January 25, 2021

Republicans' tendentious two-step

In the wake of the Donald Trump-incited riots at the Capitol on Jan. 6, supporters of the former president deployed the usual two-step playbook when Trump makes an indefensible blunder. First, they hid. CNN’s Jake Tapper told viewers last week, “We invited every single Republican senator to join us this morning. Every one of them declined or failed to respond.” This week, they emerged for the second step: Deflect, and protect Trump from having to suffer any consequences.

“It’s a moot point” whether Trump committed an impeachable offense, argued Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday. “For right now, I think there are other things that we’d rather be working on instead.” Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) sounded a similar note on “Fox News Sunday,” even as he acknowledged Trump bears “responsibility for some of what happened” at the Capitol. “I think the trial is stupid. I think it’s counterproductive,” Rubio said. “We already have a flaming fire in this country, and it’s like taking a bunch of gasoline and pouring it on top of the fire.”

To extend Rubio’s analogy, though, discarding the House’s impeachment article now is like saying the person who helped set the fire shouldn’t face consequences because his friends might be upset. And after several days of Republicans dismissing President Biden’s first actions as being of the “radical left,” as Rubio did on Friday, it’s unconvincing to turn around and feign interest in working with the new White House.

But as weak as Rubio and Rounds’s arguments were, no one deflected more flagrantly than Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) on ABC’s “This Week.” Host George Stephanopoulos began by asking, “This election was not stolen, do you accept that fact?” Paul refused. “We never had any presentation in court where we actually looked at the evidence,” he said. “Most of the cases were thrown out for lack of standing, which is a procedural way of not actually hearing the question.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/01/24/republicans-tendentious-two-step/

January 25, 2021

China Overtakes U.S. as World's Leading Destination for Foreign Direct Investment

Source: Wall Street Journal

Flows into America nearly halved as Covid-19 dragged on the economy in 2020

China overtook the U.S. as the world’s top destination for new foreign direct investment last year, as the Covid-19 pandemic amplifies an eastward shift in the center of gravity of the global economy.

New investments by overseas businesses into the U.S., which for decades held the No. 1 spot, fell 49% in 2020, according to U.N. figures released Sunday, as the country struggled to curb the spread of the new coronavirus and economic output slumped.

China, long ranked No. 2, saw direct investments by foreign companies climb 4%, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development said. Beijing used strict lockdowns to largely contain Covid-19 after the disease first emerged in a central Chinese city, and China’s gross domestic product grew even as most other major economies contracted last year.

The 2020 investment numbers underline China’s move toward the center of a global economy long dominated by the U.S.—a shift accelerated during the pandemic as China has cemented its position as the world’s factory floor and expanded its share of global trade.

Read more: https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-overtakes-u-s-as-worlds-leading-destination-for-foreign-direct-investment-11611511200

January 25, 2021

There is no way for decent people to 'unite' with racism, anti-Semitism or homophobia

America will not be saved at the expense of those who have too often been shut out of the nation’s lofty ideals, writes Leonard Pitts.

It’s been said of Abraham Lincoln that he had a “mystical” devotion to the idea of Union. His conviction that the American states were united in an indissoluble bond is what braced him through the monstrous burdens he bore. It’s not too much to say that the very existence of this country owes in large part to the stubborn faith of that sorrowful man. He held to Union even when military reversals, political reality and common sense all counseled against it.

Some ghost of Lincoln haunted President Biden’s inaugural address on Wednesday. Granted, Biden faces no military reversals. On the other hand, he delivered his speech at a crime scene, the west front of the U.S. Capitol, which, not three weeks ago, was breached by a howling mob of traitors, white supremacists and goons all too starkly reflective of what the Republican Party has devolved to. That deadly event, plus political reality and maybe even common sense, all inveigh heavily against the theme of the new president’s inaugural address. Which, like Lincoln’s first inaugural address, was union.

“On this January day,” said Biden, “my whole soul is in this: Bringing America together. Uniting our people, uniting our nation. I ask every American to join me in this cause. Uniting to fight the foes we face: anger, resentment and hatred, extremism, lawlessness, violence, disease, joblessness and hopelessness. With unity, we can do great things ...

Given that Lincoln restored a nation through sheer force of will, one is loathe to bet against Biden. Indeed, his buoyant optimism was as invigorating as ice water in August. It’s important to have a president who peddles hope instead of fear. If we didn’t know that before, surely we know it now.

https://www.tampabay.com/opinion/2021/01/24/there-is-no-way-for-decent-people-to-unite-with-racism-anti-semitism-or-homophobia-column/

January 24, 2021

The Trump approach to politics may have captured the GOP permanently

The past few tumultuous weeks in American politics have revealed a sharp split within the normally unified Republican ranks. This rift is playing out most directly on the issue of Donald Trump’s impeachment, but has much deeper roots.

Elements of this rift could be seen throughout the Trump presidency, with most Republican officeholders and party leaders enthusiastically endorsing pretty much any claim that Trump made, no matter how false or inane. Only a tiny number — most notably, Sens. Mitt Romney and Jeff Flake — spoke up. But this latter group seems to have found a stronger voice since the insurrection at the Capitol on Jan. 6.

On one level this split is about Trump. Some Republicans see him as uniquely capable of turning out lower-income white voters or they fear those voters being unleashed against them (both electorally and physically). Others want Trump gone from the Republican Party, seeing him as antithetical to whatever remains of ideological conservatism as well as a barrier to their own presidential ambitions. And some see him as politically costly, having undermined two winnable Senate runoffs in Georgia.

But the split runs deeper than concerns about Trump. At the core of this recent rift is a commitment to democracy, now revealed by the insurrection and votes to disqualify states’ electors. The Republican officials who promoted the conspiracy theories and fueled the lie of a stolen election demonstrated a hostility to democratic elections. The party’s other faction is willing to accept the outcome of an election even if it is not happy with its results.

This struggle in the GOP quite simply puts American democracy on the line.

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2021-01-24/republican-party-split-donald-trump

January 24, 2021

Fox News is a hazard to our democracy. It's time to take the fight to the Murdochs. Here's how.

I happened to be watching Fox News on election night when the network startled the political world by calling Arizona for Joe Biden.

It was a weird moment, without the fanfare that usually accompanied the announcement that a state was being put in one column or another. A few hours later, the Associated Press made the same call.

But many other news organizations, including The Washington Post, took days to reach that daring conclusion. For them, Arizona’s vote count simply remained far too close. Nate Silver, the data-oriented editor of fivethirtyeight.com, even argued that Fox News should rescind its call, that it was too early to make the prediction.

And Trumpworld was enraged. Losing the traditionally red state would make it that much harder to proclaim that the election was so close that it must in fact have been stolen by the Democrats. It would disrupt the Big Lie narrative. Former president Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, even called Fox honcho Rupert Murdoch to complain. But Fox News stood behind the call, which turned out to be correct.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/media/fox-news-is-a-hazard-to-our-democracy-its-time-to-take-the-fight-to-the-murdochs-heres-how/2021/01/22/1821f186-5cbe-11eb-b8bd-ee36b1cd18bf_story.html

January 24, 2021

Tesla has accused an engineer of downloading about 26,000 sensitive files in his first week

Tesla in a Friday court filing said a software engineer transferred about 26,000 confidential documents, including trade secrets, to his personal Dropbox during his first week at the company.

Senior software quality assurance engineer Alex Khaitov started his job at Tesla on December 28, 2020, and almost immediately began downloading sensitive files, according to Tesla.

"Within three days of being hired by Tesla, Defendant brazenly stole thousands of trade secret computer scripts that took Tesla years to develop," Tesla said in a complaint filed on Friday in the San Jose Division of the US district court of the Northern District of California.

Tesla is suing Khaitov, accusing him of stealing trade secrets and confidential information, along with breaching his contract. Khatilov was fired when internal investigators discovered the file transfers, according to Tesla.

https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musks-tesla-suing-an-ex-worker-who-it-says-downloaded-trade-secrets-2021-1

That's not going to look good come performance evaluation time...

January 23, 2021

Tom Cotton Is Lying Liar Who Lied About Being An Army Ranger

Anyone can go to clown school. I could go to clown school. You could go to clown school. But if you never actually work as a clown or register myself as a clown by painting your clown face on an official clown egg at the clown registry*, can you truly call yourself a clown?

Well, if you are Tom Cotton, you certainly can.

Sen. Tom Cotton sure has made a whole lot of his military career. It's pretty much his whole schtick. He went to Harvard Law School, joined a fancy New York firm and then left that fancy New York firm to join the Army, because of how much he believed in George W. Bush and his stupid, stupid war. One of the things he's talked a lot about — particularly during his senate run, was how very proud he was of being an Army Ranger.

But whoops! Turns out he was not, in fact, an Army Ranger. Not really, anyway.

Salon reports that Cotton "was never part of the 75th Ranger Regiment, the elite unit that plans and conducts joint special military operations as part of the U.S. Army Special Operations Command," but merely attended Ranger school, a two month course that is open to anyone serving in the military. This, technically, gives him the "right" to call himself a Ranger, and to wear a Ranger tab on their uniforms, but actual Rangers really don't like it when people do that.

https://www.wonkette.com/tom-cotton-not-army-ranger

January 23, 2021

Amanda Gorman's Inaugural Poem Is a Stunning Vision of Democracy

Among the firsts in Amanda Gorman’s inaugural poem, “The Hill We Climb,” is the concept of democracy that it assumed. Democracy, according to the twenty-two-year-old poet, is an aspiration—a thing of the future.

The word “democracy” first appears in the same verse in which Gorman refers to “a force that would shatter our nation rather than share it.” The insurrection at the Capitol on January 6th took place while Gorman was working on the poem, although the “force,” one may assume, is bigger than the insurrection—it is the Trump Presidency that made the insurrection possible, and the forces of white supremacy and inequality that enabled that Presidency itself—“it / Would destroy our country if it meant delaying democracy / And this effort very nearly succeeded” the poem continues. “But while democracy can be periodically delayed / it can never be permanently defeated.”

Both times the poem raises “democracy,” Gorman pairs the word with “delay,” which tells us that democracy is a thing expected, anticipated—not a thing that we have built, or possessed, but a dream. This is not the way that politicians or even political theorists usually use the word “democracy,” but it is one way that philosophers have used it. Jacques Derrida, the French deconstructionist, used the term “democracy to come.” Democracy, he wrote, was always forged and threatened by contradictory forces and thus is always “deferred,” always out of reach even in societies that adopt democracy as their governing principle.

Gorman’s poem is, explicitly, a text about the future. She exhorts Americans to look not at “what stands between us / But what stands before us.” She says, at the beginning, that “we know, to put our future first,” and she ends with a verse of promises and challenges as rousing as any ever written:

So let us leave behind a country
better than the one we were left with
Every breath from my bronze-pounded chest,
we will raise this wounded world into a wondrous one
We will rise from the gold-limbed hills of the west,
we will rise from the windswept northeast
where our forefathers first realized revolution
We will rise from the lake-rimmed cities of the midwestern states,
we will rise from the sunbaked south
We will rebuild, reconcile and recover
and every known nook of our nation and
every corner called our country,
our people diverse and beautiful will emerge,
battered and beautiful
When day comes we step out of the shade,
aflame and unafraid
The new dawn blooms as we free it
For there is always light,
if only we’re brave enough to see it
If only we’re brave enough to be it

The focus on the future is a direct response to the rhetoric of the outgoing President, who called on his mob to transport the country back to an imaginary past and forced Americans to live in a present without end. To write about the future, Gorman also has to write about the past. “Being American is more than a pride we inherit, / it’s the past we step into / And how we repair it,” she says, in an elegant rebuke to the rhetoric of return-to-normalcy: “We will not march back to what was / But move to what shall be.” Again, she stresses that the promise of American democracy is still there, still yet to arrive.

In everyday speech, Americans usually refer to democracy as a thing that we have, or used to have before Trump came along. In the tradition of American political speeches, democracy often figures as a work in progress. This, too, suggests that democracy is something we inhabit but continue to work on, an endless fixer-upper with good bones. Gorman’s explicit assumption is more radical and challenging.

It’s not only philosophy where the idea of a democracy-to-come can be found. “The Hill We Climb” evokes another great American poem, Langston Hughes’s “Let America Be America Again.” Hughes wrote, “America never was America to me, / And yet I swear this oath— / America will be!”—an immortal distillation of the tension between American aspirations and American reality, and a stubborn insistence that the country continue to reach for its dream. There is no better place to start for an inaugural poem, or for a Presidency.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/amanda-gormans-inaugural-poem-is-a-stunning-vision-of-democracy

January 23, 2021

10 Republicans Voted to Impeach Trump. The Backlash Has Been Swift.

The House Republicans who voted to charge President Donald J. Trump with inciting the Capitol riot are facing a fleet of primary challengers, censures and other rebukes from their party.

It’s been less than two weeks since Representatives Peter Meijer, Tom Rice and Liz Cheney broke with nearly all of their Republican colleagues in the House and voted to impeach President Donald J. Trump, but in their home states, the backlash is already growing.

In Michigan, a challenger to Mr. Meijer received a boost when Steve Bannon promoted him on his podcast.

In South Carolina, a local Republican is getting so many calls urging him to run against Mr. Rice that he can’t keep his phone charged.

And in Wyoming, a state senator called Ms. Cheney, the No. 3 Republican in the House, “out of touch” with her home state as he announced his primary campaign against her.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/23/us/politics/republican-who-wont-vote-to-impeach-trump.html

The Republican Party really is the party of fascists.

January 23, 2021

This is Wuhan Now

The long months of harsh lockdown have faded from view in Wuhan, the first city in the world devastated by the new coronavirus. As residents look to move on, they cite a Chinese saying that warns against “forgetting the pain after a scar heals.”

To many in this central Chinese city, the saying sums up a temptation to let go of the bad memories while reveling in the recovery. To families grieving in the shadows, it means the danger of hastily forgetting without a public reckoning for the lives needlessly lost.

A year ago when Wuhan shut down, it offered the world a forewarning about the dangers of the virus. Now, it heralds a post-pandemic world where the relief at unmasked faces, joyous get-togethers and daily commutes conceals the emotional aftershocks.

In Wuhan, residents savor ordinary pleasures that a year ago became forbidden hazards, like strolling along the historic Jianghan shopping street. Office workers jostle for seats on the subway, which was shut throughout the lockdown. Riverside restaurants, karaoke bars and music clubs are a hubbub of conversation and song that was unthinkable last year, and remains unthinkable for much of the world still in the grips of the pandemic.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/22/world/asia/wuhan-china-coronavirus.html