https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LuOxN93ZriE

Dear Commons Community,

CNN host Alisyn Camerota asked a Republican state lawmaker yesterday why the Texas legislature won’t apply the same gusto it used to ban abortions on protecting living children from gun violence.

Interviewing Texas state Rep. James White in the wake of a horrific mass shooting Tuesday at an Uvalde elementary school, Camerota asked the lawmaker to propose a solution.

“And the reason I ask is because we’ve all seen how quickly and creatively Texas ― your local legislature ― can act when it wants to, say, protect the unborn embryo,” she said.

“Why not act with that alacrity to protect living, breathing 10-year-olds in this school behind me?”

“Use that same blueprint that you used for your abortion law. Make there be waiting periods, make them have to come back to the scene more than once. Make them have to answer questions. Why can’t you protect living 10-year-olds?”

“Let me tell you why we have not taken that approach consistent with the legislation you brought up as it relates to innocent unborn life in the womb,” White replied. “Because we have this thing called the Constitution.”

He said “these young men for some reason have some very disturbed emotional state” and “we need to look at our mental health system.”

“There’s no evidence there’s a mental health issue here sir,” CNN’s Victor Blackwell, who was also present for the segment, shot back. “The governor has said there is no known connection to mental health illness.”

White argued that “deranged is a state of mental health.”

“We always look at the firearms. But at the end of the day, we’re gonna look at the people who do these acts, we’re gonna convict them, and we’re gonna punish them,” White said.

The shooter that killed 19 elementary school children and two teachers at Robb Elementary on Tuesday is dead. He was shot by responding officers.

“Sir, you can’t convict him,” Camerota. said. “He was killed. Along with 19 children in the school behind me.”

Blackwell then noted that White had recommended that school buildings don’t have too many entrance and exit points after a mass shooting in 2018 at the Santa Fe High School in Houston.

“This is what you [recommended] four years ago. Is that really the totality of what should happen to protect students in schools?”

White replied that “I don’t know the architecture or the layout at the elementary school in Uvalde.” Then he argued that “you can have a building that is secure and at the same time you can have a building that nurtures learning and compassion.” It’s unclear what he meant by this or what solution he was proposing.

While elected Republicans have been quick to blame anything from mental illness to architecture to fatherlessness after mass shootings, the research is clear: The U.S. has more mass shootings compared to all other developed countries because of its tremendous number of guns, types of guns allowed and weak controls over buying them.

Good question, Alisyn!

Tony

Eighteen-Year Old Uvalde Salvador  Gunman Posted the Above on Social Media Hours before Shooting

Dear Commons Community,

A gunman killed at least 19 children and two adults yesterday in a rural Texas elementary school, a state police official said, in the deadliest American school shooting since the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary a decade ago.

The slayings took place just before noon at Robb Elementary School, where second through fourth graders in Uvalde, a small city west of San Antonio, were preparing to start summer break this week. At least one teacher was among the adults killed, and several other children were wounded.

The gunman, whom the authorities identified as 18-year-old Salvador Ramos, who had attended a nearby high school, was armed with several weapons, officials said. He also died at the scene.  As reported by The New York Times.

“He shot and killed horrifically, incomprehensibly,” Gov. Greg Abbott said in a news conference.

As terrified parents in Uvalde waited for word of their children’s safety and law enforcement officials raced to piece together how the attack had transpired, the mass shooting was deepening a national political debate over gun laws and the prevalence of weapons. Ten days earlier, a gunman fatally shot 10 people inside a Buffalo grocery store.

“This is just evil,” Rey Chapa, an Uvalde resident, said of yesterday’s killings. Mr. Chapa said his nephew was in the school when the shooting took place but was safe. He was waiting to hear back from relatives and friends on the conditions of other children, scrolling through Facebook for updates. “I’m afraid I’m going to know a lot of these kids that were killed.”

Across the street from the school, state troopers were scattered across the school lawn and an ambulance idled with its lights flashing. Adolfo Hernandez, a longtime Uvalde resident, said his nephew had been in a classroom near where the shooting took place.

“He actually witnessed his little friend get shot in the face,” Mr. Hernandez said. The friend, he said, “got shot in the nose and he just went down, and my nephew was devastated.”

In a brief address from the White House last night, President Biden grew emotional as he reflected on the attack and called for action, but did not advocate for a particular policy or vote.

“It’s just sick,” he said of the sorts of weapons that are easily available in the United States and used in mass shootings. “Where in God’s name is our backbone, the courage to do more and then stand up to the lobbies? It’s time to turn this pain into action.”

Mr. Biden later added, “May the Lord be near to the brokenhearted and save those crushed in spirit, because they’re going to need a lot.”

The shooting took place on Election Day in Texas, as voters across the state headed to the polls for primary runoffs that would set the stage for the November election at a time when the state and the nation have been riven by political disagreements over race, immigration and abortion.

As the deadly toll became known, the events at Robb Elementary School immediately brought forth wrenching memories of the devastating 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook in Newtown, Conn., that left six staff members and 20 children dead, some as young as 6 years old. Six years later, a gunman killed 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla.

May God help the families of the victims!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Former President Donald Trump’s crusade for vengeance suffered two devastating blows after Georgia Governor Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger won their primaries yesterday despite rejecting Trump’s entreaties to reverse his 2020 election loss.

It’s a huge warning sign for the way Republican voters view the former president’s crusade to punish those who were not willing to overturn the will of the voters in 2020.

Voters also demonstrated an openness to embracing scandal-plagued candidates — depending on the candidate, and the scandal.

Here are some takeaways from yesterday’s primary elections in Georgia courtesy of the Associated Press.

Trump had hoped to turn  Brian Kemp into an example of the danger in defying him. Instead, Kemp  became an example of how Republican incumbents might not have as much to fear from Trump as the former president would like.

Kemp cruised past former U.S. Sen. David Perdue in the Republican primary. The victory came a year and a half after Kemp rejected Trump’s demands to help overturn the presidential election by declaring Trump the winner in Georgia instead of Joe Biden, who actually won.

Perdue’s campaign fixated on Trump’s lie that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him, but Kemp won by flexing the power of his office. To rally the base, he signed laws allowing most Georgians to carry guns without a permit and banning most abortions after a fetal heartbeat is detected. He also announced an investment by Hyundai in a new plant in the state to make batteries for electric vehicles.

Now Kemp will face Democrat Stacey Abrams in a rematch of their 2018 gubernatorial clash. Unlike Trump in 2020, Perdue accepted his defeat last night, even seeming to brush aside some supporters who took up a chant suggesting there was fraud.

“I’m sorry, but what we’re going to do right now is make sure Stacey Abrams is not governor of this state,” Perdue said.

The Georgia governor’s race wasn’t the only Trump grudge match that backfired on the former president. Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who personally rejected Trump’s call to “find” enough votes to declare him the winner in Georgia, defeated his Trump-backed primary challenger as well.

Trump recruited U.S. Rep. Jody Hice from a safe congressional seat to face Raffensperger in the Republican primary, but Hice lost. Trump endorsed primary challengers to the insurance commissioner and attorney general, and they, too, lost.

It’s clear the former president’s harping on 2020 simply did not speak to Republican voters in Georgia, the country’s newest battleground state.

“Georgia underscores one of Trump’s big problems if/when he runs again,” Brendan Buck, a former spokesperson for onetime House Speaker Paul Ryan, tweeted Tuesday. “He, of course, won’t be able to let go of the 2020 nonsense, and nobody wants to hear his whining about it anymore.”

Trump has scored some primary victories with election deniers — most significantly last week in Pennsylvania, when Republican voters there chose his preferred gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano, who said he wouldn’t have certified Biden’s 2020 win of the state.

But multiple Republicans have made clear they’re eyeing 2024 presidential bids, including former Vice President Mike Pence and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. And they have distanced themselves in ways large and small from Trump’s election allegations. Elections are usually about the future, and by the time the 2024 GOP primary rolls around, November 2020 will be ancient history.

The country will be in a better place when Trump is ancient history!

Tony

Brian Kemp

Dear Commons Community,

Donald Trump hopes to avoid a stinging defeat in the Georgia governor’s race today as Republican primary voters decide the fate of the former president’s hand-picked candidate to lead one of the most competitive political battlegrounds in the U.S.

In all, five states are voting, including Alabama, Arkansas, Texas and Minnesota. But none has been more consumed by Trump and his lie that the 2020 election was stolen than Georgia.

After incumbent GOP Gov. Brian Kemp refused to accept Trump’s baseless claims of widespread voter fraud in Georgia, he sought retribution by personally recruiting former Republican Sen. David Perdue to mount a primary challenge. But that may prove to be a bad bet as Kemp has emerged as a powerful fundraiser who has tapped into the benefits of incumbency. In the final days of the campaign, he unveiled a $5.5 billion, 8,100-job Hyundai Motor plant near Savannah.

On the eve of the election, Perdue’s allies were bracing for a lopsided defeat, the only question being whether Kemp would win the 50% majority he needs to avoid a runoff election next month.  As reported by the Associated Press.

“We’re not going to have a runoff,” said Matha Zoller, a longtime Republican activist and northeast Georgia talk show host with ties to both Trump and Perdue. “It’s going to be embarrassing.”

The results could raise questions about where power resides within the GOP. While Trump remains deeply popular among the party’s most loyal voters, the opening stage of the midterm primary season has shown they don’t always side with his picks. Other prominent Republicans, meanwhile, are growing increasingly assertive.

In a clear illustration of the divide among top Republicans, Trump’s own vice president, Mike Pence, rallied with Kemp in the Atlanta suburbs on Monday evening.

“Elections are about the future,” he told the crowd, adding that “when you vote for Brian Kemp tomorrow, you will say yes to a future of freedom here in Georgia. You will say yes to our most cherished values at the heart of everything we hold dear.”

Perdue, for his part, ended the day saying Stacey Abrams, who is Black and running unopposed for the Democratic nomination for governor, was “demeaning her own race.”

Republicans have stepped up their criticism of Abrams since she told a Democratic dinner on Saturday that “I am tired of hearing about being the the best state in the country to do business when we are the worst state in the country to live.” Abrams has said her comments were meant to address Georgia’s dismal rankings for mental health access and maternal mortality.

But in an interview Monday with conservative radio host John Fredericks and former Trump adviser Peter Navarro, Perdue went further. He likened the comment to remarks Abrams made in 2018 arguing “people shouldn’t have to go into agriculture or hospitality to make a living in Georgia.” He asserted that she was referring to Black farmers.

“When she told Black farmers, you don’t need to be on the farm, and when she told Black workers in hospitality and all this … she is demeaning her own race when it comes to that,” Perdue said.

Meanwhile, Republicans and Democrats elsewhere are grappling with ideological and strategic divisions that will determine what kind of candidates to nominate and which issues to prioritize for the November general election.

Democrats were especially focused on a runoff election in south Texas, where longtime incumbent Rep. Henry Cuellar is facing a fierce challenge from progressive Jessica Cisneros in a race where abortion is a prominent issue. Cuellar is last anti-abortion Democrat serving in the House.

Republicans will also decide a series of lower-profile primaries.

In Arkansas, former Trump aide Sarah Huckabee Sanders is expected to claim the Republican governor’s nomination. And in Alabama, conservative firebrand Rep. Mo Brooks is running to represent the GOP in the race to replace retiring Sen. Richard Shelby. Brooks, a leading figure at the Jan. 6 “Stop the Steal” rally that preceded the Capitol attack, initially won Trump’s endorsement, although Trump rescinded it after watching Brooks struggle in the polls.

No state has more consequential elections this week than Georgia, a longtime Republican stronghold that has shifted Democratic in recent elections. Biden defeated Trump in Georgia by less than 12,000 votes total in 2020, and Democrats narrowly won both Senate seats two months later.

This year, Trump’s obsession with his 2020 loss have loomed over Republican primary elections for governor, Senate and secretary of state.

Trump-backed former NFL star Herschel Walker is poised to win Georgia’s GOP Senate nomination after fending off conservative opponents who raised questions about his history of domestic violence. Walker would face Democratic incumbent, Sen. Raphael Warnock, this fall.

Leading Trump ally Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene is also expected to win her primary election in the state’s 14th congressional district, despite a first term marred by conspiracy theories and controversy.

On the Democratic side in Georgia, two congressional incumbents, Reps. Lucy McBath and Carolyn Bourdeaux, were running against each other in suburban Atlanta, forced into a rare incumbent-on-incumbent primary after Republicans re-drew the congressional map.

Meanwhile, the Georgia Republican primary for governor — and the GOP’s secretary of state contest— will have a direct impact on Georgia’s election system for the 2024 presidential contest.

In a show of anti-Trump defiance, the Republican governors of Arizona, Nebraska and Maryland have lined up behind Kemp, who refused to support Trump’s baseless claims that the 2020 election in Georgia and other swing states was stolen.

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan suggested a Kemp victory would send a clear message to Trump.

“When Brian Kemp prevails on Tuesday, he will prove that voters want their leaders to focus on the everyday issues in their lives like high gas prices and rising crime, not indulging the petty grievances of another politician,” Hogan told The Associated Press.

In the GOP primary for secretary of state, Trump has railed against GOP incumbent Brad Raffensperger, who refused support the former president’s direct calls to overturn the 2020 election. Raffensperger faces three primary challengers, including Trump-backed Rep. Jody Hice. The winner will serve as Georgia’s chief election officer in the 2024 presidential election.

Good luck to Mr. Kemp – may he win in a landslide!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The battle for the Republican Party is entering a new phase, and Representative Liz Cheney sounded the first shot of it on Sunday evening during the Profile in Courage Award Ceremonies.

“We face a threat we have never faced before: a former president attempting to unravel our constitutional republic. At this moment we must all summon the courage to stand against that,” Cheney, a Wyoming Republican and Donald Trump’s chief antagonist in the GOP, said in a speech Sunday night.

Cheney delivered the remarks (see video above) at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library after the institution presented her with a Profile in Courage award. She was one of five people given the award, along with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and three other American officials from both parties who came under intense attack by Trump and his supporters after the 2020 election.

Cheney’s direct shot at Trump — referring to him as a current and ongoing threat to the republic’s survival — kicks off a week full of drama within the GOP.  As reported by the Associated Press and Yahoo News.

Trump’s former vice president, Mike Pence, will rally with Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp on Monday evening, the night before Republican voters go to the polls in the Peach State. Trump made Kemp his No. 1 target for removal after the 2020 election, because Kemp, a conservative Republican, refused to go along with Trump’s efforts to overturn the results.

Kemp appears poised to defeat Trump’s handpicked candidate for governor, former U.S. Sen. David Perdue. Polling has consistently shown Kemp above 50%, ahead of Perdue by enough to avoid a runoff election and win the GOP nomination outright on Tuesday.

Pence’s appearance with Kemp isthe former vice president’s boldest move yet in his ongoing divorce from Trump. Pence has walked a careful line for months, at once seeking to rebut Trump’s lies about the election while still celebrating their administration’s policy accomplishments.

Gov. Brian Kemp and then-Vice President Mike Pence after a roundtable discussion with small business owners in May 2020. (Brynn Anderson/AP)

Close observers of Pence have noticed a pattern of steady and gradual escalation of his willingness to rebuke Trump. But the Georgia rally is the clearest sign so far that he is willing to do more than just poke at Trump ahead of the 2024 Republican primaries, which is increasingly likely to pit the two men against each other.

Having reportedly concluded that Georgia is a lost cause, Trump is launching a new offensive out west against Cheney. On Saturday, he will travel to Wyoming to campaign against her and for her primary opponent, Harriet Hageman.

Trump has had a mixed record this year in contested primaries where he has tried to oust Republicans he deems insufficiently loyal to him. But defeating Cheney, the most outspoken Trump critic inside the GOP, in Wyoming’s Aug. 16 primary is now a top priority for him. Conversely, Republicans who hope to move the Republican Party past Trump have coalesced around Cheney, fundraising for her as she attempts to stave off the former president’s assault.

All of this will set up a series of public hearings held by the congressional committee investigating the assault on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. The committee believes it can demonstrate to the public that Trump sought to overturn the election results through various means, in a way that has not yet been fully revealed, and that he intentionally did nothing during the insurrection, one source told Yahoo News.

Cheney is the vice chair of that committee and will play a leading role in those hearings, which will begin on June 9. Her speech at the Kennedy Library on Sunday served as a preview for how she will contextualize the events of Jan. 6.

Cheney is Republican royalty; she is the daughter of Dick Cheney, the former Wyoming congressman and secretary of defense who became George W. Bush’s vice president. But on Sunday she talked about her great-great-grandfather, Samuel Fletcher Cheney, who fought for the Union in the Civil War. She portrayed the current crisis of democracy in the context of America’s bloodiest conflict.

“I have found myself, especially since Jan. 6, thinking often of my great-great-grandfather and of the Union he fought to defend. And this was never more true than on the night of Jan. 6 itself,” she said.

Cheney then spoke in vivid detail about walking through the Capitol after pro-Trump rioters, who had sought to stop the certification of the 2020 election, had been expelled and defeated by law enforcement.

Police clash with Trump supporters who breached security and entered the Capitol building on Jan. 6, 2021. (Mostafa Bassim/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

Cheney described the House chamber still strewn with broken glass and furniture piled against the walls in an effort to barricade against rioters. She narrated her walk through Statuary Hall, where Abraham Lincoln once served in Congress, and talked about seeing police in tactical gear resting against statues, surrounded by empty water bottles scattered across the floor, “exhausted from the brutal hand-to-hand combat in which they had been engaged for hours.”

And she talked about walking to the Capitol Rotunda, the majestic vaulted room at the center of the nation’s symbol of representative democracy, where late former presidents have lain in state. Cheney referred to the rotunda as “the most sacred space in our republic.” There too, police had battled Trump’s rioters.

Cheney spoke of looking at John Trumbull’s painting of George Washington resigning his commission as commander in chief of the Continental Army at the conclusion of the Revolutionary War in 1783.

“With this noble act, George Washington set the indispensable example of the peaceful transfer of power in our country. This is what President Reagan called ‘nothing short of a miracle.’ This is what President Kennedy called, in his inaugural address, ‘a celebration of freedom,’” Cheney said. “And this sacred obligation to defend the peaceful transfer of power has been honored by every American president, except one.”

Cheney quoted Kennedy from his inaugural speech in 1961: “In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger.”

Cheney concluded: “Today that role is ours. … The question for every one of us is, in this time of testing, will we do our duty? Will we defend our Constitution? Will we stand for truth? Will we put duty to our oath above partisan politics? Or will we look away from danger, ignore the threat, embrace the lies and enable the liar?”

It was as robust and forceful a speech against Trump, and Trumpism, as any politician has given, and foreshadowed the case Cheney will make against the former president in the weeks to come.

Liz Cheney is most deserving of a Profile in Courage Award.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Maureen Dow had a column yesterday entitled, “Johnny Depp and Other Pirates,” wherein she reviews the slips and deceptions of the past couple of weeks by prominent individuals.  Here is an excerpt:

“We got a rare glimpse of the tortured soul of George W. Bush this past week.

During a speech at his presidential library in Dallas, Bush made the mother of all Freudian slips. He denounced “the decision of one man to launch a wholly unjustified and brutal invasion of Iraq.” He quickly corrected himself and clarified that he was talking about Vladimir Putin, saying, “I mean of Ukraine.” But then added, shaking his head, “Iraq, too.”

The Bushes always told me that they did not like to be “put on the couch.” But this time, W. put himself on the couch. For the 75-year-old former president, it was a moment of self-incrimination worthy of Dostoyevsky — a display of conscience and a swerve into truth in a time when truth seems lost in the mist.

Everywhere we look, we are deluged with deception and Big Lies.

Putin has pulled the wool over the eyes of a nation, deceiving Russians about the Ukraine war the same way he deceived himself. When a retired colonel blurted out the truth Monday on Russian state television, saying “the situation for us will clearly get worse,” it was another uncommon confessional moment. The anchors with him looked uncomfortable as he spilled the tea and warned Russians not to take “informational sedatives.”

“We are in total geopolitical isolation and the whole world is against us, even if we don’t want to admit it,” said the colonel, Mikhail Khodaryonok, who is now a conservative columnist and TV analyst on military affairs.

A few days later, he came back on TV to change his tune and denounce Western-made weapons, even though the pathetic spectacle of outdated and ineffective Russian weapons in Ukraine has given American military officials a snazzy new sales pitch to sell our weapon systems.

In the G.O.P. primaries Tuesday, lies were rewarded. As Reid Epstein wrote in The Times, Republican voters in Pennsylvania anointed right-wing gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano, “who helped lead the brazen effort to overturn the state’s 2020 election and chartered buses to the rally before the Capitol riot, and who has since promoted a constitutionally impossible effort to decertify President Biden’s victory in his state.”

Mastriano spread conspiracies about 2020 phantom ballots, hacked machines and dead voters. He bragged that he would be happy to purloin the 2024 election, noting: “I get to appoint the secretary of state who’s delegated from me the power to make the corrections to elections, the voting logs and everything. I could decertify every machine in the state with a stroke of a pen via the secretary of state.”

He also appeared at a far-right Christian conference organized by QAnon prophets that started with a video about “ritual child sacrifice” and a “global satanic blood cult.”

In another shameful spectacle, truth is a matter of no importance to the rabid fans of Johnny Depp. Depp fans resemble Trump fans in their blind loyalty and willingness to set aside ugly facts about their hero. Depp is locked in a lurid showdown with ex-wife Amber Heard in a courtroom in a Washington suburb, a trial that an insider described to me as “O.J. on cocaine.”

Like Trump fans, Depp fans act like they’re in a cult. They call Heard’s claims of domestic violence a hoax and cheer on Depp lawyer Camille Vasquez, in a sort of online Roman coliseum, whenever she asks a tough question of Heard.

Heard added to the circus atmosphere when she fired her well-respected P.R. firm and hired a P.R. guru who has been accused of inappropriate sexual behavior himself.

Heard and Depp have shared the most debasing, sickening stories from a relationship where they clearly brought out the worst in each other. Whatever the jury decides, a man who was once the King of Cool now seems like a washed-up, abrasive shell of his former self.”

I don’t know that George W. Bush, Putin and Johnny Depp should be all grouped together. Regardless, Dowd makes for interesting reading!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Over the  weekend, Russia permanently banned more than 900 politicians, celebrities and executives from entering the country, including President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and actor Morgan Freeman.

The Russian Foreign Ministry announced the bans on Saturday as part of a response to sanctions imposed on the country as a result of the invasion of Ukraine, as well as others who have publicly denounced Russian President Vladimir Putin. In total, 963 people are now banned. AS reported by USA Today.

“We emphasize that the hostile actions taken by Washington, which boomerang against the United States itself, will continue to receive a proper rebuff,” the ministry said in a statement. “Russian counter-sanctions are forced and aimed at forcing the ruling American regime, which is trying to impose a neo-colonial ‘rules-based world order’ on the rest of the world, to change its behavior, recognizing new geopolitical realities.”

In addition to Biden and Harris, other notable names “who incite Russophobia” on the list include Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Hillary Clinton.

However, omitted from the list is former President Donald Trump, who in the past has praised Putin and recently asked the Russian president to release any dirt he has on Biden and his son, Hunter, regarding a Russian oligarch who gave money a to a company co-founded by Hunter over a decade ago. Other living former presidents like Barack Obama and George W. Bush are not on the list.

Despite Trump’s omission from the list, supporters of the former president were included in the ban. Of the 963 people banned, over 230 are members of the U.S. Congress, both Republican and Democratic leaders.

Prominent names include: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.; Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York; Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn.; Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.; Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas; Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga.; Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla.; Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y.; and Ilhan Omar, D-Minn.

The list also included deceased politicians such as former Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.; Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev; and former deputy director of the Defense Intelligence Agency Melissa Drisko.

Aside from politicians, tech executives such as Zuckerberg and Microsoft President Brad Smith were also banned, as well as journalists George Stephanopoulos of ABC News and Bret Stephens of The New York Times.

The Russian Foreign Ministry said Academy Award winner Freeman was part of the ban because he was part of a September 2017 video “accusing Russia of conspiring against the United States and calling for a fight against our country,” which was about Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

Being on Russia’s banned list is a badge of honor!

Tony

General Mark Milley congratulating a cadet yesterday.  Associated Press.

Dear Commons Community,

The top U.S. military officer, General Mark Milley,  challenged the next generation of Army soldiers yesterday to prepare America’s military to fight future wars that may look little like the wars of today.

Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, painted a grim picture of a world that is becoming more unstable, with great powers intent on changing the global order. He told graduating cadets at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point that they will bear the responsibility to make sure America is ready.   As reported in the Associated Press.

“The world you are being commissioned into has the potential for significant international conflict between great powers. And that potential is increasing, not decreasing,” Milley told the cadets. “Whatever overmatch we, the United States, enjoyed militarily for the last 70 years is closing quickly, and the United States will be, in fact, we already are challenged in every domain

America, he said, is no longer the unchallenged global power. Instead, it is being tested in Europe by Russian aggression, in Asia by China’s dramatic economic and military growth as well as North Korea’s nuclear and missile threats, and in the Middle East and Africa by instability from terrorists.

Drawing a parallel with what military officials are seeing in Russia’s war on Ukraine, Milley said future warfare will be highly complex, with elusive enemies and urban warfare that requires long-range precision weapons, and new advanced technologies.

The U.S. has already been rushing new, high-tech drones and other weapons to the Ukrainian military — in some cases equipment that was just in the early prototype phases. Weapons such as the shoulder-launched kamikaze Switchblade drones are being used against the Russians, even as they are still evolving.

And as the war in Ukraine has shifted — from Russia’s unsuccessful battle to take Kyiv to a gritty urban battle for towns in the eastern Donbas region — so has the need for different types of weapons. Early weeks focused on long-range precision weapons such as Stinger and Javelin missiles, but now the emphasis is on artillery, and increased shipments of howitzers.

And over the next 25 to 30 years, the fundamental character of war and its weapons will continue to change.

The U.S. military, Milley said, can’t cling to concepts and weapons of old, but must urgently modernize and develop the force and equipment that can deter or, if needed, win in a global conflict. And the graduating officers, he said, will have to change the way U.S. forces think, train and fight.

As the Army’s leaders of tomorrow, Milley said, the newly minted 2nd lieutenants will be fighting with robotic tanks, ships and airplanes, and relying on artificial intelligence, synthetic fuels, 3-D manufacturing and human engineering.

“It will be your generation that will carry the burden and shoulder the responsibility to maintain the peace, to contain and to prevent the outbreak of great power war,” he said.

In stark terms, Milley described what failing to prevent wars between great powers looks like.

“Consider for a moment that 26,000 — 26,000 — soldiers and Marines were killed in only six weeks from October to November of 1918 in the Battle of the Meuse-Argonne in World War I,” Milley said. “Consider also that 26,000 U.S. troops were killed in the eight weeks in the summer of 1944 from the beaches of Normandy to the liberation of Paris.”

Recalling the 58,000 Americans killed in just the summer of 1944 as World War II raged, he added, “That is the human cost of great-power war. The butcher’s bill.”

Thinking back to his own graduation, Milley paraphrased a popular Bob Dylan song from the time: “we can feel the light breeze in the air. And right now as we sit here on the plain at West Point, we can see the storm flags fluttering in the wind. We can hear in the distance the loud clap of thunder. The hard rain is about to fall.”

Sober commencement speech!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Tiger Woods has been one of the most inspiring athletes of the past twenty-five years.  He withdrew yesterday from the 2022 PGA Championship after shooting 12 over par. The pain in his legs was obvious as he used his putter as a cane to walk to and from greens.  He was a great champion who is playing now on guts alone. Below is an article that appeared in Yahoo Sports that tells his story yesterday well.

Tony

———————————————————–

For Tiger Woods, the fight is all that’s left!

Jay Busbee

May 21, 2022, 9:09 PM

Tiger Woods withdrew from the 2022 PGA Championship on Saturday night. This is not a surprise. The surprise is that he was in the field. The surprise is that he has fought his way back from another would-be career-ending catastrophe. The surprise is that anyone, at this point, is still surprised by Tiger Woods.

The 2022 PGA Championship will forever have a “WD” next to Woods’ name. That doesn’t begin to cover the significance of the week. Yes, he stumbled to a +12 finish Saturday after a nine-over round. But after a run where he carded bogey or worse on seven of eight holes, he finished Southern Hills’ tough final four holes in one-under to keep a dreaded 80 off his record. This, after making the cut by one shot after being one stroke on the low side with seven holes to play Friday. He got around Southern Hills on will alone, and the agony of every shot was clear in the lines on his face that grew deeper each day.

Fifteen months ago to the day, Woods suffered catastrophic injuries in a single-car rollover in the early hours of the morning in Los Angeles. It was a devastating wreck — police approaching the scene feared Woods had died, and doctors initially believed he could lose his leg — followed by months of brutal physical therapy and rehabilitation. Woods ground his way through that agony, silent except for the occasional choreographed social media leak, until he was ready to return to public view as a precisely engineered Golf Dad and, later, at Augusta, as the Eternally Unbowed Champion.

Why would he put himself through all that pain, all that effort, all those hours of unrelenting rehabilitation with no clear chance of success? Because he’s Tiger Woods, of course.

Tiger Woods plays his shot from the seventh tee during the second round of the PGA Championship golf tournament at Southern Hills Country Club. (Orlando Ramirez/USA TODAY Sports)

Because he’s Tiger Woods. It’s an answer that dodges the question and completely answers it, a classic case of if you know, you know.

How did a skinny 21-year-old kid carve up Augusta National and win the Masters? Because he’s Tiger Woods.

How did that kid go on to hold all four majors at once? Because he’s Tiger Woods.

How did he win a U.S. Open on a broken leg? Because he’s Tiger Woods.

It works the other way, too. Why did he detonate his family life and forever tarnish his good name? Because he’s Tiger Woods.

Why did he continue to run afoul of traffic laws, leading to multiple accidents with more questions than answers? Because he’s Tiger Woods.

Why did he keep fans, fellow players, media — anyone not in his tight inner circle — at arm’s length, punishing and excommunicating anyone who violated his trust? Because he’s Tiger Woods.

Why does he keep fighting, slapping his way to over-par round after over-par round, long after any other player would have put the clubs in the closet for good? Because he’s Tiger Woods.

Why does he continue to command more attention than the rest of the field combined? Because he’s Tiger Woods.

I’ve thrown dirt on the coffin of Woods’ career before. “Here’s the cold truth: retirement is looming large in Woods’ near future,” I once wrote, “retirement brought on by a body broken and repaired too many times, a mind that finally acknowledges the sad inevitable.” The date of that eulogy? Feb. 10, 2017. Spoiler: Not only did Woods not retire, he went out and claimed multiple tournaments, including another green jacket.

So no more grand pronouncements about the end of the road, no more hot takes about how we’ll never see Tiger win again. To start, I wouldn’t gamble five bucks that Woods will never win again, much less guarantee it. After what we all saw in 2019 at Augusta, would you?

The greater point is this: The trophies aren’t really the endgame anymore. Yes, Woods still wants to chase majors, still wants to get those three more to catch Jack Nicklaus. It’s why he won’t bother with lower-tier PGA Tour events; he’s aiming for the biggest game every time he tees up.

The true victory for Woods doesn’t come from being the last man standing Sunday. It now comes from just standing on a Sunday, just making it through the week when so many others — maybe all others — would have called it a career.

“He’s the ultimate pro,” Rory McIlroy said after Friday’s round, where Woods fought his way under the cutline in one of the great battles of his career. “If that would have been me, I would have been considering pulling out and just going home, but Tiger is different and he’s proved he’s different

Woods has played golf professionally for 25 years. He would have been a Hall of Famer had he retired after just five. He has nothing to prove to anyone but himself anymore. Whenever he does decide to retire — whether it’s next week or 40 years from now, and both are in play — he’ll do it on his own terms.

Because he’s Tiger Woods.

Dear Commons Community,

I just finished reading  The Attack on Higher Education:  The Dissolution of the American University by Ronald G. Musto. Musto is an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Bristol and the co-author of The Digital Humanities.   His aim in writing The Attack on Higher Education was to examine the current plight of higher education including budget cuts, attacks on liberal arts and humanities, technology displacement,  and campus closings and compare it Henry VIII’s dissolution of the British monasteries in 1530s.  The comparison is a bit of a stretch but makes for an interesting read.  The beginning and ending chapters are very good. He meanders a bit in the middle and the connection to monasteries weakens.

One of the best parts in the book is where Musto discusses the future and quotes Michael Crow, the president of Arizona State University, when asked about the future of higher education, stated: 

“Only through massive application of new technologies can the academy both keep up with worldwide trends and maintain its record of excellence.   This is accomplished by embracing the breakthroughs of the digital era and through active collaboration “with leading venture capitalists and investment advisors to source, fund, pilot, and credential higher education technology companies?”

I just used this exact quote in a talk on The Great American Education-Industrial Complex which I will be giving that will be part of a panel presentation at a conference in Remscheid, Germany in June. 

Below is a blurb taken from the inside cover of Musto’s book.

Tony

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The Attack on Higher Education by Ronald G. Musto

American higher education is under attack today as never before. A growing right-wing narrative portrays academia as corrupt, irrelevant, costly, and dangerous to both students and the nation. Budget cuts, attacks on liberal arts and humanities disciplines, faculty layoffs and retrenchments, technology displacements, corporatization, and campus closings have accelerated over the past decade. In this timely volume, Ronald Musto draws on historical precedent – Henry VIII’s dissolution of British monasteries in the 1530s – for his study of the current threats to American higher education. He shows how a triad of forces – authority, separateness, and innovation – enabled monasteries to succeed, and then suddenly and unexpectedly to fail. Musto applies this analogy to contemporary academia. Despite higher education’s vital centrality to American culture and economy, a powerful, anti-liberal narrative is severely damaging its reputation among parents, voters, and politicians. Musto offers a comprehensive account of this narrative from the mid-twentieth century to the present, as well as a new set of arguments to counter criticisms and rebuild the image of higher education.