January 17, 2022
Afternoon Update:
Salvador Rizzo of the Washington Post: "A bipartisan group of U.S. senators is in Ukraine to show solidarity with the Eastern European country as it faces ongoing tension with Russia. The seven U.S. senators plan to meet with President Volodymyr Zelensky and other top officials on Monday, they announced. The visit comes amid a showdown between Russia and the West over Ukraine's territory and the threat of further Russian incursion." The seven senators are Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), Rob Portman (R-Ohio), Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.), Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.).
Linda Greenhouse of the New York Times: "Halfway through his pained dissent from the Supreme Court's decision blocking the Biden administration's workplace Covid vaccine rule, Justice Stephen Breyer made a glancing reference to a now-obscure case from 1981, American Textile Manufacturers Institute v. Donovan. It was one of the court's first efforts to interpret the 1970 law that created the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.... But what jumped off the page to me was the contrast between how the court behaved in 1981 and what happened last Thursday in National Federation of Independent Business v. Department of Labor, when six justices yielded to politics to disable an agency from carrying out its statutory mission to protect the health and safety of the American work force. That is where we are now. That's how far the court has fallen." Thanks to P.D. Pepe for the link.
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Marie: Congrats to USA Today for knowing how to celebrate the life of a champion of the poor & disadvantaged. Many news outlets are carrying reports of what facilities and open & closed on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, but only USA Today has a headline on the "Best MLK Day sales to shop."
Colleen Long of the AP: "President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden packed carrots and apples into food boxes for the hungry and chatted with volunteers Sunday at a food bank as part of a day of service for Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. The couple traveled about a half-hour from their Wilmington, Delaware, residence to Philabundance, a hunger relief organization in Philadelphia which serves about 140,000 people a week in the Pennsylvania and southern New Jersey region. Before heading to the warehouse floor where conveyor belts carried cardboard boxes full of donated food, Biden said the child tax credit needed to be renewed. The traditional day of service is on the holiday, Monday, but there was a bad winter storm heading for the area and events were being rescheduled around the region."
Hannah Farrow of Politico: "Sen. Mitt Romney said Sunday that he 'never got a call from the White House' to negotiate bringing Republicans and Democrats together to create bipartisan voting reform." Marie: Romney goes on to spout the usual hoohah, but the fact that there was no indication the White House tried to engage so-called "moderate" Republicans has surprised me for months. True, such outreach probably would have been fruitless, but Biden at least could have garnered some "bipartisan" photo-ops from the invitations. And it's more convincing to claim "Republicans won't help" when you've asked for a hand. The White House's failure to try to engage some Republicans was a big mistake.
Waiting for Garland. In Vain. Matt Zapotosky, et al., of the Washington Post: "... so far the [Justice D]epartment does not appear to be directly investigating the person whose desperate bid to stay in office motivated the [Jan. 6 attack] -- ... Donald Trump -- either for potentially inciting a riot or for what some observers see as a related pressure campaign to overturn the results of the election. The House select committee on Jan. 6 is investigating both matters..., and has aggressively pursued information about Trump and those closest to him. But FBI agents have not, for example, sought to interview or gather materials from some of Trump's most loyal lieutenants about their strategy sessions at the Willard hotel on how to overturn the results of the 2020 election, according to participants in those meetings.... The department has not reached out to the Georgia secretary of state's office about Trump urging its leader to 'find' enough votes to reverse his defeat.... The Trump campaign has not received requests for documents or interviews from the FBI or Justice Department related to Jan. 6 or the effort to overturn the election results, and federal prosecutors have not sought to interview those with knowledge of Trump's consideration of a plan to install an attorney general more amenable to his unfounded claims of massive voter fraud.... The Justice Department inspector general is investigating the aborted plan and could ultimately ask prosecutors to consider whether crimes were committed." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ~~~
~~~ Marie: "So far"? If DOJ has done zip a year after the fact, the department obviously plans to do nothing, ever. There seems to be a longstanding, high-level DOJ pact that recognizes an "Article I Pass," where presidents don't get charged with anything. The only time that agreement might have broken was in the case of Richard Nixon, who abused the DOJ itself when he essentially forced AG Elliot Richardson to resign. That could explain Gerald Ford's preemptive pardon of Nixon. ~~~
~~~ Or Maybe Not. Marcy Wheeler: "... apparently none of the four WaPo journalists [bylined above] are familiar enough with the investigation to know where to look to test their questions about whether DOJ is investigating Trump. But I guess it's a good thing that WaPo relied on the expertise of their embedded Mar-A-Lago journalist (!!!) for these issues. Nevertheless, WaPo does break news in the thirtieth paragraph of the story. It reveals that Rob Jenkins, a lawyer representing a bunch of militia defendants, keeps getting asked about Roger Stone and Rudy Giuliani's ties to militia members.... For some reason, the WaPo decided to bury the fact that prosecutors are pursuing this angle (even while claiming -- Rudy’s phones notwithstanding -- that prosecutors are not investigating what went down at the Willard), in paragraph 30." Thanks to unwashed for the link. (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~
~~~ Marie: Still, Roger & Rudy are a couple of stock comic characters, & neither had an official job even in an administration packed with of lowlifes & halfwits. Roger was on his way to prison when Trump FedExed him a get-out-of-jail-free card, and Rudy's law licenses in New York & D.C. were suspended. It's reasonable to think the DOJ could indict these two losers for some insurrection-related crimes even as it let the Mob Boss skate.
Courtney Kube & Leigh Ann Caldwell of NBC News: "Christopher Miller, who was acting secretary of defense during the Jan. 6 riot, met Friday with members of the House committee investigating the origins of the attack on the Capitol, a source familiar with the panel's activities told NBC News.... The former Pentagon chief has provided conflicting testimony to Congress in the past, at one time saying that ... Donald Trump had 'encouraged the protesters' with his remarks on Jan. 6 and then later saying he believed an 'organized conspiracy' played a role in the Capitol attack." MB: That's not necessary conflicting: Trump seems to have headed up the "organized conspiracy." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Here's an Amusing Thought. S.V. Date of the Huffington Post: "Should ... Donald Trump run for the White House again, an obscure Reconstruction-era law could keep him off the ballot in six southern states..., because of his incitement of the Jan. 6 insurrection. The third section of the 14th Amendment prohibits people who swore to defend the Constitution, but who subsequently took part in an insurrection against the United States, from holding state or federal office. Other language in that post-Civil War amendment, though, makes many experts believe that only Congress can enforce the ban, which means Senate Republicans could block any such action.... The six states affected by the 1868 law -- North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana and Florida -- together have 88 electoral votes, or 33% of the total needed to win the presidency. Trump won all of them in 2020 except for Georgia, which he lost by 12,000 votes." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ~~~
~~~ Marie: This won't happen, but it's a nice pipedream.
Presidential Election 2024. Jonathan Martin & Maggie Haberman of the New York Times on how Donald Trump & Ron DeSantis already are sparring with each other. MB: Not sure how I'm going to handle this; I do not intend to spend the next two-plus years reporting every potshot these odious men take against each other.
Douglass Daniel of the AP: "Charles McGee, a Tuskegee Airman who flew 409 fighter combat missions over three wars and later helped to bring attention to the Black pilots who had battled racism at home to fight for freedom abroad, died Sunday. He was 102."
The Pandemic, Ctd.
The New York Times' live updates of Covid-19 developments Monday are here.
Beyond the Beltway
Michigan. So Much for Academic Freedom. Eduardo Medina of the New York Times: "In a profanity-laced introduction video for a history class, Prof. Barry Mehler wears an astronaut-style helmet with air filters, tells his Ferris State University students that they are 'vectors of disease' and says that their grades are predetermined, regardless of their efforts.... The bizarre 14-minute video, which has been viewed more than 360,000 times since it was posted on his YouTube page last Sunday, resulted in Professor Mehler's being placed on paid suspension while university officials investigated his eccentric introduction to the new semester, according to Sandy Gholston, a university spokesman. David Eisler, the president of the university, which is in Big Rapids, Mich., about 150 miles northwest of Detroit, said in a statement that he had been 'shocked and appalled by this video.'"
~~~ Here's what you might call a highlights video. If obsenity & profanity offend you, don't watch. If you just can't get enough, the full video is linked in the Times story. Marie: I suppose my student-age self might have been shocked, shocked by Mehler's rant, but I'm not a kid any more and I think it's sort of funny. I even like the fact that he's so piss-poor at recording himself, his face is sometimes half out of the frame:
Oregon. Mike Baker of the New York Times: "A slide show designed to train officers in Portland, Ore., on methods of policing protests concluded with a message that celebrated the use of violence against demonstrators.... The image was included at the end of a 110-slide training session, apparently from 2018, that detailed the types of protests that officers might encounter, along with analyses of crowd behaviors and police tactics that could be used to maintain order. The concluding slide was of a meme that mocked protesters as dirty hippies, celebrating that officers could 'christen your heads with hickory, and anoint your faces with pepper spray.' It included an image of what appeared to be a police officer in riot gear hitting a protester. The office of Mayor Ted Wheeler, who serves as police commissioner, released the document on Friday, saying it had surfaced as part of a lawsuit related to the racial justice protests that consumed the city in 2020. Mr. Wheeler said that he was 'disgusted' by the slide that mocked protesters and that an investigation had begun."
Virginia. Hannah Natanson of the Washington Post: "Glenn Youngkin launched his tenure as Virginia's 74th governor this weekend with three executive orders devoted to education -- a level of focus on schools that is unprecedented in recent memory and which spells the all-but-certain continuation of polarizing cultural and curricular battles in the divided state. Youngkin's first order forbids the teaching of 'inherently divisive concepts, including Critical Race Theory,' an academic framework that examines how policies and laws perpetuate systemic racism in the United States. Educators in Virginia and nationwide contend the theory is not taught at the K-12 level, but conservatives have weaponized the term as a catchall symbolizing schools' equity and diversity work. Another order promises the investigation of Loudoun County Public Schools, a wealthy Northern Virginia district that has been embroiled in high-profile controversy for more than a year over allegations related to critical race theory and transgender rights, as well as administrators' bungled handling of two sexual assaults. The Republican governor's third order asserts that parents must be allowed to decide whether their child wears a mask in school, regardless of what federal or district-level officials say." ~~~
~~~ Marie: I don't know if Youngkin is ignorant or just a craven hypocrite. Sunday, Jonathan Capehart of MSNBC aired a clip of Youngkin saying on Fox "News" last October, "[I]n the immortal words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., we're called to judge one another based on the content of our character and not the color of our skin. And that's why there's no place for critical race theory in our school system, and why, on day one, I'm going to ban it." As former Rep. Donna Edwards pointed out on Capehart's show, Youngkin is distorting (I'd say inverting) King's point: King's most famous sentence was aspirational. What he said in his "I Have a Dream" speech was, "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character." King clearly was not urging Americans to stop talking about and learning about race relations. Rather, he was encouraging us to learn & change.
Way Beyond
Ukraine/Russia. Ellen Nakashima of the Washington Post: "Microsoft has discovered destructive malware on dozens of Ukrainian government and private-sector computers, raising the risk that government agencies could find it difficult to operate in a crisis. The malware masquerades as ransomware, but rather than encrypting data, the malware -- if triggered -- wipes computers of data and renders them inoperable, Microsoft's threat intelligence team said in a blog post late Saturday. Microsoft said it does not know who was behind the malware, but the threat comes as Russia masses troops on Ukraine's border." ~~~
~~~ Yuras Karmanau of the AP: "Ukraine said Sunday that Russia was behind a cyberattack that defaced its government websites and alleged that Russia is engaged in an increasing 'hybrid war' against its neighbor. The statement from the Ministry of Digital Development came a day after Microsoft said dozens of computer systems at an unspecified number of Ukrainian government agencies had been infected with destructive malware disguised as ransomware. That disclosure suggested the attention-grabbing defacement attack on official websites last week was a diversion." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
News Ledes
New York Times: "After slamming parts of the South over the weekend, a strong winter storm was pushing north on Monday, producing heavy snow over parts of the Lower Great Lakes, Central Appalachians and the Northeast. Rain was forecast for the coast of New England. As of early Monday, a winter storm warning stretched from western North Carolina up through Maine, according to the National Weather Service." The story has been updated. A Weather Channel report is here. ~~~
~~~ Marie: According to radar published by the Weather Channel, my house is outside the snow zone. Well, I've got several inches of snow on my covered porch. It's 7:15 am, but it might as well be midnight because the whiteout makes it too dark to see further, so I can't tell how much snow there is on the ground. Rain expected later.
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Reader Comments (17)
The notion of banning divisive ideas in schools intrigues.
What to make of a political party that survives on creating division and profiting from it that would like to pretend division doesn't exist, adding the mere idea of division to its long list of things it would have on its do not discuss list, like racism, evolution and climate change...
But at base I have to wonder how it expects to avoid division in an institution that has sorting people into groups as one of its primary purposes.
Among other ways, schools sort their charges by age, physical characteristics, psychological bent, interests, talent, and accomplishment, arraying all these judgments over a complicated and shifting template whose axes are smart and dumb, right and wrong.
Yeah, this Youngkin is either dumb or a hypocrite. Maybe both.
There: More sorting. More division. But, really. What can one do about division in a divided country?
EGG ON THEIR FACES:
Yes, Ken, division in a divided country––and crack-pots like Barry Mehler got away with playing a professor until he didn't. That said, I read a piece this morning that clears up any confusion about the labels on eggs and if you are as concerned about chickens as I am (along with other creatures) then this information is for you.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/egg-carton-labels_l_5e1f4bdcc5b673621f6f4d56
If you recall I did some research on Previgen–-that elixir that enhances your memory and found it was not FDA approved and it's testing was bogus. Recently I learned from my hair dresser whose on again off again lover is an actor in New York, told him that he knows actors who portray these people in the ad–-notice, he said, they never give last names.
Truth–––now there's an elixir that we could get our arms around. Maybe MLK said that , too.
@Ken Winkes: You sure grasped the crux of GOP hypocrisy: the general message is "divisiveness is terrible and Democrats are evil."
When it comes to education & fear of fake critical race theory, oddly enough Republicans are engaging in a kind of more realistic nostalgia than they usually do. They're longing for the educational policies of yore that -- even if they were not laid out in statutes -- were what we were taught in school. In 14 hundred & 92 Columbus sailed the Ocean Blue; the Spanish built a great fort in St. Augustine (for some unspecified reason!). The Pilgrims made friends with the Indians and had a happy Thanksgiving; John Smith liked the Indians so much he married one of them. Nothing about, um, wars & syphilis & other European illnesses that wiped out hundreds of thousands of North American natives.
If they're not going to teach kids about conflicts, public schools should stop teaching history & stick to the 3 Rs. History is, after all, about conflict. And the lessons do need to address the points of view of both or multiple sides of a conflict. When those points of view are horrible, they cannot be ignored and should not be glossed over as the strange views of a few bad apples. Either teach nothing because the students are too young to understand political ideas or teach the truth, if not, perhaps, in its goriest detail. That did not happen in the good ole days, at least not in my neck of the woods.
Maybe not political enough for RC, but found this fascinating all by itself:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/15/health/mrna-vaccine.html
And then, since the success of the years of research that led to the development of successful Covid-19 vaccines was dependent on collaboration and cooperation, on people who saw far enough outside of themselves and their little worlds to pull together discoveries divided by places, persons and years, there may be enough of a political lesson about the values of interdependent and far-sightedness in it to justify its inclusion here.
@Marie
The abc's and arithmetic are more superficially benign than history or science, but even those areas promote division with all their right and wrong answers and in the value judgments that those answers imply about both the subject matter and and the people providing them.
In schools (and in life) division is here to stay.
Linda Greenhouse breaks down "What the Supreme Court's Vaccine Case was Really about:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/17/opinion/supreme-court-vaccine-osha.html
Ken: I bring back the words of Reinhold Niebuhr:
The world if full of dangerous ideas, and if we set out to protect young people against them, we will produce gullible innocents, not tough minded realists who know what they believe because they have faced the enemies of their beliefs.
https://news.yahoo.com/florida-republican-defeated-59-percentage-
202832444.html
The republican hasn't conceded after receiving less than 20% of the
votes. He's claiming his Democrat opponent bribed voters by
supporting things like the Green New Deal, Medicare for All,
(and probably a chicken in every pot.)
No word on what programs the republican supports. Probably things
like only whites get ballots or no taxes on millionaires.
Summary statement on the Republican approach to problem solving:
Pretend there are no problems.
Works every time.
I have always thought Martin Luther King was a martyr, I remember where I was for JFK's murder, MLK's murder and RFK's murder, and I don't ever remember feeling so hopeless about humanity in general. There has been no progress on equal rights at all. At. All. All day long I hear and read of the hopelessness in general. I don't care about the so-called "devisive" populace, and political atmosphere-- my liberal family has always been on the outs with that stuff, but this time, I feel like this is an abyss of great peril and we are helpless to stop what the homegrown fascists are doing. When voting rights are on the line, (and you should read the piece in the Atlantic about how two people ARE stopping legislation to counter the winger business, a corrupt system, inept Democrats, and enabled by one SC Chief "justice," with help from his pals) I don't see a way forward. If the so-called Department of "Justice," full of legal beagles, can't figure out how to arrest and convict a mentally ill usurper hiding in Florida as he directs a continuing disaster, what hope is there for anything else? I am relying on entertainment tv to get me through to the place where I don't care anymore. Maybe I should welcome not caring-- sure would feel better... Happy continuing disaster, guys, on this MLK Day.
Glenn Youngkin: Hypocrite or ignoramus?
Neither. He has data analysts who give him the issues that excite Virginia voters, and the positions that will earn him the most votes, and he speaks (and sometimes acts) accordingly. This is the same approach that Romney tried in 2012, and developed by the same type of operations analysis/internal rate of return spreadsheet jockeys. If governing was like running a hedge fund, it would be successful.
Government is not business. You can run parts of it like a business (e.g., delivering Social Security checks; managing government facilities; etc.), but those are not core functions of government.
One reason you can't run "the government" like a business is that, if there was fair profit in most government functions, you could let businesses perform them. In almost all cases where the government outsources, it subsidizes the businesses that do the work.
Glenn Youngkin will undoubtedly try what many R's have tried over the years, "privatizing" government functions -- which in almost all cases results in lower service , under-capitalization, unfunded exogenous costs (e.g., environmental costs), elimination of vested pensions, etc. In the end, businesses can walk away from failure without liability. Government can, too, but as a rule it ends up holding and funding the bag for privatization failures.
I'm sure Youngkin believes it is do-able, despite the nay-sayers. He has never been in government before, and his venture firm (Carlyle Group) was highly successful in part because of partners who had influence in national security areas, a growth field during his time there. Carlyle always has friends in high places. Youngkin will be surprised when he finds that you really can't run government like a business. He won't be the first.
The White House not reaching out to Romney on voting is a failure. On the other hand Mitt has shown no ability to lead any Republicans other than himself. And he conveniently ignores all the pleas for help from his fellow Senators across the aisle. He also has a phone and could reach out himself if he actually cared or had anything to contribute to the voting rights effort. So Romney can go jump in a lake.
@RAS: Agree completely. In fact, I meant to go back & write that those Republican senators who supposedly wanted to come to consensus agreements on a number of matters could speak to Democratic leaders & phone the White House & ask for a meeting with the Prez. But I got involved in snow-shoveling so didn't get around to it. Standing by the phone & whining that the Big Guy didn't call is for teenaged girls -- tho they probably don't do that any more, either.
I had not known or remembered the speech from which this still timely excerpt was taken. Reprinted in our local paper, with the lede that this may be the one that got him murdered:
“I should make it clear that while I have tried to give a voice to the voiceless on Vietnam and to understand the arguments of those who are called enemy, I am as deeply concerned about our troops there as anything else. For it occurs to me that what we are submitting them to in Vietnam is not simply the brutalizing process that goes on in any war where armies face each other and seek to destroy. We are adding cynicism to the process of death, for they must know after a short period there that none of the things we claim to be fighting for are really involved. Before long they must know that their government has sent them into a struggle among Vietnamese, and the more sophisticated surely realize that we are on the side of the wealthy and the secure while we create hell for the poor. Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home and death and corruption in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as an American to the leaders of my own nation. The great initiative in this war is ours. The initiative to stop it must be ours. There is something seductively tempting about stopping there and sending us all off on what in some circles has become a popular crusade against the war in Vietnam. I say we must enter the struggle, but I wish to go on now to say something even more disturbing. The war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit, and if we ignore this sobering reality we will find ourselves organizing clergy — and laymen — concerned committees for the next generation. They will be concerned about Guatemala and Peru. They will be concerned about Thailand and Cambodia. They will be concerned about Mozambique and South Africa. We will be marching for these and a dozen other names and attending rallies without end unless there is a significant and profound change in American life and policy. Such thoughts take us beyond Vietnam, but not beyond our calling as sons of the living God." — Martin Luther King Jr., April 1967
Marie: I think it's texts that they sit around waiting for these days and watching the clock for how long it has been since the last reply.
Also now every time I see people talking about reinstating the child tax credit I can't help but wonder if enough time has passed that they can measure how many fewer drugs are being bought (Manchin) now that parents aren't getting $300/month from the government to waste on their bad habits. That guy is a piece of work.
@ Ken, That NYT vaxx article was outstanding, and documents how the process does have political facets. The Bayh/Dole act made it possible to transfer NIH/NSF funded research to the private sector without payback. The RNA vaccines were indeed developed on the shoulders of federally funded giants.
@Jeanne. You are correct that there is plenty of institutional and cultural racism, but take heart. As a 78 y/o expat of the Jim Crow South, I find that quotidian relations between individuals of diverse ethnic and ancestral origins has never been better. Out here on the Left Coast or in the Deep South.
This one explains so much:
https://bestlifeonline.com/lies-sarcasm-dementia-news/
I can stop wondering. It's dementia!
"our calling as sons of the living God." MLK. Thanks Whyte. The best of Republicans have nothing on that. Mitt Romney to pick one, seems to forget that Joe B. has many things to do in addition to sucking up for a sure No vote from Mitt.
Jeanne: "I don't ever remember feeling so hopeless about humanity in general." What Orange Turd did what make Jim Crow-ness fashionable again. When I was a little kid, the N-word was all around; now it is roaring back into vogue where it is wrapped, more politely, as "liberal", "environmentalist", etc. Trump made it fashionable to be mean, uncaring, uncouth, and violent. I say again, MLK was the greatest American of the last half of the twentieth century. His example continues to inspire.
@Whyte Owen: Yes, I remember that speech, not from hearing it contemporaneously but hearing it on NPR maybe 15 years later. It occurred to me on hearing it that those conspiracy theorists who thought the federal government was behind King's assassination might have been onto something. I know J, Edgar Hoover was following King for years & gathering info. to make him look bad; the speech made King an adversary of the President, too.
So while I don't hold to that theory, I would not be shocked, shocked if it turned out to be true. The feds were pretty shady back in the day.