The myths of demagogues collapsed too Lost amidst the tangle of steel and roadway that fell into the icy Patapsco River in Baltimore on Tuesday were eight men pursuing their American Dreams. Two were rescued. Crews pulled the bodies of two others from the water on Wednesday. Four others are presumed dead. Will Bunch considers who the victims were and what their lives meant: From the day in the mid-2000s when a then-20-year-old Maynor Yassir Suazo Sandoval crossed the border into America, he never stopped working. The youngest of eight children, Suazo was fleeing numbing poverty and a dead-end career path in Azacualpa, a small rural village in the western mountains of Honduras. The undocumented Suazo wound up in Greater Baltimore, a magnet for Central American refugees with its relatively cheap housing for the bustling Eastern Seaboard, a friendly climate toward migrants, and lots of opportunity. With American dreams of entrepreneurship, he took menial jobs like clearing brush, then launched a package delivery service, and when COVID-19 ended that, started working overnight construction for a Baltimore contractor, Brawner Brothers.
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Some Friday messaging advice Two bits about defining Trump caught my attention. You’d think the guy’s image is as set as can be with his friends and foes. What else is there to tell about the twice-impeached, yada-yada? But this is campaign season. The GOP was working “but her emails” all the way up to the election in 2016. Take the hint. Joe Biden is running ads here in N.C. beginning with “Here’s the difference between me and Donald Trump…” In the wake of the Key Bridge collapse this week, Biden immediately pledged, “It’s my intention that federal government will pay for the entire cost of reconstructing that bridge.” Full stop. Brian Beutler reminds his Off Message readers that should Trump get reelected we can expect him to hold recovery funds hostage and to extort Maryland and Baltimore for favors: Four years ago this week, it became clear that Donald Trump would husband emergency pandemic resources like ventilators and personal protective equipment for Republican-run states. Or rather, Trump made it clear.
Glenn Youngkin, lame duck: No Virginia governor has come into office with a deeper dealmaking background than Glenn Youngkin, who as former co-chief executive of the Carlyle Group made a fortune acquiring and merging companies around the globe. But as the Republican chief executive of a purple state, Youngkin has struggled to translate that business acumen into political success — or even economic development success, with the demise Wednesday of his much-touted plan to bring the Washington Wizards and Capitals to Alexandria. While Youngkin and his group of financial experts had negotiated with team owner Ted Leonsis to cut what the governor called “the single largest economic development deal in Virginia’s history,” the governor was never able to work the same magic with members of the General Assembly who had to sign off on the $2 billion project. The plan’s failure wipes out a significant legacy-making opportunity for a novice politician who burst onto the scene in 2021 and drew national attention as a fresh Republican face.
I guess that’s how MAGA prefers it?
Trump’s getting worse by the day Dana Milbank: This week, he announced that he is not — repeat, NOT — planning to repeal the Affordable Care Act. He apparently forgot that he had vowed over and over again to do exactly that, saying as recently as a few months ago that Republicans “should never give up” on efforts to “terminate” Obamacare. “I’m not running to terminate the ACA, AS CROOKED JOE BUDEN DISINFORMATES AND MISINFORMATES ALL THE TIME,” the Republican nominee wrote this week on his Truth Social platform. Rather, he said, he wants to make Obamacare better for “OUR GREST AMERICAN CITIZENS.” Joe Buden disinformates and misinformates? For a guy trying to make an issue of his opponent’s mental acuity, this was not, shall we say, a grest look. The previous day, Trump held a news conference where he nailed some equally puzzling planks onto his platform. “We’ll bring crime back to law and order,” he announced.
Or, at least, something to keep in mind Josh Marshall makes an observation I haven’t seen anyone else make and while it may not prove to be prophetic it’s certainly worth considering. He starts off by noting that while we’ve known for quite some time that the GOP congress is nota serious governing party, this congress has taken it to an entirely new level. As he says, it’s been on “longrunning shutdown drama” and is now only able to function at all with the GOP Speaker running the chamber with Democratic votes, courting his own ouster every single day. More than a few powerful and well-known GOP Reps are retiring, some walking away mid term. But there’s a lot more: Then you’ve got the seemingly unrelated Trump takeover of the RNC. Let’s set aside the very important issues of corruption, cronyism and creeping strong-manism. There’s every sign that Trump and his family are going to steer significant amounts of the RNC’s money into a legal slush fund for Trump and his various co-defendants. It’s hard to imagine this won’t further depress giving to the RNC. Some donors won’t care.
Stoneham Mass.; February 29, 2024 – Visitors to Stone Zoo will notice a fuzzy new face in the prehensile-tailed porcupine habitat. On February 22, Prickles, a prehensile-tailed porcupine, gave birth to a porcupette. The baby is the fourth offspring for Prickles, age 10, and dad, Shadow, age 11. The latest prickly addition, who weighed just under 1 pound at birth, is settling in well in the Windows to the Wild space. The baby received its first medical exam on February 23 and appeared bright, healthy and alert. As with any new birth, the veterinary and animal care teams are closely monitoring the mother and baby. The porcupette has been gaining weight, and will continue to be weighed every day during the first month to make sure there is continued healthy weight gain. “We’re excited to welcome another porcupine to the zoo family, and to report that they are all doing great. We’ve observed the porcupette grip branches with its prehensile tail, which is an excellent sign of a strong, healthy baby,” says Pete Costello, the Assistant Curator at Stone Zoo.
On casting stones at patients in distress Consider where the American Taliban wants to take this country. For anyone who missed it, this clip below is the Republican nominee for governor of North Carolina. He may sound like he is a member of the lunatic fringe, but he is not. Mark Robinson is just shoutier. The lunatic fringe right has gone mainstream. In fact, they’ve made it to the U.S. Supreme Court several times already. Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern comment on Tuesday’s oral arguments in FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine (AHM). They write: In public, the plaintiffs in this case—a group of doctors and dentists seeking to ban medication abortion—have long claimed they object to ending “unborn life” by finishing an “incomplete or failed” abortion at the hospital. But in court, they went much further.
“That’s because you don’t have a criminal mind” Back in my table-waiting days, a customer who had just signed his credit card receipt asked for the carbon copies (yes, that long ago). Noticing the quizzical look on my face, he explained it was because of reports of thieves dumpster-diving for credit card numbers. That never would have occurred to me, I told him. “That’s because you don’t have a criminal mind,” the customer smiled. On that, Ed Kilgore considers what steps Donald Trump took to steal the 2020 election. Several tactics he used four years ago are now “off the table.” But considering he would not admit defeat in 2020 and what he demonstrated he was capable of, what else might he try if he loses a 2024 reelection effort premised on keeping himself out of prison? “Rolling Stone is reporting that the Biden campaign is examining a ‘comically long’ list of ‘nightmare scenarios’ that might develop. To be forewarned is to be forearmed, to a considerable extent,” Kilgore writes.