#delayed aid in the past because of trump

[the-jam-to-the-unicorn]

At this point, they're Russia's useful idiots

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Steve Brodner, Full Court Press

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LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

December 12, 2023

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

DEC 13, 2023

Last night, Special Counsel Jack Smith asked the Supreme Court to decide Trump’s claim that he is immune from any and all criminal prosecution for anything he did while in office. That claim is central to Trump’s defense; he has requested the charges against him be dismissed because of that immunity. 

When Judge Tanya S. Chutkan, who is overseeing the case in which Trump is charged with trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election, dismissed this claim, Trump’s lawyers appealed and asked for the case to be frozen while the appeal worked its way up through the courts. By going straight to the Supreme Court, Smith appears to be trying to stop Trump from delaying the trial until after the 2024 election.  

The Supreme Court has agreed to consider whether it will hear the case. So far, Justice Clarence Thomas refuses to recuse himself, even though his wife Ginni was deeply involved in the attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election. His refusal suggests that the Supreme Court’s new ethics rules are as toothless as their opponents charged.

In another filing last night, Smith revealed that the government expects to introduce the testimony of three experts who will speak to the use of cell phones by Trump and one other person after the 2020 election, including on January 6, a revelation that Los Angeles Times legal analyst Harry Litman suggested must “have the Trump camp totally freaked out.”

Inflation slowed again in November, dropping to 0.1% as gasoline prices fell, so that the annual inflation over the past year has dropped to 3.1%. 

Fallout continues from the Texas Supreme Court’s decision that a woman carrying a fetus with a fatal condition cannot abort that fetus even though it threatens her own health and future fertility. President Joe Biden promised today to continue to fight to protect access to reproductive health care, saying: “No woman should be forced to go to court or flee her home state just to receive the health care she needs. But that is exactly what happened in Texas thanks to Republican elected officials, and it is simply outrageous. This should never happen in America, period.”

But for all the importance of these major stories, the outstanding story of the day is that the Republican Party appears to have decided to undermine financial support for Ukraine’s war against Russia’s invasion. 

This is simply an astonishing decision. Majorities in both the House and the Senate want to pass supplemental aid to Ukraine, which both protects North Atlantic Treaty Organization countries and provides jobs in the United States, but an extremist minority in Congress is stopping passage of a measure that would provide more weapons to Ukraine.

There is no doubt previous funding has been effective. A newly declassified intelligence memo shows that Russia had an army of 360,000 before the war and that thanks to the Ukraine resistance it has lost 315,000 troops—87% of its army—forcing it to squeeze more recruits out of its civilian population. It has also lost 2,200 out of 3,500 tanks, forcing it to turn to Soviet-era equipment. 

Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky, who was in Washington, D.C., today to try to convince Republicans to pass such a measure, noted that Ukraine has regained half the land Russia seized in the February 2022 invasion, forced Russian warships out of Ukrainian territorial waters, and opened export corridors to get Ukrainian grain to countries that desperately need it. At the same time, he said, Ukraine’s economy is growing at a 5% rate, suggesting it will be less dependent on foreign aid going forward. 

In The Atlantic, David Frum, who has criticized Democrats on immigration policy, pointed out that Biden and the Democrats have made a real effort to negotiate with extremist Republicans but the Republicans are simply refusing to engage. Frum concluded that Republicans do not want to make a deal. Either they want to perform a ritual in which Republicans demand and Democrats comply, or they want to keep the border as a campaign issue, or they actually oppose aid to Ukraine. And yet, Frum reiterates, majorities in both the House and the Senate want the supplemental aid package to pass.  

Republicans appear to want to keep the issue of immigration front and center in 2024, hoping that people will focus on it rather than on abortion, especially in states like Texas.

Poland’s newly elected prime minister Donald Tusk today vowed that he would “loudly and decisively demand the full mobilization of the free world, the Western world, to help Ukraine in this war,” but Russia expert Fiona Hill told Politico’s Maura Reynolds that U.S. funding will be key to determining whether Ukraine wins back control of its territory. That decision, she says, is really about our own future.

Permitting Putin to win in Ukraine, she says, would create a world in which the standing of the U.S. in the world would be diminished, Iran and North Korea would be strengthened, China would dominate the Indo-Pacific, the Middle East would be more unstable, and nuclear weapons would proliferate. 

“Ukraine has become a battlefield now for America and America’s own future—whether we see it or not—for our own defensive posture and preparedness, for our reputation and our leadership,” Hill told Reynolds. “For Putin, Ukraine is a proxy war against the United States, to remove the United States from the world stage.”

“The problem is that many members of Congress don’t want to see President Biden win on any front,” Hill said. “People are incapable now of separating off ‘giving Biden a win’ from actually allowing Ukraine to win. They are thinking less about U.S. national security, European security, international security and foreign policy, and much more about how they can humiliate Biden. In that regard,” she said, “whether they like it or not, members of Congress are doing exactly the same thing as Vladimir Putin. They hate that. They want to refute that. But Vladimir Putin wants Biden to lose, and they want Biden to be seen to lose as well.”

Today, Biden noted that Russian media outlets have been cheering on the Republicans. "If you're being celebrated by Russian propagandists, it might be time to rethink what you're doing,” he said. “History will judge harshly those who turned their back on freedom's cause."

Congress is set to leave for the holiday break on Thursday, returning in the second week of January. Biden urged Congress “to pass the supplemental funding for Ukraine before they break for the holiday recess—before they give Putin the greatest Christmas gift they could possibly give him.”

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell was re-elected as Republican leader on Wednesday, defeating a challenge from Sen. Rick Scott of Florida that reflects growing angst within the party after it underperformed in the midterm elections.

The secret-ballot victory was confirmed by McConnell spokesman David Popp, with Sen. Mike Braun, R-Ind., telling reporters that 37 Republicans voted for McConnell while 10 supported Scott and one senator voted "present." The vote came after the conference rejected a motion by McConnell's dissenters to delay the leadership election, which 16 Republicans voted for, according to two sources.

The McConnell-Scott battle represents a larger clash over the direction and governing vision of the party, with the two men offering conflicting theories on why the GOP failed to win Senate seats in the midterms, with Democrats clinching the majority. It is the most serious challenge McConnell has faced for his position after leading the Republican caucus for 15 years.

"I believe it’s time for the Senate Republican Conference to be far more bold and resolute than we have been in the past," Scott, who chaired the GOP Senate campaign arm during the 2022 cycle, said in a letter asking for members' votes Tuesday. "We must start saying what we are for, not just what we are against. I do not believe we can simply continue to say the Democrats are radical, which they are. Republican voters expect and deserve to know our plan to promote and advance conservative values."

McConnell offered a different prognosis of the Republican losses in his Tuesday press conference, attributing them to poor candidates and chaotic behavior within the party that he said “frightened” independents and moderate voters.

“I don’t own this job,” McConnell said Wednesday after the vote. “Anybody who wants to run for it can feel free to do so. So I’m not in any way offended by having an opponent or having a few votes in opposition,” he said. “I’m pretty proud of 37 to 10.”

McConnell is now on track to become the longest-serving Senate caucus leader in history. Scott chaired the National Republican Senatorial Committee during the 2022 cycle, which ended in disappointment after the party failed to gain the one seat it needed to capture control of the chamber.

Before Wednesday's leadership vote, Braun said he’d back Scott because he believes it is time for a change.

“I’m going to vote for something that’s going to change the current dynamic that we’re in,” Braun said. “That option is represented by Rick Scott currently.”

Scott's challenge has rankled some in the Republican caucus, who attribute the 2022 defeats to his handling of the NRSC.

“Rick Scott must really love to lose,” griped one Senate GOP aide.

Scott and McConnell have long feuded over strategy and vision for the Republican caucus. McConnell has long been the subject of ire from former President Donald Trump, who has campaigned aggressively to oust him as leader.

Tensions ran high on Wednesday as numerous Republicans had no interest in getting in the middle of the clash. Among them was Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., who told reporters asking about the leadership contest, "No habla ingles."

During a lengthy closed-door GOP meeting Tuesday, Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, questioned management of the NRSC's finances.

“I raised some questions on the amount of money that had been raised and allocated in this cycle versus other cycles and — and just question the differences," she said.

Scott released a statement Wednesday responding to calls for an audit of the NRSC's money practices, saying that the committee "has done an annual independent audit every year since at least 2014" and that he learned of "hundreds of thousands of dollars in unauthorized and improper bonuses" sent to staff after the Republicans lost the majority in 2020.

"When that’s your starting point, you work really hard to make sure there are transparent processes and we are more than happy to sit down with any member of the caucus to walk them through our spending," Scott said.

Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont., who was elected the new NRSC chair Wednesday, said he hopes for a "strong, lasting majority for the Republicans in 2024."

[arpov-blog-blog]

Ukraine Funding Must Pass The House - Iran’s attack on Israel this weekend was a very powerful reminder of the nature of the choice in front of Republicans now:

America, The West, Israel, Ukraine, Freedom and Democracy or Trump, Putin, Iran, Hamas, Hizbollah, Illiberalism and Autocracy

Trump’s years of appeasing Putin, and the House GOP’s delay of the Ukraine funding package, has emboldened our adversaries and made America and all of us far less safe. Trump is an extraordinary danger to us all. He’s blocking Ukraine funding - the single most reckless thing Congress has done in modern times. He’s blocking funding to make our border more secure. He tried to end American democracy in 2021 and has promised to finish the job if he gets to the White House. His proposed tariffs would blow up the current global economic order, wreck our economy and further weaken the US and the West. He’s undermining public health by attacking the integrity of vaccines. He’s stripped the rights and freedoms from the women of America, and made it far more likely women will die across the US. He wants to roll back Biden’s historic investments in fighting climate change……

As David Frum wrote in the Atlantic Sunday:

Because of Donald Trump, Republicans are now the party of foreign-policy weakness, passivity, and surrender

One thing you can do today is call your Congressperson and tell them you want them to pass the Senate supplmental which provides aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan as soon as possible. While most Dems are for it, they still need to hear from us. Here’s what President Biden said upon the passage of the Senate foreign aide bill:

This bipartisan supplemental agreement is critical to advancing America’s national security interests. It will allow the United States to continue our vital work, together with our allies and partners all around the world, to stand up for Ukraine’s freedom and support its ability to defend itself against Russia’s aggression. It will provide Israel with what it needs to protect its people against Hamas terrorists. Significantly, this agreement will provide life-saving humanitarian assistance for the Palestinian people, the vast majority of whom have nothing to do with Hamas. 

We need to show the world that America can stand up to Trump, to Putin, to Iran, to China as America did this past weekend over the skies of the Middle East. We need to get loud on this one peeps. Passing this aide package really matters.

[humss-11]

𝗥𝗲𝗳𝘂𝗴𝗲𝗲 𝗖𝗿𝗶𝘀𝗶𝘀 𝗜𝗻𝘃𝗼𝗹𝘃𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗔𝗳𝗴𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗻

THE FALL OF AFGHANISTAN

As the Taliban grew stronger and further took more lands as they close in the capital of Afghanistan, Kabul. This breakthrough of the Taliban made the U.S troops sense that their advance can be a major threat to any future operations in repelling the insurgents. Seeing as the threat come closer to their doorsteps, the U.S government began the withdrawal of their troops stationed in Afghanistan that was supposed to aid in the local military training and to provide equipment to the Afghan military. The slow and secluded retreat of the U.S troops, leaving some of their equipment including military supplies. During a rally in Alabama, U.S President Donald Trump said, “they’ve left $83 billion worth of equipment behind, including brand new Apache helicopters, thousands of Humvee vehicles with armor guard, equipment that nobody has ever even seen before, it was so sophisticated”. So, when the Taliban finally sieged the capital of Afghanistan, they marked it as the end of the long-lasting twenty-year War in Afghanistan.

SEEK FOR SHELTER

The Afghanistan citizens, knowing about the fall of their beloved country, were left uneasy. As the support from their government was abolished, they are now lost and seem to become more and more hopeless. Because of that, thousands of families finally fled from their country. Now over 3 million Afghans are displaced from their homes, because of the threat by the Taliban that was already happening from the past 20 years of the war and their recent conquest on the Afghan capital, Kabul, on August 15, 2021. Neighboring countries such as Pakistan and Iran, both neighboring countries have already hosted over 1 million Afghanistan refugees. But yet there are still a majority of the Afghan population who are desperately looking for a new home to stay.

TIME FOR AN INITIATIVE

Fortunately, countries have collaborated with one another to resolve the growing Afghan crisis. “This resettlement of vulnerable people is of utmost importance,” said by the EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen. Although this statement might seem promising, the response of the European countries towards the refugee crisis risks a point of controversy. Over 60,000 asylum applicants are pending over the countries of Germany, France, and Greece. The delay of the decision is quite pointless since it seems like a manageable number, while Iran and Pakistan host almost a third of the population of Afghan refugees. European countries must fix the flaws of the asylum systems, in order to finally secure the families of a new place to stay.

GENEROSITY FOR OTHERS

As it was already an unheartening news since then, numerous people and organizations are determined aid the Afghan refugees. Non-Government Organizations, namely Welcome.US and Miles4Migrants, collaborated to develop a campaign for ordinary people to donate flyer miles, and in just two months, raised enough to provide 40,000 flights for the refugees to take shelter at military bases and temporary housing in the United States. Others set up websites to act as donation points for people across the globe to share some money for the struggling Afghan families.

And we share our contribution to this societal problem that is contemporary in our times to inform others, so that they can share their kindness and help end this problem.

[lolallday08]

So witchblr...

As often understood, a majority of us hate Trump (if you don't, then I guess you can move on, but I genuinely mean everyword of what I say here with no regret.) and some have been hexing, bedeviling, and altogether cursing him since the day he has taken office.

From asking the tricksters to put stumbling blocks in his way from day one; to asking Gods and Deities to hold him back from yet again inciting chaos to his heart's, wallet's, and deranged fans' desires; to pushing all his hate, deception, and destruction to return his him and all he does three fold; the past four years have been busy.

Most recently in his list of of his most recent actions coming to bite him in the ass, it has been revealed he's tested positive for COVID-19. Now usually I'd reserve schadenfreude for him and little else, but this man has done so many horrors in four years I've come to consider that stronger actions must be taken.

What would "stronger actions" be?

A hex on his health. Yes, while he is currently with this virus. Yes, that could possibly off him.

Now I can hear the shrieking of the witches who hate curses in the distance clutching pearls and saying "that's going too far!" And I genuinely don't give a rat's ass.

200,000+ people have died because of he and his cronies collective and near certainly wilful incompetence. Women and persons across the country are having their very lives threatened through the potential of a total attack on reproductive rights in the Supreme Court. Immigrants are suffering in camps, living in worse than hell. He's delayed much needed covid aid to our family in native communities.He's threatening the entirety of American democracy in ways that are dangerous to every man, woman, and person in America and is damaging the world.

WE CANNOT AFFORD TO BE PLAYING POLITE ABOUT USING OUR ABILITIES TO STOP THIS DEMIGOG FROM GETTING HIS WAY.

Now look, if you don't feel able or comfortable in pushing for this, that's fine. There are many other ways to push back, find the one that's best for you. If you do, you have enough experience, and your path allows it, LET HIM HAVE IT. This may literally be the chance of a lifetime. Don't let it slip by.

Does that mean you get complacent? No. Keep protesting. Keep donating to different causes and bail funds. Fight misinformation. Organize your community. Break white supremacist and fascist force with action. VOTE. This is only one possible puzzle piece to a solution, but it's one worth invoking in my book.

Witchcraft has never been just about the soft, the gentle, the accommodating. It has, at times been about retribution, about hard justice, about doing what needs to be done. And so it is now.

Come Sisters, Brothers, and Fine Family. There's works to be done.

[newstfionline]

Monday, February 15, 2021

Warning to travellers: You have until Feb 22 to return or pay up to $2,000 for Canada’s COVID-19 hotel quarantine (Yahoo News) Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced the mandatory hotel quarantine for travellers coming to Canada by air will come into effect on Feb. 22. Minister of Health Patty Hajdu confirmed that people who have received a COVID-19 vaccine are not exempt from these requirements at this time. Non-essential travellers to Canada by air are required to take a COVID-19 PCR test within 72 hour before departure. Proof of a negative test result must be with them during travel. They must submit their contact and quarantine information using the ArriveCAN app before boarding a plane. Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness, Bill Blair, confirmed that 93 per cent of air travellers are non-essential travellers. Beginning Feb. 22, travellers need to take a COVID-19 test when the they arrive in Canada, at their own cost, before they leave the airport. Travellers will then go to a quarantine hotel until their test result is returned, up to three days. They need to reserve their stay prior to arriving in Canada. Hajdu indicated hotel booking information will be available online on Feb. 18. Travellers must stay in a hotel in the city in which they first arrive in Canada. When their test comes back negative, they can then take a connecting flight to their destination.

Impeachment proves imperfect amid US polarization (AP) Three Republican senators spent an hour talking strategy with lawyers for the accused. The entire Senate served as jurors even though they were also targets of the crime. No witnesses were called. And the outcome was never in doubt. The second impeachment trial of Donald Trump laid bare the deep imperfections in the Constitution’s only process for holding a president accountable, for “high crimes and misdemeanors.” The proceedings packed an emotional punch and served as history’s first accounting of the Jan. 6 riots on the U.S. Capitol, but the inherently political process never amounted to a real and unbiased effort to determine how the insurrection unfolded and whether Trump was responsible. The results were ultimately unsurprising: a fast impeachment in the Democratic-led House followed by acquittal in the Senate, where 17 Republicans were needed to convict. Congress has rarely deployed its power to hold a president accountable for crimes and misdemeanors: impeaching Andrew Johnson in 1868, Bill Clinton in the 1999 and Trump twice over the past year. The House also launched impeachment proceedings against Richard Nixon, but he resigned from office before a vote on charges. Each of the other instances ended with the president—or in this most recent instance, former president—acquitted, and few satisfied with the process.

Postmaster general’s new plan for USPS is said to include slower mail and higher prices (Washington Post) Postmaster General Louis DeJoy is preparing to put all first-class mail onto a single delivery track, according to two people briefed on his strategic plan for the U.S. Postal Service, a move that would mean slower and more costly delivery for both consumers and commercial mailers. DeJoy, with the backing of the agency’s bipartisan but Trump-appointed governing board, has discussed plans to eliminate a tier of first-class mail—letters, bills and other envelope-sized correspondence sent to a local address—designated for delivery in two days. Instead, all first-class mail would be lumped into the same three- to five-day window, the current benchmark for nonlocal mail. That class of mail is already struggling; only 38 percent was delivered on time at the end of 2020, the Postal Service reported in federal court. Customers have reported bills being held up, and holiday cards and packages still in transit. Pharmacies and prescription benefits managers have told patients to request medication refills early to leave additional time for mail delays.

Hundreds of thousands without power in Northwest ice storm (AP) A winter storm blanketed the Pacific Northwest with ice and snow Saturday, leaving hundreds of thousands of people without power and disrupting travel across the region. Freezing rain left roads, power lines and trees coated in ice in the Portland, Oregon, region, and by Saturday morning more than 270,000 people were without power. The extreme conditions, loss of power and transportation problems prompted Oregon Gov. Kate Brown to declare a state of emergency Saturday afternoon. Winter storms and extreme cold affected much of the western U.S., particularly endangering homeless communities. Volunteers and shelter staffers were trying to ensure homeless residents in Casper, Wyoming, were indoors as the National Weather Service warned of wind chill reaching as much as 35 degrees below zero over the weekend.

With the Economy on the Ropes, Hungary Goes All In on Mass Vaccination (NYT) Hungary on Friday began injecting citizens with Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine, becoming the first country in the European Union to administer a coronavirus inoculation that has yet to be tested and approved by the bloc’s regulators. With Hungary’s economy suffering and a national election looming next year, embracing such vaccines is part of the government’s strategy to go all in on fighting the coronavirus after a series of missteps allowed it to spread in Hungary. The decision by Viktor Orban, Hungary’s far-right prime minister, to move forward with the ambitious vaccination plan comes after the European Union’s own response to vaccine distribution has lagged behind the United States, Israel, and Britain. Mr. Orban has few options for reviving the Hungarian economy, as he is opposed to handing out meaningful relief aid to citizens and businesses and appears to be betting big on getting the whole country vaccinated, with an eye on next year’s elections. While many E.U. members have expressed frustration with the bloc’s sluggish procurement procedures, Hungary is the only one so far to break from the collective strategy.

Even India’s Ex-Chief Justice Won’t Go to Nation’s Courts (Bloomberg) A former chief justice of India says he won’t go to the country’s top court with his grievances because he would have to wait endlessly for a verdict, a comment that lays bare the nation’s clogged legal system. “You want a 5 trillion dollar economy but you have a ramshackled judiciary,” said Ranjan Gogoi, who retired as the head of the country’s judiciary in November 2019 and is now a member of the upper house of the parliament. Gogoi was speaking at an event organized by the India Today Group, a news network. Gogoi’s remarks calling for an overhaul of the judiciary’s capacity and efficacy highlights India’s troubles with delayed verdicts and enforcing contracts. Court systems in Asia’s third-largest economy are clogged with over 43 million cases and a shortage of judges means that some cases can end up taking years, even decades, to find a resolution. Companies invested in India have a tough time once entangled in a legal dispute.

Hundreds of thousands protest in Myanmar as army faces crippling mass strike (Reuters) Hundreds of thousands of protesters took to the streets in Myanmar for a ninth day of anti-coup demonstrations on Sunday, as the new army rulers grappled to contain a strike by government workers that could cripple their ability to run the country. Trains in parts of the country stopped running after staff refused to go to work, local media reported, while the military deployed soldiers to power plants only to be confronted by angry crowds. As evening fell, armoured vehicles were seen in the commercial capital of Yangon for the first time since the coup, witnesses said, and the U.S. embassy urged employees to be cautious. A civil disobedience movement to protest against the Feb. 1 coup that deposed the civilian government led by Aung San Suu Kyi started with doctors. It now affects a swathe of government departments. The junta ordered civil servants to go back to work, threatening action. The army has been carrying out nightly mass arrests and on Saturday gave itself sweeping powers to detain people and search private property. But hundreds of railway workers joined demonstrations in Yangon on Sunday, even as police went to their housing compound on the outskirts of the city to order them back to work. The police were forced to leave after angry crowds gathered, according to a live broadcast by Myanmar Now.

Japan’s Quake Evokes a Painful Memory (NYT) A large earthquake shook a broad area across eastern Japan late Saturday night, with its epicenter off the coast of Fukushima, near where three nuclear reactors melted down after a quake and tsunami nearly 10 years ago. As of Sunday morning, no deaths had been reported from the quake, Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga said. But more than 100 people were injured, according to the state broadcaster, NHK. The quake left nearly a million households without power across the Fukushima region and forced the closure of roads and suspension of train services. While rattled residents braced for aftershocks, a landslide cut off a chunk of a main artery through Fukushima Prefecture. Japan’s meteorological service reported the quake’s magnitude as 7.3, up from the initial assessment of 7.1. The quake was an unnerving reminder of the vastly more powerful 8.9-magnitude earthquake and tsunami that devastated Japan in 2011, killing more than 16,000 people. After the subsequent nuclear disaster in Fukushima, 164,000 people fled or were evacuated from around the plant.

New Zealand city going into 3-day lockdown after virus found (AP) New Zealand’s largest city of Auckland will go into a three-day lockdown beginning just before midnight Sunday following the discovery of three unexplained coronavirus cases in the community. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced the move after an urgent meeting with other top lawmakers in the Cabinet. She said they decided to take a cautious approach until they find out more about the outbreak, including whether the infections are of the more contagious variants. The lockdown is the first in New Zealand in six months and represents a significant setback in the nation’s largely successful efforts to control the virus. It will also force a delay in the America’s Cup sailing regatta.

Ancient mass production brewery uncovered in Egypt (Reuters) Archaeologists have discovered a 5,000-year-old brewery that could produce thousands of litres of beer in the ancient Egyptian city of Abydos, Egypt’s tourism and antiquities ministry said. The site in Egypt’s Sohag Governorate likely dates back to the reign of King Narmer around 3,100 BC, the ministry said in a statement on Saturday. The brewery, which had a production capacity of 22,400 litres, was split into eight sections each containing 40 clay pots used to warm mixtures of grain and water.

[antoine-roquentin]

America is in a full-blown economic depression, but Democrats are anxious about whether fixing it will cost too much. In the most recent economic rescue package — one the party itself admits is only a "messaging" bill, since it already gave away most of its leverage — Democrats scaled back their student loan forgiveness program and axed an idea for economic stimulus that would continue on autopilot for as long as the crisis lasts, because of scary possible estimates of the cost.

It's hard to describe just how blinkered this is. It's like a man who is drowning in the middle of the North Atlantic worrying about how flammable his clothes are. But there is a big reason aside from Democrats' knock-kneed cowardice this happens — the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), which informed Democratic leaders they would produce big price tags for both of the above programs. But as we'll see, their analysis is garbage. This agency exercises a tyrannical control over the parameters of spending discussions in this country, and slants them heavily towards austerity. Democrats should close their ears to this nonsense.

To begin, the CBO "scores" legislation by estimating its budget cost over a 10-year window. Right out of the gate this is a misleading way to do things. When thinking about the price of something, logically what one should consider is the qualities of the item relative to one's ability to pay. That requires additional thought in the case of the government, because it has the best credit in the world, and borrows in a currency it can print. For some proposed federal program, therefore, the wise place to start is not the headline figure of required spending, but the size of spending relative to the whole economy.

Instead the CBO window leads to reporters writing stories citing the 10-year figure without that critical context. ObamaCare has "a price tag of $848 billion over 10 years," wrote Robert Pear and David M. Herszenhorn in the The New York Times in 2009. Sounds pretty big! But what they didn't say is that total economic production would be something like $175 trillion over the same period, meaning the total spending would be on the order of one half of one percent of GDP — a minor program, in other words. (Mysteriously, military spending almost never gets the 10-year treatment in mainstream reporting, which would produce eye-popping sums. Instead one year is the standard.)

This practice in turn leads to absurd policy gimmicks to rig the 10-year window and make programs appear cheaper than they are. Most of ObamaCare's implementation was delayed for four years to keep the 10-year spending under $1 trillion. This led to four years of pointlessly delayed benefits, and allowed Republicans to falsely claim that the program's costs were exploding when later CBO estimates produced dramatically higher estimates (on the order of 1 percent of GDP) because they were including a whole decade of implementation. It's a ridiculous and childish way to design policy.

More importantly, it is basically impossible to predict the trajectory of either the economy or the price of state programs with any accuracy. The rate of interest on government debt, for instance, will hugely influence how much any program which ends up being funded by borrowing will cost. (The increase in the national debt during President Reagan's terms was almost entirely driven by interest payments.) But the CBO is not just wrong in a random fashion, overshooting sometimes and undershooting other times. Mike Konczal of the Roosevelt Institute has done preliminary work plotting CBO interest rate forecasts against what actually happened, and it turns out for 30 years straight they have consistently overestimated interest trajectories.

This means all their interest payment estimates produced over that time were wrongly inflated, sometimes by a lot. The CBO itself ruefully admitted this mistake in a 2019 publication. Whoops!

The way the CBO treats spending categories is also bizarre. As Jon Walker writes at the People's Policy Project, it treats private health insurance spending as either public or private based on an arbitrary definition of how heavily the market is regulated. If the regulations are lax according to the CBO's crystal ball and bird entrails (meaning the insurance isn't very good), then government-mandated private premiums do not count as a tax. If they are strict, then they do count. This places an enormous bias against any kind of root-and-branch health care reform, because no matter how you design the policy the CBO is going to produce a gigantic price tag.

The student loan forgiveness cost cited above is similarly weird, because the government already owns almost all the loans in the country. It could simply cancel them outright without spending a dime — indeed, President Trump could do this tomorrow on his word alone. There would be less money coming in from future interest payments, but if Congress were to pass some appropriation to compensate for this, the government would just be paying the money to itself.

Perhaps the most preposterous CBO estimate of late, however, is the one about automatic stabilizers. These would be some kind of rescue policy that would keep going until the economy was back up to full strength — like continuing monthly stimulus checks so long as, say, unemployment was above 6 percent and inflation was below 4 percent. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi told reporters that she wanted to include something like this, but the threat of a big CBO score prevented her from doing so.

Nobody has a clue how long the coronavirus depression is going to last, which will determine how long stabilizers would be activated. So now we have the agency making up a score based on an arbitrary and probably wrong guess about how the economy is going to do, and ignoring the broader economic context at the worst possible moment. The thing about economic stabilizers is that they would almost certainly pay for themselves over the long term by preventing the economy from collapsing. In other words, their cost as a percentage of the economy will be negative, because without them output will be much lower. It's literally free money, and the CBO's cramped ideological perspective is preventing America from picking it up.

None of this is accidental. The CBO was originally set up in the 1970s by the late Alice Rivlin, a neoliberal deficit scaremonger who got her start as a sort of colonial viceroy over the District of Columbia, imposing austerity by fiat and coring out the city's political sovereignty. She positioned the CBO as a nonpartisan agency that would fairly adjudicate bills from both parties, and while it has produced damaging estimates about Republican bills, its bias is overwhelmingly against big social reforms. She inserted the agency in the center of budget politics as part of an ideological crusade against the national debt and social welfare programs, as David Dayen writes at The American Prospect. She's a person who worked with Paul Ryan on an appalling scheme to privatize Medicare.

It's hard to say whether or not Pelosi and company would behave any differently without the CBO — they could just be hiding their austerian preferences behind the agency. But this kind of thinking is going to do stupendous damage to a Democratic presidency if the party wins in November. If stabilizers aren't passed in the next few months, President Biden is going to burn up most of his political capital trying to get additional rounds of aid past Republican congressional obstruction. Democrats really need to stop worrying and learn to love big, beautiful programs.

[yourfavehatesautismspeaks]

Coronavirus

The world right now seems to be in a very precarious situation. The SARS-COV-2 (nCOV/Covid-19) outbreak has been labelled a pandemic. The NBA has suspended its season after Rudy Gobert of the Utah Jazz tested positive for the virus. As has Juventus player Daniele Rugani. Some sports games are being played without spectators whereas others have been delayed or outright cancelled. Coachella has been postponed and so has the new James Bond film. Donald Trump has issued a severely confusing travel ban or maybe not. The UK is moving past phase 1 and into phase 2 of dealing with the outbreak following an emergency COBRA meeting set to take place later today. Numerous high level officials are being tested and diagnosed. The UK’s health minister, in a shocking twist of irony, has the virus. Schools are being cancelled and millions of people are being quarantined. Stock markets are crashing, tourism is falling, airlines are failing, and we’re standing on the brink of a new world recession. And perhaps most heartbreakingly, actor Tom Hanks has also tested positive for the virus.

If you think all of that sounds scary, then I agree with you. It does sound scary. If you look at the numbers, they also look scary.

But it’s important now, more than ever, not to panic. Because panic buying is how we start accidentally buying too much toilet paper, for example. That’s not something we need. But getting hand sanitisers and toilet roll from a claw machine might be. As long as the joystick and buttons are wiped down between turns.

The reason this is happening is because there is a lot of misinformation being spread on the internet. And the media are not adhering to the oath they’ve taken to only provide people with the truth. This is not helping anyone and if anything, is only causing further spread of the virus. When I was a journalism student, I took this oath and now I’m going to give you some Coronavirus facts.

Those who are more likely to be infected with Covid-19 and suffer more severe cases are those with preexisting conditions such as diabetes, asthma, COPD, cystic fibrosis, HIV/AIDS, cancer, heart disease, cardiovascular disease or otherwise compromised immune systems as well as those over the age of 70. If none of this applies to you, please still be wary.

Over 80% of all reported cases are mild.

It’s important to practice good hygiene, not touch your face and wash your hands for 20 seconds with soap and water or a high alcohol content hand sanitiser to protect not just yourself, but your parents, grandparents and those around you with preexisting conditions.

Other ways to prevent catching or spreading the virus include coughing or sneezing into a tissue and discarding it, and coughing or sneezing into your elbow.

And an interesting fact, if you joke morbidly like me, that you have the Coronavirus when you have a cold, then you might not be lying because coronaviruses are one of a few different viruses that cause the common cold.

And now for some good Coronavirus news. It’s looking like life is ever so slowly returning to normal in China, where the virus is believed to have peaked and the number of cases is dropping off. South Korea also believe their cases of the virus has peaked. Also, after a nearly two month closure, Shanghai Disneyland is finally beginning to operate again. Just the shops and restaurants for now, but the park is likely not to be too far behind.

If we all do the right things, this could peak soon for the rest of us. But until then, it’s going to get worse before it gets better so please do not panic, but instead be wary. We at YFHA$ will still be right here.

-Mod Rowlf

(Who is reposting this because there is no need at all to mention racism in the comments, come on people)

[feelingbluepolitics]

"[I]t is not clear that [t]rump’s efforts to throw money at key voting groups will in fact sway voters to his side, in part because the execution of these programs has often proved either uneven or nonexistent.

"[t]rump’s pledge last month to send American seniors $200 coupons to offset their prescription drug costs has resulted in no concrete action or additional benefit for seniors as of Thursday, according to Larry Levitt, a health-care expert at the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonprofit.

"[t]rump also announced last month that billions in aid for Puerto Rico would be released after years of delays, a move interpreted by some as aimed at shoring up his support among Latinos in Florida. [t]rump has for years insulted Puerto Rico’s leaders while withholding funding for the island approved by Congress, igniting fierce criticism that he stalled its recovery from Hurricane Maria.

..."While he has repeatedly said that he would like to send out another round of $1,200 checks, [trump] earlier this week publicly called off negotiations.

..."Billions in aid for the farmers has been released by the [t]rump administration but also produced mixed results, with some critics calling it insufficient and others arguing it has gone primarily to large producers rather than small and independent operators.

"In Wisconsin, an infusion of federal aid has helped slow down the worst of a tsunami of dairy farm closures over the past three years, but the state continues to lead the nation in farm bankruptcies. About 25 dairy farms in Wisconsin have filed for bankruptcy this year alone, despite almost all receiving money from [t]rump’s bailout, according to a review of court records conducted by the Environmental Working Group, a watchdog group. [t]rump consistently trails former vice president Joe Biden in the polls in Wisconsin as well as other key Midwestern states that carried him to victory four years ago.

..."Approximately 70 percent of farmers, traditionally Democratic or independent, voted for him in 2016.

"But once in office, [trump] took actions that risked alienating that base of support. America’s farmers have been roiled by multiple financial crises under the [t]rump administration, including some directly tied to [trump’s] decisions, particularly the dramatic price volatility related to his ongoing trade wars.

..."[However,] many Democrats in rural Wisconsin said they believe [t]rump’s late push for more federal spending will help his reelection prospects. At a recent Tuesday night in a barn outside of La Crosse, Lisa Vander, 58, a doctoral student in economics with two masters degrees, hosted a handful of neighbors to spray paint large cardboard yard signs for Biden and his running mate, Sen. Kamala D. Harris (Calif.).

"Only one farmer, a lifelong Democrat, was in attendance. While Vander said many farmers do support Biden, she has met few who have abandoned [trump] despite the severe disruption to their trade markets.

"'If someone gives you $8,000, or $10,000 or $12,000 — you best believe that’s going to make a difference,' Vander said."

But perhaps not for those he bankrupted nonetheless.

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) is emerging as the chief obstacle to quick passage of President Biden's $2.25 trillion infrastructure package that Democrats want to move through Congress sooner rather than later. Manchin is ramping up discussions with Republicans about what a scaled-down infrastructure package should look like, and some GOP senators are even optimistic that the moderate Democrat can be persuaded to block efforts to raise the corporate tax rate.

That means Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) will likely have to wait for the negotiations to reach some kind of conclusion before moving ahead with the budget reconciliation process, as Manchin is expected to be the critical 50th Democratic vote needed to avoid a GOP filibuster. Senate Republicans proposed a $568 billion infrastructure counteroffer last week. Now, bipartisan talks on a compromise proposal between $600 billion and $1 trillion are just getting started.

Manchin wants time for the talks to build momentum. "For the sake of our country, we have to show we can work in a bipartisan way," he said Monday evening. "I don't know what the rush is. Stay here a little bit, work a little bit," he advised colleagues. But Democrats are getting nervous about an extended timeline and worry that splitting Biden's infrastructure agenda into two or three pieces of legislation might mean that a substantial part of it gets left behind. "I'm the most anxious member of the Democratic caucus. I want to get it done and done quickly," Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said Monday when asked how long Democrats are willing to wait on bipartisan infrastructure talks.

Manchin said over the weekend that he wants to focus on "conventional infrastructure" such as roads, bridges, water projects and expanded broadband internet, and he proposed splitting off about $400 billion in funding for home- and community-based caregivers for the elderly and people with disabilities, as well as billions of dollars for child care. While Manchin said such priorities are "needed," he added that doesn't want to lump too many of them in a broad bill because he thinks it would be tougher to sell to the public. His remarks dealt a blow to other Senate Democrats who want to pass as large a package as possible and who called the $568 billion Republican proposal "totally inadequate" and a "slap in the face."

Durbin, the No. 2 Democrat, on Monday said he does not support splitting up Biden's $2.25 trillion infrastructure package into two pieces. "Time is not on our side. We have so many things to do," he said. "Immigration, policing. All of these things are critical elements and we don't have a lot of time on the calendar. The sooner the better to keep everything together and move it in a package that works," he added of Biden's proposal.

Senate Budget Committee Chairman Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said he wants to move as quickly as possible, warning that past efforts to negotiate with Republicans, such as on the Affordable Care Act in 2009, ended up wasting time. "We have learned that lesson in the past. I think we should have our ears open, we should listen to any great ideas, any good ideas that Republicans have. But obviously it cannot be an endless process. It has to move very quickly," he said Monday. Sanders balked at Manchin's suggestion of segmenting out the home- and community-based care portions of the package. Manchin, however, is praising the $568 billion framework put together by fellow West Virginia Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R) as "a good start." The blueprint is focused on roads, bridges, transit systems, rail, water infrastructure and airports.

Democrats are also nervous about Manchin's opposition to Biden's proposal to raise the corporate tax rate to 28 percent, saying a 25 percent rate is more reasonable. He met last week with Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), a staunch ally of former President Trump, to explore ways to fund a compromise infrastructure package without relying heavily on tax increases. "Watch Joe Manchin. Joe's going to be a key player here," Graham told Fox News Sunday. "I think there's a sweet spot on infrastructure where we can find pay-fors that won't hurt the economy. If you raise taxes, you're going to destroy jobs," Graham said.

Many Democrats are skeptical of efforts to pursue GOP proposals. "Take a deep breath and face reality. If we're going to do something big and bold and build the 21st century economy, we're not going to do it with what [Republicans] have suggested: user fees and tolls," Durbin said Monday.

Manchin has urged Schumer and his other Democratic colleagues not to use the budget reconciliation process to pass Biden's agenda, an approach that would shut out Republicans and allow for a simple majority vote in the 50-50 Senate. "I simply do not believe budget reconciliation should replace regular order in the Senate. How is that good for the future of the nation?" he wrote in a Washington Post op-ed this month. Manchin disagrees that he's a roadblock to Biden's agenda. "I'm not a roadblock at all. The best politics is good government," he told CNN's "State of the Union" over the weekend. He also reiterated his opposition to changing the Senate's filibuster rule to curtail GOP power to block Biden's priorities, such as police reform and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act. "I'm not going to be a part of blowing up this Senate of ours or basically this democracy of ours," he said Sunday.

Senate Democratic sources say they expect the bipartisan infrastructure talks to fizzle and Manchin to vote with them to pass a $2 trillion-plus infrastructure package under budget reconciliation. They argue that West Virginia, which had a 5.9 percent unemployment rate in March and a 14.9 percent poverty rate by last measure, needs its share of the $2.25 trillion plan as much as any state. "He's still trying to find his way as the new most important 'big man on campus,' but I think he'll have a very hard time standing up to the pressure of the administration. I think he'll find his way back home," said a Senate Democratic aide, referring to Manchin's power in an evenly split Senate where Democrats cannot afford a single defection. The aide predicted that if Manchin winds up derailing or excessively delaying Biden's infrastructure package, the backlash from within the party will be swift and damaging. "The more he plays that game, I think the more the pushback becomes significant and starts having legs to it," the aide added.

While Manchin is coming under increasing pressure from fellow Democrats to support passing Biden's full package without splitting it up, his reputation as a bipartisan dealmaker is also at stake. During the negotiation of Biden's $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief plan, Manchin played a central role in narrowing the number of Americans eligible for $1,400 stimulus checks by helping to craft a deal to phase out the direct checks for people earning $80,000 or more, instead of the $99,000 cutoff favored by House Democrats. He was also instrumental in shrinking the federal unemployment benefits in that bill from $400 a week to $300 a week and limiting the tax deductibility of unemployment benefits collected in 2020.

Despite Manchin's efforts to address the concerns of GOP colleagues who said the rescue plan needed to be more narrowly targeted, not a single Republican in either chamber voted for the package. If Manchin drags out consideration of the infrastructure package for weeks or months without securing any GOP votes for whatever bill finally gets passed, some Democrats say his reputation as a dealmaker will suffer severely. "That's what's at risk for him. He's going to have to put up or shut up," said the Democratic aide.

A second Senate Democratic aide, however, said Manchin represents a broader group of centrist Democrats who would like to rack up a significant bipartisan accomplishment with Republican votes before trying to move other elements of Biden's agenda under reconciliation. "There are other Democrats who agree with him, but they don't need to go out there and say it and take shit from the left," the aide said. The aide also said the GOP counteroffer unveiled last week "is a lot better" than the $618 billion COVID-19 relief package a group of 10 moderate Republicans floated to Biden earlier in the year. Democrats quickly dismissed the GOP's counteroffer on coronavirus relief and passed Biden's $1.9 trillion plan by a party-line vote. The source predicted that even if Manchin fails to bring about a bipartisan infrastructure deal, he'll remain a powerbroker for the rest of the 117th Congress. "He's still going to be a guy trying to negotiate big bipartisan deals," the aide said.

[reading-writing-revolution]

Heather Cox Richardson:

August 21, 2020 (Friday)

After the cascade of news in the past several days and the Democratic National Convention, today was a relatively calm day… at least in politics.

There are, though, some important stories.

The first is getting less play than it should: the nation has lately been hit by a series of environmental catastrophes. California is in the midst of a brutal heat wave, and has been hit by 560 fires, many of them sparked by lightning. Some of the fires have come together to create two dozen large and complex conflagrations. Land the size of Rhode Island has been burned over, six people have died in the fires, and one hundred thousand Californians have been evacuated from their homes. Air quality is dangerously bad.

California’s ability to fight the fires has been hampered by a lack of prison inmates, who have been used to fight fires since the 1940s. Usually the state can mobilize 192 inmate firefighting crews, but this year, the coronavirus has thinned their ranks both from disease and from release, as the state sent inmates home to relieve crowded facilities and slow the virus’s spread. Less than half the crews are available this year.

Inmate firefighters make up to $5.12 a day (that’s not a typo) and earn two days off their prison sentence for each day firefighting. Each year, they provide about 3 million hours of emergency response time to the state.

In an extremely rare weather event, two tropical depressions—Laura and Marco-- are currently developing in the Gulf of Mexico. If they become hurricanes, the event will be unique: never before in recorded history has the Gulf had two hurricanes at the same time. Weather Channel meteorologist Greg Diamond notes that the town of Chauvin, Louisiana, has the dubious honor of being located at the site where both forecast cones overlap.

Illinois and Iowa were hit with a “land hurricane” or “derecho” on August 10. The winds of up to 110 miles per hour damaged homes and businesses in Iowa and destroyed at least 10 million acres of crops. Many are still without power. Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds (R) asked for $3.9 billion in federal aid on Sunday, and Trump tweeted that he had “Just approved (and fast) the FULL Emergency Declaration for the Great State of Iowa.”

But, in fact, he approved only about $45 million in aid to repair government buildings and utilities and remove debris from them. He did not fund assistance for homeowners or farmers. This appears to reflect the Republican conviction that the federal government has no role to play in providing a safety net for individuals.

There are a few political stories as well today.

Postmaster General Louis DeJoy testified before the Senate. He acknowledged that the changes he has made at the United States Postal Service have slowed mail delivery—the LA Times had a ghastly story today about rotting parcels and shipments of dead chickens in mail facilities in California—but says he will not replace the sorting machines he has had removed because “they’re not needed.” He promises the USPS will be able to handle the expected volume of mail-in ballots this fall, and insisted he had made “no changes in any policies with regard to election mail for the 2020 election.” In fact, internal USPS documents show clearly that the USPS intended to treat ballots according to their marked postage, rather than all as first-class mail, as it has done in the past. Treating ballots as bulk mail would have slowed delivery.

The Senate hearing before the Republican-led Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee was announced after the House Oversight Committee had arranged a hearing for Monday with DeJoy and USPS Board of Governors Chair Robert Duncan. While senators of both parties today expressed concerns over delays in the mail, the hearing was much friendlier than Monday’s, in front of a committee led by Democrats, is likely to be.

Trump’s apparent embrace of the QAnon conspiracy theory has put Republicans in an uncomfortable spot. The victory of QAnon supporter Marjorie Taylor Greene in her conservative district in Georgia Tuesday means she will likely be going to Congress, along with her racism, anti-Semitism, and adherence to the belief that Trump is leading a secret crusade to purge the world of a gang of pedophiles and cannibals who have taken over governments and economies. When Illinois Representative Adam Kinzinger tweeted that there is “no place in Congress” for QAnon, Greene retorted: “He’s a never Trumper who did nothing to stop the Russian collusion conspiracy/witch hunt…. America can’t afford any more RINOs!” (A “RINO” is a “Republican in Name Only," an epithet used since the 1990s to purge the party of moderates.)

“If she’s the future of the Republican party, we’re in trouble,” said freshman Representative Denver Riggleman (R-VA), who was replaced in his primary by a far-right candidate. And there’s the rub for Republican leaders: QAnon supporters like Trump, but their extremism threatens to turn off all but fellow extremists. So far, Republican leaders have been quiet about the QAnon believers in their midst, but there are rumblings of discontent from lower lawmakers at the inclusion of conspiracy theorists in their caucus.

There are signs that some Republican candidates are desperate. In Arizona, Martha McSally, who was appointed to her seat by Governor Doug Ducey in late 2018 after losing an election for Arizona’s other senate seat, is running significantly behind her Democratic challenger, former astronaut Mark Kelly. (Kelly is married to former Arizona Representative Gabby Giffords.) Tonight, news leaked that at a recent event McSally said: “We’re doing our part to catch up, you know, to get our message out. But it takes resources. So, anybody can give, I'm not ashamed to ask, to invest. If you can give a dollar, five dollars, if you can fast a meal and give what that would be.” After pushback on Twitter over the statement that people should go hungry to fund her campaign, a spokesperson said McSally had been joking.

The president’s tax returns were back in the news again today. Yesterday, Federal Judge Victor Marrero dismissed the president’s argument that the Manhattan district attorney’s subpoena for eight years of his taxes was “wildly overbroad.” Marrero permitted the subpoena to stand. Trump’s lawyers then filed an emergency motion to block a grand jury from obtaining the records. The court today denied their request and scheduled a hearing about the matter on September 1. Trump’s lawyers have argued that the presidency makes Trump “constitutionally different” from other people, and thus should be treated differently than others. The court disagrees. Yesterday’s decision prompted Trump to complain, “This is just a continuation of the most hideous witch hunt in the history of our country.”

Finally, the White House has made no statement on the poisoning of Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny. European leaders as well as American politicians of both parties have condemned the attack.

[suilinbride]

Hello! Glad to see you again, sorry tumblr is so broke! I hope you are well. If I am not too late, may I request a lenormand reading of the general spiritual kind? Trying to work with and around my adhd in this area has been difficult. I didnt see any info request in your post, but I think ive seen you request initials before. Im AM. Thanks! Or if I am late, thanks anyway! Stay safe and well!

Hello there AM! Thank you for the well wishes, I've been a little under the weather this past week but it looks like it's starting to fade out and I'm starting to feel a lot better now, which is always good.

And yes, I'm doing my best to stay safe too. I have a form of Asthma, and I've heard people with any kind of Asthma are especially easy targets for Corona, so I've been sticking inside or at least around my home. I'll probably be sticking in or near home until they figure out a vaccine or things truely start to settle down further.

Of course, it doesn't help that my grandmother is currently going through the moderate stages of Dementia, and we have to constantly keep her from wandering off or attempt to go places during these crazy times. My family and I have our hands full with trying to keep her home and safe for sure. I know it's kept me worried sick on occasions, and I've ended up with some more Grey hairs because of it. It also doesn't help that my grandparents are Republiccan, are super fans of Trump, and my grandmother especially doesn't believe that the Pandemic is something to worry about.

Nope, you're not late at all. Your request came just in time actually. And yes, I prefer initials or aliases for people who send in anonymous requests for divination. I know some people ask for other things like your Sun, Moon, and Rising signs to get a lock on your energy, well I do the same with Aliases, Initials, and the like. So long as it's something you go by that is authentically connected to you in some way enough to allow me to get a proper lock on things to read for you as best as I am able to.

Alright, let's get to your reading then. For your reading, I drew the following cards:

House, Fish, Crossroads, Mountain, and Key.

Okay, first let's look at the individual meanings of the cards that came up for your reading.

House: Home, house, family, family name, real estate. Fish: Business, Independance, freedom, abundance, adaptability, freelance. Crossroads: Choices, options, future paths, fork in the road. Mountain: Block, delay, obsticle, stop, prevension, challenge, isolation, stubbornness. Key: Answer, fate, key, significance, importance, destiny, turning point, solution.

Alright, now that the individual meanings for each card have been laid out, let's take a look at the center card in this reading. The center card for any Lenormand reading is the heart of the reading, the theme for the reading as it unfolds, and the essence of the reading itself in a lot of ways.

In this case, the center card is Crossroads, which is all about choices and options. I can instantly see that there are so many choices around you currently, so many ways for you to progress with your spirituality, and I can only imagine having so many options and choices can be overwelming.

After that, I'll go ahead and look at cards two and three, along with cards three and four, to figure out and summarize the essence of what the cards have to say for you in this reading.

Fish and Crossroads: Multiple paths to obtain abundance, multiple ways to adapt to your situation. Crossroads and Mountain: Delaying or hindering abundance.

Just like I thought, it looks like the multiple paths and choices are only causing you problems by overwelming things. It's the fact that there are so many ways of going about to get where you either need or want to go that is slowing you down, causing you to stop in your tracks.

My first piece of advice is of course take a breather for a few moments, trying to relax. Do you have any specific goals in regards to your spirituality? Is there anything you see for yourself you'd like to obtain or maybe anything that your guides, companions, gods, etc, would like you to obtain or achieve?

Either way, take your time, there is no hurry. Though the more ideas you might have about where you'd like to go, obtain, or achieve, might help you narrow down your options a bit, which will most likely help with the problem you're facing currently.

Now that I finished  looking at the essence of what the cards are trying to tell you, let's take a look at any possible conflicts or problems that you might be facing as part of the situation being read for here. I do this by reading cards one and five, along with cards two and four, by employing a little Lenormand trick called mirroring.

House and Key: Fated family, destined home, significant or important family member or place of residence? Fish and Mountain: Delaying abundance, hindering abundance.

Like I asked before, are there any influences impacting this situation, causing more choices or options to open up and therefore overwelm you even more? I ask this because this part of the reading is telling me that something or someone is specifically causing the many options to occur, the overwelming feeling to compound.

Is there a particular place you feel like you should be or need to be spiritually? A deity or a group of deities reaching out to you? Or a deity or deities that you already have some kind a relationship with who want to deepen their relationship or relationships with you? The same questions can be asked about spirits as well.

Or maybe it's more like there's a place in your spirituality that you feel like you need or want to be, or said deities, spirits, etc, need or want you to be at? Whatever the case may be, regardless of whomever or whatever the source of the desire of things may come from, it's the focus of such that is either directly causing the multiple choices or options about how to proceed to obtain or achieve this that causes all the various choices and options to manifest, thus overwelming the hell out of things.

Alright, now that I finished reading the primary portion of this reading, let's dive straight into things to obtain some more details for you! In my opinion, you can never go wrong with nitty gritty details!

First, I'm going to read the cards as pairs:

House and Fish: Abundant family or home. Fish and Crossroads: Choices or options for abundance. Crossroads and Mountain: Hindering future paths. Mountain and Key: Important or significant delay or struggle.

There is a person or people for that matter, or even a place of being, from a spiritual perspective that is connected to you in some way. Maybe you already know them or that place, maybe you are seeking them or that place, or maybe they and that place is seeking you instead. Either way, regardless of which way it actually is, this person, these people, this place wish to bless, improve, help, aid, or to allow you to further grow or thrive spiritually.

Problem is, however, there are so many ways they can go about doing this. Maybe the choices are in their or that hands, or maybe the choices are in your hands instead. Either way, there's too many to properly get a grip of things at the moment.

All these choices and options, either from their end or on your end, are causing the problem. The various choices and options presenting in front of you are causing major delay to your personal spiritual growth and development that it's causing things to come grinding to a halt in frustration.

The real problem is, however, that whatever may reside beyond the choices is important. It's significant in a number of ways to all involved, and it's understandable that you, and maybe even them and that too, are wanting to figure out the correct path to get to that significant thing or person or place, but the actual significance of whatever it may be, combigned with all the options and choices that lead you to it or that or them, is confusing as hell. It's confusing and overwelming and causing you nothing but problems.

Okay, last but certainly not least, I'm going to dive even further for even more details by reading the cards out in their rows.

House and Fish: Abundant family member, family, or home. House and Crossroads: Multiple family members, families, or homes. House and Mountain: Hindering family member, family, or home. House and Key: significant family member, family or house.

Looking at things further, breaking it down into more details, makes me think that it's more likely a person or people involved than a place or state of being in regards to the house card showing up in your reading. This is good to know and helps clarify some things.

A person or group of people wish to bless, aid, or benefit you. There's actually more than one person involved, though there could one person who is leading or taking charge of things while others realted help with it. However, the current way they are going about doing things, may be what they think is the most efficiant manner, but in reality it's problematic and causing you to become overwelmed with all those choices. That being said, the person and/or the people involved are significant to you and/or the overall situation of your spirituality in some way.

Fish and Crossroads: Multiple ways to be abundant. Fish and Mountain: Hindering abundance. Fish and Key: Important or significant abundance.

There are multiple ways in which they can bless and aid you in your spirituality, but of course, this, as much as the multiple ways of going about getting to where you need or want to go, is causing all kinds of problems. It's slowing things down and causing a lot of the overwelming feeling. But the blessing or aid they are just as important and/or significant as they in-of-themselves are.

Crossroads and Mountain: Hindering the future paths. Crossroads and Key: Significant or important choices or options.

And of course, all of this is doing nothing but hindering your path, whichever path you may want to take or even should take in the first place. And to compound the issue further, there isn't only one important or significant path you can take. Multiple paths are important or significant in ttheir own ways, though I feel like some are more so than others.

Mountain and Key: Important or significant delays, struggles.

And the struggle you are going through, the hinderences that are causing you so much delay to your spiritual growth and development is important significant as well. It's important that you deal with this now, so that you can figure out which way you best determine is suited for you to move ahead on.

And there you go. I'm sorry if this reading didn't really clarify things enough for you, though I hope it does help in some way. Please let me know if you'd like me to try and do another reading to try and determine more about things, especially if you have any specifics you'd like me to try and look into with a second reading after reading this one.

Once again, thank you for giving me the oppertunity to read for you like this. Take care and stay safe yourself!

[mojave-pete]

Text of speech as posted on McConnell’s Senate page.

‘These past weeks, the Senate has grappled with as grave a subject as we ever consider: A request from a majority in the House of Representatives to remove the president. ‘The Framers took impeachment extremely seriously. But they harbored no illusions that these trials would always begin for the right reasons. Alexander Hamilton warned that “the demon of faction” would “extend his sceptre” over the House of Representatives “at certain seasons.” He warned that “an intemperate or designing majority in the House” might misuse impeachment as a weapon of ordinary politics rather than an emergency tool of last resort. ‘The Framers knew impeachments might begin with overheated passions and short-term factionalism. But they knew those things could not get the final say. So they placed the ultimate judgment not in the fractious lower chamber, but in the sober and stable Senate. ‘They wanted impeachment trials to be fair to both sides. They wanted them to be timely, avoiding the “procrastinated determination of the charges.” They wanted us to take a deep breath and decide which outcome would reflect the facts, protect our institutions, and advance the common good. ‘They called the Senate, quote, “the most fit depositary (sic) of this important trust.” Tomorrow, we will know whether that trust was well placed. ‘The drive to impeach President Trump did not begin with the allegations before us. ‘Here was reporting in April of 2016: “Donald Trump isn’t even the Republican nominee yet… [but] ‘Impeachment’ is already on the lips of pundits, newspaper editorials, constitutional scholars, and even a few members of Congress.” ‘Here was the Washington Post headline minutes after President Trump’s inauguration: “The campaign to impeach President Trump has begun.” ‘The articles of impeachment before us were not even the first ones House Democrats introduced. This was go-around number seven. Those previously-alleged “High Crimes and Misdemeanors” included things like being impolite to the press and to professional athletes. ‘It insults the intelligence of the American people to pretend this was a solemn process reluctantly begun because of withheld foreign aid. No, Washington Democrats’ position on this President has been clear for years. ‘Their position was obvious when they openly rooted for the Mueller investigation to tear our country apart and were disappointed when the facts proved otherwise. It was obvious when they sought to impeach this President over and over. Here’s their real position: Washington Democrats think President Donald Trump committed a “High Crime or Misdemeanor” the moment he defeated Secretary Clinton in the 2016 election. ‘That is the original sin of this presidency: That he won and they lost. ‘Ever since, the nation has suffered through a grinding campaign against our norms and institutions from the same people who keep shouting that our norms and institutions need defending. ‘A campaign to degrade our democracy and delegitimize our elections from the same people who shout that confidence in our democracy must be paramount. ‘We have watched a major American political party adopt the following absurd proposition: We think this president is a bull in a china shop, so we’re going to drive a bulldozer through the china shop to get rid of him. ‘This fever led to the most rushed, least fair, and least thorough presidential impeachment inquiry in American history. ‘The House inquiry into President Nixon spanned many months. The special prosecutors’ investigation added many more months. With President Clinton, the independent counsel worked for years. ‘It takes time to find facts. It takes time to litigate executive privilege, which happened in both those investigations. Litigating privilege questions is a normal step that investigators of both parties understood was their responsibility. ‘But this time — no lengthy investigation. No serious inquiry. The House abandoned its own subpoenas. They had an arbitrary political deadline to meet. They had to impeach by Christmas. ‘So in December, House Democrats realized the Framers’ nightmare. A purely partisan majority approved two articles of impeachment over bipartisan opposition. And after the Speaker of the House delayed for a month in a futile effort to dictate Senate process to Senators, the articles finally arrived here in the Senate. ‘Over the course of this trial, Senators have heard sworn video testimony from 13 witnesses over 193 video clips. We have entered more than 28,000 pages of documents into evidence, including 17 depositions. Members asked 180 questions. ‘In contrast to the House proceedings, our trial gave both sides a fair platform. Our process tracked with the structure that Senators adopted for the Clinton trial 20 years ago. ‘Just as Democrats such as the current Democratic Leader and then-Senator Joseph Biden argued at length in 1999, we recognized that Senate traditions impose no obligation to hear new live witness testimony if it is not necessary to decide the case. The House Managers themselves said over and over that additional testimony was not necessary to prove their case. They claimed dozens of times that their existing case was “overwhelming” and “incontrovertible.” That was the House Mangers saying their evidence was overwhelming and incontrovertible at the same time they were arguing for more witnesses. ‘But in reality, both of the House’s accusations are constitutionally incoherent. ‘The “obstruction of Congress” charge is absurd and dangerous. House Democrats argued that any time the Speaker invokes the House’s “sole power of impeachment,” the President must do whatever the House demands, no questions asked. Invoking executive-branch privileges and immunities in response to House subpoenas becomes an impeachable offense itself. ‘Here’s how Chairman Schiff put it back in October. Quote: “Any action… that forces us to litigate, or have to consider litigation, will be considered further evidence of obstruction of justice.” ‘That is nonsense. “Impeachment” is not some magical constitutional trump card that melts away the separations between the branches of government. The Framers did not leave the House a secret constitutional steamroller that everyone somehow overlooked for 230 years. ‘When Congress subpoenas executive-branch officials with questions of privilege, the two sides either reach an accommodation or take to the courts. ‘That is the way this works. ‘Can you imagine if the shoe were on the other foot? How would Democrats and the press have responded if House Republicans had told President Obama, We don’t want to litigate our subpoenas over Fast and Furious, so if you make us set foot in court, we’ll just impeach you? ‘Of course, that’s not what happened. The Republican House litigated its subpoenas for years until they prevailed. ‘So much for “obstruction of Congress.” ‘And the “abuse of power” charge is just as unpersuasive and dangerous. ‘By passing that article, House Democrats gave into a temptation that every previous House has resisted. They impeached a president without even alleging a crime known to our laws. ‘I do not subscribe to the legal theory that impeachment requires a violation of a criminal statute. But there are powerful reasons why, for 230 years, every presidential impeachment did allege a criminal violation. ‘The Framers explicitly rejected impeachment for “maladministration” — a general charge under English law that basically encompassed bad management; a sort of general vote of no confidence. Except in the most extreme circumstances, except for acts that overwhelmingly shocked the national conscience, the Framers decided presidents must serve at the pleasure of the electorate and not the pleasure of House majorities. ‘As Hamilton wrote, “it is one thing to be subordinate to the laws, and another to be dependent on the legislative body.” ‘So House Democrats sailed into new and dangerous waters. The first impeachment unbound by the criminal law. Any House that felt it needed to take this radical step owed the country the most fair and painstaking process; the most rigorous investigation; the most bipartisan effort. Instead, we got the opposite. The exact opposite. ‘The House Managers argued that the President could not have been acting in the national interest because he acted inconsistently with their own conception of the national interest, a conception shared by some of the President’s subordinates. ‘This does not even approach a case for the first presidential removal in American history. ‘Such an act cannot rest alone on the exercise of a constitutional power, combined with concerns about whether the President’s motivations were public or personal, and a disagreement over whether the exercise of the power was in the national interests. ‘The Framers gave our nation an ultimate tool for evaluating a President’s character and policy decisions. They’re called elections. ‘If Washington Democrats have a case to make against the President’s re-election, they should go out and make it. Let them try to do what they failed to do three years ago and sell the American people on their vision for the country. ‘I can certainly see why, given President Trump’s remarkable achievements over the past three years, Democrats might feel uneasy about defeating him at the ballot box. But they don’t get to rip the choice away from the voters just because they’re afraid they might lose again. They don’t get to strike President Trump’s name from the ballot just because, as one House Democrat put it, “I’m concerned that if we don’t impeach [him], he will get re-elected.” ‘The impeachment power exists for a reason. It is no nullity. But invoking it on a partisan whim to settle three-year-old political scores does not honor the Framers’ design. It insults the Framers’ design. ‘Frankly, it is hard to believe that House Democrats ever really thought this reckless and precedent-breaking process would yield 67 votes to cross the Rubicon. ‘Was their vision so clouded by partisanship that they really believed this would be anywhere near enough for the first presidential removal in American history? ‘Or was success beside the point? Was this all an effort to hijack our institutions for a months-long political rally? ‘Either way — “the demon of faction” has been on full display. But now it is time for him to exit the stage. ‘We have indeed witnessed an abuse of power: A grave abuse of power by just the kind of House majority the Framers warned us about. ‘So tomorrow, the Senate must do what we were created to do. We have done our duty. We have considered all arguments. We have studied the “mountain of evidence.” And tomorrow, we will vote. ‘We must vote to reject the House’s abuse of power. Vote to protect our institutions. ‘Vote to reject new precedents that would reduce the Framers’ design to rubble. ‘Vote to keep factional fever from boiling over and scorching our Republic. ‘I urge every one of our colleagues to cast the vote that the facts in evidence, the Constitution, and the common good clearly require. ‘Vote to acquit the President of these charges.’

[newstfionline]

Wednesday, November 18, 2020

Trump Expected to Order Troop Withdrawal (Foreign Policy) U.S. President Donald Trump is set to order a dramatic and rapid cut in the number of U.S. troops stationed in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Somalia as he seeks action from loyalists newly installed at the U.S. Department of Defense. A perception that Mark Esper, the previous U.S. Secretary of Defense, would not agree to further troop reductions on so quick a schedule, was seen as one of the reasons for his removal from the post shortly after the U.S. presidential election. Although the numbers are not yet public, several media reports signal a halving of current troop levels in Afghanistan from the 4,500 troops currently stationed there. A reduction in Iraq would be less severe, but almost all of the 700 U.S. troops stationed in Somalia are expected to return to the United States. Although Republican leaders are wary, a troop withdrawal appears to be popular among the American public. According to a YouGov poll commissioned by the libertarian Charles Koch Institute in August, 76 percent Americans supported withdrawing troops from Afghanistan, with almost half of respondents strongly supporting withdrawal. The number supporting U.S. troop withdrawals from Iraq was 74 percent. The desire to end America’s wars in the Middle East and South Asia is felt similarly among U.S. military veterans. An April poll by another Koch-backed group found 73 percent of veterans surveyed supported a full withdrawal from Afghanistan, an almost 13 percent increase from the previous year.

Covid-19 origin remains a mystery (South China Morning Post, Tumori Journal) The virus that causes the Covid-19 disease has now infected more than 54 million people across the planet, but the question of just where it came from remains a mystery. Researchers may have found a new link in this puzzle after discovering evidence suggesting the pathogen had infected people across Italy as early as September last year, or months before it was first identified in the Chinese city of Wuhan. The unexpected finding “may reshape the history of [the] pandemic”, said the team led by Dr Gabriella Sozzi, a life scientist with the National Cancer Institute of Milan, in a peer-reviewed paper published last week in the Tumori Journal.

Hurricane Iota bashes Nicaragua, Honduras after Eta floods (AP) Hurricane Iota battered Nicaragua’s Caribbean coast and flooded some stretches of neighboring Honduras that were still under water from Hurricane Eta two weeks earlier, leaving authorities struggling to assess damage after communications were knocked out in some areas. By late Tuesday, Iota had diminished to a tropical storm and was moving inland over northern Nicaragua and southern Honduras, but forecasters warned that its heavy rains still posed a threat of flooding and mudslides. The storm passed about 25 miles (40 kilometers) south-southwest of Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras, where rivers were rising and rain was expected to intensify. In mountainous Tegucigalpa, residents of low-lying, flood-prone areas were being evacuated in anticipation of Iota’s rains, as were residents of hillside neighborhoods vulnerable to landslides.

Boris Johnson, in self-quarantine, says he’s ‘bursting with antibodies’ (Washington Post) British Prime Minister Boris Johnson boasted that he was “fit as a butcher’s dog” and “bursting with antibodies” as he began two weeks of self-quarantine after having close contact with a lawmaker who contracted the coronavirus. Johnson was infected with the virus in March—and struggled to breathe in an intensive care unit for three days. His staff did not say on Monday whether he had been tested this time, but cases of coronavirus reinfection have been incredibly rare. Johnson on Monday said that he felt great and that because he previously had the disease he was “bursting with antibodies” but that he would self-quarantine for two weeks as “we got to interrupt the spread of the disease.” He added that he would continue to govern by video conference.

After Trump, Europe aims to show Biden it can fight for itself (Reuters) The Donald Trump era may be coming to an end. But European Union ministers meeting this week to discuss the future of the continent’s defence will say the lesson has been learned: Europe needs to be strong enough to fight on its own. EU foreign and defence ministers meeting by teleconference on Thursday and Friday will receive the bloc’s first annual report on joint defence capabilities, expected to serve as the basis for a French-led, post-Brexit, post-Trump effort to turn the EU into a stand-alone military power. “We aren’t in the old status quo, where we can pretend that the Donald Trump presidency never existed and the world was the same as four years ago,” a French diplomat said. The EU has been working since December 2017 to develop more firepower independently of the United States. The effort has been driven mainly by France, the EU’s remaining major military power after Brexit.

Hungary and Poland Threaten E.U. Stimulus Over Rule of Law Links (NYT) When European Union leaders announced a landmark stimulus package to rescue their economies from the ravages of the coronavirus, they agreed to jointly raise hundreds of billions of dollars to use as aid—a bold and widely welcomed leap in collaboration never attempted in the bloc’s history. But that unity was shattered on Monday when Hungary and Poland blocked the stimulus plan and the broader budget. The two eastern European countries said they would veto the spending bill because the funding was made conditional on upholding rule-of-law standards, such as an independent judiciary, which the two governments have weakened as they defiantly tear down separation of powers at home. Their veto has thrown a signature achievement of the bloc into disarray, deepening a long-building standoff over its core principles and threatening to delay the stimulus money from getting to E.U. member states, if a new agreement can be reached at all.

Armenia seethes over peace deal (Foreign Policy) Armenia’s government is under strain after signing a cease-fire agreement with Azerbaijan in a Russian-backed deal a week ago. On Monday, Armenian Foreign Minister Zohrab Mnatsakanyan resigned after a public disagreement with Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan over the direction of peace talks. Pressure on Pashinyan has shown no sign of easing in recent days: 17 opposition parties have called for his resignation as street protests against his leadership continue.

Kissinger Warns Biden of U.S.-China Catastrophe on Scale of WWI (Bloomberg) Former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said the incoming Biden administration should move quickly to restore lines of communication with China that frayed during the Trump years or risk a crisis that could escalate into military conflict. “Unless there is some basis for some cooperative action, the world will slide into a catastrophe comparable to World War I,” Kissinger said during the opening session of the Bloomberg New Economy Forum. He said military technologies available today would make such a crisis “even more difficult to control” than those of earlier eras. “America and China are now drifting increasingly toward confrontation, and they’re conducting their diplomacy in a confrontational way,” the 97-year-old Kissinger said in an interview with Bloomberg News Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait. “The danger is that some crisis will occur that will go beyond rhetoric into actual military conflict.” U.S.-China relations are at their lowest in decades. As President Donald Trump stepped up his criticism of China, blaming it for the spread of the virus and the death toll in the U.S., each side also has ramped up moves the other sees as hostile.

Hundreds of fraudulent votes were discovered. Then a fat green parrot was elected. (Washington Post) A plump, waddling parrot has soared past its competition to claim victory in New Zealand’s Bird of the Year contest, a tense race marked by attempted voter interference during a divisive month of campaigning. In what event organizers conceded was “a stunning upset,” the critically endangered kakapo flew into first place to steal the title—ruffling the feathers of those who say the bright-green parrot unfairly secured a second term as chosen bird. The bird-of-the-year controversy took flight after data analysts working with Forest & Bird discovered that roughly 1,500 fraudulent votes had been cast. The “illegal votes,” which were submitted using a suspicious email account and came from the same IP address in Auckland, briefly pushed the country’s tiny kiwi pukupuku bird into the lead, a brazen meddling attempt that sent officials and campaign managers into a flap. Those votes were immediately disregarded, organizers said. “It’s lucky we spotted this little kiwi trying to sneak in an extra 1500 votes under the cover of darkness!” Laura Keown, spokesperson for Bird of the Year, said in a statement Nov. 10, adding that officials did not “want to see any more cheating.”

Israelis Take On Netanyahu And Coronavirus Restrictions In Wave Of Civil Disobedience (The Intercept) Netanyahu is Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, having been at the helm for over 11 consecutive years. He is also the first sitting prime minister to be indicted, currently on trial in three cases of bribery, fraud, and breach of trust, arising from abusing his authority to grant favors for, among other things, favorable media coverage. While there have been small but stubborn protests against Netanyahu since investigations into his corruption first opened in late 2016, it was not until the coronavirus paralyzed Israel’s economy that people—many of them in their 20s and 30s—starting coming out in droves. For more than 20 weeks now, tens of thousands of Israelis have taken to the streets to call on Netanyahu to recuse himself for corruption, for failing to manage the pandemic, and for what many describe as his megalomania—doing whatever it takes to evade trial. They have been convening in massive numbers in front of his official residence, many carrying homemade signs, chanting in unison “Go!” and “We won’t leave till Bibi resigns.”

Protests that historically bring out large numbers of Jewish Israelis have long been dominated by Israel’s left-leaning peace camp, and a decade ago, others drawing attention to the high cost of living. What is happening now is different: With over a million people unemployed in a country of 9 million, culture and nightlife all but dead amid the pandemic, and people’s ability to travel outside the country severely restricted, a nationwide movement of disgruntled Israelis, spanning ages and to an extent sociocultural backgrounds, is practicing civil disobedience. The government has responded with relative force against a segment of the Jewish population that is largely unfamiliar with police brutality and has not had their individual rights violated. At the same time, the government has all but ignored incitement and incidents of violence against the protesters. The official response is giving Jewish Israelis a tiny window into what it has always been like for Palestinians, both in Israel and the occupied West Bank and Gaza, whose protests are, prima facie, treated as suspect.

Ethiopia bombs Tigray capital (Foreign Policy) Ethiopia’s air force began bombing the Tigray region’s capital, Mekelle, on Monday in another escalation of the country’s civil war, now entering its third week. In a tweet he later deleted, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni called for the two sides to negotiate and halt the conflict “lest it leads to unnecessary loss of lives and cripples the economy.” Redwan Hussein, a government spokesman, said the war would be a “short-lived operation,” and that mediation offers from Uganda or another country were not being considered.

Amazon opens online pharmacy, shaking up another industry (AP) Now at Amazon.com: insulin and inhalers. The online colossus opened an online pharmacy Tuesday that allows customers to order medication or prescription refills, and have them delivered to their front door in a couple of days. The potential impact of Amazon’s arrival in the pharmaceutical space rippled through that sector immediately. Before the opening bell, shares of CVS Health Corp. fell almost 9%. Walgreens and Rite Aid both tumbled more than 10%. The big chains rely on their pharmacies for a steady flow of shoppers who may also grab a snack, or shampoo or groceries on the way out. All have upped online services, but Amazon.com has mastered it, and its online store is infinitely larger. Amazon will begin offering commonly prescribed medications Tuesday in the U.S., including creams, pills, as well as medications that need to stay refrigerated, like insulin. Shoppers have to set up a profile on Amazon’s website and have their doctors send prescriptions there. The company said it won’t ship medications that can be abused, including many opioids. Most insurance is accepted, Amazon said. But Prime members who don’t have insurance can also buy generic or brand name drugs from Amazon for a discount. They can also get discounts at 50,000 physical pharmacies around the country, inside Costco, CVS, Walgreens, Walmart and other stores.

R.I.P. whoopsie (Euronews) French broadcaster RFI has apologized after a bug on its website triggered the publication of obituaries of Queen Elizabeth II, Pelé, Jimmy Carter, Brigitte Bardot, Clint Eastwood and about 100 other prominent (and still alive) celebrities. RFI said in a statement that a “technical problem” led to the erroneous publications. Broadcasters often prepare obituary material in advance to publish it promptly when a death is announced.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

November 9, 2020

Heather Cox Richardson

I had hoped that the days when the news came like a firehose were over, but so far, no luck.

This morning, the stock market jumped 1200 points in its first day of trading after the announcement of Biden’s election. Over the course of the day it was up as much as 1600 points, then ended for the day with the Dow Jones Industrial Average up 834.57 points, or 2.95%.

The strong market is at least in part because pharmaceutical company Pfizer and the German drug company BioNTech announced today they have a coronavirus vaccine which appears to be about 90% effective. The Trump administration immediately tried to take credit for the vaccine, only to have Pfizer note that it has not taken federal money under Trump’s Operation Warp Speed for rushing a coronavirus vaccine. Don Jr. promptly suggested that the delay in announcing the potential vaccine until this week was designed to hurt Trump’s reelection, but it seems Pfizer is likely distancing itself from Trump to avoid any suggestion that the vaccine is about politics, rather than science. In the past, the administration has touted a number of treatments for Covid-19 that have turned out to be ineffective, and the pressure for a vaccine before the election threatened to weaken public faith in one.

The pandemic continues to worsen across the country. Today we learned that Ben Carson, the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, has tested positive for the virus; so has David Bossie, the Trump adviser in charge of the campaign’s legal challenges to the election loss. Both men were at the election night watch party at the White House, along with White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, who was infected at the time and did not wear a mask. Aides told PBS NewsHour reporter Yamiche Alcindor that they were worried the event would be a superspreader, but felt pressured to attend.

President-Elect Joe Biden started his presidential transition today, beginning by announcing the makeup of his coronavirus task force. It’s an impressive group of doctors and scientists, including Dr. Rick Bright, a whistleblower fired by Trump officials. “Please, I implore you, wear a mask," Biden told Americans. "A mask is not a political statement…. The goal is to get back to normal as fast as possible.”

New leadership and the rising infection rates are shifting the conversation. Last night, Utah’s Republican Governor Gary Herbert announced a state of emergency. He has imposed a statewide mask mandate indefinitely and a ban on social gatherings outside of households for the next two weeks. He has limited extracurricular activities at schools. Businesses that don’t follow the mask mandate can be fined; organizers who ignore the social gathering rule can be prosecuted and fined up to $10,000.

Not everyone likes the idea of new leadership, though. In an unprecedented move, Trump is refusing to acknowledge that he has lost the election. He has launched lawsuits challenging the ballot counting in a number of states, and his surrogates—including White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany—are accusing the Democrats of cheating. Tonight, Attorney General William Barr legitimized the idea of voter fraud by permitting federal prosecutors to investigate such allegations. Barr’s move prompted the head of the Election Crimes Branch of the Department of Justice, Richard Pilger, to resign.

But what’s so weird about this is that they are losing all these lawsuits. Indeed, some of them they’re not even trying to win: they’re not bothering to fill out the correct paperwork. It seems clear that they are simply stoking the narrative of an unfair election, but it is not at all clear to me to what end.

It is certainly possible that Trump and his people are launching a coup, as observers warn. And yet, this would not be an easy task. Biden’s win is not a few votes here or there; it is commanding, and Trump’s aides are telling reporters they think the game is played out. The military has already said it wants no part of getting involved in the election, and the courts so far are siding against the administration entirely. Even key Republican leaders, such as Georgia’s Republican lieutenant governor, are denying there has been any problem with the vote.

Maybe what’s at stake is that last Tuesday’s election left control of the Senate hanging on two runoff elections in Georgia. Today the Republican candidates in those races tagged on to the cries of voter fraud to call for Georgia’s Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to resign. Raffensberger is the top elections official in the state. He is a Republican. There is no evidence of any irregularity in the 2020 Georgia election, and the two senators did not offer any. But if they can get Democratic votes thrown out, Senators David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler might avoid the runoffs that look like they might well result in Democratic victories.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is determined to keep control of the Senate, and ginning up a conviction that the election was rigged could do that. McConnell defended Trump’s challenging of the election today, although he did not explicitly say he believed the election had been fraudulent. Trump’s attacks are working: new polling shows that 7 out of 10 Republican voters now think that the 2020 election was illegitimate. Barr met with McConnell before he signed onto the idea of voter fraud by announcing that federal prosecutors could go after it.

Still, while control of the Senate is likely driving McConnell, it seems highly unlikely that Trump cares about it. Perhaps the president is simply deep in a narcissistic rage, unable to face the idea of losing.

But there is something else niggling at me.

Trump’s refusal to acknowledge Biden’s win means that the current administration is denying him the right to see the President’s Daily Briefing (the PDB) which explains the biggest security threats facing the country and the latest intelligence information. Trump can keep Biden from seeing other classified information, too.

Today, Trump fired Defense Secretary Mark Esper (by announcing the firing on Twitter), and replaced him with a loyalist, Christopher C. Miller, who will be “acting” only. Trump also selected a loyalist and Republican political operative, Michael Ellis, to become the general counsel at the National Security Agency, our top spy agency, over the wishes of intelligence officials. Ellis was the chief counsel to Representative Devin Nunes (R-CA), a staunch Trump loyalist. Trump is also reportedly considering firing FBI director Christopher Wray and CIA director Gina Haspel. Last week, he quietly fired the leaders of the agencies that oversee our nuclear weapons, international aid, and electricity and natural gas regulation, although the last of those officials was moved to a different spot in the administration.

In other words, Trump is cleaning out the few national security leaders who were not complete lackeys and replacing them with people who are. It’s funny timing for such a shake-up, especially one that will destabilize the country, making us more vulnerable.

Today Washington Post diplomacy and national security reporter John Hudson noted that a source told him that the “Trump administration just gave Congress formal notification for a massive arms transfer to the United Arab Emirates: 50 F-35s, 18 MQ-9 Reapers with munitions; a $10 billion munitions package including thousands of Mk 82 dumb bombs, guided bombs, missiles & more….” This deal comes two months after the administration’s Abraham Accord normalizing relations between Israel and the UAE opened the way for arms sales.

The UAE has wanted the F-35 for years; it is the world’s most advanced fighter jet. They cost about $100 million apiece. The president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, has secretly been pushing for the sale of the arms to the UAE in the face of fierce opposition by government agencies and lawmakers.

The administration had announced a much smaller version of this deal at the end of October, in a sale that would amount to about $10 billion, but Congress worried about the weaponry falling into the hands of China or Russia and seemed unlikely to let the sale happen. In 2019, it stopped such a deal. Trump declared a national emergency in order to go around Congress and sell more than $8 billion of weapons to the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Jordan. He later fired Steven Linick, the State Department’s inspector general looking into those sales, but when the IG’s report came out nonetheless, it was scathing, suggesting that they put the U.S. at risk of being prosecuted for war crimes.

When you remember that Trump’s strong suit has always been distraction, and that he has always used the presidency as a money-making venture, I wonder if we need to factor those characteristics in when we think about his unprecedented and dangerous refusal to admit he has lost this election.

—-

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

Heather Cox Richardson