6/30/21 House Tosses Its Confederate Marbles; Repugs Spout Head-Scratchers

The House today voted to remove the busts of Confederates and white supremacists now displayed within the Capitol building. The vote was 285 to 120, with those 120 being all Republicans.

Right away, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy started in with a loony-tunes spin. “I applaud the Democrats for standing up, removing Democrat statues from Democrat-controlled majorities sent to a Democrat-majority House who accepted them,” said McCarthy, who also pointed out that Abraham Lincoln was a Republican.

Never mind that the Republicans became the party of money during the late 19th century, or that President Theodore Roosevelt, who called himself a Republican, was effectively a modern-day Democrat.

“Each of the statues in question represents a known racist who was a Democrat from the past,” added Rodney Davis (R-Ill.), serving as McCarthy's sidekick. “The majority party is anxious to erase their discriminatory history from the Capitol with this action.”

The same sort of bill got stepped on in the Senate last year, which said that the states, who choose two honchos apiece to honor in the Capitol, would have to make the decisions first. This time, the bill will remove the statues and let the states respond at their leisure.

In case you were wondering, the Confederates leaving the Capitol are joined by four others: John C. Calhoun (a dour man whom you would avoid sitting next to at the dinner table); Justice Roger B. Taney, who wrote the Dred Scott decision, and who will be replaced by Thurgood Marshall; Charles Aycock; and James P. Clarke. We presume the latter two are well known to our readers.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/house-votes-to-remove-confederate-statues-from-capitol_n_60db771ce4b0b84c3be260a8?fbclid=IwAR3KNKhBoEm1kYX26uxtnKjImWdceaAs1-xf-l1FNar1xlArjrmfGmvvx34

6/30/21 Governor Sununu Tries to Thread the Needle, but Impales Himself -- Twice

For someone who learned the craft of politics at his daddy's knee, Chris Sununu kinda blew it. The Republican New Hampshire governor signed a bill last week that restricts teachers and some state employees from talking about racism. That's pretty typical for a GOP governor, and if New Hampshire were a pretty typical GOP state, it might be the end of the story.

It wasn't. Ten members of the 17-member "diversity council" that Sununu set up in 2017 resigned in protest. In their resignation letter, they said that "...nearly every member of the Council that is not part of your administration is resigning today, as we collectively see no path forward with this legislation in place."

It's hard to know how the nimble John Sununu, late New Hampshire Governor and George H.W. Bush's chief of staff, would have threaded the needle on the dilemma that faced his second child (of eight). It's also hard to know how John E. Sununu, Chris's brother and former U.S. Senator, would have handled it, because brother John isn't talking -- yet.

Governor Sununu, however, responded in part by criticizing the ACLU for inserting “politics into an otherwise fruitful mission in addressing many issues of race and discrimination in our state.” This bizarre statement sounds like a Trumpist "back-atcha," but it isn't, quite: One resigning council member is the ACLU's state executive director.

The racism-talk contretemps follows closely on another Sununu belly-flop that started when he signed a trailer to the state's budget bill last Friday -- a trailer that restricts abortion. Historically, New Hampshire voters, including Republicans, don't like that. Not at all. The GOP there tends to be Libertarian, and they hate rules and bans. The state motto is literally “Live free or die!”

Never mind that the ban was on abortions at the 24th week and later, except for medical emergencies. Doctors could go to jail for seven years and be fined up to $100,000. It also requires an ultrasound before abortion.

While Sununu keeps saying that the trailer wasn't his idea, he (tellingly) signed the bill without benefit of a photo op. And now the state's Democrats have responded by talking up Sununu as a potential senatorial candidate.

Sununu should be so lucky.

 

Is Sununu overstepping the will of the voters? If so, he could be voted out of office. Why on earth would he choose to be adamant about these particular issues? So how DO you tell teachers not to talk about racism without ticking off a diversity panel?

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/nhs-sununu-the-gops-top-senate-recruit-for-2022-may-have-just-created-a-big-political-problem-over-abortion/ar-AALAi6L?fbclid=IwAR2WLggH5_xI7-Avq1KOnLjW9f4kcEuercvj_CEzA2G_uoGCSWZufL-eIMM 

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/new-hampshire-governor-chris-sununu-diversity-council-protest-resign_n_60db5e93e4b0b9e497df733d?fbclid=IwAR1Iy3J0J2Nrp3eWjZm5otFpK2YtfNG4UNR4ewBtiaHQwIrtrekWvCuPP40

6/29/21 The Sons of Confederate Veterans Include People in Positions of Responsibility

Not all hackers are baddies. Some (called “white-hat hackers” are activists). It was one of the white-hatters who provided The Guardian, a public-interest news publication, with the names and contact information of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, a neo-Confederate group.

The data sent to the Guardian reveals the names, addresses, telephone numbers and email addresses of almost 59,000 past and present members of the organization, all organized into state chapters. The list includes 91 who used addresses associated with government agencies for their contact email, and 74 who used addresses associated with the armed forces. Thirteen members had emails from The Citadel, a notoriously misogynistic military academy in South Carolina.

"The organization’s members include serving military officers, elected officials, public employees, and a national security expert whose CV boasts of “Department of Defense Secret Security Clearance,” says The Guardian.

That expert is Danny W. Davis, Ph.D, a professor and a program director at Texas A&M University. Davis told The Guardian that he'd joined because three of his great-grandfathers had fought as Confederates. He said he thought the group members were mostly "people like me who are interested in history."

The SCV generally sticks to defending statues of Confederates that are being moved out of the public eye. For instance, last year, the SCV rededicated statues of Jefferson Davis and Ku Klux Klan founder Nathan Bedford Forrest at its National Confederate Museum in Columbia, TN.

But some members also belong to other, more violent neo-Confederate groups, such as the League of the South. Members of that group marched at Unite the Right in Charlottesville, NC in 2017. Also at that rally was SCV member Chester Doles, a former Klansman and member of the neo-Nazi National Alliance, who marched with the Hammerskins white power gang. He has also been a member of the SCV Motorized Cavalry, a motorcycle club made up of members of SCV.

Ugly, to be sure. Still, we'd rather know about these people than have them hiding in the dark corners of society -- or, worse, in positions that involve the public trust.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jun/28/neo-confederate-group-members-politicians-military-officers?fbclid=IwAR3RBEWoWxfbA07lUfilDXZFBIAP7aRxxVH9pX9Na6SqJB89QPesw766xBY

6/26/21 Pentagon UAP Report: All We Know is that the US Didn't Build Them

The long-awaited Pentagon report on Unidentified Aerial Phenomenons has landed, but in nine pages, it doesn't tell us a lot. Here's the report in brief.

The 144 sightings are a vast undercount, because only Navy pilots generally reported them; in other branches, seeing a UAP is bad for one's military career.

They fall into five categories, airborne clutter (birds, balloons, drones); unusual but natural atmospheric phenomena; new aircraft from the U.S. government or U.S. industry; new aircraft from foreign adversaries; and "other." Problem is, only ONE (1) sighting falls into one of these categories -- a large, deflating balloon ("airborne clutter").

Of the rest, 80 were spotted by more than one source, 18 moved against the wind or extremely fast, and 11 came close to colliding with the planes whose pilots reported them. Although most are reported near military bases, that's just because more people there are looking for stuff in the sky. The dangers the UAPs pose include interfering with aircraft -- or they could be enemy devices spying on the U.S.

However, there's no indication they came from other planets. "There are probably multiple types of UAP requiring different explanations based on the range of appearances and behaviors described in the available reporting," the paper states, helpfully.

There's also a top-secret section that only legislators can read. You can see the public version here: https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/assessments/Prelimary-Assessment-UAP-20210625.pdf?fbclid=IwAR1NQJLKOCYXr3H4FUaKQO2TE8a96cSgL22SrF_H0_ZFgwKhniOdRgBBK-4

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/06/25/government-report-ufos-are-real-496319?fbclid=IwAR19SibJtUC_rDz9n5ZtcUxDPWioBNzlYjGv611TvNlmO1xmGA4WVNhRNlI

6/29/21 Pelosi Calls for a Select Committee to Investigate the 1/6 Insurrection Attempt

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi introduced legislation on Monday to form a Select Committee to investigate the insurrection attempt on 1/6/21.

It's a way forward after Senate Republicans, led by House Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, blocked a bill for a full-bore bipartisan investigation.

“Senate Republicans did Mitch McConnell a ‘personal favor’ rather than their patriotic duty," Pelosi said, as she introduced the bill, “But Democrats are determined to find the truth.”

The 13-member committee will have eight members chosen by Ms. Pelosi, and the House GOP leaders will have input on the other five. Ms. Pelosi will also choose the committee chair.

Word has it that Pelosi might name a Republican as one of her picks for member. It's probably in Ms. Pelosi's (and the country's) interests to include Republicans to sidestep attempts by certain GOP lawmakers to paint the investigation as a one-party smear brigade.

The House Rules Committee is expected to send Pelosi's bill to the full House for a vote, which will probably occur Wednesday.

At this juncture, almost six months after 1/6, the committee will have lots of investigative evidence to draw from, thanks to the ongoing FBI manhunt for participants. But this committee won't just be looking for small fry. They'll want to know who was involved in the conception and planning of the monstrosity of that day, including the role played by ex-President Donald Trump.

We all have an opinion, or a hunch, about who was behind the catastrophe of that day. Let's hope that the committee will find incontrovertible facts -- and soon.

Do you think that Trump or people in his inner circle were instigators of the insurrection? Do you think that there will be a "smoking gun" that will show Trump's role? Do you think that the GOP will try to thwart the committee, or to whitewash its conclusions once it's finished?

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/pelosi-resolution-house-select-committee_n_60da54bfe4b07b25f60e533d?fbclid=IwAR3MwAW5fR6ntCkfYiGbUHiguYta_qiWdPb7xJ-GSI_9M2_PDz4oNYlzurE

6/26/21 Big Shots Get Bulletproof Vests, but Staffers Are Expendable in Texas's AG's Office

Even for a press secretary, $65,000 a year is short of combat pay. So when Kayleigh Lovvorn Date, who works for Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, was ordered, on May 17, to shoot documentary video about border security in a cartel-infested border town, she asked what security she could arrange for her team and their equipment.

The answer, she said, was none. There'd be no security team, no protective gear. Her bosses told them to "Just bring our guns" if they were worried. (Date has neither a license nor training.) She asked for a week's delay to work out security plans. That was denied too.

And this for a trip to Bracketville, near Del Rio -- a location the Governor says is “overrun by gangs and smugglers.”

Date's boss, Communications Director Alejandro Garcia, apparently could do little to help. Garcia's boss, Assistant Attorney General Brant Webster, had in mind a series of documentaries on the border as part of Paxton's PR.

Date refused to take the trip. Then, at a meeting the day the team was originally slated to leave, “We were told that because Mr. Webster [had gone there himself], our refusal to travel to these potentially dangerous locations without security on a tight timeline was ‘embarrassing,’” Date wrote.

During Webster's trip, he had been with Paxton, who has a security detail of state troopers. Other law enforcement was also present, and Webster and Paxton both wore bulletproof vests during parts of the trip.

“The communications team was then told that if these expectations and demands were too great, we should look for other jobs,” Date wrote in a formal complaint. “As I personally consider the expectation that employees travel to potentially life-threatening locations without any form of security unreasonable, I am choosing to follow that recommendation.” Date's resignation was effective June 11.

In a letter dated June 23, Enrique Varela, a complaint officer in the AG's office, said that Date's complaint didn't allow him to investigate Webster, since she did not report to or work with him directly.

Varela closed Date's complaint.

If that doesn't raise red flags for you about ethics, consider that eight of Paxton's top aides resigned or were fired within the last year after blowing whistles about Paxton taking bribes and helping out a donor illegally. Webster is a replacement for one of those aides. Paxton is under indictment for securities fraud. Not to mention that he was also the leading force behind Texas's involvement in a recent bid by conservative states to have Obamacare overturned in the Supreme Court.

In a statement, Date's boss said that “Law enforcement prepares security plans for all border trips. We do not release those plans to employees or the public as that could be a security risk for all individuals involved in those trips.” (Emphasis mine.)

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/politics/texas/article/Paxton-spokeswoman-resigns-after-being-pushed-to-16272730.php?fbclid=IwAR1Iy3J0J2Nrp3eWjZm5otFpK2YtfNG4UNR4ewBtiaHQwIrtrekWvCuPP40

6/27/21 Pregnant Woman Shot in Road Rage Incident

In a cowboy town where everybody rides a high horse, it doesn't pay to cut someone off. That's what happened late Friday night in Dallas, TX, where a man driving with his pregnant girlfriend blundered into the crosshairs of some yahoo with a grievance and a gun.

Outraged at this insult to his manhood -- we're assuming it was a man -- the second driver shot at the car, and the bullet traveled through the back driver's side door to the woman in the front passenger seat. The shooter sped away while the boyfriend turned into a gas station. Dallas Fire & Rescue took the woman to a hospital, where she delivered her baby.

The baby's fine. The mom's critical. The shooter's still at large.

The Dallas police said last week that it was stepping up its presence on the roads since the city had at least eight people shot or killed in road rage incidents in the last month. On their website, Dallas police say that 38% of road rage shootings take place in the summer.

Summer is one thing Texas has in abundance. That and guns. If the state doesn't have the highest gun-per-capita ratio in the nation, it's within shouting distance. Or will be, now that Trump-clone Governor Abbott has signed a law making it legal for gun owners to bring their weapons almost anywhere, with or without training or license.

In statistics up to 2016, though, Florida had more road rage incidents involving firearms than Texas, and bizarrely enough, an Allstate insurance study found out the safest city to drive in in the entire country is Brownsville in, yes, Texas. (The safest state is Massachusetts, and the worst drivers are in Mississippi.) The biggest predictors of road rage are (a) youth (b) being male and (c) being psychologically, um, "off" in specific ways.

None of that matters when it comes down to one hospital bed where a baby's mom is between life and death.

https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2021/06/26/texas-road-rage-suspect-shot-pregnant-women/2651624733408/?fbclid=IwAR1vTqgilmF1p-5a_a3vL4hrpQuiUBpHH6VwoT6EL1rih1Pv0vA6JbIDG-k

6/28/21 Barr: Trump's Election-Fraud Claims Are "Bulls**t"

After months and years of carrying water for the Trump cause, it seems that Attorney General Bill Barr finally got fed up with all the chicanery when Trump started up his false -- or delusional -- charges of fraud in the 2020 election.

“If there was evidence of fraud, I had no motive to suppress it," Barr told Jonathan Karl, an ABC reporter, for a book that was excerpted in yesterday's Atlantic magazine. "But my suspicion all the way along was that there was nothing there. It was all bullshit.”

While Trump was pressuring Barr to launch investigations, Mitch McConnell pressured Barr in the other direction, reportedly telling him in mid-November that the lies were working against the Republican candidates in the Georgia Senate runoff election, scheduled for January 5.

McConnell didn't want to make himself the target of Trump's rage by saying out loud that Biden had won. He thought Trump might retaliate by damaging Republicans' campaigns in Georgia. (Both Barr and McConnell verified this account, Karl says.)

Later, McConnell said, “Bill, I look around, and you are the only person who can do it.”

Barr did his own informal look-see into the balloting in Michigan, which went for Biden, even though Trump did better than he had against Clinton in 2016. Barr also checked into voting machines, concluding that if there was a discrepancy, a hand count would show it -- and there hadn't been any such reports.

Perhaps it was the prospect of continuing to feed the runaway ego of an unprincipled and increasingly unhinged chief executive that put Barr back on the straight and narrow.

Barr spilled the beans on December 1 in a lunch meeting with a few other DOJ officials and one lucky Associated Press reporter. Barr said, “To date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election.”

A few hours later, Barr was taking an earful from the President. Trump asked "How the f*** could you do this to me? Why did you say it?"

“Because it’s true,” Barr answered.

The president, livid, responded, “You must hate Trump. You must hate Trump," and launched into a tirade about all Barr's perceived mistakes.

A few weeks later, Barr turned in his letter of resignation. His last day was December 23rd.

Is it possible that Trump could believe the lies he was telling about election fraud?

Could Barr have extricated himself any faster once he decided he'd reached his limit with Trump's demands?

Do you believe that Barr was "the only one who could do it?" as McConnell said?

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2021/06/william-barrs-trump-administration-attorney-general/619298/?fbclid=IwAR1eM7WVcHtY3CYSq0xNtXpbuvFozfkOxW0VW3hCgYe1jPVvA4nVyDiA9YA

6/26/21 In Siberia, No Coats Required: The Arctic Circle is Broiling Under Climate Change

Air temperatures above the Arctic Circle in Siberia have reached 90 degrees this season, while surface temperatures in an area usually covered in snow and ice have gone as high as 118 degrees, according to satellite data.

Copernicus Sentinel-3A and Sentinel-3B satellites, which track temperature data, reported the ground temperatures on June 20 near Verkhojansk, a small town usually known for its extreme cold temperatures. The air temperature that day, near the town of Saskylah, was the highest on record since 1936.

It's reassuring to think that the heat wave now was once equalled in 1936, but in fact, the World Meteorological Organization says the climate change is intense. "The most dramatic change is in the Arctic, which is warming more than twice as fast as the global average," the agency said Monday. A jumbo glacier disintegrated in Greenland last year, and wildfires consumed large areas of Siberia in 2019 and 2020.

If you haven't called your congressperson lately, this might be a good topic to bring up.

https://www.cnet.com/news/surface-temperatures-in-siberia-heat-up-to-a-mind-boggling-118-degrees/?fbclid=IwAR0a5HVZgF9QJSE0Sxx-xLU2ECcQM4asqMu9NrbLA1UcyKDswoRzW8EW4CY

6/25/21 751 Unmarked Graves Found at an Indian School in Saskatchewan

Marieval Indian Residential School opened in 1899 and stayed open for 98 years on land that belongs to the Cowessess First Nation, a Canadian Indian group.

During that time, 751 children and, possibly, adults were buried there. At first, according to Chief Cadmusn Delmore of the Cowessess, they had grave markers, but they had been removed in the 1970s by the Roman Catholic church, which ran the school with the aim of assimilating Indian children into the majority culture -- an odd goal, considering that people of a darker hue were often rejected by whites for their skin color.

Like the residential school in Kamloops Indian Residential School in British Columbia, where 215 children were found in unmarked graves, the news brought about handwringing by the Canadian government and its private citizens -- and in the United States as well, because we, too, ran schools designed to take the Indianness out of the Indians.

Justin Trudeau released a statement saying “My heart breaks for the Cowessess First Nation, and for all Indigenous communities across Canada,” he said. According to the Canadian government, more than 150,000 First Nation, Métis, and Inuit students were enrolled in the residential school system, most in schools run by the Catholic church.

In the United States, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, herself of indigenous descent, started, on Tuesday, a review of America's Indian boarding schools.

Unlike the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation, which was affected in Kamloops, the Cowessess Nation has expressed its anger.

“Removing headstones is a crime in this country,” said the community’s chief, Cadmus Delorme. “We are treating this like a crime scene.” He said further that “The Pope needs to apologize for what happened to the Marieval Indian Residential School.”

Says the head of the Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations, Chief Bobby Cameron, “We are seeing the results of the genocide that Canada committed — genocide on our treaty land.”

Because China has faced criticism over charges of genocide against Uighurs, it has been critical of the human rights records of Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States. On Monday, Trudeau responded, “Where is China’s truth and reconciliation commission? Where is their truth?"

As an aside, the 1850s through the 1920s was also a time of brutal workhouses for indigent and inconvenient people -- 163 poorhouses in Ireland, 700 in England, where the system began. Compassion was in short supply in several English-speaking countries.

Why were North American whites so determined to erase the Indian past?

Was there any real hope of assimilation, the stated goal of these schools?

What were the attitudes that created such determination to break down one way of thinking and build it back up to match the majority (white) culture?

Do you have any insights about the comparison between Indian schools and British poorhouses?

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/06/24/first-nations-saskatchewan-unmarked-graves-496082?fbclid=IwAR39Lrtx9-PlKdK_XRFhGFKeY0tFlXjV1J3NQ6uxEEdln9FkDeK3bl_8aqk

6/25/21 Giuliani's Law License is Suspended for Election Lies

On Thursday, a panel of five judges suspended Rudy Giuliani's license to practice law in New York, effective immediately.

“There is uncontroverted evidence that respondent communicated demonstrably false and misleading statements to courts, lawmakers and the public at large . . . ” the court wrote in its decision. “These false statements were made to improperly bolster respondent’s narrative that due to widespread voter fraud, victory in the 2020 United States presidential election was stolen from his client."

That's telling it like it is. But after Giuliani's off-the-wall lies, "four seasons" press conference, dribbling hair dye, and appearance in a Borat movie, no one is particularly surprised. Huffpo reports a noticeable number of snarky comments on Twitter, such as "Good thing Giuliani has that lucrative MyPillow sponsorship," by @theMax Burns.

Giuliani's lawyers, of course, disagreed with the panel. “We believe that our client does not pose a present danger to the public interest,” their statement said. “We believe that once the issues are fully explored at a hearing Mr. Giuliani will be reinstated as a valued member of the legal profession."

The suspension has nothing to do with the FBI investigation into whether Giuliani served as a foreign agent for Donald Trump in Ukraine. Last month's raid on Giuliani's apartment, resulting in seizures of ten computers and phones, was part of that investigation.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/rudy-giuliani-suspended-practicing-law-new-york_n_60d4a45ae4b0b6b5a1635dd9?fbclid=IwAR1nUbI1YtKN6U0Ub5D3D0z1ACdKsp5LWK5M2dptS9c0UFd_SrbLLCcD8nw