February 6, 2023
Afternoon Update:
MSNBC reported on-air that according to National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, the reason the Trump administration didn't know about Chinese balloons floating all over the place is that they weren't bothering to look for them. When Biden became president, he ordered the national security apparatus to get a handle on foreign government surveillance of the U.S.
About that Pet Charity. Michael Gold & Grace Ashford of the New York Times: George "Santos ran a pet charity that he claimed saved 2,500 animals. But several people questioned the way he handled funds that were raised to benefit the pets.... Few public records exist to corroborate [Mr. Santos' claims], and Friends of Pets United's operations appear to have centered on a Facebook group that is now defunct. Only traces of the organization remain on public social media posts and GoFundMe campaigns, and Mr. Santos's campaign biography no longer mentions it.... Several people said Mr. Santos assured them he was operating a registered nonprofit, but no records exist to confirm that.... They said the group rescued far fewer pets than the more than 2,500 animals that Mr. Santos claimed it saved. The group was not registered as a rescue organization in New York State, and there was no record that it was authorized to take dogs from New York City shelters. And several people took issue with how Mr. Santos handled his group's funds, saying they never received the thousands of dollars he raised on their behalf, often through GoFundMe." GoFundMe eventually kicked Mr. Santos off the site.
Rachel Weiner & Jasmine Hilton of the Washington Post: "A neo-Nazi leader recently released from prison has been arrested again and accused of plotting an attack on the Maryland power grid with a woman he met while incarcerated.Brandon Russell, 27, and Sarah Clendaniel, 34, are expected to make their first appearance Monday in Baltimore and Florida federal courts on a charge of conspiring to destroy an energy facility, which carries up to 20 years in prison.... According to prosecutors, their plan was to attack with gunfire five substations that serve the Baltimore area. The charges come after similar attacks on the power grid in North Carolina and Oregon that remain unsolved...." An ABC News story is here.
Eric Hananoki of Media Matters: "Eric Trump has been touring with antisemitic conspiracy theorist Scott McKay, who claims that many Jewish people are working 'under the cover of this religion called Judaism' to carry out a massive and evil conspiracy. In McKay's telling, these fraudulent Jewish people have perpetrated 9/11; set up banking systems 'in exchange for the child blood sacrifices'; and engineered presidential assassinations, among many other crimes. McKay has also praised Hitler as a like-minded ally. In his narrative, Jewish people supposedly 'created' and 'built' Hitler to profit from war, but 'Hitler broke away' from his Jewish creators and their evil banks by trying to create 'a banking system for the people and the free world.... Hitler was actually fighting the same people that we're trying to take down today,' McKay claimed last year.... McKay, who is also a QAnon conspiracy theorist, has begun to gain more prominence because of his featured speaking role on the ReAwaken America tour, which was founded by Clay Clark and Michael Flynn.... In addition to McKay, its 'featured speakers' include Charlie Kirk, Kash Patel, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Peter Navarro, Mike Lindell, and Alex Jones.... Donald Trump Jr. has also spoken on the tour."
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Helene Cooper & Edward Wong of the New York Times: "Navy divers were searching for debris from the Chinese spy balloon that a U.S. fighter jet shot down off the coast of South Carolina, defense officials said on Sunday.... The recovery effort, which is expected to take days, began not long after debris from the balloon hit the water on Saturday, a defense official said. He added that a Navy ship had arrived on the scene, and that other Navy and Coast Guard ships, which had been put on alert, had also been dispatched. The shooting down of the balloon, occurring at the end of a remarkable week of high-stakes international drama playing out in the open skies and behind closed doors, introduced a new phase in the increasingly tempestuous relationship between the United States and China...." ~~~
~~~ Dan Lamothe & Azi Paybarah of the Washington Post: "The Defense Department has notified Congress of several previous incursions of U.S. airspace by Chinese surveillance balloons, with earlier sightings near Texas, Florida, Hawaii and Guam, U.S. officials said Sunday, as Republicans criticized the Biden administration for allowing a suspected surveillance balloon to track across much of the United States over the last week. Rep. Michael Waltz (R-Fla.), a member of the House Armed Services Committee, said in an interview that defense officials identified the locations in a discussion with lawmakers and staff on Saturday.... The defense officials said that several of those events occurred during the Trump administration, Waltz said. Officials had also said that during a news briefing with reporters on Saturday.... The administration official briefing [the members of Congress] said the other incidents had mostly been along or off the coast of the United States.... A senior administration official ... said Sunday that the previous occurrences were discovered after the Trump administration left office." A related CNN story is here. ~~~
~~~ Christian Shepherd of the Washington Post: "Chinese authorities have confirmed that an 'unmanned aircraft' currently flying over Latin America also originated in China, even as Beijing stepped up its protests against the U.S. military decision to shoot down another suspected spy balloon that traversed mainland United States last week. At a regular news briefing on Monday, Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Mao Ning said that the second balloon came also from China but claimed that it was used for civilian flight tests. 'Due to the impact of weather and limited self-steering ability, this aircraft seriously deviated from its scheduled course,' Mao said.... Separately on Monday, Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Xie Feng lodged 'solemn representations' with the United States Embassy in Beijing over the use of an F-22 Raptor to shoot down the balloon that had slowly drifted across U.S. continental airspace over multiple days." ~~~
~~~ Emily Fujiyama of the AP: "'... the United States turned a deaf ear and insisted on indiscriminate use of force against the civilian airship that was about to leave the United States airspace, obviously overreacted and seriously violated the spirit of international law and international practice,' Xie [Feng] said."
A Booby Prize for Congressional Republicans. Hugo Lowell of the Guardian: "US officials have offered to provide a closed-door briefing to congressional leaders about their review of about 300 classified-marked documents retrieved from Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort last year, sources familiar with the matter said. The precise nature of the briefing remains unclear. The offer from the justice department and the Office of the Director for National Intelligence (ODNI) was described as unofficial on Sunday and no date had yet been set, though the briefing could come as soon as this week.... Republicans in Congress have seized on the presence of marked documents at [President] Biden's home in Delaware and a private office space in Washington, and have sought briefings as a means to pressure the president and draw inaccurate parallels with the Trump case." ~~~
~~~ Update. According to this AP report, by Nomaan Merchant and others, "U.S. officials have offered to brief congressional leaders on their investigation into the classified documents found at ... Donald Trump's Florida residence as well as President Joe Biden's "MB: What a disappointment. I was wanting Republican MOCs to have to sit through hours of a Trump vetting: "This one describes how to get around U.S. sub radar: Now, this one contains the nuclear codes; and so forth. Instead, they'll also get to listen to what Biden retained: Here's the recipe for Xi's favorite chicken potstickers."
Martin Pengelly of the Guardian: "Ted Cruz has introduced a bill to limit US senators to two terms in office, thereby removing from Washington what he calls 'permanently entrenched politicians … totally unaccountable to the American people' On Sunday, however, he said he saw no problem with running for a third term himself. 'I've never said I'm going to unilaterally comply,' the Texas senator said.... Congressional term limits are a popular policy offering on the American right."
The Pandemic, Ctd. Ali Swenson & Angelo Fichera of the AP: There is "a growing list of hundreds of children, teens, athletes and celebrities whose unexpected deaths and injuries have been incorrectly blamed on COVID-19 shots. Using the hashtag #diedsuddenly, online conspiracy theorists have flooded social media with news reports, obituaries and GoFundMe pages in recent months, leaving grieving families to wrestle with the lies.... The campaign causes harm beyond just the internet, epidemiologist Dr. Katelyn Jetelina said. 'The real danger is that it ultimately leads to real world actions such as not vaccinating,' said Jetelina...."
Beyond the Beltway
North Carolina. GOP Justices Tee Up Voter Suppression All Over Again. Michael Wines of the New York Times: "An extraordinary pair of orders by North Carolina's Republican-controlled Supreme Court is highlighting how the partisan tug of war has pervaded the state's courts and, by extension, the nation's. On Friday, the court moved to rehear two major voting rights cases that it had previously decided, one striking down a gerrymandered map of State Senate districts and another nullifying new voter identification requirements. Such rehearings by the court are exceedingly rare. In fact, North Carolina's Supreme Court ordered as many rehearings on Friday as it has in the past three decades. What also made the rehearings exceptional was that the cases had been decided less than two months ago -- by a court that, at the time, contained four Democratic and three Republican justices. The court that voted to rehear the cases has a 5-to-2 Republican majority, courtesy of the party's sweep of state Supreme Court races in November. And the potential beneficiary of those reviews is the Republican leadership of the state General Assembly, which had both drawn the political map and enacted the voter ID law that the court struck down in December." ~~~
~~~ Marie: They may each hold the title of "justice," but we're about to find out if "thug" and "racist" are more apt titles.
Way Beyond
Ukraine, et al. The New York Times' live updates of developments Monday in Russia's war on Ukraine are here.
News Ledes
Ohio. AP: "Officials monitoring the smoldering, tangled wreckage of a train derailment in northeastern Ohio urgently warned hundreds of nearby residents who had declined to evacuate to do so Sunday night, saying a rail car was at risk of a potential explosion that could launch deadly shrapnel as far as a mile. They warned of 'the potential of a catastrophic tanker failure' after a 'drastic temperature change' was observed in that rail car, according to a statement from Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine's office that said teams were working to prevent an explosion at the scene in East Palestine. It did not specify what was in that car or whether it was among those that had been carrying hazardous materials."
Turkey. New York Times: "Millions of people in Turkey, Syria, Lebanon and Israel were jolted from their beds early Monday after a deadly earthquake hit the region, collapsing buildings and raising the specter of a humanitarian crisis. More than 1,200 deaths were reported in Turkey and Syria, and the toll was expected to increase. The epicenter of the earthquake was near the city of Gaziantep in south central Turkey. Some survivors there fled their homes in the rain and took shelter in cars as the temperature hovered near freezing and the extent of the destruction became apparent."This is a liveblog. ~~~
~~~ CNN's live updates are here.
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Reader Comments (17)
While conspiracy theorists can talk about the sudden deaths in an excited emotional way, the data coming from the UK, Europe and Australia is published by their governments. No conspiracy. Just data.
Real excess deaths - with covid deaths accounted for and subtracted. Forget the chatter. Look at the numbers.
It will take a complete rebuilding of the CDC for people here to believe CDC data.
Another stupid poll:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/02/06/poll-americans-dont-feel-biden-impact/
...or not all numbers have the same pedigree.
Here's one tho' that I believe.
Fifty one percent of American who watch nationally broadcast "news" channels get their "news" from Fox.
Might have something to do with the WAPO poll numbers.
@Marie: Under the Infotainment section, the Washington Post story
about testing of marinara sauces caught my eye. Just received latest
copy of Consumer Reports. They tested about 50 marinara sauces.
Trader Joe's was about #40. Rao's was #7.
The winner was The Silver Palate Low sodium marinara.
Don't know if that is available all over since the Silver Palate is
located in Manhattan.
The Silver Palate was owned by Julee Rosso and Shiela Lukens
until about 20 years ago when they sold it to a conglomerate, reason
being that Julee's mother was ailing so she came here to take care
of her. That's when she met her mother's handyman and married him.
Being a workaholic, she bought a Bed and Breakfast Inn in the next
block from me. She just sold it last summer and retired at last.
That's part of chapter 31 in the book I'm writing.
Victoria,
Perhaps the worst in a horrifyingly long list of attacks on the United States, its government, agencies, and the American public, by criminal and traitor Donald Trump, is the hollowing out of public health operations, notably the CDC, purely for political gain, to look tough and to win an election.
Trump sicced his attack dogs on the CDC, replacing the head of the Center with his hand picked hack, Robert Redfield, who shut down scientists and rubber stamped the most outrageous and dangerous diktats of Trump and his cronies in the midst of a pandemic.
People with zero experience in science, infectious diseases, or public health, like Princess Ivanka, Stephen Miller, and Jared Kushner, were inserting themselves and their politically driven opinions into the public discourse surrounding the approach to the coronavirus pandemic, guaranteeing the deaths of tens of thousands of Americans. Kushner sent a phalanx of blue suited Jared wannabes, political apparatchiks with no knowledge of the common cold, never mind Covid, to the CDC to shout down career scientists.
Many were fired, reassigned, or just quit.
Trump—and medieval superstition and fear of science—won.
Americans lost. And died.
And the CDC is now a hollow shell. No one listens to them anymore.
As with so much of what he destroyed, Trump, in a matter of months, wiped out an agency that took decades to build up. All to serve his Chinese weather balloon sized ego.
@Forrest Morris: Thanks for the tip. I just checked the Internets, and I can get Silver Palate pasta sauces at a local grocery store, so I'm going to pick a couple jars up the next time I venture out into the cold, cruel world.
How many right wing nut jobs do we think will bring a balloon to
Pres. Biden's state of the union address?
One nutjob will be giving the Traitor response to the SOU address.
Sarah Huckabee Sanders: a person with zero experience governing anything (a second year school committee person probably knows more about governance) who is now governor of Arkansas, and whose previous “job” in guv’mint was as a professional liar for TFG.
And don’t forget how she took a few months off from the job of “press secretary” by refusing to meet with the press. Typical.
Sanders, once described as a “firehose of disinformation” (that’s being kind), will be sure to toe the conspiracy mongering, white supremacizing, chaos spreading line of the ruling thugs in the Party of Traitors.
Should be a ball-oon.
But much more important than Firehose Sanders’ upcoming lie-spiel is this ranking of pasta sauces. I myself prefer Akhilleus’ Homemade Sauce (free at my house), but Rao’s is pretty damn good (if expensive).
Have never tried Silver Palate or Trader Joe’s. Bertolli’s isn’t bad, but Ragu, Prego,…yuck.
Over the years we’ve tried Emeril’s and Newman’s Own, both okay, but neither beats Rao’s. Nonetheless even the okay stuff is light years past what most of us had as kids, when homemade was not available. The “sauce” tended to be, shall we say, short on taste, texture, and edibility (even for an Irish kid).
There’s a funny scene in the first episode of “Band of Brothers” which takes place at boot camp. The guys are served “spaghetti” which doesn’t meet with the approval of two the Italian guys in the group, one of whom says “Spaghetti? This ain’t spaghetti. This is noodles with ketchup”. Must have been Republican spaghetti.
Sorry…I’m acronymically challenged today.
Should be SOTU, not SOU, which I think stands for Some Other Universe…
@Forrest Morris: Fortunately, the other right-wing nut jobs will be there with their tiny AR-15 pins to shoot down the balloons with their tiny 50-round clips -- unless the Capitol Police make them leave their little AR-15s at the door.
@Akhilleus: Yes, homemade is apt to be best. For years I made my own, and it took half a day. It was very good but also very "American," and once a few companies other than Prego & Ragu started showing up on the supermarket shelves, I was ready to cave to the corporations. One thing that made my sauce good was that about 5 minutes before taking it off the heat, you added a tiny amount (1/4" tsp. maybe) of baking soda, and that cut the acidity of the tomatoes. It would work for any sauce, I should think.
Speaking of adding a tiny amount of stuff, I recently read on the Internet that adding a pinch of cornstarch to raw scrambled eggs would make them creamier. Since I scramble my eggs with powdered milk instead of real, whole milk I thought I'd give it a try. It works!
I've been trying to find out what happened to the Zeugma museum which is in Gazientep, Turkey. It's a beautiful tour of roman mosaics saved from being drowned by the rising waters behind a new dam. Zeugma itself was destroyed by an earthquake about 2000 years ago. The mosaics there were uncovered and brought up the a museum, only to be placed in a city which is now very near the epicenter of this recent earthquake. The city itself is a population center and the buildings are close together and not earthquake safe. It seems clear that there must be massive loss of life.
A la Band of Brothers:
Fort Polk, LA, 1968, Basic Training. North Fort, E-5-2. Old style Army mess hall (i.e. not contractor-run).
About half of the cycle was National Guard guys from Rhode Island.
RING Guy, eating grits for the first time: "Yuk! This is the worst Cream of Wheat I've ever had!!"
Mess cook: "Don't eat it. More for the pigs." (Local farmers picked up "edible garbage" for stock feed.)
There were days when it seemed the cook was in cahoots with the farmers, the food was so heavy and greasy, but BCT activity was so calorie-intensive, after a few weeks you'd eat anything.
@Patrick: The only good thing I remember about Fort Polk is that
it's only a 4 hour drive to New Orleans.
One can learn lots of things in New Orleans, at least back then, don't
know about now.
@Victoria: I don't see how the museum could have fared well. It seems to be quite close to Gaziantep Castle, which collapsed, along with a nearby 17th-century mosque. Of course the museum is in a new building, so maybe it's earthquake-ready.
Patrick,
I have distinct memories of my first taste of grits. Here I am, an Irish kid from Boston, visiting my college roommate’s family in Arkansas on spring break, 1974. His daddy was Speaker of the House in Arkansas back then, and we went to see his grandmother, a real old time southern aristocratic lady. Her cook brought us out some grits and they all gathered round to see how this Yankee would take to this particular southern delicacy. Summoning up massive reserves of gentlemanliness I didn’t know I had, I said “Hmmmm…delicious!” trying hard not to say “Holeee shit! What is this crap?”
I always order grits when I go out for breakfast at our favorite little place in Nags Head...I really enjoy them...once...and have come to the conclusion that grits are epic ONLY with real butter. Someone tried to give us margarine with our grits, and my gosh, it was, pretty much, yucky. So, my conclusion about grits is, they are super good when decorating lovely butter... AND someone from PA can't possibly try to make them at home, ditto hushpuppies. Hushpuppies can only be eaten piping hot with real butter in Chincoteague, VA at a certain restaurant on the water. I would NEVER try to have them anywhere else... Also, I don't ever eat butter substitutes, so in PA we have everything delicious with true butter.
Marie,
The baking soda and cornstarch tips I’ve never heard of. Definitely trying them both. Hey, I’m the guy who put chocolate bits in an omelette once. I’ll try anything.