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Saturday, December 31, 2022

The world is watching how Republicans deal with the latest Donald Trump copycat liar and grifter

GeorgeSantosFrance.jpg

Article in Le Figaro, France. Translation: United States: George Santos, the Republican representative elected by using a falsified CV.

Investigations into the fake profile of recently-elected congressman for New York George Santos are being reported worldwide. Articles have appeared already in major journals in Spain, France, Finland, Brazil, Uruguay, China, Japan, Italy, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Ireland, Australia, India, Germany, Greece, Britain, the Netherlands and Somalia.

Yes, Somalia. Somalians are appalled. So are the Vietnamese. Vietnam’s Baonguoiviet news outlet reports that Republicans have shown no sign of forcing Santos to resign so far – despite his public confessions to “a host of lies” – loạt  thứ chuyện.

GeorgeSantosChina.jpg

This is another highly public test for Republicans, whose global reputation has been trashed by the sorry record of incompetence, corruption and monumental deceit of Donald Trump through his disastrous tenure of death and destruction as US president.

Santos is following faithfully the Trump playbook. Lie and cheat about everything, whether you need to or not. The bigger the lies the better. Play everyone for suckers, including party colleagues. Treat the whole world – voters, family, business associates, party officials, lawmakers, public servants – as gullible shmucks who deserve only your contempt and derision.

Concoct a false profile of non-existent past successes and accomplishments. Give yourself bogus awards for outstanding service. When forced to correct a fake résumé, replace it with another fake one which you insist is accurate. Keep doing this indefinitely.

Lie about your education. Create a record of academic brilliance at the best universities. You could even build your own fake university.

Conceal everything about your finances and brag you are mega rich. Concoct a vast property portfolio and claim to be a developer, even if actual projects have all failed. Assert failure to pay taxes is a virtue.

Claim to be a great philanthropist. Set up a website for a fake charity.

Claim money you borrowed was actually earned by dazzling business deals. Ensure cash fundraised for political campaigning can legally be diverted into your personal account via fine print footnotes.

When unresolved legal or commercial matters in other countries are revealed, deny, deny, deny.

When found out, play the victim. First, refute that you did it. Just say your blatant lies were “a poor choice of words”. When that is disproven, say it wasn't wrong. When that is disproven, say it wasn't all that serious, that critics are “nitpicking”. When that fails, say "Look over there! the Bidens!"

Then claim you are being persecuted by political opponents. Choose a form of words which supporters can pretend was an apology even though you are not sorry one little bit.

Take the Oath of Office, even if you have absolutely no intention whatsoever of keeping it. Grasp as much money from the public purse as you can while you can. Milk expenses by whatever means available. Golf at your own golf courses can generate $300,000 per game.

GeorgeSantosRussia.jpg

Will Republicans fail this test also? According to Russian newspaper Коммерсанте, they seem in no hurry – Те пока не торопятся.

The world is watching.

Friday, December 30, 2022

And, Just Like That, All the Top Sheets Were Gone

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Something just doesn't feel right on this hotel bed.

Like many, we pretty much stayed home during the first couple of years of the pandemic.  But by last month, 5 amazing injections later, we were ready to go again.  Off to see some history.  Over to Europe.

We arrived at the first hotel and attempted, and failed, to crawl in bed.  Unable to find the edge of the top sheet, we suspected something sinister was afoot.  Maybe the chip shortage, or an uprising in the housekeeping department.  I had heard about the secret cover sheets that were spirited off to Mar-a-Lago.  Maybe ours were among them.

And it was the same thing at the next hotel, and the one after that, and so on.  It was a massive conspiracy.  Nothing but bottom sheets and big, fluffy comforters.

But it’s a good conspiracy.  The bottom side of that fluffy comforter is smooth like a sheet.  There’s one less sheet to wash, less water to use and to heat, and a lot of time saved in making up the bed.  Multiply that by hundreds of rooms in thousands of hotels and the savings in resources is substantial.  And the conspiracy has spread to cruise ships.  One more little step in becoming more efficient.  Push down the heat and crawl under that fluffy comforter, and the sleeping is wonderful and the energy savings even greater.

This change apparently took place in 2021, but the word had not yet reached Missouri.  You can now order bedding sets without top sheets.  We bought one of those fluffy comforters and set the temperature to go lower at night, and it’s great sleeping.

I’m also giving some thought to holding my fork in my left hand.  Because we’ll never be truly able to compete internationally if we have to switch hands every time we need the knife.

Happy New Year to you.  And good sleeping... 

Not everybody is in favor of eliminating the top sheet.

 

Thursday, December 29, 2022

New studies show the Supreme Court's 'imperial' behavior really is unprecedented

WASHINGTON, DC - OCTOBER 07: United States Supreme Court Associate Justice Samuel Alito poses for an official portrait at the East Conference Room of the Supreme Court building on October 7, 2022 in Washington, DC. The Supreme Court has begun a new term after Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was officially added to the bench in September. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)
Who needs precedent when you can channel the spirits of pre-industrial-revolution English witch hunters.

As Republican nominees of archconservative Supreme Court yank back precedents of the last hundred years in an attempt to scrub American society of any rights that old-timey English witch-hunters or Colonial-era slaveholders would find distasteful, we've landed ourselves in a place where nobody's quite sure what is or isn't covered by United States law because court conservatives have been increasingly unwilling to bother with explaining it to us. Or, rather more urgently, to the lower courts who have been trying to piece together their rulings into a consistency that Justice Blackout Drunk or Justice Papal Seance haven't bothered to themselves provide.

It's nice to see judicial experts and reporters alike putting some real numbers to the problem, and The New York Times has a genuinely good(!) examination of the court's eagerness to change even their own internal processes in order to more efficiently arrive at the preferred conservative outcomes without argument or, increasingly, without waiting for lower court decisions in the first place.

The end result is not a deference to the executive branch, to Congress, to states, or to lower courts, the Times quotes from a Harvard Law Review examination of the record, "withdrawing power from all of them at once."

Some of the most useful data from the piece:

• The Roberts court has sided with the executive branch "just 35 percent of the time" in high-profile cases, "a rate more than 20 percentage points lower than the historical average."

• The Supreme Court is making a regular habit of plucking cases before federal appeals courts to be presented for arguments before the appeals courts have made rulings to begin with. "Before 2019, the court had not used the procedure for 15 years;" since 2019, the Roberts court has done it 19 times.

• "More than any other court in history," a new study finds, the Roberts court "uses its docket-setting discretion to select cases that allow it to revisit and overrule precedent."

All of this is what Supreme Court critics have been grousing about since the Court first began its new sprint to the right, so it's useful to see data to back up the complaints. Yes, the conservative Court is "revisiting" long-established precedents at a historically unprecedented rate. Yes, a peculiar new habit of the court's conservatives is to use the so-called shadow docket to force preferred outcomes in cases without arguments or even an explanation of why the rules have changed. And no, while the Court has had little patience for allowing the executive branch to interpret rules and regulations the executive branch was tasked with writing, the Court isn't deferring to congressional, state, or lower court opinions, either.

If you're a lower court trying to determine which United States laws are still real and which have been upended due to new conservative rulings favoring the Republican Party's selected polluters and religions, you're reduced to guesswork, not law books. A common thread among even the current Court's most-explained reversals of precedent has been an inability for lower courts to deduce how the hell they're supposed to apply those rulings going forward; the reason for the confusion is that so many of the conservative decisions appear to contradict even what the same justices declared just a few decisions back.

We'll have to leave it to legal experts for suggestions on counteracting a Supreme Court that's decided the last 200 years of history was a mistake that needs correcting. Filling the court with a few more justices who haven't been specifically handpicked by the Federalist Society to sabotage human rights and cooperative governance both seems like it'd be a plus, so long as we're talking about correcting past errors. But apparently, doing that would be (checks notes) an insult to the current Court and to the seditionist who created it.

This woman, "Coke Can" Clarence's obese wife, is a primary determinant of what you can and cannot do with your life.  "Coke Can" and his cohorts are taking liberties with your basic rights that no Supreme Court has ever taken before.

Wednesday, December 28, 2022

GOP lawsuits block Biden's student relief plan

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Student loan borrowers protest the GOP outside the Republican National Committee for denying student loan relief to 40 million borrowers on Nov. 18, 2022 in Washington, D.C.

The Biden administration’s student debt relief plan announced this past summer is monumental for Latinos in particular: Roughly one- third are set to see their school debt eliminated outright under the initiative. 

But following a number of Republican lawsuits, that relief has for now been paused. The Supreme Court has agreed to take up the case in an expedited hearing, but declined to lift the lower court injunction. So for now, all that affected borrowers like Cristher Estrada-Pérez and her mom Daisy Pérez can do is wait.

RELATED STORY: One-third of Latinos stand to have student debt cleared thanks to Biden's relief plan

Estrada-Pérez told NBC News that her mom went to school to study nursing to relieve the family from financial struggles. She achieved her goal and became a registered nurse, but was also left with  $90,000 in student debt. Estrada-Pérez is facing nearly that much in loans herself, at $80,000.

As Pell Grant recipients, both mom and daughter qualified for up to $20,000 in relief under the president’s plan. It in no way covers all their debt or even just the interest accumulated over the years, Estrada-Pérez told NBC News. But the Republican proposal has been zero. The Republican proposal has in fact been to go to court to challenge any sliver of relief for student borrowers.

“The onerous cost of higher education is a persistent challenge as communities continue to encourage college completion, especially for groups such as Latinos who lag in the number of adults with college degrees, with recent gains set back by the pandemic,” NBC News reported. 

Latino advocacy organization UnidosUS said survey findings revealed that 38% of Latino respondents owed an average of $17,000 in debt. The overwhelming majority of respondents said they’d been unable to save for their retirement, and have been affected in their decision to buy a home. Sixty-six percent said they had to borrow money from family or friends to cover an emergency. “For those with student debt, this number jumps to 80%.”

“She’s never going to be able to own a home and earn enough to retire,” Estrada-Pérez said about her mom. Estrada-Pérez told NBC News she’s had her own dreams about going to law school. But it doesn’t look realistic at the moment. “I couldn’t think about what my debt would look like if I even attempted to go to law school,” she said in the report.

The Biden administration did extend the pause on student loan repayments through next June, Daily Kos’ Joan McCarter reported last month.

“’I’m confident that our student debt relief plan is legal. But it’s on hold because Republican officials want to block it,’ Biden said in a video release,” she wrote. “’We’re not going to back down though on our fight to give families breathing room,’ Biden continued, explaining the the Department of Justice has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to rule on the case.”

While Hispanics suffer more than others, women of all colors pay a higher price than men.

Tuesday, December 27, 2022

Nostradamus predictions for 2023: An antichrist arrives, World War III and the monarchy dies

A Meteor glowing as it enters the Earth's atmosphere
Will it be a meteor or the wrath of Meghan Markle that sets Buckingham Palace ablaze in 2023?
Getty Images/iStockphoto

By Reda Wigle  
Provided by New York Post

As the year comes to a close, it's time to talk doomsday forecasts my babies, and no one grips us with grim quite like Nostradamus.

Nostradamus, Nos if you're nasty, was a 16th century astrologer, plague doctor, accused heretic and bearded seer that has been credited with foretelling The Great Fire of London, Hitler's rise to power, the September 11th attacks and the COVID 19 pandemic to name a few.

Sometimes on the money but more often than now muddily missing the mark, our man's prophecies lean towards conflagration and catastrophe.

Referred to as the "prophet of doom," Nostradamus's bleak world view is believed to have been shaped by heavy doses of the old testament and the trauma of losing his wife and young children to illness, presumably the plague. Unable to cure the ones he loved most, it seems he set out to forewarn the rest of us through his revelations of ruin.

With the publication of his famed book “Les Prophéties” in 1555, Nostradamus gifted the world and its future generations a quasi-poetic tome that predicts wars, pestilence, natural disasters, civil unrest, political assassinations and other such sunny stuffs. Heavy on language like “blood rain” the book is an enduring classic and with 2K23 on the horizon we’re taking a look at what fury and hellfire lay in store. But first, a look back.

Nostradamus’s predictions for last year included the rise of AI, the conquering power of cryptocurrency, and a surge in cannibalism as a response to inflation. How’d he do? While bitcoin has gone bust, inflation remains at an all time high and not for nothing, “Dahmer”, Netflix’s controversial ode to the famous flesh-eater became the second most watched show in the network’s history. 

In a fun little passage of imminent marine annihilation, Nostradamus predicts, “Like the sun the head shall sear the shining sea: The Black Sea’s living fish shall all but boil.” This one checks out, folks, as recent research suggests many of the most commonly eaten fish species could face extinction as a direct result of climate-change warming, i.e. boiling, the Earth’s oceans. With one of humanity’s major food sources in peril, maybe we’ll take to eating each other after all.


Nostradamus predicted 2K23 will see “Celestial fire on the royal edifice.” Taken literally, this could mean a meteor is headed straight for Buckingham Palace, burning down the house if you will. On a more metaphorical tip, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, who recently released a “bombshell” Netflix series detailing the dark deeds committed against them by the crown, have taken aim with a different kind of fire power, lighting up and tearing down the reputation of the royal family as we know it.

MANDATORY CREDIT
 Mandatory Credit: Photo by MIKHAIL METZEL/KREMLIN POOL/SPUTNIK/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock (13618066a)
 Russian President Vladimir Putin congratulates personnel and veterans of the Russia's Interior Ministry agencies on their professional holiday, in Moscow, Russia, 10 November 2022.
 Putin congratulates personnel of Russia's Interior Ministry agencies on professional holiday, Moscow, Russian Federation - 10 Nov 2022
Putin congratulates personnel of Russia's Interior Ministry agencies on professional holiday, Moscow, Russian Federation - 10 Nov 2022
Death-dealing, wax-faced, war-mongering enemy of decency Vladimir Putin could be the evil Nostradamus named in his 2K23 prophecy.
Mikhail Metzel/Kremlin Pool/Sputnik/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock

Nostradamus writes that 2K23 will find the world embroiled in, “Seven months great war, people dead through evil.” This could apply, albeit a bit late to the firefight, to the devastating conflict in Ukraine which thus far has been marked by war crimes and a heavy civilian death toll. In terms of the “evil” Nostradamus blames, hate-mongering, death-dealing, Libra Vladimir Putin comes pretty close to personifying it.

The prophecy points to the conflict escalating into a full scale world war in the year to come, which, given the nuclear arsenals at stake could equate to apocalyptic levels of destruction. But wait! It gets worse, like antichrist worse.

Photo illustration of shadowy Satan figure taking a selfie.
According to Nostradamus, the antichrist is coming to wage war and possibly post selfies.
Composite: Shutterstock

Nos writes that in or around 2023, “The antichrist very soon annihilates the three. Twenty-seven years his war will last. The unbelievers are dead, captive, exiled. With blood, human bodies, water and red hail covering the earth.” In a surprise to no one, the antichrist is a dude with blood lust, which means he could be lurking under the lies and necktie of any number of global politicians.

With mention of war and unbelievers being “dead, captive or exiled” there’s strong indication that the antichrist could be Putin himself, though Elon Musk’s Halloween costume and the Twitter response to it suggest that madman is also in the running. As an aside, if the “red hail covering the earth” sounds anything like the album of the same name by Armenian jazz musician Tigran Hamasyan, it ain’t so bad. Here’s hoping 2023 won’t be either.

Astrologer Reda Wigle researches and irreverently reports back on planetary configurations and their effect on each zodiac sign. Her horoscopes integrate history, poetry, pop culture and personal experience. She is also an accomplished writer who has profiled a variety of artists and performers, as well as extensively chronicled her experiences while traveling. Among the many intriguing topics she has tackled are cemetery etiquette, her love for dive bars, Cuban Airbnbs, a “girls guide” to strip clubs and the “weirdest” foods available abroad.

Monday, December 26, 2022

Disaster Scenarios Raise the Stakes for Colorado River Negotiations

Disaster Scenarios Raise the Stakes for Colorado River Negotiations 
The Glen Canyon Dam sits above Lake Powell and the Colorado River in Page, Ariz. Federal officials have projected that, as soon as July, water levels in the lake could fall to the point where the hydroelectric plant inside the dam could no longer produce power. (photo: Joshua Lott/WP)
 
At Colorado River conference in Las Vegas, water managers debate how to make historic cuts
 Joshua Partlow / The Washington Post

The water managers responsible for divvying up the Colorado River’s dwindling supply are painting a bleak portrait of a river in crisis, warning that unprecedented shortages could be coming to farms and cities in the West and that old rules governing how water is shared will have to change.

State and federal authorities say that years of overconsumption are colliding with the stark realities of climate change, pushing Colorado River reservoirs to such dangerously low levels that the major dams on the river could soon become obstacles to delivering water to millions in the Southwest.

The federal government has called on the seven Western states that rely on Colorado River water to cut usage by 2 to 4 million acre-feet — up to a third of the river’s annual average flow — to try to avoid such dire outcomes. But the states have so far failed to reach a voluntary agreement on how to make that happen, and the Interior Department may impose unilateral cuts in coming months.

“Without immediate and decisive actions, elevations at Lake Powell and Mead could force the system to stop functioning,” Tommy Beaudreau, the Interior Department’s deputy secretary, told a conference of Colorado River officials here Friday. “That’s an intolerable condition that we won’t allow to happen.”

Many state water officials fear they are already running out of time.

Ted Cooke, general manager of the Central Arizona Project, which delivers Colorado River water to central Arizona, said that “there’s a real possibility of an effective dead pool” within the next two years. That means water levels could fall so far that the Glen Canyon and Hoover dams — which created the reservoirs at Lake Powell and Lake Mead — would become an obstacle to delivering water to cities and farms in Arizona, California and Mexico.

“We may not be able to get water past either of the two dams in the major reservoirs for certain parts of the year,” Cooke said. “This is on our doorstep.”

The looming crisis has energized this annual gathering of water bureaucrats, the occasional cowboy hat visible among the standing-room-only crowd inside Caesars Palace. It’s the first time the conference has sold out, organizers said, and the specter of mass shortages looms as state water managers, tribes and the federal government meet to hash out how to cut usage on an unprecedented scale.

“I can feel the anxiety and the uncertainty in this room and in the basin,” said Camille Calimlim Touton, commissioner of the Bureau of Reclamation.

The negotiations will ultimately have to weigh cuts in rapidly growing urban areas against those in farming communities that produce much of the country’s supply of winter vegetables. In the complex world of water rights, farms often have priority over cities because they’ve been using river water longer. Unlike in past negotiations, water managers now expect that cuts will affect even the most senior water users.

The states of the Upper Colorado River Basin — Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming — say it is difficult to specify how much they can cut because they are less dependent on allocations from reservoirs and more on variable flows of the river. The lower basin states — California, Arizona and Nevada — also consume far more water.

“In the Upper Basin, we can say we’ll take 80 percent, and Mother Nature gives us 30,” said Gene Shawcroft, chair of the Colorado River Authority of Utah. “Those are some of the challenges we’re wrestling with.”

The federal government set an August deadline for the states to reach a voluntary agreement on cuts, but that deadline passed with no deal. Some state officials here blame the Biden administration. When it became clear this summer that the federal government wasn’t ready to impose unilateral cuts, the urgency for a deal evaporated, they said.

Now the Biden administration has launched a new environmental review for distributing Colorado River supplies in low-water scenarios. Water managers hope to have more clarity on what states can offer by the end of January. By summer, the federal government is expected to define its authority to impose unilateral cuts.

“Unfortunately, it’s a year later than we need it,” Cooke said in an interview.

Across the West, drought has already led to a record number of wells running dry in California, forced huge swaths of farmland to lie fallow and required homeowners to limit how much they water their lawns. This week, a major water provider in Southern California declared a regional drought emergency and called on those areas that rely on Colorado River water to reduce their imported supplies.

The problems on the river have been building for years. Over the past two decades, during the most severe drought for the region in centuries, Colorado River basin states have taken more water out of the river than it has produced, draining the reservoirs that act as a buffer during hard times. The average annual flow of the river during that period has been 13.4 million acre-feet — while users are pulling out an average of 15 million acre-feet per year, said James Prairie, research and modeling group chief at the Bureau of Reclamation.

In 1999, Lake Mead and Lake Powell, the two largest reservoirs in the country, held 47.6 million acre-feet of water. That has fallen to about 13.1 million acre-feet, or 26 percent of their capacity. An acre-foot equals 326,000 gallons, or enough to cover an acre of land in a foot of water.

Federal officials have projected that, as soon as July, the level in Lake Powell could fall to the point where the hydroelectric plant inside the Glen Canyon Dam could no longer produce power, and then keep falling so that it would become impossible to deliver the quantities of water that Southwest states rely on. Water managers say such a “dead pool” is also possible on Lake Mead within two years.

“These reservoirs have served us for 23 years, but we’re now pushing them to their limits,” Prairie said.

David Palumbo, the Bureau of Reclamation’s deputy commissioner of operations, stressed that the effects of climate change — a hotter and drier West, where the ground absorbs more runoff from mountain snow before it reaches the reservoirs — means the past is no longer a useful guide to the future of the river. Even high snow years are now seeing low runoff, he said.

“That runoff efficiency is critical to be aware of and, frankly, to be afraid of,” he said.

Water managers say cuts are likely to hit hard in Arizona and California, where major farming regions consume big portions of the available supply. These states, which get water after it passes through Lake Mead and the Hoover Dam, also face the greatest risk if the reservoirs fall to dangerous levels, said John Entsminger, general manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority.

“If you can’t get water through Hoover Dam, that’s the water supply for 25 million Americans,” he said.

A dust storm moves across the parched Arizona landscape.

Sunday, December 25, 2022

GARRISON KEILLOR: A Miraculous Evening on Sixth Avenue

A Miraculous Evening on Sixth Avenue  
Garrison Keillor. (photo: The Birchmere)
 
Garrison Keillor / Garrison Keillor's Website
readersupportednews.org 

I’ve been reading Christmas letters this week and — I don’t know how to say this politely — back where I come from, Minnesota, it is considered shameful to be shameless and write a promotional brochure about your over-achieving children — “Tara was top scorer on her soccer team and won the lead role in ‘Antigone,’ and her essay on chaos theory will be in the next issue of American Scholar. She and her partner Maria whom she met in Trigonometry and who is Phi Beta Kappa from Pakistan are engaged to marry in June and plan to start a family when they move to Cambridge to start grad school.”

Probably I am all wrong about this. Probably I am simply defensive about my own slovenly habits. Probably I am envious, having never excelled in anything other than humility. I hit a brick wall in lower algebra and never got to trig. And now I’ve brought home a pitiful misshapen Christmas tree for which I paid $90. I was sent out to purchase a tree and I brought home a cripple. I had to go out and buy a special orthopedic tree stand with lead weights so it won’t fall over.

My beloved tries to reassure me that the tree is “just fine,” that Christmas is about spirit, not décor. I hate this sort of reassurance. It simply confirms my inadequacy. Other men went tree shopping two weeks ago when the first loads had arrived in New York from Quebec and they got dibs on magnificent ten-footers and negotiated the price down to $50. I am inept at negotiation and I paid full price for this embarrassment.

And I haven’t yet found a Christmas gift for the love of my life. She says, “I don’t need anything, I have you,” which I take to mean, “Anything you buy me I’d just have to return so don’t bother.” I should take out a mortgage on the apartment and go to Tiffany’s and buy her emerald earrings but, knowing me, I’d be accosted by a gentleman outside Tiffany’s who’d offer me emeralds for twenty grand, half what Tiffany’s charges, and I’d buy them and they’d turn out to be from Woolworth’s.

What to do? I wrote her a sonnet one Christmas years ago and she was touched by that but now I am even more stunned by her beauty and brilliance and don’t think I could capture that in a poem.

And then yesterday a miracle occurred, not on 34th Street but on 50th, at Radio City Music Hall. My love and I and our beautiful daughter took the C train down to see the enormous perfect tree at Rockefeller Center and to see the Christmas Spectacular with the Rockettes. Thank goodness I married a capable woman. She guided us from the subway up to the line forming for the 5 p.m. show and steered us through the Art Deco lobby to our seats (which she had bought) in mid-orchestra, and the duo-organists started playing and the light show began and I felt swept away by Christmas.

I’m from Minnesota. I’m a Christian. I was brought up to be suspicious of glitter and glamor and to prefer simple sincerity, and the Spectacular is New York showbiz glitz from beginning to end, a full orchestra in the pit, the 36 Rockettes doing their classic routines between which Santa rollicks around and there’s a 3-D video and a Nutcracker skit and a thrilling video of Santa and his sleigh flying through the canyons of Manhattan and around Miss Liberty and there are angel drones and then the Rockettes come out on a double-decker bus that goes racing around city landscapes. There’s a brief and utterly irrelevant Nativity scene, with camels and sheep, and then the Rockettes return for a finale, tall long-legged young women who have mastered trigonometric routines while tap-dancing and doing high kicks in unison.

I should’ve been repelled by this. It goes against my principles. I’m a man who goes to church on Christmas Eve and weeps as we sing “Silent Night.” I loved the whole thing with a whole heart. We exited and an usher said softly to me, “Merry Christmas,” sincerely, and I wanted to hug her.

We came home. Our daughter went to her room to FaceTime her friends. My love sat on my lap and we looked at our tree and she said, “I love you so much” (to me). It’s about cheerfulness, dear friends. God bless your house and all those whom you love. Be kind. A child is born.


Saturday, December 24, 2022

ROBERT REICH: What the Hell to Do About Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas?

Clarence surely would have grandfathered this interracial marriage if he had been able to ban them.
 

 What the Hell to Do About Clarence Thomas?  Former Clinton labor secretary Robert Reich. (photo: Steve Russell/Toronto Star)

Out him for breaking the law

Robert Reich / Substack Friends,

Trump’s legal problems are mounting — with growing probability of criminal prosecutions for his attempted coup, theft of top-secret documents, and tax fraud.

You know where all this is going to end up, right? The Supreme Court.

What are the chance that Trump’s three appointees along with the two rightwing justices already on the high court when Trump was elected, Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, will allow the former president to be locked up?

I can’t predict. That they were appointed by Trump or another Republican president does not pose an illegal conflict of interest.

But I’ll tell you what is clearly an illegal conflict of interest: Clarence Thomas’s continued participation in any case arising from Trump’s attempted coup.

A federal law — 28 U.S. Code § 455 — requires that “any justice, judge, or magistrate judge of the United States shall disqualify himself in any proceeding in which his impartiality might reasonably be questioned.”

If Thomas fails to recuse himself from the Moore v. Harper case currently before the Court, he will be breaking that law. The bogus “independent state legislature” theory at the heart of Moore v. Harper was used by Thomas’ wife, Ginni Thomas, to pressure state lawmakers to overturn the 2020 election results.

Given these extraordinary actions by Ginni Thomas in the wake of the 2020 election, surely it’s reasonable to question the impartiality of Clarence Thomas.

Let’s be clear: The legal issue here is not whether Clarence Thomas is in fact impartial. The point of the federal law governing judicial conflicts of interest is to preserve the public’s trust in our legal system by eliminating even the appearance of partiality.

Thomas’s refusal to recuse himself from Moore v. Harper would further damage the integrity of the Court.

The stakes are significant. If the Supreme Court rules in favor of the plaintiffs in Moore v. Harper, Republican-controlled state legislatures could pass harsher voter suppression laws, enact even more gerrymandered maps, and potentially even change how electors are chosen in a presidential election — the specific strategy Ginni Thomas urged after the 2020 presidential election. (The Electoral Reform Act would go some way toward preventing this, but a determined state legislature and governor might use Moore v. Harper to justify it nonetheless.)

What to do about Clarence Thomas’s illegal conflict of interest?

I can think of at least three things (short of seeking to impeach him, which would be a non-starter in the soon-to-be Republican House) that should be done.

Chief Justice John Roberts should publicly state that Thomas must recuse himself from Moore v. Harper because his impartiality might reasonably be questioned.

The Senate should hold public hearings on Thomas’s apparent violation of law, including asking him to testify.

The Justice Department should convene a grand jury to consider whether Thomas has violated the law.

None of these will result directly in a legal finding that Clarence Thomas has an illegal conflict of interest. But they will shine a spotlight on it, pushing Thomas either to recuse himself or explain clearly why he won’t.

No person is above the law — not even someone charged with interpreting it.

"I can marry out of my race, but don't you go trying it."

Friday, December 23, 2022

No greater honor, no sorrier shame: Zelenskyy before Congress was a study in contrasts


Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky pumps his fist as he holds up a US national flag he received from US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) (L) following his address to the US Congress at the US Capitol in Washington, DC on December 21, 2022. - Zelensky is in Washington to meet with US President Joe Biden and address Congress -- his first trip abroad since Russia invaded in February. (Photo by Mandel NGAN / AFP) (Photo by MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images)
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accepts a flag flown over the U.S. Capitol in exchange for the Ukrainian flag he brought from Bakhmut.

Last night, Washington, D.C., witnessed a contrast so stark that it’s difficult to say when it might have been matched. On the one hand, Congress welcomed into its chamber a man who is currently leading his nation through a bloody war in which tens of thousands have died and millions have been displaced. Also present—or pointedly absent—were supposed representatives for millions of Americans who showed nothing but disdain for that man, the suffering of his people, and the role they play in saving not just their country but ours.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy brought with him a flag freshly taken from the front lines of the war, signed by soldiers who wanted to express their gratitude to the United States for the assistance it has provided. Those soldiers, fighting in the ruins if their homes, shadowed by death and threatened by a seemingly heartless foe, recognize that on their shoulders falls a burden carried only by a few in any century: the decision as to what kind of world goes forward, both now and for decades to come. Zelenskyy came to the House chamber as an emissary of those women and men, seeking to show their appreciation for aid already rendered as well as their desperate need for the tools that will allow the fight to be prosecuted to conclusion.

That Zelenskyy was in Washington and not in London, Paris, or anywhere else shows just how central the United States still remains—even at this late date, in spite of everything—to the enterprise of freedom. We are still the arsenal of democracy with all the responsibility that brings.

But even as Vice President Kamala Harris and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi were raising that Ukrainian battle flag at the front of the chamber, there were in the same room representatives of the same threat Ukraine is fighting. Their actions and words were not just a despicable shadow across a historic evening, but a sign of how close that enterprise stands to failure.

The people who are assailing Ukraine have no doubt about their purpose in that country, or what role this fight plays in the larger world. It takes no more than a quick look at their state-sponsored media to find the calls for extinction of the Ukrainian people before going on to other opponents.

That Zelenskyy came to the United States does us honor. That the joint session of Congress was opened by the enthusiastic greetings of representatives and senators who have supported Ukraine in its fight was genuinely heartwarming. Those who escorted Zelenskyy into the chamber and those who grew tearful applauding the man in a green shirt as he stepped to the podium have this in common with those fighting in the trenches at Bakhmut and Soledar: They knew they were making history. 

But it’s impossible to ignore the shadow that hung over the back rows of that chamber. Some of that shadow was evident in the way that not every seat was filled. Earlier in the day, Pelosi mentioned her father’s presence in Congress on the day that Winston Churchill visited, the day after Christmas in 1941. On that day, every seat was swiftly filled. Doorkeepers placed extra chairs at the rear of the chamber to accommodate the swelling crowd, while the visitors’ galleries overflowed with family members and guests.

Of course, while Churchill’s dilemma in World War II seems all too similar to the difficulties now facing Zelenskyy, there was one big difference: The Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor just three weeks earlier. Only a few months earlier, in March 1941, 135 Republicans had voted against the Lend Lease Act. Had Churchill come to visit at that time, he may well have gotten a reception like that given to Zelenskyy by representatives like Thomas Massie of Kentucky. 

Massie has voted against every bill containing any assistance to Ukraine and has declared that he is “proud” of those votes. On Wednesday, he not only refused to come to come to the joint session, he did so with a sneer.

Massie tweet on Zelensky speech

Then there were those such as Colorado Rep. Lauren Boebert and Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz. They did attend, but did so only so that they could show their disdain for Zelenskyy. They not only remained seated when their colleagues stood to greet the Ukrainian president, they made a point of visibly chattering during some of the most moving moments of the speech, of blatantly checking their phones, and of staring stony-faced toward Zelenskyy in those moments when he was urgently calling for the assistance of America.

In fact, the only moments that seemed to cause Gaetz and Boebert to smile during the whole evening was when they deliberately forced their way past the security checkpoint at the entrance of the chamber and pointedly ignored the police who tried to stop them from entering the joint session. Because nothing tops off a display of disrespect like adding an extra layer of threat.

They weren’t alone in their refusal to recognize the moment. When even Rep. Jim Jordan stood for one moment of applause, he still couldn’t get Georgia representative and gun store owner Andrew Clyde to stand. “I will not,” said Clyde. “I will not.”

All of these conveyers of contempt were eagerly welcomed by right-wing media, which provided a number of pundits to join in painting the event with sarcasm and disdain. However, as might be expected, it fell to Fox News’ Tucker Carlson to really plumb the depths of loathsomeness.

Every single Republican who went on Fox seemed obsessed with the idea that America is defined by “the border.” And maybe that’s the basic flaw with everything on the right, because America isn’t a block of land prescribed by borders. America is an idea. Thankfully, not everyone has forgotten that. During his campaign for the White House, President Joe Biden used that phrase as he address the “battle for the soul of this nation.”