We begin today with Bill Smith of the Fort Myers News-Press and the devastation that continues to unfold in Southwest Florida due to Hurricane Ian, which made landfall as a Category 4 hurricane yesterday afternoon near Cayo Costa, a barrier island west of Fort Myers.
Benji Jones and Umar Irfan of Vox describe how Hurricane Ian could intensify so rapidly and what it portends for future hurricanes.
A hearing of the Select Committee to Investigate the Jan 6. Select Attack on the U.S. Capitol that was originally scheduled for yesterday was postponed due to Hurricane Ian but Chairman Bennie Thompson did make a big news announcement.
Deposed meaning under oath, of course.
Peter M Shane and Will Dobbs-Allsopp write for Washington Monthly that while Republicans are mounting legal challenges to President Joe Biden’s plan to forgive student debt, Biden’s plan stands on solid legal ground.
Renée Graham of The Boston Globe notes the hypocrisy of conservatives when one of their own— in this case, retired quarterback Brett Favre— cheats the welfare system.
Jamie Dettmer of POLITICO Europe explains why Italy’s “red belt” went blue for Giorgia Meloni.
Robin Givhan writes for The Washington Post about the role that the probable future Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni plays on the political stage.
Aleksander Brezar of Euronews reports on some progressive left reactions to Meloni’s electoral win from Pigneto, probably the most progressive neighborhood in Rome.
While the bulk of Angela Giuffrida’s report for the Guardian is about Meloni’s election day TikTok concerning her...melons, Ms. Giuffrida also offers a few paragraphs of insight about the sexism within the center-left Democratic Party.
Nadia Pantel of Der Spiegel reports on Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić’s use of the LGBTQ+ community as a “distraction” for his political problems.
Finally today, Rahman Bouzari and Ali Fathollah-Nejad of New Lines Magazine discuss how the hijab protests in Iran, in part, date all the way back to the Iranian Revolution of 1979.
Have a good day, everyone!
Hurricane Ian took a permanent place in Southwest Florida history Wednesday, with an agonizingly slow sweep through the region, leaving devastated families, ruined homes and uncertain futures.
More damage was caused by Ian than any other storm since Roger Desjarlais said he's been Lee County manager.
The powerful hurricane made landfall near pristine Cayo Costa, but the fury of its winds and rough surf spread destruction throughout Lee County.
Damage was so severe that it was decided by county and local officials to wait before making some evacuations, for fear it could kill the rescuers.
"It left families suffering the agony of knowing that loved ones cling to life in areas that can not yet be reached by rescue crews because it is it too dangerous to save them," Desjarlais said.
We were in the eye wall of Cat. 4 #Hurricane #Ian for over 5 hours and the back side was the worst. I haven't experienced anything close to this in over 30 years @weatherchannel pic.twitter.com/wfEqcuEBAm
— Mike Seidel (@mikeseidel) September 29, 2022
This is what Florida's Tampa Bay looks like as Hurricane Ian’s counterclockwise winds blow the water out to sea. The bay is now less than a foot deep in some areas, but the water will eventually return and could rise dangerously quickly in minutes. https://t.co/zLTdDMwZqU pic.twitter.com/Ra3fZKtpqw
— The New York Times (@nytimes) September 28, 2022
Benji Jones and Umar Irfan of Vox describe how Hurricane Ian could intensify so rapidly and what it portends for future hurricanes.
There are three main ingredients that, when mixed together, can result in a rapidly intensifying hurricane: moist air, low wind shear (wind coming from different directions or at different speeds), and warm ocean water.
“All three of those things create a favorable ecosystem for a hurricane to establish circulation and intensify,” Miller said.
Ian had them all. As it developed several days ago, the storm system faced some disrupting winds, but there was little shear as it grew over the last few days, Miller said. And Ian has largely avoided a region of dry air in the Gulf of Mexico. (Had Ian hit Florida farther north, it might have deteriorated faster, he said.)
Then there’s the warm ocean water. The Gulf of Mexico has been unseasonably warm this summer, according to the National Weather Service. And climate change is heating the Caribbean ocean by a little over 1 degree C (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) per century.
“Even small changes — half a degree C, or a degree — can really make a big difference,” said Brian McNoldy, a hurricane researcher at the University of Miami.
A hearing of the Select Committee to Investigate the Jan 6. Select Attack on the U.S. Capitol that was originally scheduled for yesterday was postponed due to Hurricane Ian but Chairman Bennie Thompson did make a big news announcement.
NEW: Ginni Thomas to be deposed THIS WEEK, per Chairman Thompson @NBCNews pic.twitter.com/ugRT1zp24Y
— Haley Talbot (@haleytalbotnbc) September 28, 2022
Deposed meaning under oath, of course.
Peter M Shane and Will Dobbs-Allsopp write for Washington Monthly that while Republicans are mounting legal challenges to President Joe Biden’s plan to forgive student debt, Biden’s plan stands on solid legal ground.
On Tuesday, the libertarian Pacific Legal Foundation filed a lawsuit challenging the Biden administration’s plan to forgive student debt, calling the initiative “flagrantly illegal.” And a host of other conservative actors, ranging from Senator Ted Cruz to state attorneys general to the Heritage Foundation, are strategizing how to do the same. “I think there’s a lot of people celebrating prematurely,” said Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich, one of the would-be challengers. However, the debt plan is on a much sounder legal footing than its critics suggest. [...]
A legal memo issued by the Department of Justice asserts that the Education Department’s ability to waive student debt stems from the Higher Education Relief Opportunities for Students (HEROES) Act of 2003. That act authorizes the secretary to “waive or modify any statutory or regulatory provision” within the department’s financial aid programs “as the Secretary deems necessary in connection with a … national emergency.” The statute provides this authority for the purpose of ensuring that “recipients of student financial assistance … are not placed in a worse position financially” on account of a national crisis. The White House has explained that the national emergency it believes justifies the forgiveness policy is the coronavirus pandemic.
Yet some commentators, including the progressive law professor Jed Shugerman, predict that the administration will struggle to offer a good-faith legal argument connecting the student debt plan to the COVID-19 national emergency, as the law requires. We disagree.
Renée Graham of The Boston Globe notes the hypocrisy of conservatives when one of their own— in this case, retired quarterback Brett Favre— cheats the welfare system.
While federal prosecutors will figure out what to do with Favre, there’s no limit to the ridicule and scorn he deserves. Good luck finding any in conservative circles. The same people who regularly decry welfare as a handout for the undeserving aren’t particularly outraged when millions of those state funds wind up in the already well-lined pockets of a favorite son of Mississippi. You won’t hear Republicans sneering that Favre should be pulling himself up by his bootstraps instead of opening his hand for a government check.
Compare that to what happened last year during Vice President Harris’s diplomatic trip to Paris. Fox News and other conservative outlets couldn’t stop jawing about the fact that Harris “spent over $500 on cookware in a Parisian shop amid rising inflation and economic uncertainty at home in the US.” Of course, one had nothing to do with the other. She used her own money to buy some pots and pans; yet Fox fashioned her into Marie Antoinette thumbing her nose at struggling Americans with neither a pot to pee in nor a window to throw it out of.
Right-wing politicians and pundits love to keep their supporters angry. The fastest way to spike that noxious brew is by manufacturing controversies about those they despise. But the opposite happens when it comes to those rich conservative white men in particular whom they hold dear — they can do no wrong even when the wrongdoing seems glaringly clear.
With his 2020 endorsement of Donald Trump, Favre earned his conservative purity badge and a guarantee that those in the same political corner would always have his back. They don’t care that Favre has long been known as a louse.
Jamie Dettmer of POLITICO Europe explains why Italy’s “red belt” went blue for Giorgia Meloni.
A sense of foreboding has been hanging over Italy’s mountainous heartland for years. In the central regions of Lazio, Umbria and Le Marche, mistrust of government has been rising. Many feel that successive governments have ignored them, and they’re frustrated at the lack of follow through on economic pledges.
Rome has paid more attention in the past two years, however, with Mario Draghi’s coalition government funding much needed road maintenance in central Italy and backing restoration work on long-neglected cultural monuments — an investment that was largely thanks to EU funds and the prospect of some €200 billion more to come in the form of grants and loans, aimed at improving Italy’s laggardly economic performance.
But these postcard-perfect regions of central Italy — with summer pastures of sunflowers and poppies, abundant vines, rows of ancient olive trees and medieval hilltop stone towns — have battled to offset a decline in commercial agriculture for years, desperately exploring ways to refashion themselves as tourist destinations and centers of artisanal trades and crafts.
But the 2008 financial crash sent a burgeoning regional tourism industry into a tailspin from which it was slowly recovering, only for the COVID-19 pandemic to strike.
Robin Givhan writes for The Washington Post about the role that the probable future Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni plays on the political stage.
Politics is serious business, but it’s conducted on a stage, and so it’s theater, too. Participants play against type, and they settle into cliches as they make their pitch to voters, who aren’t stirred so much by policy promises as they are by a gut feeling that the candidate gets them — or is willing to stick it to those folks that the voters just don’t get.
Meloni plays the ballsy woman. In the many tales of her political rise, people are reminded that she is probably Italy’s first female prime minister. But what does this bit of history mean? If nothing else, it’s a reminder that women should be allowed to try, fail and try again, in the same way that men have done for centuries. It’s also a reminder to let go of certain assumptions about women in leadership. We tend to believe a fairy tale that has women bringing a kumbaya perspective to leadership. In politics, it’s typically presumed that women will bring a greater degree of cooperation and civility. Maybe they will be more attuned to issues that overwhelmingly affect women, whether it’s reproductive health care or child care or the care and nurturing of career goals. Women will look out for women.
But while Meloni has been attuned to child-care issues, she is not a believer in the programs that have championed gender parity in politics, boardrooms and classrooms. She is not viewed as a reliable defender of abortion access. So many of her stances, such as her argument against allowing same sex couples to adopt, are simply cruel. “I’m not in favor of adoption [by same-sex couples],” she said in a recent interview with The Washington Post. “I’m not, because I think that a child who’s unlucky needs to be given what’s best, right? And what’s best is having a father and a mother.” She is not the things that so many see as the reason it’s important to bring women into the leadership fold.
Aleksander Brezar of Euronews reports on some progressive left reactions to Meloni’s electoral win from Pigneto, probably the most progressive neighborhood in Rome.
Here, the streets are peppered with images and biographies of the neighbourhood’s Partisan rebels, who played a significant role in liberating Rome from fascists in World War II. Many of them paid the price of freedom with their lives and the lives of their families, yet they are never mentioned by Meloni when she insists Italy should be proud of its history.
Pier Paolo Pasolini, the avant-garde left-wing director known for highlighting social issues, is treated akin to a saint in this neighbourhood, with murals and plaques dedicated to him being omnipresent.
Over the years, the once working-class area became increasingly more attractive to forward-thinking, alternative and younger crowds while also welcoming the LGBTQ+ community with open arms.
Having Meloni in power together with her coalition partners, Lega’s anti-immigrant illiberal Matteo Salvini and Forza Italia’s octogenarian right-wing mainstay Silvio Berlusconi, has made people who lean away from conservative ideas both worried and angry.
While the bulk of Angela Giuffrida’s report for the Guardian is about Meloni’s election day TikTok concerning her...melons, Ms. Giuffrida also offers a few paragraphs of insight about the sexism within the center-left Democratic Party.
Monica Cirinnà, a politician with the centre-left Democratic party (PD) who became a symbol for Italy’s LGBTQ+ community after drafting legislation that led to civil unions being approved in 2016. She said leadership needed to be “earned” and that Meloni had earned her role.
There was an outcry in August after PD leader, Enrico Letta, selected Cirinnà as a senator candidate, but in a constituency she was likely to lose. Cirinnà was also furious but decided to run after being encouraged by her supporters, even knowing she would lose.
“He put me in a losing constituency, essentially he was saying that I was no longer powerful for the party,” said Cirinnà. “Let’s just say he wanted people who are more agreeable; I am difficult and do not give in easily.”
While the PD placed women in ministerial roles when in government, Cirinnà criticised the party, saying elected women were always “chosen by men” and that women who “speak freely” like herself “irritate” them.
Nadia Pantel of Der Spiegel reports on Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić’s use of the LGBTQ+ community as a “distraction” for his political problems.
Serbia is not an easy place for anyone who isn't clearly heterosexual, to say the least. The LGBTQI community has been gathering in Belgrade for pride parades since 2001, though there have been several interruptions. And in 2017, Ana Brnabić became the first openly lesbian woman to hold the office of prime minister in the country. But there is also a counter-movement, especially from Orthodox Christians and nationalists who dislike this kind of openness. The authorities have often been accused of doing too little to combat widespread homophobia in the country. And since last week, people like Menalo and those who advocate for LGBTQI rights in Serbia have faced a new level of vilification. They have been accused of waging a "hybrid war."
The accusation comes from Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić himself, the man who wants to lead his country toward the European Union. Vučić left open what exactly this supposed hybrid war is supposed to be about, but the message he sent is unmistakable: Homosexuals are a threat to societal peace. At the end of August, Vučić even announced that the planned parade couldn't take place in Belgrade. He said the police had too much to do and that they couldn't provide the necessary protection to the participants.
The subsequent three-weeks of wrangling over whether or not to allow the parade to take place helped Vučić keep another issue out of the media. The same day that he canceled Europride, he made a significant concession to Albin Kurti, Kosovo's prime minister. Kosovars may now enter Serbia without needing any special documents. For the conservatives among Vučić's voters, it was nothing less than a scandal. But discussion of the concession was muted. After all, Vučić had given right-wingers the opportunity to get upset about something else: the gays in the city.
Finally today, Rahman Bouzari and Ali Fathollah-Nejad of New Lines Magazine discuss how the hijab protests in Iran, in part, date all the way back to the Iranian Revolution of 1979.
The intersection of gender and ethnic discrimination plays a significant role here. Despite their active participation in the 1979 Revolution, women were the very first group to be barred from post-revolutionary Iran’s public sphere. And Kurds have been among the country’s most harshly repressed, yet resilient, ethnic groups. With Iranian Kurdistan’s long tradition of resistance, Amini’s funeral transformed into a demonstration, and exiled Kurdish parties have called for an all-out general strike across the province.
This intersection is epitomized by the now ubiquitous slogan that originated in Kurdistan and rapidly spread across the country: “Woman, life, freedom.” Derived from the idea that the oppression of women was the root of all other forms of oppression, it points to the convergence of ideological, economic and political injustices inflicted upon Iranians over the past four decades.
Iranian women have resisted their subjugation since the establishment of the Islamic Republic. As early as the first month after the revolution, women poured into the streets to protest Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s policy of enforced veiling, which required Iranian women to cover all parts of their bodies, with the exception of the face and hands, in public, regardless of religion and ethnicity.
Have a good day, everyone!