Friday Reads: Fighting the Same Old Fights
Posted: September 24, 2021 Filed under: morning reads, Republican politics, U.S. Politics, Women's Rights 7 Comments
Good Afternoon Sky Dancers!
It’s been nearly a month since Ida turned Southeast Louisiana into a gigantic mess. It’s cooler now and sunny, Fall seems to have treated us with an on-time appearance. My streets are free from the garbage that was not picked up for weeks on end. Yesterday, they removed all the tree debris from the neutral ground. There were some huge trunks there from one of the neighbor’s very old oak trees. They probably were riddled with Formosan Termites.
It continues to be difficult watching White Male Republican Christianists and their enablers tear at the very foundation and dream this country was built on. We should be a country where just about anyone should be able to come, seek refuge, and work their way up into the middle class, at least. Our outcomes shouldn’t depend on our race, our gender, who we love, and the beliefs we hold. We are fighting the same fights for a more perfect union and watching the white male patriarchal nationalists continue to fix the game in their favor, morally objectionable people get thrown onto court benches for holding extremist positions. We’re reminded daily of this as the same group of suspects in state governorships rev up extremist laws that should be unconstitutional with the purpose of handing the decision to stacked courts.
There is now an intersection between two of the most objectionable and worthless Supreme Court Justices with a penchant for sexually assaulting women. Anita Hill is back in the headlines with a new book. BB pointed me to this article last night in The Atlantic by Anita Hill herself. “What It Was Like for Me to Watch Christine Blasey Ford’s Testimony. From my own experience in 1991, I knew that her life would never be the same.” No matter what we do by changing laws and providing prevention and legal means to change the situation, predatory men still get rewarded by the system. She views the Kavanaugh hearing through the eyes of Christine Blasey Ford.
I had never spoken with Ford directly, but once the Judiciary Committee chair, Chuck Grassley, who also had heard my testimony about Clarence Thomas three decades earlier, announced that Ford would testify, emails flooded my inbox. Some suggested politely, “I would like to see you sitting behind Dr. Ford as she testifies on Thursday.” Others argued that my presence “would certainly send a message to those, dare I say, incorrigible, ignorant men who did not listen to your honest pleas to be heard those many years ago.”
My instinct told me that those “ignorant men” and many others would make political hay out of any gesture I made to show my support for Ford. I recalled the claims from 1991 that left-wing, pro-abortion-rights feminists had duped me into testifying about Thomas’s behavior. I was certain that Ford was hearing something of the same.
My biggest hope for the day was that it would be a completely different experience for her than it had been for me—that a lot of hard work by activists, researchers, lawyers, and others raising claims and demanding change in their workplace in the 27 years since I had faced that same Senate committee had resulted in the evolution of a new awareness of gender violence. But with some of the same senators from 1991 sitting on the Judiciary Committee and with Grassley in charge, I could not bring myself to be optimistic that the entire committee had evolved.
The 1991 committee was entirely made up of white men, and men in the Senate outnumbered women 98 to two. That the 2018 Senate Judiciary Committee included women, one of whom was Black, as well as a Black man, gave me hope for a greater understanding of gender and power, as did the fact that 23 women were Senate members. I wanted to believe that, between 1991 and 2018, enough senators had read the Department of Justice or CDC reports about the prevalence and health consequences of sexual violence to counter the committee’s naysayers.
We know how that turned out. Margaret Sullivan–writing for The Washington Post–refers to the two women as a “club of two”.
During a recent conversation recorded for a new podcast, Hill, now 65 and a Brandeis law professor, told Ford, 54 and a psychology scholar at Stanford and Palo Alto University, that she felt a sense of overwhelming kinship as she watched the 2018 testimony — a feeling that she knew was shared by a large community of like-minded women.
“A spiritual solidarity,” Hill called it.
Their conversation is a high point in “Because of Anita,” a new four-part podcast series that debuts in October. I listened to a segment of it Thursday and found it moving, instructive and — as podcasts sometimes can be — surprisingly intimate. The two had met and spoken before but not, until now, for the public to hear.
The conversation took place on Zoom in late August with Hill and Ford in their home offices in Massachusetts and California. The podcast hosts — activist and scholar Salamishah Tillet and journalist Cindi Leive, longtime editor of Glamour magazine — were in San Diego and Brooklyn.
Hill and Ford discussed the intensity of their experiences, and how it lingered far beyond their moments in the harsh spotlight — moments remembered by many Americans as a still image of each woman with her right hand raised.
They also agreed on their motivation: that it was not, at heart, to persuade those who would vote for or against the nominees but rather, a desire to be clear and honest about their experiences — to simply say what they knew and not to be attached to the outcome.
The most obvious outcomes, of course, were similar. Thomas and Kavanaugh both were confirmed by narrowly divided Senate votes: 52 to 48, and 50 to 48, respectively.
But both Hill and Ford sound as if they have made their peace with that — and say they would do it again, though they acknowledge how much the searing experiences have changed their lives.
Hill is still fighting the good fight against gender violence. Samantha Simon has this to say about her in a piece for InStyle. This is an interview with Hill who is part of a series speaking with “badass women”.
“Once you get on this track, you don’t stop. You just realize there’s something else to accomplish,” she says. “Right now, I’m feeling like I have time. I wish for everyone the feeling I have about how I live my life: I can do things to make the world better for other people, and that’s really a gift. Not everyone feels they have that kind of power.
The concentration of power — who holds it and the ways they use it to harm those who don’t have enough — has been central to Hill’s work all along. “This has been a public crisis long before the #MeToo movement, and people are still facing resistance to their ideas or identities in the workplace and can’t come forward,” she says. “As long as those conditions exist, I will be doing this work.”
That’s what I think it feels like for all of us working on Social Justice Issues. We’re fighting and refighting the same things. For example, some on needs to tell Lindsey Graham whipping black people with a leash went out with the end of the civil war.
There is nothing I can say to folks that try to lessen the impact of that image. It’s just another way we see another era in our country when people could be property. It’s not supposed to be that way anymore.
I’m going to end here with something that happened to me this week. On Tuesday, I was sitting in my little virtual office online waiting patiently to see students or help students. The usual chat request came in with only the letter e typed in. What followed was this question. “Are you a (n-word)? Of course, the university is investigating it. It rattled me more than I thought possible given the amount of hate I’ve seen all around the Quarter when the White Male Christianists come to hate on women and the GLBTQ community. But, it reminded me that none of us really have a safe space which really, is what everyone wants. Protecting privilege as vehemently as today’s Republicans do is just hard to deal with day-in-and-out. But we are the majority. That is what scares them. We must use our power as the majority and stop them. If I was a Christian, I would sure be pushing back on what they say is the path of Jesus. I’m allied with kindness, compassion, and civility.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Totally Tuesday Reads: Curbing Presidential Powers
Posted: September 21, 2021 Filed under: morning reads, U.S. Politics 20 Comments
Good Morning Sky Dancers!
BB’s had a bad week or so with her pain issues so I’m sitting in for her today. She’s going to be talking to her doctor so hopefully, she’ll get some relief sometime today! It’s the last day of summer also. I hope we can get some relief from the heat.
Charlie Savage has written this piece in the New York Times today: “Democrats Begin Effort to Curb Post-Trump Presidential Powers ut to appeal to Republicans, a bill being introduced in the House to impose checks on executive authority may be broken into pieces in the Senate.”
House Democrats are planning to introduce a package of proposed new limits on executive power on Tuesday, beginning a post-Trump push to strengthen checks on the presidency that they hope will compare to the overhauls that followed the Watergate scandal and the Vietnam War.
Democrats have spent months negotiating with the Biden White House to refine a broad set of proposals that amount to a point-by-point rebuke of the ways that Donald J. Trump shattered norms over the course of his presidency. The Democrats have compiled numerous bills into a package they call the Protecting Our Democracy Act.
The legislation would make it harder for presidents to offer or bestow pardons in situations that raise suspicion of corruption, refuse to respond to oversight subpoenas, spend or secretly freeze funds contrary to congressional appropriations, and fire inspectors general or retaliate against whistle-blowers, among many other changes.
The legislation’s lead sponsor, Representative Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California, said he hoped it would receive a floor vote “this fall.”
Here’s another example of things that should not happen. Thank goodness for courts and prosecutors!
https://twitter.com/JanNWolfe/status/1440088421339254791
https://twitter.com/JanNWolfe/status/1440130225816358913
“Tongue Fashion”, from the “Annunciation” series (1969) Wilfredo Lam
Yeah, right “Russian Hoax” Blah. Blah. Blah. This is from the AXIOS link cited above.
The big picture: The Justice Department alleges that Jesse Benton, 43, the husband of Paul’s niece and a veteran Republican staffer, orchestrated a scheme to conceal the illegal foreign donation with another GOP operative, Doug Wead.
The details: The indictment, unsealed on Monday, outlines allegations of a convoluted money trail from the unnamed Russian national through a consulting firm run by Benton and to a Trump joint fundraising committee.
- The Russian national was determined to underwrite a Trump fundraising event in order to get a photo with the former president, according to communications between Benton and Weed cited in the indictment.
- The indictment alleges that Benton received $100,000 from the Russian national and passed on $25,000 to the joint fundraising committee, allegedly pocketing the remaining $75,000.
- Wead and Benton each face six criminal charges, including conspiracy and abetting illegal foreign political contributions.
For the record: Efforts to reach Wead were not immediately successful. Benton did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
- Benton was previously convicted of filing false statements in connection with a scheme to funnel money from Ron Paul’s 2012 presidential campaign to an influential Iowa politician who backed Paul in the state’s presidential caucus.
- Trump pardoned Benton in December, shortly before leaving office.
Rebecca Shabad of NBC news provides these details: “Many of the bill’s provisions are a response to the way Donald Trump operated as president.” So this is the type of behavior the bill addresses.
The measure would limit a president’s pardon power, require presidential candidates to be transparent with their tax records, and extend a deadline for prosecuting former presidents and vice presidents for federal crimes committed before or during their time in office, according to the group Protect Democracy, which is advocating for the measure.
It would also ensure that incoming presidents have access to resources for the transition period following an election, and would require the disclosure of contacts between the White House and the Justice Department.
“The proposals respond to longstanding vulnerabilities in our democracy that have allowed for the aggrandizement of presidential power, many of which have been exploited over decades by presidents of both parties, and some of which reached new heights through the actions of the Trump administration,” the group says on its website.
Donald Trump, for example, has refused since his campaign for president to release his tax records, repeatedly claiming that he couldn’t do so because the IRS was conducting an audit of his documents.
Before Trump left office, he pardoned hundreds of people including his former campaign manager Paul Manafort, his former adviser Roger Stone, his other former campaign manager, Steve Bannon, and his former national security adviser Michael Flynn.
President Biden addresses the United Nations today and is speaking–at this writing–on Climate Change in a quite colorful language. Here’s that part of the speech. I can speak directly to climate change. I’m not sure how long it will take to take care of things after Ida down here in Southe East Louisiana. There really are some towns that may not come back. You may thank your rising gas prices to the hurricane’s destructive path that hit Port Fouchon
Twitter is full of horror over a whip being used by a Border patrol officer on people fleeing political chaos in Haiti border patrol. This is reported in the New York Times. “Mayorkas says he was ‘horrified’ by images of horse-mounted Border Patrol agents confronting Haitian migrants.”
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said Tuesday that he was “horrified” by images of horse-mounted Border Patrol agents attempting to grab Haitian migrants and use their animals to push them back toward Mexico and promised a “swift” investigation.
“I was horrified by what I saw,” Mayorkas said during an appearance on CNN. “I am going to let the investigation run its course, but the pictures that I observed troubled me profoundly.”
Mayorkas was responding to scenes captured by news cameras and photographers Sunday along the Rio Grande. In one instance, an agent is heard on video shouting an obscenity as a child jumps out of a horse’s path.
“One cannot weaponize a horse to aggressively attack a child,” Mayorkas said. “That is unacceptable. That is not what our policies and our training require. …Let me be quite clear: That is not acceptable.”
The stench of Trump and Steven Miller are all over the Border Patrol. I personally feel they should all be fired and made to reapplyou.
It’s going to take a long time to deal with the aftermath of the Trump administration and its culture of grift and dismissal of the rule of law and expected protocol. I’m still amazed we’re still standing some days
So, I hope you feel better BB! Take care of yourself!
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Monday Reads: What do you do with a problem like a)Joe Manchin b)Krysten Sinema c)Senate Parlimentarian d) Mitch McConnell e)All of the above plus more
Posted: September 20, 2021 Filed under: morning reads, Troubles 26 Comments
Good Morning Sky Dancers!
Well, the Biden Agenda–even the watered down parts meant to appease Republicans–is stalled. Here’s a quick line-up of all that’s not going to get done in the name of ego and the mid-term election politics. It seems Americans dealing with so many issues like climate-change induced diasters, Covid-19, underemployment and lack of living wages are just going to wait until a few blowhards get their day in the sun. We sure do have the Troubles in this country.
From Hans Nichols writing at Axios: “Scoop – Manchin: Delay Biden plan to ’22”.
Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) is privately saying he thinks Congress should take a “strategic pause” until 2022 before voting on President Biden’s $3.5 trillion social-spending package, people familiar with the matter tell Axios.
Why it matters: Manchin’s new timeline — if he insists on it — would disrupt the plans by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) to vote on the budget reconciliation package this month.
Driving the news: Back home in West Virginia last week, Manchin told a group of employees at a Procter & Gamble facility in Martinsburg he wanted to pause all the talk about the $3.5 trillion bill until 2022, Axios was told.
- Those semi-public comments track with some of his private conversations about how long he wants to impose the “strategic pause” he floated in a Wall Street Journal op-ed this month.
- Manchin didn’t give a specific timeline in his op-ed.
Any delay on the Democrat-only reconciliation package could imperil House passage of the separate $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill, which Pelosi has promised to pass by Sept. 27.
- House progressive lawmakers are publicly vowing to vote against the infrastructure bill if it’s not paired with the $3.5 trillion bill to be passed through the budget reconciliation process.
- But centrist Democrats are adamant the House pass the bipartisan bill first — next week.
The big picture: Manchin and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) are leading the Democratic opposition in the Senate to the size and scope of the reconciliation package.
It’s largely been written by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), and would vastly expand the social safety net from cradle to grave, as the New York Times recently put it.
Why is it all things ego-related these days always include Bernie Sanders and Joe Manchin? Oh, and now Kristin Sinema who appears to be part of the stymy everything wing of the Democratic Party. From Politico and Laura Barron-Lopez: “Sinema tells White House she’s opposed to current prescription drug plan. The Arizona Democrat joined Joe Manchin in giving the president a wake-up call on the reconciliation bill.” Who likes higher drug prices? Big Pharma and the pols they own evidently.
The White House has a new headache as it struggles to get its multitrillion-dollar party-line spending bill passed: Sen. Kyrsten Sinema’s objections to drug pricing reforms that are already struggling to make it through the House.
The Arizona Democrat is opposed to the current prescription drug pricing proposals in both the House and Senate bills, two sources familiar with her thinking said. They added that, at this point, she also doesn’t support a pared-back alternative being pitched by House Democratic centrists that would limit the drugs subject to Medicare negotiation.
Sinema met with President Joe Biden on Sept. 15 to discuss the social spending package, in which party leaders hope to include the Medicare prescription drug pricing proposal. Sinema has made her resistance to the current House prescription drug negotiation proposal clear to the White House, according to one of the sources, but it’s unclear if she’s completely immovable.
Both she and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), who met with the president the same day, delivered what one source described as a sobering message for the White House about the fate of the reconciliation bill and its $3.5 trillion price tag, which they both say is too high. The social spending plan is designed to pass without GOP votes through budget reconciliation, meaning that Biden will need to win all 50 Senate Democratic votes to secure its passage.
Giorgio de Chirico, Le trouble du philosophe, 1925-26. Museo del Novecento, Milano
AP and Allan Fram report that the “Senate parliamentarian deals blow to Dems’ immigration push.”
Democrats can’t use their $3.5 trillion package bolstering social and climate programs for their plan to give millions of immigrants a chance to become citizens, the Senate’s parliamentarian said late Sunday, a crushing blow to what was the party’s clearest pathway in years to attaining that long-sought goal.
The decision by Elizabeth MacDonough, the Senate’s nonpartisan interpreter of its often enigmatic rules, is a damaging and disheartening setback for President Joe Biden, congressional Democrats and their allies in the pro-immigration and progressive communities. Though they said they’d offer her fresh alternatives, MacDonough’s stance badly wounds their hopes of unilaterally enacting — over Republican opposition — changes letting several categories of immigrants gain permanent residence and possibly citizenship.
The parliamentarian opinion is crucial because it means the immigration provisions could not be included in an immense $3.5 trillion measure that’s been shielded from GOP filibusters. Left vulnerable to those bill-killing delays, which require 60 Senate votes to defuse, the immigration language has virtually no chance in the 50-50 Senate.
In a three-page memo to senators obtained by The Associated Press, MacDonough noted that under Senate rules, provisions are not allowed in such bills if their budget effect is “merely incidental” to their overall policy impact.
Citing sweeping changes that Democrats would make in immigrants’ lives, MacDonough, a one-time immigration attorney, said the language “is by any standard a broad, new immigration policy.”
The rejected provisions would open multiyear doorways to legal permanent residence — and perhaps citizenship — for young immigrants brought illegally to the country as children, often called “Dreamers.” Also included would be immigrants with Temporary Protected Status who’ve fled countries stricken by natural disasters or extreme violence; essential workers and farm workers.
At the Bottom of the Anxiety Swamp by Jayoon Choi
‘There is a moment when you can’t help but sink deep down. Attacked by spiteful thoughts. But, oh dear! I was the monster.’
So, can we get a WTF? from the Amen Corner? “This Powerful Democrat Linked to Fossil Fuels Will Craft the U.S. Climate Plan. Senator Joe Manchin is already a crucial swing vote in the Democrats’ sweeping budget bill. But he will also write the details of its climate change program.”
Joe Manchin, the powerful West Virginia Democrat who chairs the Senate energy panel and earned half a million dollars last year from coal production, is preparing to remake President Biden’s climate legislation in a way that tosses a lifeline to the fossil fuel industry — despite urgent calls from scientists that countries need to quickly pivot away from coal, gas and oil to avoid a climate catastrophe.
Mr. Manchin has already emerged as the crucial up-or-down vote in a sharply divided Senate when it comes to Mr. Biden’s push to pass a $3.5 trillion budget bill that could reshape the nation’s social welfare network. But Mr. Biden also wants the bill to include an aggressive climate policy that would compel utilities to stop burning fossil fuels and switch to wind, solar or nuclear energy, sources that do not emit the greenhouse gases that are heating the planet.
As chairman of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, Mr. Manchin holds the pen and the gavel of the congressional panel, with the authority to shape Mr. Biden’s ambitions.
But Mr. Manchin is also closely associated with the fossil fuel industry. His beloved West Virginia is second in coal and seventh in natural gas production among the 50 states. In the current election cycle, Mr. Manchin has received more campaign donations from the oil, coal and gas industries than any other senator, according to data compiled by OpenSecrets, a research organization that tracks political spending.
He profits personally from polluting industries: He owns stock valued at between $1 million and $5 million in Enersystems Inc., a coal brokerage firm which he founded in 1988. He gave control of the firm to his son, Joseph, after he was elected West Virginia secretary of state in 2000. Last year, Mr. Manchin made $491,949 in dividends from his Enersystems stock, according to his Senate financial disclosure report.
“It says something fascinating about our politics that we’re going to have a representative of fossil fuel interests crafting the policy that reduces our emissions from fossil fuels,” said Joseph Aldy, who helped craft former President Barack Obama’s climate change bill and now teaches at Harvard.
Tiger, Shark and Me Sit Down for Tea by Emma Haddow
‘I’ve struggled with anxiety and depression since I was a teenager. There have been times when it has crippled me, and I was afraid of everything. I started to face my fears, my demons head on and I still do. It’s scary in the dark but what’s more scary to me is denying and suppressing what lurks beneath the surface. My mental health is good these days. My dark days are still here, but I no longer turn them away.’
Politco question if Democrats can get anything done including in the time left to them. “Dems vow to go the distance as September problems pile upThe party has Herculean levels of work to do in 11 days, and it’s projecting confidence but offering few clues on how.”
The House and Senate return to Washington together this week with Democrats facing four tasks that would be challenging on their own — but, taken together, are the legislative equivalent of Hercules’ labors.
Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) summed up the party’s wildly urgent to-do list with the drama of a movie trailer: “Keep the government open. Don’t default on the debt. Make sure the president gets a win on the infrastructure bill … and, obviously the mother of all legislation, the reconciliation package,” he said, referring to the mega-bill that Democrats want to pass along party lines to spend trillions of dollars on a panoply of social priorities.
But for all of the party’s awareness of what it needs to do, Democrats are uncertain about how to get it all done. The coming three-week legislative sprint will test their slim majorities and President Joe Biden’s domestic policy chops, with dwindling days to avoid a government shutdown and defuse a politically toxic battle with Republicans over the nation’s borrowing limit.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer are also under intense pressure to deliver on the lifeblood of Biden’s agenda: a multitrillion-dollar social spending package and a bipartisan infrastructure bill, which could both see floor votes in the coming weeks.
Already, ideological clashes across the Democratic Party have begun to spill into the open as it begins its final push to turn Biden’s enormous spending plan into law. Last week, a small group of moderates sank a leadership-backed drug pricing initiative in a high-profile committee meeting as they demanded to vote on their own version of the bill.
Across the Capitol, Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) have said they will not support legislation that costs $3.5 trillion, setting up a skirmish with progressives who say that top line number is already a compromise. Some Democrats fear those two moderates may not be willing to support the final bill at all.
I do have faith in Pelosi and many of the Democratic leaders to do what they can. However, I also know that ego mixed with big donations can make a politician pretty useless for the people.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
It’s Thursday Right? (Reads)
Posted: September 9, 2021 Filed under: morning reads | Tags: Bungalo Bush, Climate change, Insurrectionists 17 Comments
Hello Sky Dancers!
Things are partially back around the little Kathouse on the Mississippi River. Wow, it’s been a while! I’ve had the power on for about a day and 1/2 but the cable TV and internet are still down with no ETA. I’m using my neighbor’s wifi right now. She has a different provider. There’s a convergence of anniversaries this month.
It’s been 20 years since we experienced the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. I know JJ has much more vivid memories of that than me since her husband was in the tower. I await her thoughts as we approach the anniversary.
I was awakened by my neighbor Bryan who told me to turn on the TV and then from phone calls from the University telling me classes are canceled so stay home. I turned the TV just in time to see the second plane hit the towers. Shortly after that, we all watched the Towers fall. This led to a series of bad political/foreign policy decisions and the last 20 years of endless war in the Middle East. Bungalo Bush’s tenure was his own form of disaster and the Russian Potted Plant is the Disaster that keeps on killing.
Sixteen years ago, a zombie version of myself was parked on my late friend Jane’s sofa screaming at CNN to figure out the difference between the lower 9th ward and the upper 9th ward. The levees had failed and Hurricane Katrina became the next huge Dubya Bush failure. That was the year the Bad Hands people slapped a $10,000 named storm deductible on my home insurance policy that plagues me at least every several years and especially today.
Ah, today, America, land of massive hurricanes, massive fires, and can’t we all just agree this is the result of Climate Change and aim some torches and pitchforks at Exxon Mobile and captured pols? Mexico gets a massive earthquake today and legal abortions. Well, you know what Texas gave us, what Florida is doing to kill us, and what is going to happen on the 18th which could be another attempt at an insurrection by white Christian nationalists.
So, watching the news just keeps getting more stressful. Part of me is glad I didn’t get mine for about 10 days. My friend, a retired CNN news producer, keeps telling her colleagues to stop being part of the problem that what is going on right now is important and choose the right side and report on it. I keep thinking all these events call for us to stand up for humanity, justice, and democracy. The Republican Party is lost to its worst instincts. Acknowledge they are not capable of governing us out of any crises and are responsible for most of them. They seem to be doing Darwin’s work already thought with Covid-19. Why do they want their base to basically die and kill others?
https://twitter.com/WFLA/status/1435760796383039491
Lineworkers from Northern Wisconsin working to restore power to my street on September 7.
So, here comes the enemies of democracy again. From Roll Call: “As Sept. 18 rally approaches, violent language ramps up online. Capitol Police chief will brief congressional leaders about situation.”
As Capitol Police Chief J. Thomas Manger prepares to brief congressional leaders on a potentially violent rally scheduled for Sept. 18, an internal department assessment reveals more violent online discussion around the event and increased attendance numbers for the demonstration.
The intelligence assessment, dated Sept. 7, notes that in recent days, the department and partner agencies have found more violent online talk surrounding the #JusticeForJ6 rally, organized by Look Ahead America. The event seeks to support pro-Trump rioters who were jailed for their roles in the Jan. 6 Capitol attack.
A discussion thread on the far-right site 4chan includes calls to “do justice” against “local jews and corrupted officials.” It also says the demonstration should be used as a vehicle to participate in violent acts against local “Jewish centers and Liberal churches” while law enforcement is distracted.
Another comment from the thread reads, “I will be there with my AR15 even though legally I can’t have one f*** the Demonrats.” (ed. note: asterisks inserted by CQ Roll Call)
Look Ahead America, a group led by former Trump campaign employee Matt Braynard, asked for a permit in Union Square at noon on Sept. 18 for 700 participants, a number that has risen from 500.
The city, state, and FEMA were all present throughout the neighborhood rec centers with cooling and charging stations, hot meals, and supplies. This has been my morning retreat for days. September 7 with neighbors at the Stallings Center. FEMA is there helping with registrations.
Again, CNN reports that “Capitol Police memo warns of potential for violence during September 18 rally.” They are preparing this time for trouble.
Law enforcement officials are bracing for potential clashes and unrest during an upcoming right-wing rally in Washington, DC, as violent rhetoric surrounding the September 18 event has increased online and counterprotests are being planned for the same day, according to an internal Capitol Police memo reviewed by CNN.
The latest intelligence report on the “Justice for J6” rally — which aims to support insurrectionists charged in the Capitol riots — notes that online chatter in support of the event started increasing after the officer who fatally shot rioter Ashli Babbitt went public with his identity in a recent interview with NBC’s Lester Holt.
There’s been a noticeable uptick in violent rhetoric around the event and heated discussions centered on Babbitt’s shooting on social media and discussion boards, according to the memo. The document warns that many individuals may also see September 18 as a “Justice for Ashli Babbitt” rally, which could be cause for concern, and it’s not unreasonable to plan for violent altercations. There have been additional discussions of violence associated with the event, with one online chat suggesting violence against Jewish centers and liberal churches while law enforcement is distracted that day.
The Capitol Police have formally asked the Capitol Police Board that temporary fencing be put in place again around the complex ahead of the rally, a source familiar with the planning told CNN. The Capitol Police Board will make the final call, but the recommendation will weigh heavily in its final decision.
There’s a list of those arrested for the US Capitol Breach on January 6 here at the website of the US District Attorney of the DC. These are the insurrectionists that are the targets for the September 18th rally. USA Today maintains a continuously updated list of these traitors here. This list has pictures and narratives for each of the individuals. You can also check out the ones from your state!
So, thanks again to BB who held up my end of the deal here. Also, thanks to JJ who offered to put me and the Kathouse critters up. We have a wonderful family here and I appreciate and love each and every one of you!
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Lazy Caturday Reads
Posted: September 4, 2021 Filed under: morning reads | Tags: caturday, Climate change, Covid-19, Hurricane Ida, insurrection, right wing attacks on elections 14 Comments
Arthur’s morning, by Vicky Mount
Good Morning!!
We’re heading into the long Labor Day weekend, but it isn’t quiet one on the news front. The angry reaction to the Texas abortion law continues, Louisiana and multiple states in the Northeast are still just beginning their recovery from Hurricane Ida, Covid-19 is worse than ever, thanks to GOP governors and antivaxxers, and right wing crazies are threatening another violent insurrection in Washington D.C. as well as further attacks on democratic elections.
Texas Abortion Law Stories
AP News: Judge shields Texas clinics from anti-abortion group’s suits.
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — A state judge has shielded, for now, Texas abortion clinics from lawsuits by an anti-abortion group under a new state abortion law in a narrow ruling handed down Friday.
The temporary restraining order Friday by state District Judge Maya Guerra Gamble in Austin in response to the Planned Parenthood request does not interfere with the provision. However, it shields clinics from whistleblower lawsuits by the nonprofit group Texas Right to Life, its legislative director and 100 unidentified individuals.
A hearing on a preliminary injunction request was set for Sept. 13.
The law, which took effect Wednesday, allows anyone anywhere to sue anyone connected to an abortion in which cardiac activity was detected in the embryo — as early as six weeks into a pregnancy before most women even realize they are pregnant.
Ralph Black Cat painting by Dora Hathazi
CNBC: Lyft, Uber will cover legal fees for drivers sued under Texas abortion law.
Lyft and Uber said Friday they would cover legal fees for drivers on their respective platforms who are sued under Texas’ restrictive abortion law that went into effect this week….
“Drivers are never responsible for monitoring where their riders go or why. Imagine being a driver and not knowing if you are breaking the law by giving someone a ride,” Lyft said in a release.
“Similarly, riders never have to justify, or even share, where they are going and why. Imagine being a pregnant woman trying to get to a healthcare appointment and not knowing if your driver will cancel on you for fear of breaking a law. Both are completely unacceptable,” Lyft added.
Lyft said its defense fund would cover 100% of legal fees incurred by drivers because of the law, being the first rideshare company to do so. The company will also donate $1 million to Planned Parenthood.
Uber shortly followed by saying it would also cover fees.
The New York Times: TikTok Users and Coders Flood Texas Abortion Site With Fake Tips.
After a Texas law restricting abortion went into effect on Wednesday, the state’s largest anti-abortion group publicized a website that invited citizens to inform on the law’s violators.
The website, prolifewhistleblower.com, which was set up by the group Texas Right to Life, was designed to help carry out the new law. That’s because the law places enforcement not in the hands of state officials but with private citizens, who are deputized to sue anyone who performs or aids an abortion in violation of the law.
Tips about the law’s potential offenders quickly flooded into the website, which features an online form so people can anonymously submit reports of those who are illegally obtaining or facilitating abortions.
But some of the tips were a little unexpected.
Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas, who was a leading proponent of the abortion law, was a violator, according to some of the tips. The fictional characters from Marvel’s Avengers were also apparently seeking abortions, the reports said. Other tips did not point to individuals but instead contained copies of the entire script to the 2007 animated film “Bee Movie.”
The reports, which were obviously bogus, were the work of activists on TikTok, programmers, and Twitter and Reddit users who said they wanted to ensnarl the site’s administrators in fabricated data.
Hurricane Ida Aftermath
The New York Times: Satellite Images Find Oil Spill in Gulf Left in Ida’s Wake.
Cleanup crews are working to contain what experts called a substantial oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, according to an examination of satellite and aerial survey images, ship tracking data and interviews with local officials and others involved in the spill response.
Manolo Ruiz-Pipo, Spanish, 1929–1998, The Little Girl with the Cat, 1957
The spill, one of multiple plumes spotted off the Louisiana coast in the wake of Hurricane Ida, was identified in satellite imagery captured Thursday by the space technology companies Planet Labs and Maxar Technologies.
A black expanse and rainbow sheen of oil spanning at least 10 miles was spreading in coastal waters about two miles off Port Fourchon, an oil and gas hub. An aerial survey image of the spill was captured Wednesday by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration….
It was unclear how much oil had spilled into the Gulf, according to a person with direct knowledge of the cleanup. The spill, possibly from an old pipeline no longer in use that was damaged by the storm, was first spotted on Monday from reconnaissance flights led by a number of Gulf Coast producers, and was reported to the Coast Guard, said the person who was not authorized to speak publicly about the cleanup effort.
Reuters: Why Hurricane Ida crippled the New Orleans power grid.
Hurricane Ida’s 150-mph winds crippled a Louisiana electric grid already vulnerable from aging transmission lines, electricity bottlenecks and $2 billion worth of damage caused by three hurricanes that hit last year.
Ida’s landfall on Sunday left a wake of destruction and suffering. More than 1 million customers were without electricity immediately after the storm – a hardship that, for some, could last weeks.
Entergy Corp (ETR.N), the largest Louisiana utility, is facing tough questions on whether it had done enough to harden the electric system, which lost eight major transmission lines delivering power to the New Orleans metropolitan area.
Entergy was in the midst of upgrades throughout its system after Hurricane Laura in 2020. From 2017 to 2019, Entergy’s Louisiana subsidiary spent about $1.2 billion on numerous projects to improve its transmission system.
A pivotal question now for Entergy and its consumers is how well those capital improvements survived the hurricane’s wrath compared to the company’s older infrastructure. Entergy declined to detail the age of the eight New Orleans-area transmission lines that failed.
Painting by Anatoly Merkushevvia
NPR: Why Ida Hit The Northeast So Hard, 1,000 Miles Away From Its Landfall.
Hurricane Ida’s remnants created deadly havoc in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York days after the system hit the Gulf Coast — some 1,000 miles away.
There was “just the right mix of weather conditions” in place to fuel the system, according to Tripti Bhattacharya, an assistant professor of earth and environmental sciences at Syracuse University.
“A storm like this would have been exceptionally rare 20 or 50 years ago,” she told NPR. “But we have to start thinking about it becoming the norm as the climate warms.”
Bhattacharya’s research on regional rainfall and climate change was cited in the U.N.’s recent climate change report.
Click the link to read the interview.
Covid-19 News
The Washington Post: U.S. covid death toll hits 1,500 a day amid delta scourge.
Nationally, covid-19 deaths have climbed steadily in recent weeks, hitting a seven-day average of about 1,500 a day Thursday, after falling to the low 200s in early July — the latest handiwork of a contagious variant that has exploited the return to everyday activities by tens of millions of Americans, many of them unvaccinated. The dead include two Texas teachers at a junior high, who died last week within days of each other; a 13-year-old middle schoolboy from Georgia; and a nurse, 37, in Southern California who left behind five children, including a newborn.
What is different about this fourth pandemic wave in the United States is that the growing rates of vaccination and natural immunity have broken the relationship between infections and deaths in many areas.
The daily count of new infections is rising in almost every part of the country, according to data tracked by The Washington Post. But only some places — mostly Southern states with lower vaccination rates — are seeing a parallel surge in deaths. The seven-day average of daily deaths is about a third of what it was in January, the pandemic’s most deadly month, but it is forecast to continue rising as high numbers of patients are hospitalized.
Alberto Zampieri (Italian, 1903-1992) – Il bambino e il gatto (Boy with cat), 1952
Bloomberg: Florida’s Newly Reported Covid Deaths Jump to Pandemic Record.
Florida reported 2,345 additional Covid-19 deaths in its latest weekly report, the most ever in a similar period.
The daily average rose 36% to 335, according to calculations based on the report. That would surpass the high for the entire pandemic in Johns Hopkins University data. The data is based on when the death was reported, not when it occurred.
People 65-and-over accounted for 63% of the deaths reported in the period. Cumulatively over the entire pandemic, Florida seniors have made up 79% of deaths.
Raw Story: 15 Miami-Dade school staffers die of COVID in 10 days: report.
On Friday, NBC 6 Miami reported that 15 staffers and educators in the Miami-Dade County school system have died of COVID 19 — just in the past ten days.
“Sonia Diaz, a spokesperson for several unions in the school district, confirmed the number of deaths to NBC 6,” reported Johnny Archer. “Miami-Dade County Public Schools resumed classes on Aug. 23, and it’s unknown when the employees contracted COVID-19.”
The news comes as school districts and state governments around the country wrestle with how to handle the continued spread of the Delta variant.
The Washington Post: Here’s what we know about the mu variant.
A coronavirus variant known as “mu” or “B.1.621” was designated by the World Health Organization as a “variant of interest” earlier this week and will be monitored by the global health body as cases continue to emerge across parts of the world. It is the fifth variant of interest currently being monitored by the WHO….
The variant was first detected in Colombia in January 2021, where cases continue to rise. It has since been identified in more than 39 countries, according to the WHO, among them the United States, South Korea, Japan, Ecuador, Canada and parts of Europe….
About 2,000 mu cases have been identified in the United States, so far, according to the Global Initiative on Sharing All Influenza Data (GISAID), the largest database of novel coronavirus genome sequences in the world. Most cases have been recorded in California, Florida, Texas and New York among others.
However, mu is not an “immediate threat right now” within the United States, top infectious-disease expert Anthony S. Fauci told a press briefing on Thursday. He said that while the government was “keeping a very close eye on it,” the variant was “not at all even close to being dominant” as the delta variant remains the cause of over 99 percent of cases in the country.
More Coronavirus stories:
Cincinnati.com: CDC classifies every Ohio county as ‘red’ for high levels of COVID-19 transmission.
Katherine J. Wu at The Atlantic: What We Actually Know About Waning Immunity.
Derek Thompson at The Atlantic: The Masks Were Working All Along. Now we have definitive proof that masks really are effective.
Trump Supporters’ Threats on Democracy
Ellie Silverman at The Washington Post: Former Trump campaign operative plans rally for those charged in Capitol riot.
ProPublica: Heeding Steve Bannon’s Call, Election Deniers Organize to Seize Control of the GOP — and Reshape America’s Elections.
One of the loudest voices urging Donald Trump’s supporters to push for overturning the presidential election results was Steve Bannon. “We’re on the point of attack,” Bannon, a former Trump adviser and far-right nationalist, pledged on his popular podcast on Jan. 5. “All hell will break loose tomorrow.” The next morning, as thousands massed on the National Mall for a rally that turned into an attack on the Capitol, Bannon fired up his listeners: “It’s them against us. Who can impose their will on the other side?”
Sekino Jun’ichirô (Japanese, 1914 – 1988) Boy holding a cat
When the insurrection failed, Bannon continued his campaign for his former boss by other means. On his “War Room” podcast, which has tens of millions of downloads, Bannon said President Trump lost because the Republican Party sold him out. “This is your call to action,” Bannon said in February, a few weeks after Trump had pardoned him of federal fraud charges.
The solution, Bannon announced, was to seize control of the GOP from the bottom up. Listeners should flood into the lowest rung of the party structure: the precincts. “It’s going to be a fight, but this is a fight that must be won, we don’t have an option,” Bannon said on his show in May. “We’re going to take this back village by village … precinct by precinct.”
Precinct officers are the worker bees of political parties, typically responsible for routine tasks like making phone calls or knocking on doors. But collectively, they can influence how elections are run. In some states, they have a say in choosing poll workers, and in others they help pick members of boards that oversee elections.
After Bannon’s endorsement, the “precinct strategy” rocketed across far-right media. Viral posts promoting the plan racked up millions of views on pro-Trump websites, talk radio, fringe social networks and message boards, and programs aligned with the QAnon conspiracy theory.
Suddenly, people who had never before showed interest in party politics started calling the local GOP headquarters or crowding into county conventions, eager to enlist as precinct officers. They showed up in states Trump won and in states he lost, in deep-red rural areas, in swing-voting suburbs and in populous cities.
Read the rest at ProPublica.
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