to Republican. Knees across the aisle will all jerk simultaneously and Presto! No guv’mint shut down!
He might have to make a good show of it, however, meaning he’ll have to pretend to rape someone (not his wife), start carrying assault rifles (plural) wherever he goes, yell “impeach!” At random moments during the day, and confess that he did too rig the last election, but he can say that Jesus made him do it. Also, to be safe, he should make sure to complain loudly about how much he had to pay to get stupid-drunk at an airport, because he ruined the economy.
@Akhilleus: Can't quite put my finger on it, but I sense a flaw in your plan.
There are dozens of news (fake?) sites reporting on the death of
Biden early in his presidency. Most of them report that the oval
office is actually a stage set with actors, some with makeup to look
like the person who would normally be there, and then there's an
actor who wears a Biden face mask when he's out in public.
This article gets into the fact that his eyes don't blink as often as they
should to be the real Biden.
Who knew?
https://www.reuters.com/fact-check/no-one-bidens-family-has-said-
he-died-was-replaced-by-actor-2019-2023-09-15/
David Remnick takes on old age in this age of leaders in their old age but first gives us a bit of history, Russian style. He discusses our problem with Biden and others that have reached their zenith.{ the link to this piece will get tagged on separate message:}
"In a declining society, the images of an aging leadership can come to embody a general sense of withering and decay. A civic nightmare becomes the caricaturist’s dream. In Moscow, the late nineteen-seventies and early eighties was the era known as zastoi, the time of stagnation. Leonid Brezhnev, the Communist Party’s longtime General Secretary until his death, in 1982, suffered from arteriosclerosis and an alarming dependence on sleeping pills; ordinary Soviets, in the privacy of their kitchens, mocked his inability to speak a clear sentence. Brezhnev’s successor, Yuri Andropov, was stricken by kidney failure shortly after taking office and lasted fifteen months. The Kremlin H.R. department promoted Konstantin Chernenko, an unsteady chain-smoker in his eighth decade. His emphysema was so acute that he could not climb the steps to the Lenin Mausoleum. Soon, he was often working from the hospital. In February, 1985, a large room there was remodelled so that television viewers could watch him casting his ballot at his “local polling station.” Two weeks later, Chernenko was dead".
Link to the Previous post:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/10/02/the-washington-gerontocracy
@Forrest Morris: Thanks for the info. I had no idea! Fake Biden is doing such a great job! I'm going to vote for Fake Biden in 2024. Not only is he super-competent, he can never get sick & die like David Remnick's old commies. Long live Fake Biden!
May all our Presidents be impostors. As long as they're Democrats.
All this talk of doubles reminds me of one of my favorite Heinlein novels, "Double Star," written in the mid 1950's. Connie Willis had this to say about it:
https://sciencefiction.loa.org/appreciation/willis.php
In this one the plot has the double doing pretty well as a faux leader. Like Marie would for a Biden doppelgänger, I might have voted for him.
The novel was written before Heinlein took the hard right turn that IMO spoiled much of his later work.
Reminder:Starting Sept 25th, we can get covid tests for the new
variant. The site is 'covidtests.gov.'
Peter Hotez on the anti-science movement.
"We must find ways to preserve our achievements in biomedicine and support scientists, even if that means both the scientists and those in positions of power engage political leaders and challenge ideologues to reject their anti-science rhetoric and agenda. Otherwise, almost a century of America’s preeminence in science will soon decline, our democratic values will erode, and our global stature will fall."
Julie Turkewitz and Isayen Herrera in The New York Times describe the reasons for the "historic wave of migrants headed north amid growing global crises....The short answer is that people are exhausted by so many years of economic struggle, and global policies meant to change the situation have failed to keep them at home."
A sad stoy that the authors note began when "the economy crashed in the mid-2010s amid mismanagement of the oil sector by an authoritarian government claiming socialist ideals, now led by President Nicolás Maduro. Tough sanctions imposed by the United States in 2019 have exacerbated the situation." Shared link:Why Are So Many Venezuelans Going to the United States?
Speaking of spacey thingies, this is absolutely true and real and genuine:
https://youtu.be/7tScAyNaRdQ?feature=shared
Would I kid you?