The Conversation -- September 3, 2023
This is a yooge electronic billboard the Republican Accountability Project has posted in Times Square:
~~~ A related Georgia Public Radio story is here. Thanks to RAS for the lead.
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Michael Shear & Nicholas of the New York Times: "President Biden offered his support and condolences to a Florida community hit hard by Hurricane Idalia after being snubbed by Ron DeSantis, the state's Republican governor and a potential rival for the presidency. Mr. Biden and Jill Biden ... took an aerial tour of Live Oak, a small town east of Tallahassee; received a briefing from federal and local emergency medical workers; and met with members of the community. In brief remarks, the president vowed that the federal government would support those affected for as long as it takes to recover. 'We're not going anywhere,' he said. 'The federal government, we're here to help.'" ~~~
~~~ Alex Gangitano of the Hill: "'Nobody can deny the impact of climate crises -- at least nobody intelligent can deny the impact of the climate crisis anymore. Just look around, around the nation and the world for that matter,' [President] Biden said while in Live Oak, Fla. 'Historic floods, intense droughts, extreme heat, deadly wildfires that have caused serious damage that we've never seen before.'" ~~~
~~~ Alex Gangitano of the Hill: "President Bidenon Saturday praised Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) while visiting Florida in the aftermath of Hurricane Idalia after he was snubbed by Gov. Ron DeSantis. 'I'm very pleased, the guy who we don't agree very much at all, the distinguished former governor and senior senator, he came, talked about to me and to you all [about] what an incredible job the federal government was doing and I found that reassuring,' Biden said in remarks in Live Oak, Fla. 'And, so, I think we can pull all of this together....'... Biden told reporters he wasn't disappointed that DeSantis didn't join the visit. 'No, I'm not disappointed. He may have had other reasons,' the president said. 'But he did help us plan this, he sat with FEMA and decided where we should go, where it would be the least disruptive.'" MB: IOW, President Biden could not have been more gracious, and Ron DeSantis has proved himself to be a bigger jerk than Rick Scott, which is quite a feat. (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~
~~~ Nick Robertson of the Hill: "Former Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) criticized Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) for not meeting with President Biden while he visited the state Friday to survey hurricane damage, calling the decision 'absolutely outrageous.' 'There's a 1 percent to 2 percent chance it's logistics. There's a 98 percent to 99 percent chance it's the optics,' Kinzinger said in a CNN interview Saturday. 'Ron DeSantis, at the cost of the benefit to Florida, has decided his political campaign cannot have him meet with Joe Biden, the President of the United States, who ultimately will be signing the checks that Florida is going to be begging for,' he continued." (Also linked yesterday.)
Tara Suter of the Hill: "Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) responded Saturday to recent White House criticism of her saying she would vote against funding the government if the House decides not to open an impeachment inquiry against the president. 'The White House is attacking me for demanding an impeachment inquiry before I'll vote to fund one penny to our over bloated $32 TRILLION dollar in debt failing government,' Greene wrote in a lengthy thread on X...-Twitter.... Greene on Thursday also placed other conditions on her vote, including eliminating funding for Ukraine, withholding funding for 'Biden's weaponization of government,' and eliminating any remaining COVID-related mandates."
** Shania Shelton of CNN: "Former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, a longtime fixture of Democratic politics with turns as Energy Secretary and United Nations ambassador under the Clinton administration, died on Friday, the Richardson Center for Global Engagement said in a statement. He was 75." Richardson's New York Times obituary is here. (Also linked yesterday.) President Biden's statement is here.
Girl Troubles
A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved -- I do not expect the house to fall -- but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other. -- A. Lincoln, 1858 ~~~
~~~ ** Jamelle Bouie of the New York Times likens the "federalism" recently imposed by the extremist Supremes to the federalist structure that governed the practice of slavery before the Dred Scott decision: "The reason to compare these proposed limits on travel within and between states to antebellum efforts to limit the movement of free or enslaved Black people is that both demonstrate the limits of federalism when it comes to fundamental questions of bodily autonomy. It is not tenable to vary the extent of bodily rights from state to state, border to border."
Maureen Dowd of the New York Times writes about anxiety among girls and young women; it's worth a read. (Also linked yesterday.)
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Alabama. Ed Pilkington of the Guardian, in the Observer: "Kenneth Smith is one of two living Americans who can describe what it is like to survive an execution, having endured an aborted lethal injection last November during which he was subjected to excruciating pain tantamount, his lawyers claim, to torture. Nine months later Smith has been singled out for another undesirable distinction. If the state of Alabama has its way, he will become the test dummy for an execution method that has never before been used in judicial killings and which veterinarians consider unacceptable as a form of euthanasia for animals -- death by nitrogen gas.... Death penalty experts have decried what is in effect a human experiment." MB: We really should stop pretending we are part of the "civilized world." The only European country that still has the death penalty is Belarus, which, as you'll see in the story linked below, is so uncivilized, it's been disinvited from the Nobel Prize ceremonies.
Florida. Fredreka Schouten of CNN: "A Florida judge on Saturday struck down congressional district lines for northern Florida advocated by Gov. Ron DeSantis, ruling that the Republican governor's map had improperly diluted Black voting power. Circuit Judge J. Lee Marsh concluded that the congressional boundaries -- which essentially dismantled the seat once held by Al Lawson, a Black Democrat -- violated the state's constitution, which protects minority-access districts. Marsh's order blocks the state from using the map in congressional elections and orders the legislature to draw a new one. The DeSantis administration is expected to quickly appeal the case all the way to the Florida Supreme Court.... Most of the judges on Florida's high court have been appointed by DeSantis, now in his second term. A separate federal challenge to the state's congressional map is still pending."
Minnesota, et al. "It Takes a Lot of Water to Make a Perfect Fry. "Dionne Searcey & Mira Rojanasakul of the New York Times: In the land of 10,000 lakes, big farmers are draining the aquifers. "By turning on the taps in the depths of [one of the worst droughts on record], R.D. Offutt and other farmers in the state -- where thousands of wells irrigate potatoes and other water-intensive crops like corn, soybeans and sugar beets -- blew through limits designed to protect aquifers that supply drinking water to millions of people.... The water helped R.D. Offutt [which accounted for nearly a third of the water extracted] to achieve its objective of creating long, smooth potatoes that effortlessly sail through the slicers at frozen food processors so Americans could have one of their favorite foods: McDonald's French fries.... [The drainage] exposed how dependent much of the state has become on aquifers that are fragile and often poorly understood. The increasing overuse of groundwater is a nationwide problem, a New York Times data investigation found, with big cities and industrial farms alike draining aquifers at alarming rates." ~~~
~~~ Water, Water Everywhere, And Not a Drop to Drink. Marie: There is an existential irony in living in a country where people may die of thirst even as the sea is gradually drowning the coastlines. But, hey, ask most Republicans, like presidential* hopeful & boy pharma baron Vivek Ramaswamy, and he'll tell you climate change is a hoax.
Aaron Boxerman of the New York Times: "The Nobel Foundation reversed course on Saturday and said it would not invite the ambassadors of Russia and Belarus to the Nobel Prize award ceremony, acknowledging that an earlier decision to extend invitations had prompted backlash. Both Russia and Belarus were disinvited from the ceremony last year after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The exclusion was part of a diplomatic campaign by the West to isolate the government of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. The organization also retracted Iran's invitation after a harsh government crackdown on anti-government protests that erupted after the death of a young woman who had been detained by the country's morality police."
News Lede
New York Times: "Thousands of attendees at the Burning Man festival in a remote stretch of the Black Rock Desert in Nevada were told on Saturday to conserve food, water and fuel after heavy rainfall trapped them in thick mud. The event, which takes place in Black Rock City and began on Sunday, was interrupted by heavy rains on Friday night, and organizers directed attendees to shelter in place as rain poured over the area.... Black Rock City is a temporary community that pops up each year in the middle of a vast desert ... for Burning Man. The makeshift town hosts more than 60,000 people every year and is a three-hour drive from the nearest airport, which is more than 100 miles away in Reno.... Burning Man, which has been around since the 1980s, is a self-described 'community and global cultural movement' that is premised on countercultural principles, such as radical self-expression.... The event features art installations and culminates with the burning of a giant sculpture of a man, giving it its name."
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Reader Comments (7)
MTG: “Waaaahh! I can say whatever stoopid bullshit comes into my thick traitor skull and no one should be able to criticize me for it! Waaaah. And unless Joe Biden gets impeached, like I want, I’m not gonna vote for one single cent of the federal budget! Howdya like that? Waaaahhh!!”
Well, in that case, whiny Marge, once the federal budget is approved—without you—how about we make it so that your district doesn’t get one single cent of that budget? Howdya like that? And we’ll send a postcard to every voter in the 14th congressional district informing them that it’s all your fault. Oh yeah, and we’ll pay for those cards and postage out of your salary, which you won’t be getting anymore because “one single cent, blah, blah, blah…”
And that should go for each and every Freeedumb Cock-up who votes against the budget as an act of hostage taking to get whatever politically motivated traitor bullshit they want.
Howdya like that?
Once again, Joe Biden shows himself to be a mature adult who does his job without prejudice or favor while Ron DeSantis stomps around in his little go-go boots and poopy diaper working overtime to demonstrate his essential childishness and indefatigable douchebaggery to MAGAts who wouldn’t vote for him if he had a picture of Trump’s fat face tattooed on his ass.
The fact that this guy is the best the Party of Traitors can do after a fat fascist says it all about the state of that moribund and fetid organization.
Party of Law and Order
Water, water everywhere.
Yeah, I've wondered for years when will the time come that those
desert farm conglomerates will run out of water and that time is
almost here.
Their next step? We want to run pipelines from the Great Lakes
to all of our money making desert farms. Many cities in Michigan
(Grand Rapids, for one) already pump water from Lake Michigan to
be turned into drinking water. There may be trillions of gallons of
fresh water here, but it won't be an endless supply. If we have many
more winters without lots and lots of snow, the rivers won't be
supplying the Great Lakes with more water. And when the polar
region has been depleted, no more water coming down through
Canada.
I'd start storing water in my basement pantry, but plastic bottles will
eventually leach out carcinogens, so not a good idea.
We had better start working on those desalination plants but I'm sure
one of our political parties would fight it because of the expense, and
anyway, we've been told over and over that it's a hoax.
RAS,
That billboard is a nice idea (running through Trump’s criminal charges), but video billboards in Times Sq? Don’t they realize that it’s likely 70% of those who see it (in NYC) already agree that Trump is a vicious, lying crook and an existential threat to democracy?
They need to put this up in red states where they worship that fat traitor. But now that I think of it, a giant billboard screaming out Trump’s many crimes in a place like Birmingham or Biloxi would prompt locals to Timothy McVeigh the whole building.
More law and order.
The DeSantis Biden snub is laden with symbolism.
Presumably DeSantis didn't want to associate himself with the liberal leanings of the Biden administration like tolerance for racial and sexual diversity, support for women's rights, humane immigration policies, acknowledgment of climate change and the expansion, not limitation, of voting rights.
DeSantis also knew he risked nothing with his churlishness, that the Biden administration would not respond in kind, and federal aid would nonetheless be forthcoming.
As always, boors assume the large-hearted will ignore or forgive their bad behavior...They rely on the tolerance and generosity they don't practice.
They are self-centered cowards.
I believe the simplest understanding of Rhonda avoiding a photo op with Joe is that all of his advisers probably told him: "Remember Chris Christie." When Gov. CC posed with President Obama during the NJ clean-up after Hurricane Sandy, CC was pilloried by the Rightwing opinionati for kowtowing to the Usurper. He had lots of other baggage, but that handshake really hurt him with the confederates.
Rhonda's advisers probably just told him "don't, there's no upside and plenty of down" if there's a Joe and Rhonda handshake in front of a smashed house.
President Biden knows how to plat that.