Congress is on Easter/Passover recess until Monday, April 25, and week-daily …meanwhile… is also taking the time off. Until then ...
The Fox News headline … Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) is “mocked for voicing outrage” over a video she reportedly shared Saturday evening, which depicts a worship leader on a commercial airliner, leading passengers in singing Christian music for Easter.
The ‘outrage’: “I think my family and I should have a prayer session next time I’m on a plane,” she wrote with the video (not identified as being posted on any social media). “How do you think it will end?”
Republican candidates’ reaction: Fox News quoted several Republican candidates criticizing Omar, who is Muslim.
“Why do you hate Christians, Ilhan?” says Vernon Jones, a “Black pro-Trump former Democrat” running to represent Georgia’s 10th District in the U.S. House of Representatives.
“Qatar – a country you’re very familiar with – plays Islamic prayers on the intercom before takeoff on their planes,” commented Cicely Davis, who is running for the GOP nomination for Omar’s House seat, Minnesota’s 5th District.
Was it ‘outrage’?: Did Omar express “hatred” for Christians? Email your comments to editors@thehustings.news.
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On Musk’s Twitter gambit … Last week, the world’s richest man, Tesla and SpaceX chief Elon Musk launched a $43 billion hostile takeover bid of Twitter, prompting a “poison pill” response from the social media giant. Some conservatives are buoyed by the prospect of un-censored free speech that would allow room for Donald J. Trump and followers to spread whatever views of the 2020 presidential election and right-wing conspiracy theories they may have.
Our meta response: So The Hustings took to Twitter (@NewsHustings) in a 72-hour reader poll to ask: “If Elon Musk buys Twitter in order to open up unfettered free speech, will he allow criticism of Tesla, SpaceX, The Boring Company and Elon Musk’s Twitter?"
Results: Of 595 votes, 52.6% responded “yes,” and 47.4% said “no.”
Context: Like a certain former president, Elon Musk has proven thin-skinned toward public criticism of him and his company, though much of the backlash to such criticism comes from loyal followers of Musk and his businesses.
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Headlines aggregated … Russian missiles hit Lviv, Ukraine, early Monday, NPR’s Morning Edition reports. At least seven are dead, the first fatalities in the western city near the Polish border. [https://www.npr.org/live-updates/ukraine-russia-lviv-mariupol-04-18-2022] …
Alex Jones’ Infowars has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the Southern District of Texas, sources tell The Hill, [https://thehill.com/news/media/3271477-alex-joness-inforwars-files-for-bankruptcy/] as the website faces numerous lawsuits over comments made about the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in which 20 first-graders and six teachers were killed …
Tesla stockholders have asked a judge to silence the EV automaker’s CEO, Elon Musk, in a fraud case, according to Politico. The shareholders are suing Musk over some 2018 tweets in which he said he was lining up investors to take the company private. [https://www.politico.com/news/2022/04/17/tesla-elon-musk-lawsuit-00025741] …
President Biden and First Lady Jill Biden paid 24.6% tax on $610,000 income, Roll Call reports. [ https://rollcall.com/2022/04/15/bidens-paid-24-6-percent-tax-on-610k-income-return-shows/]. Today is deadline for filing income taxes.
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FRI 4/15/22
The Slava goes to Ukraine's military... A senior Pentagon officials has confirmed to NPR that Russia's premier missile cruiser, Moskva, was hit by two Ukrainian missiles before it sank in the Black Sea, off the coast of the Eastern Donbas region of Ukraine. The Kremlin had claimed the explosion was the result of an onboard ammunition explosion, which forced Moskva's crew of 500 to evacuate.
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Republicans v. Democrats …
Donald J. Trump may not have been able to reverse the results of his November 2020 re-election loss, but he has influenced the Republican National Committee to withdraw from the Commission on Presidential Debates, which was formed in 1987 and has organized the televised combats between major party candidates since George H.W. Bush v. Michael Dukakis.
While Trump has “repeatedly leveled accusations of anti-Republican bias” against the CPD, The Hill notes, GOP acrimony toward the group goes back to 2012, at least, when CNN’s Candy Crowley “fact-checked” candidate Mitt Romney live in a debate against President Barrack Obama – and Crowley was wrong, says uspresidentialelectionnews.com.
This comes as the Democratic National Committee looks ready to brush Iowa’s caucuses from its 2024 presidential nominating process, CNN reports. Per a statement by the DNC as quoted by CNN’s Chris Cilizza in his daily newsletter, The Point!: “The new plan jettisons the current early states of Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina and implements a process that would prioritize diverse battleground states that choose to hold primaries, not caucuses. Under the new structure, states will apply to hold early nomination contests and the rules committee will select up to five that will be allowed to go before Super Tuesday, the first Tuesday in March.”
Iowa is not diverse and does hold caucuses, Cilizza notes, and pounded the final nail in its first-in-the-U.S. contest’s coffin when it botched its 2020 caucuses, and was not able to name a winner for days.
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Musk and Twitter … Everybody’s talking about Tesla CEO and SpaceX founder Elon Musk’s launch of a hostile $43 billion takeover of Twitter. Musk, whose persona and apparently libertarian, anti-union politics have invited comparisons with former President Trump, has 81 million Twitter followers. He told a TED conference Thursday he “sees the platform as a way to foster conversation and potentially even prevent international conflicts,” according to The Washington Post.
Conservatives consider Musk their “Twitter savior” who would “allow for few, if any restrictions on free speech,” Politico reports.
That got us to wondering whether the soft-skinned Musk would allow any criticism of Tesla, SpaceX or of the world’s richest man himself, on Twitter if he owned it. Go to our Twitter account, @NewsHustings and take our poll on the question.
--Edited by Todd Lassa
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Younger voters are losing confidence in Uncle Joe . . . Joe Biden’s popularity number among Gen Z (born 1997-2004) was 60% in January to June 2021, according to Gallup.
Biden is now — between September 2021 and March 22 — down 21 points, to 39% approval.
For Millennials (1981-1996) he is down 19 points over the same period, to 41%.
And for Gen X (1964-1980) the decline is 15 points, to 40%.
While the Gallup analysis focuses on the nature of the people within those generational cohorts (e.g., there are more political independents among these groups and therefore there isn’t the same sense of political party straight-line support), we would like to suggest a simpler explanation, albeit one that is perhaps somewhat insensitive.
Joe Biden is 79 years old.
Anyone who sees him walking from a podium in the White House or on his way to Marine One can see that the man appears frail. Each step seems lightly placed as though there is a bit of trepidation that he might fall.
Isn’t it possible that younger people get the sense that the man is simply too old to be the president and consequently that any problems — whether pandemic or economic — are a consequence of that?
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Fraud at polls; Trump still defeated … All evidence to date there was voter fraud in the November 2020 presidential election points to the MAGA wing of the GOP allegedly committing voter fraud. Latest is that Mark Meadows has been removed from the rolls in Macon County, North Carolina as the state continues to investigate whether Donald J. Trump’s last White House chief of staff registered to vote at a motor home he never owned or resided in.
“What I found was that he was also registered in the state of Virginia,” said Macon County Board of Elections Director Melanie Thibault, according to Asheville, North Carolina’s Citizen Times. “And he voted in a 2021 election. The last election he voted in Macon County was in 2020.”
Meadows was removed from the Macon County voter rolls under General Statute 163-57. A spokesperson for the former Trump chief of staff did not return calls for comment to the Citizen Times.
--Edited by Gary S. Vasilash and Todd Lassa
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TUE 4/12/22
Highest inflation rate since 1981 … The Consumer Price Index hit another high with an annual rate of 8.5% in March, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Tuesday. The month-over-month rate was +1.2% for March, after a +0.8% in February. Energy prices rose an especially brutal 11% in March, for an annual rate of +32%, with gasoline up 18.3% in March. Food prices rose at an annual rate of 8.8%.
Meanwhile, President Biden visited Iowa Tuesday to announce the federal government will allow sales of a 15% ethanol summer fuel blend in order to ease gas prices, Roll Call reports. The biofuel causes more greenhouse gas but can also cut the cost of fuel at the pump.
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We’ve been warned, again … Fiona Hill, the national intelligence officer on Russia and Eurasia for the George W. Bush administration, the Obama administration for nearly a year, and for the Trump administration up to Donald J. Trump’s 2019 “perfect” phone call with newly elected Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy demanding he have Hunter Biden investigated in exchange for military aid, tells journalist Robert Draper for The New York Times Magazine she was at home writing her memoir, January 6, 2021, when a friend called to tell her to turn on her television.
“I saw the thread, the thread connecting the Zelinskyy phone call to January 6,” she tells Draper. “And I remember how, in 2020, Putin had changed Russia’s Constitution to allow him to stay in power longer. This was Trump pulling a Putin.”
Hill’s memoir is titled, There Is Nothing for You Here: Finding Opportunity in the 21st Century.
Draper’s in-depth piece on Hill may be found here (subscription required): https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/11/magazine/trump-putin-ukraine-fiona-hill.html
It’s worth a close read, especially if you remain a fan of the former president’s policies. While The Hustings remains committed to an open, civil discussion between left and right, we are trying to understand the enduring loyalty toward ex-President Trump nearly 15 months after the Capitol insurrection. We welcome civil comments from either side of the political divide, including comments from anti- and pro-Trump conservatives, as well as liberals. email: editors@thehustings.news
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Meanwhile, in weather news . . . One in three U.S. adults say they have been affected by an extreme weather event — extreme cold, hurricanes, ice storms — during the past two years, according to a recent Gallup poll. Those living in the South and West have been most affected, 39% and 35%, respectively.
Considered overall, 63% of those who have been affected by extreme weather worry “a great deal” about global warming/climate change and 78% of them believe those environmental changes are underway. Presumably, if a cow goes flying past your window, your level of concern is a bit elevated.
Considered through a partisan lens, there is no surprise: 79% of Democrats who have been affected worry “a great deal” while only 28% of Republicans who have been affected do. Perhaps Republicans are just more calm and collected than Democrats.
But one thing is curious about the results: 35% of Democrats and 31% of Republicans who have been affected by an extreme weather event say they understand global warming “very well.”
Evidently there is a lack of information that cuts across all individuals.
The weather, of course, doesn’t consider one’s political affiliation.
--Edited by Todd Lassa and Gary S. Vasilash
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