None of the solutions to the Government's concerns about migrant boats crossing the Channel require the UK's withdrawal from the ECHR, writes Brad Blitz
Uncategorized
Will Bunch has some thoughts: The sight in recent days of Santos and several of his Republican colleagues parading through the hallowed halls of the U.S. Capitol with a mini-celebration of a killing machine that serves no civilian purpose beyond mowing down large numbers of innocent people in the shortest possible time is perhaps the most hideous assault on human decency I’ve seen in more than 40 years of covering U.S. politics. But that’s the point, isn’t it? The lapel pins — like those Christmas cards of their adorable blond kids armed to the teeth with high-powered weaponry or the right’s new love affair with the toxic fumes of gas stoves — are meant to “trigger the libs” and sustain a career arc that generates prime-time hits on Fox News and fund-raising emails without ever having to get anything done. Yes, you could argue this column, then, is a perfect example of what these cons want. But what a choice: playing along, or remaining silent while America sheds the skin of humanity.
One month ago, he was leading the fifth-largest country in the world. These days, he is wandering around Florida supermarkets, eating fried chicken alone at fast-food restaurants, and holding court for supporters from the driveway of a modest home owned by a former ultimate-fighting champion in a gated community south of Orlando. Jair Bolsonaro’s re-emergence in Florida is a bizarre spectacle, even for a state with a long history of providing haven to eccentric characters. The embattled ex-President of Brazil, who refused to concede his electoral loss in October, left the country for the U.S. on Dec. 30, two days before the inauguration of his successor, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. On Jan. 8, his supporters stormed the Brazilian Parliament, Supreme Court and Presidential Palace, violently threatening police and destroying property in an assault with eerie echoes of the attack on the U.S. Capitol carried out by supporters of Donald Trump Meanwhile Bolsonaro, once dubbed the “Trump of the Tropics,” has been hanging out just a couple hours’ drive up the Florida Turnpike from his former presidential counterpart.
When Trump returns to Facebook he will likely instantly violate their lax new “guardrails.” We know it will happen. Adam Schiff even pointed out what the violations will be in a letter to Meta on December 2022. When it happens we should demand that Meta enforce their own rules. Will they? If they do, they will lose engagement. In Zuckerberg’s mind more engagement, even engagement that violates their community standards, means more revenue. We know this from the Facebook Whistleblower Frances Haugen. We also know from the Jan 6th committee memo on Social Media (Link to gifted Washington Post article) that Zuckerberg overruled his staff who wanted to ban Trump for his multiple violations of their community standards before Jan 6th. But engagement isn’t the only metric for Meta’s success. Meta’s stock price can be hurt in multiple ways. Stories about management making bad decisions hurt the stock. Stories about management supporting and enabling domestic terrorists can hurt the stock price.
Don’t say a word about your Monday Visual images of collapsing and collapsed buildings are horrible. A magnitude 7.8 earthquake struck Turkey and Syria before dawn Monday. A severe aftershock struck at midday. Early numbers (headlines keep shifting) are over 1,500 dead and climbing, per a Guardian report: CNN meteorologist Chad Myers explained what makes this type of quake different from those that strike the Pacific Rim: The 7.5 aftershock was “an earthquake in itself,” Myers told CNN’s This Morning. “It would have been the strongest earthquake since 1999 in the region.” We always talk about the epicenter, but in this case we should talk about the epi-line. Two massive tectonic plates – the Arabian and the Eurasian – meet underneath Turkey’s southeastern provinces. Along this fault line, “about 100 miles from one side to the other, the earth slipped,” said Myers. Seismologists refer to this event as a “strike slip” – “where the plates are touching, and all of a sudden they slide sideways,” said Myers.
I have lived through some tiresome news cycles in my life but this Chinese balloon cycle was one of the worst. The hysteria was completely inane, particularly on the right but among the media as well. But it is a story and it’s bizarre enough that a little calm expertise is called for. James Fallows is not only a great journalist but also an aviator and a China hand so his analysis is particularly astute: I. The Chinese Balloon Q: Do we believe the Chinese government statement that this was just a science-oriented weather mission? A: No. Q: Then what could the people who launched it conceivably have been thinking? A: Who knows. At the moment I can imagine three possibilities, all bad. -First, this could have been a screwup in the most basic sense. Whoever launched it thought the jet-stream winds would keep it over Canada, rather than dipping into the U.S. Of course that would still mean traversing airspace of a NATO member, and of course it would mean crossing Alaska before that. This possibility is conceivable but not likely. -Second, this could have been a screwup within the Chinese leadership.
They’ve even dragged anti-tax zealot Grover Norquist out of his crypt. This isn’t new. The quote below is from Lincoln’s Cooper Union speech in which he was describing the slave states’ threats to blow up the union. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose …
“Statistically speaking, of course, it’s still the safest way to travel.” — Superman in Superman (1978) Fly enough times and you’ll experience an aborted landing. I’ve experienced two or three. The first, in Minneapolis (1989?) in low-visibility conditions, resembled one this weekend. Those who follow James Fallows’s newsletter know the veteran pilot follows aviation news closely. He reported recently on a Jan. 13 “runway incursion” at Kennedy Airport in New York. But over the weekend, two aircraft had an even closer call in Austin, Texas: The short version of what happened is: “For perspective,” writes Fallows, “around the world some 100,000 airline flights take off and land safely every day.” So there’s that. A graphical recreation follows: A friend just earned her multi-engine rating, so I hear aviation chatter from her as well. What strikes me about this Austin incident was how much it resembled my experience in Minneapolis years ago. Our aircraft was arriving from Seattle early that morning.
Not bloody likely If you need proof that the Republican Party is fully in the hands of far-right extremists, look no further than the case of Congressman Jim Jordan. The Ohio Republican, first elected in 2006, is the new chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. Jordan has been a right-wing bomb thrower and ruthless partisan street fighter from the start. An early endorser of the Tea Party and a founder of the hardcore austerity crusaders the Freedom Caucus, Jordan was always at the center of the obstructionist tactics during the Obama years. He then ran interference for Donald Trump during his many scandals. From Tea Party to Freedom Caucus to MAGA, for the last 16 years, Jim Jordan has been the quintessential far-right Republican, in whatever permutation that is at a given time. Jordan was involved in the efforts to oust former GOP Speaker John Boehner as a member of the Freedom Caucus, causing Boehner to dub him a “legislative terrorist” which is a very accurate description of his tactics. And he led unsuccessful efforts to do the same to his successor Paul Ryan.
A Trumper family goes down the rabbit hole This is very sad. These people obviously had problems to begin with and ended up focusing on Trump’s Big Lie, leading to a suicide pact: A Pennsylvania family found shot dead in their backyard last week in what police say appears to be a suicide pact, included a mother and daughter who loved bowling and were devout Christian conservatives, people who knew them said. Morgan Daub, 26, and her parents, James Daub, 62, and Deborah Daub, 59, were found dead on the ground in the backyard of their home in York County, Pennsylvania, on the morning of Jan. 25, after police responded to a request for a welfare check from a neighbor. The West Manchester Township Police Department has since said that notes left inside the house indicate that the family recently made a “joint decision” to end their lives. Police believe Deborah Daub shot and killed her husband and then was shot and killed by Morgan, who died by suicide. Police said there were no signs of forced entry or struggle and no evidence that anyone else had been present. An investigation into the deaths has been closed.