JustOneMinute

Jan 6 Hearings - Mission Accomplished?

The WSJ editors tell us what they think the Jan 6 hearings accomplished:

The House Jan. 6 committee voted 9-0 on Thursday to subpoena former President Trump, but the clock is ticking. If Republicans take the House, they’ll shut down the inquiry posthaste in early January. If he wants to avoid the hot seat, Mr. Trump only needs to find a way to resist the subpoena until then.

...

Getting direct evidence of Mr. Trump’s action—and inaction—was always going to be a challenge. There is no evidence so far that Mr. Trump was communicating or coordinating with the Proud Boys or other nefarious elements in the runup to Jan. 6. On Thursday the committee played video of foolish talk by Roger Stone, another Trump flunkie who also took the Fifth. “I say f— the voting, let’s get right to the violence,” Mr. Stone said on Nov. 2, which was the day before the election.

What the committee has accomplished, however, is to cement the facts surrounding Mr. Trump’s recklessness after Nov. 3 and his dereliction of duty on Jan. 6. The Justice Department and Mr. Trump’s own campaign repeatedly told him that his fraud claims were without basis. Whether it was willful blindness or an intentional strategy, he kept repeating them.

...

Committee members said Thursday they will write a report summarizing their findings. Transcripts of the testimony ought to be released at the same time, so that posterity can see what Mr. Cipollone and others said in full. Ditto for the documents gathered. The committee’s credibility has suffered without GOP cross-examination of the witnesses. And the way that the committee selectively leaked Ginni Thomas’s text messages was outrageous, and appeared to be an effort to discredit her husband, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

The Jan. 6 committee probably won’t get Mr. Trump under oath, but the evidence of his bad behavior is now so convincing that political accountability hardly requires it.

 

It Begins!

We'll see how far the best hitter in baseball can carry the Yankees. If he gets the chance.

In other match-up news, here is the showdown we wanted - orcas versus great whites! Bet orcas.

Drone and helicopter footage captured off the coast of South Africa provides what scientists say is the first direct proof that orcas are capable of hunting and killing one of the world’s largest sea predators: the great white shark.\

A study published this week in the journal Ecology details a more than hour-long pursuit of a number of white sharks by a pod of killer whales off Mossel Bay, a harbor town in South Africa’s Western Cape province. At least two white sharks were killed over a 71-minute period in May, the researchers said.

“This behavior has never been witnessed in detail before, and certainly never from the air,” the study’s lead author, Alison Towner, a shark biologist at Marine Dynamics Academy in Gansbaai, South Africa, said in a statement.

The footage could help explain the disappearance of great white sharks off the coast of South Africa in recent years, a decline that scientists and government officials had long suspected was due to killer whales, rather than illegal hunting or overfishing.

 

Meanwhile, Back In Ukraine...

The Russian Army continues to under-perform. I would think that with autumn upon us and and winter approaching that Major Mud and General Snow will stall any further Ukranian offensives. OTOH, the Russians probably have a brutal logistics challenge in front of them - this war is taking longer than planned and their transportation lines keeping getting, well, re-organized as they fall back.

Water, Water Everywhere... But Not Enough And Not Where We Need It

The Colorado River situation is just part of the US and the global water management problem oppportunity.

But things coud be worse! We haven't hit "Worst Year EVER!" status, where 536 AD may be the reigning champ.

Good Meeting, Vlad

India joins China in distancing from Putinn.

Good Meeting, Vlad

India joins China in distancing from Putinn.

Timing Being Everything...

Putin's 'special military operation' in the Ukraine is looking extra-special after the rout around Kharkiv. And now he gets to meet hat-in-hand with Xi, who may be having revised thoughts about Putin as his ride-or-die. Not Putin's best week.

MORE: In the Times.

 

Winter Is Coming

However much the US has suffered from higher energy prices, it is far worse in Europe and Britain. Can pro-Ukraine unity survive a cold, gas-free winter? Putin aims to find out.

All Very Awkward

The WSJ editors are right: unless Trump's Mar-a-Laga documents contained some truly consequential secrets its hard to see a criminal indictment coming out of this:

It’s hard to believe that a dispute over documents would yield a criminal indictment. Attorney General Merrick Garland would have to explain to the public why Mr. Trump’s behavior was so much more nefarious than other cases of mishandled classified documents. That includes former national security adviser Sandy Berger, who pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor. And Hillary Clinton, who got off with a sanctimonious lecture from then FBI director James Comey.

We aren’t defending Mr. Trump’s behavior in any of this. He brings much of his trouble on himself. But his political enemies make it worse when they break political norms themselves. They also help Mr. Trump by making him into a political martyr. If you’re going to indict a former President, you’d better have him dead to rights on something bigger than mishandling documents.

But how will the government prove any such secrets were in fact consequential? Team Trump will insist the documents were over-classified trivia; the government is hardly in a position to release the secrets to prove they are a BFD. Or maybe Trump's supporters will take the word of leaks to the NY Times and a pronouncement from Biden's Director fo National Intelligence? Yeah, definitely maybe not.

DC is not a high-trust outfit these days.

Dog Days Open Thread

Woof.

A Hot Summer

Trump and Garland.

Jack Goldsmith ponders the nuances of classified and declassified information and the deeply diviooded politic behind this. Sadly, both sides have tarbished credibility:

Several sensible commentators—including George Will, Damon Linker, and David Brooks—think Attorney General Garland made a mistake, perhaps a disastrous one, in executing the search warrant at Mar-a-Lago. (They made these claims before the federal magistrate unsealed the warrant and the inventory of seized materials.) They worry that the search will, in Will’s sedate words, harm “social comity” and “domestic tranquility.”  

They are right in this sense: Trump supporters would have viewed any criminal legal process directed at Trump from the Biden Justice Department as, in Linker’s words, “an illegitimate act undertaken by an alien, tyrannical ‘Regime’ resembling a Third World dictatorship.” Justifiably or not, this reaction—and the further diminution in trust in the Justice Department and FBI by a large chunk of the country—was a directly foreseeable consequence of Garland’s decision. 

Which is not to say that Garland made the wrong decision. On that question it is far too early to tell. Will is right to suggest that Garland’s decision, even if scrupulously non-political in intent, is “inherently political” and should be judged by how well he “adjust[s] tidy principles to untidy realities” and “balance[s] competing objectives.” And the bar should be very high before the Justice Department in an administration run by Trump’s former and probably future political opponent, uses unprecedented criminal process against Trump—especially given our cleaved politics, upcoming elections, and the well-documented mistakes and illegalities that the Justice Department and FBI committed in pursuing Trump in the past. 

And yet Trump has for all his adult life, and especially during his presidency and post-presidency, shown contempt for law. The FBI’s belief that Trump acted illegally in bringing scores of sensitive documents to Florida, or in not returning them upon request, is very far from shocking. It also appears right now—and this too would not be surprising—that Trump and his advisors did not fully cooperate with the National Archives’ and the Justice Department’s efforts to secure and retrieve this information. There obviously must be a point where information is so sensitive, and Trump’s disregard for law so extreme, to justify legal process against Trump, even in the current milieu. Otherwise the law is entirely hostage to a former president’s (and his supporters’) self-serving veto—something no legal system can tolerate. 

Given the media's disastrous performance on the Russiuagate trainwreck (no, the walls were NOT closing in...) its hard to take the anti-Trump leaks with confidence. OTOH, Trump is not Mr. Clean here.

Time may tell.

David French walks down Memory Lane and compares Hillary's mishandling of classified info with Trump's. It's possible Trump is faling to cooperate in a way that breaks new ground.

But we can’t rewind the clock. We can only decide how to go forward. And so the DOJ should go forward with the same rule it applied to Hillary Clinton, including the same level of deference. Any other result wouldn’t simply be unjust—insofar as it would refuse to treat similarly-situated people similarly—it would be profoundly destabilizing. There cannot be one set of standards for Democrats and another for Republicans.

Would applying this same standard mean Trump, too, should not face prosecution? Well, not necessarily. We can’t yet conclude that Trump and Clinton’s misconduct is equivalent, and the reason why may relate not to the mishandling of defense information, but rather to obstruction of justice. 

The available reporting indicates that Trump didn’t simply remove clearly marked classified material from the White House, he also retained much of that material in spite of repeated requests that it be returned, retained some of that material in defiance of a subpoena, and then ultimately treated the material as his personal property. Here’s Maggie Haberman, Glenn Thrush, and Charlie Savage, writing in the New York Times: 

It is not clear why Mr. Trump apparently chose to hang onto materials that would ignite another legal firestorm around him. But last year, he told close associates that he regarded some presidential documents as his own personal property. When speaking about his friendly correspondence with the North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, Mr. Trump said, “They’re mine,” according to a person familiar with the exchange.

Moreover, there’s additional reporting that Trump’s team may have misled the DOJ. Yesterday morning, Maggie Haberman and Glenn Thrush reported that a “lawyer for former President Donald J. Trump signed a written statement in June asserting that all material marked as classified and held in boxes in a storage area at Mr. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence and club had been returned to the government.” 

Saturday Afternoon

Away we go.

Officing Alone

Peggy Noonan makes a point about the breakdown of community that could have been lifted from 'Bowling Alone'. But she talking about remote work and the end to office-time:

The primary location of daily integration in America—the coming together of all ages, religions, ethnicities and political tendencies, all colors, classes and conditions—has been, during the past century, the office. It is where you learn to negotiate relationships with people very different from you, where you discover what people with different experiences of life really think. You discern all this in the joke, the aside, the shared confidence, the rolled eyes. And with all this variety you manage to come together in a shared, formal mission: Get that account, sell that property, get the story, process those claims.

Daily life in America happened in the office. If it doesn’t, where will America happen?

And, this being a political column, my second worry. The end of the office will contribute to polarization. Receding from office life will become another way of self-segregating. People will be exposed to less and, in their downtime, will burrow down into their sites, their groups, their online angers. Their group-driven information and facts.

 

Bannon Guilty of Contempt

Steve Bannon is found guilty of congempt of Congress. Sentencing will be Oct 21, so that's his last chance to do a Mae West callback. In my rich fantasy life we get this:

"Mr. Bannon, are you trying to show contempot for Congress?"

No, your Honor, I'm trying to hide it."

Yeah, I have big dreams...

 

Biden On The Road

Joe Biden brings back the Terrorist Fist Jab while in Saudi Arabia greeting MBS, the man believed to be the impetus behind the brutal murder/ dismemberment of Khashoggi. Biden's backers (The Few, The Proud...) say the fist bump was chillier than alternatives, but the Saudi PR team was pushing videos so I'd guess they were happy with the photo op they got.

And in the background, there remains a real mystery as to the Saudi oil production capability.

Secret's Out - Biden's Too Old

Big if true - White House insiders and follks on the street agree - Biden is getting older, not better.

Independence Day!

Boom!

Saturday Afternoon

So, any excitement this week?

Saturday Open Thread

Here we go.

Sunday Afternoon

Here we go again.

Sweet Jiminy!

OK, we are taking on the Tough Questions du Jour - why was Rod Stewart singing "Sweet Caroline" at the Queen's Platinum Jubilee Concert? Isn't that a Red Sox Nation thing?

Well, yes-ish, per the Times - Sweet Caroline is a fan favorite around the world and in many sports, and has been a thing in Northern Ireland for years, but... per the Times, the song came to Wembley in 2019 for the Red Sox-Yankees two game set and then took off during the Euro 2020 soccer tournament in 2021. LOTS more here, but I know you want to see Rod take a whack at it. Come in at the 1:55 mark, as Rod explains that the BBC made him sing this. Might want to think about turning down the sound and closing your eyes, but here goes...

Memorial Day Weekend!

Memorial Day is nigh! For me its a time to remember gas for the grill, the names of my kids' Significant Others (JK! Its the kids' names I still stumble on!), our nations's war dead and of course this old post from carefree 2008, when Candidate Barack re-imagined the holiday:

Obama: He's Ready To Tell Us His Secret

Obama is ready to tell us his secret - he sees dead people... Obama's intro to his Memorial Day speech in New Mexico:

On this Memorial Day, as our nation honors its unbroken line of fallen heroes -- and I see many of them in the audience here today -- our sense of patriotism is particularly strong.

They've fallen - but they've gotten back up!  Well, he was in New Mexico...

Only fourteen years? Seems like a lifetime ago.

Monday Morning, And Biden Does It Again

Let's start the week with a resounding chorus of "WTF is it now?".

I'll open with this - back in the day (1916, actually) Woodrow Wilson's campaign slogan was "He kept us out of war".

Looks like Biden is pining his hopes on "He talked us into war". First up, by declaring his view that Putin was a war criminal and subsequently ad-libbing "For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power”, Biden has raised the stakes in Ukraine to even more dangerous levels.

Now he is on a Pacific visit, so Biden has up-ended the longstanding US policy of 'strategic ambiguity' on Taiwan. And once again, after Biden's mouth finished its walkabout his aides began a frantic walk-back:

Biden Says U.S. Military Would Defend Taiwan if China Invaded

May 23, 2022; By Kanno-Youngs and Peter Baker

TOKYO — President Biden indicated on Monday that he would use military force to defend Taiwan if it were ever attacked by China, dispensing with the “strategic ambiguity” traditionally favored by American presidents and repeating even more unequivocally statements that his staff tried to walk back in the past.

At a news conference with Prime Minister Fumio Kishida of Japan during a visit to Tokyo, Mr. Biden suggested that he would be willing to go further on behalf of Taiwan than he has in helping Ukraine, where he has provided tens of billions of dollars in arms as well as intelligence assistance to help defeat Russian invaders but refused to send American troops.

“You didn’t want to get involved in the Ukraine conflict militarily for obvious reasons,” a reporter said to Mr. Biden. “Are you willing to get involved militarily to defend Taiwan if it comes to that?”

“Yes,” Mr. Biden answered flatly.

“You are?” the reporter followed up.

“That’s the commitment we made,” he said.

The president’s declaration, offered without caveat or clarification, set the stage for fresh tensions between the United States and China, which insists that Taiwan is a part of its territory and cannot exist as a sovereign nation. It also surprised some members of Mr. Biden’s own administration watching in the room, who did not expect him to promise such unvarnished resolve. The United States has historically warned China against using force against Taiwan while generally remaining vague about how far it would go to aid the island in such a circumstance.

The White House quickly tried to deny that the president meant what he seemed to be saying. “As the president said, our policy has not changed,” the White House said in a statement hurriedly sent to reporters. “He reiterated our One China Policy and our commitment to peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait. He also reiterated our commitment under the Taiwan Relations Act to provide Taiwan with the military means to defend itself.”

But Mr. Biden’s comments went beyond simply reiterating that the United States would provide Taiwan with arms, because the question was posed as a contrast to what he had done with Ukraine. The president made no effort to qualify what he intended when he agreed that he would “get involved militarily.”

Oh, brother. The point of 'strategic ambiguity' was that a firm US commitment to fight alongside Taiwan would both antagonize the mainland Chinese government and embolden Taiwanese separatists. Better to leave potential adversaries uncertain about just what dangers they faced if war started (perhaps triggered by a formal Taiwanese declaration of separation.)

And why change that policy now? My view is that one silver lining from this Ukranian horror is its likely impact on Xi and any subsequent Chinese leader. I'd hope that any assurances from his generals and admirals that the Chinese military was up to the challenge of a cross-strait invasion contested by Taiwan and perhaps the US Seventh Fleet would be met with a prudent question - "What do you suppose Putin was told about invading Ukraine?".

The last time China had a sizeable military engagement was their 1979 invasion of battle-hardened North Vietnam. Although a mismatch on paper it went poorly for the Chinese. Would they could attempt to invade Taiwan without first staging a warm-up war elsewhere?

A Chinese blockade of Taiwan relying on missiles and mines seems more managable militarily, although even that would probably lead to an economic war China may not want to fight. A Chinese strategy that culminates with an invasion would probably start with a blockade anyway (to limit supply of military aid), so a war in Taiwan is likely to start with a lot of obvious warnings.

Maybe a clear red line drawn by the US will discourage Chinese adventurism without firing up Taiwan. But if the US is changing its policy it would be nice to imagine the US foreign policy pros at State and Defense have chimed in first. "Foreign policy by ad-lib" was a feature of the Obama administration (and his campaign!), so its not as if Biden is a lonely Dem on this approach.

ERRATA: Obama apparently ad-libbed on Jerusalem as the undivided capital of Isreal in remarks to AIPAC in Jun 2008.

A brain fart that Egypt was not an ally came in September 2012 during a campaign effort on Telemundo.

Happy Monday!

Here we go, into the week!

LOL NY Times...

The NY Times seems to be testing a feature that is new to me - present the story they want to tell (and their Upper West Side readers want to read) early on and then run appropriate corrections and clarifications deep in the original story. No need for embarrassing appended editor's notes!

Here we go. The topic is Schumer's failed 'plant a flag for the elections' vote on a Dem abortion bill. Their narrative goal is evergreen: Common sense Dems thwarted by extremist Republicans, ie, all of them.

Bill to Guarantee Abortion Rights Fails in Senate

Dated May 11 and the byline goes to Annie Karni, a name we will keep in mind.

WASHINGTON — Democrats tried and failed on Wednesday to push forward legislation to guarantee abortion rights nationwide, as Republicans and one Democrat in the Senate blocked an effort to enshrine the landmark Roe v. Wade precedent in federal law.

With 51 senators opposed and 49 in support, Democrats fell short of the 60 votes they would have needed to take up sweeping legislation to ensure abortion access and explicitly bar a wide array of restrictions.

...

Republicans, who unanimously opposed the measure, were joined by one Democrat, Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia. Mr. Manchin, who opposes abortion rights, said the legislation was overly broad, noting that it would go substantially further than simply codifying Roe and warning that it would “expand abortion.”

The resulting vote showed that a majority does not now exist in the Senate to support maintaining legal abortion nationwide. Democrats who supported the bill framed it as a call to action, ahead of midterm elections, for voters who support abortion rights to elect likeminded candidates who will preserve them.

People who read beyond the Times and have been following the debate will notice two howlers, because the bill goes well beyond enshrining Roe v. Wade, and majority does exist in the Senate for a pro-choice bill.

But don't take my word for it! Eventually (paragraph 17-18):

The legislation Democrats tried to advance on Wednesday, called the Women’s Health Protection Act, would protect abortion access nationwide, going beyond simply codifying Roe. It would explicitly prohibit a long list of abortion restrictions, including some that have been enacted by states since Roe was decided in 1973 and that have severely limited access to the procedure.

Democrats conceded that their bill was more expansive than Roe, saying that they had drafted the measure in line with their view that some of the statewide restrictions that have been put in place over the past decade are inconsistent with that precedent.

As to a possible Senate majority, that is retracted in paragraphs 19 and 20:

That position cost them support from Mr. Manchin and two Republicans who back abortion rights but said they wanted merely to preserve the status quo — not roll back existing abortion restrictions.

Senators Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, and Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, had proposed a narrower bill that they said would codify Roe by outlawing any limit that would put an “undue burden” on a woman’s right to obtain an abortion. It borrowed language from the 1992 decision in Planned Parenthood vs. Casey, which affirmed what it called the essential holding in Roe: that states may not prohibit abortions before fetal viability.

Democrats dismissed the proposal as toothless, noting that it lacked clear guidance about what states can and cannot do, and that it would not explicitly rule out abortion bans before a fetus is viable or bar any specific prohibitions on abortion methods.

So basically, the bill attempts to "codify Roe" by re-writing it as the law as abortion actists would prefer.

But at least this story gives determined (and patient!) readers a fighting chance at finding the facts. Last week Ms. Karni previewed the bill, and provided only the most opaque of belated clarifications. Here we go again, as common-sense Dems battle extremist Reps:

Democrats Plan a Bid to Codify Roe, but Lack the Votes to Succeed

In announcing a Wednesday vote on doomed legislation to enshrine abortion rights into federal law, the top Senate Democrat teed up a political fight for the midterm campaign.

May 5, 2022 by Annie Karnie

WASHINGTON — Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, moved on Thursday to set up a vote next week on a bill to codify abortion rights into federal law, acting quickly in the wake of a leaked Supreme Court draft decision overturning Roe v. Wade, despite clear evidence that the measure lacks the support to be enacted.

The plan is little more than an effort to send a political message before the midterm elections and a seismic ruling that could have major legal, cultural and electoral consequences, with deep significance for voters across the political spectrum.

The legislation is all but certain to be blocked by Republicans, falling short of the 60 votes needed to advance past a filibuster. It also appears to lack even the simple majority it would need to pass the 50-50 Senate, given that Senator Joe Manchin III, the centrist Democrat from West Virginia who opposes abortion rights, voted against bringing up a nearly identical measure in February and has shown no signs that he has shifted his position.

...

Even if Democrats have no real path to passing a bill to enshrine Roe into federal law, the vote will give them a chance to show their progressive core supporters that they are trying to do so. They also hope the action stokes a backlash against Republicans by swing voters, including college-educated suburban women, who might be alienated by the G.O.P.’s opposition to abortion rights.

OK, the headline and paragraph 8 talk about codifying Roe. Much late, starting at para. 17:

They have also altered the measure [from a February version] in an effort to garner more support among Republicans who back abortion rights, removing a lengthy series of findings, including passages that referred to abortion restrictions as “a tool of gender oppression” and as being “rooted in misogyny.” Also scrapped was a section clarifying that while the bill refers to women, it is meant to protect the rights of “every person capable of becoming pregnant,” including transgender men and nonbinary individuals.

Yeah, swing voters worry about protecting abortion rights for transgender men. Whatev. They took that out. Still, para. 18-23:

But the fundamentals of the bill remain the same. It states that health care providers have a legal right to perform abortions, and patients to receive them, and would expressly nullify a wide range of requirements, restrictions and bans.

Democrats had hoped that removing the nonbinding findings could win over Senators Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, two Republicans who support abortion rights.

But Ms. Collins said on Thursday that she still opposed the bill, because it went beyond simply codifying Roe v. Wade, which she supports, and lacked provisions that would allow Catholic hospitals to refuse to perform abortions.

Democrats said they were not interested in finding a compromise that might be acceptable to Ms. Collins and Ms. Murkowski, who have introduced a narrower bill that would bar states from imposing an “undue burden” on a woman’s right to obtain an abortion before her fetus is viable.

The Democrats’ bill is more prescriptive, explicitly invalidating any abortion ban or restriction before viability, which it defines as the point at which the treating physician judges the fetus has “a reasonable likelihood” of “sustained” survival outside the womb.

“We’re not cutting back; we’re not compromising,” Mr. Schumer said at a news conference when asked if he would consider taking up the Republican bill. “We’re not looking to compromise on something as vital as this. This has been American law for 50 years.”

Ms. Karnie updated and clarified her description of the Collins/ Murkowski bill for her latest story. I'll reprise it for comparison:

Senators Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, and Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, had proposed a narrower bill that they said would codify Roe by outlawing any limit that would put an “undue burden” on a woman’s right to obtain an abortion. It borrowed language from the 1992 decision in Planned Parenthood vs. Casey, which affirmed what it called the essential holding in Roe: that states may not prohibit abortions before fetal viability.

Well, yes - the mysterious "undue burden" of the earlier story is now explained as coming from Casey (1992) which upheld restrictions (such as parental notification) which were found to be an undue burden.

 

 

 

Abortion

Abortion thunder from the right from... Bill Maher?

"Real Time" host Bill Maher kicked off his panel discussion about the abortion debate Friday by sharing the surprising things he learned following the leaked Supreme Court majority opinion draft on Roe v. Wade. 

"I learned things this week… that are pretty basic things that I did not know about abortion. Like in Europe, the modern countries of Europe are way more restrictive than we are or what they're even proposing!" Maher exclaimed. "If you are pro-choice, you would like it a lot less in Germany, and Italy, and France, and Spain, and Switzerland. Did you know that? I didn't know that."

The Washington Post ran a fact check asserting that back in 2017; now that it is being cited (including in the draft Alito opinion) they are backpedaling and emphasizing the nuance.

"I learned most people who are pro-life are women. I did not know that. Most abortions are from… mothers, people who have a kid… And I thought this was interesting, most abortions now — even when you go to a clinic are done with the pill. The pill. And pills are easy to get in America," Maher continued. "So, you know, for the people who say we're going back to 1973, we're not. That's just factually inaccurate."

Hmm. If the hysterical progressives have lost Bill Maher...

Kind Of A Big Deal

Roe to Go? Heck of a leak.

 

Real Men (and Women!) of Genius, Biden Advisor Edition

IMHO student debt relief is a bad idea for all sorts of reasons. Debt relief without MAJOR reforms to the system that got us here (high college costs, hunanities degrees of doubtful value) makes no sense. And plenty of progressives (cf Pete Buttigieg and Urban Institute below) acknowledge that, as priorities go, debt relief to high earning college grads is low on their list.

But as explained in The Atlantic college grads and academia drive the Dem agenda. That leads to some brilliant thinking, as Team Biden tries to placate part of his progressive wing without totally alienating the rest of us. From the WaPo:

White House officials weigh income limits for student loan forgiveness

Biden aides consider how to cut off eligibility to exclude high-earners

Well, the concept of means-testing makes sense but look at the thresholds:

In recent weeks, senior Biden aides have examined limiting the relief to people who earned less than either $125,000 or $150,000 as individual filers the previous year, the people said. That plan would set the threshold at around $250,000 or $300,000 for couples who file their taxes jointly, the people said. 

What kind of a country are we living in if a guy or gal making $125k can't get some help from the Feds on their bills?

Biden is apparently going to rely on Executive authority and a stroke of his pen. His team may see a political benefit to taking this step now (I'd say they talked too much to back down now) but I think they may be headed for the worst of all worlds - lose even more House seats this November and then lose a court fight next year.

Biden's obvious excuse to delay action is that this debt relief is inflationary, as explained by Matt Yglesias (I know, right?). But, to quote a Mitt Romney tweet, desperate polls call for desperate measures.

INTERESTING BACKGROUND: The NY Fed analyzed an Equifax data base of credit reports and scores.

ERRATA: Mayor Pete Buttigieg on debt relief while back on the campaign trail in April of 2019:

“Americans who have a college degree earn more than Americans who don’t,” Mr. Buttigieg said while addressing college students in Boston. “As a progressive, I have a hard time getting my head around the idea of a majority who earn less because they didn’t go to college subsidizing a minority who earn more because they did.”

And Matthew Chingos of The Urban Institute, also April 2019:

“I think you also are going to see some concerns from the left that if you are wiping out all the debt, that that would be a pretty regressive thing to do,” said Matthew Chingos, the vice president of education data and policy at the Urban Institute. “And once you look at the numbers, this looks like the Trump tax cuts in terms of who it benefits. So it’s a little hard to be out there saying, well, ‘I’m against tax cuts for the wealthy, but at the same time I want to give this big handout to the wealthy.’”

Well, not all college grads are wealthy. Yet here we are.

 

DeSantis v. Disney - One For The Public Finance Experts

Dissolving Disney's special tax district may be more complicated than it seems - when the Reedy Creek Improvement District was created by the FL state legislature pledged back in 1967 they pledged not to impair any subsequent bond issues. That leads to other issues - what one legislative session bestows another can often take back. But both the Florida and US constitutions speak to the question of impairing government contractual obligations.

The Miami Herald reprises the action so far.

 

Vaccine Panic At The Times

The Times delivers some vaccine porn for their Upper West Side readership - OMG, we won't vaccinate 70% of the world agasint COVID!

Its is only VERY late in the story we hear from experts who wonder whether that goal still makes any sense (spoiler - it probaby doesn't.)

Here we go:

The Drive to Vaccinate the World Against Covid Is Losing Steam

Rates are stalling in most low-income countries well short of the W.H.O.’s goal to immunize 70 percent of people in every nation. Some public health experts believe the momentum is gone forever.

In the middle of last year, the World Health Organization began promoting an ambitious goal, one it said was essential for ending the pandemic: fully vaccinate 70 percent of the population in every country against Covid-19 by June 2022.

Now, it is clear that the world will fall far short of that target by the deadline. And there is a growing sense of resignation among public health experts that high Covid vaccination coverage may never be achieved in most lower-income countries, as badly needed funding from the United States dries up and both governments and donors turn to other priorities.

...

Countries in different parts of the world, including some in Eastern Europe and the Middle East, have seen their vaccination rates stagnate in recent months at a third or less of their populations. But Africa’s vaccination rate remain the most dismal.

...

Fewer than 17 percent of Africans have received a primary Covid immunization. Nearly half of the vaccine doses delivered to the continent thus far have gone unused. Last month, the number of doses injected on the continent fell by 35 percent compared to February. W.H.O. officials attributed the drop to mass vaccination pushes being replaced by smaller-scale campaigns in several countries.

Some global health experts say the world missed a prime opportunity last year to provide vaccines to lower-income countries, when the public was more fearful of Covid and motivated to get vaccinated.

“There was a time people were very desperate to get vaccinated, but the vaccines were not there. And then they realized that without the vaccination, they didn’t die,” said Dr. Adewole, who wants to see countries continue to pursue the 70 percent target.

Yeah, well, experience can be a valuable teacher. But why is the momentum gone? A shortage of vaccines? Well, no:

The African Union still aims to vaccinate 70 percent of its population by the end of 2022. But with countries slow to use up donated vaccines, the bloc has not exercised its options to order more doses of the shots from Johnson & Johnson and Moderna.

The South African drugmaker Aspen Pharmacare earlier this year finalized a deal to bottle and market the Johnson & Johnson vaccine across Africa, a contract that was billed as an early step toward Africa’s development of a robust vaccine production industry. Aspen geared up for production, but no buyers, including the African Union and Covax, have placed orders yet, said Stephen Saad, Aspen’s chief executive.

The Serum Institute of India, the world’s largest vaccine maker, stopped its production of Covid shots in December last year, when its stockpile grew to 200 million doses; Bharat Biotech, another Indian firm that was a major producer, also stopped making vaccines in the face of low demand. The companies say they have no further orders since their contracts with the Indian government ended in March.

The loss of public demand is eventually adddressed head-on - vaccines aren't great agasint Omicron and anyway, most people have had COVID:

The vaccine regimens that had been planned for the developing world offered little protection against infection with the Omicron variant. And as sub-Saharan African countries were shut out of vaccine distribution for much of last year, more and more Africans gained protection against the virus from natural infection, which studies have shown works as well as two mRNA doses in preventing infection. New data from the W.H.O. shows that at least two-thirds of Africans had been infected with the virus before the Omicron wave.

If 67% of the population had effective immunity prior to Omicron, the 70% goal has surely been achieved the hard way. Many experts are saying the focus should be on the vulnerable:

Given these factors, some public health experts in Africa say the broad 70 percent goal no longer makes sense. “There’s very little value to it. In fact, we will gain much more by getting to more than 90 percent of people above the age of 50,” said Shabir Madhi, a professor of vaccinology and the dean of the faculty of health sciences at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. About two-thirds of South Africans above age 50 are currently fully vaccinated.

Dr. Madhi said that South Africa could close down mass vaccination sites and instead redouble its efforts to seek out the most vulnerable at church services and at government offices that pay out monthly pension benefits.

Katherine O’Brien, who directs the W.H.O.’s work on vaccines and immunizations, said the agency encourages countries to focus on its most vulnerable citizens rather than vaccinating “a random set of 70 percent” of their populations. The aspiration she said, has always been “100 percent of health workers, 100 percent of older adults, 100 percent of pregnant women, 100 percent of the people who fall into those highest risk groups.”

Vax the vulnerabble! Seems like common sense. But the Times can't leave their readers there, so they close with a plaintive plea for social equality:

Some public health experts said that while the 70 percent vaccination threshold is clearly not achievable by its original deadline, it would be unwise and unethical to give up on that target over a longer time horizon. They expressed frustration about the growing gulf between wealthy countries vaccinating young children and offering healthy adults fourth vaccine doses, and the regions where the majority of people still do not have one dose.

“Why are we making it one target for high-income countries and one target for low income?” said Dr. Ayoade Alakija, a co-chair of the African Union’s vaccine delivery program.

She said that even though many people in sub-Saharan Africa have been infected, there is still need for the additional protection that would come from a high level of vaccination coverage.

Modest vaccination coverage, she said, “is not considered a good enough level of protection in England, it’s not a good enough level of protection in America. How is it OK not to be aiming for the very maximum, maximum we can? Aim for the sky and get to the top of the tree.”

That's the spirit! Why should countries with a much younger population and very different public health challenges be treated differently from the US or the UK?

 

 

 

Away We Go

Hmm, vacations are killing me...

Back In The Ukraine, Offshore Edition

It looks as if the Russian admirals resented the world's attention being focused on the ineptitude of the Russian Army:

Prized Russian Ship Was Hit by Missiles, U.S. Officials Say

WASHINGTON — The Moskva was the pride of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, a symbol of the country’s dominance of the region and a powerful war machine that had been used to launch precision cruise missiles deep inside Ukraine.

Despite claims by Russia that an accidental fire broke out on the ship, U.S. officials confirmed on Friday that two Ukrainian Neptune missiles had struck the vessel, killing an unknown number of sailors and sending it and its arsenal to the bottom of the Black Sea.

The sinking of the Moskva on Thursday was a grave blow to the Russian fleet and a dramatic demonstration of the current era of warfare in which missiles fired from shore can destroy even the biggest, most powerful ships. It was also the most significant combat loss for any navy since 1982, when Argentina’s Air Force sank a British guided missile destroyer and other ships during the Falklands War.

Tough break for Vlad the Derailer.

Meanwhile, Back In Michigan...

An awkward moment for the DoJ:

Jury acquits two in Michigan governor kidnap plot; deadlocks on two others

Partial defeat for the Justice Department’s efforts to combat domestic terrorism; defense lawyers said the men were entrapped by the FBI

A federal jury acquitted two men of conspiring to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, and deadlocked on the counts against two others, apparently agreeing to some degree with defense claims that FBI agents entrapped the men in a violent plot shortly before the 2020 election.

The trial in Grand Rapids, Mich., was closely watched as a test of the U.S. government’s ramped-up efforts to combat domestic terrorism, and Friday’s verdict is a partial defeat for the Justice Department. The men’s arrest in October 2020 raised alarms about the possibility of politically motivated violence as the nation was increasingly divided over a bitterly contested presidential race.

It's worth remembering that the DoJ did get guilty pleas from two other alleged conspirators:

The acquittals and hung jury came even though prosecutors called as witnesses two admitted co-conspirators, Ty Garbin and Kaleb Franks. Garbin and Franks pleaded guilty months ago, and told the jury they had agreed to kidnap Whitmer, a Democrat, from her lakeside home.

Bad legal advice, or stronger evidence? IDK.

Durham Chugging Along

A new filing from John Durham revives whatver modest interest remains in his investigation. At this point, its been a long wait for not much.

She's Running!

Back to the future with Sarah Palin.

Say It Ain't So, Joe!

Joe Biden goes global with his gaffe-o-matic act.

How Biden sparked a global uproar with nine ad-libbed words about Putin

By declaring that the Russian leader ‘cannot remain in power,’ the U.S. president seemed to suggest a drastic change in U.S. policy — prompting a scramble by White House officials

With nine ad-libbed words at the end of a 27-minute speech, Biden created an unwanted distraction to his otherwise forceful remarks by calling for Russian President Vladimir Putin to be pushed out of office.

“For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power,” Biden said.

It was a remarkable statement that would reverse stated U.S. policy, directly countering claims from senior administration officials, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who have insisted regime change is not on the table. It went further than even U.S. presidents during the Cold War, and immediately reverberated around the world as world leaders, diplomats, and foreign policy experts sought to determine what Biden said, what it meant — and, if he didn’t mean it, why he said it.

Well. Biden said it because he meant it. Also, because he's an old guy who's lost whatever weak filter he once had (his gaffe-o-matic act has played for years.)

So now diplomats get to earn their paychecks explaining that Biden didn't mean what he obviously meant. Awkward! And Russian opponents of Putin's regime get to explain that they are true Russian patriots, not CIA stooges. Also awkward!

Well. The recent declaration that we considered Putin a war criminal created a certain tension - would we negotiate with him, or arrest him? Now that Biden has come out in favor of regime change, a negotiated settlement may be even more difficult.

SPINNERS GOTTA SPIN: The NY Times shows us highly trained clean-up artists at work:

Administration officials have been careful not to hint at Mr. Putin’s removal from office, knowing that it would be taken by the Kremlin as a dangerous escalation. Shortly after Mr. Biden’s speech concluded, the White House insisted that the president was not calling for regime change with his comment about Mr. Putin remaining in power, which appeared to be ad-libbed.

“The president’s point was that Putin cannot be allowed to exercise power over his neighbors or the region,” a White House official said in a statement to reporters. “He was not discussing Putin’s power in Russia, or regime change.”

Whatever, dude. Go with that.

But some experts said Mr. Biden may come to regret the comment.

“The White House walk back of @POTUS regime change call is unlikely to wash,” Richard Haass, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, said in a tweet. “Putin will see it as confirmation of what he’s believed all along. Bad lapse in discipline that runs risk of extending the scope and duration of the war.”

On the other hand...

Mr. Biden’s statement that Mr. Putin could not remain in power could be perceived “as a call for regime change,” said Michal Baranowski, a senior fellow and director of the Warsaw office of the German Marshall Fund, a nonpartisan policy organization. But he said the comment was unlikely, in itself, to lead to any escalation.

“Russia is responding to military logic much more than political logic,” Mr. Baranowski said, noting the powerful explosions near Lviv heard minutes before Mr. Biden began speaking.

I hope he's right, but Putin clearly misjudged the military logic of this invasion.

Mother's Day Gifts Arriving Early

At the KBJ hearings folks were saying nice things about the future Supreme Court juistice. The proud, adoring look she got from her daughter is every parent's aspiration.

As to the nominee, I'll side with Andrew McCarthy, and especially his description of Sen. Hawley's attack on KBJ's record in child pornography cases:

Senator Hawley’s Disingenuous Attack against Judge Jackson’s Record on Child Pornography

Ben Sasse provided a pithy summary of the behavior of some (not all!) of his Republican colleagues on the Senate Judiciarly Committee: 'Jackassery".

Back In Ukraine

Foreign Policy on "How Putin Bungled His Invasion of Ukraine". A much shorter article would focus on what Putin did right.

Sunday Afternoon

Spring Forward!

 

Or, Spring Forward?!? Enough already!

Daylight Saving Time: Americans want to stay permanently ‘sprung forward’ and not ‘fall back’

Polled days before the annual ritual of ending Daylight Saving Time by changing their clocks, Americans say they would much rather have one time that lasts all year long, one that doesn’t require changing all clocks twice a year. The latest Economist/YouGov Poll finds that nearly four times as many Americans would end the practice of setting clocks ahead in the spring and back again in the fall.

As the headline say, the preferred one-stop is to spring forward and stay there. Never look back!

While Americans would prefer one time for the whole year and not worry about keeping their clocks in order, if there is going to be only one time for the U.S, which one should it be?

Nearly twice as many Americans who prefer not changing their clocks would prefer that Daylight Saving time – not Standard Time – be the one that is kept.

Again, which time one picks isn’t a matter of politics. Instead, it appears age matters more. Adults under the age of 30 are closely divided on whether they want sunlight later into evening (which happens with Daylight Saving Time) or in the morning. Older adults have a clear preference for Daylight Saving Time. So do people from every region.

 

Naturally this won't happen.

Doomsday Watch Open Thread

This is not your grandfather's Red Army. Back in 1949 NATA was formed to prevent the Red Army from rolling through Berlin to Paris. The US never promised 'no first use' of nuclear weapons because there was serous doubt about the ability of the West to win a conventonal war against the USSR.

But as Ross Douthat notes, this Red Army can't even roll to Kyiv. WIth the possible (probable?) exception of the Baltic states, NATO really can afford to defend itself and US nukes can be strictly a deterrent to Russian escalation rather than something we'd use first.

Why The Russian Army Is Struggling

The Russians are still the likely victors but Mark Antonio Wright, NRO editor and Marine Corps Reserve officer explains some of their apparent problems.

Unhappy Is The Land That Has No Hero

"Unhappy is the land that has no hero" said one of Galileo's students. To which Galileo replied, "No, unhappy is the land that needs a hero".

Galileo was wise. Fortunatley, Ukraine has a hero. Their President Zelensky, an actor and comedian turned politician and warrior has had moments like these:

When the United States offered to evacuate him from Ukraine, he stood his ground, saying, "The fight is here; I need ammunition, not a ride."

Folks have also dusted off old video of Zelensky shaking it down en route to winning Ukraine's version of Dancing With The Stars in 2006, because why not?

Ukraine needs a miracle. But maybe they'll get one - there be a lot of pressure on the West not to let this guy and his people down.

Life During Wartime

Putin chooses the all-out invasion path. 

The Dash To Dumb

The dash to dumb gets a new land speed record - a CNN contributor explains thats the San Francisco school board recall (backed by the progressive mayor and succeeding with about 75% of the vote) was a nefarious right wing propaganda ploy. Yeah, registered Reps are about 6% of the San Fran electorate but they sure can leverage their clout.

San Francisco school board recall sends a dangerous message

Opinion by Nicole Hemmer

...

This week's recall election in San Francisco is following a similar pattern. Three school board members lost their seats in a recall effort fueled by so many different issues that observers could easily play pick-your-own-narrative.

There were extended pandemic school closures, a ham-handed effort to rename schools commemorating Abraham Lincoln and George Washington, among other figures, in the name of social justice, an attempt to move away from testing and GPA requirements for admission into high-ranking public schools, a growing achievement gap, an enormous budget deficit and, in the case of one school board member, the use of a racial slur in an anti-Asian rant. All that makes trying to sum up the lessons of the recall a tall order.

Well, those were the issues all right. So what lesson does she take away?

But while the results in San Francisco may resist simple analysis, the politics swirling around the recall tell us something important about a process underway across the country. In San Francisco, deep-pocketed, right-leaning donors shoveled money into the recall, while activists and media outlets began using language that lashed together the disparate dissatisfactions into a coherent message.

And that coherent message swayed the mayor and roughly 75% of San Fran voters. Those tricky righties!

She closes with an exhortation to the media to Do Better:

Democratic politicians often lack courage when backlash politics are in motion, as likely to jump on the outrage bandwagon as shrink into the shadows, waiting for it to blow over. But they and progressive activists have a responsibility to counter moral panics with narratives more rooted in reality and more concerned with those whose needs are being overlooked.

Journalists and commentators also play a critical role in how backlash politics form: whose stories get told and emphasized, what frames are applied to the story of what schools need and where they fail, what policy issues and political concerns are treated as legitimate and which get hand-waved away. Getting those issues right is not just critical for how elections unfold, but how schools are ultimately valued and reformed.

That's the spirit! If libs are re-naming schools while refusing to open them, its up to the press to explain why!

Peggy Noonan (no doubt a part of the right-wing conspiracy here) provides a different take on San Francisco.

Super Sunday!

Are you ready for some football?

Open Everything!

Jim Geraghty on the resurgent, insurgent 'Open Everything!' movement.

Pence 2028! Would You Believe, 2032?

Mike Pence's decision to call out Trump may be Bold and Principled but if he runs in 2024 he won't be competitive. Someone like Youngkin, who more or less dodged Trump, has more of a chance than someone who takes him head-on.

Pence, OTOH, had no real play anyway - the currently numerous Stop The Steal crowd will never embrace him.

Tough Times At The Back Of The Alphabet

A bit of a skid for Zucker and Zuckerberg.

Ready For Some Football

Shovel some snow, pop some Aleve, watch the Rams and Chiefs advance to the Super Bowl - Big Day planned.

Ready For The Weekend

Here we go again! Snow Time!