The Commentariat -- July 7, 2021
Late Morning/Afternoon Update:
The New York Times is live-updating of developments in Haiti after the assassination of the country's president, Jovenel Moïse.
New York. Dana Rubinstein, et al., of the New York Times: "Kathryn Garcia and Maya D. Wiley, who ran muscular campaigns to become the first female mayor of New York City, acknowledged on Wednesday that their bids had fallen short, conceding to Eric Adams in the Democratic primary."
Insurrectionist/Teacher Thought It Was All a Kids' Game. Jordan Williams of the Hill: "The FBI seized a 'fully constructed' Lego set of the U.S. Capitol from the home of an alleged insurrectionist. Prosecutors detailed the finding in a court document for Robert Morss, who was arrested on June 11 at his home in Glenshaw, Pa.... The Pittsburg Post-Gazette previously reported that Morss was a substitute social studies teacher.... He faces nine charges in connection to the riots, including assaulting, resisting, or impeding certain officers or employees; civil disorder; robbery of the personal property of the United States and obstruction of an official proceeding.
The New York Times' live updates of Covid-19 developments Wednesday are here.
Neil Irwin of the New York Times: "This week, the White House is planning to release an executive order focused on competition policy. People familiar with the order say one section has several provisions aimed at increasing competition in the labor market. The order will encourage the Federal Trade Commission to ban or limit noncompete agreements, which employers have increasingly used in recent years to try to hamper workers' ability to quit for a better job. It encourages the F.T.C. to ban 'unnecessary' occupational licensing restrictions, which can make finding new work harder, especially across state lines. And it encourages the F.T.C. and Justice Department to further restrict the ability of employers to share information on worker pay in ways that might amount to collusion. More broadly, the executive order encourages antitrust regulators to consider how mergers might contribute to so-called monopsony -- conditions in which workers have few choices of where to work an therefore lack leverage to negotiate higher wages or better benefits."
Timothy Bella of the Washington Post: "Darnella Frazier, the teenager whose cellphone footage of Derek Chauvin murdering George Floyd last year sparked a racial reckoning in the United States, said Tuesday that her uncle was killed in a car crash involving a Minneapolis police vehicle that was pursuing a robbery suspect. Leneal Lamont Frazier, 40, was in his car when it was struck by Minneapolis police while they were in a high-speed chase with another vehicle on the north side of the city. The victim, who was later identified by Darnella Frazier as her uncle, was not being pursued by police, authorities said."
What Climate Change? Henry Fountain of the New York Times: "Last month was the warmest June on record in North America, researchers said Wednesday, confirming the suspicions of millions of people who endured some of the hottest temperatures ever experienced on the continent. The Copernicus Climate Change Service, an agency supported by the European Union, said that average surface temperatures for June in North America were about one-quarter of a degree Fahrenheit (0.15 of a degree Celsius) higher than the average for June 2012, the previous record-holder."
Former Guy Sues Social Media. Cat Zakrzewski & Rachel Lerman of the Washington Post: "... Donald Trump on Wednesday filed class-action lawsuits targeting Facebook, Google and Twitter and their CEOs, escalating his long-running battle with the companies following their suspensions of his accounts. The suits were filed in the Southern District of Florida, and Trump said at a news conference in Bedminster, N.J., that they would call for the court to issue an order blocking the companies' alleged censorship of the American people.... The suits allege that the companies violated Trump's First Amendment rights in suspending his accounts and argues that Facebook, in particular, no longer should be considered a private company but 'a state actor' whose actions are constrained by First Amendment restrictions on government limitations on free speech. Traditionally, the First Amendment is thought to constrain only government actions, not those of private companies. It also called for the court to strike down Section 230, a decades-old Internet law that protects tech companies from lawsuits over content moderation decisions."
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Kelly Hooper of Politico: "President Joe Biden on Tuesday encouraged Americans to stand up to the 'lies' that led to the deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol and called for a bipartisan effort to investigate what happened on Jan. 6." ~~~
~~~ President Joe Biden in a statement "on the Six-Month Anniversary of the January 6th Insurrection on the Capitol. Not even during the Civil War did insurrectionists breach our Capitol, the citadel of our democracy. But six months ago today, insurrectionists did. They launched a violent and deadly assault on the people's house, on the people's representatives, and on the Capitol police sworn to protect them, as our duly elected Congress carried out the sacred ritual of our republic and certified the Electoral College vote.... It posed an existential crisis and a test of whether our democracy could survive -- a sad reminder that there is nothing guaranteed about our democracy."
DOJ Press Release: "Attorney General Merrick B. Garland [Tuesday] afternoon met with U.S. Capitol Police officers who defended the Capitol on January 6th, and with Department of Justice employees who have worked tirelessly to hold accountable those who attacked the Capitol six months ago today."
About That $10BB Contract Trump Mucked Up. Kate Conger & David Sanger of the New York Times: "The Defense Department said on Tuesday that it would not go forward with a lucrative cloud-computing contract that had become the subject of a contentious legal battle amid claims of interference by the Trump administration. The Pentagon had warned Congress in January that it might walk away from the contract if a federal court agreed to consider whether ... Donald J. Trump interfered in a process that awarded the $10 billion contract to Microsoft over its tech rival Amazon, saying that the question would result in lengthy litigation and untenable delays. The Defense Department said in a news release on Tuesday that the contract for the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure, known as JEDI, 'no longer meets its needs,' but it said it would solicit bids from Amazon and Microsoft on future cloud-computing contracts." The AP's story is here.
It's Okay for an Elected Federal Official to Incite an Insurrection. Spencer Hsu of the Washington Post: "Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) has asked to be dismissed from a federal lawsuit alleging that he incited the Jan. 6 mob assault on the U.S. Capitol, claiming that he can't be held liable because he was acting as a federal employee while challenging the 2020 election results in a fiery speech just before the riot began. Brooks said in a motion Friday that he should be dropped as a defendant or represented by the Justice Department in the case, filed March 5 by Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.).... U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta in Washington on Monday directed the Justice Department and Swalwell to respond to Brooks's claims.... In his filing Friday, Brooks invoked a 1988 law that protects federal employees from personal liability while acting within the scope of their office or employment."
Help! FBI Press Release: "The FBI's Washington Field Office has released 11 new videos of suspects in violent assaults on federal officers during the riots at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, and is seeking the public's help to identify them. The 11 new videos depict suspects seen forcefully attacking law enforcement officers. Investigating the violent assaults on law enforcement officers committed during the January 6 attack on the Capitol has been a priority for the FBI. With the assistance of hundreds of thousands of tips from the American people, the FBI has arrested more than 500 individuals who took part in the Capitol riots. Of those, more than 100 were arrested for assaulting law enforcement officers. However, some of the most violent offenders have yet to be identified, including the 11 individuals seen assaulting officers in the video footage we are releasing today." Includes videos.
Rachel Weiner & Spencer Hsu of the Washington Post: "After storming the Capitol on Jan. 6, a Northern Virginia man began forming his own militia-like group in the D.C. suburbs and building up a supply of explosives under the guise of a Bible study group, according to federal prosecutors. Fi Duong, 27, appeared in court Friday and was released to home confinement pending trial, over the objections of prosecutors who sought stricter terms. According to the court record, at the time of his arrest he had several guns, including an AK-47, and the material to make 50 molotov cocktails. Details of the case -- one of the first if not the first in which the government publicly disclosed it had someone undercover to continue monitoring a Jan. 6 defendant -- were made public Tuesday."
Another Bad Hair Day for Matt. Matt Dixon of Politico: "A key figure in the ongoing federal sex-crime investigation into Rep. Matt Gaetz is seeking to delay his sentencing as he continues to cooperate with prosecutors. Joel Greenberg, a former Seminole County tax collector who in May pleaded guilty to sex trafficking and corruption-related charges, requested in a motion filed Tuesday a delay in his sentencing, which is scheduled for August 19. Prosecutors are not opposing the motion, court records show."
Stupidest Senator News. Em Steck, et al., of CNN: "Sen. Ron Johnson insisted again last week that he is not a climate change denier, but CNN's KFile found video of him from just weeks earlier telling a Republican group that it is 'bullsh*t.' 'I don't know about you guys, but I think climate change is -- as Lord Monckton said -- bullsh*t,' the Wisconsin Republican said, without uttering the expletive but mouthing it, and referring to British conservative climate change denier Lord Christopher Monckton. 'By the way, it is.'" ~~~
~~~ Marie: My father taught us a repetitive poem, which I took to be an ethnic slur once I learned what ethnic slurs were. It's titled, "Yon Yonson," and to say it properly you have to use an offensively dimwitty fake Swedish accent. In its more appropriate iteration -- with only one letter changed -- it would go like this: "My name is Ron Yonson, I live in Wisconsin. I work in a lumber yard there. The people I meet when I walk down the street, They say 'What's your name?' And I say: My name is Ron Yonson ... (repeated again and again)."
Inexcusable Habits Die Hard. Felicia Sonmez of the Washington Post: "Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) on Tuesday used a Nazi-era comparison in opposing the Biden administration's push to encourage all Americans to get vaccinated against the coronavirus, calling the individuals leading those efforts 'medical brown shirts.' Members of the paramilitary organization that helped Hitler and the Nazi Party rise to power were known as 'brownshirts.' Greene's remarks, made in a tweet, came weeks after she visited the Holocaust Museum and apologized for previously comparing coronavirus face-mask policies to the Nazi practice of labeling Jews with Star of David badges." ~~~
~~~ Marie: The odd thing is that Margie knows Nazis are bad, but she doesn't seem to recognize that her own supporters, like the Three Percenters, are the U.S. groups that most closely resemble (and try to emulate) the brownshirts, or that urging people to save their own lives by getting vaccinated is not even remotely akin to using force to put down opposing political groups. Now, there is one guy who does not acknowledge that Nazis are bad ~~~
~~~ Martin Pengelly of the Guardian: "On a visit to Europe to mark the 100th anniversary of the end of the first world war, Donald Trump insisted to his then chief of staff, John Kelly: 'Well, Hitler did a lot of good things.' The remark from the former US president on the 2018 trip, which reportedly 'stunned' Kelly, a retired US Marine Corps general, is reported in a new book by Michael Bender of the Wall Street Journal.... Bender reports that Trump made the remark during an impromptu history lesson in which Kelly 'reminded the president which countries were on which side during the conflict' and 'connected the dots from the first world war to the second world war and all of Hitler's atrocities'.... Bender says unnamed sources reported that Kelly 'told the president that he was wrong, but Trump was undeterred', emphasizing German economic recovery under Hitler during the 1930s." ~~~
~~~ Marie: I guess I'm not as "stunned" as Kelly was. First, Trump is a famous ignoramus. Second, Donald is Fred Trump's son, and I'll bet Fred had a high regard for Hitler. A lot of Germans & German-Americans did, even after WWII & the Holocaust. Trump, like some of his followers, is a neo-Nazi.
The Company He Keeps. David Fahrenthold of the Washington Post: "A friend and golfing partner of ... Donald Trump -- who gained notoriety for using that friendship to lobby Trump's administration -- was charged with indecent assault last week in Pennsylvania on allegations he groped one of his dental patients, according to court documents. Albert Hazzouri Jr., a 65-year-old dentist from Scranton, Pa., is best known for a 2017 note he wrote Trump, using stationery from Trump's own Mar-a-Lago Club, to push a proposal for an oversight committee on dental spending. The note, which addressed Trump as 'Dear King,' came to symbolize the way that Trump blended business with government, giving his customers and friends an audience to lobby for their private causes. In charging documents filed last week, police said Hazzouri had groped a female patient after a dental procedure in May."
Nicole Perlroth & David Sanger of the New York Times: "Russian hackers are accused of breaching a contractor for the Republican National Committee last week, around the same time that Russian cybercriminals launched the single largest global ransomware attack on record, incidents that are testing the red lines set by President Biden during his high-stakes summit with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia last month.... Early indications were that the culprit [in the R.N.C. hack] was Russia's S.V.R. intelligence agency, according to investigators in the case."
White Girl Out. Ben Strauss of the Washington Post: "ESPN announced Tuesday that Rachel Nichols [White girl] will not be part of the network's NBA Finals coverage as a sideline reporter. The announcement came two days after the New York Times published an audio recording of Nichols making disparaging comments about colleague [Black sports commentator] Maria Taylor. Nichols was scheduled to be the sideline reporter for the Finals, which begin Tuesday night, but she will be replaced by NBA reporter Malika Andrews [Black sports reporter].
The Pandemic, Ctd.
Felicia Sonmez, et al., of the Washington Post: "President Biden outlined several strategies Tuesday to persuade more Americans to get vaccinated against the coronavirus, including 'door-to-door outreach' in targeted communities and stepped-up efforts to get vaccine to primary-care doctors and pediatricians who can encourage adolescents to get shots as they head back to school or get ready for fall sports. 'It's a year of hard-fought progress. We can't get complacent now. The best thing you can do to protect yourself and your family and the people you care about the most is get vaccinated,' Biden said in remarks at the White House complex on the federal government's coronavirus response, after falling shy of his self-imposed July 4 deadline for 70 percent of U.S. adults to have received at least one vaccination shot. White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters Tuesday that by the end of the week, nearly 160 million people in the United States will be fully vaccinated." This is part of the Post's live updates of Biden's activities. ~~~
~~~ David Smith of the Guardian: "Joe Biden has warned that the Delta variant of the coronavirus now makes up half of cases in many areas of the US and pledged to deploy federal 'surge response teams' to help local officials stop the spread. The president spoke on Tuesday after narrowly missing his self-imposed target of 70% of American adults receiving at least one dose of the Covid-19 vaccine by Independence Day on 4 July. Although he noted that coronavirus cases and deaths are down 90% since January, Biden urged younger adults in particular to get vaccinated as the Delta variant, already raging across the world, threatens to become the dominant one in America. 'Our fight against this virus is not over,' he said in public remarks after a briefing by the White House Covid-19 response team."
Max Boot of the Washington Post: "The Biden administration, in cooperation with the states, has done a superb job of rolling out the vaccines.... The problem is that a significant percentage of the country refuses to get vaccinated. While young people and African Americans exhibit vaccine hesitancy, the most problematic group by far is Republicans. According to a new Post-ABC News poll, 86 percent of Democrats have gotten at least one vaccine shot, compared with only 45 percent of Republicans. Forty-seven percent of Republicans say they likely won't get vaccinated, compared with only 6 percent of Democrats. The states that have the lowest vaccination rates -- Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Wyoming -- are all Republican redoubts.... Republicans have fallen victim to a virulent strain of misinformation circulating in the right-wing echo chamber." Boot cites disinformation circulated by Reps. Marjorie Green, Tim Massey (Ky.) & Sen. Ron Johnson & Fox "News."
Beyond the Beltway
Maryland. Justin Moyer of the Washington Post: "A 76-year-old woman who was taken back into custody last month after not answering calls during a computer class ... was ordered released Tuesday. After serving 16 years in federal facilities for dealing heroin, Gwen Levi moved to Baltimore to live with her 94-year-old mother, build relationships with her sons and grandchildren, and volunteer at prisoner-advocacy organizations as she searched for a job. She was one of about 4,500 prisoners allowed to serve their sentences at home as the coronavirus swept through federal prisons, killing 240 prisoners and four Federal Bureau of Prisons staff members. Her release, however, was revoked after she attended a computer word-processing class in Baltimore on June 12 and didn't return calls from officials monitoring her.... Her case drew attention after reports on former inmates who might have to go back to prison when the pandemic ends."
New York. The New York Times is liveblogging New York City ranked-choice mayoral election results here: "Eric Adams had a lead of one percentage point over his nearest rival, Kathryn Garcia, in the race for the Democratic mayoral nomination in New York City, according to a new count on Tuesday that included tens of thousands of absentee ballots. With most absentee votes now slated to be accounted for, Mr. Adams led Ms. Garcia by 8,426 votes in the Democratic mayoral primary, the city's first mayoral contest to be determined by ranked-choice voting. Maya Wiley, who emerged late in the primary as a left-wing standard-bearer, ended up in third place in the tally released on Tuesday. She had come in second place in the initial count of in-person ballots cast on Primary Day and during the early vote period." ~~~
~~~ Update. Karen Matthews of the AP: "Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams has won the Democratic primary for mayor of New York City after appealing to the political center and promising to strike the right balance between fighting crime and ending racial injustice in policing."
North Carolina. Lauren Lumpkin & Nick Anderson of the Washington Post: "Journalists Nikole Hannah-Jones and Ta-Nehisi Coates are joining Howard University's faculty, school officials announced Tuesday in a major recruiting victory for the private institution in the nation's capital. It was a simultaneous setback for the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to lose Hannah-Jones after a long and remarkably contentious effort to recruit her. The surprising development came less than a week after trustees for UNC-Chapel Hill voted to award tenure to Hannah-Jones. Initially, the public university hired her as a professor without the job-protection status. But its board of trustees approved tenure for her on Wednesday, after faculty members and students at Chapel Hill protested that she had been mistreated." A Huffington Post story is here. (Also linked yesterday.)
News Lede
The New York Times' live updates of developments in the Surfside, Florida, condominium collapse are here: "The elite crews searching the pulverized steel and smashed concrete that was the Champlain Towers South would shift their focus to recovery efforts, officials said on Wednesday, acknowledging after nearly two weeks that survivors would not be found."
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Reader Comments (10)
Marie: Having been born and bred in Wisconsin (and then quickly fled) the "Yon Yonson" ditty–-if that's what you call it–-was heard and even put to music by a German Oompa band that did its thing on the green many a Friday night. The actual Ron Johnson has got to be incredibly stupid in order to spew all the inanities he so frequently spews–-I don't mean just having a slanted outlook or contrived misconceptions––I mean actually STUPID!
Such good news re: Hannah-Jones and Coates; good for Nikole to walk away and say, thanks but no thanks–-a little too late and a little too racist. Howard U's gain for them both.
From yesterday: @AK: Your mentioning Djuna Barnes brought back a memory of a long time friend who, when we were reminiscing as to how we met said this:
"I knew we would become fast friends after I discovered you were an atheist, a liberal, laughed at my dirty jokes and knew who Djuna Barnes was."
Fatty thinking that Hitler did some good things fits his own profile of a demagogue who pillages and murders his own people and retreats happily to his merry- logo bunker basking in his still-hold on his party and millions of those people who will continue fighting for him hell or high water--as they say in Trump territory. All this has such a comic aspect to it but the laughter is lost when we realize we are in what could be described as a civil war. The more we knock down and expose the threat of that thing called democracy, the nearer we come to squashing the beast––whose white plumage covers its cold heart.
Jovenel Moise, President of Haiti, has been assassinated:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/07/world/americas/haiti-president-killed.html
On Haiti.
Had this to say to a Times commenter who said Haiti would never be "ready for democracy."
@msfenton
Not wholly sure what "not ready for democracy" means, especially after the last five years here in democracy's purported bastion.
But one thing I am sure of is that democracy depends both on equitable wealth distribution and citizens who care enough about having a democratic social order to do the hard work necessary to create and keep it.
In Haiti's case, inequity is both cause and effect of what has taken place.
Here at home, it seems Americans have little interest in reversing the wealth gap that brings autocracy in its wake, and that for too many Americans this democracy thing has become just too much trouble.
They'd just rather have Daddy tell them what to do.
Two thoughts on ethnic slurs (to which it appears I am not immune):
Taught my seven year old grandson that Yon Yonson ditty--with "come from" instead of "live in"-- just the other day. Don't now remember how it came up, but after all these years, it still tripped easily off my tongue.
Now I wonder if I should be embarrassed.
Also occurred to me this morning anent my comment above that the phrase "voodoo economics" might make more sense than I had previously thought.
Cause for more embarrassment?
@Ken Winkes: You're right; it was "come from," not "live in." I copied the lyrics of the Internets because I thought I must have forgotten them after 65 years. I guess not. "Come from" makes more sense for people -- like my father -- who didn't live anywhere near Wisconsin & wanted to make fun of some Scandinavians.
Marie,
The father of my neighbor across the street is named John Johnson.
He knows. the ditty, too.
I think this is the only kind of federal 'surge response teams' that will actually be able to deal with our unvaccinated problem.
I am tempted to contend that MTG does NOT know that Nazis are bad. An appreciation of the galactic moral turpitude, depravity, and inclinations to violence, extreme racism, and hatred of any differing political positions that informed Nazi sensibilities is frighteningly approximated by MTG herself, her followers, and the thugs she vehemently supports.
Any understanding of the nature of national socialism as it rampaged through Germany under Hitler would, without fail, prompt a swift recognition of the same sorts of beliefs and political and social movements that now support Trump, Green, and the entire Party of Traitors.
She is a moral monster. A liar, and a dangerous idiot.
Former Guy Sues Social Media. I don't believe this is much more than misdirection so people look at this shiney bauble and not at his life's work being sued for fraud. How much do you want to bet he had this lawsuit staged and waiting for the best, most advantageous time to spring the suit? He's an Ewwwww!
@Akhilleus: Points taken. However, the fact that she derides vaccinators' attempts to save the lives of her constituents by calling them "brownshirts" & she compared the horrors of mask-wearing to the Holocaust seems to make it implicit that brownshirts & the Holocaust were bad. But is she a moral monster, a liar & a dangerous idiot? Well, yes, of course.