Finally Friday Reads: What’s a democracy to do?

Posted: April 12, 2024 | Author: | Filed under: just because | Tags: , , , , , , , , , | 12 Comments

“You know, when the jury is seated, Trump won’t be able to contain himself.” John Buss, @Repeat1968

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

We’ve had incredibly stormy weather down here this week. Almost all the streets a few blocks downhill from me flooded, and Uptown became a surfing safari. Even City Hall was closed for the day. The winds were wild. A tornado severely damaged a small city on the North Shore close to the Mississippi Border. Fortunately, I had just bought groceries, and the electricity stayed on. It was a good week to just read a book in many ways. This weekend is the quiet before the next storm. It’s a named storm like many that go into the history books. It’s officially entitled “The People of the State of New York v. Donald J. Trump.” We all know it as the Stormy Daniels Hush Money Case.

The first place to check to get the facts of the case as we know it is Forbes Magazine. Staff writer Alison Durkee has a bulleted timeline to highlight everything known to date. “Trump And Stormy Daniels: What To Know About Hush Money Saga That Led To Ex-President’s First Criminal Trial.”

Former President Donald Trump will go on trial in Manhattan next week as he faces felony charges for falsifying bank records—the first of his criminal cases to go to trial—which will mark the culmination of a yearslong saga stemming from his alleged affair with adult film actress Stormy Daniels and a “hush money” payment made during his 2016 campaign to keep her quiet.

Kristal did not want to hear any news yesterday afternoon. I imagine a lot of us are Kristal.

This is a historical trial. He’s the first Former President to be criminally indicted. Trump faces 34 felony charges of falsifying business records in the first degree. These charges carry a maximum sentence of 136 years if convicted on all counts. Since Trump is a criminal defendant on parole, he must attend court daily. Unless they can sedate him with tranquilizers that would stun an elephant, I doubt he can hold it together. You see, my friend John agrees with that assessment. The list of witnesses is trickling out through the media. This is from MSNBC.

NBC News obtained a list of potential witnesses for the prosecution in Trump’s hush money trial. The list includes Stormy Daniels, Karen McDougal, Michael Cohen, and Hope Hicks among other Trump associates.

Politico has a long story today about Michael Cohen and his testimony next week. “Michael Cohen on the Trump Trial: Prepare To Be Surprised. Trump’s former attorney on the hush money trial, how he’s preparing for life as the key witness and who he expects Trump will choose as a 2024 running mate.” Ryan Lizza interviewed Cohen, which is the central part of the article.

Trump’s defense is going to be to paint you as an untrustworthy witness. He’s going to cite your guilty plea for lying to Congress, and the fact that the Justice Department declined to offer you a cooperation deal because prosecutors thought you lied to them. And he’ll say you’re out for revenge and that you have a financial incentive to see him convicted. So how do you defend yourself from those accusations?

I wish that when people state that “you lied to Congress,” that you’d do me the courtesy — do yourself the courtesy — of finishing the sentence. What is the sentence? That I had done that, really, for the benefit of Donald J. Trump. And that lie centered around the number of times that I had stated that I spoke to Donald about the failed Trump Tower Moscow real estate project — in conjunction with other lawyers Jay Sekulow, Abbe Lowell, Ty Cobb, with other individuals like Alan Garten or Ivanka [Trump] and Jared [Kushner]. Everybody worked on that statement. I was just the fool who went ahead and read it into the record and submitted it. But what benefit did I have in terms of saying three times versus 10? That’s the lie: That I claimed to have spoken to Donald three times about the failed Trump Tower Moscow real estate project, when the true answer was 10.

I appreciate you putting it in context. With these other accusations, is that the way you approach it: You put those things in context for the jury so that they understand them, and what sounds like a dramatic allegation can be defanged?

Absolutely. There is a ton of misinformation, disinformation, malinformation that has been put out there by Trump and acolytes literally since the Steele dossier. We all know that the Steele dossier was completely inaccurate, as it related to me. I don’t even talk about any of the other allegations raised in that garbage document.

Hey, look what I found on the side of the street while walking Temple. You’d think gold spray paint and a Sharpie signature would last longer!

Can you imagine the energy in that courtroom when he takes the stand, and Trump has to just sit there? So, most of us know the basis of this story and have been pummeled by it for such a long time. I might as well go to that level since so many of these concerns are about killing tabloid stories. This is the first time I’ve seen someone get the dirt on Melania’s reaction to the allegations. This is from HuffPo. It’s reported by Ed Mazza. “Ex-Aide Reveals What ‘Humiliated’ Melania Trump Did After Stormy Daniels News. Stephanie Grisham also explained why the ex-president is probably “quite worried” about his wife right now.”

A former aide to Melania Trump said former President Donald Trump’s looming trial in the Stormy Daniels hush money case could be causing some stress in their marriage.

“I spent a ton of time with her when the news was breaking about Stormy Daniels,” Stephanie Grisham said on CNN on Wednesday. “And she didn’t take it lightly at all.”

Daniels claimed to have had an affair with Trump from 2006-2007, while Melania Trump was caring for the couple’s then-infant child. Grisham said separate allegations of an affair with Playboy Playmate Karen McDougal also led to tensions in the White House.

“We went to the State of the Union separately. She refused to walk out to Marine One with him because she didn’t want to be like Hillary Clinton and standing by her man,” said Grisham, who was chief of staff to the then-first lady before becoming White House press secretary under Donald Trump. “She’s a very independent and strong woman.”

She said she believed Melania Trump would “push” her husband to go on the witness stand during the hush money trial, which is set to begin next week, to defend himself in public.

“This is very, very embarrassing for her. It’s humiliating for her,” she said. “And I can guarantee you that she’s not happy right now and that he’s quite worried about that.”

You may watch the video here on CNN. Frankly, I just couldn’t get past the Botox lips. While this is all historical, sensational, and tacky, I still have this question. The analysis is also from Politico. It’s provided by James Romoser. “How Donald Trump Gets Special Treatment in the Legal System. The former president rails against a “two-tiered system of justice.” But he’s the one benefiting from it.” This is what my Inquiring Mind wants to know.

A firebrand politician named Donald is about to stand trial. Just a few days before jury selection, he goes on TV to slam the charges as baseless and biased.

“The FBI and the Justice Department,” he insists, have “targeted” their political opponents in a burst of partisan persecution.

The rhetoric sounds familiar, but this is not a story about Donald Trump. It’s about a man named Don Hill, a former Dallas City Council member who was facing bribery charges 15 years ago.

The telltale clue that this isn’t about Trump is what happened next: The judge, upset by the attempt to taint the jury pool, slapped the politician-turned-defendant with criminal contempt and ultimately sentenced him to 30 days in jail for violating a gag order.

Today, Trump routinely spouts invective far more inflammatory than anything Hill said. He denigrates prosecutors. He lies about his cases. He vilifies the judges overseeing them — and then vilifies their wives and daughters, too. Yet Trump has never faced the swift repercussions that were imposed on Hill — and are routinely imposed on other defendants in America.

Instead, Trump gets special treatment.

“I can’t imagine any other defendant posting on social media about a judge’s family and not being very quickly incarcerated,” said Russell Gold, a law professor at the University of Alabama.

As Trump prepares to begin his first criminal trial on Monday in New York, the tolerance of his tirades is perhaps the most glaring sign of the judicial system’s Trump exceptionalism. But it’s far from the only example. Over the past year, in ways large and small, in criminal cases and civil ones, Trump has consistently been given more freedom and more privileges than virtually any other defendant in his shoes.

Some judges in Trump’s cases may have afforded him unique leeway in hopes of avoiding any appearance that they are meddling in the 2024 campaign. Indeed, Trump’s role as a presidential candidate — one who is always eager to play the martyr — complicates the task of prosecutors and judges eager to lower the temperature of the proceedings. Penalizing Trump before he’s ever convicted of anything could stir a backlash and trigger more heat, not less.

Tom Toles Editorial Cartoon

The central question to every discussion I have with anybody concerning Trump and his trial antics is, How The FUCK does this guy get away with it? The interesting analysis this week that Kristal avoided was the comparison between OJ Simpson’s epic trial and Trump’s endless trials. The answer is, “And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.” It took me a while to determine the resounding difference between my black and white colleagues’ reactions to the trial verdict as we watched its announcement in our corporate lawyer’s office. It was, for once, the system did to a rich black guy (football star, football announcer, and movie star) what they always do for rich and famous white men. OJ had an excellent lawyer and the prosecutors weren’t up to the challenge.

The jury saw the opportunity to make a point. Johnny Cochrane was a well-paid and extremely brilliant lawyer who knew how to do his job. I can’t say Donald will have that exact representation. Kaitlin Collins at CNN has this story. “Trump attorney who became a crucial witness against him has departed legal team.” OJ eventually got caught doing more crimes and did time. Will one of these criminal suits put this asshole in jail please?

More from Romoser.

But even in the civil fraud case — which by all accounts was a devastating loss for Trump and his businesses — there were nonetheless signs of special deference. Justice Arthur Engoron, who oversaw the trial, was extraordinarily tolerant of Trump’s courtroom antics and outbursts. During a day of testimony in November, Trump essentially converted the witness box into a campaign stump — a privilege few other witnesses would receive.

Engoron ultimately issued the nearly half-billion-dollar penalty, and Trump seemed headed toward a financial crisis when he was unable to secure a bond to stave off the immediate enforcement of the verdict.

But after Trump complained to a New York appeals court, a panel of judges intervened with an unexpected 11th-hour reprieve, issuing a terse, unexplained order that sharply reduced the bond amount that Trump had to post while he appeals the verdict. The decision ensured that Trump wouldn’t have to start selling off assets and that James couldn’t start seizing them.

The American legal system is currently undergoing a Trump-induced stress test, one that will only intensify when Trump’s Manhattan trial begins on Monday.

Each day, during breaks in trial, he’ll stand in the hallway outside the courtroom and denounce the charges. He’ll continue to test the bounds of the gag order that the judge in the case, Justice Juan Merchan, recently imposed. He may even mutter “witch hunt” within earshot of jurors, as he’s done before.

Voters will be watching. So will the prosecutors in his other criminal cases — all of whom are trying, but so far failing, to bring him to trial before Election Day. Those prosecutors have left unsaid the reason why the timing matters so much, but everyone involved knows it: If Trump is elected president again, all pending criminal cases will stop in their tracks.

This is an extremely long article, but it is definitely worth reading. It capsulizes everything most of us have been wondering about these long Trump-filled years. One more Trump Trial note, and I’m off for the weekend. This is from The Daily Beast and reported by Jose Pagliery. “Trump Bond’s Cayman Connection ‘Stinks to High Heaven.’ The company that saved Donald Trump with a $175 million bank fraud bond is playing an insurance game that has experts questioning whether New York will ever see the money.”

When the questionably leveraged company that rescued Donald Trump with a last-minute $175 million court bond insured itself with its own parent company, it raised concerns about how the company was playing with its finances.

But now, as even more details come out about that parent company—particularly that it’s based in the Cayman Islands, a notorious tax haven—the concerns are just piling up.

Former industry regulators and investigators told The Daily Beast that Knight Specialty Insurance Company being financially backed by a firm based in the Cayman Islands should raise eyebrows at the New York AG’s office—particularly because companies frequently organize in the Cayman Islands not just to avoid taxes, but also to minimize visibility into its business practices, avoid more stringent U.S. regulations, and make liability harder should things go wrong.

All of those concerns could come into play if the New York Attorney General has to chase the company down for the money Trump currently owes for committing bank fraud.

“This just stinks to high heaven,” said Dave Jones, who oversaw the nation’s largest insurance market as California’s insurance commissioner for seven years until 2018.

“Taken in its totality, this dog does not hunt. Along every step of the way, this purported bond is problematic. It’s just one issue after another that calls into question whether this bond could ever possibly satisfy the judgment,” said Jones, who’s now the director of the Climate Risk Initiative at University of California Berkeley.

Former regulators described a potential worst-case scenario: Trump loses his bank fraud case on appeal and refuses to pay, the insurance company can’t actually come up with the money, and the New York Attorney General runs into problems chasing after a second company that never explicitly promised to pay this particular court judgment—and is based in a little-regulated foreign jurisdiction in the Caribbean Sea.

“The risk here is the company will not have the liquidity to pay on the bond when demanded, and the beneficiary of this bond, the New York AG, may not have a direct claim against the reinsurer,” said former New York Department of Financial Services superintendent Maria Vullo. “That the reinsurer is in the Cayman Islands compounds this issue as it is a non-U.S. jurisdiction, which makes collection very difficult.”

These rich assholes usually do not come by their money with ethical businesses. So, why do we expect them to play by the book? Here’s another one that should be thrown in jail. “Leo rejects Senate subpoena from panel probing gifts to Supreme Court justices. The conservative judicial activist called the move ‘politically motivated,’ and the committee chair said Leo had left them ‘no other choice’ but to move forward with the compulsory process.” This is from Washington Post writer Tobi Raji.

The Senate Judiciary Committee sent a subpoena Thursday to conservative judicial activist Leonard Leo as part of a months-long inquiry into undisclosed gifts to Supreme Court justices and he promptly rejected it, calling the move “politically motivated.”

“I am not capitulating to his lawless support of Senator Sheldon Whitehouse and the left’s dark money effort to silence and cancel political opposition,” Leo said of Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), the committee’s chairman, in a statement to The Washington Post.

The committee voted along party lines on Nov. 30 to authorize subpoenas for Leo and Texas billionaire Harlan Crow following reports that Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomasand Samuel A. Alito Jr. accepted — and did not disclose — free luxury travel and gifts from Crow, Leo and conservative donor Robin Arkley II.

Crow did not receive a subpoena Thursday, his spokesman Michael Zona told The Post.

In a statement to The Post, Durbin said sending a subpoena to Leo was a necessary step.

“Since July 2023, Leonard Leo has responded to the legitimate oversight requests of the Senate Judiciary Committee with a blanket refusal to cooperate,” Durbin said. “His outright defiance left the Committee with no other choice but to move forward with compulsory process. For that reason, I have issued a subpoena to Mr. Leo.”

“Mr. Leo has played a central role in the ethics crisis plaguing the Supreme Court and, unlike the other recipients of information requests in this matter, he has done nothing but stonewall the Committee. This subpoena is a direct result of Mr. Leo’s own actions and choices,” Durbin continued.

First, they eliminate campaign finance law, and then the dark money warps the system. Welcome to the hell wrought by Leonard Leo and his Federalist Society buddies.

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

And in Uptown New Orleans

Sunday Reads: Some like it Chill

Posted: August 20, 2023 | Author: | Filed under: just because | Tags: , , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

 

Hurricane Hilary swirls near Baja California, Mexico, on Friday. (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration)

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

The stress from extreme weather should be sending a huge wake-up call to the community of humans sharing the planet. Relentless heat here is setting records week after week. Now we’re staring down a map of disturbances in the Atlantic and the Gulf that reminds me of Multiball mode in pinball. We’re still receiving unsettling news from Maui after fires destroyed a historic town. Now, we’re watching a Hurricane threatening a good portion of the west coast. I’m still worried about the koala population decimated by fires in Australia in 2020.

Why aren’t we doing more?

This is from Politico. “Hilary will produce ‘really significant impacts’ in California, FEMA administrator warns “People really need to take this storm in California serious,” Deanne Criswell said.” I’m reading this as I begin my hurricane preparations and readiness as a 30-year veteran of hurricanes. I really hope the people in California are getting up to speed quickly.

As the federal government prepares its response to the tropical storm expected to hit parts of Southern California on Sunday afternoon, FEMA is bracing for potentially devastating flooding.“Hurricane Hilary is going to produce some really significant impacts to Southern California,” FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell said Sunday during an interview on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”

Though the total amount of rain appears unlikely to exceed that of similar storms that more frequently make landfall on the East Coast, people should not downplay this threat, Criswell said.

“People really need to take this storm in California serious,” she said on ABC’s “This Week.” “I think it’s interesting that the total rain amounts aren’t like what we see in some of our Atlantic storms and Gulf storms, but it’s going to really be potentially devastating for them in these desert areas.

The emergency management agency already has a team embedded in California, and is moving additional resources into the state, Criswell said, as the storm moves north toward Mexico and the southwest United States, where it’s expected to cause “catastrophic” flooding.

“They’re a very capable state as well and they have a lot of resources,” Criswell said of California Sunday. But if it does exceed what their capability is, “we’re going to have additional search-and-rescue teams, commodities on hand to be able to go in and support anything that they might ask for.”

The storm is the latest in a series of natural disasters and extreme weather that left communities in need of federal assistance. Wildfires in Hawaii recently raged across a historic Maui town, leaving more than 100 dead and even more without shelter. President Joe Biden will visit Lahaina on Monday to see the devastation first-hand and “reassure” residents “that the federal government is there,” Criswell said.

 

Volunteers from the West Orange County Community Emergency Response Team load sandbags for local residents as the hurricane approaches. Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images

Isn’t it a relief to have a president in charge of things whose response is not limited to throwing paper towels at people? While President Biden has worked to get a climate change policy on the American Agenda, it’s blocked by the same old pols who adore fossil fuels and the money they receive from them. West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin is a perpetual spoiler. This is from the Washington Post. “White House is torn over Joe Manchin’s fury at climate law he crafted. As White House officials weigh how much to give in to his demands, rift grows between president and senator from West Virginia.”

The obscure federal agency that oversees the nation’s immense tangle of pipelines, power lines, and transfer stations is unfamiliar to most Americans. But it has very much been on Sen. Joe Manchin III’s mind.

By the end of last year, the West Virginia Democrat had become deeply displeased with how the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission was helping the Biden administration advance its aggressive climate goals. Manchin, a staunch ally of fossil fuel interests, was particularly critical of the agency’s efforts to write regulations that more fully consider climate impact when it reviews new natural gas infrastructure.

So he kneecapped the agency. The chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, Manchin refused to hold a confirmation hearing for the reappointment of Richard Glick, the agency’s chair and a key ally of President Biden, after Glick’s term expired at the end of the year. That has effectively stripped the board of its Democratic majority, leaving it deadlocked and limiting its ability to advance renewable energy projects.

Manchin isn’t the essential tiebreaking vote for Democrats in the Senate anymore, but a year after the enactment of the Inflation Reduction Act — which wouldn’t have passed without his support — he’s irate at the way Biden is implementing the law. And he’s fighting back: Besides his pressure on FERC, Manchin has vowed to oppose appointments to the Environmental Protection Agency and the Interior Department. He is even publicly flirting with running for president in 2024, an unlikely prospect but one that could be devastating for Biden — and a situation that senior White House officials are closely monitoring.

In this photo provided by Tiffany Kidder Winn, burned-out cars sit after a wildfire raged through Lahaina, Hawaii, on Wednesday, Aug. 9, 2023. The scene at one of Maui’s tourist hubs on Thursday looked like a wasteland, with homes and entire blocks reduced to ashes as firefighters as firefighters battled the deadliest blaze in the U.S. in recent years. (Tiffany Kidder Winn via AP)

The horrifying Maui fires are nearly contained, but their damage to one community will be a forever thing. This is from Forbes. “Maui Fire Death Toll Reaches 114 As Island Nears Containment Of Multiple Blazes” The response to the fires is under investigation. Why did this happen? It is probably the more acute question.

The cause of Maui’s wildfires has been attributed to multiple factors. When the blazes first began raging, experts pointed to drought conditions, dry vegetation, and strong winds caused by Hurricane Dora, which was several hundred miles away from Hawaii at the time. Media reports suggested the island’s first fire was likely caused by a power line in the woods of the Maui Bird Conservation Center. Hawaiian Electric, which services 95% of Hawaii’s residents, is facing several negligence lawsuits from residents alleging failure to maintain their equipment and clear vegetation located near utility poles. However, the power company told Forbes this week a cause for the fire had yet to be determined.

Believe me, it’s odd to live in a tropical zone, experiencing basically desert conditions week after week after week. It’s not normal. I haven’t opened my curtains in days, and I judge the heat by how many cold baths I take. Early in the morning, Temples panting worried me, and I put her in a cold bath. The relentless heat has been the most significant weather topic we’ve had since Hurricane Katrina. The biggest question is, “Will this be the new normal?

The answer – according to the World Meteorology Organization–is yes.

The summer of extremes continues. July was the hottest month ever recorded. The high-impact weather is continuing through August.
“This is the new normal and does not come as a surprise,” said Alvaro Silva, a climate expert with WMO. “The frequency and intensity of many extremes, such as heatwaves and heavy precipitation, have increased in recent decades. There is high confidence that human induced climate change from greenhouse emissions is the main driver,” he told a regular media briefing in Geneva.

Moderate and severe heat warnings for the third week of August have been issued by several national meteorological and hydrological services in Europe, including from France, Switzerland, Germany, Poland, Croatia, Italy, Greece, Hungary, Austria, Lithuania.

WMO stresses the need to follow authoritative warnings from national meteorological and hydrological services to stay safe.

During the weekend of 19-20 August, maximum temperatures may reach up to 40 °C in parts of southern France, according to Meteo-France. It said it would be the most intense heatwave of the summer of 2023. This situation is due to a strong high pressure and subtropical warm air from North Africa.
Meteo-Suisse has issued level 3 amber alerts for most of the country, with maximum daytime temperatures between 33 and 35 °C and high nighttime temperatures.

Morocco set a new national temperature record of 50.4 °C in Agadir on 11 August, as temperatures crossed 50°C for the first time. Turkey reported a new national temperature record of 49.5°C on 15 August, beating the previous record of 49.1°C set in July 2021. Many parts of the Middle East also saw temperatures of above 50°C.

Spain, including Canary Islands and Portugal, also experienced extreme heat, fuelling an extremely severe fire risk. As of 17 August, the Tenerife wildfire continued out of control, with more than 2600 ha burnt area and people evacuated in some sites. Dry conditions, maximum temperatures above 30 °C, night temperatures above 20 °C, peak wind gusts above 50 km/h were observed on 16 and 17 in some AEMET weather stations of Tenerife.

Japan has also suffered a prolonged heatwave, with many station records broken, according to the Japanese Meteorological Agency, which issued concurrent warnings for torrential rain and typhoon-related floods.

While climate change is controversial to interests aligned with the oil, coal, and gas industries, data shows that America’s voters aren’t as skeptical as some would have you believe. “Climate change issues have a reputation for being divisive. Data show it’s not quite true. The majority of the country believes climate change is happening and is worried for the future. But experts say real change won’t happen until the beliefs are more personal.” This is reported by Grace Manthey.

Climate perspectives vary across the country, but by smaller margins than political leanings.

Nearly three-quarters of Americans believe global warming and climate change is happening. Two thirds are worried about it, according to The Yale Program on Climate Change Communication.

Yale’s program produces Climate Opinion Maps based on a large national survey dataset with more than 28,000 respondents collected between 2008 and 2021. And, the strong majorities nationwide don’t just apply to believing climate change is impacting the weather and might harm people. The data show widespread support for government intervention:

77% of Americans support funding research into renewable energy sources and tax credits for electric vehicles and solar panels

72% believe the government should regulate CO2 as a pollutant

66% support imposing strict limits on coal power plants and taxing fossil fuel companies

For context, the largest popular vote percentage in a presidential election in American history was in 1964, when President Lyndon B. Johnson won 61% of the popular vote.

President Ronald Reagan’s 1984 win was considered a landslide when he nearly swept electoral votes. But Reagan only won about 59% of the popular vote.

These climate change opinions vary by geography with some resemblance to political trends, and democrats are more likely to have pro-climate leanings, a recent Pew survey found.

But the issue isn’t black and white: republicans are not completely against climate-friendly changes and geographic trends on climate opinions aren’t as extreme as political ones.

Here’s something that seems contradictory.

In 92% of counties in the country, more than half of residents are worried about global warming.

That includes Mobile County, AL – the county surrounding the city of Mobile – where 58% of residents are worried about global warming and 59% believe it will harm people.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump received 55% of the 2020 presidential vote in Mobile County.

The most significant disconnect seems to be that those that haven’t experienced it don’t connect to the issue. The analysis in the article is interesting. You can read more at the link. Texas Public Radio provides some clues in its investigation “Why Climate Change Denial is still working.” It’s reported by David Martin Davies.

You may listen to it at the link.  Here’s another link to a different interview.

https://twitter.com/NOLALeyda/status/1690372060789313540

Lipsky is a contributor to the Rolling Stone. “How Sun Myung Moon ‘Digested the Scientists’ and Fueled Climate-Change Denial. In an excerpt from his new book The Parrot and Igloo, Rolling Stone contributor David Lipsky reveals a forgotten chapter in the climate crisis — when two once-respected scientists became merchants of doubt and mouthpieces for the Unification Church’s controversial leader.

IF THERE WERE A DENIAL Mt. Rushmore the two biggest heads would be S. Fred Singer and Frederick Seitz. Dishonesty’s Lincoln, lying’s Washington. Together, the two graybeard prophets launched a movement.

Frederick Seitz’s slab would be the larger and more solemn. Most decorated scientist ever to slip over to the dark side, the non-truth side. With just about the grandest possible resume entry: former President of the National Academy of Sciences.

He did it for the old man reasons. Because the new politics made him nervous. Because the new generation made him feel vulnerable and defensive, rickety. (Seitz called students “the youth.”) There are accomplished people who fear any change to the order that once promoted them is really a portent of chaos and doomsday. When Seitz was a university president, one student said hello — and he coolly explained college presidents are not people you say hello to. Fifty years later, climate denial’s most coveted honor is the Frederick Seitz Memorial Award. Its first statuette was delivered by Dr. S. Fred Singer.

Singer’s Rushmore head would smaller, sneakier, giving visible side-eye. He is the man responsible for all of it. There was a big denier convention a decade ago. (Held in Las Vegas; because denial is classy.) The president of a denial think tank raked his eyes across the denial ballroom, took in the denial faces at the denial tables making up his denial audience. “Fred Singer is the most amazing and wonderful person participating in the global warming debate today,” this president explained. “If there’s any person in the world responsible for the development of a skeptics movement on global warming, it’s Dr. S. Fred Singer… Fred is a giant. He is a hero.” Singer is the origin of denial. And here is his origin as a denier.

At this stage of the denial story — end of the eighties, that John Hughes decade — Frederick Seitz is already a denier. This is a story about how and where S. Fred Singer joined him. Singer began as a straight scientist — an environmentalist. Did not attain promotion at the EPA. (HR Departments: be careful who you disappoint.) So he quit. And came back changed. Served briefly in Washington as the Department of Transportation’s chief scientist. And then the surprising part, the historical part of Fred Singer’s journey — his real travels and adventures — began.

The thing this story shows about deniers: they will accept money from . . . anyone. (And once you deny — once your lips break that truth barrier — the succeeding denials become easier and easier. In a sense, you become deaf to the sound made by your own life. As you must.) That openness is what this story is also about. And about how everybody, even people with the most powerful friends, can eventually require the services of a professional denier.

Our friend @repeat1968 (John Buss) gets the last word.

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
And please stay safe wherever you are!

I had the pleasure of meeting, setting up her microphone, and listening close up to Etta James at Jazz Fest. Believe me, it’s one of the performances I’ve witnessed that I will never forget.

Stormy Monday Reads

Posted: March 26, 2018 | Author: | Filed under: Afternoon Reads | Tags: , | 24 Comments

Good Afternoon Sky Dancers!

It’s a beautiful day here in New Orleans but today in the news it’s all Stormy, all the time. I’m going to try to sort it out and ignore the sordid details which seem to include that he only got one Mercy Fuck out of her because he probably couldn’t even attract a cloud of hungry mosquitoes. Oh, and that the interview implied she had pix.

In this case, when the Wall Street Journal revealed the details of the contract on January 12, 2018, that information stopped being confidential.

So why not just say that? Why not cite the WSJ report, say the information is no longer confidential, and that’s that? Why seek a declaratory judgment voiding the agreement based on a flimsy theory that Avenatti must know is risky at best?

The answer may be in the agreement itself, because it has some unusual provisions in it.

First, it’s chiefly concerned with “certain still images and/or text messages.” Yes, later in the agreement, the “confidential information” at issue is expansively defined, to include absolutely anything, tangible or intangible, that Daniels might know about Trump, including, of course, whether she spanked him with a magazine or not.

But far more ink is spilled discussing what Daniels is supposed to do with those texts and images: give copies to Cohen and destroy the originals.

Now the strategy starts to make sense. This dispute isn’t about the affair: it’s about those pictures or texts. As viewers of Daniels’ 60 Minutes interview surely noticed, the only question Daniels refused to answer was about whether she’s got more evidence of the affair. Avenatti suggested the answer is yes: he tweeted a photo of a DVD inside a safe.

Stormy Weather (1943)
Directed by Andrew L. Stone
Shown from left: Cab Calloway, Lena Horne

Oh, wait, that’s kinda sorta salacious while the interview itself was kind of a yawner.  This link from The Cut via BB explains why that’s a good strategy.

In fact, Stormy was entirely credible in every way. Calm, clear-eyed, and direct, she telegraphed competence and clarity of purpose. She answered questions quickly and without hesitation, never averting her gaze, lowering her eyes, or even pausing. Her words were simple and devoid of rhetorical flourishes. When asked, for example, whether she understood the $130,000 she’d accepted was “hush money,” Daniels’s firm “yes” flew from her mouth nearly before Cooper could finish his question. She offered this kind of swift, emphatic, and monosyllabic response several times.

Everything about this interview screamed legitimacy. 60 Minutes is the 50-year-old doyenne of broadcast journalism, a network show watched by grandparents and Trump supporters (and apparently even Trump himself). This was Stormy’s chance to take her case to the widest American public, to clear her name and tell her truth, even at the risk of being penalized for breaching her non-disclosure agreement (and possibly even at risk to her personal safety).

This quest for legitimacy made for dull television. For primetime, Stormy toned down her makeup (false lashes but no visible shadow, pink not red lips), and buttoned up her shirt (although admittedly, the buttons were straining). But she also muted her personality, showing far less of the brash and witty side we’ve seen in other interviews and on her Twitter feed. The sharp-tongued woman with the off-color sense of humor all but disappeared last night. (It returned briefly when, proving she’d not sold her story, she quipped to Cooper, “I don’t have a million dollars. You didn’t even buy me breakfast.”).

And while she still owns her adult-film career proudly, Daniels showed a more vulnerable side when detailing how she’d felt obliged to have sex with Trump — unprotected! — even though she felt disinclined, simply because she’d gone alone to his hotel suite. Her explanation for this conjured a retrograde notion of women’s sexual obligations to men and even a whiff of self-abnegation: “I had it coming for making a bad decision … I just heard the voice in my head, ‘Well, you put yourself in a bad situation … so you deserve this.’”

Stormy’s story is one more narrative related to Trump and his continual philandering, cheating, and womanizing. Yet, his base of White Supremacist Christofascists stick with him.  Why?

Why are white Christians sticking so closely to President Trump, despite these claims of sexual indiscretions? And why are religious individuals and groups that previously decried sexual impropriety among political leaders suddenly willing to give Trump a “mulligan” on his infidelity?

Our new study points to a different answer than others have offered. Voters’ religious tenets aren’t what is behind Trump support; rather, it’s Christian nationalism — their view of the United States as a fundamentally Christian nation.

The system is clearly rigged in their favor.  As long as they hang out in backwater states, they get more representation than the rest of us.

Donald Trump lost the popular vote by nearly 3 million votes, yet he still got to be president. The 49 senators in the Democratic caucus represent nearly 40 million more people than the 51 senators in the Republican caucus.

And this last problem is likely to get much worse. According to Baruch College’s David Birdsell, by 2040 “about 70% of Americans are expected to live in the 15 largest states.” As a result, 70 percent of Americans “will have only 30 senators representing them, while the remaining 30% of Americans will have 70 senators representing them.”

Moreover, if the parties continue to sort into diverse, urban Democrats and homogeneous, more rural Republicans, the GOP won’t just gain a lock on the Senate. They could potentially ensure that no Democrat is ever confirmed to the federal bench again.

In 2016, when Senate Republicans successfully blocked Chief Judge Merrick Garland’s nomination to the Supreme Court, the 46 Democrats in the Senate represented 20 million more people than the 54 Republicans. In 2017, when Neil Gorsuch was confirmed to occupy this seat, the 45 senators who opposed his confirmation represented more than 25 million more people than the senators who supported him.

The United States, in other words, is barreling toward a future where a younger, multicultural, more urbanized majority is ruled by an aging, white, rural minority. That’s a recipe for civil unrest, or even a secession crisis.

Well, if you thought a Stormy day was great!  Just wait until you get a Summer one!!!

Yes.  Pretty Soon, it will be Summer time.

“Summer Zervos is one of many women who has been subjected to unwanted sexual touching by Donald J. Trump.”

So begins the defamation lawsuit filed by Zervos, a restaurant owner and former contestant on The Apprentice, who says Trump sexually assaulted her in 2007 and then called her a liar when she spoke out about it in 2016.

Zervos’s case centers on a disturbing account of sexual assault, an important distinction from two other high-profile legal cases involving women and Trump. Adult film actress Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal (who is suing the company that publishes the National Enquirer) say they had consensual affairs with Trump.

Zervos scored a victory recently when a New York Supreme Court judge ruled that her suit could go forward, rejecting the Trump team’s argument that a sitting president can’t be sued in state court. “No one is above the law,” the judge responded. Trump’s lawyers have announced they will appeal the decision.

The potential implications of the Zervos case are huge. When Paula Jones sued Bill Clinton for sexual harassment 20 years ago, the Supreme Court set the precedent that a sitting president can’t push off a federal case until after he leaves office. Clinton’s perjury in a deposition in that case ultimately led to his impeachment.

 

 

I’ve had a long few days so I’m calling it a short post. Let us know what’s on your reading and blogging list today! Enjoy two brilliant singers and genius music!!!