Labor Day Reads

Good Afternoon!!

There is so much horrible stuff happening in the world that you’d think the New York Times wouldn’t bother with their usual gossip pieces, but you’d be wrong. Yesterday Katie Rogers published this gross pile of garbage in the paper of record, and fellow gossip columnist Peter Baker pushed it on Twitter:

NYT: In Invoking Beau, Biden Broaches a Loss That’s Guided His Presidency.

In the hours before Lance Cpl. Jared Schmitz, 20, was killed by a terrorist’s bomb in Afghanistan, he posed for a photograph taken by a bunkmate. In the image, the Marine’s brow was furrowed. He flashed a peace sign.

“This is Jared Schmitz,” his father, Mark Schmitz, said he told President Biden days later at Dover Air Force Base, where the two men had traveled to observe the dignified transfer of the remains of 13 U.S. Marines killed last week in the attack in Kabul. “Don’t forget his name.”

But Mr. Schmitz was confused by what happened next: The president turned the conversation to his oldest son, Beau, who died of brain cancer in 2015. Referring to him has become a reliable constant of Mr. Biden’s presidency. In speeches, Oval Office discussions and personal asides, Mr. Biden tends to find a common thread back to his son, no matter the topic. But for Mr. Schmitz, another father consumed by his grief, it was “too much” to bear.

“I respect anybody that lost somebody,” Mr. Schmitz added in an interview, “but it wasn’t an appropriate time.”

The Biden administration, seeking to avoid a public rift with Gold Star families, has not pushed back on criticism from Mr. Schmitz and other families who have said the president brought up his own son too often and acted distant during the ceremony at Dover. But the moment crystallized just how much Mr. Biden is still haunted by the memory of a son he had always described to confidants as “me, but without all the downsides,” and how his anguish over that loss can clash with the political realities of being president.

Mr. Biden’s reputation is staked, in part, around his ability to withstand soul-shattering tragedies. His first wife, Neilia, and his infant daughter, Naomi, were killed in a car accident in 1972. But it was Beau’s death that left the people in Mr. Biden’s life wondering if he would ever recover, let alone wage a third bid for the presidency. His son, they say, is a major reason he decided to stay in public life.

You probably won’t be surprised to learn that Schmitz is a Trump supporter. I probably don’t need to remind you that Trump attacked gold star families and said that troops who died in battle are losers and suckers.

It’s the new “but her emails.” They’ve decided that Biden is grieving wrong. He has lost a wife and two children, but he shouldn’t share his experiences with grief and loss with others who lost a loved one. He should just STFU. He’s too empathetic. He even has the nerve to discuss Beau’s death (which he believes was cause by exposure to chemicals in Iraq) with world leaders. Oh, and according to Baker, Biden’s invoking of his son’s tragic death is an “approach,” meaning a political strategy!

In his public meetings with world leaders, doctors, military officials and families, Mr. Biden often shares how his experience with his son’s deployment to Iraq or battle with brain cancer affected his family. Invoking Beau’s memory amid the violent collapse of Afghanistan, the result of the most politically volatile decision of his presidency to date, provided a rare moment for critics to pounce on a penchant for eulogizing his son.

“Mr. Biden is not a Gold Star father and should stop playing one on TV,” William McGurn, a speechwriter for President George W. Bush, wrote in an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal. Mr. Biden has never claimed that his son died in combat, but he has often spoken of his son’s overseas deployment and the toll it took on his family. Mr. Biden’s supporters say that military families are entitled to their grief, but that the president is also entitled to his.

“The families who are grieving, they are free to feel however they feel,” Fred Guttenberg, whose 14-year-old daughter, Jaime, was killed in a mass shooting in 2018 at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., and who has received periodic calls from Mr. Biden, said in an interview. “But to anyone else who may have been critiquing: The president’s children, those living and those not, they formed who the president is.”

How shocking that a Bush speechwriter has a problem with Biden and a supporter like Guttenberg doesn’t. Baker’s tweet ended up with an incredible ratio of angry replies to retweets: 9.8K replies to 2K retweets and 1.6K likes.

Here’s a sampling of some of the replies:

I was so angry about this yesterday, that I just had to share.

Now that I’ve gotten that out of my system, here are a few more more reads with brief excerpts:

A think piece on the anniversary of 9/11 by Will Bunch at The Philadelphia Inquirer:

From the article:

“It was 8:46 a.m.,” I wrote as night fell on 9/11, “and America would never be the same again.”

Looking back two decades later, I can’t decide which is weirder — that I wrote this in the darkness of that confusing day, or that somehow I got it right. America was changed forever and — despite those initial days where we hoped the sadness and the rubble would give rise to national unity and a sense of purpose that had felt missing in the detached irony and greed of the go-go 1990s — for the most part it has changed for the worse. Those drivers going every which way at cross purposes on Vine Street weren’t just a traffic jam, but a metaphor for the road ahead.

Any national unity dissolved rapidly into fear and paranoia, which a cynical new government in Washington preferred to exploit rather than tamp down — the better to plant our flag in oil-rich lands abroad and silence any dissent here at home. Those bad tidings — and the conspiratorial mindset we embraced in the wake of 9/11 — would be turned against nations that had nothing to do with the attacks, against immigrants in general, against legitimate protest, and finally, inevitably, against one another. The era that started with the Islamic radicals who hijacked Flight 93 failing to reach the U.S. Capitol dome ended with American fanatics breaching its rotunda. The late Osama bin Laden could not have drafted a better script for his evil ambitions.

And let’s be clear: The ultimate blame for 9/11 rests squarely with those who planned and executed an attack that killed 2,977 innocent people in the name of religious fanaticism and a Middle Eastern power trip — bin Laden and his associates in al-Qaeda. It’s impossible to write about that day without either a full-throated condemnation of the banal evil behind September 11 and also our heartbroken memories of the decent everyday people — firefighters and executive assistants and cops and stockbrokers — who lost their lives because of that immorality.

In responding to their deaths, some positive things occurred — including the killing of bin Laden and the minimizing of at least the old, original al-Qaeda. Despite the inevitable carping from air travelers, an airport-security regime that’s successfully prevented any hijackings for these two decades has been quite an achievement. It’s also a reminder that America could have spent the last 20 years only doing what was necessary — shoring up our anti-terrorism regime on U.S. soil, and right-sizing our role in the world. Instead, our hubris — which was actually masking our inner fears — that America must respond to any threat to our daydreams of exceptionalism with massive force caused us to double down on military imperialism with tragic consequences, in a tortured odyssey that led us full circle to last month’s chaotic scenes at the Kabul airport.

Read the rest at the link above.

From the article:

Meanwhile, the pandemic continues to rage.

From the article:

Once again, politicians and judges are limiting abortion without any understanding of what pregnancy can, and often does, ask of the human body. To conservative legislators in Texas, a new law banning abortion after about six weeks of gestation is a ploy to subvert Roe v. Wade. But to doctors like me, the measure reveals how thoughtless its designers are and how willing they are to let pregnant patients suffer and die.

I’m an obstetrician who specializes in high-risk cases. Last month, I saw a woman whose water broke 19 weeks into a long-desired pregnancy. This patient, who had conceived after a previous miscarriage, was eager to have a child. When she came to the hospital, my colleagues and I told her the truth: Without an intact amniotic sac, she and her fetus were extraordinarily vulnerable to bacteria from the outside world. She might stay pregnant for the time being. But her chances of getting to 23 weeks—the point at which a baby might be able to survive outside her body, albeit with extensive, lifelong medical problems—were almost zero. While waiting to deliver, she faced a high probability of infection in her uterus, despite the antibiotics that we would give her. She was very likely to develop a serious infection, even sepsis, which could require a hysterectomy or, though unlikely, lead to death.

We told her that she could watch and wait, despite the risks. Medical standards also dictated that my patient be offered a termination of pregnancy right away, before she could become sick. We outlined ways to terminate her pregnancy: a procedure to evacuate her uterus in the operating room or an induction of labor with the understanding that the newborn would not survive.

This situation comes up at my hospital at least a few times a month, every month. Working with high-risk patients means I need to be able to discuss, recommend, and perform abortions somewhat regularly. This is not because I want to kill babies or end desired pregnancies. It is because, in many cases, I am walking patients and their families through a nightmare. Sometimes, abortion turns out to be the least terrible of all the progressively terrible options they face.

Read the rest at The Atlantic.

More stories to check out:

Raw Story: ‘Cruel on purpose’: Americans rage at Times writer who claims Biden grieves his family too much.

CNN: Communities across the US trudge through the long recovery process more than a week after Hurricane Ida’s landfall.

A book excerpt by Adam Tooze at The Atlantic: 2020 Was Almost Worse Than 2008. In a crisis like the one that hit the world in March 2020, only one thing will restore confidence: limitless cash. An excerpt from Shutdown: How Covid Shook the World’s Economy.

The New York Times: Covid Deaths Surge Across a Weary America as a Once-Hopeful Summer Ends.

Axios: Over 230 medical journals: Climate crisis is the “greatest” health threat.

Newsweek: Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s Approval Plummets as 52 Percent Believe State Is on Wrong Track.

Minneapolis Star-Tribune: Minnesota State Patrol destroyed texts, e-mails after riot response. Loss of data becomes issue in ACLU suit over journalists’ treatment.

The New York Times: How the Texas Anti-Abortion Movement Helped Enact a Near-Complete Ban.

The Daily Beast: Texas Anti-Abortion Groups See ‘Ultimate Goal’ Approaching.

The Daily Beast: Threats & Leaks: New Documents Show Just How Crazy the Georgia Recount Fiasco Got.

Have a nice Labor Day, Sky Dancers!!

Friday Open Thread

Good Morning!!

I’m going to do a somewhat minimal post today. Three days in a row is a bit much for me.

Dakinikat is doing OK, but it looks like most of New Orleans is still waiting for power to be restored.

https://twitter.com/luisffierro/status/1433781673909444608?s=20

WDSU.com: LIST: Entergy released estimated restoration time for all of New Orleans area.

More power has been restored to the New Orleans area after Hurricane Ida caused widespread damage to the power grid.

As of Friday morning, Entergy restored power to more than 40,000 customers.

Entergy provided an update Thursday where officials said all damage assessments will be completed by Thursday night. So far, crews have identified 837 poles, 288 transformers, and 564 crossarms that need to be repaired, according to Entergy.

Entergy released the following information on restoration times:

“The estimated times of completed restoration come after an extensive damage assessment by thousands of workers, which has thus far revealed more than 14,000 damaged or destroyed poles, 2,223 damaged or destroyed transformers, and 155 destroyed transmission structures.

“The assessment continues in the most damaged areas, but in parallel, the restoration process is well underway. Thus, the preliminary estimates for restoration reflect completion dates, but service to many customers will be restored before these dates. Nearly 26,000 professionals from 40 states continue their around-the-clock efforts to restore power throughout the affected communities.

Hurricane Ida was quite a storm.

Even after devastating Louisiana and Mississippi, it was still raging enough to cause deadly floods in New Jersey and New York, and after that had enough strength left to dump several inches of rain in Massachusetts with a tornado on the Cape and flooding in lots of places. We got about 6 inches of rain where I am. I didn’t know this before, but one 1 inch of rain is equivalent of 13 inches of snow!

The New York Times: 43 Die as Deadliest Storm Since Sandy Devastates the Northeast.

The New York Times: Trapped in Basements and Cars, They Lost Their Lives in Savage Storm.

The Washington Post: Here’s what made the New York City flooding so devastating.

NBC 10 Boston: Ida Remnants Cause Tornado on Cape Cod, Bring Flooding, Power Outages to Mass.

The New York Times: Overlapping Disasters Expose Harsh Climate Reality: The U.S. Is Not Ready.

Parents whose children were murdered Newtown, CT years are ago are still being tortured.

This is horrific. Vice: Remington Subpoenas Report Cards of 5 Children Killed in Sandy Hook Shooting.

Gun company Remington has subpoenaed the report cards, attendance records, and disciplinary records of five kindergarten and first grade students murdered in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, according to new court filings in a civil lawsuit filed against the company.

“In mid-July, the defense served a subpoena on the Newtown Public School District seeking: ‘Any and all educational records in your possession including but not limited to, application and admission paperwork, attendance records, transcripts, report cards, disciplinary records, correspondence and any and all other educational information and records pertaining to’ each of the five first-graders whose Estates are plaintiffs in this case,” according to the motion filed today that sought to protect the victims’ families from further subpoenas. “There is no conceivable way that these [records] will assist Remington in its defense, and the plaintiffs do not understand why Remington would invade the families’ privacy with such a request. Nonetheless, this personal and private information has been produced to Remington.”

In addition, Remington subpoenaed employment records of four teachers who were killed in the shooting, in which a total of 20 children and six adults died. Some of the parents of the Sandy Hook victims have been suing the weapons manufacturer since 2014, alleging that the gun manufacturer advertised its line of semi-automatic weapons to civilians. Remington previously responded to a discovery request for its internal company communications by producing more than 18,000 unsorted files containing memes, cartoons, and ice bucket challenge videos.

“We have no explanation for why Remington subpoenaed the Newtown Public School District to obtain the kindergarten and first grade academic, attendance and disciplinary records of these five school children,” Josh Koskoff, one of the lawyers representing the Sandy Hook parents, told Motherboard. “The records cannot possibly excuse Remington’s egregious marketing conduct, or be of any assistance in estimating the catastrophic damages in this case. The only relevant part of their attendance records is that they were at their desks on December 14, 2012.”

More stories and tweets:

Local 10.com: DeSantis considers implementing a Texas’ ‘fetal heartbeat’ abortion ban in Florida.

MIAMI – Gov. Ron DeSantis said on Thursday that he is going to consider following in the steps of Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to implement anti-abortion laws. Abbott’s new controversial law prohibits abortions when the fetal heartbeat can be detected.

During a news conference to address early COVID treatment, DeSantis said he is pro-life and welcomes anti-abortion legislation. He said Texas used a “private right of action,” a private-lawsuit enforcement mechanism.

“What they did in Texas is interesting and I haven’t really been able to look at enough about it … It’s a little bit different than how a lot of these debates have gone, so we will have to look. I am going to look more significantly at it,” DeSantis said.

Florida Senate President Wilton Simpson expects Republicans to introduce a similar bill for the next session. This would allow anti-abortion group members to file lawsuits against a medical provider that performs an abortion.

Imani Gandy at Rewire News Group: Groundbreaking South Carolina Bill: Compensate People for Forcing Them to Give Birth.

If South Carolina lawmakers are going to ban abortion after six weeks’ gestation and force every pregnant person to carry their pregnancy to term, the state should damn well pay for the costs associated with giving birth to and raising that child.

That’s the premise behind a bill called the South Carolina Pro Birth Accountability Act that state Sen. Mia McLeod pre-filed Wednesday, and boy howdy!—it is a barn burner.

The bill, SB 928, demands that anti-choice lawmakers in South Carolina who have proposed banning abortion at six weeks into pregnancy put their money where their mouth is: If lawmakers are going to force people to carry their pregnancies to term, and if they are going to deem the development of an unborn embryo as more important than the life and rights of pregnant people, then South Carolina should compensate them for acting as a gestational surrogate for the state of South Carolina.

The law points out that given the surrogacy market, a pregnant person’s uterus is not unlike a rental property: People who commission surrogates pay that surrogate to carry a fetus to term and to give birth to a child. So why should South Carolina be permitted to force its citizens to act as surrogates for the state without compensating them?

According to SB 928, South Carolina shouldn’t, and the legislation hammers this point home by making several key points:

• That from a medical perspective, there is no dispute that a six-week-old embryo cannot exist outside of the womb;
• That South Carolina has deemed the development of a six-week old embryo governmentally more important than the life and rights of pregnant people; and
• That the six-week ban will force pregnant people who otherwise could have elected an abortion to act as a gestational surrogate for the state of South Carolina, which—and this is my favorite part—cannot itself physically conceive or carry a child.

And here’s the kicker: “just as South Carolina may not constitutionally use a citizen’s rental property without just compensation, it may not constitutionally require a woman to incubate a child without appropriate compensation.”

That’s about all I have energy for this morning. What stories are you following?

Monday Reads

Mississippi River ahead of Hurricane Ida, Aug. 29, 2021

Good Morning!!

Yesterday, on the 16 anniversary of Katrina, Ida made landfall in Louisiana as a category 4 hurricane. Dakinikat weathered the storm, but all of New Orleans is now without power and 911 service. Last night, the storm moved west into Mississippi, where it was downgraded to a tropical storm that will affect the state throughout today. Here’s the latest:

NOLA.com: New Orleans lost power in Hurricane Ida after tower collapsed in river; fix could take days, longer.

A massive failure of the transmission system that brings electricity to New Orleans and the east bank of Jefferson Parish left the city completely without power as Hurricane Ida slammed the area and it’s not clear how long the problems will take to fix.

The problems during the storm took all eight electricity-transmission lines into the area offline, including one massive tower on the west bank that collapsed into the Mississippi River. Now, the New Orleans area could spend an extended period, perhaps days but potentially much longer, without electricity in the summer heat and during a hurricane season that will continue after Ida has departed.

The failure raises questions about New Orleans’ plan to use Entergy power to replace the Sewerage & Water Board’s antiquated turbines as the primary source of power for the city’s drainage system. City Council members who chair the committees that regulate Entergy and oversee the S&WB said the outage would prompt investigations into the power company and would require further scrutiny of the S&WB plan.

Failures of the transmission system during Hurricane Gustav in 2008 and Hurricane Laura last year left huge swaths of the state without power for days or weeks.

Mayor LaToya Cantrell urged residents to stay in their homes and New Orleans Police Department Superintendent Shaun Ferguson said “anti-looting” officers would be deployed due to the outage.

The full details of what went wrong with the transmission system were not yet known and Ida’s strong winds kept crews from fully evaluating the system on Sunday.

Bourbon Street as Ida began to move in

NOLA.com: 911 system not working in New Orleans or Jefferson Parish after Hurricane Ida hits.

The 911 system is not working in Orleans and Jefferson parishes in the aftermath of Hurricane Ida, officials said Monday morning.

In Orleans, if you have an emergency, officials said you should go to your nearest fire station or approach a police officer.

In Jefferson Parish, officials said you should call 504-227-1400, which is the administrative number for the 911 Center, if you can’t get through by dialing 911.

Dakinikat just texted that she walked to her local fire station to report a downed tree on a power line. She also talked to some neighbors, one of whom said they heard it could take 6 weeks to restore all power. Her house is OK, but a couple of big branches broke off her magnolia tree. She has been posting some updates to her Facebook page.

NOLA.com: Generator failure during Hurricane Ida at Thibodaux hospital prompts scramble to move ICU patients.

The partial loss of generator power Sunday at a Louisiana hospital in the path of Hurricane Ida sent doctors and nurses scrambling to keep patients breathing as they moved them to a different area.

Patients at Thibodaux Regional Health System in Lafourche Parish were bagged by hand, meaning hospital staff manually pushed air in and out of their lungs in place of mechanical ventilation, while they were transported to another floor, according to officials with the Louisiana Department of Health. Other generators in the hospital are still in working order, according to Dr. Joe Kanter, the state’s chief health officer, as workers and patients there continue to ride out the storm.

Officials from Thibodaux Regional Health System posted on social media around 7 p.m. Sunday that “the backup generator that was affected earlier by winds from the hurricane is back online at the current time.”

USA Today: Hurricane Ida was so powerful it reversed the flow of the Mississippi River.

As the powerful Hurricane Ida roared ashore in Louisiana on Sunday, the storm’s force was so strong it temporarily reversed the flow of the Mississippi River.

Hitting as a Category 4 storm, Ida’s winds snapped trees and tore roofs off buildings as its floodwaters blocked roads and submerged cars. The storm was expected to dump up to 2 feet of rain in some areas and bring up to 7 feet of storm surge. Over a million people in Louisiana were without power.

NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA – AUGUST 29: A person sits at a train stop for shelter ahead of Hurricane Ida on August 29, 2021 in New Orleans, Louisiana. 

A U.S. Geological Survey gauge at Belle Chasse, south of New Orleans, detected the Mississippi’s flow moving backward around midday Sunday  because of the amount of water Ida whipped up.

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers spokesman Ricky Boyette confirmed engineers detected a “negative flow” on the Mississippi River as a result of storm surge.

In the days leading up to Ida’s arrival, the river, which flows into the Gulf of Mexico, had a discharge rate hovering around 300,000 cubic feet per second. At the peak of the reversal, it was flowing nearly 40,000 cubic feet per second upriver. The reversal occurred for just over a couple hours.

Although rare, the river changing course is not unprecedented, occurring during Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and Hurricane Isaac in 2012.

The Washington Post: Ida weakens to tropical storm as it moves to Mississippi with destructive winds, heavy flooding.

Brian Stelter at CNN Business: Webcams and social media apps are changing the way we experience hurricanes.

In an ever-more-internet-connected world, we are getting close-up views of extreme weather in ways that were hard to imagine a generation ago.

When Hurricane Ida barreled ashore and ransacked the Louisiana coast on Sunday, we were able to see the storm surge inundate Grand Isle through remote video cameras that were installed by storm chasers.

Locals also uploaded web-connected security camera footage of the rising waters to social media and streamed the winds on Facebook Live. Reporters weren’t embedded in these coastal and low-lying areas because the danger was simply too great, so webcams were the main way to assess the damage on Sunday.

Later in the day, as the center of Ida moved closer to New Orleans, residents posted panicked pleas for help on Twitter and other sites. Local reporters shared videos of homes that have been flooded. Other videos on Twitter and Instagram showed debris flying through the air in New Orleans.

Traffic cameras and levee monitoring webcams also provided dozens of views from inside the storm.

Wind, storm surge from Hurricane Ida lash Louisiana

Some locations lost power and/or internet connectivity, but an impressive number of the cameras remained online throughout the day. It was the latest sign that the way we witness landfalling hurricanes is changing — perhaps providing a more visceral education for the public. Can all the live feeds and social snapshots, showing the real-time reality of the weather, cause viewers to take the threat more seriously?

And/or do some folks see the video clips and decide to head outside with their own cameras? “A video of a man plowing headlong into storm surge from Hurricane Ida garnered a stern warning from National Weather Service officials,” urging everyone to stay inside, Missy Wilkinson of The Advocate reported Sunday afternoon.

Storm chasers could not be dissuaded. Numerous chasers showed Ida’s storm surge pouring into towns like Golden Meadow, Larose and LaPlace. One camera crew said they were surrounded by water but were safe at a Motel 6 with high-enough ground.

By nightfall, a man on Twitter who called himself an oil field worker had posted a video from the actual site of the landfall, Port Fourchon, showing a toppled crane and other damage. Through texts, video clips and live streams, we’re experiencing hurricanes in new ways.

More stories to check out today:

The New York Times: The U.S. reaches 100,000 average daily Covid hospitalizations for the first time since winter.

Vice News: QAnon Anti-Vaxxer Called COVID a Hoax Even as His ‘Lungs Stopped Functioning’

The Jerusalem Post: New COVID variant detected in South Africa, most mutated variant so far.

AP News: Rockets fired at Kabul airport but US flights continue.

David Rothkopf at The Atlantic: Biden Deserves Credit, Not Blame, for Afghanistan.

The New Republic: Be Glad Donald Trump Isn’t Running the Show in Afghanistan.

Russell Berman at The Atlantic: The Obvious Voting-Rights Solution That No Democrat Will Propose. The answer to one of the most vexing debates in American politics is an idea that everyone hates.

Adam Jentleson at The New York Times: When Will Biden Join the Fight for Voting Rights?

That’s all I have for you today. I’ll have to do another post tomorrow. Take care everyone!