July 10, 2022
Jim Tankersley of the New York Times: To shore up U.S. & European economies & to prevent a global food crisis, "U.S. officials have latched on to a never-before-tried plan aimed at depressing global oil prices -- one that would complement European sanctions and allow critical flows of Russian crude onto global markets to continue but at a steeply discounted price.... The potential for another oil shock to puncture the global economy, and perhaps [President] Biden-s re-election prospects, has driven the administration's attempts to persuade government and business leaders around the world to sign on to a global price cap on Russian oil. It is a novel and untested effort to force Russia to sell its oil to the world at a steep discount. Administration officials and Mr. Biden say the goal is twofold: to starve Moscow's oil-rich war machine of funding and to relieve pressure on energy consumers around the world who are facing rising fuel prices.... Even some skeptics say that the price cap could, if nothing else, keep enough Russian oil pumping to avoid a recession-triggering price spike."
President Biden, in a Washington Post op-ed, on why he's going to Saudi Arabia: "I know that there are many who disagree with my decision to travel to Saudi Arabia. My views on human rights are clear and long-standing, and fundamental freedoms are always on the agenda when I travel abroad, as they will be during this trip, just as they will be in Israel and the West Bank.... The Middle East I'll be visiting is more stable and secure than the one my administration inherited 18 months ago.... When I meet with Saudi leaders on Friday, my aim will be to strengthen a strategic partnership going forward that's based on mutual interests and responsibilities, while also holding true to fundamental American values.... Next week, I will be the first president to visit the Middle East since 9/11 without U.S. troops engaged in a combat mission there. It's my aim to keep it that way." Worth reading for the details on developments in the Middle East.
Hannah Natanson of the Washington Post: "Hundreds of people protested for abortion rights Saturday by marching to the White House and planting themselves in front of the building for about an hour, defying D.C. law and risking arrest.... No arrests were made, according to spokespeople for the U.S. Park Police and the Secret Service.... The demonstration was organized by the Women's March, a movement that drew millions to the streets in the nation's capital and across the country the day after Donald Trump was inaugurated as president in 2017. The group has called for a 'Summer of Rage' in response to the Supreme Court's overturning last month of Roe v. Wade.... The Women's March is also urging President Biden to declare a national emergency that would allow the federal government to dedicate additional funds for abortion procedures. Other actions requested by the group include new federal guidance increasing access to abortion pills and the leasing of federal land to abortion providers." ~~~
~~~ New York Times Editors: "There are several steps the federal government can take now, with laws that are already on the books, to fortify abortion services in states where they are legal, support doctors facing legal and logistical quandaries and help women who may need to cross state lines or secure abortion pills online. The executive order [President Biden] signed Friday does little more than direct the health and human services secretary to look for ways to better enforce these existing laws, and report back.... The most urgent step for the federal government to take is to ensure access to medication abortion, the most common method of abortion.... The F.D.A. should follow the attorney general's lead and say, unequivocally, that the agency's approval of and regulatory decisions around prescription drugs, including abortion pills, pre-empt any state-level regulations or statutes.... The agency should also take immediate steps to loosen constraints on medication abortion that experts have long said are unnecessary.... The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services should also make clear, publicly, that all hospitals receiving federal funds for Medicare and Medicaid (meaning nearly all hospitals and clinics) are required to provide all F.D.A.-approved drugs ... in a medical emergency."
Jeff Stein of the Washington Post: "The Biden administration on Friday said it will terminate its four-decade-old tax treaty with Hungary over that country's resistance to implementing a global minimum tax, as the United States seeks to create a global tax floor for large multinational corporations. In a statement on Friday, the Treasury Department said the United States is ending the treaty with Hungary because 'the benefits are no longer reciprocal,' citing a loss of tax revenue for the United States and little return for American investment in the country. Hungary, which has one of the lowest corporate tax rates in Europe, is currently blocking the European Union's implementation of the global minimum tax agreement. World leaders have agreed on a 15 percent corporate tax floor, championed as a top priority by Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen.... When the treaty was agreed to, Hungary's tax rate was 50 percent; it is now 9 percent -- less than half the U.S. rate."
Ramon Vargas of the Guardian: "The US army has suspended a retired three-star general [-- Gary Volesky --] from a lucrative consultant's role after a social media post appearing under his name taunted first lady Jill Biden's support of abortion rights.... 'For nearly 50 years, women have had the right to make our own decisions about our bodies,' the Democratic first lady's statement said about the [Supreme Court] ruling, which in effect outlawed abortions in more than half the country. 'Today, that right was stolen from us.' An account under Volesky's name replied: 'Glad to see you finally know what a woman is.' Some on the platform interpreted the remark as a verbal potshot at the Biden White House's support for the transgender community." MB: Volesky will probably get a more lucrative job as a Fox "News" talking head. ~~~
~~~ The Washington Post's story is here. It more clearly explains that Volesky held a "mentoring" role in his consultancy. Some mentor, especially since -- as I believe Patrick pointed out a few weeks ago -- the Supreme Court's ruling is extremely problematic for the military, inasmuch as many young military women are stationed in states that restrict or disallow abortions.
[The committee] received critical testimony on nearly every major topic in its investigation, reinforcing key points regarding Donald Trump's misconduct and providing highly relevant new information that will play a central role in its upcoming hearings. This includes information demonstrating Donald Trump's supreme dereliction of duty.... The testimony also corroborated key elements of Cassidy Hutchinson's testimony. -- Tim Mulvey, spokesman for the House panel who questioned Pat Cipollone Friday ~~~
~~~ Luke Broadwater & Maggie Haberman of the New York Times have more on Pat Cipollone's testimony before House committee investigators: "Pat A. Cipollone, who served as White House counsel for ... Donald J. Trump, was asked detailed questions on Friday about pardons, false election fraud claims and the former president's pressure campaign against Vice President Mike Pence, according to three people familiar with his testimony.... The panel did not press him to either corroborate or contradict some specific details of explosive testimony by Cassidy Hutchinson.... Mr. Cipollone ... invoked certain privileges in declining to answer some of the committee's questions."
Beyond the Beltway
Arizona. Amanda Holpuch of the New York Times: "The governor of Arizona has signed a measure into law that makes it illegal for people to record videos within eight feet of police activity, limiting efforts to increase transparency around law enforcement operations. The law, signed by Gov. Doug Ducey on Wednesday, goes into effect in September. Many civil rights groups and news media organizations have criticized the measure.... There are exceptions for people on private property, in a vehicle stopped by the police, or those who are the subjects of police contact, as long as they do not interfere with officers' actions. There are no exceptions for journalists.... The U.S. Supreme Court has not yet ruled on whether recording a video of a police officer in public while they are on duty is protected under the First Amendment. The action is recognized as a constitutional right in most federal appeals courts, including the Ninth Circuit, which covers Arizona." MB: Sure seems to me to violate the First Amendment. This isn't peeping-Tom stuff; it's public officials engaging in official acts. And the public has every right to know what's going on in their names.
Way Beyond
Ukraine, et al. The New York Times' live updates of developments Sunday in Russia's war on Ukraine are here. The Guardian's live updates for Sunday are here. The Guardian's summary report is here. ~~~
~~~ The Washington Post's live updates for Sunday are here: "Rescuers are searching for more than 24 people feared trapped under rubble, after Russian missiles hit a residential block in the eastern Ukrainian town of Chasiv Yar, the regional governor says. Fifteen people are so far confirmed dead from the Saturday evening strike, in what Ukrainian presidential adviser Andriy Yermak called 'another terrorist attack by the terrorist country.' Elsewhere in Donetsk region, Russian forces continue offensive operations, with unsuccessful assaults northwest of the city of Slovyansk, according to analysts.... Ukrainian officials also appear to be preparing for conflict in the south as they seek to recapture territory from Moscow.... Following the Group of 20 summit in Indonesia, Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Saturday criticized China's 'alignment' with Russia since the invasion of Ukraine, questioning how any country could be neutral in the face of such aggression."
Neil MacFarquhar of the New York Times: Russian officials "'need more soldiers, desperately, and are already using what some analysts call a 'stealth mobilization' to bring in new recruits without resorting to a politically risky national draft. To make up the manpower shortfall, the Kremlin is relying on a combination of impoverished ethnic minorities, Ukrainians from the separatist territories, mercenaries and militarized National Guard units to fight the war, and promising hefty cash incentives for volunteers.... Vladimir V. Putin hobbled the mobilization effort from the beginning, experts said, by refusing to put Russia on a war footing that would have allowed the military to start calling up reserves. Hence, the Kremlin has tried to glue together replacement battalions through other means.'" The article goes a long way toward explaining why Russian forces have seemed, at times, to be so ineffective.
Sri Lanka. New York Times: "President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, whose family has dominated politics in Sri Lanka for much of the past two decades, has agreed to resign after months of protests accusing him of running the island nation's economy into the ground through corruption and mismanagement, the speaker of the country's parliament said on Saturday. Mahinda Yapa Abeywardena, the parliamentary speaker and an ally of the president, announced the development at the end of a chaotic day. Protesters entered the president's residence and office, and thousands more descended on the capital, Colombo, to register their growing fury over his government's inability to address a crippling economic crisis. As the demonstrations swelled, the country's political leaders urged Mr. Rajapaksa to step down." This is a liveblog. ~~~
~~~ In an update, the Times report that Rajapaksa, according to Abeywardena, will resign Wednesday. But Rajapaksa remains in hiding and "hasn't been seen or heard from publicly since protesters stormed his official residence Saturday in Colombo...." So somebody with less in the way of guts than Boris Johnson, who at least managed to emerge from Downing Street to say, "Them's the breaks." But maybe more guts than Donald Trump, who still doesn't have the bare-minimal sense to decency to concede.
~~~ Do you suppose anybody has ever had the guts to say to Donald Trump, directly, "You lost. You lost big. Not because Joe Biden cheated. Not because crooked poll workers rigged the machines. Not because half the voters were non-citizens. You lost because millions more bona fide Americans voted for Biden than voted for you. Millions more Americans preferred Joe to you. I can tell you, if the situation had been reversed, Joe Biden would have had the balls to concede. You're a limp dick. Mr. President.*"
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Reader Comments (10)
Rights for me, but not for thee…
Attempted rapist, liar, and whiny-ass, beer-loving bully, Bart O’Kavanaugh is thoroughly put out that members of the dirty public upset by his concurrence that women’s right to make decisions about their own lives must be taken away because no one has a right to privacy, is demanding now that while that is the case for nearly everyone else, HE has that right. Plenty of other right-wing stooges and hypocrites demand the same.
Faux douchebag and eternal imbecile, Peter Doocy, went after the president’s press secretary recently, demanding that she acknowledge Bart’s right to privacy.
The blinding hypocrisy never seems to intrude on his insistence that the Supremes, who have ruled that there is no constitutional support for privacy, nevertheless have exactly that right.
After a lengthy harangue, Karine Jean-Pierre finally shut him down with “I’m done here, Peter.”
The pearl clutching by the traitors over rights they have that no one else should be granted, continues apace.
And so it goes.
https://www.mediaite.com/news/watch-peter-doocy-grills-jean-pierre-about-steakhouse-abortion-rights-protest-by-asking-if-kavanaugh-has-right-to-privacy/
Will let Krugman supply the Sunday Sermon.
Krugman's certainly seen the Light-- and not coincidentally it's the same economic Light that guides me.
"Market forces?" Baloney!
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/08/opinion/inflation-oil-biden-monopoly.html
Lookie see what a full page ad--if indeed you can call it an ad---in the Hartford Courant has to say: Heading: Large print:
I'M SECULAR---AND I VOTE. and below a picture of the author–-a woman from Haddam, Ct. who tells us she is a grandmother, a lifelong Nutmeg and an Atheist. She also says she is one of the more than 75 million secular Americans who are not religious and trust in reason, science and America's secular Constitution and she wants Congress, her state ledge, public officals and courts to do the following:
# Keep religion out of government
* keep religion out of public schools
* Keep religion out of bedrooms, personal lives and health care decisions, including when or whether to have children, and whom to love or marry.
# Use my tax dollars only for evidence-based, not faith based purposes.
She then urges us, if we agree, to vote our secular values and perhaps join the Freedom From Religion Foundation––(-the one Ron Reagan urges us to join in his T.V. ads in which he touts being" a lifelong Atheist not afraid of burning in hell."
Small steps for mankind.........
July 10, 2022 | P.D. Pepe
"... So, somebody with less in the way of guts than Boris Johnson ..."
Boris Johnson probably does not fear that a mob would hang him from a lamp post, beat him to death in the street or hack him to pieces with a machete.
Rajapaksa (hiding, and probably somewhere like Singapore) knows those things could easily happen to him. It may sound prejudiced, but there is long history of South Asian mob violence exploding out of demonstrations. If I was Rajapaksa I would be out of the country, which is small and in which everybody knows everybody.
Pardon my bad attitude, but who gives a hoot what Steve Bannon thinks or does?
He is a minor player in a Grade D movie, and I'm tired of seeing that movie re- and re-aired.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/10/politics/steve-bannon-trump-january-6-executive-privilege/index.html
@PD Pepe: Good for the woman from Haddam. Of course it is not necessary to be a non-believer to favor the separation of church & state. One need only to adhere to a faith that is not the dominant faith -- or to adhere to the dominant faith & have empathy for those who do not -- to understand the importance of honoring every faith and to give everyone equal protection under law.
Unfortunately, we live in a country where two large faith groups -- evangelical Christians & Roman Catholics -- have found common ground on matters of governance, and they have decided together, as a matter of convenience, to lord it over the rest to of us. This matters less to someone my age -- I won't need an abortion; I won't need to get a job in a company that makes me swear allegiance to the one true God, and so forth -- but it is tragic for young people, and especially for the millions of young people too ignorant to understand what they're losing. What we had will soon enough become a distant memory: old codgers taking a nostalgic & easily-dismissed look back at the good old days when people came out in the tens of thousands to protest for human rights & civil rights and government leaders, whether they wanted to or not, bowing -- at least to some extent -- to the will of the people.
And one big reason no one will know what we had is that educators will keep the secret. They have let sloppy, thoughtless faculty take over our high schools & universities, and that has got us where we are today. Those same careless "educators" -- or their descendants -- will teach how great the "new authoritarianism" is. Luckily for them, there are plenty of greedy people who see themselves as leaders of the new order, and they will jump at every opportunity to establish themselves in the new pecking order.
The institutions that have failed us then are not just the government but those than govern other aspects of our lives -- the churches & the educational apparatus, for instance -- and others -- like sports & entertainment -- which have never been helpful, remain as useless as ever. Meanwhile, journalism -- the fifth estate -- is a shadow of its former self, and has been overpowered by the Rupert Murdochs & Mark Zuckerbergs. When it comes down to it, the fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars but in ourselves.
Picking up where Marie left off, I give you William Byrd (1543-1623), the greatest of England’s Renaissance composers.
I bring up Byrd because this morning I was listening to several of his masses, wonderful stuff. I love the harmonic progressions and the contemplative nature of these pieces. But then I thought about the distinction between these masses and the craziness going on just outside Byrd’s front door.
He was born during the reign of Henry VIII when one could be hounded, fined, arrested, imprisoned, tortured and/or (mostly “and”) killed for not toeing the ever moving line set by a paranoid ruling class that had weaponized religion to solidify its control.
Long ago, right?
But we’re quickly getting to something similar in this country, where a zealous band of religious fanatics are swiftly imposing their will, and where their followers and acolytes in state legislatures are passing laws to attack, and in some cases imprison those who seek to follow their own minds about things like democracy, personal rights, freedom, religion, and what constitutes the rule of law.
The traitors on the Supreme Court are getting ready to follow up their recent bulldozing of women’s rights, gun laws, environmental protection, and the separation of church and state. Religion is once again weaponized in the service of a ruling class minority, and if you don’t go along, they’ll force you to face the consequences.
Barrett, in just a few months on the Court, along with her extreme right cohort, led by Clarence Thomas, rolled back decades of established law and precedents. She’ll be on the Court for decades. At this rate, where will we be in thirty or forty, or even ten years?
They’ve already decided that privacy is no basis for anything, unless they say so. Anyone who thinks these nuts are finished hasn’t been paying attention. They’ll be going after contraception, same sex marriage, even gay sex, period. In fact anything they don’t like will be found, miraculously, to be illegal, immoral, and subject to arrest and imprisonment.
And we’ve no William Byrd around to offer even a tiny bit of solace.
Oh, Akhilleus!!!!! no no no no no!!!
What about Thomas Tallis???
What about dour John Dowland??
I'm so upset about everything else!
Don't forget the Masters of English Music!!!!
Victoria,
My mentioning Byrd did not mean to disparage other composers of that period (or slightly earlier). Tallis, by all means…he was a teacher of Byrd. Dowland, certainly, master of the lute. But also, perhaps even more influential in his day than Byrd, the guy who spanned the medieval and Renaissance periods, John Dunstable. Also can’t leave out Machaut and Josquin, not to mention Palestrina.
Anyway, thanks for reminding me of Tallis. The Tallis Singers have long been a favorite.
If nothing else, musical periods remind us that there is not a single date when compositional styles morphed from medieval to Renaissance, to baroque, to classical, to romantic, to…Chuck Berry.
Perhaps the current vogue on the right for medieval jurisprudence is obscuring a nascent renaissance toward decency and true freedom (as opposed to winger freeeedumb). Let us hope so.
Oops…I said the Tallis Singers, I’m conflating two groups, the King’s Singers and the Tallis Scholars.