…maybe I’m biased because I just flat out dislike the guy…but this matt gaetz shit is
…well
The Gaetz investigation was first reported by the New York Times on Tuesday. That night, Gaetz went on Fox News and called the story “verifiably false.” He said “people can look at my travel records and see that that is not the case.”
The Fact Checker could not resist this invitation. We found that Gaetz’s line about “travel records” is a complete smokescreen. They disprove nothing.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/04/01/matt-gaetzs-claim-that-travel-records-debunk-allegations-against-him/
…it seems like the more attention you pay to it the worse it gets?
…now it’s not always the fault of the one whose welcome is worn out
BBC Correspondent Leaves China, Citing Growing Risks [NYT]
…sometimes the only move you have left is to be somewhere else
In a letter posted online on Thursday, employees of the Russian embassy in Pyongyang described a “collective exit” of foreign diplomatic staff that they predicted would “unfortunately not be the last” due to unbearable conditions in the North Korean capital.
“It is possible to understand those leaving the [North] Korean capital. Hardly everyone can stand the unprecedented total restrictions [on individuals], the sharp deficit of essential goods, including medicines, the lack of any possibility to resolve health problems,” members of staff at the Russian embassy wrote.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/apr/01/foreign-diplomat-collective-exit-from-north-korea-russian-embassy-staff-strict-covid-restrictions
…democracy isn’t exactly thriving everywhere, in case you were wondering
…though these days it’s not a given that the plane you get on is going someplace else, even
Cleared for lunch: Japanese airline serves £390 in-flight meals on parked planes
…& of course old habits die hard when it comes to republican support
Liddy may have died Tuesday at 90, but he lives on in any number of characters afflicting our politics with their theatrical machismo or numbskulled shenanigans. There’s a little Liddy in the Republican senators who dressed in safari gear to visit the border last week in armed riverboats. There’s a little Liddy in New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and his hatchet men, who aren’t subtle about conducting loyalty tests or smearing opponents. TrumpWorld teemed with little Liddys trying to outdo one another with displays of bravado, running off cliffs like Wile E. Coyotes, rigging political bombs that detonated in their faces.
Roger Stone, Paul Manafort, Michael Cohen, Rudolph Giuliani. Absent-minded masterminds, all of them, tripping on their own cloaks, daggering their own shanks.
Fixers who need fixing.
Little Liddys everywhere: The legacy of a political ‘super-klutz’ [WaPo]
An extraordinary event took place in Georgia on Wednesday night. Republicans sought to cancel a tax break for Delta Air Lines, the state’s biggest employer, as punishment for the heresy of criticizing the new voter-suppression law Republicans passed last week.
And a top Republican has openly, blithely confirmed that this was exactly the motive.
This latest turn in the Georgia voting wars is wretched in its own right. But it also helps clarify some larger national themes: the profound phoniness of many GOP screams about “cancel culture” and “woke” corporations, and the ugly nature of GOP culture-warmongering, which has grown all-consuming.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/04/01/gop-war-on-voting-georgia-delta/
The NRA’s grassroots clout – via the Internet, letters, phone and other tools – coupled with the influence wielded by millions of other gun owners, keep many Republican allies fighting almost reflexively against gun curbs, notwithstanding recent NRA problems including electoral setbacks, staff cuts, drops in member dues revenue and legal threats, according to analysts.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/apr/01/nra-grassroots-clout-republicans
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2018/national/mass-shootings-in-america/]
As millions of Texans went without power for days during February’s devastating storm, Texas oil and gas regulators were circulating talking points from a noted climate skeptic blaming system failures on the state’s embrace of wind and solar energy, emails obtained by NBC News show.
The talking points from Alex Epstein, author of “The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels,” made their way to the Texas governor’s office and to the state’s oil and gas regulator, known as the Railroad Commission of Texas. One commissioner amplified the talking points on Twitter, while another commissioner’s aide forwarded them to top Texas oil and gas lobbyists.
[…]
In fact, independent fact-checkers have repeatedly said the state’s failure to weatherize, along with its disconnection from the national grid, triggered a domino effect that forced the massive blackouts as power plants went offline. The biggest losses of generation came from natural gas; failing wind power played only a minimal role.
[…]
Epstein, who runs what he calls a “for-profit think tank” called the Center for Industrial Progress, is a staunch advocate for continuing use of fossil fuels who has repeatedly cast doubt on whether there’s a scientific consensus about climate change. He describes himself as a consultant on energy messaging and runs a subscription service for pro-fossil fuel talking points.
[…]
Epstein’s talking points were among hundreds of pages of emails from the governor’s office and the Railroad Commission obtained by the watchdog group Documented and provided to NBC News.The emails cast light on what climate advocates and good-governance groups have long decried as a cozy and inappropriately collaborative relationship among Texas elected officials and regulators, lobbyists for industry and proponents of fossil fuels. Despite its name, the Railroad Commission no longer deals with trains and instead regulates oil, gas and coal.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/texas-officials-circulated-climate-skeptic-s-talking-points-on-power-failures-during-storm
…& those habits are showing up in all sorts of places they really shouldn’t
The Supreme Court said Thursday that the Federal Communications Commission could begin to relax the rules restricting single-company ownership of multiple media outlets in a community, clearing the way for more industry consolidation.
In a separate ruling, the court said Facebook did not violate the federal law governing robocalls when it sent text messages to a man who said he never had an account with the social media company.
Both decisions were unanimous.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/supreme-court/supreme-court-allows-looser-media-consolidation-rules-sides-with-facebook-in-robocall-case
[…]
The court’s opinion, written by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, said the limits on cross ownership were adopted at a time when media sources were more limited.
[…]
Kavanaugh said the FCC found that “the historical justifications for those ownership rules no longer apply in today’s media market, and that permitting efficient combinations among radio stations, television stations, and newspapers would benefit consumers.”
…not that it seemed like the old rules were getting in the way of the likes of the Sinclair Broadcast Group
A 2019 study in the American Political Science Review found that “stations bought by Sinclair reduce coverage of local politics, increase national coverage and move the ideological tone of coverage in a conservative direction relative to other stations operating in the same market.”[3][4] The company has been criticized for requiring its stations to broadcast packaged video segments and its news anchors to read prepared scripts that contain editorial content, including warnings about supposed “fake news” in mainstream media.[5]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_stations_owned_or_operated_by_Sinclair_Broadcast_Group
…who I just bet are totally fine with all of this
…despite everything about it being ass-backwards
Georgia state Rep. Park Cannon, who was arrested last week while knocking on the office door of Gov. Brian Kemp as he signed a bill that places new restrictions on voting, said Thursday that what the governor has done is a “far more serious crime” than her actions.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/georgia-legislator-arrested-for-protesting-voting-law-says-signing-bill-far-more-serious-crime
[…]
“As horrible as that experience was and as difficult as it is to acknowledge that I am facing eight years in prison on unfounded charges, I believe the governor’s signing into law the most comprehensive voter suppression bill in the country is a far more serious crime,” said Cannon, who was wearing a black sling around her left arm.
[…]
“The issue at hand: Voter suppression in Georgia is alive today, on the first day of April. He has erased decades of sacrifices, incalculable hours of work, marches, prayers, tears even, and as he minimized the deaths of thousands who had paid the ultimate price for the right to vote,” she said.
…but “times they are a-changing”, right?
Before the coronavirus, the World Economic Forum estimated that it would take a century before women worldwide would reach gender parity. Now, as the world lurches toward recovery, the WEF’s latest report finds that it will take another generation — an additional 36 years — before women are on equal footing as men.
https://www.thelily.com/the-pandemic-set-womens-equality-back-another-generation-a-new-report-says
[…]
To put it another way, if current trends hold, no one alive today will see economic or political gender parity in their lifetime.
An Accidental Disclosure Exposes a $1 Billion Tax Fight With Bristol Myers [NYT]
…in a lot of ways it seems like we need to be taking another look at a lot of our assumptions all round
Biden’s Big Bet: Tackling Climate Change Will Create Jobs, Not Kill Them [NYT]
These stories, from four different parts of the United States, aren’t isolated pockets of struggle. They are emblematic of a larger problem that has been widely acknowledged by people from the Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell to Amy Schumer: America’s child-care industry is in crisis.
Child Care in Crisis: Can Biden’s Plan Save It? [NYT]
…although that can be tricky
Advances in technology, fertilizer use and global trade have allowed food production to keep pace with a booming global population since the 1960s, albeit with gross inequities that still leave millions of people suffering from malnutrition.
But rising temperatures in this time have acted as a handbrake to farming productivity of crops and livestock, according to the new research, published in Nature Climate Change. Productivity has actually slumped by 21% since 1961, compared to if the world hadn’t been subjected to human-induced heating.
With the global population set to rise to more than 9 billion by 2050, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization has estimated that food production will have to increase by about 70%, with annual crop production increasing by almost one 1bn tonnes and meat production soaring by more than 200m tonnes a year by this point.
[…]
The intensification of farming to boost output has in itself caused major environmental damage, through the deforestation of grazing land, loss of valuable topsoil, pollution from pesticides and the release of vast amounts of greenhouse gases that contribute to global heating.
[…]
Weston Anderson, a researcher of food security and climate at Columbia University who was not involved in the study, said the new research provides fresh insight into the magnitude of the impact upon agriculture.“The regions that this paper highlights as experiencing the largest reductions in agricultural productivity – Central America and the Sahel – contain some of the least food secure countries in the world, which is a real concern,” he said.
“It means that populations that were already food insecure are shouldering the heaviest burden of climate change, and highlights the importance of doing all that we can to improve agricultural production in these vulnerable regions immediately.”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/apr/01/climate-crisis-global-heating-food-farming-agriculture
…so even the nice stuff isn’t necessarily as nice as it looks
Japan’s famous cherry blossoms reached their peak earlier than ever before this year, with experts suggesting the record-setting date is the result of climate change.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/japan-s-famous-cherry-blossoms-see-earliest-bloom-in-1-200-years
…& hard as it might be to believe…covid only just scraped into the top three
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/covid-was-third-leading-cause-death-in-the-us-last-year
…but some numbers are looking like they fall in our favor
The findings are the first to demonstrate that the vaccine remains effective for many months, an outcome that doctors and scientists had desperately hoped for because it suggests that people being vaccinated now should be protected at least until the autumn when boosters may be ready.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/apr/01/pfizer-vaccine-has-91-efficacy-for-up-to-six-months-trial-shows
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/pfizer-says-trials-suggest-covid-vaccine-works-against-south-african-variant
…so…let’s hope things don’t go the other way
Virus Surge in Michigan Is a ‘Gut Punch’ to Hopes of Pandemic’s End [NYT]
This new rise in cases is most pronounced in Michigan and New York but is becoming widespread across large swaths of the country. The threat of a fourth wave comes as many states have loosened Covid-19 restrictions – disregarding public health officials’ many warnings that doing so was premature.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/apr/01/us-fourth-wave-covid-coronavirus-cases
…either way…it pays to check the back seat before you drive off
A man who went shopping in New Mexico returned to a car filled with 15,000 honey bees who had apparently got in through an open window while he spent 10 minutes buying groceries.
Astonishingly, the man – who was not named in the New York Times report detailing his unexpected travel companions – did not notice the sudden presence of a giant swarm of buzzing insects on his vehicle’s back seat until he was driving away.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/apr/01/new-mexico-man-bees-car-supermarket
An off-duty firefighter in Las Cruces, N.M., whose hobby is beekeeping, safely removed the swarm from the man’s car in an Albertsons supermarket parking lot.
A Man Found 15,000 Bees in His Car After Grocery Shopping [NYT]
…being aware of your surroundings is generally a good idea when you think about it…although (if you’ll excuse a brief brexit-inspired bit of oh-for-fuck’s-sake-britain)
The founder of a Scottish dog food business has told how Brexit forced him to move to France after his exports to the EU were halted because of the new trade barriers in place since 1 January.
After 10 weeks of daily calls and emails to government representatives, who he said were “absolutely terrible”, Antoon Murphy said he was left with no other option than to relocate or face losing the business.
“The trade deal they agreed at Christmas is very close to as good as no deal,” he said.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/apr/01/brexit-scottish-dog-food-firm-relocates-to-france-due-to-export-red-tape
[…]
About 60% of his sales were dog chews made from deer antlers, a sustainable and safer alternative to the bones popular in the UK and across the EU.
[…]
He hit the first wall in January when he discovered the chews and other treats were classed as animal feed and each dispatch needed a health certificate.
[…]
“Our products are quite niche and there is no specific health certificate for them,” he said. “It took us about 10 weeks of daily calls and emails with the Animal Health Agency to finally get somewhere in obtaining export health certificates for our products. They were absolutely terrible.”
…mind you
Last week, as Britain focused on its gradual emergence from lockdown, the home secretary, Priti Patel, laid out the government’s “New Plan for Immigration.”
The details were deeply sinister. Only those coming through resettlement schemes, who amount to less than 1 percent of refugees globally, would be welcomed. Everybody else, forced to take life-threateningly dangerous journeys, would be branded “illegal” and aggressively penalized. They would be blocked from key state support, given diminished family reunion rights and be permanently liable for removal, even if granted asylum.
These drastic proposals — which some suggest could contravene the United Nations’ 1951 Refugee Convention — have been months in the making. Last year, Ms. Patel reportedly raised the possibility of sending asylum seekers to islands in the south Atlantic and considered deploying the Navy to prevent people from reaching Britain’s shores. Her plan, inhumane and wrongheaded, exemplifies how the British government treats migrants and refugees.
But such cruelty goes further than the asylum process. Since Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government took office in December 2019, promising to “Get Brexit Done,” it has sought to institute a harsher, more punitive system of immigration and border control. In the name of British sovereignty, it has suffused its rule with anti-migrant authoritarianism.
Boris Johnson’s Government Is Built on Cruelty [NYT]
…they do seem to be leaning into the doth-protest-too-much thing just at the minute
Doreen Lawrence, who campaigned for 18 years for justice after her son Stephen was murdered by racists, has said a government-commissioned report that claimed the UK no longer had a system rigged against minorities could allow racism to flourish.
“My son was murdered because of racism and you cannot forget that. Once you start covering it up it is giving the green light to racists. You imagine what’s going to happen come tomorrow. What’s going to happen on our streets with our young people? You are giving racists the green light,” Lady Lawrence said.
Her words follow an outcry over the 258-page report from the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities, which claimed the term “structural racism” was “too liberally used” and that factors such as socioeconomic background, culture and religion had a “more significant impact on life chances”.
Shortly after the report’s publication the government admitted that a “considerable number” of people giving evidence – particularly from ethnic minorities – had in fact told the commission that structural racism was a real problem.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/apr/01/doreen-lawrence-says-no-10-report-gives-racists-the-green-light
…so you have to wonder what Doreen Lawrence (whose son’s death resulted in among other things a report describing the metropolitan police as a structurally racist institution) would make of this
A man has become the first serving British police officer to be convicted of a terrorism offence after he was found guilty of membership of a banned neo-Nazi group.
Ben Hannam had been working as a probationary officer for the Metropolitan police for nearly two years before his details were found on a leaked database of users of an extreme rightwing forum.
The 22-year-old was found guilty on Thursday at the Old Bailey in London of membership of the terrorism group National Action (NA), which was banned in December 2016.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/apr/01/ben-hannam-met-police-officer-guilty-belonging-banned-neo-nazi-terror-group
…still…with the weekend on the way…at least we can agree that generally friday is pretty much irenic
The lexicographer and etymologist Susie Dent tells me it comes from Eirene, the Greek goddess of peace, who also gives us the name Irene. What a pity, then, that you don’t hear of many Irenes these days. I’m sure my nan knew an Irene, but that’s about it in my life. I searched a list of 50 famous Irenes and hadn’t heard of any of them. However, I’m so glad I looked, because I came across the quite fabulously named actor and director Irene Miracle.
It says something bad about us that this beautiful word, irenic, has fallen out of use, as has its only real synonym, pacific. As Dent points out in her book Word Perfect, negative words are more likely to flourish than positive ones. She reminds me that there is no synonym for love, yet we have endless choices for hate, and that once we could be ruly, couth, wieldy, pecunious, mayed, ept, gruntled and so on, but now we can only be their opposites.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/apr/01/isnt-it-irenic-its-time-to-bring-back-beautiful-words-we-have-lost
I can’t decide whether AOC calling out the GOP on social media is a good thing or a bad thing. On the one hand silence means your side isn’t heard since plenty of people seem to rely on social media for news, OTOH, after years of cheeto railings on social media you run the risk of being seen as another crackpot and it’s a distraction from the real evil that is happening while people are tweeting.
Anyone see the articles about cheeto suddenly touting the global economy? That’s a good one, what happened to murica first donny boy?
…I don’t spend a lot of time on twitter…but I ran across that AOC thing & on balance I think it seems fair enough on her part
…I might be a bit more on the fence in terms of your point generally…on the one hand it doesn’t matter how snappy a comeback you can serve out on social media the problems those elected to office are meant to be grappling with aren’t addressed in that medium…but on the other hand it seems like these days if you want to get a message to a lot of people then it’s arguably not smart to ignore that avenue?
…in this particular instance though I think the point for me was that cruz was trying to be clever…as I understand it putting that period before the @ means the account “called out” doesn’t get notified…so he was trying to make a bullshit point about a thread she’d previously put together about why his stunt-trip to the border was a bullshit distraction from the ways in which he & his ilk have been instrumental in creating the conditions he now wants to claim are a problem caused by those he opposes…but not “to her face” so to speak
…mostly though he just seemed like an easy example of the “super-klutz” style of “fixers who need fixing”?
I think it’s okay in its current form. She’s being truthful, factual, and not rude. Everything Cruz fails at.
It’s a terrible balancing act because AOC gets waves of threats and harassment for speaking out, but why should she let the harassers win? And what if her interactions manage to move the needle here and there? She clearly finds it worth that bit of bandwidth.*
* all opinions subject to a complete 180 if it turns out Cruz is getting off on all this, because yuck.
Agreed. Plus her social media footprint is bigger than Cruz, so she is basically obligated to call out his bullshit with facts, lest we see more Twitter demagoguery from the right. I say carry on, AOC.
Gaetz may have left Florida, but Florida never left him.
I was texting with a friend about it after the news first hit and he referred to it as “a sex scandal” and I said “there’s no way it’s not scandalSSSS”
More fun details. Seems Matt Gaetz was captured on video sneaking into his buddy, Joel Greenberg’s, tax office in the middle of the night, where they rifled through expired licenses. Greenberg swiped expired licenses from the office and used them to create fake IDs. Why? Well, now that’s a good question.
Greenberg, you will remember, was removed from office as the Seminole County Tax Collector and is facing nearly three dozen charges of various crimes, including sex trafficking. The investigation into Greenberg is what launched the Gaetz investigation. From the article:
An indictment states that Greenberg used his access as an elected official to look up information about a girl between the ages of 14 and 17 in a state database, in order “to produce a false identification document and to facilitate his efforts to engage in commercial sex acts.”
https://www.orlandosentinel.com/politics/os-ne-joel-greenberg-matt-gaetz-closed-office-weekend-20210402-y5xcsaecibaa3eysrljvwjp3cm-story.html
…I think the broad outlines of that bit were in the first dozen entries of that thread…but yeah…also…somewhere along my way I recall there being a response to roger stone’s name coming up in connection to greenberg that featured a picture of the trio having a night out
…but I didn’t want to entirely ruin anyone’s day so I left that image out
I clicked ‘like’ but in this instance it means disgusted.
I figured.
Oh, damn. Now they have receipts. Literal receipts, not figurative.
Matt Gaetz paid prostitutes using Cash App and Apple Pay
https://www.rawstory.com/matt-gaetz-2651326023/
fucking criminal mastermind!!!
Right? Pay prostitutes in CASH, my dude. That’s like Crime 101.
But it was an *APP,* Bryan… everybody KNOWS you’re anonymous when you use an app… jeeeeeez!
😆😂🤣🤣🤣🤣
1. Matt Gaetz. You think you know someone and then…I imagined him living a quiet, closeted life with his “son” Nestor, occasionally going on the floor of the House to spew all kinds of nonsense. The Founders, in their infinite wisdom, foresaw this, and created the Senate as an overriding counterbalance. But no, it looks like Gaetz likes to party all the time, with women?
2. AOC really doesn’t fuck around, does she? If she really wants to get under Ted Cruz’s skin, she should tweet at him in Spanish (I assume they can both speak it, at least enough to be intelligible) whenever he says anything about immigration, and remind him that he himself is an immigrant (born in Canada) of immigrant parents (born in Cuba.) She should also refer to him by his given first name, Rafael. It’s no wonder Nancy Pelosi detests AOC. She can wear kente cloth and take the knee and rip up State of the Union speeches all she wants but she is no AOC and never was, even a half-century ago when she was AOC’s age.
3. I don’t think it is widely known that Boris Johnson was actually born in New York, to British parents (I think) and carried dual UK-American citizenship until quite recently. He gave up his American citizenship so he’s one fewer for which America has to bear some liability.
4. Meanwhile, back here in The Only City That Matters™, we were greeted today by the news that the deal around Andrew Cuomo’s fantasy self-fan-fic, partially ghostwritten by well-paid aides on the state payroll, has been added to the investigation. This isn’t a great thing, because the more sleaze they pile on the longer it will take to get any resolution. If there were five or six concurrent investigations that might be one thing, but it seems to me it’s becoming this huge package deal with an “all-or-nothing” clause.
https://news.yahoo.com/ny-assembly-probe-now-look-123912136.html
I’m starting to seriously wonder about Nestor’s role in all of this. It looks like Gaetz was basically trying to set up a prostitution ring (as a part-time job maybe, what the actual fuck?), and he clearly spent time auditioning and recruiting staff. So if Gaetz is a pimp or pimp-wannabee, is Nestor part of the staff? And for how long? Which is depraved on so many levels.
…I guess I never paid enough attention to know how the timeline actually shook out but I saw something that suggested all the nestor-related stuff (& the engagement) came along after he became the subject of a federal investigation
…I don’t know when he supposedly dated nestor’s sister or however it was he supposedly met the kid…but I think the bit where he called attention to having “fostered” a son would have been after the investigation was under way
…which is just another kind of way this whole thing is bizarre & creepy & all kinds of sketchy, I guess?
I just assumed Nestor, who he’d been taking care of since he was 12, was probably extensively groomed to be a victim as well.
A single man doesn’t take in a 12 year old he’s not related to (where that kid also has family alive) for reasons that aren’t disturbing.
Premier Doofus Ford finally relented and put the whole damn province under shutdown or whatever confusing bullshit he defines it this Sat.
I used to wonder about his sky high approval rating (and I loathe Ford Nation) but he did the job and he did deserve credit. After listening to his supporter base of rabid “small/medium business owners” and religious “leaders” especially the prosperity gospel churches instead of health experts that’s gone.
He seems more interested in protecting cash flow than people.
Spent most of the day yesterday at the hospital with my friend. He’s not doing well. I haven’t seen him since Aug, but I was warned about how he’s physically changed. I didn’t mind helping him in and out of various vehicles/wheelchairs etc.
They had to admit him into the hospital because he has too much fluid in his stomach and ankles.
Had a chat with his brother later when I stopped by to drop off things. I get why he said the things he did (doesn’t mean I’m on his brother’s side.) His brother’s manager is a total shithead. Reminds me of the supervisor I had who felt no empathy for others yet demanded it when shit happened to him (gave out warning letters to those who called in for birth of kids and or took time off to deal with the death their kid yet took 3 weeks off when his grandmother died.)
It’s Fur Face Friday, hosted this week by Deadsplinter’s myopicprophet!
https://backtalkvillage.blogspot.com/2021/04/fur-face-friday.html?m=1