Open Thread: Duck, Duck, Crab

Soft Shelled Crab < Soft Headed Crab

We already knew this, now it’s official.

California fire officials said Wednesday that Pacific Gas & Electric Corp. power lines sparked a Northern California blaze that killed 85 people, making it the deadliest U.S. wildfire in a century.

Cal Fire said transmission lines owned and operated by the San Francisco-based utility started the Nov. 8 fire in the Pulga area that nearly destroyed the town of Paradise in the Sierra Nevada foothills. The fire wiped out nearly 15,000 homes. Many of those killed were elderly or disabled. The oldest was 99.

The investigation also identified a second nearby ignition site involving PG&E’s electrical distribution lines that had come into contact with vegetation. The second fire was quickly consumed by the initial fire. The disclosure came on the same day the utility’s new chief executive was testifying before a legislative committee in Sacramento. Bill Johnson told the state Assembly Utilities and Energy Committee he had expected the utility would be blamed for the fire.

“I have made the assumption when I got here that PG&E equipment caused the fire,” he said, noting the utility had said that was probable in recent filings. “It’s a disappointment that this happened. Let’s not do it again.”

Johnson says he wants to earn back public trust as PG&E navigates bankruptcy proceedings and faces billions of dollars in liability for its alleged role in dozens of wildfires.

Dahlia Lithwick tackles the Alabama abortion law and the messy scenario it presents our current SCOTUS. Masks are ripped away and the sight isn’t pretty. A tidbit.

Why, then, do I feel sorry for John Roberts? Because what keeps the Supreme Court in business is often the polite subterfuge of complex legal doctrine. We don’t so much suppress minority votes as protect the dignity of the states. We don’t so much enable dark money to corrupt elections as invite free speech. And we don’t so much punish women for bearing children as celebrate God and babies. This is all the kind of democracy-suppressive language the justices can get behind. It’s why Americans don’t riot on the streets.

It’s easiest to swallow when courts pretend to be a bit more human than they are while what are essentially unvarnished religious arguments get dressed up in platitudes about patient care, informed consent, maternal information, and solicitude for mothers in distress. It’s easier to pretend that every fertilized egg is a person if one also pretend-acknowledges that every mother is a person as well. But legislators in Ohio, who insist that an 11-year-old rape victim has no legal autonomy or dignity, and legislators in Georgia, who insist that women can be investigated and charged with murder for their miscarriages, and legislators in Alabama, who bragged that they would disregard the interests of rape victims for now because it would get their legislation before the Supreme Court sooner, have, in their zeal for godliness and exigent court review, accidentally dispensed with these polite pretexts. They are openly saying now the thing that will make it very difficult for John Roberts, institutionalist, and Brett Kavanaugh, girls basketball coach, to embrace: America should end Roe v. Wade not because abortions should be safer or offered alongside better information, but because every woman who suffers an unwanted pregnancy is bad, her baby is good, and such a woman should be punished and made to suffer for her sins. It is the exact sentiment Donald Trump accidentally blurted out during the 2016 campaign, before he was told that preserving the pretext is everything.

What is interesting is that these pretexts were already falling apart at the high court. This past Monday saw the veneer of comity and civility collapse as the justices swiped at each other in public documents about their respective bad faith. The context was the death penalty, not abortion, but the reason the attacks were so personal and shocking is that the justices recently appeared eager to point to the pretexts and pretenses employed by the other side. In a case last month involving an impending execution, Justice Stephen Breyer wrote in his dissent that in denying a hearing, the court’s conservative justices had deviated from “basic principles of fairness.” This week, Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, and Neil Gorsuch retaliated against Breyer, in writing, for making that assertion.

@trollhattan:

They are openly saying now the thing that will make it very difficult for John Roberts, institutionalist, and Brett Kavanaugh, girls basketball coach, to embrace: America should end Roe v. Wade not because abortions should be safer or offered alongside better information, but because every woman who suffers an unwanted pregnancy is bad, her baby is good, and such a woman should be punished and made to suffer for her sins.

I object. They will not find this hard at all. Its who they are.

@TenguPhule:

And what about the man that initiated the pregnancy when he couldn’t keep his fucking pants zipped? Why no mention of his culpability?

Pearl is a beauty!

@debbie:

And what about the man that initiated the pregnancy when he couldn’t keep his fucking pants zipped? Why no mention of his culpability?

Rapists and pedophiles have no agency, according to Alabama’s Republicans.

McConnell and Blount have announced there will be no extra funding for election security.

@TenguPhule: Prior to this announcement, did you have confidence in next year’s elections in the battleground states?

@trollhattan:
Link, just because google:
Alabama’s Extremist Abortion Bill Ruins John Roberts’ Roe Plan – SCOTUS was all teed up to quietly gut America’s abortion rights. Then Alabama happened. (Dahlia Lithwick, May 15, 2019)
And yeah, I agree; it’s a good piece.

@Omnes Omnibus:

Prior to this announcement, did you have confidence in next year’s elections in the battleground states?

Not much. I remember we were promised fixes since 2000 and every 4 years ever since. And yet here we are.

Trump to unveil plan to move immigration toward ‘merit-based’ system

I’m sure this will end well. After all, Ivanaka certainly showed a lot of ‘merit’. Even if it wasn’t natural. //s

@Amir Khalid:

I object strongly to this common misuse of the term sharia to apply to despised rightwing-agenda legislation.

Agree, call it what it is, a Crusade.

@TenguPhule:
White Christian Supremacy. (Male.)

@Bill Arnold: Sadly I fear there are more then just white males standing in support of that.

@TenguPhule:

Sadly I fear there are more then just white males standing in support of that.

Yeah, I was being unduly generous to the non-white-christian-males that support such things.

@ruemara:
Congratulations!👏👏

So we’ve got one clown who dominates every thread? Even with it pied it’s a pain in the ass.

@ruemara: Congrats. About time your talent got wider recognition.

In 2015, Senator Stutts introduced a bill to repeal two laws. The first relating to notifying patients of dense breast tissue following a mammogram and the second requiring insurance companies to provide mandatory minimum hospitalization time following a woman giving birth, 48 hours for vaginal delivery and 96 hours for cesarean section. This second law, commonly referred to as Rose’s Law, was unanimously passed by the Alabama Legislature following the 1998 death of Rose Church ten days after she had given birth. The attempted appeal of Rose’s Law made national news following disclosure that Rose Church was a patient of Stutts in 1998. Senator Stutts withdrew the bill from consideration stating “neither the bill nor today’s decision is related to any patient case I have had during my medical career.”

(wikipedia)

Trump, frustrated by advisers, is not convinced the time is right to attack Iran

The Trump administration has been on high alert in response to what military and intelligence officials have deemed specific and credible threats from Iran against U.S. personnel in the Middle East.

But Trump is frustrated with some of his top advisers, who he thinks could rush the United States into a military confrontation with Iran and shatter his long-standing pledge to withdraw from costly foreign wars, according to several U.S. officials. Trump prefers a diplomatic approach to resolving tensions and wants to speak directly with Iran’s leaders.

SMH.

@Gvg: I don’t think voters were aware of that at the time of the election. He’s in their tribe, that’s all they knew.

Stutts, a Republican, campaigned against incumbent Senator Roger Bedford, a Democrat, on a platform to repeal “Obamacare-style” regulations in Alabama. Following a recount, Stutts won by a margin of about 70 votes.

@ruemara: you bet! we met at one at the story tavern years back would be nice to have another get-together! and: break a– microphone!

@Sally:

This is about the government sitting in our doctors’ surgeries, telling us what medical care we are allowed to receive, and when.

In my experience, a “surgery” is an operating room which you enter on a gurney, escorted by a bevy of nurses who helped prep you for the upcoming procedure. If it’s a doctor’s office, here in America, we call it a doctor’s office.

Where are you from that you call these facilities “our doctors’ surgeries”?

No offense, just have never heard that usage anywhere, and I suspect it’s a British/Canadian/Australian usage…

@J R in WV: From Wikipedia:

Doctor’s surgery, British term for a doctor’s office, a facility in which a general practitioner sees patients

You clearly haven’t spent half your life reading English novels.

ETA: Having said that, I’d love it if Sally could shed some light on the social distinctions between the medical men (Dr. and Mr.) in Middlemarch, which I have just been re-reading.

@Amir Khalid:

It wasn’t said to offend. I remember listening (on my local NPR station) to a panel of Muslim scholars. The subject was about Sharia and one of them defined it as the law of man imposed in place of, or instead of, the law of God.

“A contractor for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is under investigation by his employer for posting bail in March to free a member of the right-wing men’s fraternity the Proud Boys from the Multnomah County Jail.”

https://www.wweek.com/news/2019/05/15/ice-contractor-posted-bail-for-proud-boy-jailed-in-portland-for-assault/

@Bill Arnold: Blocked in the US too.

Years too late, 800,000 followers and how many kids has she radicalized with hate?

Just saying whack-a-mole does have an effect; these companies are getting nervous and are much more responsive than they used to be. They have mechanisms in place already for copyright takedowns, that can be adapted.