November 27, 2022
Afternoon Update:
Lily Kuo of the Washington Post: "Protests erupted in cities and on campuses across China this weekend as frustrated and outraged citizens took to the streets in a stunning wave of demonstrations against the government's 'zero covid' policy and the leaders enforcing it. Residents in Shanghai, China's most populous city, came together Saturday night and early Sunday, calling for the end of pandemic lockdowns and chanting, 'We want freedom!' and 'Unlock Xinjiang, unlock all of China!' according to witnesses at the event. In even more extraordinary scenes of public anger aimed at the government's top leader, a group of protesters there chanted, 'Xi Jinping, step down!' and 'Communist Party, step down!'"
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The Dumbest Damned "Modern Democracy" on Earth. Mike McIntire of the New York Times: "Across the country, openly carrying a gun in public is no longer just an exercise in self-defense -- increasingly it is a soapbox for elevating one's voice and, just as often, quieting someone else's.... In June, armed demonstrations around the United States amounted to nearly one a day. A group led by a former Republican state legislator protested a gay pride event in a public park in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. Men with guns interrupted a Juneteenth festival in Franklin, Tenn., handing out fliers claiming that white people were being replaced.... Whether at the local library, in a park or on Main Street, most of these incidents happen where Republicans have fought to expand the ability to bear arms in public, a movement bolstered by a recent Supreme Court ruling on the right to carry firearms outside the home. The loosening of limits has occurred as violent political rhetoric rises and the police in some places fear bloodshed among an armed populace on a hair trigger. A partisan divide -- with Democrats largely eschewing firearms and Republicans embracing them -- has warped civic discourse. Deploying the Second Amendment in service of the First has become a way to buttress a policy argument, a sort of silent, if intimidating, bullhorn."
Jacob Bogage of the Washington Post: "As the White House pushes public agencies and big business to slash greenhouse gas emissions, it is leaning on the Postal Service to step up the pace to meet President Biden's directive to ensure all new government-owned vehicles are EVs by 2035. And, after a hard-won $3 billion infusion from Congress to jump-start its transition, the first of the agency's 34,000 zero-emission mail trucks will begin rolling out next year. Most of those funds, according to Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, will remedy a massive and widely underappreciated challenge in the green migration: the arduous and costly build-out of EV infrastructure, from gargantuan new buildings to thousands of charging stations.... The agency is set to purchase 85,000 mail trucks, a mix of custom-built Next Generation Delivery Vehicles from a defense contractor in Wisconsin, as well as models from mainstream automakers. Nearly 40 percent of them, roughly 34,000 trucks, will be electric, far fewer than the Biden administration wanted but four times more than the agency initially planned.... The fleet decision was particularly fraught."
Beyond the Beltway
Fake Voter Fraud Squads with Nothing to Do. Gary Fields, et al., of the AP: "State-level law enforcement units created after the 2020 presidential election to investigate voter fraud are looking into scattered complaints more than two weeks after the midterms but have provided no indication of systemic problems. That's just what election experts had expected and led critics to suggest that the new units were more about politics than rooting out widespread abuses. Most election-related fraud cases already are investigated and prosecuted at the local level." MB: These "law enforcement agencies" are so Soviet.
Georgia Senate Race. Dylan Wells of the Washington Post: "Georgia voters flocked to the polls Saturday to cast their ballots in the Senate runoff, taking advantage of an extra day of voting brought about by a lawsuit filed by Sen. Raphael G. Warnock (D), who is defending his seat against Republican Herschel Walker. In more than two dozen counties across the state, thousands of voters from both parties came out to vote, some waiting for hours in lines stretching around the block for the chance to cast their ballot early for the Dec. 6 runoff. The secretary of state's office reported that at least 70,000 people voted Saturday."
Way Beyond
Ukraine, et al.
The Washington Post's live briefings of developments Sunday in Russia's war on Ukraine are here: "In what he called 'a very busy diplomatic day,' President Volodymyr Zelensky solidified his Grain from Ukraine initiative, hosted world leaders in a summit on food security, and elicited European nations' support for Ukraine to join NATO and the European Union.... The [grain] effort comes in addition to the Black Sea Grain Initiative, through which shipments have gone to various countries. Other countries, including the United States, have agreed to help with the new program, sending Ukraine about $150 million, Zelensky said in his daily address.... Weather is slowing front line operations in Ukraine, according to the Institute for the Study of War think tank, but a consistent ground freeze expected in early December would allow Russian and Ukrainian forces to pick up where they left off."
Catherine Belton & Robyn Dixon of the Washington Post: "For months, [Vladimir] Putin claimed that the economic blitzkrieg' against Russia had failed, but Western sanctions imposed over the invasion of Ukraine are digging ever deeper into Russia's economy, exacerbating equipment shortages for its army and hampering its ability to launch any new ground offensive or build new missiles, economists and Russian business executives said. Recent figures show the situation has worsened considerably since the summer when, buoyed by a steady stream of oil and gas revenue, the Russian economy seemed to stabilize. Figures released by the Finance Ministry last week show a key economic indicator -- tax revenue from the non-oil and gas sector -- fell 20 percent in October.... The Western ban on technology imports is affecting most sectors of the economy, while the Kremlin's forced mobilization of more than 300,000 Russian conscripts to serve in Ukraine, combined with the departure of at least as many abroad fleeing the draft, has dealt a further blow, economists said. In addition, Putin's own restrictions on gas supplies to Europe, followed by the unexplained explosion of the Nord Stream gas pipeline, has led to a sharp drop in gas production...."
Taiwan. Huizhong Wu of the AP: "Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen resigned as head of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party following local election losses on Saturday in which voters chose the opposition Nationalist party in several major races across the self-ruled island. Concerns about threats from rival China, which claims Taiwan as its territory, took a backseat to more local issues in the elections.... Tsai offered her resignation on Saturday evening, a tradition after a major loss, in a short speech in which she also thanked supporters."
News Ledes
AP: "Search teams have recovered seven dead, including a 3-week-old infant and a pair of young siblings, buried in mud and debris that hurtled down a mountainside and through a densely populated port city on the resort island of Ischia, officials said Sunday."
New York Times: "Irene Cara, the Academy Award-winning singer who performed the electric title tracks in two aspirational self-expression movies of the 1980s, 'Flashdance' and 'Fame,' has died. She was 63."
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