Last Call For Meathead Matt's #MeToo Moment, Con't

Florida Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz is already facing a federal investigation into sexual abuse of a minor, now the other shoe has fallen as Gaetz is now reportedly under investigation for obstruction of the investigation itself through witness tampering.

 

Federal prosecutors are examining whether Rep. Matt Gaetz obstructed justice during a phone call he had with a witness in the sex-crimes investigation of the Florida congressman, according to two sources familiar with the case.

The witness in question was one of a handful of women who entered Gaetz’s orbit via his one-time “wingman,” former Seminole County, Fla., tax collector Joel Greenberg, who pleaded guilty last month to a host of crimes, including sex-trafficking a 17-year-old in 2017.

The obstruction inquiry stems from a phone call the witness had with Gaetz’s ex-girlfriend. At some point during the conversation, the ex-girlfriend patched Gaetz into the call, sources said. While it’s unknown exactly what was said, the discussion on that call is central to whether prosecutors can charge Gaetz with obstructing justice, which makes it illegal to suggest that a witness in a criminal case lie or give misleading testimony.

The witness later spoke with prosecutors, the sources said.

Gaetz has denied all wrongdoing, including obstructing justice or having sex with the trafficked 17-year-old, who was a friend of both Gaetz’s ex-girlfriend and the witness prosecutors interviewed.

The obstruction probe is the latest development in the ongoing federal investigation into Gaetz, a top ally of former President Donald Trump who has come under increasing scrutiny due to his relationship with Greenberg — now a cooperating witness. The obstruction inquiry signals how wide a net federal prosecutors are casting to possibly ensnare the congressman.

A spokesman for Gaetz provided a written statement that stated the congressman — who is an attorney — broke no laws and characterized the federal government’s investigation as a politically motivated fishing expedition.

“Congressman Gaetz pursues justice, he doesn’t obstruct it,” the statement said. “The anonymous allegations have thus far amounted to lies, wrapped in leaks, rooted in an extortion plot by a former DOJ official. After two months, there is still not a single on-record accusation of misconduct, and now the 'story' is changing yet again.”

Gaetz’s statement also said his lawyers are simultaneously investigating an alleged shakedown scheme that was purportedly organized by a former federal prosecutor in reaction to the case.

Brian Tannebaum, a veteran federal defense attorney briefed by POLITICO on the investigation, said that obstruction of justice is “widely used by prosecutors in various forms” and can even ensnare witnesses who lie on the stand at trial. He said that, if authorities recorded the call involving Gaetz, prosecutors will listen for signs that he’s trying to get the woman to “get her story straight” by shading the truth.

“If there’s any indication he was trying to influence her testimony, that can be obstruction,” Tannebaum said. “If it’s determined that what he said obstructed the investigation — ‘did what he tell you have any influence on your testimony before the grand jury?’ — it can be real problem.”

 

Gaetz had better hope his lawyers are better at actual criminal law then they are press statements, because the guy is facing multiple witnesses cooperating with the feds, and odds are an indictment is coming soon. And this time, there's no Trump to save him.

Finally Some Good News On COVID

With the majority of US adults now being vaccinated and the weekly number of new COVID-19 cases having dropped into the thousands rather than the hundreds of thousands, America has finally turned the corner on the virus, thanks to the vaccine rollout by the Biden administration.

The U.S. has brought new coronavirus infections down to the lowest level since March 2020, when the pandemic began.

The big picture: Nearly every week for the past 56 weeks, Axios has tracked the change — more often than not, the increase — in new COVID-19 infections. Those case counts are now so low, the virus is so well contained, that this will be our final weekly map.

By the numbers: The U.S. averaged roughly 16,500 new cases per day over the past week, a 30% improvement over the week before. New cases declined in 43 states and held steady in the other seven. The official case counts haven’t been this low since Americans went into lockdown in March last year — when the pandemic was still new, no one knew how long this would go on, and inadequate testing meant that cases were undercounted.

Overall, roughly 33 million Americans — about 10% of the population — have tested positive for COVID-19. About 595,000 people have died from the virus in the U.S., making it deadlier for Americans than the past 80 years of wars and other armed military conflicts combined, including World War II.

The U.S. largely failed to contain the virus until the vaccines arrived. Cities and businesses began shutting down last March. From there, the virus rolled into a second wave last summer, when cases climbed to over 65,000 per day, on average, and hospitals in many parts of the country said they were overwhelmed. That failure was then eclipsed in the winter, when hundreds of thousands of people per day were contracting the virus and deaths climbed over 3,000 per day for about a month.

But now, the virus really is under control, nationwide and in every state, thanks almost entirely to the vaccines. Just over half of American adults are now fully vaccinated, according to the CDC.

 

But that still leaves 100 million US adults unvaccinated and at risk, and the globe is suffering from another major outbreak of the disease as vaccine rollouts have not gone anywhere nearly as smoothly as in the US.

 

We've turned the corner, but the road out of the woods is still long and dangerous.

The Great Debate Debate, Con't

GOP chair Ronna Romney McDaniel is already laying down the rules of any 2024 presidential debates, instead of just working the refs like Republicans do, McDaniel is all but demanding they be replaced by Trump campaign officials.

Writing to the CPD “on behalf of the Republican Party and 74 million Americans who voted for” Trump, McDaniel warned the nonpartisan organization that the “RNC will have no choice but to advise its future nominees against participating in CPD-hosted debates” unless the commission enact certain changes “to restore the faith and legitimacy it has lost” through “repeated missteps” during last year’s race. Such missteps, according to McDaniel, include a “surprising and awkward” reflection problem that the CPD almost caused by erecting acrylic glass shields, an “amateur” and “unforced error” that “nearly derailed the debate itself” but that Trump, “thanks to his background in television,” was able to prevent.

McDaniel’s gripes, which Axios notes are largely an extension of perceived slights Trump voiced last year, included the CPD’s selected moderators, adoption of a virtual format for the would-be second debate in light of Trump’s COVID-19 diagnosis (an event eventually scrapped due to Trump’s refusal to attend), and decision to mute candidates’ microphones during the final debate following an interruption-filled premiere. She specifically took issue with the selection of C-SPAN’s Steve Scully as a 2020 moderator because the veteran Washington journalist interned in Joe Biden's Senate office for about six weeks in 1978.

Before the first face-off last September, Tom Kludt reported for Vanity Fair on concerns about Trump’s willingness to cooperate with the CPD, how the commission was contending with the pandemic, and what one could expect from an incumbent who in 2016 baselessly accused his opponent of “trying to rig the debates.” The Trump campaign proposed mainstream news anchors as moderators, such as ABC News’s David Muir and CBS News’s Norah O’Donnell, as well as pro-Trump voices like Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo and conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt.

Now McDaniel appears to be working the refs ahead of 2024, putting pressure on the CPD to make concessions in the interest of her party—and perhaps Trump, himself, if he’s again the nominee. Her request for changes, which she has asked the CPD to respond to by July 31, include holding at least one debate before early voting begins, barring members from publicly commenting on candidates and punishing them if they do, and restricting who is eligible to be a moderator. McDaniel also suggested the CPD impose term limits on its ten-member Board of Directors, six of which “have gone on record making disparaging comments about President Trump while serving,” she wrote, claiming the forum’s “tolerance of this behavior undermines any legitimacy it claims as a nonpartisan organization,” despite the fact that half the Trump-critical members she listed are also Republicans. Yet the GOP represented on the CPD’s board—establishment types Trump would likely dub “RINOs”—no longer represents today’s GOP, as evidenced by McDaniel’s complaints and demands.

 

Of course there's a 100% chance the commission folds and gives in to the GOP's demands here, which will make it all the more fun when the GOP makes more demands in another few months or so. By the time the actually 2024 debates are supposed to begin, they'll either be moderated by Tucker Carlson, Steve Bannon or Sebastian Gorka.

Last Call For A Meatier Strike On The Net

Another week, another major cyberattack on US infrastructure, this time with the operations of the world's largest meat processor, JBS, being the target, shutting down all of its US plants.

A cyberattack on JBS SA, the largest meat producer globally, forced the shutdown of all its U.S. beef plants, wiping out output from facilities that supply almost a quarter of American supplies.

All of the company’s fed-beef and regional beef plants were forced to shutter, and all other JBS meatpacking facilities in the country experienced some level of disruption to operations, according to an official with the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union.

JBS didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. The union represents workers at the company’s plants in the U.S.

Slaughter operations across Australia were also down, according to a trade group, and one of Canada’s largest beef plants was idled. That comes after a weekend attack on the Brazilian company’s computer networks, according to JBS posts on Facebook, labor unions and employees.

It’s unclear exactly how many plants globally have been affected by the ransomware attack as Sao Paulo-based JBS has yet to release those details. The prospect of more extensive shutdowns worldwide is already upending agricultural markets and raising concerns about food security as hackers increasingly target critical infrastructure. Livestock futures slumped, while pork prices rose.

Hackers now have the commodities industry in their crosshairs with the JBS attack coming just three weeks after Colonial Pipeline Co., operator of the biggest U.S. gasoline pipeline, was targeted in a ransomware attack. It also happened as the global meat industry battles lingering Covid-19 absenteeism after recovering from outbreaks last year that saw plants shut and supplies disrupted.

The White House offered assistance to JBS after the company notified the Biden administration on Sunday of a cyberattack from a criminal organization likely based in Russia, White House Deputy Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters Tuesday.

There have been more than 40 publicly reported ransomware attacks against food companies since May 2020, said Allan Liska, senior security architect at cybersecurity analytics firm Recorded Future.

 

Expect meat prices to skyrocket as we head into summer grilling season, and that's the point: to hang higher prices at the pump, at the grocery store, and at restaurants around the neck of President Biden.

 

Ask cui bono, who benefits from the crime the most, and you'll find your perps. 

Hint, one is orange, and the other is very, very red.

Trump Cards, Con't

With his Second Civil War Tour 2021 kicking off this weekend in North Carolina, Trump is dropping his blog page.

Former President Donald Trump’s blog — a webpage where he shared statements after larger social media companies banned him from their platforms — has been permanently shut down, his spokesman said Wednesday.

The page, “From the Desk of Donald J. Trump,” has been scrubbed from Trump’s website after going live less than a month earlier.

It “will not be returning,” his senior aide Jason Miller told CNBC.

“It was just auxiliary to the broader efforts we have and are working on,” Miller said in email correspondence.

 

The blog wasn't sufficiently feeding the dark, cavernous maw of his eternal narcissistic hunger. His event tour will get him on the news as much or more so than President Biden though, because our media is broken, and everyone knows it. It's what Trump needs to survive, it's what the media outlets have been craving, and the whole thing will be an utter mess.

Trump wants to be shadow president, and everything is there for that to happen.

Last Call For Retribution Execution, Con't

As Donald Trump revives his hate rallies starting this week in NC at the state's GOP convention, it's important to note that the recent talk of "coups" and "reinstatement" by his revanchist revenants appears to be idle boasting, but of course, it's anything but.

Former President Donald Trump has been telling people he thinks he'll return to the White House as the sitting president by August, the New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman tweeted on Tuesday.

Trump has been telling a number of people he’s in contact with that he expects he will get reinstated by August (no that isn’t how it works but simply sharing the information). https://t.co/kaXSXKnpF0

— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) June 1, 2021

Haberman, who broke some of the biggest stories of the Trump administration and has been covering him for decades, added that Trump had been "laser focused" on election audits in states whose results he is still trying to overturn.

The anti-democratic conspiracy theory has been bubbling up in fringe conservative media for several months. It has no basis under the Constitution or any legitimate legal framework.

MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell has been a prominent proponent of the theory.

The former Trump attorney Sidney Powell also floated the idea at a QAnon conference over the weekend.

Read more: Low-paid Capitol Hill staffers are moonlighting for Starbucks and Door Dash. They're fed up with unlivable salaries that hinder diversity and kneecap careers.

The anticipation of a Trump reinstatement on a certain date could spread further among the most dedicated Trump supporters. The calls to help overturn the 2020 election on January 6, for example, gained steam through a pro-Trump bus tour by a fringe group and led to the insurrection at the Capitol.

Lindell has said August is when he would go to the Supreme Court to present evidence he's acquired — evidence he's said would be so convincing that the justices would be forced to reject the 2020 election result.

A podcast from the former Trump advisor Steve Bannon has amplified the conspiracy theory, as Lindell and others have gone on the show to promote it with minimal pushback.

 

Trump kept telling us January 6th was going to happen, now he's telling us that early August will happen.

 

Maybe this time we should be ready for the violence?

It's About Suppression, Con't

Enraged by Texas Democrats in the state House blocking his voter suppression bill by denying a quorum in the final day of the legislative session on Sunday, Texas GOP Gov. Greg Abbott says he will exact revenge by vetoing the state legislature's entire budget and revoking lawmaker pay until Democrats agree to a special session to pass the bill.

 

Gov. Greg Abbott said Monday he would veto the section of the state budget that funds the Legislature, hours after a Democratic walkout killed his priority elections bill.

"No pay for those who abandon their responsibilities," Abbott said in a tweet. "Stay tuned."

Late Sunday night, enough Democrats left the House to break a quorum and block passage of the elections bill, Senate Bill 7, before a midnight deadline. Calling the bill's failure "deeply disappointing," Abbott quickly made clear he would call a special session to get it passed, though he has not specified a timeline.

Abbott's tweet referred to Article X of the budget, which pays not only lawmakers and staff but also funds legislative agencies, such as the Legislative Budget Board. Under the current budget, the legislative branch is funded through the end of August, and the budget Abbott is referring to covers the fiscal year starting Sept. 1.

Abbott has until June 20 to carry out the veto.

State lawmakers are paid $600 a month, equal to $7,200 per year. They also get a per diem of $221 for every day they are in session, including both regular and special sessions.

Democratic legislators quickly criticized Abbott's veto announcement.

"This would eliminate the branch of government that represents the people and basically create a monarchy," state Rep. Donna Howard of Austin tweeted.

SB 7 was one of Abbott's emergency items, as was another proposal that died Sunday that would have made it harder for people arrested to bond out of jail without cash.

Abbott's tweet came minutes before the House adjourned sine die, finishing its regular session. In remarks from the dais, GOP Speaker Dade Phelan acknowledged lawmakers had unfinished business.

"We will be back — when, I don't know, but we will be back," Phelan told members. "There's a lot of work to be done, but I look forward to doing it with every single one of you."

The cruelty of course is the point here, and Abbott takes great pleasure in hurting people who don't obey his decrees. But it also means that if the bill isn't passed by August 31, Texas may not have a functioning legislature at all. At that point, Abbott would be calling all the shots.

Who knows?

Black Lives Still Matter, Con't

The Former Guy™ would never have even bothered to recognize the fact that the Tulsa Massacre ever happened, just like the rest of his party of racist assholes. President Joe Biden makes it clear that 100 years later, it can never be allowed to happen again.

One hundred years ago, a violent white supremacist mob raided, firebombed, and destroyed approximately 35 square blocks of the thriving Black neighborhood of Greenwood in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Families and children were murdered in cold blood. Homes, businesses, and churches were burned. In all, as many as 300 Black Americans were killed, and nearly 10,000 were left destitute and homeless. Today, on this solemn centennial of the Tulsa Race Massacre, I call on the American people to reflect on the deep roots of racial terror in our Nation and recommit to the work of rooting out systemic racism across our country.

Before the Tulsa Race Massacre, Greenwood was a thriving Black community that had grown into a proud economic and cultural hub. At its center was Greenwood Avenue, commonly known as Black Wall Street. Many of Greenwood’s 10,000 residents were Black sharecroppers who fled racial violence after the Civil War.

In the decades following the Civil War and Reconstruction, Greenwood became a place where Black Americans were able to make a new start and secure economic progress despite the continued pain of institutional and overt racism. The community was home to a growing number of prominent Black entrepreneurs as well as working-class Black families who shared a commitment to social activism and economic opportunity. As Greenwood grew, Greenwood Avenue teemed with successful Black-owned businesses, including restaurants, grocery stores, hotels, and offices for doctors, lawyers, and dentists. The community also maintained its own school system, post office, a savings and loan institution, hospital, and bus and taxi service.

Despite rising Jim Crow systems and the reemergence of the Ku Klux Klan, Greenwood’s economic prosperity grew, as did its citizens’ demands for equal rights. This made the community a source of pride for many Black Americans. It also made the neighborhood and its families a target of white supremacists. In 2 days, a violent mob tore down the hard-fought success of Black Wall Street that had taken more than a decade to build.

In the years that followed, the destruction caused by the mob was followed by laws and policies that made recovery nearly impossible. In the aftermath of the attack, local ordinances were passed requiring new construction standards that were prohibitively expensive, meaning many Black families could not rebuild. Later, Greenwood was redlined by mortgage companies and deemed “hazardous” by the Federal Government so that Black homeowners could not access home loans or credit on equal terms. And in later decades, Federal investment, including Federal highway construction, tore down and cut off parts of the community. The attack on Black families and Black wealth in Greenwood persisted across generations.

The Federal Government must reckon with and acknowledge the role that it has played in stripping wealth and opportunity from Black communities. The Biden-Harris Administration is committed to acknowledging the role Federal policy played in Greenwood and other Black communities and addressing longstanding racial inequities through historic investments in the economic security of children and families, programs to provide capital for small businesses in economically disadvantaged areas, including minority-owned businesses, and ensuring that infrastructure projects increase opportunity, advance racial equity and environmental justice, and promote affordable access.

A century later, the fear and pain from the devastation of Greenwood is still felt. As Viola Fletcher, a 107-year-old survivor of the Tulsa Race Massacre courageously testified before the Congress recently, “I will never forget the violence of the white mob when we left our home. I still see Black men being shot, Black bodies lying in the street. I still smell smoke and see fire. I still see Black businesses being burned. I still hear airplanes flying overhead. I hear the screams. I have lived through the massacre every day. Our country may forget this history, but I cannot.”

With this proclamation, I commit to the survivors of the Tulsa Race Massacre, including Viola Fletcher, Hughes Van Ellis, and Lessie Benningfield Randle, the descendants of victims, and to this Nation that we will never forget. We honor the legacy of the Greenwood community, and of Black Wall Street, by reaffirming our commitment to advance racial justice through the whole of our government, and working to root out systemic racism from our laws, our policies, and our hearts.

 

No matter how much you may dislike Joe Biden for his long career of bipartisanship solipsism,  he understands that America isn't perfect, and isn't even great. It's a critically flawed nation of one-third of a billion people, most of whom are pretty good, but that still leaves a bunch of terrible humans.

Trump on the other hand never would have mentioned this. In fact, he would have worked to make mentioning the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa Massacre either all about himself, or making it illegal. Or somehow, both.

I'll take Biden every time.

Last Call For In Like Flynn, Con't

If you're wondering what former Trump National Security Adviser Michael Flynn is up to since the Former Guy™ pardoned him for his role in, you know, betraying his country's government, well it turns out he's openly calling for a military coup to overthrow his country's government. Again.

Avowed QAnon disciple and confessed felon retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn has called for a Myanmar-like military coup in America.

“It should happen,” Donald Trump’s former national security adviser said in an astonishing declaration at a QAnon conference Sunday.

Myanmar’s military violently seized control of the country from its civilian government in late January, detained democratically elected leader Aung San Suu Kyi and top party members, and killed more than 700 protesters as of early this month. The military justified its action by claiming unproven “election fraud.”

Flynn presented his dark vision of a military coup and dictatorship in the U.S. in response to a question from the audience at the conference.

″I wanna know why what happened in Myanmar can’t happen here?” an unidentified member of the audience asked Flynn, though he pronounced the nation as “Minnimar.”

“No reason,” Flynn responded to wild screams of approval. “It should happen.”

It’s not the first time Flynn has called for a military takeover of a democratically elected government. He retweeted a message in December after Trump lost the election that called on the president to declare martial law and keep the White House by force.

 

They want this so badly they can taste it, and so can tens of millions of Republicans. They've already tried once. They will absolutely try again.

It's About Suppression, Con't

So it turns out late last night Democrats in the Texas state House were able to stop the Texas Senate GOP's voter suppression and election rigging bill by walking out of the final night of the yearly session, denying the GOP the quorum they needed to proceed with the bill, but that's only a temporary delay.

Texas Republicans' push to enact a slew of new voting restrictions was stymied -- at least for now -- by Democrats who walked off the state House floor late Sunday night, leaving majority Republicans without the quorum they needed to approve the bill in the final hours before a midnight deadline. 

Their move effectively killed Senate Bill 7 for this year's legislative session. But it could soon be revived: Republican Gov. Greg Abbott tweeted Sunday night that he is adding "election integrity" to a list of topics lawmakers will address in a special session he plans to call. 

"Legislators will be expected to have worked out the details when they arrive at the Capitol for the special session," Abbott said. 

Democrats left the chamber at about 10:45 p.m., CT, leaving Republican Speaker Dade Phelan to concede that the House did not have the 100 members necessary for a quorum and to adjourn the House for the night. 

Republicans in Texas had sought to join Florida, Georgia and other GOP-controlled states that have seized on former President Donald Trump's lies about the 2020 election and adopted new restrictions that will make it harder for some of their residents to vote. 

It's not yet clear when Abbott will call the special session. It's also not clear whether Republicans will enter the special session set on approving SB 7 as it's currently drafted or will seek to make further changes.

 

Frankly, Texas Republicans could easily make the bill even worse, and almost certainly will in order to further punish Democrats. Abbott has months in which to call the session, and Texas Republicans will almost certainly be afforded the time to make the bill as nasty as possible.

 

Dems won the battle here, and they are to be commended. But the war is almost certainly lost.

Cruisin' For A Losin', Con't

Gov. Florida Man Ron DeSantis is doubling down on his ban on cruise lines requiring vaccine information or even asking for it, saying that the taxpayers of Florida will be very happy with the $5,000 fine per passenger and worker windfall from the cruise companies. 

 

Gov. Ron DeSantis isn’t wavering from his ban on “vaccine passports” as a cruise line has received federal approval to set sail from a Florida port next month if passengers and crew members are inoculated against COVID-19.

Speaking to reporters on Friday, the governor maintained that Florida won’t exempt cruise lines from a new law, which goes into effect July 1, that imposes a fine of $5,000 for each customer asked to provide proof of a coronavirus vaccination. DeSantis said he also expects the state to win its lawsuit challenging federal restrictions that have idled the cruise ship industry throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We are going to enforce Florida law,” DeSantis told reporters Friday at the LifeScience Logistics Distribution Center in Lakeland. “I mean, we have Florida law. We have laws that protect the people and the privacy of our citizens, and we are going to enforce it. In fact, I have no choice but to enforce it.”

DeSantis, who signed the “passport” bill into law on May 3, also said “we provided vaccine for a lot of their workers,” referring to the cruise industry. “Nobody has fought harder, not just for cruises, but the entire leisure and hospitality sector in this state in its history than me,” the Republican governor, who is seeking re-election to his post next year, said Friday.

Celebrity Cruises, a subsidiary of Royal Caribbean Group, has drawn approval from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and could begin operating out of Port Everglades by the end of June. The approval requires 100% of crew members and 95% of passengers to be vaccinated.

Meanwhile, U.S. District Judge Steven Merryday has given state and federal attorneys until Tuesday to settle Florida’s lawsuit challenging the cruise restrictions. According to court documents, lawyers from both sides held a settlement conference on Thursday and are scheduled to meet again Tuesday.

 

The cruise companies are of course increasingly turning to Alaska and Washington State.

 

Norwegian Cruise Line will restart its U.S. sailings, which have been on hold for over a year, with weeklong cruises to Alaska this summer.

The Miami-based flagship brand from Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings (NYSE: NCLH) announced plans to resume cruises from Seattle in August. It would mark the company's first U.S. cruise with since March 2020, when the entire industry was forced to suspend voyages as passenger ships became hot spots for the spread of the virus.

Passengers and crew aboard Norwegian Bliss must be fully vaccinated for Covid-19 to board the ship in Seattle.

The announcement from Norwegian notably leaves out when it will resume cruises from South Florida, once home to its largest ships. The plan, released Monday, follows an executive order from Gov. Ron DeSantis that bars companies that accept state dollars from requiring proof of vaccination from any customers.

Norwegian will resume voyages with fully vaccinated passengers and crew elsewhere.

The cruise company previously stated the state's ban on "vaccine passports" complicates its plan to resume voyages in South Florida, once the cruise capital of the world.

"At the end of the day, cruise ships have motors, propellers and rudders, and God forbid we [can't] operate in the state of Florida for whatever reason, then there are other states that we do operate from," CEO Frank Del Rio said during a first quarter earnings call May 6." We can operate from the Caribbean for ships that otherwise would've gone to Florida. We certainly hope that doesn't come to that. Everyone wants to operate out of Florida, it's a very lucrative market, it's close drive market — but it is an issue, [we] can't ignore it."

We'll see who blinks first., negotiation or not.

Last Call For Israeli A Problem, Con't

The one thing that's kept Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu in power for the last two years, despite a massive corruption and bribery scandal, is the fact that the opposition hasn't been able to put enough votes together in the Knesset to oust him and form a new government. In fact, Israel is on its fifth attempt to do so in two years, and Netanyahu has remained in power out of sheer bloody-minded inertia.

As of this weekend however, that situation has finally appeared to come to an end, and along with it, Netanyahu's career.

A diverse coalition of Israeli opposition parties said Sunday that they have the votes to form a unity government to unseat Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving leader and its dominant political figure for more than a decade.

Under their agreement, reached after weeks of negotiations spearheaded by centrist opposition leader Yair Lapid, former Netanyahu defense minister and ally Naftali Bennett will lead a power-sharing government. Bennett, 49, would serve as Israel’s next prime minister, according to terms of the deal reported by Israeli media, to be succeeded in that role by Lapid, 57, at a later date.

“We could go to fifth elections, sixth elections, until our home falls upon us, or we could stop the madness and take responsibility,” Bennett said in a televised statement Sunday evening. “Today, I would like to announce that I intend to join my friend Yair Lapid in forming a unity government.”

Lapid is expected on Monday to inform President Reuven Rivlin of his ability to form a government with the support of Bennett, and will have a week to finalize coalition deals. At the end of the week, the government will come up for a vote of confidence in the Knesset.

Netanyahu, 71, has struggled to hold onto power after four inconclusive elections in the past two years while facing an ongoing corruption trial. Bennett is one of several former loyalists who have flirted with joining the so-called change coalition, a collection of parties that span the political spectrum but share a desire to end Netanyahu’s 12-year tenure.

Their announcement follows the 11-day conflict between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip this month, which some analysts speculated would help bolster the embattled Netanyahu. At the outset of the fighting, Bennett, a former Netanyahu protege who had been poised to join a unity government with Lapid, said the military operation, which killed more than 250 Palestinians and 12 Israelis, had ended his interest in joining with the anti-Netanyahu coalition, which has the support of left-leaning and Arab parties.

But after an Egyptian-brokered cease-fire took hold May 21, criticism of Netanyahu surged again. Some 47 percent of Israelis said they opposed the cease-fire and 67 percent said they expected another round of fighting with Hamas within the next three years, according to opinion polls published last week by Israel’s Channel 12.

Netanyahu’s rivals said the operation lacked a coherent or long-term strategy and that Netanyahu’s failure to stop Hamas rocket fire from raining down on Israel or secure the remains of Israeli soldiers was further proof of his need to leave office.

“With the best intelligence and air force in the world, Netanyahu managed to extract from Hamas an ‘unconditional cease-fire.’ Embarrassing,” tweeted Gideon Saar, another former Netanyahu protege now with the change coalition.

 

Amazingly enough, it seems that Netanyahu's far right flank has turned on him not because of his nearly two decades of making the Palestinians suffer, but because he hasn't made them suffer enough. 

Still, even an ousted Netanyahu facing felony prison time will remain dangerous. Count on that.

It's About Suppression, Con't

Texas takes the lead in the voter suppression and election fascism Olympics as GOP state lawmakers passed an omnibus slate of voting and election measures Sunday that will, among other things, allow judges to overturn elections very easily and without evidence, and the Texas Senate broke their own rules in order to pass it.

Texas is one of several Republican-led states — including Iowa, Georgia and Florida — that have moved since the 2020 presidential contest to pass new laws governing elections and restricting voting. The impetus is both Republicans’ desire to appease their base, much of which continues to believe former President Donald J. Trump’s lies about a stolen election, and the party’s worries about a changing electorate that could threaten the G.O.P.’s longtime grip on power in places like Texas, the second-biggest state in the country.

In a statement on Saturday, President Biden called the proposed law, along with similar measures in Georgia and Florida, “an assault on democracy” that disproportionately targeted “Black and Brown Americans.” He called on lawmakers to address the issue by passing Democratic voting bills that are pending in Congress.

“It’s wrong and un-American,” Mr. Biden said. “In the 21st century, we should be making it easier, not harder, for every eligible voter to vote.”

Republican state lawmakers have often cited voters’ worries about election fraud — fears stoked by Mr. Trump, other Republicans and the conservative media — to justify new voting restrictions, despite the fact that there has been no evidence of widespread fraud in recent American elections.

And in their election push, Republicans have powered past the objections of Democrats, voting rights groups and major corporations. Companies like American Airlines, Dell Technologies and Microsoft spoke out against the Texas legislation soon after the bill was introduced, but the pressure has been largely ineffective so far.

The final 67-page bill, known as S.B. 7, proved to be an amalgamation of two omnibus voting bills that had worked their way through the state’s Legislature. It included many of the provisions originally introduced by Republicans, but lawmakers dropped some of the most stringent ones, like a regulation on the allocation of voting machines that would have led to the closure of polling places in communities of color and a measure that would have permitted partisan poll watchers to record the voting process on video.

Still, the bill includes a provision that could make overturning an election easier. Texas election law had stated that reversing the results of an election because of fraud accusations required proving that illicit votes had actually resulted in a wrongful victory. If the bill passes, the number of fraudulent votes required to do so would simply need to be equal to the winning vote differential; it would not matter for whom the fraudulent votes had been cast.

Democrats and voting rights groups were quick to condemn the bill.

“S.B. 7 is a ruthless piece of legislation,” said Sarah Labowitz, the policy and advocacy director at the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas. “It targets voters of color and voters with disabilities, in a state that’s already the most difficult place to vote in the country.”

But Republicans celebrated the proposed law and bristled at the criticism from Mr. Biden and others.

“As the White House and national Democrats work together to minimize election integrity, the Texas Legislature continues to fight for accessible and secure elections,” State Senator Bryan Hughes, one of the bill’s sponsors, said in a statement. “In Texas, we do not bend to headlines, corporate virtue signaling, or suppression of election integrity, even if it comes from the president of the United States.”

As I've said before, Texas is much less of a red state than it is a non-voting, voter suppression state, and it was already the worst state to try to vote in before this law. 

 

On top of all this, the law gives poll watchers unprecedented authority to directly interfere with voters, making it a crime for watchers to be denied access to voting areas and election officials. where they are free to harass voters.

Finally, surveillance video of all vote counting must be provided by each county and made public, so that poll watcher groups or anyone can sue individual counties over "election fraud".

Such laws would have been dismantled by the Voting Rights Act previously. But the VRA is dead thanks to the Roberts Court. And new voting laws will never survive a guaranteed GOP filibuster.

Our country my never survive the lack of them.

Sunday Long Read: The Olympia Gambit

This week's Sunday Long Read comes to us from Vanity Fair's Joshua Hunt, who details the theft of Magritte's Olympia, stolen from a private museum in Brussels and ransomed for millions. It's the story of Section Art, Belgium's dedicated art theft recovery squad, and the people who operate there, because it turns out that art theft and ransom is both profitable and quite possibly done so to fund terrorist attacks.

 

The doorbell rang at 135 Rue Esseghem, a modest row house in Jette, a Brussels suburb. The concierge was occupied with a pair of Japanese tourists visiting the apartment, which had been home to the surrealist painter René Magritte and his wife, Georgette Berger, from 1930 until 1954, and was now a private museum. It was shortly after 10 a.m. on September 24, 2009. When she excused herself to answer the door, the concierge found two young men waiting at the threshold. One of them asked if visiting hours had begun; the other placed a pistol against her head and forced his way inside.

The armed men quickly rounded up both tourists and the three staff members on duty, leaving them kneeling in the museum’s small courtyard, where Magritte had hosted weekly gatherings for painters, musicians, and intellectuals. With the hostages out of their way, one of the thieves jumped the glass partition protecting the tiny museum’s centerpiece: Olympia, a 1948 portrait of the late artist’s wife, pictured nude with a seashell resting on her stomach. The painting measured 60 by 80 centimeters and was estimated to be worth 2 million euros. Belgian police arrived within minutes, summoned by an alarm triggered by the removal of the painting. But by that time, the thieves had returned to a getaway car that sped off toward the neighboring suburb of Laeken.

It was uncommon in those days for small museums to bother installing surveillance cameras, so police had to rely on sketches of the two suspects, who appeared to be in their 20s. Interpol described one suspect as short, of Asian descent, and an English speaker, while the other was described as a bit taller, of European or North African descent, and a French speaker. Brazen as it was, the robbery seemed to be the work of professionals—a daring, high-value heist carried out with speed and precision by men who knew how to handle weapons, how to deal effectively with hostages, and how quickly to expect a police response. They had also been clever about selecting their target. Magritte, whose surrealist paintings influenced the work of Ed Ruscha, Andy Warhol, and Jasper Johns, is a national treasure in Belgium, where a number of museums display his work. But the thieves had avoided larger, more secure metropolitan museums in favor of one exceptionally valuable painting from the artist’s former home, open only by appointment, leaving slim chance they would arrive to find it packed with more visitors than they could manage.

With little to go on, one of the first police officers to reach the crime scene called someone he knew could help: Lucas Verhaegen, a veteran officer with Belgium’s Federal Police force in a specialized unit called Section Art. Last August, when I met Verhaegen at police headquarters in central Brussels, he recalled the investigation from behind his tidy desk, next to a table piled high with old case files. He wore gray slacks, a short-sleeve button-up, and the scuffed black dress shoes favored by detectives and those who play them on TV. His face served as its own good-cop-bad-cop routine: friendly, disarming smile; penetrating blue eyes.

“They know very well what they must do when there is a theft,” Verhaegen said of Belgium’s local police. “But when it’s art theft, what we need is a very good description, a photo; a maximum of information, very quickly, because we know that a lot of stolen objects go abroad. In the first hour, sometimes it’s in another country.”

Verhaegen was 51 at the time of the Magritte heist and had been a cop for two decades. It was a childhood dream that he pursued only after earning degrees in agronomy and biochemistry, then working for a few years in the private sector. His law enforcement career began with a five-year stint on the local police force in Brussels, where he patrolled the central district of Belgium’s capital city. Next he worked as part of a special intervention unit that investigated organized crime and managed underworld informants; he specialized in Eastern Europe. When he joined Section Art in August 2005, Verhaegen’s years of particular experience proved surprisingly useful: Serbian gangs are heavily involved in trafficking stolen art and antiquities, Verhaegen told me, along with organized crime networks that can be traced to Romania, Bulgaria, Moldova, and elsewhere in the Balkans and Eastern Europe.

“Our borders are open,” Verhaegen said. “It’s very easy to do an important art theft here in Belgium and then the same night, or 15 hours later, they are in Croatia or in Albania. There they can sell [the art] to finance their own criminal activities: drugs, arms, prostitution.” 

 

You know me, I love a good true crime story, especially if it's a sophisticated art heist.  This one's a good story and then some.

Obamacare 2: Bidencare

Getting Medicaid expansion to red states that have turned it down has been a major Biden campaign promise, but keeping that promise won't be easy, or cheap, and like everything else the Dems are trying to do, they're running out of time before they potentially lose the House, Senate, or both.

Democratic lawmakers are rallying around an effort to extend health insurance in states that have refused to expand Medicaid, believing they have a limited window to help millions who’ve been unable to get coverage because of intractable GOP opposition to the Obamacare program.

Democrats had hoped that President Joe Biden’s election, along with the promise of new federal cash from the recent Covid relief package for states to expand Medicaid, would move at least some of the dozen remaining holdout states. But there’s little indication those states are budging, which is energizing a push among Democratic lawmakers for a new federal program guaranteeing coverage for low-income adults long shut out of Medicaid expansion.

“I think in most of them, like Texas, it's not a question of dollars, it’s a question of wanting to be ideologically opposed to any additional role for government in helping impoverished people,” said Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas), the House Ways and Means health subcommittee chairman, who’s working on a coverage proposal. “The only way we overcome that is through a federal initiative.”

Expanding coverage to the estimated 2.2 million people lacking affordable health insurance options in the Medicaid expansion holdout states would fulfill a Biden campaign pledge while his other key health care promises, like government drug price negotiations and a public option, face tough odds in Congress. Democrats also believe it would deliver a major win for their party heading into tightly contested midterm elections next year, given that Medicaid expansion has polled well — including in states where Republican leaders have blocked it for years.

However, the new effort carries risks that Democratic lawmakers, White House officials and health care advocates have been struggling to resolve in behind-the-scenes discussions over the past few months, say people involved in those talks. One challenge is designing a program that won’t invite backlash from a health care industry ready to battle Democrats on other sweeping changes. Another concern is inadvertently rewarding states that blocked Medicaid expansion for years. Any plan would also come with a steep price tag.

"There is pretty universal acknowledgment that action is needed to address the population,” said Henry Connelly, spokesperson for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. “Everyone is exploring ways to get it done.”

Democratic lawmakers are weighing a few options that could potentially get wrapped into a major economic package they hope to pass along party lines this year. But they haven’t yet agreed on an approach, and Democratic leaders are facing competing demands to use upcoming infrastructure legislation to expand Medicare eligibility and benefits, mandate drug price negotiations and bolster Obamacare subsidies.

Health care advocates caution that Democrats have limited time to address stalled progress on Medicaid expansion — seen as the biggest unfinished piece of the Affordable Care Act — while the party controls Washington for the first time since the law’s passage a decade ago.

“This is the moment,” said Judy Solomon, a senior fellow at the left-leaning Center for Budget and Policy Priorities. “This is probably the only moment that we’ll have for years.”

 

Maybe I'm being fatalistic but my entire life has been "Democrats with a limited 2-year window of doing the right thing, making limited progress, then seeing a lot of that progress destroyed by Republicans" and yeah, I want to see things improve dramatically, for once.

In a lot of ways it has already.