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December 12th, 2021:

Weekend link dump for December 12

Dec 12th, 2021
by Charles Kuffner.
1 comment

“The Untold Story of the Portuguese Diplomat Who Saved Thousands From the Nazis”.

“25 years ago, Tickle Me Elmo’s co-creator was suspected of being the Unabomber by the FBI”.

“Here’s Why Movie Dialogue Has Gotten More Difficult To Understand (And Three Ways To Fix It)”.

“Our children are not having the education around race and history that they should, and it’s to our detriment and it’s a disservice to our children.”

“The Science And Art Of Sustainable Mushroom-Based Building Materials”.

“We did not have very far to go, between throwing actual literal parades for our medical heroes and people threatening them with violence if their relatives are treated with anything other than Farmers’ Choice Premium Horse Paste, TM, because in truth hospital staff members have long been used to patients and those with patients getting violent, or making threats of violence, when doctors or nurses disagree with them about what their diagnosis should be or what drugs should be dispensed to fix it. There’s something particularly Republican about this new strain, though.”

Ichiro is a mensch. And a damn legend.

An illustrated history of dogs-playing-poker paintings.

RIP, Eddie Shames, WWII veteran who inspired one of the characters in the HBO miniseries “Band of Brothers”.

An update on the Fonzie memorabilia auction, which I have mentioned before.

“For starters, a Democratic vice president will be presiding over the Senate when the Electoral College votes are opened.”

“I catch him when he’s straying, like any brother would”.

“A field guide to understanding who is at the center of the Jan. 6 probe”. (TL;dr Lock them up.)

“As previously promised, we have no plans to start our own religion.”

Hot tip: Don’t invest in nuclear fusion startups.

“Three Myths About Pearl Harbor, According to a Military Historian”.

“The U.S. government has moved one step closer to turning science fiction into reality. On Wednesday, the federally funded National Academy of Sciences released a new report laying out six avenues to alter the oceans in an attempt to suck more carbon dioxide out of the sky and store it for centuries to come.”

“A newly approved eye drop hitting the market on Thursday could change the lives of millions of Americans with age-related blurred near vision, a condition affecting mostly people 40 and older.”

“Amy Coney Barrett Was Speaking In Anti-Abortion Code. Here’s What She Really Meant.”

RIP, Michael Nesmith, guitarist, singer, and songwriter for The Monkees. A great obit for him from Houston Chronicle writer Andrew Dansby is here.

“Prosperity gospel preachers should be presumed guilty unless proven innocent. We should always give them the doubt of their benefit.”

RIP, Dave Campbell, longtime journalist and founder of “Dave Campbell’s Texas Football” magazine, an annual must-read for college football fans.

Travis Scott speaks

Dec 12th, 2021
by Charles Kuffner.
1 comment

Really not sure this was his best move.

Amid countless lawsuits against him, Travis Scott sat down with The Breakfast Club radio personality, Charlamagne tha God, for his first public interview since a dangerous crowd surge injured hundreds and left 10 people dead during his Astroworld Festival performance on Nov. 5.

In a one-hour discussion shared to Charlamagne’s YouTube channel on Thursday, Scott, whose real name is Jacques Berman Webster II, shared that he’s been experiencing a range of emotions, largely grief, trying to wrap his head around the tragedy and remained consistent to previous statements denying his knowledge of the severity of the mass casualty incident until the press conference that occurred after his set.

“Even after the show you’re just kind of hearing things, but I didn’t know the exact details until minutes before the press conference,” he said, adding, “And even at that moment you’re like, ‘Wait, what?’”

“People pass out, things happen at concerts, but something like that… it’s just like,” he added before trailing off.

[…]

In response to criticism that the event was poorly planned and understaffed, Scott pointed to the responsibilities for all involved. An artist is responsible for the creative side of the show, he said while he trusts the “professionals” to control what they can in the crowd and “make sure that people are taken care of and leaving safely.”

“You can only help what you can see and whatever you’re told,” Scott said responding to a question about the responsibility an artist has to help in that type of situation. “Whenever somebody tell you to stop you just stop.”

James Lassiter, a Houston attorney representing the family of Bharti Shahani, a 22-year-old Texas A&M University student who died, and other injured festival attendees, responded to Scott’s interview Thursday afternoon.

“Travis Scott’s attempt to escape responsibility for creating a deadly situation from which his fans could not escape is shameful and, sadly, true to form,” he said in a statement.

Houston’s NRG Park, where the festival was held, occupied up to 50,000 guests that night, a crowd size that Houston Police Chief Troy Finner said he had enough officers onsite to handle. But he also said he could not have abruptly ended the show for fear of sparking a riot his department could not control.

Finner said the “ultimate authority” to end the show resided with LiveNation and with Scott. The two parties have largely taken the hit for the continuation of the concert for an additional 37 minutes after local authorities declared the event a mass casualty.

But in the interview, Scott said that part was never communicated with him directly.

Scott also denied the tragedy having anything to do with the crowd size as there have been festivities “way bigger,” he said.

“It’s not about the maximum of it, I think it’s about the attention to what’s going on and how it’s going on, and as long as that’s handled then I think things will be okay,” he said. “But as you look at it through the history of festivals, this isn’t the first time happening. It’s been a long history of this.”

The Astroworld Festival tragedy already ranks among deadliest U.S. concerts ever.

Scott said he believes he did everything he could possibly do to help. While he’s not surprised to be at the epicenter of the blame since he’s the “face of the festival,” he said he thinks the responsibility should be a shared load for everybody collectively to “just figure out the bottom line solution” to the problem to make sure this never happens again.

I dunno, man. I Am Not A Lawyer, but I’m pretty sure the right move in this kind of situation is to keep your mouth shut and limit any public remarks to “I can’t comment on pending litigation”. I feel very confident that all of the lawyers suing him – as well as counsel for the various co-defendants – will be listening to this interview very closely, and will be ready to pounce on any inconsistency that arises from future statements given under oath. I understand where he’s coming from, and whatever else happens I have empathy for him, but I can feel his lawyers cringing from here.

Two Georgia election workers sue over post-election harassment

Dec 12th, 2021
by Charles Kuffner.
1 comment

I am so rooting for them.

In the aftermath of the 2020 election, the Gateway Pundit—one of the country’s leading sources of pro-Trump misinformation—helped instigate a vicious harassment campaign against two Black Georgia election workers, according to a new lawsuit. As Republicans desperately tried to cast doubt on Joe Biden’s victory, the two women—Ruby Freeman and her daughter Wandrea “Shaye” Moss—were reportedly stalked by strangers, doxxed, inundated with death threats and racist taunts, and driven from their homes.

Now, Freeman and Moss are fighting back in court. [Last] Tuesday, they filed a defamation suit against the Gateway Pundit, its founding editor Jim Hoft, and contributor Joe Hoft, accusing them of spreading “false and endlessly repeated accusations” about the women’s conduct on election night. The two women seek “compensatory and punitive damages” from the defendants, the removal of the inaccurate articles accusing them of election fraud, and an acknowledgement that the site’s coverage was false.

The alleged harassment followed a December 2020 hearing before Georgia lawmakers, when a Trump campaign attorney named Jacki Pick falsely claimed that a surveillance video from a ballot-processing room in Atlanta showed Fulton County election workers pulling suitcases of “illegal” ballots from under a table. The Gateway Pundit quickly identified the two workers as Moss and Freeman and, according to the New York Times, published dozens of false stories about them, calling them “crooked Democrats” and claiming that they “pulled out suitcases full of ballots and began counting those ballots without election monitors in the room.”

The claims were swiftly debunked by both Georgia’s secretary of state and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, which concluded that the “suitcases” were standard ballot containers with legitimate votes and that Freeman and Moss were simply doing their jobs.

But Donald Trump, his surrogates, and the far-right media ecosystem continued to spread falsehoods about them over the next few months. On December 10, 2020, Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani appeared at another hearing with Georgia lawmakers, where he repeatedly identified Moss and Freeman by name and labeled them “crooks.” On December 22, Trump tweeted out a One America News Network segment featuring the Gateway Pundit’s “investigation” into the two women. And on January 2, 2021, during his infamous phone call with Brad Raffensberger, Georgia’s secretary of state, Trump called Freeman a “professional vote scammer and hustler” who had pulled out suitcases “stuffed with votes” and scanned each ballot “three times.” The Gateway Pundit itself continued to publish stories about the women through November 2021.

What happened to these women as a result of these reckless lies was horrifying, and I hope they ultimately take the people responsible for it for everything they have. There hasn’t been nearly enough accountability for the blatant attempts to overturn the election and overthrow the rightfully elected President, but the one place that has been forthcoming has been in the civil courts. It’s slow and painstaking, but the law is coming. It can’t come soon enough, or with enough righteous fury.

UPDATE: Daily Kos and TPM note a weird new development to this story involving a publicist for Kanye West. No, really.

2021 runoff results

Dec 12th, 2021
by Charles Kuffner.
5 comments

Here are the vote totals, and here’s an early Chron story which has the results right but was just before the last batch came in. To summarize:

– Sue Deigaard had the only easy night – she led by 30+ points early on and cruised to a 64-36 win.

– Bridget Wade had a modest early lead, which stretched out to a 54-46 win.

– The next closest race was in HCC, where Eva Loredo had a small lead all the way, eventually winning by five points.

– Elizabeth Santos held on by 41 votes, and unfortunately Kendall Baker finally managed to get elected to something, by 78 votes. It would not surprise me if there are recounts in either or both of these, though as we know, those seldom make any difference.

– The HISD board has Republicans on it again, for the first time since the 2017 election that put Deigaard and Holly Maria Flynn Vilaseca on and gave Anne Sung a full term. Democrats now hold a 7-2 advantage on the board. I fully expect Wade and Baker to make trouble, but they’re not going to be able to get anything passed unless they can convince at least three other members to go along with them.

– So is this a portent of Bad Things to come for Democrats? Eh, maybe, but I wouldn’t read too much into it. These were pretty solidly Republican districts – as was Deigaard’s – before 2017, and both Sung and Vilaseca were caught up in the Abe Saavedra fiasco. For what it’s worth, Harvin Moore beat Anne Sung by a similar 53-47 margin in the 2013 race, while Mike Lunceford in V and Greg Meyers in VI were unopposed. In fact, the last election in District VI before 2017 that wasn’t unopposed was in 1997.

– Total turnout in the four HISD district was about 35K, which is right about where I thought it would be.

– Election results came in at normal times, with the first Election Day numbers coming in at 8:15 and the final tallies being posted three hours later. Isabel Longoria tweeted that it was a wrap at 11:27. I saw some concerns about slowness at the voting sites related to the processing of the paper receipt, but I think that can be ameliorated by having more scanners at voting locations for future, higher-turnout elections.