News Avoiding the Election, Mostly

Great news for Arizona and democracy! Gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, endorsed by Deposed Donald Trump (DDT), lost her election to Secretary of State Katie Hobbs. Bad news for Arizona: after the losses of her and two other major DDT candidates, Mark Finchem for secretary of state and Blake Masters for U.S. senator, election liars may try to burn the state down. DDT wants an entire new election for the state because Democrats won some of the races, and some of the losers refuse to concede, saying that they will ensure that they win. With a little over 100,000 ballots still to be counted, Kris Mayes is only 3,000 votes ahead of GOP Abe Hamadeh, another DDT election liar who can bring lawsuits for the state.

In a three-hour face-to-face meeting, President Joe Biden and Chinese President XI Jinping looked for ways to work together. Biden said there will be no “new Cold War” and believes China has no imminent plans to invade Taiwan. The leaders were in Bali for the G20 summit, and the meeting came after months of quiet negotiations. Biden asked Secretary of State Antony Blinken to follow up on the discussion in Beijing as part of a long process to thaw a tense relationship. Biden kept DDT’s tariffs and restricted selling semiconductors and chip-making equipment to China.

For the first time, Xi warned against nuclear weapons in Russia’s war when he met with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in a clear signal to Russian President Vladimir Putin. A Chinese senior official said on the condition of anonymity:

“I think there is undeniably a discomfort in Beijing about what we’ve seen in terms of reckless rhetoric and activity on the part of Russia. I think it is also undeniable that China is probably both surprised and a little bit embarrassed by the conduct of Russian military operations.”

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was absent for part of the summit after he was taken to the hospital for a heart problem. He said he is fine. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), possibly the biggest liar in the Senate, feels that Biden is compromised by China. No evidence, just a “feeling.”

The House January 6 investigative committee may subpoena the phone records of Arizona GOP chair Kelli Ward according to a Supreme Court ruling. She had claimed the request for her phone records violated the First Amendment. The committee requested call records, phone numbers, text messages, and IP addresses communicating with Ward’s number between November 2020 to January 2021 when she was connected to the scam of an Arizona alternate electors’ slate to overturn Joe Biden’s victory.      

Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas dissented from the decision without explanation. Thomas’ wife, Ginni Thomas, had taken part of the attempted coup by writing 29 Arizona lawmakers, urging them to choose “a clean slate of electors” instead of the state electors pledged to Biden in support of the popular vote. Ward and her husband were “fake electors” from Arizona, lying about the 2020 presidential election in their state. Both the state district court and the 9th Circuit Court disagreed with Ward’s arguments, one of the three-judge panel a DDT appointee.

Ginni Thomas is working on another coup, this one to get rid of Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and Mitch McConnell (R-KY) for congressional leaders. She joined almost 60 far-right politicians, some of them like Thomas investigated by the House January 6 investigative committee, in signing a letter to delay the choice of GOP leadership in the 118^th Congress.  The American Independent’s senior political reporter Emily C. Singer called it a “who’s who of insurrection supporting Republicans.”

A DDT-supported federal judge in the U.S. District Court for D.C. dismissed a year-old lawsuit by Mark Meadows, DDT’s former chief of staff, to block the House investigative committee to subpoena him. He will likely appear and run the clock out to the end of the 117^th Congress, but the ruling is a precedent for many other suits in the same court. Meadows was on the telephone when DDT tried to persuade Georgia election officials to “find” sufficient votes for his victory and with DDT on January 6, 2021 when insurrections illegally entered the Capitol.

A federal judge blocked attempts by Rudy Giuliani to dismiss a lawsuit brought by two Georgia election workers, Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss. Giuliani’s accusation of election fraud by the mother/daughter pair caused serious threats and harassment against them; Freeman even had to leave her home for months. Giuliani had falsified a video for his lies.

The Senate returns next week, and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), also elected for that position in the 118^th Congress, scheduled a Wednesday vote on the bill to codify the right to same-gender and interracial marriage. Democratic leader Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) said she thinks the bill has the 60 votes to overcome a filibuster and has reached an agreement on “commonsense” changes to protect religious freedom with Sens. Rob Portman (R-OH), Susan Collins (R-ME), Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ, and Thom Tillis (R-NC). In July, almost 50 House Republicans joined Democrats to pass the bill.  

When Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) politely protested Elon Musk’s allowing Twitter impersonation of him—and many others—Musk responded by saying Marky’s own account “sounds like a parody.” Marky tweeted back:

“One of your companies is under an FTC consent decree. Auto safety watchdog NHTSA is investigating another for killing people. And you’re spending your time picking fights online. Fix your companies. Or Congress will.”

A fake tweet from Eli Lilly about free insulin in a supposedly verified account brought outrage after Lilly’s “apology” that it was false, including from a parody imitating Lilly:

“We apologize to those who have been served a misleading message from a fake Lilly account about the cost of diabetic care. Humalog is now $400. We can do this whenever we want and there’s nothing you can do about it. Suck it. Our official Twitter account is @LiIlyPadCo.”

About 37.3 million people in the U.S. have diabetes, and 8.4 million need insulin to survive. To manufacture, a vial costs under $10, but Lilly’s list price is $274.70, the generic at $82.41. Most people on insulin require 2-3 vials a month so at least 1.3 million people risk their lives by rationing their insulin. The Inflation Reduction Act caps insulin out-of-pocket costs at $35 per month for Medicare participants, but Republicans blocked all other price caps.  

In the midst of ballot-counting, the Interagency Security Classification Appeals Panel released the newly declassified summary of a joint interview with George W. Bush and his VP Dick Cheney regarding the September 11 attacks. Members of the 9/11 Commission, did not record the event on April 29, 2004, and the released summary document is the only official record, a “memorandum for the record.”

Bush evidenced no sense about the death and destruction set free by his global war; the interview was at the same time as a massive insurgency in Iraq against a U.S. occupation which would kill thousands of U.S. soldiers and tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians. Seeing the first plane hit the World Trade Center, he thought what a terrible pilot. When his chief of staff Andy Card told him the U.S. was under attack, he stayed in the classroom where he had been reading My Pet Goat to children. He tried to “collect his thoughts” and decided he should “project calm and strength.”

Communications equipment kept failing, including the secure phone line between Bush and Cheney. Bush couldn’t find Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and complained about not having “good television” on Air Force One. Cheney was responsible for authorizing the military to shoot down civilian aircraft. Bush also claimed he didn’t know anything about Saudi nationals receiving permission to leave the country after 9/11.

Bush said he got no “actionable intelligence” About Osama Bin Laden and preparation for hijackings or other attacks in the U.S. and claimed CIA Director George Tenet said “the threat was overseas.” Cheney criticized congressional oversight of covert operations, especially by the CIA, because it weakened the agency. To make the U.S. less vulnerable to attack, Bush said, “We had to kill them before they kill us.” Working with Putin was important to use U.S. military and intelligence of bases in central Asia.

Inflation dropped to an annual rate of 7.7 percent in October, down a half percent. The biggest inflationary contributors were shelter, gasoline, and food, the first two items raising historic profits for companies. Buyers will find less inflation in used cars prices, household supplies, clothing and accessories, household gas, and some food items.

Biden gave all veterans and Gold Star families lifetime passes to national parks.

New drugs could restore a woman’s period using the same medication as used in medical abortion, misoprostol or in combination with mifepristone. The process might not be classified as abortion because the woman doesn’t know whether she is pregnant. Misoprostol is also used for gastric ulcers in nonpregnant people but have become more difficult to obtain because of its connection to abortions. The courts, however, have described abortion as related to “knowledge of a confirmed pregnancy” or “intent to end a confirmed pregnancy.” Menstrual regulation doesn’t rely on a confirmed pregnancy, and no states ban or restrict this regulation with an unknown pregnancy status.

Shell Drilling Would Destroy Arctic Waters

Shell Oil has spent almost $5 billion trying to set up offshore oil drilling in the Arctic Ocean, but the disaster at the end of December will hopefully prevent them from doing this—at least for a while. On New Year’s Eve, the 28,000-ton Kulluk, carrying about 140,000 gallons of diesel, grounded near Kodiak Island, Alaska, after losing its towing lines in heavy winds. The Coast Guard is coordinating a 500-plus person response to figure out the damage, but no one knows when or how they can regain control of the massive hulk.

One thing that is known is that Shell was most likely moving the rig in very harsh conditions to save $6 million in state taxes that they would pay if the rig stayed in Alaska waters on January 1. Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA) has provided detailed information about this situation. Bad news for Shell: it’s still in Alaska waters. This is the company that wants rights to drill offshore in Arctic waters.

Some of Shell’s 2012 problems:

• February: A Government Accountability Office report identified challenges related to Arctic offshore drilling and concluding that Shell’s “dedicated capabilities do not completely mitigate some of the environmental and logistical risks associated with the remoteness and environment of the region.”
• February: Sixty members of congress, nearly 400,000 American citizens and 573 scientists urged the administration to halt Arctic offshore drilling.
• April: Lloyd’s of London warned that responding to an oil spill in a region that is “highly sensitive to damage” would present “multiple obstacles, which together constitute a unique and hard-to-manage risk.” (Does that mean no insurance?)
• April: German bank WestLB refused to provide financing for any offshore oil or gas drilling in the Arctic, saying the “risks and costs are simply too high.”
• July: Shell lost control of its Noble Discoverer rig when the vessel slipped its mooring and came close to running aground in Dutch Harbor, Alaska.
• July: Shell’s oil spill response barge, a key piece of oil spill response equipment, repeatedly failed to get Coast Guard certification keeping Shell from beginning drilling work on schedule.
• August: Norwegian oil and gas company Statoil announces it will suspend its own plans to drill offshore in the Alaskan Arctic Ocean after watching Shell’s struggles. They said they were going to watch Shell before deciding to drill there.
• September: A British parliamentary committee called for a halt to drilling in the Arctic Ocean until necessary steps are taken to protect the region from the potentially catastrophic consequences of an oil spill.
• September: France-based Total SA, the fourth largest publicly traded oil and gas company in the world, became the first major oil producer to admit that offshore drilling in Arctic waters is a risky idea, saying such operations could be a “disaster” and warning other companies against drilling in the region.
• September: Shell’s containment barge repeatedly failed to receive Coast Guard approval which forced Shell to postpone exploratory drilling operations until 2013 and settle instead for beginning to drill two non-oil producing preparatory wells.
• September: Shell suspends drilling as a massive ice pack covering approximately 360 square miles drifts toward the site just one day after starting its preparatory drilling.
• November: More than a week after preparatory drilling ended for the season, Shell experienced a number of complications when it tried to get its Kulluk rig out of the Beaufort Sea more than a week after the preparatory drilling season ended.
• December: Internal emails between Interior Department officials showed that the September test of Shell’s oil spill containment system was not just a failure but a complete disaster. The containment dome “breached like a whale” and was “crushed like a beer can” – and all in the comparatively temperate waters of Puget Sound.
• December: Shell’s second drilling rig, Kulluk, slips its cables while being towed out of Alaska waters on an accelerated schedule in order to dodge paying Alaska taxes in 2013. The rig, along with its 150,000 gallons of fuel and drilling fluid, washes up on an uninhabited island along one of Alaska’s most pristine coastlines.

Yet in June, June, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar told reporters “I believe there’s not going to be an oil spill.” The next month, Shell changed its spill response statement from recovering 95 percent of any spilled oil to encountering  95 percent of spilled oil with no provisions regarding what they would collect. Salazar now says the administration is committed to having exploration of oil in that region, but he isn’t sure it would happen this year. The Obama Administrations has ordered a sweeping review of Shell’s plans to drill in the Arctic.

Drilling rig Kulluk, photo from Alaska Dispatch

Why can’t people trust Shell’s offshore drilling? Here are a few reasons beyond the company’s preference to save tax money rather than the environment:

• Shell has no idea how much an oil spill clean-up would cost. That’s the word from Peter Velez, Shell’s head of emergency response in the Arctic.
• Shell’s barge, the Arctic Challenger, was not deemed safe enough by the US government. The 36-year-old barge used to drag safety equipment through the ice is “no longer appropriate” for the Arctic environment—according to Shell!
• The U.S. Coast Guard is “not confident” with Shell’s dispersants in the event of an oil spill. The commandant said, “I’m not confident what it will do in the colder water up in Alaska.”
• Shell’s drill ship runs aground in a “stiff breeze.” The Noble Discoverer ran aground in the sheltered and relatively calm Dutch Harbour, Alaska, in a 35mph wind. Both this drill ship and the Kulluk are old, rusty vessels, and the Kulluk was mothballed for the last 13 years.
• Shell’s drill ship catches fire. The Noble Discoverer caught fire when it returned to Dutch Harbour last November; the fire had to be put out by specialist fire crews.
• Shell’s capping stack safety system was “crushed like a beer can” during testing. In December a Federal Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement revealed that this had happened three months earlier.
• Shell’s Alaskan Vice-President admits: “There will be spills.” They just don’t know what to do about this.
• Shell is more interested in money than safety. That’s what caused their oil rig, Kulluk, to run aground off the coast of Alaska while the company was trying to tow it back to Seattle. The Kullik hit heavy weather in the gulf of Alaska a few days earlier. Its 400-foot towing line broke and the rig drifted free. The tug managed to reconnect with the Kulluk, but it “experienced multiple engine failures” 50 miles south of Kodiak Island, causing the rig to drift free once again in 35-foot seas and 40-mph winds. The rig eventually ran aground on December 31, 2012, after another attempt to tow it away. The Kulluk has 139,000 gallons of diesel and 12,000 gallons of hydraulic oil on board.  Teams on the ground are currently still trying to secure the rig.

Tell Shell to stay out of the Arctic waters.