As someone who has no real personal connection to Notre Dame, this news still hurts. Cathedrals in general are beautiful works of art. I can't imagine how painful this must be those who hold it as a source of pride.
It looks like they are going to lose the entire thing. French Interior Minister says firefighters may not be able to save it. Of course Donald Trump offered his advice, which was to act quickly and to use flying water tankers. Which the French Civil Service quickly said would likely cause the entire structure to collapse.
Edit: they seem to have it contained and they may still save the structure.
But seriously, nothing yet. Assumed accidental. It was going through some renovations, so that could have played a part. They’ll have to wait for the thing to be completely extinguished before looking for the cause.
Allegedly most of the religious artifacts and art have also been recovered and are safe. Also bronze statues that are usually on the roof were removed a week ago due to the renovations.
Yeah. This whole situation was profoundly tragic. No political spin or anything. Just an enormous loss for everyone. Every religion, every nationality. The Notre Dame Cathedral is one of the most significant landmarks in the world.
I've never been to France, but my historical studies focused mostly on Napoleonic France. Napoleon was crowned in Notre Dame (Well. He crowned himself there). It was also briefly converted into a place of worship for the Cult of Reason during the French Revolution.
The significance of Notre Dame might best be summed up by the fact that the Cathedral's construction began in the 12th century. This would have been well before the French had a collective idea of common heritage. This building has been an icon for just about as long as France was a polity.
So, you know how Reps are always identified on TV with a (D) or (R) after their name?? New proposal: in addition to that, let's show a map of their district beforehand as well.
While that would be enlightening, it wouldn't really help. Remember, they pack and crack the minority party as well, so both side's districts are gerrymandered.
A state-by-state analysis of the degree of gerrymandering might be illuminating though.
I mentioned the fact that the demographic algorithms have gotten more sophisticated a few posts back. So yeah, they likely can micro-manage the districts down to individual properties or at least down to individual sub-divisions. Yay, technology!
It was said that the 2010 redistricting by Republicans was down to the street. With the information we have now, I am certain it is now possible to gerrymander down to individual houses.
If not now, certainly by the time of the redistricting in 2020-21.
For example, remember that funny story a few years back about how a special commercial district was arranged so that there was not supposed to be ANY voters who could oppose the sales tax it would have had, but they screwed up because there was 1 resident?
I wondered what happened to that. I've done some research.
It was 2015. It always did sound suspicious. A special CID (commercial improvement district), formed so that, under law, commercial property owners could vote for it if there were no residents. It's a sales tax, which does not affect the property owners as much as a property tax.
Anyways, Apparently a few more voters were found, allowing for 15 ballots, and it passed 4-3. The initial single person, Jen Henderson, filed a lawsuit, citing various election violations (lack of secret ballot, not enough time to announce the election or print ballots, not enough announcing the vote, etc.). It got thrown out by a judge in 2016, who gave no formal judgement. It couldn't be officially appealed until it had a formal judgement. Only recently did the Missouri Supreme Court said that the judge MUST give a reason, which was only done this February. What the hell?
The sales tax was supposed to make 200-225k dollars, debt at the time was about 199k. The revenue for the district was 7k/month (84k/year), of which 70k paid the district's director for salary and benefits. Hrm, can't imagine why that director had made a special trip to see Henderson.
And now the city approved a 15 million dollar 10-year renovation of the area a couple years later. The district has tax revenue of 373k, so more than half from that tax that passed.
"Both the Missouri Court of Appeals Western District and the Missouri Supreme Court have declined to hear appeals in Henderson’s case because Asel has never issued what the court considers a judgment. Rules governing court procedures require the term “judgment” to appear on a ruling for it to be considered an appealable conclusion."
Really? We're so caught up in technicalities now that cases get hung up for YEARS over a WORD?
This is our legal system. Wonder of the modern world.
State Duma passes law ‘isolating’ Russian Internet
"The law would allow the Russian government to control all connections between the Russian segment of the Internet and the rest of the world. It provides for the creation of infrastructure that would enable the Russian segment to work in isolation if operators are unable to connect with Internet servers abroad. The agency responsible for executing the law will be Roskomnadzor, the Russian government’s censorship organ."
Argentina changes immigration law to limit entry, ease deportation
"More than three-quarters of migrants who arrived in Argentina between 2011 and 2015 came from Paraguay, Bolivia and Peru, according to Argentina’s Interior Ministry. "
Argentina's President Gets Backlash for Immigration Policy
"President Mauricio Macri blamed rising crime rates on migrants"
"I am the son of an immigrant, we all are and we need to continue welcoming people that want to come work here, but we are not going to allow for crime to keep rising in Argentina because of a lack of action," he said in a press conference.
It is becoming obvious over the last few days that the GOP is moving back into their 2001-2008 fear tactics. It isn't just the Ilhan Omar situation, though that is the clear catalyst. In the 48 hours since the fire at Notre Dame, there is something going on. The usual suspects are declaring the cathedral a "symbol of the West". But that isn't where the most sinister stuff is going on. Glenn Beck has risen from the grave, and said "if Islamic terrorists did this, we'll never find out" (ostensibly because the French government would cover it up). Today on Fox News, Martha McCollum said "other religions want these buildings to burn down". There is a CLEAR insinuation taking shape on the far-right, despite ZERO evidence, that Muslim terrorists are possibly responsible for this fire.
It is becoming obvious over the last few days that the GOP is moving back into their 2001-2008 fear tactics. It isn't just the Ilhan Omar situation, though that is the clear catalyst. In the 48 hours since the fire at Notre Dame, there is something going on. The usual suspects are declaring the cathedral a "symbol of the West". But that isn't where the most sinister stuff is going on. Glenn Beck has risen from the grave, and said "if Islamic terrorists did this, we'll never find out" (ostensibly because the French government would cover it up). Today on Fox News, Martha McCollum said "other religions want these buildings to burn down". There is a CLEAR insinuation taking shape on the far-right, despite ZERO evidence, that Muslim terrorists are possibly responsible for this fire.
Seriously, on the eve of another William Barr delivery to Congress, do NOT trust this man. If this doesn't convince you, nothing will. It's not wild speculation. It's judging him on his past actions:
It was finally revealed why Columbine and other high schools in the Denver area were and continue to be on lock down (actually closed today) this week as the 20th anniversary of the shooting comes ahead.
A 18 year old senior from a Florida high school named Sol Pais made alleged threats about attacking the school, flew to Colorado, purchased a pump action shotgun then disappeared. She is said to be infatuated with the Columbine massacre and the local police and FBI are attempting to track her down.
Sounds pretty scary but the scariest thing is even if the FBI do find her, they have nothing to charge her with as she hasn't committed a crime which just shows how hard it is for law enforcement alone to stop school shootings like this. It is impossible. All the red flags can be flying, but they are limited in what they can do until a person actually pulls the trigger.
I am positive there had to have been mass shootings before Columbine, but I honestly can't remember any. It's in it's own way as significant an event as 9/11, because of the modus operandi all later shooters would follow.
I am positive there had to have been mass shootings before Columbine, but I honestly can't remember any. It's in it's own way as significant an event as 9/11, because of the modus operandi all later shooters would follow.
Why the hell are Trump's lawyers getting briefed by DOJ?? Why would a report that is a so-called "exoneration" require a rebuttal?? That would be like lodging a protest against a positive performance review at work.
I had predicted that Barr would give the Trump administration some details ahead of time to help them prepare a rebuttal and blunt the impact it would have on public opinion. Apparently that is in fact happening.
I had predicted that Barr would give the Trump administration some details ahead of time to help them prepare a rebuttal and blunt the impact it would have on public opinion. Apparently that is in fact happening.
Let's imagine for two seconds how massive and earth-shattering the uproar would have been if James Comey had delayed his findings on Hillary's email server for a month so he could brief the Clinton campaign on his findings.
IN FACT, conservatives were apoplectic across the board about a 5 minute conversation Bill Clinton had with Loretta Lynch on an airplane tarmac. This is, by ANY measure, about 100,000x worse.
Bill Barr is holding a press conference (again, why??) at 9:30am tomorrow. The report isn't being released until 90 minutes later. Every reporter worth their salt should boycott Barr's dog and pony show until they have had time to digest the findings.
If someone has a disagreement with what Josh Marshall puts together here, I'd be quite interested to know what that could possibly be:
We’ve now gotten more details about about what we’ve basically already known or should have known: the fix is in. The goal here is to max out every avenue to protect the President from the contents of the Report. Bill Barr and his friends at the White House clearly do not care what anyone outside of Trump world thinks at this point. They are not even bothering to keep up appearances at the margins. A good and increasingly relevant question for Bill Barr at this point would be at what point the statutory powers of the Attorney General can amount to obstruction of justice if exercised with corrupt intent.
Let’s go through what we’ve learned this afternoon.
Barr and his lieutenants at the DOJ have repeatedly briefed the President’s lawyers about the contents of the Mueller Report. So the President and those working for him have gotten a privileged advanced look at the results of the investigation into the President himself – ahead of Congress and ahead of the public. Indeed, it appears that the President and his lawyers have gotten more of a look at the Report than the Attorney General ever intends to give to Congress or the public.
This raises a related and critical point. Barr and his lieutenants have been briefing the White House about the contents of the Report and discussing its contents while the process of redaction is underway. Even if we posit the hypothetical that Barr didn’t consciously want to give the President and his lawyers a voice in the redaction process, it’s basically impossible for one conversation not to infect or influence the other.
This is a bedrock assumption in every regulation or administrative guideline addressed to conflicts of interest. The dialog between the DOJ and the President’s lawyers is explicitly about rebutting or defending allegations or asserted facts in the Report. Having one side of that discussion be in charge of deciding what gets hidden from the public and what doesn’t fatally delegitimizes the redaction process. Of course, there’s little reason to believe giving the White House such a voice wasn’t a planned and explicit part of those discussions.
I had some advance word about this press conference but wasn’t able to confirm it. It’s been under consideration at least since the weekend. Barr had basically no role in the probe. He took over at DOJ when it was substantively finished. He is on record as arguing that both components of the probe – the 2016 election and obstruction of justice – were essentially baseless and illegitimate. He has no reasonable basis to be the person who describes the findings of the Report. Very clearly, he’s there to spin the report in the President’s favor.
A few days after what was actually the 2nd Barr Letter (the exoneration letter), Barr justified that letter by telling Chairman Nadler that he did “not believe it would be in the public’s interest for me to attempt to summarize the full report.” Now he’s decided it actually would be in the public’s interest to summarize the report. Things change.
As I said, there’s little attempt here even to keep up appearances.
An additional point: Barr will hold his press conference at 9:30 tomorrow morning. Hard copies will apparently be delivered to Capitol Hill sometime after 11 AM. It’s not clear when the public will see the redacted version but it seems unlikely it will be before the hard copies show up on Capitol Hill. In other words, the press conference has been timed to ensure that no one on hand to ask questions will have been able to read the Report. Barr can summarize the report and put his gloss on it before anyone has a chance to see it.
To return to the basic point: Every detail of this has been planned to spin the Report or maximally conceal it in the interests of protecting the President.
So who else thinks Barr's press conference will be announcing an investigation into the oranges of the Mueller report? The Press Conference is a distraction from the mueller report and it will work unfortunately with the dumb media. They will shift focus after they dumbly accept the neutered report.
That's what's going to happen.
I'd bet a few bucks that's what the press conference is going to be about. Barr goes up and:
1. Barr announces an investigation into oranges of the investigation. Spends 3 hours talking about this.
2. Barr spends 5 minutes on the Mueller report and releasea something which is 80% redacted and the other 20% is completely limited in scope so that it covers only the areas where nothing happened. I mean there's probably no direct photos of Trump coordinating with Putin so that means to Fox News
and Conservative alternative facts media that Trump's completely innocent about everything ever. Because there's no photo of direct collusion during the campaign the things we've seen Trump do with our own eyes don't count - that will be their narrative on Fox News.
As someone who has no real personal connection to Notre Dame, this news still hurts. Cathedrals in general are beautiful works of art. I can't imagine how painful this must be those who hold it as a source of pride.
Would this still make people sad if it was a Pagan Temple that burned? Or when Christianity build it on top of a Pagan Holy Site? The land was home to a temple to Jupiter (Zeus) prior.
As someone who has no real personal connection to Notre Dame, this news still hurts. Cathedrals in general are beautiful works of art. I can't imagine how painful this must be those who hold it as a source of pride.
Would this still make people sad if it was a Pagan Temple that burned? Or when Christianity build it on top of a Pagan Holy Site? The land was home to a temple to Jupiter (Zeus) prior.
I think if something happened to Stonehenge people would still be a bit affected, even though they’ve never visited. Although, that is still Western Culture. I doubt people would be as sadden if it was something like Angkor Wat.
Let me ask again: How is "apparently jesus done it" politics?
As for the Notre Dame episode, it can definitely be a part of politics. At the very least, because such a monument can affect what people and societies do, eg. feel more togetherness instead of something else.
Comments
Edit: they seem to have it contained and they may still save the structure.
But seriously, nothing yet. Assumed accidental. It was going through some renovations, so that could have played a part. They’ll have to wait for the thing to be completely extinguished before looking for the cause.
Allegedly most of the religious artifacts and art have also been recovered and are safe. Also bronze statues that are usually on the roof were removed a week ago due to the renovations.
Fox News does apparently?
I've never been to France, but my historical studies focused mostly on Napoleonic France. Napoleon was crowned in Notre Dame (Well. He crowned himself there). It was also briefly converted into a place of worship for the Cult of Reason during the French Revolution.
The significance of Notre Dame might best be summed up by the fact that the Cathedral's construction began in the 12th century. This would have been well before the French had a collective idea of common heritage. This building has been an icon for just about as long as France was a polity.
While that would be enlightening, it wouldn't really help. Remember, they pack and crack the minority party as well, so both side's districts are gerrymandered.
A state-by-state analysis of the degree of gerrymandering might be illuminating though.
It was said that the 2010 redistricting by Republicans was down to the street. With the information we have now, I am certain it is now possible to gerrymander down to individual houses.
If not now, certainly by the time of the redistricting in 2020-21.
For example, remember that funny story a few years back about how a special commercial district was arranged so that there was not supposed to be ANY voters who could oppose the sales tax it would have had, but they screwed up because there was 1 resident?
I wondered what happened to that. I've done some research.
It was 2015. It always did sound suspicious. A special CID (commercial improvement district), formed so that, under law, commercial property owners could vote for it if there were no residents. It's a sales tax, which does not affect the property owners as much as a property tax.
Anyways, Apparently a few more voters were found, allowing for 15 ballots, and it passed 4-3. The initial single person, Jen Henderson, filed a lawsuit, citing various election violations (lack of secret ballot, not enough time to announce the election or print ballots, not enough announcing the vote, etc.). It got thrown out by a judge in 2016, who gave no formal judgement. It couldn't be officially appealed until it had a formal judgement. Only recently did the Missouri Supreme Court said that the judge MUST give a reason, which was only done this February. What the hell?
The sales tax was supposed to make 200-225k dollars, debt at the time was about 199k. The revenue for the district was 7k/month (84k/year), of which 70k paid the district's director for salary and benefits. Hrm, can't imagine why that director had made a special trip to see Henderson.
And now the city approved a 15 million dollar 10-year renovation of the area a couple years later. The district has tax revenue of 373k, so more than half from that tax that passed.
In chronological order of publication:
https://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-mh-a-gerrymandering-attempt-20150831-column.html
https://www.columbiamissourian.com/news/local/business-loop-cid-examines-debt-future-projects-after-sales-tax/article_80d3aaa8-a4d6-11e5-bfbc-37db703e8a2e.html
https://www.columbiamissourian.com/news/local/lawsuit-filed-against-the-business-loop-cid/article_ac4e2850-b982-11e5-b012-eb9c1282fdb5.html
https://www.columbiamissourian.com/news/local/year-plan-for-business-loop-carries-price-tag-near-million/article_1976a902-4c98-11e8-b73f-bf8ad04033c9.html
https://www.columbiatribune.com/news/20180912/missouri-supreme-court-questions-asels-refusal-to-issue-judgment-on-loop-cid?rssfeed=true
https://www.columbiamissourian.com/news/local/judge-must-decide-business-loop-lawsuit/article_6e0ad994-2fc7-11e9-841f-5f489a9e4a9f.html
"Both the Missouri Court of Appeals Western District and the Missouri Supreme Court have declined to hear appeals in Henderson’s case because Asel has never issued what the court considers a judgment. Rules governing court procedures require the term “judgment” to appear on a ruling for it to be considered an appealable conclusion."
Really? We're so caught up in technicalities now that cases get hung up for YEARS over a WORD?
This is our legal system. Wonder of the modern world.
"The law would allow the Russian government to control all connections between the Russian segment of the Internet and the rest of the world. It provides for the creation of infrastructure that would enable the Russian segment to work in isolation if operators are unable to connect with Internet servers abroad. The agency responsible for executing the law will be Roskomnadzor, the Russian government’s censorship organ."
source : https://meduza.io/en/news/2019/04/16/state-duma-passes-law-isolating-russian-internet
Argentina changes immigration law to limit entry, ease deportation
"More than three-quarters of migrants who arrived in Argentina between 2011 and 2015 came from Paraguay, Bolivia and Peru, according to Argentina’s Interior Ministry. "
"Such criticism of immigrants has rarely featured prominently in Latin American politics. But in neighboring Chile, a wave of recent arrivals from Haiti and Venezuela has turned immigration into a key issue in presidential elections later this year. "
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-argentina-immigration/argentina-changes-immigration-law-to-limit-entry-ease-deportation-idUSKBN15E1V3
Argentina's President Gets Backlash for Immigration Policy
"President Mauricio Macri blamed rising crime rates on migrants"
"I am the son of an immigrant, we all are and we need to continue welcoming people that want to come work here, but we are not going to allow for crime to keep rising in Argentina because of a lack of action," he said in a press conference.
Their feelings don't care about the facts.
A 18 year old senior from a Florida high school named Sol Pais made alleged threats about attacking the school, flew to Colorado, purchased a pump action shotgun then disappeared. She is said to be infatuated with the Columbine massacre and the local police and FBI are attempting to track her down.
Sounds pretty scary but the scariest thing is even if the FBI do find her, they have nothing to charge her with as she hasn't committed a crime which just shows how hard it is for law enforcement alone to stop school shootings like this. It is impossible. All the red flags can be flying, but they are limited in what they can do until a person actually pulls the trigger.
Bob Geldof wrote a song about one of them in 1979. I Don't Like Mondays
Why the hell are Trump's lawyers getting briefed by DOJ?? Why would a report that is a so-called "exoneration" require a rebuttal?? That would be like lodging a protest against a positive performance review at work.
Let's imagine for two seconds how massive and earth-shattering the uproar would have been if James Comey had delayed his findings on Hillary's email server for a month so he could brief the Clinton campaign on his findings.
IN FACT, conservatives were apoplectic across the board about a 5 minute conversation Bill Clinton had with Loretta Lynch on an airplane tarmac. This is, by ANY measure, about 100,000x worse.
Bill Barr is holding a press conference (again, why??) at 9:30am tomorrow. The report isn't being released until 90 minutes later. Every reporter worth their salt should boycott Barr's dog and pony show until they have had time to digest the findings.
We’ve now gotten more details about about what we’ve basically already known or should have known: the fix is in. The goal here is to max out every avenue to protect the President from the contents of the Report. Bill Barr and his friends at the White House clearly do not care what anyone outside of Trump world thinks at this point. They are not even bothering to keep up appearances at the margins. A good and increasingly relevant question for Bill Barr at this point would be at what point the statutory powers of the Attorney General can amount to obstruction of justice if exercised with corrupt intent.
Let’s go through what we’ve learned this afternoon.
Barr and his lieutenants at the DOJ have repeatedly briefed the President’s lawyers about the contents of the Mueller Report. So the President and those working for him have gotten a privileged advanced look at the results of the investigation into the President himself – ahead of Congress and ahead of the public. Indeed, it appears that the President and his lawyers have gotten more of a look at the Report than the Attorney General ever intends to give to Congress or the public.
This raises a related and critical point. Barr and his lieutenants have been briefing the White House about the contents of the Report and discussing its contents while the process of redaction is underway. Even if we posit the hypothetical that Barr didn’t consciously want to give the President and his lawyers a voice in the redaction process, it’s basically impossible for one conversation not to infect or influence the other.
This is a bedrock assumption in every regulation or administrative guideline addressed to conflicts of interest. The dialog between the DOJ and the President’s lawyers is explicitly about rebutting or defending allegations or asserted facts in the Report. Having one side of that discussion be in charge of deciding what gets hidden from the public and what doesn’t fatally delegitimizes the redaction process. Of course, there’s little reason to believe giving the White House such a voice wasn’t a planned and explicit part of those discussions.
I had some advance word about this press conference but wasn’t able to confirm it. It’s been under consideration at least since the weekend. Barr had basically no role in the probe. He took over at DOJ when it was substantively finished. He is on record as arguing that both components of the probe – the 2016 election and obstruction of justice – were essentially baseless and illegitimate. He has no reasonable basis to be the person who describes the findings of the Report. Very clearly, he’s there to spin the report in the President’s favor.
A few days after what was actually the 2nd Barr Letter (the exoneration letter), Barr justified that letter by telling Chairman Nadler that he did “not believe it would be in the public’s interest for me to attempt to summarize the full report.” Now he’s decided it actually would be in the public’s interest to summarize the report. Things change.
As I said, there’s little attempt here even to keep up appearances.
An additional point: Barr will hold his press conference at 9:30 tomorrow morning. Hard copies will apparently be delivered to Capitol Hill sometime after 11 AM. It’s not clear when the public will see the redacted version but it seems unlikely it will be before the hard copies show up on Capitol Hill. In other words, the press conference has been timed to ensure that no one on hand to ask questions will have been able to read the Report. Barr can summarize the report and put his gloss on it before anyone has a chance to see it.
To return to the basic point: Every detail of this has been planned to spin the Report or maximally conceal it in the interests of protecting the President.
None of this is on the level.
That's what's going to happen.
I'd bet a few bucks that's what the press conference is going to be about. Barr goes up and:
1. Barr announces an investigation into oranges of the investigation. Spends 3 hours talking about this.
2. Barr spends 5 minutes on the Mueller report and releasea something which is 80% redacted and the other 20% is completely limited in scope so that it covers only the areas where nothing happened. I mean there's probably no direct photos of Trump coordinating with Putin so that means to Fox News
and Conservative alternative facts media that Trump's completely innocent about everything ever. Because there's no photo of direct collusion during the campaign the things we've seen Trump do with our own eyes don't count - that will be their narrative on Fox News.
The fix is definitely in.
Would this still make people sad if it was a Pagan Temple that burned? Or when Christianity build it on top of a Pagan Holy Site? The land was home to a temple to Jupiter (Zeus) prior.
Sauce: https://metro.co.uk/2019/04/17/mum-claims-can-see-jesus-flames-notre-dame-cathedral-9225760/
https://forums.beamdog.com/discussion/71562/well-thats-a-bit-creepy-lol
I think if something happened to Stonehenge people would still be a bit affected, even though they’ve never visited. Although, that is still Western Culture. I doubt people would be as sadden if it was something like Angkor Wat.
9 a.m. Barr issues an investigation into how this investigation got started and to pin point where the Russian narrative started.
In turn, anything dealing with Russia in the Mueller report is now part of an ongoing investigation and will be redacted from the Mueller report.
@juliusborisov I don't know. Why didn't you ask that when there was earlier discussion about the incident in this thread?
@juliusborisov I mean come on.
As for the Notre Dame episode, it can definitely be a part of politics. At the very least, because such a monument can affect what people and societies do, eg. feel more togetherness instead of something else.