Lazy Caturday Reads
Posted: August 28, 2021 Filed under: morning reads | Tags: Afghanistan drone strike, Afghanistan terrorist attack, caturday, Enhanced unemployment ends, Evictions, Hurricane Ida, hurricane katrina, ISIS-K, Joe Biden, Louisiana, Major Biden, NBC clickbait, New Orleans, SCOTUS, U.S. service members killed in Afghanistan 27 Comments
Gathering Storm, by Karen Comber
Good Morning!!
Hurricane Ida is bearing down on Louisiana on the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. Fortunately, the seawall protections are better now and Joe Biden is president instead of George W. Bush.
AP News: Ida aims to hit Louisiana on Hurricane Katrina anniversary.
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Hurricane Ida struck Cuba on Friday and threatened to slam into Louisiana with devastating force over the weekend, prompting evacuations in New Orleans and across the coastal region.
Ida intensified rapidly Friday from a tropical storm to a hurricane with top winds of 80 mph (128 kph) as it crossed western Cuba and entered the Gulf of Mexico. The National Hurricane Center predicted Ida would strengthen into an extremely dangerous Category 4 hurricane, with top winds of 140 mph (225 kph) before making landfall along the U.S. Gulf Coast late Sunday.
“This will be a life-altering storm for those who aren’t prepared,” National Weather Service meteorologist Benjamin Schott said during a Friday news conference with Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards.
The governor urged residents to quickly prepare, saying: “By nightfall tomorrow night, you need to be where you intend to be to ride out the storm.”
New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell ordered a mandatory evacuation for a small area of the city outside the levee system. But with the storm intensifying so much over a short time, she said it wasn’t possible to do so for the entire city. That generally calls for using all lanes of some highways to leave the city.
Orange Cat, by Vicky Mount
“The city cannot order a mandatory evacuation because we don’t have the time,” Cantrell said.
City officials said residents need to be prepared for prolonged power outages, and asked elderly residents to consider evacuating. Collin Arnold, the city’s emergency management director, said the city could be under high winds for about ten hours.
Other areas across the coastal region were under a mix of voluntary and mandatory evacuations. The storm is expected to make landfall on the exact date Hurricane Katrina devastated a large swath of the Gulf Coast exactly 16 years earlier.
More from CNN: Gulf Coast braces for Sunday arrival of Hurricane Ida, potentially a Category 4 storm.
Ida is anticipated to reach at least Category 4 strength before landfall, the National Hurricane Center said, maintaining its earlier forecast.
“Ida is expected to be an extremely dangerous major hurricane when it approaches the northern Gulf Coast on Sunday,” National Hurricane Center forecasters said Saturday morning. At 8 a.m. ET, the storm sustained winds of 85 mph.
Officials throughout the state implored people to evacuate, with some issuing mandatory orders to do so.
A dangerous storm surge of 10 to 15 feet is expected from Morgan City, Louisiana, to the mouth of the Mississippi River on Sunday as Ida makes landfall, the NHC said.
Hurricane conditions are likely in areas along the northern Gulf Coast beginning Sunday, with tropical storm conditions expected to begin by late Saturday night or early Sunday morning. These conditions will spread inland over portions of Louisiana and Mississippi Sunday night and Monday.
Rainfall can amount to 8 to 16 inches, with isolated maximum totals of 20 inches possible across southeast Louisiana and southern Mississippi through Monday– which will likely lead to significant flash and river flooding impacts.
A hurricane warning remains in effect from Intracoastal City, Louisiana, to the mouth of the Pearl River and includes Lake Pontchartrain, Lake Maurepas and New Orleans.
In Louisiana, a hurricane watch is in effect from Cameron to west of Intracoastal City and the mouth of the Pearl River to the Mississippi-Alabama border. Tropical storm warnings and watches are also issued stretching east to the Alabama-Florida border.
The city is anticipating impacts from damaging winds of up to 110 mph, according to Collin Arnold, director of the New Orleans Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness.
I found this article at Yahoo News interesting: EXPLAINER: Is New Orleans protected from a hurricane?
Storm has passed, by Robert Tracy
New Orleans finds itself in the path of Hurricane Ida 16 years to the day after floodwalls collapsed and levees were overtopped by a storm surge driven by Hurricane Katrina. That flooding killed more than 1,000 people and caused billions in damage. But Ida arrives at the doorstep of a region transformed since 2005 by a giant civil works project and closer attention to flood control.
The system already has been tested by multiple storms, including 2012’s Isaac, with little damage to the areas it protects….
The federal government spent $14.5 billion on levees, pumps, seawalls, floodgates and drainage that provides enhanced protection from storm surge and flooding in New Orleans and surrounding suburbs south of Lake Pontchartrain. With the exception of three drainage projects, that work is complete.
“The post-Katrina system is so different than what was in place before,” said U.S. Army Corps of Engineers spokesperson Matt Roe.
Starting with a giant surge barrier east of the city, the system is a 130-mile (210-kilometer) ring built to hold out storm surge of about 30 feet (9 meters). The National Hurricane Center on Friday projected Ida would bring a surge of 10 feet to 15 feet (3 to 4.6 meters) on the west bank.
At that level, it could come over the levees in some areas, said emergency manager Heath Jones of the Army Corps of Engineers’ New Orleans District.
“They’re designed to overtop in places” with protections against worse damage, including armoring, splash pads and pumps with backup generators, he said.
“We’ve built all that since Katrina,” and they’re designed for a worse storm than the Ida is expected to be, he said.
Governments as of Friday were not ordering people protected by the levees to evacuate, showing their confidence in the system.
A number of floodgates are being closed as the storm approaches. That includes massive gates that ships can normally sail through, such as ones that close off the Inner Harbor Navigation Canal near the Lower 9th Ward. That has reduced the risk of flooding in an area long viewed as among the city’s most exposed. At least one smaller floodgate on land has been removed for maintenance, though, with officials planning to close the gap with sandbags.
Read more at the Yahoo link.
Afghanistan News
The Guardian: Afghanistan drone strike targeted Islamic State ‘planner’ in car, US says.
The US drone strike in Afghanistan targeted a mid-level “planner” from the Islamic State’s local affiliate who was travelling in a car with one other person near the eastern city of Jalalabad, US official sources said on Saturday.
The strike came two days after Islamic State in Khorasan Province (ISKP) claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing outside Kabul airport, as western forces running the airlift braced for more attacks.
The US president, Joe Biden, has promised to hunt down those responsible, striking in a place and time of his choosing.
The drone strike is likely to be in part aimed at reassuring a shaken US public that its government’s counter-terrorist capabilities in Afghanistan remain intact despite the chaotic withdrawal.
There is no indication that the target of the drone was involved in Thursday’s blast, which killed around 180 people, including 13 US marines.
The attack focused attention on ISKP, which had previously been seen as only a minor actor in Afghanistan and one of the weaker IS affiliates around the world.
The group was founded in 2014 by a few dozen disaffected Taliban commanders and defectors from other militants from the region and made early gains in districts close to the border with Pakistan in the eastern Nangarhar province, where the drone strike occurred around midnight on Friday night. The name Khorasan was given by medieval Islamic imperial rulers to a region including modern Afghanistan.
Read more about ISKP at the Guardian link.
The Washington Post: The 13 U.S. service members killed in the Kabul airport attack: What we know so far.
What’s happening in your neck of the woods? If you’re in the path of Ida, please stay safe!
Friday Post Zeta Reads: We’re all hanging on and the bumpy rides keep comin’
Posted: October 30, 2020 Filed under: 2020 Elections, Mid Day Reads, New Orleans | Tags: Eye of the Hurrican, Hurricane Zeta, New Orleans, Trump's closing chaos and depraved heart murder events, Turkish Banks and Trump 12 Comments
This is an old fish/seafood market turned woodshop across the street from me. It’s lost its old tin roof.
Good Day Sky Dancers!
It’s been a few overwhelming days for me and I’m quite exhausted. New Orleans was very fortunate that Hurricane Zeta was a fast mover because she was like 1 mph off a Category 3 hurricane when she hit and hit she did. We’re going to be digging out of shredded leaves, downed trees, and infrastructure messes for awhile. Fortunately, only six families lost their homes and one person died. It could’ve been way worse.
I was really fortunate that the city and the power company had done several things to stop tree damage on my avenue and in my neighborhood just a few weeks ago. The Tree Trimmers got the old oaks trimmed of dead branches and the power company reinforced the lines with brackets and and pole supports. A large number of homes through out the metro area or still out of power. Mine came back on Thursday morning.
However, both my phone and my cable tv and internet at the house are acting hinky. I was about to check the weather channel one last time last night when I found that the only channel I had on the entire cable set up was MSNBC which was the last thing I was watching. Fortunately, the entire compliment of channels returned this morning. The Wifi has been slow off and on. I couldn’t get mobile data on my phone Wednesday night so I was completely cutoff from everything except texts and phone calls. My understanding is that the Sprint Tower had damage and that network completely went down so something similar must’ve happened with the Verizon Tower. My cable company still is showing a lot of outages and problems in the neighborhood so I’m just lucky I’ve got what I’ve got.
It looks like a leaf shredding bomb went off every where. Fortunately, our neighborhood kids decided to clean the avenue up for us old folks. They got some fresh bananas from my tree and some cash for their good work!
I spent Wednesday night reading the rest of a book on Kindle–which was amply charged for the event–by hurricane lamp light. We were totally in the center of the eyewall when it came through which was the most ethereal experience I think I’ve ever had. The city was texting us to stay inside but I wanted to get Temple out for a quick in and out walk. It was quiet and the clouds to the west, east, and north of me were swirly dark grey clouds with an eerie purple tinge. To the south, over the river, the sky was a brilliant orangish gold. I failed to bring my phone camera out with me but some others have captured the moment so I’m sharing some pictures I took but those were taken by others.
Today, I learned that a lot of polling places may not be up in time since about 70% of our schools are without power or damaged some how. I think my fire station is likely okay but I’m going to go check them out on Temple’s next Trot around the neighborhood.
And the final days of the 2020 presidential campaign look ugly.
I can’t really say I’ve been reading much or watching much TV on any of this because I’m rather traumatized enough from everything going on . But, everything I’ve seen
My kitchen stairs or one of the sites of the leaf shredding hurricane debris
makes me glad I’ve been incognito for a few days. The desperation around the Trump campaign is just frighteningly damaging to every one including his cult. I still can’t believe they abandoned a bunch of Omahans on an Airfield in freezing weather or let a group of Floridians pass out from heat exhaustion. Both were finally rescued by actions of the local fire departments which the Kremlin Potted Plant in the White House wasn’t going to praise until he found out if it was a friend or a foe. WTF?
The COVID 19 pandemic–despite Trumpist attempts to ignore and downplay it–is getting worse. NPR reports that they’ve been hiding statistics also. No surprise that! “Internal Documents Reveal COVID-19 Hospitalization Data The Government Keeps Hidden”
As coronavirus cases rise swiftly around the country, surpassing both the spring and summer surges, health officials brace for a coming wave of hospitalizations and deaths. Knowing which hospitals in which communities are reaching capacity could be key to an effective response to the growing crisis. That information is gathered by the federal government — but not shared openly with the public.
NPR has obtained documents that give a snapshot of data the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services collects and analyzes daily. The documents — reports sent to agency staffers — highlight trends in hospitalizations and pinpoint cities nearing full hospital capacity and facilities under stress. They paint a granular picture of the strain on hospitals across the country that could help local citizens decide when to take extra precautions against COVID-19.
Withholding this information from the public and the research community is a missed opportunity to help prevent outbreaks and even save lives, say public health and data experts who reviewed the documents for NPR.
“At this point, I think it’s reckless. It’s endangering people,” says Ryan Panchadsaram, co-founder of the website COVID Exit Strategy and a former data official in the Obama administration. “We’re now in the third wave, and I think our only way out is really open, transparent and actionable information.”
Super Dome in the middle of the eye and yes these were the colors I saw.
Susan B Glasser writes this at The New Yorker: “Denialism, Dishonesty, Deflection: The Final Days of the Trump Campaign Have It All. The President is ending his reëlection bid with scandals that call into question the legitimacy of next week’s vote.”
Whether or not Trump once again succeeds in pulling an unlikely win out of a near-certain defeat, this fall’s campaign may well go down as one of the most scandalous periods of his norm-shattering Presidency. Trump in recent weeks has openly flirted with white supremacy and bizarre conspiracy theories. He has demanded that the U.S. government investigate and jail Biden—it is not clear for what—and he has publicly threatened to fire the F.B.I. director and the Attorney General for failing to do so. He has held rallies at which his supporters chanted “Lock him up,” and did and said nothing to stop them. He has broadcast so much misinformation that social-media platforms such as Twitter have, for the first time, regularly warned readers about the veracity of his posts. He has lied so much that the Times found seventy-five per cent of his statements during a single rally to be untrue. He has issued orders that threaten to politicize the government long after he is gone, including an executive order, last week, which would remove key protections from the professional civil service; the potential consequences of this move are so significant that, on Monday, the Republican Trump appointee who would have to oversee it resigned in protest, warning that the decision will “replace apolitical expertise with political obeisance” across the government.
In recent weeks, scandalous revelations about Trump’s corruption include the Times’reporting on hundreds of millions of dollars of debt that Trump is personally liable for. (He will not say to whom.) The Washington Post disclosed this week that Trump has used his power to direct at least eight million dollars from the U.S. government—–and his political supporters—into his personal businesses since he took office. The consequences of Trump’s Presidency, meanwhile, include the forcible separation of at least twenty-six hundred migrant children from their parents at the southern border, and last week the awful news came out that five hundred and forty-five of these children are now stranded alone in the United States, owing to the authorities being unable to locate their mothers or fathers.
And this parade of horrors, of course, also includes Trump’s record on the coronavirus, a disastrous performance that, as of this week, has left more than two hundred and twenty thousand Americans dead. Universal mask-wearing could prevent perhaps a hundred and thirty thousand Americans from dying, according to a study in the scientific journal Nature which was released earlier this month. Yet Trump not only refuses to issue a national mask mandate; he has repeatedly and publicly questioned the need for mask-wearing during the fall campaign and has held numerous White House events with packed crowds of unmasked attendees.
This is my friend Grace Athas’ photo of the center of the eye over her uptown home.
Then, yesterday, the NYTs dropped what would be an October Surprise that kills Trump’s chances if we still lived in what was the normal United States of America. Here it is summed up by New York Magazine’s Jonathan Chait: “Trump Corruptly Meddled With Probe Into Crimes by Bank in Turkey.” The MSNBC coverage of this is evidently what got my TV stuck on the channel. I was glued to the screen. This is like immediate impeachment material for Trump, Barrett, and the Goddesses know who else?
In 2016, Turkish strongman Recep Tayyip Erdogan asked then-Vice-President Joe Biden to lean on federal prosecutors who were investigating a Turkish bank for financial crimes and to hand over a dissident cleric living in the United States. The requests seemed to be on Biden’s mind when he publicly addressed reporters and piously explained that, in the United States, the justice system doesn’t work like that. “I suspect it’s hard for people to understand that as powerful as my country is, as powerful as Barack Obama is as president, he has no authority under our Constitution to extradite anyone,” Biden explained to reporters. “Only a federal court can do that. Nobody else can do that. If the president were to take this into his own hands, what would happen would be he would be impeached for violating the separation of powers.”
Well, the justice system works like that now.
The New York Times has a comprehensive report on Erdogan’s successful efforts to recruit top Trump administration officials into his corrupt scheme.
Scandals tend to be complicated, especially scandals involving banks. But this one is extremely simple. The basic elements:
1) The Justice Department was prosecuting financial crimes by a Turkish bank.
2) Turkey’s president asked President Trump to quash the investigation.
3) Trump has personally received more than $1 million in payments from business in Turkey while serving as president.
4) Two attorneys general loyal to Trump, Matthew Whitaker and William Barr, both pressured federal prosecutors to go easy on the Turkish bank.
The Times adds plenty of new detail to the last point, which is yet another blow to anybody who hoped Barr might preserve some shred of respect for the rule of law. “In mid-June 2019, when [Geoffrey] Berman met with Mr. Barr in Washington, the attorney general pushed Mr. Berman to agree to allow the Justice Department to drop charges against the defendants and terminate investigations of other suspected conspirators,” the Times reports. When Barr subsequently fired Berman, who resisted his pressure, Justice Department officials cited his stubbornness on the Turkey case “as a key reason for his removal.”
If you read one thing today make it this article. It is imperative he be voted out of office and removed as quickly as possible along with his appointments at the DOJ.
In the eye of a hurricane
There is quiet
For just a moment
A yellow sky
So, we’ve got a bit further to go on our Country’s Bumpy Ride. Tomorrow is Halloween. Sunday is All Saints Day. Tuesday the votes are counted and I take my soul to the poll. Wednesday I turn 65. What a long strange ride this is.
Take care! Check in !
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
ClusterFuck Friday Reads: Can the Trumpist Regime get any more Incompetent?
Posted: March 27, 2020 Filed under: just because | Tags: COVID19, New Orleans, pandemic 34 Comments
Good Day Sky Dancers!
I’m waiting for a phone call from Doctor Daughter who was on call last night at her hospital in the Seattle Burbs. Youngest Daughter joined my graduate class in Derivatives on Wednesday night to talk about Options strategies and the consumer retail brokerage market from Denver to the students held up here in New Orleans. I’m beginning to feel superfluous which is fine but I worry about them both. I especially fret about the doctors in Seattle and I can only imagine the stories that I will hear today.
My paychecks continue and I’m paying my bills which keeps me in the thankful old lady range. I’m trying like crazy not to get sick again although I–like BB–wonder if the Mardi Gras Flu that kept me sick and home for 3 weeks last month was COVID 19 instead of Influenza Type B. At this point, I’d be glad to have some antibodies because my lean/mean blue cross blue shield ACA health plan keeps me from doing anything but the required annual visits, etc. I’m having to hold out to get sick or whatever until the less expensive–but still not inexpensive–Medicare becomes available to me in the fall.
So now the narrative is that my city is supposedly to blame as the supposedly evil place that gave it to the rest of the country because Mardi Gras. This is from the NYT. We’ve reached the demonize the cities with all those people of color portion of deflecting blame from the Orange Snot Blob.
In a grim irony, there is a rising suspicion among medical experts that the crisis may have been accelerated by Mardi Gras — the weekslong citywide celebration that unfolds in crowded living rooms, ballrooms and city streets — which this year culminated on Feb. 25.
It is the city’s trademark expression of joy — and an epidemiologist’s nightmare.
“I think it all boils down to Mardi Gras,” said Dr. F. Brobson Lutz Jr., a former health director of New Orleans and a specialist in infectious disease. “The greatest free party in the world was a perfect incubator at the perfect time.”
The feeling is at once familiar and distinct for a city whose history is punctuated with epic disasters, including the deadly yellow fever outbreaks of 1853 and 1905, and Hurricane Katrina a century later in 2005. Once again, New Orleanians are afraid they could be neglected by national leaders, only this time because the coronavirus is a worldwide calamity.
“This hurricane’s coming for everybody,” said Broderick Bagert, an organizer with the community organizing group Together Louisiana.
Mr. Edwards, who, like most other Louisiana governors, has extensive experience dealing with hurricanes, said the state was struggling to confront this new kind of disaster. “We don’t really have a playbook on this one,” he said.
“If you have a flood or a hurricane it’s only a small part of the country that’s affected, so you can get the full attention of the federal government and you can get a lot of help from sister states,” he said. “That’s not possible right now because this is in every state in our country.”
As a kind of ghostliness settles over a locked-down nation, the effect of social distancing feels particularly jarring in New Orleans, a city that runs on intimacy — from the deep webs of kinship and geography that connect families and neighborhoods to the fleeting threads that bind strangers and regulars in storied restaurants and packed, sweaty clubs.
The fact that the Trumpist regime underplayed this disease at a time it was arriving in places like Seattle, Boston, NYC and yes, New Orleans cannot be underplayed right now. Nor can the fact that Trump refuses to truly act to flatten the curve and step up the production of hospital supplies and ICU beds in first, the worst hit cities, and then seeing that it continues to go to the next wave of places.
None of our cities are to blame. The Federal Government clearly botched this from the very beginning.
From WAPO: “From party to pandemic: New Orleans fears Mardis Gras fueled coronavirus outbreak as cases spike”.
More than a million dancing, singing, bead-catching celebrants packed the streets of the French Quarter and other venues across this city in the weeks leading up to the sprawling open-air party that is Mardi Gras.
There was little worry during the February festivities about the new virus that had infected a few dozen people in other parts of the country. The city’s top health official believed the flu “is far more dangerous right now than the coronavirus,” she told the Times-Picayune/New Orleans Advocate newspaper.
Thirteen days later, on March 9, Louisiana reported its first case of covid-19. Then came another, and another. Clusters broke out in several nursing homes. The cases popping up across the state were not easily linked to each other, meaning that a galloping community spread was already underway.
A terrible realization began to dawn on residents and political leaders: The famous bonhomie of the world’s biggest free party may have helped supercharge one of the most rapid spreads of the coronavirus, which is now threatening to overwhelm Louisiana’s health-care system and potentially make the state one of the next epicenters.
“We had people from all over the world. We also had the spread of this virus, and people did not realize it was spreading,” said Rebekah Gee, a former state health secretary now on the faculty of Louisiana State University’s medical school. “So people not only caught beads, but they caught covid-19.”
As of Thursday, Louisiana had reported 2,305 cases and 83 deaths related to coronavirus — with about two-thirds of the cases and deaths in the New Orleans metro area. During the first two weeks of known infections, the virus was coursing through Louisiana at an extraordinarily rapid pace, according to an analysis by Gary Wagner, a professor at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. He found that the rate of growth in that period was the highest in the world.
One of the biggest barriers to progress is Jared Kushner’s Shadow Task force which CREW says violates multiple laws.
Jared Kushner’s shadow coronavirus task force appears to be violating both the Presidential Records Act (PRA) and Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA) by using private email accounts with no assurance their communications are being preserved and by meeting in secret, according to a letter sent today by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW). The failure of the White House to comply with any of the PRA and FACA requirements leaves the public in the dark about the work the shadow task force has done and the influence of private industries on the administration’s response to the coronavirus pandemic.
Kushner’s task force, composed of a team of allies from within the government and representatives from private industries, has operated adjacent to the official government task force spearheaded by Vice President Pence. With confusion over the shadow task force’s role and who its members are, and reports that the members of the shadow task force communicate using private email accounts, CREW has reason to believe the White House is not creating and maintaining accurate and complete records of the shadow task force’s activities as required by the PRA.
“If there was ever a time we need records and transparency, this is it. As the seriousness of this pandemic continues to grow, the public needs to understand who in the White House is making policy decisions, who from private industry is influencing those decisions, and how decisions to address this pandemic are being made,” said CREW Executive Director Noah Bookbinder. “After this crisis has passed, we will need to be able to look back at how this administration responded to the situation and have the full picture of what was going on behind closed doors in order to understand what we could do better in the future.”
The PRA requires the president and his staff to document, preserve and maintain records of “the activities, deliberations, decisions, and policies that reflect the performance of the President’s constitutional, statutory, or other official or ceremonial duties.” With Kushner at the head, the shadow task force’s development and implementation of federal strategies to address the coronavirus pandemic fall within these requirements.
The shadow task force also appears to fall under FACA provisions, which are triggered whenever a committee within the Executive Office of the President is advising the president and is not “composed wholly of full-time, or permanent part-time, officers or employees of the Federal Government.” The FACA prohibits such committees from being “inappropriately influenced by the appointing authority or by any special interest.” Contrary to the FACA’s requirements, the shadow task force is operating in secret, with neither the members of Kushner’s committee nor their interests fully disclosed to the public. Understanding and preserving the committee’s actions and conversations will be key in understanding how the administration ultimately decided to approach its COVID-19 response efforts.
Notice the part about Kushner’s private emails.
Trump has pulled back the offer of ventilators to NYC, demonized Washington State Governor Jay Inslee, and now appears to be attacking GM and FORD who are simply waiting for the proper channels to get activated. WTF?
The White House had been preparing to reveal on Wednesday a joint venture between General Motors and Ventec Life Systems that would allow for the production of as many as 80,000 desperately needed ventilators to respond to an escalating pandemic when word suddenly came down that the announcement was off.
The decision to cancel the announcement, government officials say, came after the Federal Emergency Management Agency said it needed more time to assess whether the estimated cost was prohibitive. That price tag was more than $1 billion, with several hundred million dollars to be paid upfront to General Motors to retool a car parts plant in Kokomo, Ind., where the ventilators would be made with Ventec’s technology.
Government officials said that the deal might still happen but that they are examining at least a dozen other proposals. And they contend that an initial promise that the joint venture could turn out 20,000 ventilators in short order had shrunk to 7,500, with even that number in doubt. Longtime emergency managers at FEMA are working with military officials to sort through the competing offers and federal procurement rules while under pressure to give President Trump something to announce.
But in an interview Thursday night with Sean Hannity, the president played down the need for ventilators.
This is an interesting headline from a Michigan: “‘After Trump Attacks Whitmer, She Says Vendors Aren’t Sending Desperately Needed Coronavirus Supplies. “They’re being told not to send stuff to Michigan.”‘
After President Donald Trump issued scathing comments about Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, saying she’s “not stepping up,” and “doesn’t know what’s going on,” she told WWJ 950 the state is having trouble getting the equipment they need to fight the novel coronavirus.
“What I’ve gotten back is that vendors with whom we’ve procured contracts — They’re being told not to send stuff to Michigan,” Whitmer said live on air. “It’s really concerning, I reached out to the White House last night and asked for a phone call with the president, ironically at the time this stuff was going on.”
The other stuff was Trump speaking with Sean Hannity on FOX News about Whitmer, a Democrat who has said very pointed things about the federal government’s lack of coordinated response to the coronavirus crisis. Trump said of Whitmer, “She is a new governor, and it’s not been pleasant … “We’ve had a big problem with the young — a woman governor. You know who I’m talking about — from Michigan. We don’t like to see the complaints.”
Michigan’s request for disaster assistance has not yet been approved by the White House, and Trump told Hannity he’s still weighing it.
“She doesn’t get it done, and we send her a lot. Now, she wants a declaration of emergency, and, you know, we’ll have to make a decision on that. But Michigan is a very important state. I love the people of Michigan.”
In her public addresses closing schools, bars and restaurants, and issuing a shelter in place order, Whitmer has complained about the federal’s government lack of organization and state assistance, but she told WWJ she has never personally attacked the president.
“It’s very distressing,” she said about Trump’s attack, noting that she was only one of several governors who noted “the federal preparation was concerning.”
But she apparently struck a nerve with the president. And now the question is whether the leader of the free world could possibly take it out on medical professionals, patients and communities who desperately need help.
“I’ve been uniquely singled out,” Whitmer said. “I don’t go into personal attacks, I don’t have time for that, I don’t have energy for that, frankly. All of our focus has to be on COVID-19.”
This continued pettiness ruling our National Public Health Policy and Actions should be called out immediately. I still believe no press outlet other tha CSPAN should be carrying the Trump’s political and disinformation-laden pressers. They can edit him out and play the Science portion and quit scaring the rest of us. But look, he didn’t cancel his damned rallies during the same Mardi Gras period.
So, I guess if me sitting home is the best I can do to help this, here I sit. Still, we rely heavily on our Congress Critters to do the right thing right now. You still might want to give them a ring and an earful. Please be safe!
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Monday in my Bubble Read
Posted: October 28, 2019 Filed under: Hillary Clinton, Hillary Clinton: Her Campaign for All of Us | Tags: Chelsea Clinton, Melba's, New Orleans, Octavia books, The Book of Gutsy Women 26 Comments
Good Morning Sky Dancers!
I went to the other timeline for a very brief moment on Saturday and I’m trying to stay in the good timeline for awhile. Today, we can stay in our bubble. I’m giving myself permission to believe that most of us that live in this country have just about had enough of the last few years. I personally have endured enough. Join me in a bubble with “Gutsy Women” and the book tour that came to New Orleans with its authors Hillary Rodham Clinton and Chelsean Clinton. It’s a delightful book and I had a delightful time including getting to sing happy birthday to Hillary and handing her my Krewe of Hillary Campaign button while telling her that all her New Orleans Volunteers wore them proudly. I will always be with her. Fellow Hillary Volunteer Sharon Normand caught the moment on the photo at the top here. Yup, that’s my hand!
But Clinton received a rapturous response Saturday when she and her daughter Chelsea spoke at a sold-out event at St. Charles Avenue Baptist Church in New Orleans about “The Book of Gutsy Women — Favorite Stories of Courage and Resilience.”
The 450-page book by both mother and daughter profiles more than 100 women, in politics (Shirley Chisholm and Ann Richards), athletics (Abby Wambach and Venus and Serena Williams), medicine (Florence Nightingale and Clara Barton) and other fields, including Ruby Bridges, who integrated an all-white elementary school in New Orleans in 1960.
The 900 people who filled the Uptown church heard stories about famous and little-known women for $45, which included a copy of the book from Octavia Books, which sponsored the event.
“I’ve been a fan of hers for my entire life,” said Jennifer Greene, a New Orleans attorney originally from Little Rock. “I wouldn’t have missed this for the world.”
Neither Clinton mentioned President Donald Trump by name.
The closest came when Chelsea answered a question about the rise of bullying in the United States.
“The bullies are often quoting the president, particularly when girls are being bullied,” Chelsea said. “It’s just so painful to me that his demeaning treatment of women broadly but specifically with my mom and Speaker (Nancy) Pelosi and others is clearly being watched by kids across the country and often has given further motivation to the meanness already there.”
It really was just a conversation about how Chelsea and Hillary had picked the women for the book. Chelsea told us that that it had been significantly downsized given the original number of essays they had written. Some of the women were historical and some still lived or had lived recently so there some quite personal stories too. It was nice to be around nice people talking primarily about nice things. I long for the days when we could discuss things more politely and civilly.
When I was a little girl, my family subscribed to Life magazine, which came to our house every week on Friday. When I came home from school, I’d eagerly grab it and lie down on the floor in our living room to read it before I had to set the table for dinner. It was in those pages that I first encountered Senator Margaret Chase Smith, who was the first example I ever remember seeing of a woman elected official. Following her career—from the campaigns that led to her becoming the first woman to serve in both houses of Congress to her history-making candidacy for president of the United States in 1964—shaped my understanding of politics and public service. She embodied the thrill of breaking barriers—and the challenges that come with being “the first.”
Born and raised in Maine, Margaret discovered a passion for politics when her husband, Clyde Harold Smith, was elected to Congress. She campaigned for him and, after he was elected, joined him in Washington. During his first term, he became gravely ill, and Margaret stepped in to fill as many of his obligations as she could. She traveled back and forth between Washington and Maine, appearing at events on behalf of her husband. With Margaret’s help, Clyde was reelected in 1938. His health, however, declined quickly. In the spring of 1940, he put out a statement urging his friends and supporters to stand behind Margaret if he could not run in the upcoming election. “I know of no one who has the full knowledge of my ideas and plans or is as well qualified as she is, to carry on these ideas and my unfinished work for my district.” He died the next day.
Margaret easily won the special election to serve out her husband’s unexpired term. At the time, most of the few women who served in office had been elected or appointed to fill a seat vacated by a husband or father. It was so common it even had a name: “the widow’s mandate.” Though she had never planned on it, Margaret was now the state’s first woman member of Congress. (“Mrs. Smith Goes to Washington,” read one headline.)
Oh, and the Clintons stopped by Melba’s which is probably the most unique restaurant/literacy center/laundromat you’d ever want to see! And, did I mention the food? MMMMMMmmm …
On Saturday morning the Creole gumbo was simmering, the daiquiri machines were churning and the dryers were spinning at Melba’s and Wash World, the connected po-boy shop and laundry at Elysian Fields Avenue in New Orleans.
Then the sleek black SUVs pulled up and out stepped former secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton, former president Bill Clinton and their daughter Chelsea Clinton.
The political power family was not here to talk politics.
Instead, they were visiting the unique literacy program and family learning initiative that has taken root at Melba’s and Wash World with the support of their foundation. It’s a program they plan to bring nationwide in the months ahead.
Melba’s and Wash World together present a kaleidoscope of local art and New Orleans emblems around the business of doing some laundry and grabbing a quick bite.
Earlier this year, it also debuted its latest feature, the Family Read & Play Space. A colorful niche by the washers and dryers has kid-sized furniture, toys, coloring materials and a collection of books for a wide range of young readers. The aim is to turn the time families spend together on a laundry errand into an investment in a child’s future, strengthening early literacy and engaging their curiosity.
“We’re thrilled with what they’ve done here,” said Hillary Rodham Clinton.
But back to to the book event! They took two questions from the audience. Both were from little girls. One of the little girls just wrote you are my president. The other asked about bullying. Chelsea had some great stories and advice. She’s really a most articulate and impressive young woman.
The event’s most personal moment happened when a 9-year-old child in the audience asked the Clintons how they stand up to mean comments. Chelsea said she has gotten used to getting hate all her life because of who her parents were. People told her when she was 8 years old that they wished she had been aborted. When Bill Clinton was in the White House, everyone from Rush Limbaugh to Saturday Night Live made fun of teenage Chelsea’s appearance.
As painful as that experience was, she’s grateful because it’s left her better able to handle the abuse that many famous women have to deal with in the social media age. Today, she said, the most hateful comments come anti-abortion commenters, because of her pro-choice stance, and anti-vaccination activists, because she’s a professor of public health.
“I’m really thankful that that happened at a young age, because I think that has served me well, particularly in this moment we’re living through when there’s lots, sadly, of ugliness,” Chelsea Clinton said.
Hillary Clinton praised her daughter for always responding with politeness and “cheerful shade.” She said there will always be hate in society; what’s important is that “leaders in a democracy like ours are supposed to be trying to bring people together. They’re certainly not supposed to be fomenting bullying and hatred.”
She quoted what her husband Bill Clinton said in his recent eulogy for U.S. Rep. Elijah Cummings: “Freedom cannot last if half of us are supposed to hate the other half about everything.”
Secretary Clinton never explicitly mentioned Donald Trump, the man she lost the 2016 election to, but he lingered as the elephant in the room.
At one point the moderator, Susan Larson, asked her to talk about “the role of anger as a motivating force for women.” Clinton gave a sighing, drawn-out, “OK …” and the entire room burst into laughter and applause.
“I think what’s important here is that the anger that you’re talking about is anger at injustice,” Clinton continued. “It’s anger at inequality… It’s that kind of anger that can motivate the movement into courage and into taking action.”
So, for me, today is a day where I just may continue to leave the TV off. Between watching the service for Elijah Cummings and listening to our last president’s words and then spending Saturday awash with tales of Gutsy Women by Gutsy Women I really want to stay in the bubble today and maybe for awhile longer.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Monday Reads: Right now, we can choose between keeping our Republic or losing it
Posted: June 18, 2018 Filed under: Afternoon Reads | Tags: Jeff Sessions, New Orleans, Sheriffs 58 Comments
Good Afternoon Sky Dancers!
I placed a call to Boomer last night to make sure she had the phone numbers down here for some criminal attorney friends of mine because I was deep into working with folks to start planning protests in New Orleans and an opportunity popped up for this morning. I wasn’t actively planning on getting arrested but it seemed likely that there would be arrests.
I was getting ready to head out when I was stopped by the reminder of a meeting that I had completely forgotten but had to attend. During the meeting helicopters flew low over the house heading downtown. I was really startled. I’ve attended protests and rallies before but I know how important these would be. My spidey sense knew there were going to be arrests and there were. Some guy also tried to run over a protester with a pick up truck.
This sky is still that weird yellow color indicating bad weather approaching as I start looking for local news. The insidious mix of bad policing practices, racism, and an Administration marching us towards Fascism means it is rightly lit. The sky is a sick color.
AG Jeff Sessions–the oldest living confederate widow–and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen–who is sounding more like a character from an Orwell book each passing day–are in New Orleans addressing Monday’s opening session of the National Sheriff’s Association annual conference. Law enforcement and immigration were the topics. Protests were the order of the day. There were 5 arrests.
There was a woman hit and injured by a cursing truck driver who took off unarrested and unfollowed. I rabbled the troops last night so I’m probably back on some list. It’s been since the Nixon years I’ve had that distinction except now I’m on social security and semi-retired. The tits are getting saggy but the ability to know right from wrong has never been stronger. I’m not a university student any more. I am a university professor.
The DHS Secretary is doing what all the women employed in this administration are doing. Lying for the big guy. Gaslighting for the big guy. Signing on to the Direct Express to the lowest hell realm for the big guy.
From HuffPo: “DHS Secretary Says There’s No Family Separation Policy ‘Period’. Last week, DHS announced that nearly 2,000 kids had been separated from their parents during a six-week period ending last month.” It’s mislead the Sheeple Monday. Trump must be assigning them to either Putin or Kim Jong Un for training sessions on Despot Support and Propaganda Techniques.
“This misreporting by members, press and advocacy groups must stop,” Nielsen wrote in a series of tweets Sunday evening. “It is irresponsible and unproductive. As I have said many times before, if you are seeking asylum for your family, there is no reason to break the law and illegally cross between ports of entry.”
We do not have a policy of separating families at the border,” she continued. “Period.”
The Convention Center is about 2 miles down the river road from me. It’s a short bike ride or bus ride there. Louisiana Sheriffs are living up to their image per Raw Story. New Orleans protesters are fierce.
A woman hit by a truck driver while protesting a speech given by Attorney General Jeff Sessions in New Orleans Monday said the man driving was shouting about the demonstrators — and that he wasn’t stopped after colliding with her.
John R. Stanton, a national correspondent for BuzzFeed News, tweeted that Sarah Morrison, the woman struck by the truck, told him the driver “was cursing at protesters before he hit her.” “[New Orleans Police Department] didn’t stop him,” Stanton continued, adding that they took a report from the woman who is shaken by alright after the ordeal.
Here’s some background information from the Raw Story link.
The woman, identified by the New Orleans Times-Picayune as “Sarah Morris,” said she was protesting Sessions’ speech in light of the Trump Justice Department‘s recent policy changes that separate children from their parents when detained by immigration officials.
“This isn’t what our country is about, taking children and caging them and they are doing this in our land,” the woman said. “Where does it go from here? Where does it end?”
The woman also told the Times-Picayune she doesn’t believe she was hit intentionally, and that she suffered a hit on the head and had cuts on her knee that drew blood.
Demonstrators didn’t find out about the attorney general’s speech at the National Sheriffs’ Association or the planned counter-protest until hours before it was slated to begin. He appeared alongside Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA).
Subsequent reports from the protest revealed that police from multiple Louisiana parishes had begun arresting demonstrators.
Raw Story has now included an update.
UPDATE: In a statement to Raw Story, NOPD said it is investigating the driver hitting the protester outside the Sessions speech. Although NOPD interviewed the driver, “no charges have been filed nor have any arrests been made at this time.”
Meanwhile, Sessions took the opportunity on stage to show his support for law enforcement, call for longer sentences for criminals and address to controversy at the US-Mexico border where families are being separated by authorities as they illegally enter the country.
“There’s an important conversation in this country about whether we want to be a country of laws or if we want to be a country without borders,” Sessions said. “We cannot and will not encourage people to bring their children – or other children – to the country illegally by giving them immunity in the process.”
Sessions directly addressed the controversy surrounding new video and images of children being detained in cells and cages after their parents are arrested for illegally crossing the border.“We do not want to separate children from their parents, we do not want parents to bring their children in illegally,” he said. “We can not and will not encourage people to bring their children or other children to the country unlawfully by giving them immunity.”
Sessions continues to gaslight us on the process and existence of asylum.
Over the weekend, I pasted the links and quotes to the Immigration and Custom site where it clearly stated this as the way to seek asylum.
To obtain asylum through the affirmative asylum process you must be physically present in the United States. You may apply for asylum status regardless of how you arrived in the United States or your current immigration status.
You must apply for asylum within one year of the date of their last arrival in the United States, unless you can show:
- Changed circumstances that materially affect your eligibility for asylum or extraordinary circumstances relating to the delay in filing
- You filed within a reasonable amount of time given those circumstances.
You may apply for affirmative asylum by submitting Form I-589, Application for Asylum and for Withholding of Removal, to USCIS. See Form I 589, Application for Asylum and for Withholding of Removal for instructions on how to file for asylum,.
If your case is not approved and you do not have a legal immigration status, we will issue a Form I-862, Notice to Appear, and forward (or refer) your case to an Immigration Judge at the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR). The Immigration Judge conducts a ‘de novo’ hearing of the case. This means that the judge conducts a new hearing and issues a decision that is independent of the decision made by USCIS. If we do not have jurisdiction over your case, the Asylum Office will issue an I-863, Notice of Referral to Immigration Judge, for an asylum-only hearing. See ‘Defensive Asylum Processing With EOIR’ below if this situation applies to you.
Affirmative asylum applicants are rarely detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). You may live in the United States while your application is pending before USCIS. If you are found ineligible, you can remain in the United States while your application is pending with the Immigration Judge. Most asylum applicants are not authorized to work.
I felt I needed to capture all this as it seems disappeared at times.
Former First Lady Laura Bush has penned an editorial. She knows what this policy represents. All good people do of faith and of reason alone. This a take from CBS.
Former first lady Laura Bush criticized the Trump administration over the practice of separating undocumented migrant families, taking children from their parents at the border. “I live in a border state,” Bush wrote in a Washington Post op-ed that was posted Sunday evening. “I appreciate the need to enforce and protect our international boundaries, but this zero-tolerance policy is cruel. It is immoral. And it breaks my heart.”
She continues, “Our government should not be in the business of warehousing children in converted box stores or making plans to place them in tent cities in the desert outside of El Paso.” She called the images “eerily reminiscent of the Japanese American internment camps of World War II, now considered to have been one of the most shameful episodes in U.S. history.” (While the images may be similar, the Japanese Americans were, in fact, U.S. citizens who already lived in the United States when they were forcibly removed to internment camps)
For Bush, the practice of separating families threatens our national identity as “a moral nation.”
“We pride ourselves on believing that people should be seen for the content of their character, not the color of their skin. We pride ourselves on acceptance,” she writes. “If we are truly that country, then it is our obligation to reunite these detained children with their parents — and to stop separating parents and children in the first place.”
Though everyone agrees that the U.S. immigration system “isn’t working,” she says, “the injustice of zero tolerance is not the answer.”
It is very rare for Bush, the wife of ex-President George W. Bush, to wade into political controversies, but perhaps this exception is less surprising because it is in keeping with her longtime advocacy for children. In her op-ed, she writes that while the material needs of the migrant children are being met with “beds, toys, crayons, a playground and diaper changes,” at shelters run by by the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement, “the people working at the shelter had been instructed not to pick up or touch the children to comfort them. Imagine not being able to pick up a child who is not yet out of diapers.”
It reminded her of her late mother-in-law, Barbara Bush, who picked up and comforted a young child dying of HIV/AIDS. “She, who after the death of her 3-year-old daughter knew what it was to lose a child, believed that every child is deserving of human kindness, compassion and love,” wrote Laura Bush. “In 2018, can we not as a nation find a kinder, more compassionate and more moral answer to this
You may read her words at WAPO.
It’s clear to nearly ever one that this is a deeply immoral and indefensible position. Yet, every administration official and Trump cult follower are doing everything they can to avoid directly discussing the situation. I’ve never seen such Orwellian pretzel twists of logic and words in my life. If any of this stands, we’re clearly on the road to an autocratic, fascist, dictatorship what ever laws our on our books. The new meme is “come to the table” which buys into the lie that this is a law passed by democrats. What it asks for is a negotiation with a kidnapper, asking for ransom, and demanding an apology for making him do the deed.
Each Republican elected official–including the ones that preface their surrender with some form of objection–is leading us down the path to ruin and evil. What causes this illness? This acceptance of pure unadulterated evil?
Nearly every day, voters have been confronted with heart wrenching stories about immigrant children being separated from their parents upon crossing the border into the United States.
The president incorrectly blames his administration’s policy on Democrats, but regardless of his attempt to pass the responsibility, self-identified Republicans have his back, according to a new Ipsos poll done exclusively for The Daily Beast.
The poll of roughly 1,000 adults aged 18 and over, and conducted June 14-15, asked respondents if they agreed with the following statement: “It is appropriate to separate undocumented immigrant parents from their children when they cross the border in order to discourage others from crossing the border illegally.”
Of those surveyed, 27 percent of the overall respondents agreed with it, while 56% disagreed with the statement. Yet, Republicans leaned slightly more in favor, with 46% agreeing with the statement and 32 percent disagreeing. Meanwhile, 14 percent of Democrats surveyed supported it and only 29% of Independents were in favor.
The sample, according to Ipsos, included 339 Democrats, 335 Republicans and 204 Independents.
On Saturday, President Trump continued to falsely assert that Democrats were to blame for the horrific stories of families being torn apart.
You may watch the speeches from Sessions, Nielsen, and the shame of Louisiana, Congressman Steve KKK Scalise here.
You may read about the even more shameful Trump words here.
Trump continued to cast blame on Democrats Monday, as he detoured from planned remarks on U.S. space policy to defend his administration’s policies. “I say it’s very strongly the Democrats’ fault,” he said at the White House.
“The United States will not be a migrant camp and it will not be a refugee holding facility,” he added. “Not on my watch.”
The one Republican taking action is the Republican Governor of Massachusetts. From WGBH: “Baker Cancels National Guard Deployment To Border, Citing ‘Inhumane’ Treatment Of Children And Families.”
Governor Charlie Baker is canceling the deployment of Massachusetts National Guard troops to the border in light of recent reports about the Trump Administration’s practice of separating immigrant children from families.
“Governor Baker directed the National Guard not to send any assets or personnel to the Southwest border today because the federal government’s current actions are resulting in the inhumane treatment of children,” said Baker communications director Lizzy Guyton in a statement sent to WGBH News.
State officials announced early in June that Massachusetts National Guard troops would be deployed to the border to support in security operations. One helicopter, aircrew, and military analysts from Massachusetts were set to head to the border at the end of June.
The crew was to “provide aviation reconnaissance to offer an additional tool for observation and tracking of unlawful activity in the region,” according to the Mass National Guard.
The cancellation comes amid increased scrutiny over the Trump Administration’s practice of separating children from families at the border, in some cases detaining children in makeshift facilities and, in one facility in Texas, cages. The practice has been condemned by the United Nations, a coalition of Catholic bishops, and numerous public officials, including former First Lady Laura Bush.
Previously, when asked about the Trump Administration’s practice of separation of children and families on Boston Public Radio in May, Baker said he had “ a huge problem with that.”
The deployment was a response to a proclamation signed by President Trump in April calling on National Guard troops to assist in securing the border. The request was made by invoking a statute of U.S. law known as “Title 32,” which allows governors to review requests for National Guard troops and deploy at their own determination, and troops remain under state control. (A “Title 10,” request, on the other hand, is involuntary and troops operate under federal control.)
It’s raining now but that odd yellow color remains. Maybe the wisdom beings are pissing on the Convention Center roof. It would be an irony given it would likely enthrall the wanna be despot planted by Russia and angry WiPiPo. Golden showers on his police state.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
peej
Carissa
bostonboomer
dakinikat
ecocatwoman
grayslady
mablue2
JJ Lopez aka Minkoff Minx
NW Luna
peggysue22
quixote
skydancingguestblogger
Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)
Sky Dancing 
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