The Commentariat -- June 2, 2021
Afternoon Update:
Amanda Marcotte of Salon: President Biden "had some harsh words [Tuesday] for Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, whose support for the filibuster is preventing Senate Democrats from passing bills that would block Republican efforts to dismantle fair election systems.... As much as political Twitter would like to believe otherwise, shaming is not, in fact, an effective persuasion technique.... The only real hope that it works lays in the fact that Manchin and Sinema have spent months getting attention for being the holdouts. This likely means they can no longer bask in the ego boost from having the president and others cajole and plead for them to do the right thing.... But it's a troubling sign that Democrats are at the end of the line, seemingly short on strategies to save American democracy. Everything now depends on two people, both who seem unbelievably pigheaded and egotistical, to grow up and start acting like they care about the people who got them elected." ~~~
~~~ Alexander Bolton of the Hill: "Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough has effectively ruled that only one more automatic budget reconciliation is permissible this year, dealing a blow to Democrats who previously thought they would have two more chances to sidestep Republicans in advancing President Biden's agenda. MacDonough ruled that a revision to the 2021 budget resolution cannot be automatically discharged from the Senate Budget Committee, meaning Democrats would need at least one Republican on the 11-11 panel to vote with them." MB: Change the rule, ladies & gentlemen.
Ben Leonard of Politico: "Former special counsel Robert Mueller will take part in a University of Virginia law school class covering his investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and potential ties to the Trump campaign, the school announced Wednesday. Mueller, who graduated from the school in 1973, will lead "at least one class" of the course, which is being taught by three former senior Mueller team members, including deputy special counsel Aaron Zebley, according to a release from the school. The 'short' class, called 'The Mueller Report and the Role of the Special Counsel,' will be taught in person this fall."
Remember the Olive Oil! Chandelis Duster & Barbara Starr of CNN: "The US military has issued an apology after soldiers accidentally stormed a factory in Bulgaria that produces processing machinery for olive oil during a training exercise last month.... Bulgarian President Rumen Radev condemned the incident and said he expects there will be an investigation, CNN affiliate Nova TV reported Monday."
Donald Dumps Desk. Kevin Breuninger of CNBC: “Former President Donald Trump’s blog — a webpage where he shared statements after larger social media companies banned him from their platforms — has been permanently shut down, his spokesman said Wednesday. The page 'From the Desk of Donald J. Trump' has been scrubbed from Trump’s website after going live less than a month earlier.” ~~~
~~~ Drew Harwell & Josh Dawsey of the Washington Post: "Upset by reports from The Washington Post and other outlets highlighting its measly readership and concerns that it could detract from a social media platform he wants to launch later this year, Trump ordered his team Tuesday to put the blog out of its misery, advisers said."
Iran.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s opponents on Wednesday announced they have reached a deal to form a new governing coalition, paving the way for the ouster of the longtime Israeli leader. The dramatic announcement by opposition leader Yair Lapid and his main coalition partner, Naftali Bennett, came shortly before a midnight deadline and prevented the country from plunging into what would have been its fifth consecutive election in just over two years.... The agreement still needs to be approved by the Knesset, or parliament, in a vote that is expected to take place early next week. If it goes through, Lapid and a diverse array of partners that span the Israeli political spectrum will end the record-setting 12-year rule of Netanyahu. Netanyahu, desperate to remain in office while he fights corruption charges, is expected to do everything possible in the coming days to prevent the new coalition from taking power."
he Queen’s courtiers banned 'coloured immigrants or foreigners' from serving in clerical roles in the royal household until at least the late 1960s, according to newly discovered documents that will reignite the debate over the British royal family and race. The documents also shed light on how Buckingham Palace negotiated controversial clauses – that remain in place to this day – exempting the Queen and her household from laws that prevent race and sex discrimination.... The Queen has remained personally exempted from those equality laws for more than four decades. The exemption has made it impossible for women or people from ethnic minorities working for her household to complain to the courts if they believe they have been discriminated against.”
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Katie Rogers & Michael Shear of the New York Times: "A century after a white mob destroyed a vibrant African American community in Tulsa, Okla..., President Biden ... visited the area to address ... one of the worst outbreaks of racist violence in the United States but was largely ignored in history books.... Mr. Biden ... recalled in detail the horror that occurred.... The president’s visit was also intended to highlight steps his administration is taking to close the wealth gap between Black and white people in the United States.... Administration officials on Monday detailed efforts to direct more federal spending to small and minority-owned businesses, fair housing enhancements and programs intended to repair the damage to neighborhoods divided by transportation projects.... Before he delivered remarks, he met privately with survivors of the massacre, each between the ages of 101 and 107, whom he mentioned throughout his speech." ~~~
~~~ Marie: At long last, many influential politicians, intellectuals & pundits, from the President on down, are beginning to grasp -- and say out loud -- what I've been arguing for some time: Republicans are determined to destroy our democracy. They're on overdrive in today's news. Even CNN's morning show is leading with Donald Trump's dreams of reinstatement (story linked below). ~~~
~~~ Biden Elevates Harris, Knocks Manchin & Sinema. Katie Rogers of the New York Times: “President Biden said on Tuesday that he had directed Vice President Kamala Harris to lead Democrats in a sweeping legislative effort to protect voting rights, an issue that is critical to his legacy but one that faces increasingly daunting odds in a divided Senate.... In Tulsa, Mr. Biden seemed to express open frustration at the odds facing the bill — and at the Democratic lawmakers who may stand in the way of its success. 'I hear all the folks on TV saying, “Why doesn’t Biden get this done”?' the president said. 'Well, because Biden only has a majority of effectively four votes in the House and a tie in the Senate, with two members of the Senate who vote more with my Republican friends,' a likely swipe at [Senator Joe] Manchin [of West Virginia] and Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona....” ~~~
~~~ President Biden begins speaking at about 4:00 minutes in: ~~~
~~~ Greg Sargent of the Washington Post: “... in a striking intervention, more than 100 scholars of democracy have signed a new public statement of principles that seeks to make the stakes unambiguously, jarringly clear: On the line is nothing less than the future of our democracy itself.... And these scholars underscore the crucial point: Our democracy’s long-term viability might depend on whether Democrats reform or kill the filibuster to pass sweeping voting rights protections. 'We urge members of Congress to do whatever is necessary — including suspending the filibuster — in order to pass national voting and election administration standards,' the scholars write....”
Dana Milbank of the Washington Post: On the very day that Republicans like Mitch McConnell declared, “'I’m looking forward not backward,' Republicans took two giant steps backward.... In Texas, the Republican-controlled legislature tried to ram through a bill so flagrantly restricting the ability of Blacks and Latinos to vote that it wouldn’t have been entirely out of place in the Jim Crow era.... Also Sunday, and also in Texas..., Donald Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, told a gathering of QAnon followers that a military coup 'should' happen in the United States. (Former Trump lawyer Sidney Powell earlier told the assembly that Trump could be 'reinstated.') Taking the stage at the same conference were Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Tex.) and state Republican Party Chairman Allen West, a former congressman. Gohmert ... posed with a self-proclaimed participant in the insurrection.... After a social media uproar, Flynn later walked back his endorsement of the violent overthrow of the U.S. government. But he offered no such retreat from the lies that caused the deadly attack on the Capitol. 'Trump won,' he told the QAnon faithful. 'He won the popular vote, and he won the electoral college vote.' And that would be true — if you counted only the votes of White people.” ~~~
~~~ Conservative Max Boot of the Washington Post: “Republicans have spent nearly seven months making bogus charges of fraud in the 2020 election under the banner of 'stop the steal.' Now they have segued into a 'start the steal' offensive to ensure that they will win the 2022 and 2024 elections — even if most voters once again support the Democratic Party. The Brennan Center for Justice reports that 'between January 1 and May 14, 2021, at least 14 states enacted 22 new laws that restrict access to the vote' and 'at least 61 bills with restrictive provisions are moving through 18 state legislatures.' Those bills are designed not to avert nonexistent voter fraud but to avert another election defeat for Republicans — and they are drawing perilously close to that goal.... This brings us to a nightmare scenario: a Republican-controlled Congress overturning the 2024 presidential election results to install Trump or a Trump mini-me in the White House.” ~~~
~~~ Conservative Matt Lewis of the Daily Beast: “It Can’t Happen Here is a dystopian novel about the rise of an American dictator that Sinclair Lewis wrote in 1935. It Should Happen Here,' is an even more dystopian idea, authored by Mike Flynn in 2021, and it’s non-fiction.... This is a former general and national security adviser endorsing a military coup to overthrow a democratic election, depose Joe Biden, and install Donald Trump as president.... Lewis describes [the main character Buzz Windrip] as 'a Professional Common Man' who was 'vulgar, almost illiterate,' and 'a public liar easily detected.' Sound familiar?... If there’s a character resembling Flynn, it would be Herbert Y. Edgeways, the general who rails against 'college professors, newspapermen, and notorious authors.'... Edgeways says he’d like to come out and tell the whole world, 'Now you boys never mind about the moral side of this. We have power, and power is its own excuse!'... How do we preserve this precious democracy when a good chunk of Americans are actively rooting for a democratic election to be forcefully overthrown, and that chunk is over-represented at the upper-echelon of one of the two major political parties whose 'leaders' are too weak or too addled to stand up to this madness?” ~~~
~~~ Marie: Never noticed till today that Buzz's last name is not "Win-drip" but "Wind-rip." Clearly, (Sinclair) Lewis meant to call his irredeemable anti-hero "BuzzFart." I'll bet the schoolboys forced to read the novel couldn't stop snickering. BTW, I had to sign up for a "free, 30-day trial" to access the article. I assume that at the end of this period of grace, the Beast will once again be inaccessible to me.
** Susie Madrak, writing in Crooks & Liars, goes a'Twitter-winnowing, and puts together tweets from people we know are not Chicken Little sky-is-falling alarmists. I'm cherrypicking excerpts that summarize the situation: "A general who served at the highest levels of intel, then nat security for Trump, who colluded w Russia + planned a rendition w Turkey, is openly talking of a coup.... Cover w the gravity it merits." -- Cliff Schecter; "Trump has been telling a number of people he’s in contact with that he expects he will get reinstated by August." -- Maggie Haberman; "I think it's a grave mistake for people to dismiss Trump's plan to resume power in August as the rantings of a madman." -- Marcy Wheeler. AND Arieh Kovler, who on December 21 predicted the January 6 insurrection, adds, "The United States is just one Trump statement away from a civil war.... If he calls for people to rise up they will." Thanks to unwashed for the link. ~~~
~~~ Marie: One wag wondered why Republicans voted against a January 6 commission when they said the insurrectionists were all violent, far-left antifa adherents dressed up as Trumpsters. ~~~
~~~ Paul Campos, in LG&$, responds to Trump's prognostication: "The savvy response to this kind of thing is that of course he doesn’t believe it, it’s just part of an eleventydimensional scheme to A B and C, etc. The truth is probably simpler: Donald Trump is a deranged old man who genuinely believes some completely crazy things." MB: It remains to be seen if Trump will act on his dream, but he might. If he does, someone will have to lock him up in a very secure location & take away his big Sharpie. Because, as Matt Lewis reiterates, 15 percent of Americans believes they should act upon his fever dreams.
Coral Davenport, et al., of the New York Times: "The Biden administration on Tuesday suspended oil drilling leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, unspooling a signature achievement of the Trump presidency and delivering on a promise by President Biden to protect the fragile Alaskan tundra from fossil fuel extraction. The decision sets up a process that could halt drilling in one of the largest tracts of untouched wilderness in the United States.... A formal order from Interior Secretary Deb Haaland paused the leases until her agency has completed an environmental analysis of their impact and a legal review of the Trump administration’s decision to grant them.... Still, the ... administration has only committed to reviewing the Trump leases, not canceling them. If it determines that the leases were granted illegally, it could then have legal grounds to cancel them.... Alaskan elected officials were livid.... Environmentalists have criticized moves by the White House last month to legally defend a major drilling project elsewhere in Alaska, to pass on an opportunity to block the contentious Dakota Access oil pipeline, and to support a Trump-era decision to grant oil and gas leases on public land in Wyoming."
Mary Jalonick of the AP: “House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is ruling out a presidential commission to study the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol, telling House Democrats on Tuesday that having President Joe Biden appoint a panel is unworkable even after the Senate blocked an independent probe last week. Pelosi laid out possible next steps after Friday’s Senate vote, in which Senate Republicans blocked legislation to create an independent, bipartisan panel.... She proposed four options for an investigation of the attack, according to a person on the private Democratic caucus call.... But the speaker said she believed a commission appointed by Biden — an idea pitched by some in her caucus after Friday’s Senate vote — was 'not a workable idea in this circumstance' because Congress would still need to approve money and subpoena authority for the panel.... On Friday, White House deputy press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters..., 'We will continue to work with Congress to find a path forward to ensure that [an investigation] happens.'...”
New Mexico Congressional Race. Susan Bryan & Morgan Lee of the AP: "Democrat Melanie Stansbury has won election to Congress for New Mexico to fill a vacant seat previously held by Interior Secretary Deb Haaland. Stanbury prevailed Tuesday in a four-way race after campaigning in support of major initiatives of the Biden administration.... Stansbury defeated third-term Republican state Sen. Mark Moores to fill an Albuquerque-based seat that has been held by Democrats since 2009." MB: According to MSNBC Tuesday night, Stansbury is running well ahead of expectations, though only a portion of the votes have been counted. The Washington Post has vote totals here. The WashPo report on the results, by Dave Weigel, is here. The New York Times report, by Jonathan Martin, is here.
Jonathan O'Connell & Shayna Jacobs of the Washington Post: "... Donald Trump’s company has again hired a broker to sell the lease to its D.C. hotel, according to two people familiar with the discussions, a second attempt to unload the property after the pandemic thwarted a previous effort." ~~~
~~~ MEANWHILE. Trump Continues to Piss on Taxpayers. Justin Rohrlich of the Daily Beast: “The Secret Service is spending nearly $35,000 to rent portable toilets for the next four months in Bedminster, New Jersey — where ... Donald Trump is reportedly summering — according to federal procurement data reviewed by The Daily Beast.... 'Even now, taxpayers continue to spend many thousands of dollars to facilitate Donald Trump's businesses,' Noah Bookbinder, executive director of ... [CREW] ..., told The Daily Beast. '... Forcing taxpayers to spend all of this money for porta potties at a business that surely has sufficient bathrooms is confounding.'... After Trump was elected in 2016, controversy over pricey bathroom leases began to follow the president’s family like an unpleasant odor. When ... Ivanka Trump and husband Jared Kushner moved into their new home in Washington, D.C., the Secret Service agents assigned to protect them were told the half-dozen bathrooms inside the couple’s house were off-limits to them. Instead, American taxpayers were forced to spend $3,000 per month -- more than $100,000, in all — to rent a nearby studio apartment so agents could use its bathroom during their shifts.” MB: The Bedminster outhouses are not just any plastic outhouses. According to the vendor, their product provides “an upscale, portable restroom experience.”
Shane Goldmacher of the New York Times: “The tabloid publishing company that paid $150,000 to a former Playboy model in 2016 to suppress her account of an alleged affair with Donald J. Trump, then a presidential candidate, has agreed pay $187,500 to the Federal Election Commission to settle accusations that the company violated campaign finance law in making the payment. The commission found that the firm, American Media Inc., and its former chief executive, David J. Pecker, had 'knowingly and willfully' violated campaign laws by secretly routing the $150,000 payment to the former model, Karen McDougal, in coordination with senior officials with the Trump campaign, including Michael D. Cohen, who served as Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer at the time.” The Hill's story is here.
Where's the Beef? And the Pork? And the Chicken? Julie Creswell, et al., of the New York Times: “A cyberattack on the world’s largest meat processor forced the shutdown of nine beef plants in the United States on Tuesday, according to union officials, and disrupted production at poultry and pork plants. The attack could upset the nation’s meat markets and raises new questions about the vulnerability of critical American businesses. The company, JBS, said the majority of its plants would reopen on Wednesday. But even one day’s disruption at JBS could 'significantly impact' wholesale beef prices, according to analysts at Daily Livestock Report. The breach at JBS was a ransomware attack, the White House said.... JBS has said that it was the target of an 'organized cybersecurity attack' that affected systems in North America and Australia.... Karine Jean-Pierre, a White House deputy press secretary, told reporters on Air Force One on Tuesday that JBS had told the Biden administration that it was a ransomware attack, and that the ransom demand had come from 'a criminal organization likely based in Russia.'”
Alana Goodman of the Washington Free Beacon: "Google’s head of diversity strategy said in a 2007 blog post that Jews have an 'insatiable appetite for war' and an 'insensitivity to the suffering [of] others.' The comments were part of a longer meditation from Kamau Bobb, now head of diversity strategy at Google, that also slammed Israel’s military actions in Gaza and Lebanon that same year. Bobb was at the time a research associate in technology at Georgia Tech, according to his LinkedIn. The post, titled 'If I Were A Jew,' described how he believed Jewish people should view the Middle East conflict."
Samson Amore of the Wrap: “Tesla CEO Elon Musk continued to get the company into trouble with the Securities and Exchange Commission last year because of his reckless Twitter habits, according to a new report from the Wall Street Journal. The Journal reported Tuesday that it had recently acquired documents from last May when the SEC wrote Tesla a letter chiding the company for not complying with a court order to review his social media posts. In 2019 and 2020 Musk posted several tweets about Tesla’s stock price and its solar roof production but the tweets were sent without 'required preapproval' from Tesla’s lawyers, the SEC said. According to the Journal the SEC sent at least two separate letters warning Tesla about Musk’s Twitter.”
The Pandemic, Ctd.
The New York Times' live updates of Covid-19 developments Wednesday are here.
Jaclyn Diaz of NPR: "West Virginia is giving its vaccine incentive program a boost to get more residents immunized from the coronavirus, Gov. Jim Justice announced on Tuesday. All residents who get a COVID-19 vaccine will be enrolled in the chance to win a college scholarship, a tricked out truck, or hunting rifles, in addition to a $1.588 million grand prize. The program, which will run from June 20 through Aug. 4, will be paid for through federal pandemic relief funds." MB: Aren't we thrilled that our federal tax dollars are to be used to give rifles to vaccine skeptics.
Beyond the Beltway
Max Greenwood of the Hill: "Florida's Democratic Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried is officially running for governor. The lone statewide elected Democrat announced on Tuesday that she will challenge Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) in 2022 after months of speculation about a potential gubernatorial bid.... Fried’s announcement sets her up for a primary battle against Rep. Charlie Crist (D-Fla.), himself a former governor who announced last month that he would make another run for his old job.... Beating DeSantis likely won’t prove easy, however. The governor is beloved by conservatives and has amassed a staggering warchest for his reelection bid."
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