Biden Lobbies for Democrats' Infrastructure Scam (VIDEO)

 Passage of the bill really depends on one person: Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.

At the New York Times, "Democrats Roll Out $3.5 Trillion Budget to Fulfill Biden’s Broad Agenda."

Olga Ospina's Forecast

She's a sweetie.

For KCBS Los Angeles:

Turn! Turn! Turn!

The Byrds, from 1965.

It's Biblical: "The lyrics – except for the title, which is repeated throughout the song, and the final two lines – consist of the first eight verses of the third chapter of the biblical Book of Ecclesiastes."

George Floyd Mural Struck by Lightning (VIDEO)

 In Toledo, Ohio, an act of God.

A WTOL, Toledo, "George Floyd mural in north Toledo reduced to rubble after being struck by lightning; mayor and artist say it will be replaced: The piece was created by Toledo artist David Ross. The building was said to be stable and secure prior to the lightning strike, however, the facade was not."

And watch: "George Floyd mural ... struck by lightning."

Leader McConnell May Back Biden's Infrastructure Boondoggle

Apparently this is the one piece of the Dems' legislative agenda that McConnell will support --- probably because the bill is larded with billions in bipartisan pork-barrel spending.

At Politico, "Pigs fly: McConnell weighs giving Biden a bipartisan win":

Something strange is happening in Washington: Mitch McConnell might go along with a central piece of Joe Biden’s agenda.

The self-appointed “Grim Reaper” of the Senate, a minority leader who said just two months ago that “100% of my focus is on standing up to this administration,” has been remarkably circumspect about the Senate’s bipartisan infrastructure deal. He’s privately telling his members to separate that effort from Democrats’ party-line $3.5 trillion spending plan and publicly observed there’s a “decent” chance for its success.

Other than questioning its financing, McConnell has aired little criticism of the bipartisan agreement to fund roads, bridges and other physical infrastructure, even as he panned Democrats’ separate spending plans on Wednesday as “wildly out of proportion” given the nation's inflation rate.

His cautious approach to a top Biden priority reflects the divide among Senate Republicans over whether to collaborate with Democrats on part of the president’s spending plans while fighting tooth and nail on the rest. Many Democrats predict McConnell will kill the agreement after stringing talks out for weeks, but the current infrastructure talks are particularly sensitive for the GOP leader because one of his close allies, Ohio Sen. Rob Portman, is the senior Republican negotiator.

McConnell is aware of the conventional wisdom that he will ultimately knife the deal and is taking pains not to become the face of its opposition...

RTWT. 

 

Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Prey

At Amazon, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Prey: Immigration, Islam, and the Erosion of Women's Rights. 

The C.R.T. Scam

 From Jason Riley, at WSJ, "Critical Race Theory Is a Hustle":

Ultimately, Critical Race Theory is about blaming your problems on other people—based on their race—which might be the last thing we should be teaching our children, writes @jasonrileywsj https://t.co/RGzagC1qOv

— WSJ Editorial Page (@WSJopinion) July 14, 2021

A majority of American fourth- and eighth-graders can’t read or do math at grade level, according to the Education Department. And that assessment is from 2019, before the learning losses from pandemic school closures. Whenever someone asks me about critical race theory, that statistic comes to mind. What’s the priority, teaching math and reading, or turning elementary schools into social-justice boot camps?

Given that black and Hispanic students are more likely to be lagging academically, it’s a question that anyone professing to care deeply about social inequality might consider. Learning gaps manifest themselves in all kinds of ways later in life, from unemployment rates and income levels to the likelihood of teenage pregnancy, substance abuse and involvement with the criminal-justice system. Our jails and prisons already have too many woke illiterates.

Wealthier parents will make sure their kids receive a decent education, even if it means using private schools or hiring tutors. But the majority of children are relegated to the traditional public-school system, where progressives now want to prioritize the teaching of critical race theory. In addition to being a horrible idea, the timing couldn’t be worse. As the country rapidly diversifies—for more than a decade, U.S. population growth has been driven primarily by Asians and Hispanics—liberals want to teach children to obsess over racial and ethnic differences. What could go wrong?

Recently, the nation’s two largest teachers’ unions, the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers, announced that they had jumped on the bandwagon. At its annual meeting earlier this month, the NEA adopted a proposal stating that it is “reasonable and appropriate for curriculum to be informed by academic frameworks for understanding and interpreting the impact of the past on current society, including critical race theory.” More, the organization pledged to “fight back against anti-CRT rhetoric” and issue a study that “critiques empire, white supremacy, anti-Blackness, anti-Indigeneity, racism, patriarchy, cisheteropatriarchy, capitalism, ableism, anthropocentrism, and other forms of power and oppression at the intersections of our society.” There was no proposal vowing to improve math and reading test scores, alas.

Meanwhile, the NEA’s sister outfit, the American Federation of Teachers, has joined forces with Ibram X. Kendi, an activist-scholar who openly embraces racial discrimination against whites. “The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination,” Mr. Kendi asserted in “How to Be an Anti-Racist.” Sadly, that sort of circular drivel is what passes for deep thinking on race today. Mr. Kendi spoke at an AFT conference last week, and the union announced that it will donate copies of his writings to schools, AFT members, educators and youth mentors.

Critical-race ideology is also entering the classroom via the New York Times “1619 Project,” which claims that the Revolutionary War was fought to preserve slavery and earned its creator, Nikole Hannah-Jones, a Pulitzer Prize. In a forthcoming book, “Woke Racism,” the humanities professor John McWhorter argues that proponents like Mr. Kendi and Ms. Hannah-Jones have mostly been given a pass because they’re racial minorities, they’re on the left, and criticizing them is politically incorrect.

“On the issue of the Revolutionary War, Hannah-Jones’s claim is simply false, but our current cultural etiquette requires pretending that isn’t true—because she’s black,” Mr. McWhorter writes. “Someone has received a Pulitzer Prize for a mistaken interpretation of historical documents about which legions of actual scholars are expert. Meanwhile, the claim is being broadcast, unquestioned, in educational materials being distributed across the nation.”

Mr. McWhorter is right to point out the racial double standards at work in elevating shoddy pseudoscholarship...

A lot could go wrong, apparently.

Still more. 

The Sackler Family's Opioid Settlement and Billionaire Justice

 On the opiod crisis, at the New York Times, "This Is What Billionaire Justice Looks Like":

In 2016, a small-time drug dealer in Leesburg, Va., named Darnell Washington sold a customer a batch of what he thought was heroin. It turned out to be fentanyl. The customer shared it with a friend, and the friend died from an overdose.

To combat the opioid crisis, prosecutors have begun treating overdose deaths not as accidents but as crimes, using tough statutes to charge the dealers who sold the drugs. Washington had never met the person who overdosed. But, facing a mandatory minimum prison sentence of 20 years for “distribution resulting in death,” he pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of distribution and is now serving a 15-year sentence in federal prison.

I thought about this the other day when it became clear that members of the billionaire Sackler family will most likely soon receive a sweeping grant of immunity from all litigation relating to their role in helping to precipitate the opioid crisis. Through their control of Purdue Pharma, the families of Raymond and Mortimer Sackler made a vast fortune selling OxyContin, a powerful prescription opioid painkiller that, like fentanyl, is a chemical cousin of heroin.

Though they are widely reviled for profiting from a public health crisis that has resulted in the death of half a million Americans, they have used their money and influence to play our system like a harp. It is hardly news that our society treats people like Darnell Washington with sledgehammer vengeance, and people like the Sacklers with velvet gloves.

But it’s worth asking: How did they pull this off?

For a long time, the families of Raymond and Mortimer Sackler simply evaded scrutiny, pruning their public image so that people knew about the philanthropic contributions like the Sackler Library at Oxford, but not about the source of their wealth. After the press started writing stories, in 2001, about how OxyContin had given rise to a wave of addiction, high-price spin doctors labored to keep the Sackler name out of the controversy.

As the death toll associated with OxyContin grew, Purdue continued to argue in its marketing campaign that the drug was rarely addictive. When journalists raised tough questions, the company sent its lawyers to intervene with their editors.

This “can I see your manager” approach works even with law enforcement. In 2006, federal prosecutors in Virginia were preparing to charge Purdue with felonies. They focused on three senior lieutenants who worked for the company, expecting them to flip on the Sacklers — the ultimate target, according to the lead prosecutor — when faced with potential prison time. But Purdue had enlisted two former U.S. attorneys, Rudy Giuliani and Mary Jo White. Ms. White telephoned Paul McNulty, who was then the deputy attorney general: “It’s Mary Jo White,” Mr. McNulty recalled recently. “It’s somebody who thought of herself as having access.”

The Justice Department informed the federal prosecutors in Virginia that they could not charge the executives with felonies, robbing them of their most significant point of leverage: the threat of jail. The executives did not cooperate with efforts to implicate the Sacklers; instead, they pleaded guilty to misdemeanors while maintaining that they had done nothing wrong. The company pleaded guilty to felony “misbranding” and paid a $600 million fine.

You would not be alone in detecting a whiff of La Cosa Nostra...

Still more at that top link.

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Shohei Ohtani Bats and Pitches in All-Star Game (VIDEO)

At the video, Ohtani gets three outs in the bottom of the first (so he was the American League's lead pitcher for this year's game). 

Apparently, he was the biggest star at this year's game as well.

At LAT, "Shohei Ohtani solidifies role as baseball’s biggest attraction in All-Star debut":

DENVER — They cheered their own, hometown ovations for Colorado Rockies manager Bud Black and shortstop Trevor Story, and a raucous welcome back to former Rockies star Nolan Arenado.

They booed players from the Yankees and Dodgers, jeering even Chris Taylor for his place on an evil big-market team.

For almost every other player introduced at the start of Tuesday’s MLB All-Star game, however, the crowd reception was routine.

For only one other player did the 49,184 inside Coors Field make an exception, roaring to life at the announcement of one more specific name.

“Leading off,” Fox broadcaster Joe Buck announced over the stadium public-address system, “the designated hitter, and starting pitcher: Shohei Ohtani!”

Suddenly, as the Angels’ two-way star flashed across the video board, warming up in the bullpen in preparation for his first All-Star game appearance, a jam-packed ballpark went nuts.

If ever there was a doubt about Ohtani’s place, popularity and impact within the sport, this week’s festivities had delivered one more moment putting them to rest.

Over the first half of this season, Ohtani has become one of the biggest attractions in baseball. And this week, he looked like a natural in the role, calmly and confidently saying and doing all the right things.

He participated in Monday’s home run derby, exhausting himself in an epic first-round defeat to Juan Soto. He walked the “Purple Carpet” before Tuesday’s game and made TV appearance after TV appearance leading up to first pitch.

The first player in MLB history to be selected to an All-Star game as a pitcher and hitter, he did both in the midsummer classic too, grounding out twice as the American League’s starting designated hitter and pitching a perfect first inning as the team’s starting pitcher, hitting 100 mph in a game for the first time in three months.

He called it the “most memorable” moment of his MLB career so far — “obviously I’ve never played in the playoffs yet, or World Series,” he noted, adding “once I do that, that’s probably going to surpass it” — and said he even got nervous being around so many other greats in the sport...

Nervous? Nah. The guy was out there with a big smile on his face, soaking up the adulation and having the time of his life.

A real pro.

Still more.

  

My Black Generation Is Fighting Like Hell to Stop the Whitelash

Pfft. 

This guy, Elie Mystal, is a freakin' dork.

At the Nation, "My Black Generation Is Fighting Like Hell to Stop the Whitelash":

The thought that:
A: The white people who don't know what's been happening.
B: Are going to be the white people to rise up
C: Against fellow whites
D: IS FUCKING STOOPID

— Elie Mystal (@ElieNYC) July 13, 2021

It now appears likely that I will be part of the first generation of Black people to do worse than my parents and leave a crueler world for my children than the one I inherited.

When I say “worse,” I don’t mean by a metric of homes owned or acres plowed or yachts docked or whatever measure white people mean when they bemoan doing worse than their parents. In fact, I’m doing better than my parents economically, as are a visible minority of Black people my age (I’m 43). Instead, I mean that I inherited a legacy of civil rights, a stone of freedom each Black generation since emancipation has pushed relentlessly through peaks and valleys towards the summit of equality, but mine will be the first generation to lose more ground than we’ve gained. We will leave our kids further from the promised land than our parents left us.

White Americans my age are one step removed from their “Greatest Generation.” It was their grandparents who went to Europe to fight the Nazis and then returned and settled right back into the apartheid system that was well-established here. The Black civil rights generation, our greatest generation, fought those forces of fascism and white supremacy here, on the home front, several years later, and in so doing forced America to live up to its empty promises of freedom and equality for all.

Thanks to their efforts, my generation was born into more opportunity than any generation of Black folks in the history of the New World. We haven’t squandered it. My Black generation has enjoyed unprecedented social and cultural influence. Some of us have achieved wild economic success. We even got to see the very first Black president. If you start the clock in April 1947, when Jackie Robinson broke the color line in Major League Baseball, you’ll see that Black Americans have accomplished one of the most successful nonviolent political and social revolutions in human history.

But my generation has not been the cause of those victories, merely the beneficiaries of our parents’ and grandparents’ successes. Even Barack Obama understood that. When he met Ruby Bridges, the woman who, at the age of 6, integrated the first elementary school in Louisiana, Obama said, “I think it’s fair to say that if it wasn’t for you guys, I wouldn’t be here today.”

Maybe that’s why white people are trying to ban Bridges’s story today. A new Tennessee law bars the teaching of Critical Race Theory in public schools. While there is, obviously, no such teaching going on in Tennessee public schools—Critical Race Theory is, for the 1,000th time, an academic legal discipline—the white parents pushing this know what they’re after. They highlighted four books they wanted taken out of the Tennessee curriculum; Ruby Bridges Goes to School: My True Story, by Ruby Bridges, was one of them.

Bridges’s generation made Obama possible. My generation has lived to see white people try to erase those gains...

Still more.

RELATED: I don't actually believe this story, at Truthout, "Right-Wingers Are Taking Over Library Boards to Remove Books on Racism."

Pfft.

Megan Parry's Mild Weather Forecast

My buddy up in Fresno emailed and mentioned it was up to 111 degrees up there, and of course we had the record-setting temperatures in Death Valley a few days back (130 degrees, yikes!). 

But here in the Southland it's been a truly mild summer, with temps actually below average for this time of years.

Here's the lovely Ms. Megan, who is expecting:

Iranian Intelligence Operatives Arrested in Plot to Kidnap U.S.-Based Activist

Wow! A little international intrigue, and featuring the Iranians too, heh.

At the Justice Department, "Iranian Intelligence Officials Indicted on Kidnapping Conspiracy Charges."

And at the New York Times, "Iranian Operatives Planned to Kidnap a Brooklyn Author, Prosecutors Say":

An Iranian American journalist living in Brooklyn who has been a sharp critic of the Iranian government was the target of an international kidnapping plot orchestrated by an intelligence network in Iran, federal prosecutors said Tuesday.

In an indictment unsealed in federal court in Manhattan, four Iranians were charged with conspiring to kidnap the journalist and author, Masih Alinejad.

Ms. Alinejad was not identified by prosecutors, but confirmed in an interview that she was the intended target of the plot. Last year, Ms. Alinejad wrote in a newspaper article that Iranian government officials had unleashed a social media campaign calling for her abduction.

The four defendants all live in Iran and remain at large, the prosecutors said, identifying one of them, Alireza Shavaroghi Farahani, 50, as an Iranian intelligence official and the three others as “Iranian intelligence assets.” A fifth defendant, accused of supporting the plot but not participating in the kidnapping conspiracy, was arrested in California.

The indictment describes a plot that included attempts to lure Ms. Alinejad, an American citizen, to a third country to capture her and forcibly render her to Iran. The intelligence official, Mr. Farahani, and his network used private investigators to surveil, photograph and video record Ms. Alinejad and members of her household in Brooklyn, the government said.

The extensive surveillance that Mr. Farahani’s network procured included the use of a live, high-definition video feed depicting Ms. Alinejad’s home, prosecutors said.

“This is not some far-fetched movie plot,” William F. Sweeney Jr., the head of the F.B.I.’s New York office, said in a statement.

Audrey Strauss, the U.S. attorney in Manhattan, said, “A U.S. citizen living in the United States must be able to advocate for human rights without being targeted by foreign intelligence operatives.”

President Biden late last month ordered airstrikes against Iranian-backed militias in Syria and Iraq, telling Congress that he acted to defend American military personnel and deter Iranian attacks. At the same time, the two countries are working toward a resurrection of a 2015 deal to limit Iran’s nuclear power.

Ms. Alinejad, who hosts a program called “Tablet” on Voice of America Persian, a U.S. government-owned broadcaster, has been harshly critical of the nuclear deal.

In a brief phone interview on Tuesday evening, Ms. Alinejad said that learning details of the plot was shocking to her but that she had told her husband and son not to panic.

“That shows that they’re not scared of America — they’re scared of me,” she said, adding, “Otherwise, they would not send anyone here to kidnap me.”

In a 2018 essay in The New York Times, Ms. Alinejad described her decision to leave Iran a decade earlier.

“As a journalist in Iran, I often got into trouble exposing the regime’s mismanagement and corruption until, eventually, my press pass was revoked,” she wrote. “I was often threatened with arrest or worse for writing articles critical of former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Ultimately, I was forced to flee my homeland in 2009.”

According to the indictment, in 2018, the Iranian government tried to pay relatives of Ms. Alinejad who live in Iran to invite her to travel to a third country, apparently for the purpose of having her arrested or detained and taken to Iran to be imprisoned. Her relatives did not accept the offer, the indictment said...

 

Eiza Gonzalez and More

Here, "Eiza Gonzalez Braless Nipple Pokies in Silk Blouse."

And here.

Bonus: From Arizona State University:

ASU pic.twitter.com/vvigNjIJI1

— Old Row Rad Chicks (@OldRowRadChicks) July 12, 2021

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Texas Governor Greg Abbott Calls to Arrest Democrat Statehouse Legislators Who Fled to Washington, D.C. (VIDEO)

So craven. 

They flew charter and took selfies the whole way, to protest a voting rights bill that the never block in the statehouse chamber.

See, "Greg Abbott Says Fleeing Texas Democrats 'Will Be Arrested' When They Return to State":

Texas Governor Greg Abbott has said that Democratic lawmakers who have left the state can and "will be arrested" upon their return as he pushes ahead with changes in voting laws.

Abbott, a Republican, gave an interview to KVUE on Monday about the Democrats' decision to leave the state and whether the special session of the Texas legislature the governor called can go ahead.

The Democratic legislators flew out of Texas to Washington, D.C. on Monday in order to deny the legislature the two-thirds quorum needed in order to conduct business and to pass legislation...

RTWT.

Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

Haruki Murakami, 1Q84 (Vintage International).

Customs and Border Patrol Records Highest Level of Illegal Immigrant Deaths in 20 Years

At Pajamas Media, "Illegal Immigrant Deaths Soar During Heat Wave":

Illegal immigrants frequently traverse through desert and ranchland to avoid detection by CBP. The Rio Grande Valley sector in southern Texas and Arizona’s Tucson sector account for most of the summer deaths, which generally spike in tandem with illegal crossing numbers. Over the past 20 years, the highest number of deaths recorded by CBP was 492, in fiscal year 2005, and the lowest was 251 deaths in 2015.

“To avoid death or injury from severe dehydration, a person walking across the landscape in the heat of summer must consume no less than two gallons of water per day,” CBP stated on July 1. “The average person cannot carry sufficient water to avoid life-threatening dehydration over the course of several days in the brush.” Some people crossing the Rio Grande drown...

Read the whole thing.

Haiti on Brink of Anarchy

Things are not going well down there. 

At WSJ, "Haiti on Brink of Anarchy Amid Hunger, Gang Violence and Power Vacuum: After president’s murder, Haitians see U.S. calls for elections and restoring democratic order as a pipe dream."

Businesses Struggle to Hire Workers as Economy Picks Up Steam

There are signs of this all over. 

Here's a report out of Kansas, "Burger King workers in Nebraska depart and leave message: 'We all quit'."

And out of Jackson Hole, "Businesses struggle to hire, keep workers as housing stock disappears: Out-of-town hires, even those with higher salaries, can’t find a place."