October 12, 2021

The Trump nightmare looms again

It is increasingly evident that the nightmare prospect of American politics — unified Republican control of the federal government in the hands of a reelected, empowered Donald Trump in 2025 — is also the likely outcome.

Why this is a nightmare should be clear enough. Every new tranche of information released about Trump’s behavior following the 2020 election — most recently an interim report from the Senate Judiciary Committee — reveals a serious and concerted attempt to overthrow America’s legitimate incoming government.

At roughly the same time that Trump was gathering and unleashing his goons to intimidate members of Congress on Jan. 6, he was pressuring Justice Department leaders to provide legal cover for his effort to prevent certification of the election. When they refused, Trump conspired with a lower-level loyalist to take over the department and run it according to the president’s dictates. Under the threat of mass resignations, Trump eventually backed off.

This led to one of the lamest excuses in the long history of lame political excuses. Trump defenders such as Brit Hume want to award Trump kudos for desisting in the end. “Trump decided against it,” Hume tweeted. “It is not to his credit that he even considered it, but his rejection should be part of any story on it.” But this retrenchment, on Trump’s part, was a recognition of positional weakness, not a display of public virtue. The thing that matters most is this: The current front-runner for the 2024 Republican nomination would have broken the constitutional order if he could have broken the constitutional order.

Meanwhile, it is clear that this same lawless, reckless man has a perfectly realistic path back to power. The GOP is a garbage scow of the corrupt, the seditious and their enablers, yet the short- and medium-term political currents are in its favor.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/10/11/trump-nightmare-looms-again/

October 12, 2021

A Babysitter and a Band-Aid Wrapper: Inside the Submarine Spy Case

Jonathan and Diana Toebbe seemed like an ordinary suburban couple, but the F.B.I. said they were would-be spies — and sloppy ones.

WASHINGTON — On July 28, Diana Toebbe posted a Facebook message looking for a babysitter to take care of her children early on the coming Saturday morning for five to six hours.

Later the post, visible only to friends, was updated with the word “*FOUND*.” And on that Saturday, Ms. Toebbe accompanied her husband, Jonathan, to south-central Pennsylvania.

Unbeknown to Ms. Toebbe, she and her husband were being watched by the F.B.I. as they left their home in Annapolis, Md. And the bureau’s agents continued to watch in Pennsylvania as Jonathan Toebbe removed from his shorts pocket a 32-gigabyte memory card hidden in a sealed Band-Aid wrapper, which he then, according to court papers, placed in a container set up by an undercover F.B.I. operative.

The Toebbes, accused by the U.S. government of trying to sell some of America’s most closely guarded submarine propulsion secrets to a foreign government, are scheduled to appear in federal court in West Virginia on Tuesday. They will face charges related to violating the Atomic Energy Act’s prohibition on sharing nuclear know-how.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/11/us/politics/inside-submarine-spy-case.html

Traitors.

October 11, 2021

At least 85 percent of the world's population has been affected by human-induced climate change

Researchers used machine learning to analyze more than 100,000 studies of weather events and found four-fifths of the world’s land area has suffered impacts linked to global warming

At least 85 percent of the global population has experienced weather events made worse by climate change, according to research published Monday in the journal Nature Climate Change.

After using machine learning to analyze and map more than 100,000 studies of events that could be linked to global warming, researchers paired the analysis with a well-established data set of temperature and precipitation shifts caused by fossil fuel use and other sources of carbon emissions.

These combined findings — which focused on events such as crop failures, floods and heat waves — allowed scientists to make a solid link between escalating extremes and human activities. They concluded that global warming has affected 80 percent of the world’s land area.

“We have a huge evidence base now that documents how climate change is affecting our societies and our ecosystems,” said lead author Max Callaghan, a researcher at the Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change in Germany.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2021/10/11/85-percent-population-climate-impacts/

October 11, 2021

I never expected to retire to Panama -- but we are living 'very comfortably' on $1,200 a month

This couple moved from Florida without speaking much Spanish

Kris Cunningham never expected to be living in Panama. When her husband, Joel, started talking about retiring to Central America, “I thought he had lost his mind.” She didn’t have a passport and had never been abroad.

But after nine years of living in David, a city of 83,000 near the Pacific Ocean and close to the border with Costa Rica, “we are super happy here,” the 69-year-old says. “It’s worked out beyond my wildest expectations.”

She learned Spanish, taught herself to play bass guitar and joined her husband’s rock band, called Monkey Nerve, when the bass player moved to Colombia. She seems to fall into conversation with everyone, has biked from home across Costa Rica and into Nicaragua, and blogs about her life.

Backtrack a decade. Cunningham was working in Florida as a visiting nurse, burned out but knew she and her husband, already retired from his home-remodeling job, couldn’t afford to stay in Sarasota without a paycheck or her Social Security check. And even a reduced check was a few years away.

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/i-never-expected-to-retire-to-panama-but-we-are-living-very-comfortably-on-1-200-a-month-11633001564

October 11, 2021

COVID-Infected Allen West Goes on Unhinged Anti-Vax Rant--From Hospital

The unvaccinated ex-congressman seemed to learn nothing from being sent to the emergency room with COVID-related pneumonia and low oxygen.

Right-wing firebrand Allen West on Sunday followed up the previous day’s news that he contracted COVID-19 and was hospitalized with an off-the-rails Twitter rant against vaccination.

The former congressman, who is not vaccinated, wrote that he and his wife Angela received monoclonal antibody treatments at an emergency room in Dallas on Saturday. “The results were immediate,” he claimed before noting that his wife, who is vaccinated, was allowed to go home while he stayed at the hospital due to concerns over COVID-related pneumonia and low blood oxygen levels.

The far-right figure, who has increasingly adopted QAnon-adjacent rhetoric and recently quit his post as Texas GOP chairman, praised the hospital for “not forcing any harmful protocols on me” and for “making me grits for breakfast!!!”

And then, despite the burden placed on hospital staff by people like West who refuse to get vaccinated, he pivoted to attacking vaccines.

“I can attest that, after this experience, I am even more dedicated to fighting against vaccine mandates,” he tweeted. “Instead of enriching the pockets of Big Pharma and corrupt bureaucrats and politicians, we should be advocating the monoclonal antibody infusion therapy.” (Monoclonal antibody treatments, of course, are largely manufactured by pharmaceutical giants like Regeneron and GlaxoSmithKline.)

https://www.thedailybeast.com/allen-west-goes-on-anti-vaxx-tirade-amid-covid-diagnosis

His is one obituary I look forward to reading soon.

October 10, 2021

Dear Mike Pence. Sincerely, Leonard Pitts

Republicans, you’ve done an excellent job of demeaning yourselves.

Dear Mike Pence:

Most of them are fervid adherents of bizarre conspiracy theories and fascist dogmas that might yet burn this country down.

Many of them spew a noxious slurry of racial, religious and sexual hatreds that defame the principles we purport to hold dear.

And on Jan. 6 of this year, a mob of them broke into the U.S. Capitol. They injured police officers. They drove Congress from its own house. They looted government property. They called for federal officials — including you — to be lynched. They smeared feces on the walls.

But you say it’s “the media” who are demeaning the supporters of that Florida man who used to be president?

https://www.tampabay.com/opinion/2021/10/10/dear-mike-pence-sincerely-leonard-pitts-column/

October 10, 2021

As Johnson Draws a Happy Face, Britons Confront a Run of Bad News

There’s a cognitive dissonance between Mr. Johnson’s upbeat appraisal of British life and the ills facing its citizens, including gas and food shortages and fears of rising energy prices.

LONDON — Britons are lining up for gas, staring at empty grocery shelves, paying higher taxes and worrying about spiraling prices as a grim winter approaches.

But to visit the Conservative Party conference in Manchester this past week was to enter a kind of happy valley, where cabinet ministers danced, sang karaoke and drained flutes of champagne — Pol Roger, Winston Churchill’s favorite brand, naturally.

Nobody captured the bonhomie better than Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who told a whooping crowd of party faithful, “You all represent the most jiving, hip, happening, and generally funkapolitan party in the world.”

The cognitive dissonance extended beyond the Mardi Gras atmosphere. In his upbeat keynote speech, Mr. Johnson characterized the multiple ills afflicting Britain as a “function of growth and economic revival” — challenging but necessary post-Brexit adjustments on the way to a more prosperous future.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/09/world/europe/boris-johnson-britain-brexit.html

October 10, 2021

Lebanon's national electricity grid collapses

Source: Washington Post

BEIRUT — Lebanon's electricity network collapsed on Saturday after the two most important power stations ran out of fuel, leaving private generators as the only source of power.

The state-owned electricity company has been providing citizens with just a few hours of power a day for months, but the total collapse of the national grid will compound the misery of those who can’t afford to run generators and had relied on those few hours.

The outage marks the latest milestone in the unraveling of Lebanon, which is undergoing what the World Bank has described as one of the world’s three biggest financial collapses of the past 150 years.

The banking system was the first to implode in 2019, triggering a 90 percent slide in the value of the currency that has left the government unable to afford fuel, food and medicine imports while plunging millions of Lebanese into poverty.

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/lebanon-power-beirut-electricity-collapse/2021/10/09/e2588e88-28fb-11ec-8739-5cb6aba30a30_story.html

October 8, 2021

Where the Suburbs End

A single-family home from the 1950s is now a rental complex and a vision of California’s future.

“More luxury at lower cost.” The pitch rolled across the cover of a brochure that introduced thousands of aspiring homeowners to Clairemont Villas, a San Diego subdivision that promised new homes in a world without trade-offs.

“Private and protected.” “Beauty and convenience.” A single-family house in a quiet suburb — but just a few minutes’ drive from new schools and a new shopping center along with downtown and the beach.

It was a California fantasy. Over six colorful pages the brochure sold buyers on an indoor-outdoor lifestyle where the living room opened to a yard and children played behind a redwood fence.

The fairy tale ended with the map to an address on Clairemont Drive. That’s where a row of model houses sat bunched up on a corner, waiting to be walked through.

Sixty-five years later, Margie Coats, 79, still remembers the tour. Her father drove the six of them — two parents, four sisters — to a weekend showing where in her teenage naïveté she asked a salesperson if the furniture was included. The family paid $13,250 for Lot 118 and a year later moved into 5120 Baxter Street. This was in 1957, back when the surrounding Clairemont neighborhood was booming with new subdivisions and mass-produced suburbs were still a national experiment.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/08/business/economy/suburbs-housing-density.html

"Three on a lot" is already pretty common in parts of LA where older ranch homes were once built (and subsequently demolished), and each unit nearing (if not exceeding) $1M (for maybe 1500 sq. ft.). It's great if one bought their house decades ago, not so great for younger people looking to buy a home.

October 8, 2021

Why the Senate blinked and moved back from the brink of a federal default crisis

On Wednesday morning, the Senate appeared to be headed down one unavoidable collision course with potentially calamitous consequences: Republicans refused to allow a vote raising the federal debt ceiling to pay the government’s bills unless Democrats capitulated to their procedural demands. Democrats would not do so, while no obvious strategy to avoid an unprecedented federal default was anywhere in sight.

But hours later, as senators were set to take a key procedural vote that would have heightened the confrontation, an off-ramp appeared: Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) announced Republicans would allow Democrats to advance a roughly two-month debt hike.

Senate Democrats chose to accept the deal, crowing that it represented a Republican capitulation: “McConnell caved,” announced Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) Wednesday as she left a private meeting.

But the political scorekeeping behind the deal, which passed Thursday night, is not quite so simple. Like most deals on Capitol Hill, the agreement to punt the debt-limit battle into December reflects a convergence of interests that is not always obvious in the heat of the moment. And, like most deals on Capitol Hill, it leaves mixed feelings on both sides of the aisle and involves political implications which could take months to sort out.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/default-senate-deal/2021/10/07/222f9008-2779-11ec-8831-a31e7b3de188_story.html