October 11, 2021
Afternoon Update:
Republicans Miles Taylor & Christie Todd Whitman, in a New York Times op-ed, urge Republicans to vote for "centrist" Democrats: "... for now, the best hope for the rational remnants of the G.O.P. is for us to form an alliance with Democrats to defend American institutions, defeat far-right candidates, and elect honorable representatives next year -- including a strong contingent of moderate Democrats.... Concerned conservatives must join forces with Democrats on the most essential near-term imperative: blocking Republican leaders from regaining control of the U.S. House of Representatives.... As long as [GOP House leader Kevin McCarthy] embraces Mr. Trump's lies, he cannot be trusted to lead the chamber, especially in the run-up to the next presidential election."
Facebook Is for English-speakers! Thanks to Ken W. for the lead. ~~~
Australia. Punctuation Matters! Livia Albeck-Ripka of the New York Times: "A missing apostrophe in a Facebook post could cost a real estate agent in Australia tens of thousands of dollars after a court ruled a defamation case against him could proceed. In the post last year, Anthony Zadravic, the agent, appears to accuse Stuart Gan, his former employer at a real estate agency, of not paying retirement funds to all the agency's workers.... The post ... read, 'Oh Stuart Gan!! Selling multi million $ homes in Pearl Beach but can't pay his employees superannuation,' referring to Australia's retirement system.... Less than 12 hours after the post was published on Oct. 22, Mr. Zadravic ... deleted it. But it was too late. Mr. Gan ... filed a defamation claim against Mr. Zadravic. On Thursday, a judge in New South Wales ruled that the lack of an apostrophe on the word 'employees' could be read to suggest a 'systematic pattern of conduct' by Mr. Gan's agency rather than an accusation involving one employee. So she allowed the case to proceed." ~~~
~~~ Marie: More consequential punctuation: That extra comma in the poorly-worded Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which allowed the Supremes to decide that the Amendment applied to gun rights for individual citizens, not just "a well regulated militia."
U.K., Where Folks Do Speak Various Versions of English. AP: "British police have announced they will not take any action against Prince Andrew after a review prompted by a Jeffrey Epstein accuser who claims that he sexually assaulted her." A Washington Post story is here.
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~~~ NOW, THEREFORE, I, JOSEPH R. BIDEN JR., President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim October 11, 2021, as Indigenous Peoples Day. I call upon the people of the United States to observe this day with appropriate ceremonies and activities. -- Proclamation, October 8, 2021 ~~
~~~ Melina Delkic of the New York Times: "President Biden has proclaimed Monday, Oct. 11, as Indigenous Peoples' Day, becoming the first U.S. president to formally recognize the day.... Over the past several years, states including Alaska and New Mexico have adopted the holiday, choosing to forgo Columbus Day celebrations and heeding calls from Indigenous groups and other residents not to celebrate Christopher Columbus, the Italian navigator the holiday is named for, who they say brought genocide and colonization to communities that had been in the United States for thousands of years. Many around the country, however, still celebrate Columbus Day or Italian Heritage Day as a point of pride in Italian culture. Not all states have accepted Indigenous Peoples' Day, and some members of Indigenous communities say recognizing the day does not go far enough. It is not yet a federal holiday, though there is a bill in Congress that proposes to make it one. Here's more background."
Julian Barnes, et al., of the New York Times: "A nuclear engineer for the U.S. Navy and his wife have been charged with trying to share some of the United States' most closely held secrets on submarine technology with another country, according to court documents unsealed on Sunday. The engineer, Jonathan Toebbe, was accused of trying to sell information on the nuclear propulsion system of Virginia-class attack submarines -- the technology at the heart of a recent deal that the United States and Britain struck with Australia.... Some experts thought the unsolicited offer could have been aimed at a friendly country, not an adversary. There is no allegation from the F.B.I. or the Justice Department that the foreign country obtained any classified information. But Mr. Toebbe had high-level clearances in nuclear engineering, and his service record showed that as a member of the Navy Reserve, he worked for 15 months from the office of the chief of naval operations, the top officer in the Navy." NPR's story is here.
~~~ AND Other Traitors. Meredith McGraw of Politico: "Nine months ago, Republicans were questioning Donald Trump's place as the lead fixture of their party. Saturday night provided the clearest evidence yet that they want him right there. Not one year removed from surviving a second impeachment, the former president rallied before thousands of his most loyal supporters across the Iowa State Fairgrounds on a balmy Midwestern evening. He regaled them with his stories from the White House, his falsehoods and complaints about the 2020 election results, and his criticisms of the Biden administration on everything from immigration to the withdrawal from Afghanistan.... But the notable elements were not what was said by Trump, but who was there with him. Appearing alongside the former president was a who's who of influential Republicans in the Hawkeye state, including Sen. Chuck Grassley and Gov. Kim Reynolds, Iowa Reps. Mariannette Miller-Meeks and Ashley Hinson, former acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker and Iowa GOP Chair Jeff Kaufmann. Trump has held rallies since leaving the White House. But never have elected Republicans of such tenure and stature appeared with him." A related AP story is here. ~~~
~~~ BUT. The Secret Views of Senators. Alexander Bolton of the Hill: "Several Republican senators, who requested anonymity to discuss Trump frankly, said they don't want to see Trump return as the party's standard bearer. 'I think we're better off when he's not part of any story,' said a Republican senator, who said his view is widely shared in the GOP conference. 'He's a clinical narcissist. He threw away the election in the debate with Biden and he threw away the Senate out of spite,' the lawmaker added, referring to Trump's first against Biden, which many Republican senators viewed as a disaster, and his influence on Republican voter turnout in the Georgia special election. One thing is crystal clear: Most GOP senators think Trump announcing a bid before the midterms would hurt them." MB: Because humoring Trump has been such an excellent strategy (January 6). ~~~
~~~ Another Top Republican Normalizes Overturning Elections. Hope Yen of the AP: "The House's second-ranking Republican, Rep. Steve Scalise, repeatedly refused to say on Sunday that the 2020 election wasn't stolen, standing by Donald Trump's lie that Democrat Joe Biden won the White House because of mass voter fraud. More than 11 months after Americans picked their president and almost nine months since Biden was inaugurated, Scalise was unwilling during a national television interview to acknowledge the legitimacy of the vote, instead sticking to his belief that the election results should not have been certified by Congress."
Kathryn Watson of CBS News: "Foreign affairs and national security expert Fiona Hill warned that the U.S. is in a 'dangerous moment' and has already reached a constitutional crisis as political actors try to undermine elections and call for violence.... Hill, a former National Security Council official who served as a key witness in the 2019 Trump impeachment hearings as a Trump administration official, pointed to serious threats as former President Trump is 'clearly prepping for his return to the presidency,' which he says is still rightfully his.... January 6, she said, was a 'dress rehearsal' for an attempt at overtaking the government that could happen in 2022 or 2024."
Joe DePaolo of Mediaite: A new book reports that ... Donald Trump asked his top intelligence official to investigate an absurd conspiracy theory that Chinese thermostats changed votes in the 2020 election. In an excerpt from the soon-to-be-released Betrayal by ABC New's Jonathan Karl, which was shared on Sunday's edition of This Week, the former president was said to be 'intrigued' by the theory -- which was presented to him by Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark, who Trump wanted to install as acting attorney general." MB: You people might think I'm wasting energy, but I just turned up my thermostat in hopes of getting Biden a few more votes.
You're Grounded! Ramishah Maruf of CNN: "Southwest [airlines] ... canceled more than 2,000 flights Friday through Sunday. The world's largest low-cost carrier canceled three of every 10 departures it had scheduled on Sunday and the disruption continued into Monday, a federal holiday, with 337 flights -- or about one in 10 — canceled so far, according to the aviation tracking website FlightAware. The company blamed the cancellations on air traffic control problems and limited staffing in Florida as well as bad weather. It told CNN late Sunday that getting operations back to normal was 'more difficult and prolonged' because of schedule and staffing reductions made during the pandemic.... In a statement, the Federal Aviation Administration said there have bee no air traffic related cancellations since Friday. The agency said that airlines are experiencing delays because of aircraft and crews being out of place."
The Pandemic, Ctd.
The New York Times' live updates of Covid-19 developments Monday are here: "The federal government is expected to take a significant step this week toward offering booster doses to a much wider range of Americans as advisers to the Food and Drug Administration meet on Thursday and Friday to discuss recipients of the Johnson & Johnson and Moderna coronavirus vaccines. So far, regulators have authorized booster shots only for certain adults who received the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine...." ~~~
~~~ The Washington Post's Covid-19 live updates for Monday are here.
Matthew Perrone of the AP: "Drugmaker Merck asked U.S. regulators Monday to authorize its pill against COVID-19 in what would add an entirely new and easy-to-use weapon to the world's arsenal against the pandemic. If cleared by the Food and Drug Administration -- a decision that could come in a matter of weeks -- it would be the first pill shown to treat COVID-19. All other FDA-backed treatments against the disease require an IV or injection."
Lena Sun of the Washington Post: "Within days of regulators clearing the nation's first coronavirus vaccine for younger children, federal officials say they will begin pushing out as many as 20 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech pediatric vaccine to immunize school-age kids across the United States in a bid to control the coronavirus pandemic. The kickoff of the long-awaited children's vaccination campaign is expected as soon as early November. And this time around, the government has purchased enough doses to give two shots to all 28 million eligible children ages 5 to 11." The article is free to nonsubscribers.
Alex Horton of the Washington Post: "Hundreds of thousands of U.S. service members remain unvaccinated or only partially vaccinated against the coronavirus as the Pentagon's first compliance deadlines near, with lopsided rates across the individual services and a spike in deaths among military reservists illustrating how political division over the shots has seeped into a nonpartisan force with unambiguous orders. Overall, the military's vaccination rate has climbed since August, when Defense Department leaders, acting on a directive from President Biden, informed the nation's 2.1 million troops that immunization would become mandatory, exemptions would be rare and those who refuse would be punished. Yet troops' response has been scattershot, according to data assessed by The Washington Post. For instance, 90 percent of the active-duty Navy is fully vaccinated, whereas just 72 percent of the Marine Corps is, the data show, even though both services share a Nov. 28 deadline." ~~~
~~~ Marie: This evident insubordination seems to confound contributor Bobby Lee, who wrote in yesterday's thread, "... I don't remember anyone asking me if I had any objections to getting a shot for anything. In basic training they just lined us up and ran us through the line. Later on in service it was an order to report for a booster." Yeah, I would think so.
Beyond the Beltway
New York. Jan Ransom, et al., of the New York Times: "... the sheer lawlessness inside ... Rikers, New York city's main jail complex ... is difficult to fathom. Detainees in some buildings have seized near total control over entire units, deciding who can enter and leave them, records and interviews show. In other buildings, they have wandered in and out of staff break rooms and similarly restricted areas, with some flouting rules against smoking tobacco and marijuana.... Several have stolen keys and used them to free others in custody, who went on to commit slashings and other acts of violence. The chaos was not limited to incarcerated people. Correction officers have participated in beatings or failed to intervene in hangings and other urgent situations.... City officials have accused jail officers of abusing generous sick leave policies -- hundreds have been out of work -- while the officers' labor union has said guards are not going to work because conditions in the jails are unsafe and inhumane.... The troubles on Rikers Island trace also to physical grounds that have been neglected for decades, leading to doors that do not lock properly, cells that are too deteriorated to contain detainees and aging objects like radiators that can be ripped apart and turned into weapons."
Wisconsin. Dan Balz of the Washington Post: "For the past decade [Wisconsin] has been an incubator for the kind of tribal politics and deep divisions that characterize civic life in Washington and much of the rest of the nation. While Wisconsin has been closely divided for a long time -- four of the last six presidential elections were decided by less than a percentage point -- the widening gulf between the two parties exposed in 2011 foreshadowed the extent to which American politics would come to focus more on the extremes rather than the middle of the political spectrum. This has made Wisconsin not a purple state, as many people suggest, but two states in one -- the first comprising a few heavily populated blue enclaves and the second a red sea of rural, small-town and suburban geography that surrounds those blue pockets." MB: Yo, Dan, the state of Joe McCarthy & Bob LaFollette has not been a "purple" state in my lifetime or before.
Way Beyond
Czech Republic. Rick Noack & Ladka Bauerova of the Washington Post: "Czech President Milos Zeman was rushed to the intensive care unit of a military hospital on Sunday, hours after the party of his political ally, billionaire Prime Minister Andrej Babis, was defeated in the country's general election.The unexpected development complicates efforts to form a new government. Zeman and Babis, who appears to have been weakened by revelations in the Pandora Papers leaks, were expected to meet on Sunday morning in what some opposition members interpreted as a sign that the president might seek to keep the prime minister in power despite the election result.... Zeman has been reported to suffer from diabetes and neuropathy."
News Lede
New York Times: "David Card, Joshua D. Angrist and Guido W. Imbens have made a career of studying unintended experiments -- Mr. Card in labor economics and Mr. Angrist and Mr. Imbens in analyzing cause and effect. On Monday, their work earned them the 2021 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. All three winners are based in the United States. Mr. Card, who was born in Canada, works at the University of California, Berkeley. Mr. Angrist, born in the United States, is at M.I.T. and Mr. Imbens, born in the Netherlands, is at Stanford University. 'Uncovering causal relationships is a major challenge,' said Peter Fredriksson, chairman of the prize committee. 'Sometimes, nature, or policy changes, provide situations that resemble randomized experiments. This year's laureates have shown that such natural experiments help answer important questions for society.'" The AP's report is here.
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Reader Comments (8)
Chinese…THERMOSTATS?!?!?
What about Chinese can openers? How about Chinese hair dryers?
And Trump was hot (so to speak) for this idea? Did they climb down off the wall and go vote for Biden? Or did they send out mind altering woodgie rays forcing Trumpy goons to switch their votes? How was this supposed to work?
Then again, this is the guy who suggested guzzling Clorox. And he was going to make the moron who came up with this whacky bullshit the Attorney General of the United States?
He IS an idiot.
To add to Bobby Lee's post yesterday re: vaccinations in the military.
At one point I had orders to go to Japan. I was lined up with 10
others and we had 6 shots in each arm.
Two days later my orders were rescinded because someone who
could read and write and type really fast was needed in Virginia.
I can't say where, because it required a secret clearance. But now
anyone can find the 'secret' command center which is hidden
inside a mountain. Look for the busses in the parking lot.
I have to go turn off the thermostat now, filling out my ballot voting
for city council. Or does that only apply using voting machines.
Such quandaries.
and when those "unidentified senators" who supposedly don't want Trump to run in 2024 get together do you suppose they laugh and say "Man, we really be messing with the Libs minds."
And, also too, with respect to the pre-volunteer Army's deep, deep concern about you and your feelings about vaccinations: when they gave you those "six shots" in each arm, it was not six needles per arm.
You lined up with whomever else was your cohort for getting the shots, with your paper med folder in one hand, shirt in the other, t-shirt sleeves rolled up. As you reached the seated medic, he told you not to flinch when the gun was at your arm, because the injection stream would cut you like a knife if you moved. He told the guy behind you to catch you if you fainted. Then he took a device that looked like a soda dispensing wand, attached by a flexitube to a machine on his table, pushed the multi-port nozzle against your arm and pulled the trigger. You heard the pop of the air pressure and felt the tap on your arm, and voila, you just received from one to (six?) different vaccines. Meanwhile, the other medic at the station was rubber-stamping the data into your med file, which you would only see again when you left that duty station with it in hand to turn over to the clerk at that new location.
The medics did not ask you anything (like, is it OK to give you a GG shot?) or tell you what you had been given. Once your record showed you had no allergies, it was like a meat processing line.
This system, along with many other Army public health practices, worked really well. Before WW2, more US soldiers in combat zones were hospitalized from disease than from wounds. By the 1960s the Army had lowered the levels of communicable diseases among deployed troops well below target levels, so that deployed troops didn't even worry about contracting anything but venereal diseases, which remained a scourge. Even then, most troops were dumb enough to believe that all VD could be treated with a shot of something, despite all the warnings to the contrary.
Something else that's ever worse than we thought:
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/john-oliver-misinformation-memes_n_6163dfbde4b01964442662bd
I forget which U.S. airline did it, but maybe other businesses with company health plans could put a surcharge in there for members who are unvaccinated. It seems a kick in the wallet is the most effective argument.
Marie,
Hope not all punctuation, especially misplaced apostrophes, matters.
Just re-read my long morning missive to our state's legislatively created tax structure work group (with our regressive taxes they have a lot of work to do) and see I stuck an apostrophe that didn't belong in an "its.".
Hope they don't toss out all my fine advice as a consequence of my carelessness. Believe me, it was worth millions.
@Ken Winkes: If there are any grammarians in the state's tax office (highly doubtful), they may start making an Extraneous Apostrophe Levy or a similar Apostrophaic Excise Tax.