Posted: August 17, 2021 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: just because, morning reads | Tags: Afghanistan, beltway media, Donald Trump, Joe Biden, media freakout, media narratives |
Good Morning!!
Lubeck Orphanage, 1894, Gotthardt Kuel
It looks like the media is going to focus on Afghanistan for the foreseeable future. They’ve spent the past 6 months searching for something they can attack Biden about, and now they’ve found it. Never mind that Trump is the one who negotiated with the Taliban and withdrew most of the troops. This is all Biden’s fault.
Never mind that Trump mismanaged and then ignored a deadly virus that has now killed more Americans than the Civil War. Never mind that Republican Governors in the South and people refusing vaccines based on conspiracy theories that are making the pandemic worse. That can’t be pinned on Biden, so the media will ignore the problem for now. They will also largely ignore the horrific earthquake in Haiti. The media loves covering wars.
I have to admit that I’m no expert on Afghanistan. I just know that after 20 years, it’s obvious that we aren’t going win a war against the Taliban. I lived through years of our government waging a war in Vietnam that killed nearly 60,000 U.S. soldiers and millions of Vietnamese army and civilians.
This war has gone on much longer than Vietnam, and it’s clear we’re not going to win it. The best thing we can do is get as many vulnerable Afghanis out and bring them to the U.S. or send them to other countries. Of course Republicans won’t like that, even though they are criticizing the pullout at the moment (They cheered Trump and Pompeo’s agreement with the Taliban that freed 5,000 fighters from prison. Now they are pretending that didn’t happen).
I’m not saying what’s happening in Afghanistan at the moment isn’t horrible. It is. I honestly don’t know if it could have been handled better. Maybe so. Wiser people than I will have plenty to say about that. But I’m willing to wait and see what happens.
A couple of pieces on the media reaction:
Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo: DC Press Bigs Escalate to Peak Screech Over Biden Defiance.
If nothing else for media watchers there’s a fascinating dynamic developing over the last day or so in trying to define the US exit from Afghanistan. It’s not a new dynamic. In fact, it’s one I first saw a quarter century ago when DC’s establishment press got really, really upset that not only Bill Clinton but more importantly most of the country didn’t agree with their take on impeachment in 1998. Official DC was baffled when Democrats actually managed to pick up a few seats in the 1998 midterm that was entirely about impeachment. The specifics of the case are of course pretty radically different. But the dynamic of establishment DC press escalation is not. Politico’s morning newsletter this morning captures the dynamic. It starts quoting David Axelrod making clear that Biden messed up and has admit he messed up but then notes that Biden didn’t get the message and said it was the right decision. A sort of primal scream of “WTF, JOE BIDEN?!?!?!!?!” virtually bleeds through the copy.
After quoting Biden at length saying “I stand squarely behind my decision…” Politico jumps back in: “Of course, that’s not the issue. And Republicans — as well as many in the media — were quick to point that out …”
No, no, no, Joe Biden! that’s not right!
Sunday Afternoon – Interior with a Girl Reading, Michael Peter Ancher
As I’ve made clear repeatedly, it’s not like this is a big win for Biden, at least in the near term. American public opinion is never going to like seeing the people we spent twenty years and a trillion dollars fighting getting comfy in the presidential palace after the US-backed President hopped the first plane out of Kabul. That stings no matter what the backstory. But there’s also little question that the very strong consensus among establishment DC press opinion-makers is not in line with the mood or opinion of most of the country.
At least half a dozen Politico articles in the last 36 hours have run with a snap Morning Consult poll showing that support for Biden’s withdrawal plan has fallen from 69% in May to 49% on Sunday, a whopping 20 point drop. This is hardly surprising: the concept of bringing everyone home is easier to support without pictures of the messy realities of the situation. The data point is listed in this morning’s Politico newsletter as well (“Here’s one bad sign for Biden:”). Not mentioned as far as I can tell in any of these write-ups is this: Even after a weekend of chaotic, ugly images and 48 hours of relentlessly negative news coverage, support and opposition to Biden’s withdrawal plan, according to this poll was 49% in favor and 37% opposed. The fact that the plan still has a net +12 approval even at such a bleak moment is surely a relevant part of the story.
There’s a pretty palpable reflex to keep the storyline in check and Biden is not helping.
The media needs everyone to go along with their narrative, just as they did when they were cheering the buildup to the Iraq war and many of us ordinary American were terrified of another Vietnam.
This piece at The Hill is by Joe Ferullo, a journalist and former network news executive: Beltway reporting of Afghanistan withdrawal a disservice to Americans.
As Taliban forces pushed through Afghanistan this past week, most news outlets covered the swiftly shifting story by falling back to their usual position: reporting from inside the Beltway.
That kind of journalism — insular and hermetically-sealed — can read “out of touch” to most news consumers and only further cements skepticism about the media.
In Washington, the situation in Afghanistan was largely viewed as an event with disastrous consequences for President Biden. According to the headlines, the president now faced “political peril” as the end of the war entered “treacherous terrain.”
More than that, one report insisted, this represented a “grim reckoning” for Biden, who had “rebuffed Pentagon recommendations” to leave a contingent of U.S. troops in the country.
In case the point was somehow missed, a cable news chyron shouted: “Afghanistan’s Rapid Unravelling Threatens Biden’s Legacy.”
It’s undeniable that the circumstances in Afghanistan have deteriorated much more quickly than the administration anticipated — or, at least, that it wanted to discuss publicly. But two main questions were left under-examined as the political media rushed to do what it too-often does: Find a simple D.C.-centric story thread and race to repeat it.
The more important questions, according to Ferullo:
Black Man Reading Newspaper by Candlelight, Henry Louis Stevens
The most important issue: What do the American people want? Reports from outside the Beltway, looking for voter reaction, have been rare. But recent polling makes the answer clear. In one April survey, 73 percent of respondents approved of Biden’s plan to withdraw from Afghanistan. As late as last month, polls showed 57 percent supported ending the war.
In other words, the people who have for the past 20 years been asked to do the fighting — or to send loved ones far away, tour-after-tour, as the conflict dragged on — have said “Enough is enough.” Their voices should count for something, yet their point of view was largely missing from reports out of Washington this past week.
Also largely left unconsidered: Why was the Taliban able to advance so quickly? The story line most often picked up blamed a hasty U.S. withdrawal. It was, according to one headline, “Joe Biden’s Fall of Saigon.”
That comparison actually rings true — but not for the reasons most journalists have settled on. With the passage of time, it became clear that, in large part, South Vietnam fell so quickly because its government simply did not have the support of its people. America’s military presence in Vietnam — over the course of nearly 20 years and 58,000 U.S. combat deaths — was unable to build a political infrastructure that citizens could trust.
The same is true in Afghanistan. We set up a government that the people didn’t like or trust. Read more at the link.
Biden’s Explanation of His Decisions
Biden made his case in a speech yesterday. Here’s a bit of it:
My national security team and I have been closely monitoring the situation on the ground in Afghanistan and moving quickly to execute the plans we had put in place to respond to every constituency, including — and contingency — including the rapid collapse we’re seeing now….
We went to Afghanistan almost 20 years ago with clear goals: get those who attacked us on September 11th, 2001, and make sure al Qaeda could not use Afghanistan as a base from which to attack us again.
We did that. We severely degraded al Qaeda in Afghanistan. We never gave up the hunt for Osama bin Laden, and we got him. That was a decade ago.
Our mission in Afghanistan was never supposed to have been nation building. It was never supposed to be creating a unified, centralized democracy….
I’ve argued for many years that our mission should be narrowly focused on counterterrorism — not counterinsurgency or nation building. That’s why I opposed the surge when it was proposed in 2009 when I was Vice President.
And that’s why, as President, I am adamant that we focus on the threats we face today in 2021 — not yesterday’s threats.
Christopher Wilson We conduct effective counterterrorism missions against terrorist groups in multiple countries where we don’t have a permanent military presence.
If necessary, we will do the same in Afghanistan. We’ve developed counterterrorism over-the-horizon capability that will allow us to keep our eyes firmly fixed on any direct threats to the United States in the region and to act quickly and decisively if needed.
Rosa and Bertha Gugger, 1883, Albert Anker
When I came into office, I inherited a deal that President Trump negotiated with the Taliban. Under his agreement, U.S. forces would be out of Afghanistan by May 1, 2021 — just a little over three months after I took office.
U.S. forces had already drawn down during the Trump administration from roughly 15,500 American forces to 2,500 troops in country, and the Taliban was at its strongest militarily since 2001.
The choice I had to make, as your President, was either to follow through on that agreement or be prepared to go back to fighting the Taliban in the middle of the spring fighting season.
There would have been no ceasefire after May 1. There was no agreement protecting our forces after May 1. There was no status quo of stability without American casualties after May 1.
There was only the cold reality of either following through on the agreement to withdraw our forces or escalating the conflict and sending thousands more American troops back into combat in Afghanistan, lurching into the third decade of conflict.
There’s more at the link but here’s the bottom line.
I stand squarely behind my decision. After 20 years, I’ve learned the hard way that there was never a good time to withdraw U.S. forces….
American troops cannot and should not be fighting in a war and dying in a war that Afghan forces are not willing to fight for themselves. We spent over a trillion dollars. We trained and equipped an Afghan military force of some 300,000 strong — incredibly well equipped — a force larger in size than the militaries of many of our NATO allies.
We gave them every tool they could need. We paid their salaries, provided for the maintenance of their air force — something the Taliban doesn’t have. Taliban does not have an air force. We provided close air support….
And here’s what I believe to my core: It is wrong to order American troops to step up when Afghanistan’s own armed forces would not. If the political leaders of Afghanistan were unable to come together for the good of their people, unable to negotiate for the future of their country when the chips were down, they would never have done so while U.S. troops remained in Afghanistan bearing the brunt of the fighting for them.
Support for Biden’s Arguments
This is from right wing site Axios: Biden officials: Trump left bare cupboard on Afghanistan.
Senior national security officials presiding over a historic foreign policy collapse are privately expressing deep frustrations about the thin Afghanistan withdrawal plans left behind by Donald Trump.
Why it matters: Many experienced operatives in both parties are aghast that President Biden and his team didn’t ready better preparations over nearly seven months since taking office.
- But two Biden officials who spoke with Axios on Monday on condition of anonymity bristled at the criticism coming from former President Trump and his administration in the wake of the Taliban’s rapid sweep across Afghanistan and capture of Kabul.
What they’re saying: “There was no plan to evacuate our diplomats to the airport,” a senior national security official told Axios about the preparations they inherited from the previous administration. “None of this was on the shelf, so to speak.”
- “When we got in, on Jan. 20, we saw that the cupboard was bare,” the official said, echoing a complaint Team Biden also made about Trump’s vaccine distribution plan….
Reading (Clara), circa 1865, Federico Faruffini
Biden officials said that Trump’s team during the transition, was slow to brief them on key details and context behind the 2020 peace agreement signed in Doha.
- That Trump-era deal between the U.S. and the Taliban called for a withdrawal of troops by May 2021.
- Separately, Trump, after losing the election, signed a secret memo to withdraw all troops from Afghanistan before Biden took office, as Axios’ Jonathan Swan and Zachary Basu reported. But after some Trump officials became aware of “an off-the-books operation by the commander in chief himself,” they eventually persuaded Trump to keep some 2,500 troops in Afghanistan.
After all of that, the senior Biden officials said, Trump effectively didn’t have a plan to bring all Americans including troops, contractors and diplomats home safely. One said that created “headwinds” and “unnecessarily increased” the degree of difficulty for the new administration.
- “The entire policy process had atrophied,” one of the officials said. “It was really manifest here.
- “On the one hand, they set a May deadline for withdrawal,” the official said. “On the other hand, there was no interagency planning on how to execute a withdrawal.”
The bottom line: Biden officials aren’t directly blaming Trump for how events unfolded in Kabul.
-
But they do want to challenge what they see as bad-faith arguments from Trump officials making the case that they would have presided over a more orderly withdrawal.
David Rothkopf at The Daily Beast: Biden’s Right That It’s Time for Us to Leave Afghanistan.
Joe Biden did not give the speech his critics wanted to hear when he addressed the nation on the Taliban take-over of Afghanistan. But he gave the speech America needed to hear.
Biden, keenly aware of the impact of the horrifying scenes of chaos in the Afghan capital of Kabul, looked straight into the camera and said, “I am the president of the United States and the buck stops with me.” He acknowledged the mayhem and the human toll it is taking and he expressed his clear anger at the failure of the Afghan government and military to mount a defense of their own country. He specifically noted that the government had urged the U.S. not to begin early evacuations of foreign nationals because of the message it might send.
After he spoke, the talking heads came out in force and argued he did not accept responsibility. But “the buck stops here” is the ultimate expression of a president owning his actions. They said he did not explain how we could be in the situation we are in. But what they really mean is that he did not give the explanation they wanted.
Compartment C, Car 293, 1938, Edward Hopper
CNN’s Jake Tapper called Biden’s description of the swift collapse of the Afghan central government and military “finger pointing.” But it was indeed that collapse that accounted for the speed of the Taliban’s take-over: When the Afghan forces the U.S. has invested billions in should have stood up, they did not. Given that it was widely expected that the Taliban would ultimately seize control of the country — they were, after all, the parties with whom the last administration was negotiating — the key variable was whether the Taliban would meet any resistance.
Biden described the measures being taken to get thousands of embassy employees, US citizens, citizens of allied nations and Afghans who had aiding allied forces out. He reasserted the commitment of the U.S. to using international mechanisms to provide aid to the people of Afghanistan, and stressed that the U.S. would continue to place human rights at the center of our foreign policy priorities.
It would have been heartening to hear him use tougher language with regard to applying international pressure should the rights of women and girls be violated. He should have made a commitment to investigate fully where things went wrong with the exit plan. But he left no uncertainty about our willingness to use force in the event that violent extremists posing a threat to the U.S. again appear within Afghanistan’s borders.
So that’s a counterpoint to the media freakout. I’ll post some of the latest attacks on Biden along with some more reasoned articles in the comment thread. Let me know what you think, and remember this is an open thread.
Did you like this post? Please share it with your friends:
Posted: August 7, 2021 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: just because |
Cat Fight, Leonard Tsuguharu Foujita
Good Morning!!
I hate to keep focusing on the pandemic; but, unfortunately, it’s bad again and getting worse. The AP reports: US now averaging 100,000 new COVID-19 infections a day.https://apnews.com/article/health-coronavirus-pandemic-b0811d7287ef240ae619ba1e385e0a63
The U.S. is now averaging 100,000 new COVID-19 infections a day, returning to a milestone last seen during the winter surge in yet another bleak reminder of how quickly the delta variant has spread through the country.
The U.S. was averaging about 11,000 cases a day in late June. Now the number is 107,143.
It took the U.S. about nine months to cross the 100,000 average case number in November before peaking at about 250,000 in early January. Cases bottomed out in June but took about six weeks to go back above 100,000, despite a vaccine that has been given to more than 70% of the adult population.
The seven-day average for daily new deaths also increased, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. It rose over the past two weeks from about 270 deaths per day to nearly 500 a day as of Friday.
The virus is spreading quickly through unvaccinated populations, especially in the South where hospitals have been overrun with patients.
Health officials are fearful that cases will continue to soar if more Americans don’t embrace the vaccine.
“Our models show that if we don’t (vaccinate people), we could be up to several hundred thousand cases a day, similar to our surge in early January,” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director Rochelle Walensky said on CNN this week.
Joe Pinkster at The Atlantic: Yes, the Pandemic Is Bad Again. Masks are reappearing and return-to-office plans have been postponed. Welcome to Delta’s whiplash.
In early August—well before the colder months when the coronavirus thrives—many Americans, even vaccinated ones, are finding themselves with the same sort of anxieties they were relieved to let go of in the spring: If I eat at a restaurant, what is the risk to myself and others? What about going to my workplace? And what will restrictions allow me and my loved ones to do a couple of months from now?
Painting by Yana Movchan
Of course, the pandemic is nowhere near as bad as it was last winter, thanks to vaccines that confer high levels of protection against symptomatic cases of COVID-19. The 60 percent of U.S. adults who are fully vaccinated are substantially safer than the 40 percent who aren’t, even with the Delta variant circulating.
But emotionally, the near future feels uncertain again. Just a few months ago, I felt like the rest of the year was easier to visualize. Now a light fog seems to have descended, similar to the denser one that obscured the future for the first year of the pandemic. I’m back to feeling a mild sense of the “horizonlessness”—the lack of a firm reference point in the future—that was pervasive last year.
Even some experts are surprised by the swerve the pandemic has taken. Before Delta, Andrew Noymer, a public-health professor at UC Irvine, wasn’t expecting a significant resurgence of the virus—or a need to re-mask—until the fall. Earlier this summer, “I was out there saying that it’s okay to take off your mask,” Noymer told me. “And here we are seven weeks later—there’s Delta, and guess who’s masking at the grocery store again, even though he’s fully vaccinated? This guy. I feel the same whiplash.”
David Smith at The Guardian: Biden said America had ‘gained the upper hand’ over Covid – has Delta changed the game?
A month ago Joe Biden appeared to have victory over the coronavirus pandemic within his grasp. As tens of millions of Americans got vaccinated, cases, hospitalizations and deaths were falling precipitously.
Not so fast. In the past week alone the highly contagious Delta variant fueled a rise in daily Covid-19 cases of 43% and pushed deaths up by 39%. Republicans such as Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, proved all too willing to take the politicization of face masks to new extremes.
Biden is confronted anew by the reality that he is trying to govern a nation cripplingly polarized in politics, media and even science. The US president and his team of experts’ mission to tame the pandemic and heal divisions has collided with the Delta variant and the DeSantis variant.
“They may have underestimated the degree to which vaccine hesitancy would become a Republican party platform position,” said Laurie Garrett, an award-winning science writer and author of The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance. “They were imagining that they were dealing with people who were individually scared, had concerns based on crazy things they read on the internet, were fearful of getting autism.
Two Cats, by Gertrude Abercrombie
“What they didn’t imagine is that there would be this whole deliberate Republican party position of opposition to all things that Biden would put forward about Covid. It’s not just vaccines, it’s masks, it’s social distancing, now it’s going to be vaccine passports. I’m just waiting for the guns to come out.” [….]
Garrett added: “The White House has really struggled to come up with a strategy to deal with the 20, 25%, virulently anti-vaccine faction. I don’t think they’ve come close to imagining a strategy for that.
“It’s not for lack of trying. They’ve got they’ve gone through the entire cookbook of recipes for, confronting vaccine resistance and refusal.and I think they just are at a loss, just as we are for just about everything else that goes on politically in the United States right now.”
The vaccine resisters will choose to poison themselves rather than get two life-saving shots in the arm. The Daily Beast: Pharmacists Fight Off COVID Truthers Demanding Horse Medicine Instead of the Jab.
It’s not snake oil, literally. But as bogus COVID-19 miracle drugs go, horse paste comes pretty close.
As coronavirus infections rage among the unvaccinated, those suspicious of the shot are championing a new supposed COVID-19 cure. Thanks to a dubious study of ivermectin, a drug used in humans to treat parasites like scabies, cranks have seized on the drug as the new solution to coronavirus prevention and treatment.
Devotees have besieged pharmacists with prescriptions from shady online prescribers, forcing pharmacies to crack down and treat the antiparasitic drugs like opioids. As human-approved ivermectin prescriptions have been harder to come by, enthusiasts have taken to raiding rural tractor supply stores in search of ivermectin horse paste (packed with “apple flavor!”) and weighed the benefits of taking ivermectin “sheep drench” and a noromectin “injection for swine and cattle.”
“There is certainly a noticeable increase in calls to poison centers regarding ivermectin being misused,” a Texas-based poison control specialist, who requested anonymity due to concerns of repercussions, told The Daily Beast via email. “It’s clear that a vast majority are associated with a belief that it will prevent or treat COVID. That said, I do want to be careful not to be sensational—there’s no epidemic of ivermectin overdoses in hospitals, but it’s needless suffering given the lack of conclusive evidence of a benefit.”
All to treat and prevent a disease for which there’s a free and widely available vaccine.
There’s much more on these crazies at the link.
Hernán Valdovinos, 1948
Last year, before the vaccine was available, hundreds of thousands of bikers converged in Sturgis, South Dakota for a massive super-spreader event, and then took the virus home to infect their friends and families in several other states. Now vaccine resisters have once again converged on Sturgis for another super-spreader.
The Washington Post: Sturgis Motorcycle Rally revs up, drawing thousands and heightening delta superspreader fears.
For the 700,000 people expected to descend on South Dakota’s Black Hills for the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, the slogan for this year’s event after a year of pandemic restrictions and lockdowns is: “We’re spreading our wings.”
“People want to escape,” said Jerry Cole, director of rally and events for the city of Sturgis, S.D., “and they’re escaping to South Dakota.”
But as coronavirus cases are rising because of the highly transmissible delta variant and millions who remain unvaccinated, there is concern among health officials, residents and even attendees that one of the largest motorcycle rallies in the world, which began Friday, has the potential to become the latest superspreader event at a time when the resurgent virus is ripping across the United States.
The 81st annual motorcycle rally comes a year after roughly 460,000 attendees shunned masks and social distancing at an event that researchers associated with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention concluded “had many characteristics of a superspreading event.” At least 649 covid-19 cases were linked to Sturgis, but the true total was obscured as contact tracing was difficult after bikers returned to their home states.
Although Sturgis’s coronavirus case numbers are relatively low, the CDC has designated Meade County, which includes the city, as an area of “high community transmission,” advising residents or visitors to wear masks in public indoor spaces. About 37 percent of Meade County is fully vaccinated, according to the CDC, and more than 47 percent of South Dakota is fully inoculated as of Friday.
Christina Steele, a spokeswoman for the city of Sturgis, told The Washington Post that the city is offering coronavirus tests, masks and hand sanitizer stations for anyone in town, but no mask mandate is in place. The city has also signed off on a temporary open container ordinance in an effort to keep people outside instead of crowded together inside bars. Steele said those who are not vaccinated or who have certain underlying health conditions are putting themselves at risk, but the virus has not been a talking point among those who’ve flocked to the Black Hills.
Vladimir Dunjic, 1957
But the ultimate hot spot in the U.S. right now is Florida, where Governor Ron DeSantis is doing everything in his power to kill off the citizens of his state.
The New York Times: As Covid Surges in Florida, DeSantis Refuses to Change Course.
MIAMI — Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida snapped this week at a reporter who asked if masks might help keep children safe in a state that now has more Covid-19 hospitalizations, including for pediatric patients, than anywhere else in the nation.
He blamed President Biden’s purported failure to control the spread of the virus across the border after the president suggested that governors like Mr. DeSantis should either “help” fight the coronavirus or “get out of the way.”
And he touted a new state rule, adopted on Friday, that will counter local school mask mandates by allowing parents to request private school vouchers if they feel that the requirements amount to “harassment.”
Mr. DeSantis has been unyielding in his approach to the pandemic, refusing to change course or impose restrictions despite uncontrolled spread and spiking hospitalizations — an approach that forced him to undertake the biggest risk of his rising political career.
The governor reopened his state’s economy last spring and kept it that way, defying coronavirus surges that filled hospitals, and then celebrated as a statewide vaccination campaign took hold and life in Florida began to look normal.
Now Mr. DeSantis is gambling again. A new virus spike has led to a record number of Covid-19 hospitalizations that have undone some of Florida’s economic and public health gains and again raised the stakes for Mr. DeSantis.
The Washington Post: DeSantis criticizes masks, restrictions as coronavirus roars to record levels in Florida.
As covid-19 hospitalizations in Florida surged past 12,000 this week — far exceeding a record already shattered over the weekend — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) was fed up.
Not with those spreading misinformation about vaccines or refusing to take protective measures. DeSantis instead railed against reporters for creating “hysteria” about rising hospitalizations and accused President Biden of facilitating the virus by not reducing immigration through the southern border.
Florida is the epicenter of a summer coronavirus spike fueled by the highly transmissible delta variant, reporting a fifth of all new U.S. infections and current hospitalizations. New cases and admissions have surpassed last summer’s Sun Belt surge. Florida is center stage of a dangerous phase of the pandemic where a new strain spreads more rapidly in a fully reopened society, attacking young and middle-aged adults and filling up hospital beds faster than ever. On Friday, the state reported 22,783 new cases of the virus and 199 deaths….
The Birthday Party, Paul Bond
Florida also illustrates a new dynamic in the pandemic now that vaccines are widely available: Some Republican leaders have decided new surges are tolerable and do not require a robust response to quell. Some, including DeSantis, are treating a return of mask mandates and shutdowns as the greater threat
“We can either have a free society or we can have a biomedical security state and I can tell you, Florida, we’re a free state,” DeSantis said at a Wednesday news conference. “People are going to be free to choose to make their own decisions about themselves, about their families, about their kids’ education and about putting food on the table.”
DeSantis, running for reelection next year, has dug into an approach that rejects restrictions that disrupt a tourism-heavy economy and treats public health measures as individual choices. In public appearances since cases and hospitalizations began skyrocketing in July, DeSantis has repeatedly condemned mandates and shutdowns. He has described the ongoing surge as an expected seasonal increase.
I’m so grateful that I live in a state with a sane governor and where most citizens understand that vaccines work. Wherever you live, please stay safe, and wear a mask when you go out. We will get through this somehow.
Did you like this post? Please share it with your friends:
Posted: August 5, 2021 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: just because |
Good Morning!!
Is it the pandemic? Lately there have been so many reports of bad behavior by people in public places like airplanes and restaurants. The latest shocking airline incident happened on a Frontier Airlines flight on July 31.
Frontier now says they support the flight attendants, who will be paid during the investigation.
10 WBNS: Ohio man taped to seat on flight after allegedly groping, fighting flight attendants.
An Ohio man and former Ohio Wesleyan University student was arrested after he was reported to have groped two attendants on a flight to Florida, according to a police report from the Miami-Dade Police Department.
The report says 22-year-old Max Berry of Norwalk, in northern Ohio, was on a Frontier Airlines flight on July 31 from Philadelphia to Miami.
Berry finished two alcoholic drinks and ordered another from a flight attendant when he brushed an empty cup against the attendant’s backside, according to the report.
After the attendant told Berry not to touch them, Berry allegedly spilled his new drink on his shirt and went to the restroom.
Berry came out of the restroom without his shirt on and an attendant helped get him another shirt out of his carry-on bag, according to the report.
After walking around for about 15 minutes, the report says Berry groped a flight attendant’s breasts. The flight attendant told Berry to sit down and not to touch her.
The report says Berry walked up behind two flight attendants, put his arms around them and groped their breasts again.
After the incident, the flight attendants who were groped asked another flight attendant to watch Berry.
The new flight attendant watching Berry asked him to calm down several times and remain seated. Berry then punched them in the face and a fight ensued, according to the report.
The report says the flight attendant and nearby passengers got control of Berry and taped him down and used a seatbelt extender to tie him down for the remainder of the flight.
Berry was taken into custody and taken to the Miami-Dade County Jail and is being charged with three counts of battery.
Get this: when Max Berry was a student at Ohio Wesleyan, he received an award for being the “perfect role model,” according to The Daily Mail.
According to Conan.com, Max’s father Christopher Berry is a “computer tech” who is “affiliated with the Republican Party,” and
He was 51 years old when his son Max went viral in August 2021. Max was caught on camera being intoxicated and unruly while on a Frontier Airlines flight from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA to Miami, Florida, USA on July 31, 2021. Max screamed “My parents are worth more than f—–g $2 million goddamn dollars” and “My grandpa is worth more than your f—–g life.”
Conan.com also checked out Max’s Twitter page. His tweets are about as childish as you would expect.
What happens when a rude, “unruly” male with a powerful father gets into a position of power? You get Andrew Cuomo.
Here’s a very good article by Danielle Tcholakian at The Daily Beast: Andrew Cuomo Remains a Fucking Creep to the Bitter End.
This fucking guy. This empty shirt, this morally bankrupt sack of hot air, this corrupt scion of unearned entitlement and utter fucking bullshit.
I’m speaking, of course, about New York’s governor, Andrew Cuomo, a man who couldn’t tell the truth, or do the right thing or even just pantomime anything remotely resembling humility if his life depended on it—and indeed, for once, it seems like his political life might.
New York Attorney General Tish James’ report investigating Cuomo’s misconduct against female employees and women he encountered because of his powerful position became public Tuesday morning, 168 pages plus three appendixes cataloguing interviews with nearly 200 people, many of whom wisely preserved documentation of their experiences, knowing full well that the notoriously manipulative and threatening governor would not go gently into any sort of good night.
Some of the report’s details were known already, of course; the investigation itself was triggered by women bravely going public with their experiences, a necessity born of the toxic culture of machine politics in Albany, and New York more broadly, that has long protected Andrew Cuomo from any kind of comeuppance for his undeniable pattern of abusive, power-hungry and predatory behavior.
But there were new complaints, like that of a state trooper to whom Cuomo apparently took such a fancy, he literally changed the state’s laws to put her on his security detail despite her inexperience—or, as he told investigators, because he “was on constant alert to recruit more women, Blacks, and Asians to the state police detail.” After getting her on his security detail, the trooper had to deal with the governor commenting on her appearance, her sex drive and telling her that he was looking for a romantic partner who “can handle pain.” Some champion of diversity in the workplace.
The report is damning, horrifying and thorough. In response, the governor released a pre-recorded video, bravely fielding exactly zero questions from the press. He talked about how he’d learned to hug and kiss from his mom and dad, as though that was license to hug and kiss any staffer—or any New Yorker he came across, apparently—any time, before playing a slideshow of photos showing him kissing famous people over the years, which was apparently meant to serve as exculpatory evidence pardoning him from a wealth of allegations of groping and unwanted kissing in the workplace. He described himself as a champion of women, without really explaining why all these different women, many of them working for him, testified that he was creeping on them, making them feel small and intimidated and uncomfortable as they tried simply to do their jobs.
There is much more well worth reading at the the link.
Also be sure to check this piece by Erin Gloria Ryan: Andrew Cuomo Is Every Horny Male ‘Mentor’ and Creepy Office ‘Dad,’
And what about Andrew’s younger brother Chris, who works at CNN?
Earlier this year, CNN executives floated an idea to their star anchor Chris Cuomo. If he wanted to formally advise his brother, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York, on responding to the sexual harassment accusations that had engulfed his administration, he could take a temporary leave from CNN and return to the network later.
The idea was informal and strictly optional — not a request — and intended as an acknowledgment of Mr. Cuomo’s unique position as both a prime-time network anchor and the brother of a prominent politician facing a scandal, according to two people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal conversations.
The exchange, which has not been previously reported, underlines the conundrum for a news network whose top-rated anchor belongs to one of the country’s most powerful Democratic families — and the lengths that CNN’s president, Jeff Zucker, and his team have gone to accommodate Chris Cuomo, even as the anchor has had to apologize for participating in strategy sessions with Andrew Cuomo’s aides.
The idea for a possible leave was floated after Chris Cuomo’s involvement in those sessions was first reported in May. CNN called the anchor’s actions “inappropriate,” though Chris Cuomo faced no discipline.
Chris Cuomo has told CNN leadership that he planned to continue on his program and abide by rules preventing him from commenting on his brother’s scandal, the people said. He also promised not to discuss Andrew Cuomo’s strategic response to the scandal with any government officials besides the governor himself.
On Tuesday, hours after Ms. James’s report was released, Chris Cuomo was in the anchor chair for his 9 p.m. show, “Cuomo Prime Time.” He opened with a segment on the coronavirus, airing a clip of President Biden asking governors to help stop the spread of the Delta variant.
The clip omitted Mr. Biden’s other notable statement: calling on Governor Cuomo to resign.
Chris Cuomo should be fired.
Another rude male in a powerful position is Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who is refusing to help save lives in his state as the Cornavirus spreads out of control.
Gov. Ron DeSantis lashed out at President Joe Biden a day after Biden told the Republican governor to “get out of the way” of mask mandates.
During a stop in Panama City on Wednesday, DeSantis accused Biden of “helping facilitate” COVID-19 by not securing the border with Mexico. He said immigrants crossing the border are spreading variants of the virus.
“You have hundreds of thousands of people pouring across every month,” DeSantis said. “Not only are they letting them through, they’re farming them out all across the country, putting them on planes, putting them on buses. Do you think they’re worrying about COVID for that? Of course not.”
“Why don’t you get this border secure?” DeSantis added. “Until you do that, I don’t want to hear a blip about COVID from you.”
DeSantis’ comments came after Biden on Tuesday criticized the governor’s opposition to mask mandates.
“Look, we need leadership from everyone. If some governors aren’t willing to do the right thing to beat this pandemic, then they should allow businesses and universities who want to do the right thing to be able to do it,” Biden said in remarks about the pandemic. “I say to these governors, please help. But if you are not going to help, at least get out of the way of the people who are trying to do the right thing. Use your power to save lives.”
The Herald/Times asked the DeSantis administration for COVID-19 data on immigrants crossing the border but did not receive a response.
Of course not. This man is a murderer.
This is from The Guardian: ‘The Pied Piper leading us off a cliff’: Florida governor condemned as Covid surges.
Florida governor Ron DeSantis earned a new moniker this week as the resurgent coronavirus continued to wreak havoc on his state: the “Pied Piper of Covid-19, leading everybody off a cliff.”
The stark assessment of the Republican politician from Dan Gelber, the mayor of Miami Beach, came as Florida continued to set records for new cases and hospitalizations, saw worrying surges in both deaths and rates of positivity, and led the nation in pediatric Covid admissions.
With the highly contagious Delta variant swirling, a state comprising little more than 6% of the US population was accounting for one in five of the country’s new cases, recording 50,997 in the three days to Tuesday, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Meanwhile, DeSantis, who says the spike is “seasonal” and opposes lockdowns or new restrictions, was following up his signing of an executive order banning children from having to wear masks in schools by
dismissing the burgeoning crisis in Florida’s hospitals as “media hysteria”.
“You try to fearmonger, you try to do this stuff,” DeSantis snapped at a reporter who asked him at a press conference in Miami on Tuesday about the state setting a new high for Covid hospitalizations of 11,863.
“Our hospitals are open for business. We’re not shutting down. We’re gonna have schools open. We’re protecting every Floridian’s job in this state, we are protecting people’s small businesses. These interventions have failed time and time again throughout this pandemic,” he said, referring to mask mandates.
I haven’t gotten to the ultimate rude, misogynistic, bullying, powerful male: Donald Trump. Here are a few stories to check out on the latest news about his attempt to stage a coup after losing the election:
Philip Bump at The Washington Post: A newly released letter tells us more about Trump’s last-ditch push to steal the election.
ABC News: DOJ officials rejected colleague’s request to intervene in Georgia’s election certification: Emails.
Aaron Blake at The Washington Post: A key witness emerges in probe of Trump’s DOJ election scheme.
Raw Story: Top DOJ official had resignation letter ready to go as Trump threatened to fire his acting AG.
Just Security: Mark Meadows Timeline: The Chief of Staff and Schemes to Overturn 2020 Election.
That’s all I have for you today, but this is an open thread so let us know what you’re reading and thinking about. Have a nice Thursday!!
Did you like this post? Please share it with your friends:
Posted: July 24, 2021 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: just because, morning reads | Tags: anti-maskers, Donald Trump, Olympics, Paul Manafort, Tom Barrack, United Arab Emirates, vaccine holdouts |
Arsen Kurbanov, Russian artist
Good Morning!!
It’s going to be interesting to see what happens with the case against Trump ally Tom Barrack, who was arrested on Tuesday and charged with acting as an agent of a foreign power. Politico:
Tom Barrack, a longtime supporter of and adviser to former President Donald Trump, was arrested Tuesday on charges he secretly acted in the U.S. as an agent for the United Arab Emirates.
Barrack, 74, is accused of failing to register as a foreign agent, conspiracy, obstruction of justice and four counts of making false statements to the FBI.
A federal indictment issued by a grand jury in Brooklyn, N.Y., charged that Barrack put pro-UAE language into a Trump campaign speech in May 2016, took direction from UAE officials about what to say in media appearances and an op-ed piece he published just before the 2016 election, and agreed to promote a candidate for ambassador to UAE backed by UAE officials.
Prosecutors say Barrack used his insider access to White House officials that he gained through roles like his position as chair of Trump’s inaugural committee to give the UAE “non-public information about the views and reactions of senior U.S. government officials following a White House meeting between senior U.S. officials and senior UAE officials.”
Also charged in the case were an aide to Barrack at his investment firm Colony Capital, Matthew Grimes, and a businessman from UAE, Rashid Al-Malik.
Prosecutors allege that early in the Trump administration, Barrack sought to be appointed to a high-profile role in Middle East policy, while telling his allies in UAE that such an appointment would be good for them.
“In his communications with Al Malik, the defendant framed his efforts to obtain an official position within the Administration as one that would enable him to further advance the interests of the UAE, rather than the interests of the United States,” prosecutors wrote in a court filing.
Carel Willink, Wilma with a cat, 1940
Barrack has now been released on a massive bail and will have to wear a gps monitoring bracelet. CNN: Trump ally Tom Barrack strikes a $250 million bail deal to get out of jail.
Also see these Emptywheel pieces: Paul Manafort Shared Trump Energy Speech with Tom Barrack and Paul Manafort Knew Tom Barrack Was Working with “Our Friends”
Columnist Michelle Goldberg at The New York Times: A Foreign Agent in Trump’s Inner Circle?
…[W]hen the billionaire real estate investor Tom Barrack, one of Trump’s biggest fund-raisers, was arrested on Tuesday and charged with acting as an unregistered agent of the United Arab Emirates along with other felonies, it might have seemed like a dog-bites-man story. Barrack was once described by longtime Trump strategist Roger Stone — a felon, naturally — as the ex-president’s best friend. If you knew nothing else about Barrack but that, you might have guessed he’d end up in handcuffs.
Nevertheless, Barrack’s arrest is important. Trump’s dealings with the Emirates and Saudi Arabia deserve to be investigated as thoroughly as his administration’s relationship with Russia. So far, that hasn’t happened. When Robert Mueller, the former special counsel, testified before Congress, Adam Schiff, chair of the House Intelligence Committee, said to him, “We did not bother to ask whether financial inducements from any Gulf nations were influencing U.S. policy, since it is outside the four corners of your report, and so we must find out.” But we have not found out.
A Barrack trial, if the case goes that far, is unlikely to answer all the outstanding questions about how Gulf money shaped Trump policy. But it could answer some.
Portrait of Edward Gorey by Sam Kalda
Let’s recall that Russia was not the only nation to send emissaries to Trump Tower during the presidential campaign offering election help. The bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee Report on Russian election interference discusses an August 2016 Trump Tower meeting whose attendees included Donald Trump Jr., George Nader, then an adviser to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed, the Emirates’ de facto ruler, and Joel Zamel, owner of an Israeli private intelligence company, Psy-Group. (Nader is currently in prison for child sex trafficking and possession of child pornography.)
“Zamel asked Trump Jr. whether Psy-Group’s conducting a social media campaign paid for by Nader would present a conflict for the Trump campaign,” said the Senate report. “According to Zamel, Trump Jr. indicated that this would not present a conflict.”
Zamel told the committee that his company never actually performed such work. “Nonetheless, as described below, Zamel engaged in work on behalf of Nader, for which he was paid in excess of $1 million,” said the report. Zamel claimed the payment was for a postelection social media analysis, all copies of which were ostensibly deleted.
If the allegations in the Barrack indictment are true, it means that while an adviser to the Emirates was offering the Trump campaign election help, an Emirati agent was also shaping Trump’s foreign policy, even inserting the country’s preferred language into one of the candidate’s speeches. Prosecutors say that Barrack told a high-level figure they call “Emirati Official 2” that he had staffed the Trump campaign. (It was Barrack who recommended Paul Manafort, later to be convicted of multiple felonies, to Trump.) When an Emirati official asked Barrack if he had information about senior Trump appointees, Barrack allegedly replied, “I do” and said they should talk by phone. He is said to have traveled to the Emirates to strategize with its leadership about what they wanted from the administration during its first 100 days, first six months, first year and first term.
Read more at the NYT.
Yesterday Dakinikat focused on the latest pandemic news as well as the growing anger against the idiots who are refusing to be vaccinated. I want to follow up on a some of the stories she posted. First, in the comment thread, she posted a horrifying story about an anti-mask demonstration at a cancer clinic.
Here’s more on that from Vice News: Breast Cancer Patient Attacked by Violent Anti-Mask Protest Outside Clinic.
A breast cancer patient says she was sprayed with bear mace, physically assaulted, and verbally abused outside a cancer treatment center in West Hollywood, Los Angeles by far-right activists who were angry over the clinic’s mandatory mask policy.
Andrea Kowch, Queen’s Court, 2019
Dozens of anti-maskers holding signs with anti-vaxx and QAnon-adjacent conspiracy theories amassed on the sidewalk by the Cedars-Sinai Breast Health Services building on Thursday afternoon, and harassed patients and doctors.
In one exchange captured by local videographer Vishal Singh, a woman who has since publicly identified herself as Kate Burns, a cancer patient, approached the protesters and told them to leave.
“I get treated here, get the fuck away,” Burns said.
One protester, who was filming the scene on his phone, asked her why she was so angry, as a man holding a cardboard sign saying “End the Censorship of Vaccine Risks” smirked.
“Because I’ve just gone through fucking breast cancer,” Burns said. “And you motherfuckers are here.”
After a few more exchanges, the a “protester” actually punched Burns in the chest.
Tensions continued to rise as more far-right, anti-maskers arrived on the scene. A small group of anti-fascists also arrived, and got into altercations with the far-right. A woman holding a megaphone shoved Burns, and then punched her several times. Burns said, on social media, that the woman hit her in the chest and struck her scars….
Thursday was the second time that anti-maskers had targeted that particular breast cancer clinic over its mask policy. The ugly scenes and casual political violence that unfolded there on both occasions have become troublingly common across the U.S.
Can someone explain to me why unvaccinated athletes are being permitted to compete in the Olympic games? NBC News: About 100 U.S. athletes in Tokyo unvaccinated as Covid-hit Olympics begin.
Five out of 6 U.S. athletes competing in the Tokyo Olympics have been vaccinated against Covid-19, the team’s top doctor revealed Friday just before the Games officially begin.
That information was culled from the health histories that 567 of the athletes filled out before they departed for Japan, said Dr. Jonathan Finnoff, who estimated that 83 percent of those competitors were fully vaccinated.
“Eighty-three percent is actually a substantial number, and we’re quite happy with it,” Finnoff, the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee’s medical chief, said.
That’s higher than the national rate, with about 56 percent of Americans having received at least one dose of a vaccine. But it still means that about 100 of the total contingent of 613 U.S. athletes have not yet been vaccinated.
The news came as the opening ceremony of the pandemic-hit Games got underway in Tokyo’s Olympic Stadium, marking the official launch of the global sporting event.
But why aren’t they all vaccinated? This makes no sense to me. We really need to stop coddling these holdouts. They are putting themselves and everyone else in danger.
Chelin Sanjuan Piquero, Spanish artist
Dan Diamond and Tyler Pager at The Washington Post: ‘Patience has worn thin’: Frustration mounts over vaccine holdouts.
Seven months after the first coronavirus shots were rolled out, vaccinated Americans — including government, business and health leaders — are growing frustrated that tens of millions of people are still refusing to get them, endangering themselves and their communities and fueling the virus’s spread.
Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey (R) on Thursday lashed out amid a surge of cases in her state, telling a reporter it’s “time to start blaming the unvaccinated folks.” The National Football League this week imposed new rules that put pressure on unvaccinated players, warning their teams could face fines or be forced to forfeit games if those players were linked to outbreaks.
“I think for a lot of leaders, both in government and in business, patience has worn thin,” said Matt Gorman, a Republican strategist. “There is an urgency that might not have been there a month ago.”
Meanwhile, exhausted health providers say they are bracing for casespikes that are largely preventable, driven by the hyper-transmissible delta variant. “We are frustrated, tired and worried for this next surge — and saddened by the state we find ourselves in,” said Jason Yaun, a Memphis-based pediatrician, who said his colleagues are grappling with an “accumulation of fatigue” since the outbreak exploded in March 2020.
Biden administration officials increasingly frame the current outbreak as a “pandemic of the unvaccinated,” seeking to persuade and perhaps even frighten some holdouts to get the shots.
But after months of careful cajoling, a growing number of Democrats and Republicans are venting about the sheer number of Americans who remain unvaccinated, particularly as hospitals are becoming overwhelmed in states with low vaccination rates.
Read the rest at the WaPo. These people need to grow up!
That’s all I have for you today. What’s on your mind?
Did you like this post? Please share it with your friends:
The House Select Committee investigating the January 6 insurrection begins this morning by interviewing police officers who fought the invading Trump army in the Capitol. I’d like to watch as much of the testimony as I can, so I’ll get right to it. Here’s the latest news and commentary I’ve come across so far. 
The Wall Street Journal: 
Witnesses can give “unrestricted testimony” to the House Oversight and Reform Committee and the Senate Judiciary Committee, the department said in a letter this week. Both panels are scrutinizing the Trump administration’s efforts to overturn the election in its final days and the events leading up to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
Investigative report from Joshua Kaplan and Joaquin Sapien at ProPublica: 
The Washington Post Editorial Board: 
peej
Carissa
bostonboomer
dakinikat
ecocatwoman
mablue2
Mama Lopez
peggysue22
quixote
skydancingguestblogger
Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)
Sky Dancing 
Recent Comments