October 5, 2022
Afternoon Update:
The New York Times is live-updating news about President Biden & Jill Biden's trip to Florida to view hurricane damage.
Stanley Reed of the New York Times: "Saudi Arabia and Russia, acting as leaders of the OPEC Plus energy cartel, agreed on Wednesday to their biggest cuts in production in more than two years in a bid to raise prices, rebuking efforts by the United States and Europe to choke off the massive revenue Moscow reaps from the sale of crude. President Biden and European leaders have urged more oil production to ease gasoline prices and punish Moscow for its aggression in Ukraine. Russia, a co-leader of OPEC Plus with Saudi Arabia, has been accused of using energy as a weapon against countries opposing its invasion of Ukraine, and the optics of the decision could not be missed." CNN's report is here. ~~~
~~~ Marie: Let's say you're a patriotic American Neanderthal and you can't help but think climate change is a myth/hoax. Wouldn't you still want the U.S. to develop alternate sources of energy to save the U.S. (and other nations) from being so dependent upon fickle oil & gas producers in the Middle East & Russia? ~~~
~~~ Lee Shan of CNBC: "OPEC+'s plans to cut oil production is a 'mistake,' according to U.S. Senator Chris Murphy, who said there needs to be a re-evaluation of the alliance between the group's de-facto leader and the United States.... 'I think it is a mistake on their part. And I think it's time for a wholesale re-revaluation of the U.S. alliance with Saudi Arabia,' Murphy told CNBC's Hadley Gamble Tuesday. Murphy said that the United States needed the Saudis to take steps that 'may affect their short-term bottom line when it comes to oil revenues,' but which would allow the West to survive the challenge against Russia." ~~~
~~~ Why Can't the U.S. Be More Like Uruguay? Noah Shannon in the New York Times: "This is the paradox at the heart of climate change: We've burned far too many fossil fuels to go on living as we have, but we've also never learned to live well without them.... There are countries more prosperous, and countries with a smaller carbon footprint [than Uruguay's], but perhaps in none do the overlapping possibilities of living well and living without ruin show as much promise as in Uruguay.... Today, Uruguay boasts one of the world's greenest grids, powered by 98 percent renewable energy." Interesting. MB: Despite Uruguay's attempts to mitigate the environmental effects of their huge cattle industry, I still think they should learn to eat less beef.
Julian Barnes, et al., of the New York Times: "United States intelligence agencies believe parts of the Ukrainian government authorized the car bomb attack near Moscow in August that killed Daria Dugina, the daughter of a prominent Russian nationalist, an element of a covert campaign that U.S. officials fear could widen the conflict. The United States took no part in the attack, either by providing intelligence or other assistance, officials said American officials also said they were not aware of the operation ahead of time and would have opposed the killing had they been consulted Afterward, American officials admonished Ukrainian officials over the assassination, they said. The closely held assessment of Ukrainian complicity, which has not been previously reported, was shared within the U.S. government last week. Ukraine denied involvement in the killing immediately after the attack, and senior officials repeated those denials when asked about the American intelligence assessment."
Cora Engelbrecht of the New York Times: "An Iranian American who was held captive in Iran for seven years was released on Wednesday for urgent medical surgery [in the U.A.E.], according to his lawyer and the U.N. The man, Baquer Namazi, 85, a retired UNICEF official, was imprisoned in 2016 by Iranian authorities during a visit to Iran to check on his son, Siamak Namazi, who had been arrested the year before while on a business trip. The Namazis were convicted of collaborating with a hostile power -- the United States -- in a secretive trial in Iran in October 2016, but the precise nature of the accusations has never been made clear. A video released by Iranian state media on Wednesday appeared to show Baquer Namazi on a tarmac struggling to board a flight of stairs...."
From the Department of Be Careful What You Wish For. Marcy Wheeler on how Judge Aileen Cannon appears to have caused Donald Trump more harm than if she "had left well enough alone.... That's because, by means that are not yet clear (but are likely due to a fuck-up by one of Cannon's own staffers), the inventories [of documents] ... were briefly posted on the docket. (h/t Zoe Tillman, who snagged a copy [MB: Bloomberg link]). Those inventories not only show Cannon's claims of injury to Trump were even more hackish than I imagined. But it creates the possibility that DOJ's filter team will attempt to retain some of the documents..., notably records pertaining to the Georgia fraud attempts and January 6, they otherwise wouldn't have.... The single solitary medical document pertaining to Trump ... is this letter from Trump's then-personal physician released during the 2016 Presidential campaign.... [That is, Cannon] personally halted efforts to keep the United States safe, in part, to prevent leaks of a document that Trump released himself six years ago."
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Alex Marquardt, et al., of CNN: "The Biden administration has launched a full-scale pressure campaign in a last-ditch effort to dissuade Middle Eastern allies from dramatically cutting oil production, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter. The push comes ahead of Wednesday's crucial meeting of OPEC+, the international cartel of oil producers that is widely expected to announce a significant cut to output in an effort to raise oil prices. That in turn would cause US gasoline prices to rise at a precarious time for the Biden administration, just five weeks before the midterm elections. For the past several days, President Joe Biden's senior-most energy, economic and foreign policy officials have been enlisted to lobby their foreign counterparts in Middle Eastern allied countries including Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE to vote against cutting oil production."
Marie: It's Tuesday afternoon as I type this, and Trump hasn't filed a new lawsuit since way back on Monday. So ~~~
~~~ Not a New Case, But a New Venue. Adam Liptak of the New York Times: "... Donald J. Trump asked the Supreme Court on Tuesday to intervene in the litigation over documents marked as classified that the F.B.I. removed from his Florida estate, saying that an appeals court had lacked jurisdiction to rule on the matter. Although the Supreme Court is dominated by six conservative justices, three of them appointed by Mr. Trump, it has rejected earlier efforts to block the disclosure of information about him, and legal experts said Mr. Trump's new emergency application faced significant challenges. The new filing was largely technical, saying that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, in Atlanta, had not been authorized to stay aspects of a trial judge's order appointing a special master in the case." CNN's report is here. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ~~~
~~~ Oh, and There's This. Devlin Barrett & Robert Barnes of the Washington Post: "The petition was filed with Justice Clarence Thomas, who oversees emergency requests from the 11th Circuit. Thomas instructed the Justice Department to file a response to the court by Oct. 11." MB: I don't see a problem. Do u? (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Shane Harris of the Washington Post: "During his four years in office, [Donald] Trump never strictly followed the rules and customs for handling sensitive government documents, according to 14 officials from his administration.... He took transcripts of his calls with foreign leaders as well as photos and charts used in his intelligence briefings to his private residence with no explanation. He demanded that letters he exchanged with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un be kept close at hand so he could show them off to visitors. Documents that would ordinarily be kept under lock and key mingled with piles of newspaper articles in Trump's living quarters and in a dining room that he used as an informal office.... Several former aides said Trump spent his time in office flouting classification rules and intimidating staffers who might try to take secret intelligence material away from him." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ~~~
~~~ Marie: Those 14 former aides are all liars, Maggie Haberman is a creep, and if you don't acknowledge that only Donald Trump is the source of all truth and knowledge, human and divine, Democrats will come & eat you and your children alive.
A Grandiose Call to Arms. Alan Feuer of the New York Times: "Stewart Rhodes, the leader of the Oath Keepers militia, was a prolific writer of encrypted text messages, many of which have been featured this week as evidence at his trial on seditious conspiracy charges in Federal District Court in Washington. The government has used the messages to build its case that Mr. Rhodes and four other members of the group plotted to stop the transfer of power and keep ... Donald J. Trump in office. But they have also provided a window into the mind-set of Mr. Rhodes and others in the far-right organization during a period when Mr. Trump was stoking outrage among his supporters.... The messages, which were seized during the government's investigation of the Capitol assault, paint a portrait of an organization in thrall to conspiracy theories and willing to use extreme measures to fight for what they saw as a country in apocalyptic decline." The article includes partial texts of numerous Rhodes missives in which, among other things, he seems to compare himself to George Washington in his capacity as revolutionary general.
Natasha Korecki of NBC News: "Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., acknowledged Tuesday that he exchanged text messages with one of Donald Trump's attorneys before and after Johnson's staff tried to deliver a package to then-Vice President Mike Pence on Jan. 6, 2021. He added that the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack 'smeared' him because it didn't publicize all the text messages between his and Pence's aides. Johnson, in response to questions from NBC News, said 'the entire episode lasted about an hour,' referring to his ties to a fake electors scheme he said he knew nothing about. He also said he didn't know the contents of the package he said the attorney wanted to be delivered. 'You can't even call it participation. I wrote a couple texts,' Johnson said. Johnson has previously distanced himself from the scheme, telling WISN-TV of Milwaukee in August: 'My involvement in that attempt to deliver spanned the course of a couple seconds.'" ~~~
~~~ Marie: Yeah, I know you're shocked that Johnson would lie to a reporter while pretending to be on the phone to try to avoid answering the reporter's questions about Johnson's involvement in or knowledge of the fake electors scheme.
Justices in Search of a Path to Permit Racism. Adam Liptak of the New York Times: "In Supreme Court arguments on Tuesday, members of the court's conservative majority seemed to be searching for a narrow way to uphold a congressional map drawn by Alabama lawmakers that a lower court had said diluted the power of Black voters, violating the Voting Rights Act. Based on their questioning, which was mostly subdued and limited, the court's conservatives seemed likely to reject some of the state's most aggressive arguments, which would impose profound new restrictions on how the 1965 act applies in redistricting cases." ~~~
~~~ Marie: Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson engaged in some first-class trolling of the Court's confederate originalists. And of CJ John Roberts, who infamously wrote in an opinion in an earlier case, "The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race." This, of course, is a pretense to all but ignore racism as a valid reason for taking, or failing to take, certain actions that promote racist discrimination. Jackson said in oral arguments yesterday that "the law had to be understood in the context of the history of the 14th Amendment, adopted after the Civil War, which was meant to protect formerly enslaved Black people. 'That's not a race-neutral or race-blind idea,' she said."
Rachel Pannett of the Washington Post: On Monday, the "Onion -- a satirical publication known for poking fun at everything from popular culture to global politics -- ... filed an amicus brief to the U.S. Supreme Court in support of an Ohio man who faced criminal charges over a Facebook page parodying his local police department.... True to form, the supporting brief filed by the Onion's lawyers Monday takes a satirical approach in its bid to get the nation's top court to consider Novak's petition.... Despite the sarcasm and hyperbole, the legal brief isn't a joke. The publication's aim is to get the Supreme Court to scrutinize qualified immunity and free speech rights.... It also highlights what the Onion suggests are shortcomings in the legal system when it comes to protecting those who use comedy to question people in positions of authority." ~~~
~~~ Alex Henderson of AlterNet: "The Onion, founded in 1988, has been offering parody for 34 years. In the Amicus brief, The Onion noted its ability to occasionally fool people. None of the articles published in The Onion are meant to be taken seriously, but on occasion, some readers have taken them seriously and didn't realize they were reading fiction.... In the Amicus brief, The Onion's lawyers argued that a 'reasonable reader' should be able to recognize parody when they see it.... Noting the Onion's Latin motto is "Tu stultus es. You are dumb," the brief claims: '... the phrase 'you are dumb' captures the very heart of parody: tricking readers into believing that they're seeing a serious rendering of some specific form -- a pop song lyric, a newspaper article, a police beat -- and then allowing them to laugh at their own gullibility when they realize that they've fallen victim to one of the oldest tricks in the history of rhetoric.'" Thanks to RAS for the link. ~~~
~~~ Marie: You sort of have to read both stories to get to the gist of the brief: the WashPo story give the background but too little in the way of content. The AlterNet story provides little in the way of background; it doesn't even mention the case for which the Onion filed the brief, but it goes much more into the content of the Onion's brief. Most interesting to me is that the Onion's brief makes precisely the argument Trump lawyer & all-around wacko Sidney Powell made in her own defense in a defamation suit Dominion Voting Systems brought against her: "'No reasonable person would conclude that the statements were truly statements of fact,' Powell's attorneys said in a court filing...." That is, an intelligent Fox "News" viewer (okay, an oxymoron) would realize that her attacks on Dominion were obviously hyperbolic. I can foresee Donald Trump making a similar claim about his January 6 speech at the ellipse. Reportedly, he already has called the insurrectionists "idiots."
Kate Conger & Lauren Hirsch of the New York Times: "Elon Musk, in a surprise move..., proposed a deal with Twitter on Monday evening that could bring to an end an acrimonious legal fight between the billionaire and the social media company. The arrangement would allow Mr. Musk to acquire Twitter at $54.20 per share, the price he agreed to pay for the company in April, two people familiar with the proposal who were not authorized to speak publicly said. But it was not immediately clear whether Twitter planned to accept his offer, which could be seen as a negotiating tactic by Mr. Musk to halt Twitter's litigation against him." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) An NBC News story is here.
Beyond the Beltway
Florida. Christopher Flavelle & Jonathan Weisman of the New York Times: "Hurricane Ian's wrath made clear that Florida faces some of the most severe consequences of climate change anywhere in the country. But the state's top elected leaders opposed the most significant climate legislation to pass Congress -- laws to help fortify states against, and recover from, climate disasters, and confront their underlying cause: the burning of fossil fuels. Senators Marco Rubio and Rick Scott voted against last year's bipartisan infrastructure law, which devotes some $50 billion to help states better prepare for events like Ian, because they said it was wasteful. And in August, they joined every fellow Republican in the Senate to oppose a new climate law that invests $369 billion in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, the largest such effort in the country's history. At the same time, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis has blocked the state's pension fund from taking climate change into account when making investment decisions, saying that politics should be absent from financial calculations." ~~~
~~~ Marie: Southwest Florida is a Republican stronghold. It's fine to feel sorry for the people who lost their homes and/or their lives to a climate-change exacerbated hurricane, but the fact is that many of the people who are now crying for help from the rest of us taxpayers voted for Republicans who oppose efforts to mitigate the effects of climate change. Sorry, Ronnie Boy, but it's your own party that has consistently decided to put the politics into sound climate policy. And Republicans have done so for the crassest of "financial" reasons: campaign contributions from the fossil-fuel industry.
Georgia. Hypocrites on Parade. Shane Goldmacher, et al., of the New York Times: "National Republicans quickly began to close ranks on Tuesday behind Herschel Walker, the party's embattled nominee for Senate in Georgia, a day after a report that Mr. Walker, an outspoken supporter of an abortion ban with no exceptions, had paid for a girlfriend's abortion in 2009.... Mr. Walker appeared on Fox News on Monday hours after the allegations broke, denying the Daily Beast report and explaining away the $700 payment by saying, 'I send money to a lot of people.'... The statements of support from fellow Republicans came quickly on Tuesday.... Mr. Walker, who has spoken extensively about his religious faith, is counting on the support of evangelical Christians in Georgia. [Christianist leader Ralph] Reed argued that the latest report could lift turnout among social conservatives, saying voters would rally to defend Mr. Walker." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ~~~
~~~ Marie: Wait, wait. How is it that Walker is such a paragon of Christian virtue, whereas Sen. Warnock, who has a Ph.D. from Union Theological Seminary & for decades has been pastor of prominent churches, is not? ~~~
~~~ Meredith McGraw, et al., of Politico: "Months before news broke alleging that Herschel Walker paid for an abortion, top Republicans in the state -- including those advising his team -- warned him that the story could torpedo his campaign. Four people with knowledge of those preliminary discussions said that the abortion issue was well known within the state, even before reporters began inquiring about it.... Rather than move to proactively address the story, Walker's team held their breath, hoping that the election would pass before it surfaced."
Way Beyond
Ukraine, et al. The New York Times' live updates of developments Wednesday in Russia's war on Ukraine are here. The Guardian's live updates are here. ~~~
~~~ The Washington Post's live briefings for Wednesday are here: "... Vladimir Putin signed documents Wednesday for the illegal annexation of four regions of Ukraine, although the exact borders of the attempted land grab remain unclear. The move is a breach of international law. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Ukrainian forces were making a 'fast and powerful advance' in the country's south, with 'dozens of settlements' liberated from Russian control.... The Biden administration approved an additional $625 million in security assistance for Kyiv, bringing total U.S. military aid to Ukraine to $16.8 billion since February, the Defense Department said in a statement.... The OPEC Plus group of oil-producing nations is set to meet Wednesday, and oil prices rose Tuesday amid signals it would announce plans to cut production significantly.... A Russian court set Oct. 25 as the appeal date for Brittney Griner, the WNBA star held in Russia on charges of drug possession, the Associated Press reported."
News Ledes
New York Times: "The Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to Carolyn R. Bertozzi, Morten Meldal and K. Barry Sharpless on Wednesday for the development of click chemistry and bio-orthogonal chemistry -- work that has 'led to a revolution in how chemists think about linking molecules together,' the Nobel committee said. Dr. Bertozzi is the eighth woman to be awarded the prize, and Dr. Sharpless is the fifth scientist to be honored with two Nobels, the committee noted."
Forgot this yesterday:
New York Times: "Three physicists whose works each showed that nature is even weirder than Einstein had dared to imagine have been named winners of the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics. John Clauser, of J.F. Clauser and Associates in Walnut Creek, Calif.; Alain Aspect of the Institut d'Optique in Palaiseau, France; and Anton Zeilinger of the University of Vienna in Austria, will split a prize of 10 million Swedish kronor. Their independent works explored the foundations of quantum mechanics, the paradoxical rules that govern behavior in the subatomic world."
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Reader Comments (11)
Here's a comment by Akhilleus from very late yesterday on the Supremes' hearing yesterday:
By Akhilleus:
Father Alito at it again…
So today the Supremes (not the singing ones, unfortunately) began this term by hearing arguments on the atrociously racist Alabama gerrymandering grudge fuck.
The guy presenting the case for Alabama’s ridiculous map didn’t even know what he was doing. At one point John (Racism is Over) Roberts, after trying to get the guy to give them a solid reason for doing something finally said “Dude! Why are you here? What do you want us to do?”
“Why, stick it to the darkies, of course!” Okay, he didn’t actually say that, but that’s the whole point of this exercise in Jim Crowing.
Interesting how the racists were trying to talk about intent, even though that’s not even an issue anymore, intent being ferociously hard to prove. Ketanji Brown Jackson pointed out that intent doesn’t matter. All that matters is what happens on the ground, the effect, the outcome, and how things would look if districts were fairly drawn.
Alito then sniffed that he knew for sure that there wouldn’t be a single additional district which could send a Black candidate to congress. And how does this exalted prelate know?
“A computer program sez so! So there.”
Seriously? A fucking computer simulation is the rock in which he’s building his racist church?
Computer sims are only as good and as useful as the programming (and by extension the person or persons doing the programming). If the guy plugging in the numbers is the Tuscaloosa Grand Dragon of the local KKK, I’m pretty sure the results are what you might expect.
And by the way, Sammy, I could program a computer app that would say you were a tsetse fly. Would you trust that result?
When you see embarrassingly specious jibber jabber like this that passes for judicial acumen, you know 100% that they got nothin’. And they know it.
Computer simulation my Irish one.
P.S. Don’t you just love it, love it, love it when these guys start yapping about a “colorblind” district map? Of course they would never admit that their map is very much NOT colorblind. It’s built to be whitey-white-white.
Not one to assign blame but did wish you all would have fixed things while we were gone.
Seems, though, a few messes (as Mae West said in another connection--foreign and domestic) remain to be cleaned up.
Guess we'll have to get to work.
Once again TFG has put the GOP in a bad position. He recruited and supported a badly flawed Senate candidate for Georgia in Herschel Walker. Walker easily won his primary and now is in a tight race. If the GOP dropped support over his flaws now this would hand the seat to the Democrat Warnock.
In short the seat is what's important, not the man who's sitting in it.
The reporter who broke the Herschel Walker story was on Chris Hayes last night and heavily intimidated that the woman his campaign was worried about in the Politico story is not the same one he reported on. So there may be more similar stories on the way for Walker.
@RAS: Right now the segment you cite is at the top of the Chris Hayes Show page. It's also available on this Yahoo! News page (and probably will be there for longer).
As you say, reporter Roger Sollenberger seems pretty sure that the rumor Politico refers to in the story linked above is about a different abortion Walker bankrolled. I doubt Sollenberger would have made this assertion (he volunteered it as an interjection, not under questioning) if he didn't have pretty good reason to think the Politico story referred to another woman, not Sollenberger's source.
If Sollenberger is right, that's pretty stunning for someone who has opined that abortion is murder and supports a nationwide ban.
Marie,
Like most hypocrites, Walker’s expressed ire and outrage are for others. Not himself. Like the way Trump, a lifelong crook and scofflaw, upbraids others for not obeying the law, the law he has no use for and demands to be freed from. Or the way wingers howl about voter fraud, when, with each passing week, the only fraud we hear about, ever, concerns Republican cheating.
Ken, the other day, I came up with the perfect plan to fix everything, amd I wrote it down with a pen from my kid’s desk. Only problem, it was the pen with invisible ink we made as a science project and now I forget the details!
Remember the mythical "moderate Republican?" Since it doesn't exist, I am sure that every motherf****** R in the country is firmly behind that piece of sad, pathetic, lying crudola that is a formerly good (?) football player, who somehow thinks he can save himself by moving to DC. The truly cracked thing about him and Oz, killer of puppies and dogs and seller of crackpot "drugs" that made him rich, is that neither of them has a clue what the job entails, nor do they know why they want to be elected or should be. We know why the merciless cult wants them: easy to make them puppets, since they just wanna play with the big boys. I am terrified Oz will beat Fetterman now, when it was formerly not a big deal, as Fetterman was running away with it. You should see the horrible ads we get in the mail all about how chummy he is with felons etc. He has not done himself any favors by not answering the general questions he is getting on friendly shows, and for reverting to remarks about Oz. I don't know whether that is just his way, or whether it is his stroke recovery way. I am "less" worried about Asstriano, as he is fasting his way toward the election and Shapiro has the money and the ads that Asstriano does not, but of course, he can cause a lot of damage in Pennsylvania between now and the presidential election. He comes off as crazy every time he opens his mouth. The other urgent thing happening is that the lege is like all these other leges, and they can cause a lot of damage all the time. Of course, they are highly paid and work almost never, except secretly at night, so one never knows really what is going on. Our one Dem from this county/has a secret R running against him and many people could be unenlightened and vote for her "reasonableness" when she is boilerplate R, but cross-filed as they do. Husband talked with her on our porch awhile back and accepted a sign for the yard until he got a letter with footnotes from her foe all about what she is REALLY about. The sign is in the trash, though...
So, happy Wednesday, same as any other day in October...
Apologies: the paragraph is my friend and I completely failed at it. It is quite the long blurb, and I won't do that again, hopefully...sorry, all!
A positive story about schools and the environment, "Schools Go Solar, Save Millions On Energy, Upgrade Classrooms, Pay Teachers More"
"one in 10 US public and private schools in the US was using solar energy by early 2022, according to a report from clean energy nonprofit Generation 180 — twice as many as in 2015.
The solar installations at the schools themselves are forecast to save the school district as much as $8 million over 30 years. The Times notes that the forecast hadn't expected any savings in the first year, 2021, but then energy costs spiked for everyone using the local utilities, and the schools saved $4,000 that hadn't been anticipated.
Other districts are using their energy savings to create apprenticeship programs so students can learn to become solar installers, or to upgrade schools' cooling and heating systems, or to replace old outdated lighting systems, which will further reduce energy costs over time.
In Louisa County, Virginia, school administrators used federal Covid recovery and local funds to place 32 solar-generated mobile Wi-Fi stations throughout the community during the height of the pandemic, helping to connect families and the roughly 40 percent of students who didn’t have reliable internet access. “The beautiful part of the project was once we designed the Wi-Fi trailers, we had high school students build them,” said David Childress, the district’s director of technology."
Jeanne,
Not to worry, the rampant political and social evil out and about these days emanating from right-wing anus crevices masquerading as mouths can easily trigger a Joycean stream of consciousness, so you’re in good company.
And if you’re talking about the former guy, here’s a snippet from Joyce you might agree with:
“And when all was said and done the lies a fellow told about himself couldn't probably hold a proverbial candle to the wholesale whoppers other fellows coined about him.”