April 18, 2022

Afternoon Update:

Alan Rappeport of the New York Times: "As millions of Americans race to finish filing their tax returns on Monday, the Biden administration made another plea for Congress to give the Internal Revenue Service more money. The call for funding to modernize the agency and beef up its enforcement staff comes as I.R.S. and Treasury Department officials have complained that they are facing an extraordinarily challenging tax season because of staff shortages and the complexity associated with distributing pandemic relief money. The Biden administration's proposals to provide the I.R.S. with $80 billion over a decade have thus far fallen flat in Congress.... It was not clear if that proposal would make it into any legislation that Democrats could pass. Republicans have staunchly opposed providing the I.R.S. with more funding." MB: Because Republicans don't want their big tax cheats friends to get caught.

Richard Cowan of Reuters: "... Donald Trump attempted a coup on Jan. 6, 2021, and that will be a centerpiece of committee hearings in Congress next month, said Democrat Jamie Raskin, a committee member who led the prosecution of Trump's second impeachment.... Raskin said the hearings will lay out for the public the steps the former president and his associates took to try to stay in power despite a clear-cut defeat. Had the rioters succeeded in preventing the certification, Raskin said, Trump 'was prepared to seize the presidency' and likely declare martial law." ~~~

~~~ Ankita Rao from the same interview: Jamie Raskin, a “progressive congressman from Maryland believes that no other crisis, even the existential threat of the changing climate, can be solved without first protecting the fabric of American democracy[.]... He said America can't fix the planet without fixing its government.... 'We've got to save the democracy in order to save the climate and save our species,' he said in an interview with the Guardian in collaboration with Reuters and Climate One public radio, as part of the Covering Climate Now media collaboration. Later Raskin added: 'We’re never going to be able to successfully deal with climate change if we're spending all our time fighting the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers and Ku Klux Klan, and the Aryan nations and all of Steve Bannon's alt-right nonsense.'"

Kathryn Joyce of Salon: Republicans are trying "to normalize the [January 6, 2021,] riot at the Capitol, and to cast its perpetrators as overwhelmingly 'ordinary people' who got caught up in the momentum of something beyond their control. But last week came decisive evidence that this simply isn't true: At least a third of those arrested in conjunction with Jan. 6 belong to a far-right network that is not just deeply interconnected but resilient and adaptable. Last Thursday, Michael Jensen, a senior researcher at the University of Maryland's National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START center), released preliminary findings on the ideological motivations and connections of about 30 percent of all Jan. 6 defendants. While his research is ongoing, Jensen has already found that at least 244 of the 816 people arrested to date were either members of 'extremist' organizations or self-identified with them."

The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race. -- Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, 2007 ~~~

~~~ Adam Liptak of the New York Times: "The Supreme Court on Monday turned away an appeal from a death row inmate in Texas who said his jury had been tainted by racial bias. The inmate, Kristopher Love, a Black man, had objected to the seating of a juror who had said he believed 'nonwhite races' to be the 'more violent races.' The court's three liberal members dissented, saying the Supreme Court should have instructed the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, the state's highest court for criminal matters, to reconsider Mr. Love's challenge."

Sarah Rumpf of Mediaite writes a post titled, "We Regret to Inform You That Tucker Carlson’s New Special Does In Fact Promote "Testicle Tanning'". MB: I leave it to you to decide whether or not to read on. It does occur to me, however, that every story about something TuKKKer said or did should begin, "We regret to inform you that ..."

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Marie: Late finish today. I posted links up till 9:20 am ET.

Putin's War Crimes, Ctd.

The New York Times' live updates of developments Monday in Russia's war on Ukraine are here. ~~~

     ~~~ The Washington Post's live updates for Monday are here. ~~~

     ~~~ The Guardian's live updates for Monday are here: "Unconfirmed reports are filtering in that five missiles struck Lviv early this morning. Lviv mayor, Andriy Sadovy, said in an update over his official Telegram account this morning.... Ukraine has vowed that its forces will 'fight to the end' in the besieged port city of Mariupol, after a Russian ultimatum for the remaining Ukrainian troops there to surrender expired. Russian troops said they will close the city for entry and exit on Monday and issue 'movement passes' to those who remain, according to an adviser to the mayor. Residents of the Luhansk region in eastern Ukraine have been urged to evacuate immediately.... Ukraine's president Volodymyr Zelenskiy has called for more weapons, describing 'every delay' as 'permission for Russia to take the lives of Ukrainians'.... Zelenskiy also claimed in the address that the regions of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia in Ukraine's south were being transferred to 'the ruble zone' and subordinated to Russian administration.... The United Nations refugee agency said 4,869,019 Ukrainians had left the country since Russia invaded in February...." Emphasis removed. ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: BTW, I have found the Guardian's updates to be more up-to-the-minute than either the New York Times' or the Washington Post's.

Anton Troianovski of the New York Times: "The brutality of Moscow's war on Ukraine takes two distinct forms, familiar to those who have seen Russia's military in action elsewhere. There is the programmatic violence meted out by Russian bombs and missiles against civilians as well as military targets, meant to demoralize as much as defeat. These attacks recall the aerial destruction in 1999 and 2000 of the Chechen capital of Grozny and, in 2016, of the Syrian rebel stronghold of Aleppo. And then there is the cruelty of individual soldiers and units, the horrors of Bucha appearing to have descended directly from the slaughter a generation ago in [the Ukraine] village [of] Novye Aldi.... In Russia..., such acts are rarely investigated or even acknowledged, let alone punished. That leaves it unclear how much the low-level brutality stems from the intent of those in charge or whether commanders failed to control their troops. Combined with the apparent strategy of bombing civilian targets, many observers conclude that the Russian government -- and, perhaps, a part of Russian society -- in reality condones violence against civilians."

Neil MacFarquhar of the New York Times: "A video released by Russia's Ministry of Defense purporting to show dozens of uniformed crew members from the missile cruiser Moskva standing in formation, apparently days after the ship sank, did not answer lingering questions about the fate of the vessel and its more than 500 personnel. The questions reached the point Saturday where even Vladimir Solovyev, a popular prime-time talk-show host whose pronouncements often reflect the Kremlin line, began asking what went wrong.... The segment was unusual not least because Mr. Solovyev broached the idea that Ukraine had managed to sink the Moskva, one of the biggest naval losses anywhere in the world since World War II.... Other television talking heads in Russia have started referring to the fighting in Ukraine as a 'war' -- although they have tended to use the term when suggesting that the whole of NATO, including the United States, is ganging up on Russia.Some analysts think all the talk of NATO attacking Russia is meant to lay the groundwork for a possible general mobilization of the male population -- martial law is a necessary prior step, and a declaration of martial law requires going to war or being under threat."

Josh Halliday of the Guardian: "A second British soldier fighting with the Ukrainian army has been paraded on Russian television after being captured in the besieged city of Mariupol. Shaun Pinner said he had been fighting alongside Ukrainian marines when Vladimir Putin's forces invaded nearly eight weeks ago. The 48-year-old former British soldier appeared tired and bruised in a short propaganda video aired by Russian media on Saturday night.... He was fighting alongside his friend Aiden Aslin, 28, from Nottinghamshire, who is thought to have surrendered to the Russian military last week after his battalion ran out of ammunition."

Odd News. Alex Horton of the Washington Post: Russians fired tiny lethal darts -- called fléchettes -- into Bucha neighborhoods. They are seldom used in modern warfare. "Some human rights groups have decried the use of fléchettes because they are indiscriminate weapons that can strike civilians even if they are aimed at military formations. They are not banned by international conventions, but 'they should never be used in built-up civilian areas,' Amnesty International has said." MB: The fléchettes, which are pictured within the story, look like something you'd read about in an Agatha Christie novel.

Josh Boak of the AP: "The Biden administration is taking a key step toward ensuring that federal dollars will support U.S. manufacturing -- issuing requirements for how projects funded by the $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure package source their construction material. The guidance being issued Monday requires that the material purchased -- whether it's for a bridge, a highway, a water pipe or broadband internet -- be produced in the U.S., according to administration officials. However, the rules also set up a process to waive those requirements in case there are not enough domestic producers or the material costs too much, with the goal of issuing fewer waivers over time as U.S. manufacturing capacity increases."

Annals of "Journalism," Ctd. James Downie of the Washington Post: “On Friday, CNN released more than 100 text messages from [Sen. Mike] Lee [R-Utah] and Rep. Chip Roy (R-Tex.), sent between the 2020 election and Jan. 6, 2021, to then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows.... Both Lee and Roy encouraged Trump and his aides to overturn the results. As Trump and associates ... beclowned themselves with conspiracy theories, Lee and Roy became more critical of the election subversion efforts. But both men still advocated for conservative lawyer John Eastman's plan to have Republican-controlled state legislatures submit alternate slates of electoral college delegates and then have Vice President Mike Pence refuse to certify Joe Biden's win.... Since [January 6, 2021]..., Lee has downplayed his earlier efforts.... So a Republican senator -- a self-proclaimed 'constitutional conservative,' no less -- misled the country about his participation in a plot to overturn a presidential election. And yet not one of the five major Sunday talk shows mentioned one word about Lee.... In a functioning democracy, it is the media's job to call out those who scheme to subvert that democracy."

As long as I count the votes, what are you going to do about it? -- Boss Tweed, 1870s

There's an expression that the vote counters are more important than the candidate, and you could use that expression here. -- Donald Trump, April 2022

Boss Trump. Shane Goldmacher of the New York Times: "Working from a large wooden desk reminiscent of the one he used in the Oval Office, [Donald] Trump has transformed Mar-a-Lago's old bridal suite into a shadow G.O.P. headquarters, amassing more than $120 million -- a war chest more than double that of the Republican National Committee itself.... Mr. Trump has ... aggressively pursuing an agenda of vengeance against Republicans who have wronged him, endorsing more than 140 candidates nationwide and turning the 2022 primaries into a stress test of his continued sway. Inspiring fear, hoarding cash, doling out favors and seeking to crush rivals, Mr. Trump is behaving not merely as a power broker but as something closer to the head of a 19th-century political machine.... An entire political economy now surrounds Mr. Trump, with Trump properties reaping huge fees: Federal candidates and committees alone have paid nearly $1.3 million to hold events at Mar-a-Lago, records show.... Yet ... Mr. Trump can be downright stingy." ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: Here's what I don't get. Every normal person hates dictators. We hate dictators for a number of reasons, one of which, obviously, is that we want our personal freedom: life liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Yet Trumpies cry louder than anyone for freeeedom on the one hand, while voluntarily ceding it to a nasty old fart on the other. I understand the concept, "He's a dictator, but he's our dictator." But that doesn't work here, at least for political toadies. Trump is, as Goldmacher writes, stingy. And even if the toadies cross Trump accidentally, he will cut them to pieces, perhaps ruin their pathetic careers. They must give all to get close to nothing. Of if they do get some small measure of power over their little fiefdoms, Trump may snatch it away. So, aside from all the other things we know about members of the Trump mob, WTF is the matter with them? ~~~

     ~~~ Great answers from Akhilleus & Ken W. at the top of today's thread. And there's this: ~~~

~~~ ** Michael Kruse in Politico Magazine interviews historian & expert on autocracies Ruth Ben-Ghiat. "Ben-Ghiat:... 'He's changed the party to an authoritarian party culture.... So not only do you go after external enemies, but you go after internal enemies. You're not allowed to have any dissent.... The GOP was already going away from a democratic political culture, but he accelerated it and normalized extremism and normalized lawlessness. And so the GOP over these years has truly, in my estimation, become an authoritarian far-right party. And the other big story is that his agenda and his methods are being continued at the state level.... These states are really laboratories of autocracy now, like Florida, Texas.... One of the big talking points and strategy of right-wing authoritarianism, is to label democratic systems as tyrannical.'" Read on.

CBS News/AP: "Far-right website Infowars and two other companies owned by radio host Alex Jones have filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in light of several defamation lawsuits. The filings were made in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas. Chapter 11 bankruptcy procedures put a hold on pending civil litigation while letting a business keep running as it prepares a turnaround plan.... Infowars says in the filing that it has assets of $0 to $50,000 and liabilities of $1,000,001 to $10 million.... A judge found Jones liable for damages, and a trial on how much he should pay the families is set for August." MB: Pardon my skepticism, but I suspect Alex there has been busy squirreling away his money in offshore accounts, then filing for bankruptcy protection so he wouldn't have to pay off Sandy Hook parents.

The New York Times' live updates of Covid-19 developments Monday are here.

Beyond the Beltway

France. Kim Willsher of the Guardian: "The European Union's anti-fraud body has accused Marine Le Pen and several of her party members -- including her father &-- of embezzling about €620,000 [about $807,500] while serving as members of the European parliament. France's investigative website Mediapart published a section of the new 116-report alleging that the MEPs misused EU funds for national party purposes. The claims come a week before the second round of the presidential election, on 24 April, in which Le Pen will go head to head with Emmanuel Macron."

April 17, 2022

Afternoon Update:

As long as I count the votes, what are you going to do about it? -- Boss Tweed, 1870s

There's an expression that the vote counters are more important than the candidate, and you could use that expression here. -- Donald Trump, April 2022

Boss Trump. Shane Goldmacher of the New York Times: "Working from a large wooden desk reminiscent of the one he used in the Oval Office, [Donald] Trump has transformed Mar-a-Lago's old bridal suite into a shadow G.O.P. headquarters, amassing more than $120 million -- a war chest more than double that of the Republican National Committee itself.... Mr. Trump has ... aggressively pursuing an agenda of vengeance against Republicans who have wronged him, endorsing more than 140 candidates nationwide and turning the 2022 primaries into a stress test of his continued sway. Inspiring fear, hoarding cash, doling out favors and seeking to crush rivals, Mr. Trump is behaving not merely as a power broker but as something closer to the head of a 19th-century political machine.... An entire political economy now surrounds Mr. Trump, with Trump properties reaping huge fees: Federal candidates and committees alone have paid nearly $1.3 million to hold events at Mar-a-Lago, records show.... Yet ... Mr. Trump can be downright stingy."

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An Easter Story. Joanna Moorhead of the Guardian: "... when cutting-edge carbon-14 tests found that the Shroud of Turin was a forgery, it seemed like the final chapter for a relic that had been revered for centuries as the cloth in which Christ's body had been wrapped when he supposedly rose from the dead at the first Easter almost 2,000 years ago. But one man -- David Rolfe ... -- wasn't prepared to give up on it. He was convinced the carbon dating, carried out in 1988 under the direction of the British Museum and Oxford University, had been flawed. And now he claims he has the evidence to prove it. This week sees the release of a new film, Who Can He Be?, in which Rolfe argues that, far from the shroud being a definite dud, new discoveries in the past few years have again opened the question of its authenticity. So convinced is Rolfe that he's issuing a challenge worth $1m to the British Museum. 'If ... they believe the shroud is a medieval forgery, I call on them to repeat the exercise, and create something similar today,' he says." ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: My husband was a reasonable, educated man, not given to superstition. He was not a practicing Christian. But he was born in & grew up in Torino, and he would not be convinced that the Shroud was a 14th-century fabrication. Our childhood beliefs die hard.

Putin's War Crimes, Ctd.

The New York Times' live updates of developments Sunday in Russia's war on Ukraine are here: "The port city of Mariupol was on the cusp of falling on Sunday, a significant advance for Russian forces in their bid to capture Ukraine's southeastern coast.... Russia said on Saturday that its forces had surrounded a remaining group of Ukrainian fighters who were holed up in a Mariupol steel plant.... President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine appeared to acknowledge the impending takeover, saying that Ukrainian troops controlled only a small part of Mariupol and faced much larger Russian numbers.... 'Russia is deliberately trying to destroy everyone who is there,' Mr. Zelensky said in his overnight address.... The United Nations warned on Saturday that closures of ports on the Black Sea, which normally export grain feeding 400 million people, could trigger a global food catastrophe yielding starvation, mass migration and political instability. Germany's energy minister has called on citizens to cut back their energy consumption, by drawing curtains and lowering their home temperatures, as part of a national effort to reduce dependence on Russian fossil fuels." ~~~

     ~~~ The Washington Post's live updates for Sunday are here: "... officials in the capital Kyiv and the western city of Lviv reported explosions Saturday. Moscow has withdrawn its forces from those regions to focus on eastern Ukraine, but airstrikes have continued. Russian forces were continuing to gather around the eastern city of Izyum, farther inland from Mariupol, where significant gains have not materialized from small attacks, according to an analysis by the Institute for the Study of War, which said it was unclear whether the forces there were simply yet to be bolstered or if they were 'setting conditions for a larger-scale, better-coordinated offensive' soon.... Another Russian general, Maj. Gen. Vladimir Frolov of the 8th Army, died in battle in Ukraine, the governor of St. Petersburg said.... Washington Post journalists who spent seven days on the ground in Bucha documented how for nearly a month in March, the Ukrainian city's streets became a theater of Russian sadism amid mounting frustration over the Kremlin's battlefield losses." ~~~

     ~~~ The Guardian's live updates for Sunday are here. The Guardian has a summary report here.

Karen DeYoung & Michael Birnbaum of the Washington Post: "Nearly two months into Vladimir Putin's brutal assault on Ukraine, the Biden administration and its European allies have begun planning for a far different world, in which they no longer try to coexist and cooperate with Russia, but actively seek to isolate and weaken it as a matter of long-term strategy. At NATO and the European Union, and at the State Department, the Pentagon and allied ministries, blueprints are being drawn up to enshrine new policies across virtually every aspect of the West's posture toward Moscow, from defense and finance to trade and international diplomacy. Outrage is most immediately directed at Putin himself, who President Biden said last month 'can't remain in power.' While 'we don't say regime change,' said a senior E.U. diplomat, 'it is difficult to imagine a stable scenario with Putin acting the way he is.'"

David Stern, et al., of the Washington Post: "Deadly attacks rocked numerous cities and leveled buildings across Ukraine on Saturday, serving as ominous signals of how close destruction remains even in areas where Russian forces have recently pulled out. Russia moved ever closer to controlling the already-devastated port city of Mariupol as its invasion of Ukraine continued into its eighth week. In Russian-occupied Kherson, satellite imagery that showed the digging of hundreds of fresh grave plots held haunting symbolism of the fate of civilians there." MB: We seem to be moving from war crimes to genocide to annihilation.

Bob Brigham of the Raw Story: "[Investigative] journalist Jane Mayer [of the New Yorker] has a bombshell new report on a dark money group that [built] a 'slime machine' attacking President Joe Biden's nominees. Mayer broke down how Republicans attacked Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson as 'pro-pedophile' with QAnon adjacent attacks. She wrote 'the fierce campaign against her was concerning, in part because it was spearheaded by a new conservative dark-money group that was created in 2020: the American Accountability Foundation.... Rather than attack a single candidate or nominee, the A.A.F. aims to thwart the entire Biden slate. The obstructionism, like the Republican blockade of Biden's legislative agenda in Congress, is the end in itself. The group hosts a Web site, bidennoms.com, that displays the photographs of Administration nominees it has targeted, as though they were hunting trophies,' Mayer [wrote].... The organization is led by [Ted Jones,] a former top staffer to Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX). [Mayer wrote,] 'When I asked Jones for an interview, through the A.A.F.'s online portal, he replied, 'Ms. Meyers ... Go pound sand.'" ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: Technically, Tom, you ignorant slimeball, I don't believe women can "pound sand." Mayer's story, which is firewalled, is here. Tom Sullivan, in Hullabaloo, publishes some more bits from Mayer's report, including how "that Vanderbilt- and Oxford-educated, faux-hayseed Sen. [John] Kennedy (R-La.)" availed himself of A.A.F.'s services to slime Saule Omarova, President Biden's nominee for Comptroller of the Currency. Omarova withdrew from consideration after Kennedy repeatedly accused her of being a Russian communist.

Beyond the Beltway

Alabama Gubernatorial Race. Kyle Whitmire of AL.com: "Alabama gubernatorial candidate Tim James has attacked an LGBTQ-friendly charter school for hosting a drag show, calling it 'vile' and 'evil.' Only when he was a student at Baylor School, he was part of a drag show, too," as a photo from his high school yearbook shows. James himself was not in drag in the photo, but he stood with some of his teammates who were. In general, Whitmire isn't much of a fan of James. He writes, "Until now, James has struggled against a public perception that he's not that bright. In a failed 2010 campaign for governor, he ran strange commercials in which he meandered from room to room in a house saying kinda racist things about how immigrants should speak English in between unusually long pauses. It was the pauses that turned the ads into a target for viral online parodies.... If you wrote a fictionalized version of Alabama politics, James is the sort of character a lazy writer might come up with."

Florida. Abigail Weinberg of Mother Jones: "Florida has a new addition to the long, absurd list of topics it considers too 'woke' to tolerate: math textbooks. When vetting math books for K -- 12 classes, the state education commissioner rejected 41 percent of submissions because of 'references to Critical Race Theory (CRT), inclusions of Common Core, and the unsolicited addition of Social Emotional Learning (SEL) in mathematics,' the state announced yesterday in a press release titled, 'Florida Rejects Publishers' Attempts to Indoctrinate Students.' The press release does not provide any examples of the offending material, but it does say that 54 of 132 submitted textbooks were rejected, including 71 percent of materials proposed for grades K-5." ~~~

     ~~~ Marie's PS: Apparently the dictionary is another book that is too "woke" for people in Florida's Department of Education to consult, causing them to put out a press release that confuses "tenants" with "tenets."

Kansas. Andrew Bahl of the Topeka Capital-Journal: "Gov. Laura Kelly [D] vetoed Friday a so-called 'parents' bill of rights,' designed to increase the ability for parents to inspect and review curriculum used in classrooms. The measure has been fiercely opposed by educators as overly burdensome, though the proposal that hit Kelly's desk, Senate Bill 58, was less restrictive than other options that were considered in the Legislature. Still, Kelly previously called the bill a 'teacher demoralization act' and said in her veto message that it was 'about politics, not parents.' She added the bill would cause division when Democrats and Republicans should be working to ensure the state's schools are fully funded.... Kansas' bill would have required school districts develop policies allowing parents to be informed of what is being taught in their child's classroom and letting them examine lesson plans, examinations, textbooks and other course materials.... Parents could also object to activities or materials that violate 'their firmly held beliefs, values or principles' and withdraw their student from participating in those areas."

Oklahoma. A Man with No Shame. Felicia Sonmez of the Washington Post: "Scott Pruitt, who led the Environmental Protection Agency until resigning amid a series of ethics scandals in 2018, is launching a Senate bid in Oklahoma. Pruitt, 53, is running to fill the unexpired term of Sen. James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.), who announced in February that he will step down next year. Inhofe handily won reelection in 2020, meaning that whoever wins the November special election for his seat will serve until 2027."

Texas. Rotten Tomatoes. Alicia Wallace & Vanessa Yurkevich of CNN: "A weeklong protest by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott against President Biden's recent immigration policy reached a resolution on Friday, but the gridlock it created has resulted in hundreds of millions of lost dollars and delays in shipments of everything from avocados to automobile parts that will have a longer-term impact.... Abbott's [protest], which Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller [R] criticized as 'political theater,' ultimately created a logjam of trucks between the US and its largest goods trading partner. Vegetable producers say their produce is spoiling in idling trucks and they are losing hundreds of millions of dollars.... What used to be a routine border crossing turned into a 30-hour wait for some trucks. Meanwhile, the fruits and vegetables in those trucks spoiled, leaving some produce department shelves sparse or empty in advance of the holiday weekend, [Dante L. Galeazzi, CEO ... of the Texas International Produce Association,] said.... Losses to fruit and vegetable producers are estimated to be more than $240 million, said Lance Jungmeyer, president of the Fresh Produce Association of the Americas. Consumers will also pay a price as producers look to recoup some of their losses and supplies run low." ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: How about dumping those rotten tomatoes at the Texas state capitol and tossing a few at Greg Abbott.

News Ledes

Unsafe Anywhere. Another Saturday Night in Second-Amendment USA. Washington Post: "A shooting early Sunday at a house party in Pittsburgh left two people dead and at least eight injured, city officials said, the latest in a string of high-profile incidents of gun violence that have unfolded across the country in recent days. Police said they responded just after 12:30 a.m. to a property in Pittsburgh's East Allegheny neighborhood, where about 200 people had been attending a party at a house that had been rented via Airbnb. More than 90 rounds were fired inside the house, prompting some partygoers to jump out of windows, Pittsburgh Police Chief Scott E. Schubert said at a news conference on Sunday afternoon." ~~~

~~~ AP: "Authorities in South Carolina say they are investigating shooting at a nightclub in Hampton County early Sunday that left at least nine people injured. It was the second mass shooting in the state over the Easter holiday weekend, and the third in the nation. The South Carolina shootings and one in Pittsburgh that left two minors dead early Sunday at least 31 people injured."

A New York Times report (which is oddly mistitled) provides a moment-by-moment, account of the shooting in the subway train.

April 16, 2022

Putin's War Crimes, Ctd.

The New York Times' live updates of developments Saturday in Russia's war on Ukraine are here: "A large explosion rocked Kyiv early Saturday, and the Ukrainians claimed to have shot down missiles aimed at Odesa in the south and Lviv in the west.... The Russian government had threatened to intensify missile strikes targeting Kyiv after asserting that Ukrainian forces had attacked Russian villages near the countries' shared border. A Ukrainian military official also said Russia had fired missiles at the Lviv region in western Ukraine on Saturday morning. The head of the Lviv military administration said that Ukrainian anti-aircraft systems had destroyed four cruise missiles. There was no word on casualties or damage. At the same time, there were reports of shelling and bombardments in other towns and cities across southern and eastern Ukraine as Russian continued to move military equipment and forces into position for a renewed offensive." ~~~

     ~~~ The Washington Post's live updates for Saturday are here: "Kyiv region police said Friday that the bodies of more than 900 civilians had been tallied in the area — more than 350 of which were discovered in the Bucha suburb. The vast majority of them were found with gunshot wounds. Meanwhile, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told CNN his country had lost 2,500 to 3,000 troops since the Feb. 24 invasion, with perhaps another 10,000 injured. Russia appears to be on the verge of capturing the devastated port city of Mariupol, which a regional leader said had been 'wiped off the face of the earth.'... Large swaths of Ukraine are littered with explosive ordinances that authorities are trying to deactivate."

Julian Barnes & James Glanz of the New York Times: "The Moskva was the pride of Russia's Black Sea Fleet, a symbol of the country's dominance of the region and a powerful war machine that had been used to launch precision cruise missiles deep inside Ukraine. Despite claims by Russia that an accidental fire broke out on the ship, U.S. officials confirmed on Friday that two Ukrainian Neptune missiles had struck the vessel, killing an unknown number of sailors and sending it and its arsenal to the bottom of the Black Sea. The sinking of the Moskva on Thursday was a grave blow to the Russian fleet and a dramatic demonstration of the current era of warfare in which missiles fired from shore can destroy even the biggest, most powerful ships. It was also the most significant combat loss for any navy since 1982, when Argentina's Air Force sank a British guided missile destroyer and other ships during the Falklands War." See also commentary at the end of yesterday's thread. ~~~

~~~ AND They Did It with Homemade Weapons. Adam Taylor & Claire Parker of the Washington Post: "Soon after Russia seized Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula in 2014, a Ukrainian defense firm used an arms show in Kyiv to unveil its latest project: an anti-ship cruise missile it called 'Neptune.' The new missile ... is in the spotlight after ... Ukrainian forces used Neptune missiles to strike and sink Russia's flagship Moskva.... The strike on Wednesday marked a major boost for Ukraine -- not only for its war effort but also for the homegrown arms industry, even as it relies on weapons donated by Western allies."

John Hudson & Jeff Stein of the Washington Post: "Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has made a direct appeal to President Biden for the United States to designate Russia a state sponsor of terrorism, one of the most powerful and far-reaching sanctions in the U.S. arsenal. Zelensky's request, which has not previously been reported, came during a recent phone call with Biden that centered on the West's multifaceted response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, according to people familiar with the conversation. Biden did not commit to specific actions during the call, these people said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive dialogue between the two leaders. The president has told his Ukrainian counterpart he is willing to explore a range of proposals to exert greater pressure on Moscow, they added." The NBC News report is here.

Drew Harwell of the Washington Post: "Ukrainian officials have run more than 8,600 facial recognition searches on dead or captured Russian soldiers in the 50 days since Moscow's invasion began, using the scans to identify bodies and contact hundreds of their families.... The country's IT Army, a volunteer force of hackers and activists that takes its direction from the Ukrainian government, says it has used those identifications to inform the families of the deaths of 582 Russians, including by sending them photos of the abandoned corpses. The Ukrainians champion the use of face-scanning software from the U.S. tech firm Clearview AI as a brutal but effective way to stir up dissent inside Russia, discourage other fighters and hasten an end to a devastating war. But some military and technology analysts worry that the strategy could backfire, inflaming anger over a shock campaign directed at mothers...."

TuKKKer the Tool. Russia's Propaganda Gold Mine: Fox "News." Stuart Thompson of the New York Times: "The narratives advanced by the Kremlin and by parts of conservative American media have converged in recent months, reinforcing and feeding each other. Along the way, Russian media has increasingly seized on Fox News's prime-time segments, its opinion pieces and even the network's active online comments section -- all of which often find fault with the Biden administration -- to paint a critical portrait of the United States and depict America's foreign policy as a threat to Russia's interests. [Tucker] Carlson was a frequent reference for Russian media, but other Fox News personalities -- and the occasional news update from the network -- were also included. Sergey Lavrov, Russia's foreign minister, who has made several false claims about the war -- including that Russia never attacked Ukraine — singled out Fox News for praise last month.... Mentions of Fox News in Russian-language media grew 217 percent during the first quarter of this year compared with the final quarter of last year...." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: Maybe TuKKKer will start sending shortwave messages to Ukrainians, urging them to surrender; Kyiv KKKarlson could be Fox's 2022 version of WWII's Tokyo Rose.

~~~ Oh, We Watch Fox "News" in Kentucky. Jonathan Edwards of the Washington Post: When the general manager of a Colton's Steak House & Grill franchise in Bardstown, Kentucky, flew a Ukrainian flag over the restaurant, "hate started coming from all fronts -- the restaurant's phone, Facebook page and reviews on Google. Over the past week, the firestorm has kept raging in Bardstown, a city of about 13,500 in central Kentucky. [Ben] Ashlock, describing himself as an uncontroversial person, said he had planned to keep the flag up until Russia left Ukraine." He has not taken down the flag, but the hate messages keep coming. Ashlock and his wife have an adopted Ukrainian son. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Michael Shear of the New York Times: "President Biden and his wife on Friday reported earning $610,702 in 2021, almost the same amount the couple said they earned the year before, according to copies of their tax return made public by the White House. The release of their return -- which comes just days before Monday's deadline for Americans to file their taxes with the I.R.S. -- shows that Mr. Biden and the first lady, Jill Biden, paid $150,439 in federal income tax, for an effective rate of 24.6 percent. Most of the money Mr. Biden and his wife earned came from his $400,000 annual salary for being president and two pensions. He also reported almost $62,000 from an S corporation controlled by the Bidens, which received money in 2021 from two publishing houses, Simon & Schuster and Flatiron Books.... The president and first lady reported donations of $17,394 to 10 charities....

"The White House also released the tax returns for Vice President Kamala Harris and her husband, Doug Emhoff. The couple reported earning $1,655,563 and paying $523,371 in federal income tax, a rate of 31.6 percent. They also paid $120,517 in California income tax and $2,044 in New York income tax, according to the White House. Mr. Emhoff, who is an entertainment lawyer, also paid $54,441 in District of Columbia income tax. Their tax returns show that the couple earned money from the sale of a California property for $860,000 and from income on the memoir Ms. Harris published in 2019, 'The Truths We Hold: An American Journey.'"

     ~~~ Politico's report is here. The Bidens' return is here; the Emhoff-Harris return is here. Both are pdfs via the White House.

Drill, Baby, Drill. -- Sarah Palin's 2008 Opponent. Anna Phillips of the Washington Post: "As pressure increases on the Biden administration to lower the price of fuel, the Interior Department announced on Friday plans to hold its first onshore oil and gas lease sales since President Biden took office. The department said it plans to open roughly 144,000 acres up for lease next week and will charge oil and gas companies higher royalties to drill on federal land, raising the fees for the first time. Under the plans unveiled Friday, royalty rates would increase to 18.75 percent from 12.5 percent for oil and gas lease sales."

Eugene Scott of the Washington Post: "Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) is pushing back on lawmakers' accounts that her memory has deteriorated and she is mentally unfit to serve, insisting that she remains a productive senator at the age of 88. 'The real question is whether I’m still an effective representative for 40 million Californians, and the record shows that I am,' she said in a statement Thursday. Feinstein, who is the oldest U.S. senator, took the step of responding to a San Francisco Chronicle report that four Senate colleagues -- three of them Democrats -- and three of the lawmaker's former staffers and a California Democrat in the House said her memory is rapidly deteriorating. Various individuals said the lawmaker's staff does most of the work because of what they described as her cognitive decline." (Also linked yesterday afternoon. The original Chron report also was linked yesterday.) ~~~

~~~ Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post: "The portrayal of the 88-year-old Feinstein in an article this week in the San Francisco Chronicle was devastating, painful and, from my own reporting, accurate.... Feinstein's handling of the 2018 Brett M. Kavanaugh confirmation hearings -- in particular, her decision not to alert fellow lawmakers to the allegations by Christine Blasey Ford -- prompted a near-insurrection by her Democratic colleagues. Her performance at the 2020 confirmation hearings for Justice Amy Coney Barrett, including her post-hearing hug of Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) and thanks for 'one of the best set of hearings that I've participated in,' was the last straw. Under pressure from Senate Democratic leader Charles E. Schumer, Feinstein announced she would step down from her position as the committee's ranking Democrat. According to the New Yorker's Jane Mayer, that took 'several serious and painful talks,' in part because 'Feinstein seemed to forget about the conversations soon after they talked, so Schumer had to confront her again.'"

This is a sh*tshow... Fix this now. -- Rep. Chip Roy, text to Mark Meadows, January 6, 2021

We are -- Mark Meadows to Chip Roy, January 6, 2021 ~~~

~~~ ** Ryan Nobles, et al., of CNN: "In the weeks between the 2020 election and the January 6 attack on the US Capitol, almost 100 text messages from two staunch GOP allies of ... Donald Trump reveal an aggressive attempt to lobby, encourage and eventually warn the White House over its efforts to overturn the election, according to messages obtained by the House select committee and reviewed by CNN. The texts, which have not been previously reported, were sent by Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah and GOP Rep. Chip Roy of Texas to then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows. The text exchanges show that both members of Congress initially supported legal challenges to the election but ultimately came to sour on the effort and the tactics deployed by Trump and his team.... Lee and Roy both voted to certify the electoral results in favor of [Joe] Biden...." You can read the messages between Lee & Meadows, & between Roy & Meadows, via CNN, here. (Also linked yesterday.)~~~

     ~~~ The New York Times story, by Luke Broadwater, is here. ~~~

I don't think the president is grasping the distinction between what we can do and what he would like us to do. -- Sen. Mike Lee to Mark Meadows, January 3, 2021 ~~~

     ~~~ A Washington Post story, by Mariana Alfaro, concentrates on Mike Lee's texts: "Lee makes clear that he was working hard to assist Trump, saying in one text that he was spending '14 hours a day' on the effort and contacting state lawmakers seeking anything to give Congress a reason not to count the electoral votes for Biden on Jan. 6, 2021 and affirm his win.... Lee's willingness to support Trump's campaign to overturn the election is notable given his experience -- he clerked for Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. and was mentioned as a possible Supreme Court nominee when Trump ran for office in 2016.... Lee's texts show that, soon after the election, it was Lee who encouraged Meadows to give [Sidney Release the Kraken] Powell access to Trump, saying she would help him push forward the legal challenges. He provided Meadows with Powell's contact information.... By late November, Lee had backed away from Powell and instead began encouraging Meadows to hire right-wing lawyer John Eastman. But the trust in Eastman didn't last long either...."~~~

A coup that goes unpunished is just a training exercise. -- Mehdi Hasan on MSNBC Friday ~~~

~~~ Marie: On MSNBC Friday night, Mehdi Hasan zeroed in on Lee's efforts to overturn the election by trying to get states to submit false slates of pro-Trump electors. Lee, who seems to think he's a brave defender of the Constitution, believes that it's pkay to overturn the will of the people if he can get state legislators to throw out the electors the voters chose. If he figured that was, you know, Constituional in 2020, Hasan pointed out, there's no reason it won't be okay in 2024 or in any other presidential election that goes to the Democrat.

A Different System. Marie: Mehdi Hasan listed a number of white men who knowingly cast illegal votes in the names of dead relatives & so on, who were prosecuted, and who received suspended sentences. Then he interviewed Crystal Mason, the Black Texas woman who unknowingly cast an illegal provisional vote in 2016 & was sentenced to a five-year prison term (now on appeal). Hasan asked her if she thought the difference was that those who got probation were white men and she was a Black woman. She summed up as well as anyone could the persistent stain on American "justice": "Yes, it's a different system." Yes, it is.

Paul Blumenthal of the Huffington Post: "... the $2 billion stake invested by the Saudis in [Jared] Kushner’s new private equity firm dwarfs all previous post-presidential money grabs in both size and scope.... As with so many things done by Trump and his family, Kushner's $2 billion Saudi payout highlights a preexisting malady in American life by taking it to its extreme. In this case, that malady is the commercialization of the post-presidency that has taken hold over the past 40 years.... Unlike the money made by other ex-presidents or their family members, this is a gigantic lump sum coming from a foreign government with discrete policy interests in the U.S. government that Kushner was happy to support when in the White House.... Most importantly..., Trump ... is likely to run again in 2024 and is considered the front-runner for the Republican Party nomination."

Lauren Hirsch & Kate Conger of the New York Times: "Twitter unveiled its counterattack against Elon Musk on Friday, using a strategy invented to repel corporate raiders in an attempt to block a takeover bid by the world's richest person. The strategy, known as a poison pill, would flood the market with new shares if Mr. Musk, or any other individual or group working together, bought 15 percent or more of Twitter’s shares. That would immediately reduce Mr. Musk's stake and make it significantly more difficult to buy up a sizable portion of the company. Mr. Musk currently owns more than 9 percent of the company's stock. The goal is to force anyone trying to acquire the company to negotiate directly with the board. Investors rarely try to break through a poison pill threshold, according to securities experts -- one said 'it would be financially ruinous, even for him.' But Mr. Musk rarely abides by precedent." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ~~~

~~~ Mike Masnick of TechDirt: At a TED talk, Elon Musk demonstrated how little he understands about social media content moderation. His simplistic views "sound like what the techies who originally created social media said in the early days.... All of them eventually learned that their simplistic belief in how things should work does not work in reality and have spent the past few decades trying to iterate. And Musk ignores all of that while (somewhat hilariously) suggesting that all of those things can be figured out eventually, despite all of the hard work many, many overworked and underpaid people have been doing figuring exactly that out, only to be told by Musk he’s sure they're doing it wrong.... The problem is not 'someone I dislike saying something I dislike' the problem is spam, abuse, harassment, threats of violence, dangerously misleading false information, and more. Musk not understanding any of that is just a representation of how little he understands this topic." Emphasis original. ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: A fundamental problem: people like Musk & Zuckerberg who are super-successful in one arena think their success somehow is proof that they are already very good at other arenas in which they have no experience or expertise whatsoever. When it comes to understanding human nature -- including the spammers, abusers, harassers, threateners & liars -- Musk is just another drunk pontificating from his perch at the end of the bar. Musk thinks he's David Hume, but he's really Cliff Clavin.

Beyond the Beltway

Florida. Ron DeSantis, Child Abuser. Aaron Rupar of Public Notice: "Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has lately been surrounding himself with kids at public events, including while signing extremely controversial pieces of legislation.... To be clear, it’s standard political practice for elected officials to invite children to participate in relatively uncontroversial things like Easter egg hunts or fitness programs. But... DeSantis is ... using kids to confer legitimacy upon legislation that restricts rights and harms people. Some examples: DeSantis was flanked by kids holding 'Choose Life' signs ... when he banned abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy. There are no exceptions or provisions in the bill for extreme cases, not even rape or incest.... He also surrounded himself with kids last month when he signed legislation threatening teachers with lawsuits if they discuss sexual orientation or gender identity' with their students." ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: I guess I think it's okay to let your young children hold signs for political candidates you endorse, perhaps because in theory your little tot could like Grampy Grassley or Auntie Margie even if the candidates have horrifying policy positions. But it's pretty disgusting to have kids brandishing support for things they obviously can't understand like abortion & LGBTQ rights.

Missouri. Alex Cooper of the Advocate: "The Missouri House approved a bill Wednesday evening that would allow school districts to vote on whether to ban trans student athletes from youth sports.... State Rep. Chuck Basye, a Republican who proposed the amendment, said it was to 'save women's sports.' In a video seen more 700,000 times on TikTok, gay Missouri lawmaker Ian Mackey called out Basye. He compared the anti-trans bill to his own experience as a queer student growing up and even brought up Basye's own gay brother." MB: Watch the video embedded in the story. If you haven't wanted to say what Mackey said on the Missouri House floor, especially if you're of a certain age, I guarantee you know a number of people who do. And BTW, Basye's clueless response to Mackey's query is classic, too. Bigotry is blinding. Thanks to Lawrence O'Donnell for the lead.

New York. Another Sinking Ship. Johnny Diaz of the New York Times: "A warship that survived Japanese air attacks in the Pacific, a typhoon and barrages of artillery fire is sinking, slowly, far from the theaters where it saw combat decades ago: moored in the waterfront of Buffalo, N.Y. The ship, the U.S.S. The Sullivans, suffered 'a serious hull breach' on Wednesday and began taking on water at its home for the last several decades, the Buffalo and Erie County Naval & Military Park, the authorities said on Thursday." MB: Probably got hit by a couple of Ukraine Neptunes.

Texas. Laura Reiley of the Washington Post: "Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) said Friday that there were no longer any secondary inspections of trucks crossing into his state from Mexico, announcing the end of a policy that had created multi-mile backlogs and that critics alleged had cost them millions of dollars in losses because key trade routes had ground to a halt. The announcement came after Abbott said he had reached agreements with a number of Mexican officials to improve border security." The AP report is here.

Wisconsin. Thanks, Supremes! Michael Wines of the New York Times: "The conservative majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court voted to adopt new state legislative maps [link fixed] drawn by Republicans who control the Legislature, reversing its earlier decision that favored maps drawn by the state's Democratic governor. The court acted after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down its previous decision last month, stating in a contentious ruling that the state justices had not considered whether the Democratic-drawn map complied with the federal Voting Rights Act. The newly adopted maps -- partisan gerrymanders that had been drawn in secret in 2011 after the G.O.P. took control from Democrats in both houses of the Legislature -- essentially lock in overwhelming Republican majorities in the Assembly and the Senate for the next decade." The AP report is here. MB: I look upon this as a victory for Mitch McConnell, who is singularly responsible for the make-up of the U.S. Supreme Court.

News Ledes

Unsafe Anywhere: Shot While Shopping. AP: "Ten people were shot and two others injured in a shooting at a busy shopping mall in South Carolina's capital [Columbia] that authorities do not believe was a random attack. Three people who had firearms have been detained in connection with the Saturday afternoon shooting at Columbiana Centre, Columbia Police Chief W.H. 'Skip' Holbrook said. He said at least one of those three people fired a weapon. 'We don't believe this was random,' Holbrook said. 'We believe they knew each other and something led to the gunfire.' Authorities said no fatalities have been reported but that eight of the victims were taken to the hospital. Of those eight, two were in critical condition and six were in stable condition, Holbrook said." The Guardian's report is here.

Guardian: "Five people who provided 'critical information' that helped lead to the arrest of the man charged with this week's mass shooting in a New York subway will share a $50,000 reward, police announced."