Skip to main content

Home/ History Readings/ Group items tagged landslide

Rss Feed Group items tagged

ethanshilling

At Least 12 Dead in 2 Landslides in Indonesia - The New York Times - 0 views

  • Two landslides set off by heavy rainfall and unstable soil killed at least 12 people on Java, Indonesia’s most populous island, and left rescue workers searching for survivors, disaster officials said Sunday.
  • “The first landslide was triggered by high rainfall and unstable soil conditions,” said Raditya Jati, spokesman for the National Disaster Mitigation Agency.
  • “Many people came to see the rescue team and suddenly the second landslide hit,” she said. “There were more victims from the second one because it was much bigger than the first landslide.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • Many people were not in their homes at the time of the landslide because it was afternoon, she said.
  • Deadly landslides are common in Indonesia, where deforestation and illegal small-scale gold mining operations often contribute to unstable soil conditions.
  • The first landslide struck the village hours after a Sriwijaya Air passenger jet crashed into the Java Sea upon takeoff from Jakarta, the Indonesian capital, in heavy rains, killing all 62 aboard.
  • Indonesia, an archipelago of 17,500 islands that straddles the Equator, was once covered by vast rain forests. But over the last half-century, many of the forests have been burned and logged to clear the way for palm plantations and other farmland.
rachelramirez

How much do we hate our 2016 options? Mitt Romney would win in a landslide. - The Washi... - 0 views

  • x How much do we hate our 2016 options? Mitt Romney would win in a landslide.
  • “What if President Obama were able to run for a third term?” and “What if Mitt Romney had run?” are fun questions to ask but don’t actually tell us how they would be doing if they had run. The most popular politician, after all, is a politician who is neither seen nor heard from. Absence makes the heart grow fonder and the poll numbers rise, as they say.
  • The poll asked about a hypothetical matchup between Romney and Hillary Clinton, and Romney led by 10 points, 50-40. As our colleague Dave Weigel would say, “Whoa, if true.”
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Back in March, Bloomberg pollster Selzer and Company tested Romney’s favorable ratings and found that he was nearly 2-to-1 in the negative: 58 percent unfavorable versus just 32 percent favorable. That's even worse than most of Trump’s numbers this year.
  • Despite being largely out of public view in recent years, you see, Romney is still an unloved figure in American politics
  • This poll will surely lead a few Romney die-hards/NeverTrumpers to pine — or rather, continue pining — for a 2016 campaign in which Romney was the Clinton alternative rather than Trump.
Javier E

Donald Trump will win in a landslide. *The mind behind 'Dilbert' explains why. - The Wa... - 0 views

  • What the Bay Area-based cartoonist recognizes, he says, is the careful art behind Trump’s rhetorical techniques.
  • Adams believes Trump will win because he’s “a master persuader.”
  • His stated credentials in this arena, says Adams — who holds an MBA from UC Berkeley — largely involve being a certified hypnotist and, as a writer and business author, an eternal student in the techniques of persuasive rhetoric.
  • ...18 more annotations...
  • he bolsters that approach, Adams says, by “exploiting the business model” like an entrepreneur. In this model, which “the news industry doesn’t have the ability to change … the media doesn’t really have the option of ignoring the most interesting story,” says Adams, contending that Trump “can always be the most interesting story if he has nothing to fear and nothing to lose.”
  • what Trump is doing? He is acknowledging the suffering of some, Adams says, and then appealing emotionally to that.
  • “The most important thing when you study hypnosis is that you learn that humans are irrational,
  • Having nothing to lose essentially then increases his chance of winning, because it opens up his field of rhetorical play.
  • Within that context, here is what Candidate Trump is doing to win campaign hearts and minds
  • 1. Trump knows people are basically irrational.
  • 2. Knowing that people are irrational, Trump aims to appeal on an emotional level.
  • “The evidence is that Trump completely ignores reality and rational thinking in favor of emotional appeal,” Adams writes. “Sure, much of what Trump says makes sense to his supporters, but I assure you that is coincidence. Trump says whatever gets him the result he wants. He understands humans as 90-percent irrational and acts accordingly.”
  • 3. By running on emotion, facts don’t matter.
  • “There are plenty of important facts Trump does not know. But the reason he doesn’t know those facts is – in part – because he knows facts don’t matter. They never have and they never will. So he ignores them.
  • 4. If facts don’t matter, you can’t really be “wrong.”
  • “If you understand persuasion, Trump is pitch-perfect most of the time. He ignores unnecessary rational thought and objective data and incessantly hammers on what matters (emotions).”
  • “Did Trump’s involvement in the birther thing confuse you?” Adams goes on to ask. “Were you wondering how Trump could believe Obama was not a citizen? The answer is that Trump never believed anything about Obama’s place of birth. The facts were irrelevant, so he ignored them while finding a place in the hearts of conservatives.
  • 5. With fewer facts in play, it’s easier to bend reality.
  • Among the persuasive techniques that Trump uses to help bend reality, Adams says, are repetition of phrases; “thinking past the sale” so the initial part of his premise is stated as a given; and knowing the appeal of the simplest answer, which relates to the concept of Occam’s razor.
  • 6. To bend reality, Trump is a master of identity politics — and identity is the strongest persuader.
  • “The best Trump linguistic kill shots,” Adams writes,”have the following qualities: 1. Fresh word that is not generally used in politics; 2. Relates to the physicality of the subject (so you are always reminded).”
  • : “Identity is always the strongest level of persuasion. The only way to beat it is with dirty tricks or a stronger identity play. … [And] Trump is well on his way to owning the identities of American, Alpha Males, and Women Who Like Alpha Males. Clinton is well on her way to owning the identities of angry women, beta males, immigrants, and disenfranchised minorities.
katyshannon

Myanmar Election Has Aung San Suu Kyi's Party Confident of Landslide - The New York Times - 0 views

  • YANGON, Myanmar — The opposition party of the Nobel Peace laureate Daw Aung San Suu Kyi said on Monday that it was confident of a sweeping victory in the country’s landmark nationwide elections, while the ruling military-backed party acknowledged its poor showing.
  • “Nationwide, we got over 70 percent,” said U Win Htein, a senior member of Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi’s party, cautioning that the results were not yet official. But, he added, “We can call this a landslide victory.”
  • The first official results released on Monday afternoon showed the opposition nearly sweeping seats in Yangon, the country’s largest city. Even a torrential downpour could not bring down the spirits of a crowd of opposition supporters, who cheered and sang as they watched the results on a giant TV screen outside the party’s headquarters here.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • Across the country, a number of powerful members of the military establishment in Myanmar conceded defeat, including former senior military officers who were among the most prominent members of the ruling party.
  • If the results of Sunday’s election are respected by the current government and the military, it will be the first time in more than five decades that voters in Myanmar were able to choose their leaders freely.
  • The election was primarily a contest between the military elites and the democracy movement that the former generals persecuted for more than two decades. Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi was under house arrest for 15 years while the military was in control, emerging as a national democracy hero. The election has unleashed a flurry of emotion among her supporters, many of whom were jailed during military rule. Voting was largely peaceful.
  • In a country fractured by ethnic divisions and riddled with corruption, drug trafficking and destitution, expectations for the next government are perhaps implausibly high. But this has not stopped outpourings of joy.
kaylynfreeman

White House Press Secretary: Campaign Believes Trump Will Win By A 'Landslide' | HuffPost - 0 views

  • Kayleigh McEnany lambasted Joe Biden’s campaign for saying that “under no scenario” would Trump be declared the victor on election night.
  • White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany made a bold prediction on Tuesday morning, declaring that President Donald Trump’s campaign “believes that tonight will be a landslide.” 
  • “under no scenario will Donald Trump be declared a victor on election night.” 
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • Trump’s press secretary said Dillon’s remark reminded her of an “appalling” statement that former Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton made in August. Clinton had said that Biden “should not concede under any circumstances” because she believed the election was “going to drag out, and eventually I do believe he will win if we don’t give an inch.” 
  • “We believe this will be a landslide, and for the Biden campaign to come out and double down on Hillary Clinton’s egregious statement that under no circumstance should you concede just tells you all you need to know,” she said. “They’re in a pinch. It’s why they’re out on the campaign trail, even today as voters go to the polls.”
  • Fox News also aired a snippet during the segment of Trump talking about Biden campaigning on Election Day, which he claimed was because the former vice president is “worried.”
  • McEnany emphasized that the Biden campaign is simply “trying to catch up with President Trump” but that “voters see through that act and that charade.”
Javier E

Waiting for a Landslide - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • realignments in American politics are usually punctuated by transformative elections, in which the old order suddenly gives way and a new majority emerges in its place.
  • This “realignment theory” was embraced by many scholars because it fit the historical record so well. Every 30 to 40 years, it seemed, the American political order had decisively turned over: in 1800, when Thomas Jefferson’s Democratic-Republicans trounced John Adams’s Federalists; in 1828, when the Democratic-Republicans split into the Democrats and the Whigs; and then on down through Abraham Lincoln’s 1860 victory, William McKinley’s 1896 consolidation of a Republican majority, and the emergence of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal coalition.
  • One reason American policy-making has become “less stable, less effective, and less predictable” — in the words of the downgrade that Standard & Poor’s handed to the United States on Friday night — is the enduring influence of V. O. Key’s theory, and the seductive dream of realignment that it conjured up.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • there’s no guarantee that such a majority will be established in time to walk the country backward from the fiscal cliff. And in the meantime, our leaders have a responsibility that transcends their ideological differences: the responsibility to work with one another to keep the country solvent.
blaise_glowiak

Taiwan must abandon 'hallucination' of independence, warn Chinese media | World news | ... - 0 views

  •  
    Taiwan should abandon its "hallucinations" about pushing for independence and any moves towards it would be a "poison", Chinese state-run media said after a landslide victory for the island's independence-leaning opposition.
Javier E

Donald Trump will win in a landslide. *The mind behind 'Dilbert' explains why. - The Wa... - 0 views

  • Adams believes Trump will win because he’s “a master persuader.”
  • what Trump is doing? He is acknowledging the suffering of some, Adams says, and then appealing emotionally to that.
  • And he bolsters that approach, Adams says, by “exploiting the business model” like an entrepreneur. In this model, which “the news industry doesn’t have the ability to change … the media doesn’t really have the option of ignoring the most interesting story,” says Adams, contending that Trump “can always be the most interesting story if he has nothing to fear and nothing to lose.”
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • Having nothing to lose essentially then increases his chance of winning, because it opens up his field of rhetorical play. “Psychology is the only necessary skill for running for president,” writes Adams, adding: “Trump knows psychology.”
  • “Did Trump’s involvement in the birther thing confuse you?” Adams goes on to ask. “Were you wondering how Trump could believe Obama was not a citizen? The answer is that Trump never believed anything about Obama’s place of birth. The facts were irrelevant, so he ignored them while finding a place in the hearts of conservatives. For later.
  • “If you see voters as rational you’ll be a terrible politician,” Adams writes on his blog. “People are not wired to be rational. Our brains simply evolved to keep us alive. Brains did not evolve to give us truth. Brains merely give us movies in our minds that keeps us sane and motivated. But none of it is rational or true, except maybe sometimes by coincidence.”
  • “While his opponents are losing sleep trying to memorize the names of foreign leaders – in case someone asks – Trump knows that is a waste of time … ,” Adams writes. “There are plenty of important facts Trump does not know. But the reason he doesn’t know those facts is – in part – because he knows facts don’t matter. They never have and they never will. So he ignores them.
  • “The evidence is that Trump completely ignores reality and rational thinking in favor of emotional appeal,” Adams writes. “Sure, much of what Trump says makes sense to his supporters, but I assure you that is coincidence. Trump says whatever gets him the result he wants. He understands humans as 90-percent irrational and acts accordingly.
  • Among the persuasive techniques that Trump uses to help bend reality, Adams says, are repetition of phrases; “thinking past the sale” so the initial part of his premise is stated as a given; and knowing the appeal of the simplest answer, which relates to the concept of Occam’s razor.)
  • Writes Adams: “Identity is always the strongest level of persuasion. The only way to beat it is with dirty tricks or a stronger identity play. … [And] Trump is well on his way to owning the identities of American, Alpha Males, and Women Who Like Alpha Males. Clinton is well on her way to owning the identities of angry women, beta males, immigrants, and disenfranchised minorities.
rerobinson03

Opinion | Republican Cowardice Endangers American Democracy - The New York Times - 0 views

  • What’s different this time is the acquiescence of Republican elites. The Big Lie about the election didn’t well up from the grass roots — it was promoted from above, initially by Trump himself, but what’s crucial is that almost no prominent Republican politicians have been willing to contradict his claims and many have rushed to back them up.
  • olitical scientists have long noted that our two major political parties are very different in their underlying structures. The Democrats are a coalition of interest groups — labor unions, environmentalists, L.G.B.T.Q. activists and more. The Republican Party is the vehicle of a cohesive, monolithic movement. This is often described as an ideological movement, although given the twists and turns of recent years — the sudden embrace of protectionism, the attacks on “woke” corporations — the ideology of movement conservatism seems less obvious than its will to power.
  • The field I know best, economics, contains (or used to contain) quite a few Republicans with solid academic reputations. Like just about every academic discipline, the field leans Democratic, but much less so than other social sciences and even the hard sciences. But the G.O.P. has consistently preferred to get its advice from politically reliable cranks.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • he contrast with the Biden team, by the way, is extraordinary. At this point it’s almost hard to find a genuine expert on tax policy, labor markets, etc. — an expert with an independent reputation who expects to return to a nonpolitical career in a couple of years — who hasn’t joined the administration.
  • o if Trump or a Trump-like figure declares that we have always been at war with East Asia, well, his party will say that we’ve always been at war with East Asia. If he says he won a presidential election in a landslide, never mind the facts, they’ll say he won the election in a landslide.
carolinehayter

What We Know About Security Response At Capitol on January 6 : NPR - 0 views

  • The Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol was a security failure, an intelligence failure — or both. How could security forces in the nation's capital be so swiftly and completely overwhelmed by rioters who stated their plans openly on a range of social media sites? President Trump had even tweeted on Dec. 19: "Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!"
  • The Metropolitan Police Department arrests Enrique Tarrio, leader of the far-right Proud Boys group. He is charged with destruction of property and possession of high-capacity firearm magazines. He's released the next day and told to leave Washington.
  • And then there is the National Guard. In the 50 states and Puerto Rico, the Guard is under the command of the governor. In Washington, D.C., however, the Guard is under the command of the president, though orders to deploy are typically issued by the secretary of the Army at the request of the mayor.
  • ...38 more annotations...
  • The Department of Homeland Security produces a threat assessment — but it is an overview, a DHS spokesperson told NPR, focusing on the "heightened threat environment during the 2020-2021 election season, including the extent to which the political transition and political polarization are contributing to the mobilization of individuals to commit violence."
  • This raw intelligence — bits and pieces of information scraped from various social media sites — indicates that there will likely be violence when lawmakers certify the presidential election results on Jan. 6.
  • But the DHS and the FBI do not create an intelligence report focused specifically on the upcoming pro-Trump rally.
  • These threat assessments or intelligence bulletins are typically written as a matter of course ahead of high-profile events. It's not clear why this didn't happen.
  • In a letter to the Justice Department, Bowser says "we are mindful" of events in 2020 — likely referencing the June 1 clearing of peaceful protesters in Lafayette Square by Park Police and other federal law enforcement that not answerable to the city.
  • U.S. Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund asks permission from House and Senate security officials to request that the D.C. National Guard be placed on standby in case the protest gets out of control. The Washington Post reports: "House Sergeant at Arms Paul Irving said he wasn't comfortable with the 'optics' of formally declaring an emergency ahead of the demonstration, Sund said. Meanwhile, Senate Sergeant at Arms Michael Stenger suggested that Sund should informally seek out his Guard contacts, asking them to 'lean forward' and be on alert in case Capitol Police needed their help."
  • The FBI Field Office in Norfolk, Va., issues an explicit warning that extremists have plans for violence the next day, as first reported by the Post. It releases its advisory report after FBI analysts find a roster of troubling information including specific threats against members of Congress, an exchange of maps of the tunnel system under the Capitol complex and organizational plans like setting up gathering places in Kentucky, Pennsylvania and South Carolina so extremists can meet to convoy to Washington.
  • The head of the FBI's Washington Field Office, Steven D'Antuono, later says that information is shared with the FBI's "law enforcement partners" through the bureau's Joint Terrorism Task Force. That includes the U.S. Capitol Police, U.S. Park Police, D.C.'s Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) and other agencies.
  • Officials convene a conference call with local law enforcement to discuss the Norfolk warning.
  • Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser announces that the MPD will be the lead law enforcement agency and will coordinate with the Capitol Police, Park Police and Secret Service.
  • The Metropolitan Police Department has jurisdiction on city streets; the U.S. Park Police on the Ellipse, where Trump's rally took place; the U.S. Secret Service in the vicinity of the White House; and the U.S. Capitol Police on the Capitol complex.
  • That day appears to have profoundly influenced the mayor's approach to the Jan. 6 events. In her letter, Bowser describes the difficulty and confusion of policing large crowds while working around other law enforcement personnel without proper coordination and identification.
  • Bowser requests, and receives, a limited force from the D.C. National Guard. The soldiers number 340, though they are unarmed and their job is to help with traffic flow — not law enforcement — which is to be handled by D.C. police.
  • Trump begins to address the crowd at the Ellipse, behind the White House. He falsely claims that "this election was stolen from you, from me, from the country." Trump calls on his supporters at the rally to march on the U.S. Capitol, saying he will walk with them. Instead, he returns to the White House.
  • "We see this huge crush of people coming down Pennsylvania Ave. toward the Capitol," reports NPR's Hannah Allam. "We follow the crowd as it goes up to the Hill, toward the Capitol. There's scaffolding set up for the inauguration already," she adds. "But as far as protection, all we really saw were some mesh barriers, some metal fencing and only a small contingent of Capitol Police. And we watched them being quickly overwhelmed." The FBI says multiple law enforcement agencies receive reports of a suspected pipe bomb at the headquarters of the Republican National Committee. Fifteen minutes later, there are reports of a similar device at the Democratic National Committee headquarters.
  • Mayor Bowser asks Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy for additional Guard forces
  • Capitol Police Chief Sund speaks with the commanding general of the D.C. National Guard Maj. Gen. William Walker by phone and requests immediate assistance.
  • Moving to the Senate terrace, they see protesters smashing the door of the Capitol to gain entry, as Capitol Police inside work to push them back.
  • Capitol Police send an alert that all buildings in the Capitol complex are on lockdown due to "an external security threat located on the West Front of the U.S. Capitol Building. ... [S]tay away from exterior windows and doors. If you are outside, seek cover."
  • The House and Senate abruptly go into recess.
  • On a conference call with Pentagon officials, D.C. Mayor Bowser requests National Guard support and Capitol Police Chief Sund pleads for backup.
  • Trump tweets criticism of Vice President Pence: "Mike Pence didn't have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution, giving States a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify. USA demands the truth!"
  • From inside the House chamber come reports of an armed standoff at the door to the chamber. Police officers have their guns drawn on someone trying to get in.
  • Acting Defense Secretary Miller determines that all available forces of the D.C. National Guard are required to reestablish security of the Capitol complex.
  • Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam tweets that his team is working closely with Mayor Bowser, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to respond to the situation.
  • White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany says on Twitter that the National Guard is on its way at Trump's direction.
  • rump tweets a video downplaying the events of the day, repeating false claims that the election was stolen and sympathizing with his followers, saying: "I know your pain, I know you're hurt. We had an election that was stolen from us. It was a landslide election and everyone knows it, especially the other side. But you have to go home now. We have to have peace. ... You're very special. You've seen what happens. You see the way others are treated that are so bad and so evil. I know how you feel, but go home, and go home in peace."
  • Acting Defense Secretary Miller authorizes the mobilization of up to 6,200 National Guard troops from Maryland, Virginia, New York, New Jersey, Delaware and Pennsylvania, according to the Pentagon.
  • Trump tweets a message to his supporters. "These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly & unfairly treated for so long. Go home with love & in peace. Remember this day forever!"
  • Capitol Police, MPD and the D.C. National Guard establish a perimeter on the west side of the Capitol.
  • The Capitol is declared secure. Members of Congress return to complete the opening and counting of the Electoral College votes.
  • Pence affirms that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have won the Electoral College: "Joseph R. Biden Jr. of the state of Delaware has received for president of the United States, 306 votes. Donald J. Trump of the state of Florida has received 232 votes."
  • The FBI formally warns local law enforcement that armed protests are being planned for all 50 statehouses and the U.S. Capitol. The warning says an unidentified group is calling on others to help it "storm" state, local and federal courthouses, should Trump be removed as president before Inauguration Day.
  • Rep. Tim Ryan, D-Ohio, says two Capitol Police officers have been suspended. One of the suspended officers took a selfie with a rioter. The other put on a MAGA hat "and started directing people around," says Ryan.
  • The U.S. Justice Department says it has received more than 100,000 pieces of digital information in response to its call for tips about those responsible for the Capitol riot. The Justice Department says MPD acted on its intelligence to arrest the Proud Boys' Tarrio before the protest, and federal officials interrupted travel of others who planned to go to D.C.
  • The secretary of the Army announces that as many as 20,000 National Guard troops are expected to be deployed to D.C. for the inauguration. Some will be armed, while others will have access to their weapons but will not carry them.
  • FBI Director Christopher Wray says the bureau has identified more than 200 suspects from the Capitol riots and arrested more than 100 others in connection with the violence. "We know who you are if you're out there — and FBI agents are coming to find you," he warns.
  • U.S. Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz announces his office will begin "a review to examine the role and activity of DOJ and its components in preparing for and responding to the events at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021." Horowitz said his review will coordinate with IG reviews in the departments of Defense, Homeland Security and Interior.
yehbru

US Capitol secured after rioters stormed the halls of Congress to block Biden's win - C... - 0 views

  • The US Capitol is once again secured but a woman is dead after supporters of President Donald Trump breached one of the most iconic American buildings
  • About 90 minutes later, police said demonstrators got into the building and the doors to the House and Senate were being locked. Shortly after, the House floor was evacuated by police. Vice President Mike Pence was also evacuated, where he was to perform his role in the counting of electoral votes.
  • "The D.C. Guard has been mobilized to provide support to federal law enforcement in the District," said Jonathan Hoffman, the chief Pentagon spokesman. "Acting Secretary Miller has been in contact with Congressional leadership, and Secretary McCarthy has been working with the D.C. government. The law enforcement response will be led by the Department of Justice."
  • ...15 more annotations...
  • Multiple officers have been injured with at least one transported to the hospital, multiple sources tell CNN.
  • Smoke grenades were used on the Senate side of the Capitol, as police work to clear the building of rioters. Windows on the west side of the Senate have been broken, and hundreds of officers are amassing on the first floor of the building.
  • The stunning display of insurrection was the first time the US Capitol had been overrun since the British attacked and burned the building in August of 1814, during the War of 1812, according to Samuel Holliday, director of scholarship and operations with the US Capitol Historical Society.
  • The shocking scene was met with less police force than many of the Black Lives Matter protests that rolled across the country in the wake of George Floyd's killing at the hands of Minneapolis police officers last year.
  • Flash bangs could be heard near the steps of the Capitol as smoke filled the air. In some instances officers could be seen deploying pepper spray. Tear gas was deployed, but it's not clear whether by protesters or police, and people wiped tears from their eyes while coughing.
  • Congressional leaders were being evacuated from the Capitol complex just before 5 p.m. ET and were set to be taken to Fort McNair
  • A woman is dead after being shot in the chest on the Capitol grounds, DC police confirmed to CNN. More information on the shooting was not immediately available and a police spokesperson said additional details will come later.
  • The official said DC National Guard was not anticipating to be used to protect federal facilities, and the Trump administration had decided earlier this week that would be the task of civilian law enforcement, the official said.
  • Lawmakers began returning to the Capitol after the building was secured and made it clear that they intended to resume their intended business
  • "Today, a shameful assault was made on our democracy. It was anointed at the highest level of government. It cannot, however, deter us from our responsibility to validate the election of Joe Biden," Pelosi wrote.
  • "We love you. You are very special."
  • "I know your pain, I know you're hurt. We had an election that was stolen from us. It was a landslide election and everyone knows it. Especially the other side. But you have to go home now. We have to have peace."
  • "These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly & unfairly treated for so long. Go home with love & in peace. Remember this day forever!"
  • Federal and local law enforcement responded to reports of possible pipe bombs in multiple locations in Washington, DC, according to a federal law enforcement official. It's unclear if the devices are real or a hoax, but they're being treated as real.
  • The Democratic National Committee was also evacuated after a suspicious package was being investigated nearby, a Democratic source familiar with the matter told CNN.
lucieperloff

Heavy Rains in India and Nepal Kill Dozens - The New York Times - 0 views

  • Unseasonably heavy rainfall has destroyed crops, washed away bridges and killed dozens of people across India and Nepal in a reminder of the devastation caused by a changing climate.
  • across the subcontinent, reaching the Himalayas in Nepal and spreading all the way down to the coastal ravines of India’s southwestern peninsula.
  • India and its neighbors have struggled to square development projects intended to lift millions of people out of poverty with the risks of a changing climate.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • Meteorologists were not expecting the catastrophic rainfall that has deluged India and Nepal in recent days.
  • Torrential rains also soaked southern India, triggering flash floods and landslides in the state of Kerala.
  • This week, officials in Kerala opened overflowing dams, the first time state officials had made such a move since catastrophic flooding killed more than 400 people in 2018.
  • Rice paddy that was ready for harvest was damaged in the rain, causing Nepal’s farmers to despair and prompting fears of a food crisis in one of the world’s poorest countries.
  • “Rainfalls in October were reported in the past, too, but not to this intensity,” said Ajaya Dixit, an expert on climate change vulnerability in Nepal. “Climate change is real, and it is happening.”
criscimagnael

Brazil: Death toll from heavy rain rises - CNN - 0 views

  • Residents in Brazil's northeastern state of Pernambuco were bracing for more days of heavy rain after at least 91 people were killed as downpours triggered floods and landslides, according to the Civil Defense.
  • "Unfortunately, these catastrophes happen," Bolsonaro said during a press conference, saying "similar problems" happened before in other cities affected by heavy floods.
  • "We flew over the affected area, tried to land but, following recommendation from the pilots, decided not to due to inconsistency of the soil," Bolsonaro told reporters.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • Brazil's northeast has been suffering from exceptionally high volumes of rain, officials say. Some areas have registered more rain in a 24-hour period over the weekend than the total volume expected for the month of May.
  • The weekend downpour triggered the fourth major flooding event in five months in Brazil, according to a Reuters report, which highlighted a lack of urban planning in low-income neighborhoods throughout much of the country. Favelas -- slums or shantytowns -- are often erected on hillsides prone to giving way, usually outside major cities.
  • The climate crisis is making destructive extreme weather more common globally.
  • Why landslides occur is more complex, but they often happen during heavy rainfall in areas that have been overly deforested and built upon.
Javier E

Where Does This Leave Democrats? Ezra Klein - 0 views

  • That is roughly what happened Tuesday night. Donald Trump’s victory was not one of the grand landslides of American political history. As I write this, estimates suggest that he is on track for a 1.5-percentage-point margin in the popular vote. If that holds — and it may change as California is counted — it is smaller than Barack Obama’s win in 2008 or 2012, Bush’s in 2004 and Bill Clinton’s in 1992 or 1996. It may prove smaller than Hillary Clinton’s margin in 2016.
  • I find myself thinking about the 2004 election. In my lifetime, until today, that was the most total rejection liberals experienced. In 2000, George W. Bush was this accidental president. He’d lost the popular vote. He’d won the Electoral College after winning Florida by a few hundred votes. But by 2004, the lies and the failures and travesties of his administration were clear. The disaster of the Iraq war was clear. And the result was that Bush went from accidental president to unquestioned victor. He won the popular vote cleanly.
  • by 2004, Americans knew who Bush was and what he had done. They chose him anyway.
  • ...33 more annotations...
  • But it is a huge gain compared with 2020, when Trump lost the popular vote by nearly five points.
  • it matters where the mood of America is moving, and the popular vote tells us more about that than the few hundred thousand voters who swing Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
  • So what’s behind Trump’s gain? One theory is that this is the postpandemic, postinflation, anti-incumbent backlash. We’ve seen it in country after country. Whoever was in power in 2021 and 2022 is getting annihilated in elections.
  • As Matthew Yglesias wrote, if you look at this internationally, the interesting question might be why Trump didn’t win in a landslide. If Nikki Haley had been running, she probably would have.
  • But Trump didn’t just win this election. Democrats lost it. President Biden, at 81 years old and hovering beneath 40 percent favorability in most polls, should never have run for re-election. And for months and months and months, the leaders of the Democratic Party, with very few exceptions — shout-out to Dean Phillips — refused to say that.
  • It ignored its own voters, to say nothing of the voters it was going to need to win in 2024.
  • I was one of the people arguing, beginning back in February, for some kind of competitive process: a mini-primary leading to an open convention.
  • The hour was late. The party was scared. It had wasted so much time. And in wasting that time, it had refused to face up to a core problem: Biden wasn’t just too old. Voters were unhappy with his administration, with the wars abroad and the prices at home and the absence of leadership that made them confident that the people in charge knew what they were doing.
  • The line in the Democratic Party was and is that Biden’s record ranks him as perhaps the greatest president since Franklin D. Roosevelt
  • But Americans did not and do not believe that — and Democrats never reckoned with that fact or came up with an answer to it. That, more than any other reason, is why Kamala Harris lost.
  • Harris was dealt a bad hand. She had no time to set up her own campaign. No time to work out its themes or policies or personnel. And she was running, inevitably, as the champion of an administration people were angry at. She could not separate herself from Biden without being accused of disloyalty.
  • I think she ran a strong campaign, given how little time and how little room she had to build it.
  • she faced a very difficult problem: A popular incumbent can run on her record. A challenger can promise change. Harris could do neither.
  • She ultimately ran as the guardian of the institutions. A candidate with Liz Cheney on one side and Liz Warren on the other. But she took for granted the worth and health of those institutions. Was the endorsement of the Cheneys — and the enthusiasm with which it was embraced — a sign of the Democrats’ big tent or a sign of its internal confusion?
  • And Harris was burdened by all that had come before her. The Democratic Party had spent years kicking people out of its tent.
  • If you wanted to beat Trump, you wanted to win over people like Rogan.Liberals got so angry at me for that, I was briefly a trending topic. Rogan was a transphobe, an Islamophobe, a sexist, a racist, the kind of person you wanted to marginalize, not chat with.
  • liberals don’t get to choose who is marginalized. Democrats should have been going on “Rogan” regularly. They should have been prioritizing it
  • On YouTube alone, Rogan’s interview with Trump was viewed some 46 million times. Democrats are just going to abandon that? In an election where they think that if the other side wins, it means fascism?
  • now we’re here. Trump got the win in 2024 he could see only glimmers of in 2020.
  • Emotionally, there are two ways Democrats can respond: contempt or curiosity. I’ve seen plenty of contempt already
  • There’ll be a desire to retreat, to hunker down, to draw the boundaries of who is decent and who is deplorable ever more clearly.
  • Trump seems to have made huge gains among voters making less than $50,000 a year. The Democratic Party is losing voters who lie at the core of its conception of itself.
  • Democrats have to go places they have not been going and take seriously opinions they have not been taking seriously
  • When voters are this unhappy with the way you’ve wielded power, you have to want to know why. That work has begun in the Democratic Party — you saw it in the Biden administration’s eventual pivot to border enforcement — but it was clearly too little and too late.
  • But Bush’s win in 2004 was not the beginning of a Republican realignment. It was the end of the Republican Party as we knew it.
  • To win again, they would need to become more like what had defeated them.
  • There’s another part of the 2004 comparison that I’ve been thinking about. Immediately after that election, Democrats became obsessed with winning back the heartland
  • ecause what liberals believed about Bush was true. His administration was a disaster, and within a few years, nearly the whole country would agree
  • the Bush administration’s overreaches, failures and scandals left the reputation of G.O.P. elites so absolutely smashed that the stage was set for Trump’s eventual takeover of the party.
  • Trump is surrounded now by people who are more relentlessly focused on carrying out his will and their own. Republicans have the Senate and the Supreme Court and may well win the House.
  • Maybe JD Vance and Elon Musk and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. bring judiciousness. I think it is as or more likely that they egg Trump into ideological overreach. And my God, the corruption we are about to see. So is this the beginning of the Trump realignment, or will this end with Trump’s name and reputation as tattered as that of the Bush dynasty he destroyed?
  • But Democrats need to admit that they are at the end of their own cycle of politics. The Obama coalition is over. It is defeated and exhausted. What comes next needs to be new. That means going to new places and being open to new voices. A politics right for the next era will not be a politics designed to win the last election
  • Finding what is next, amid the pain of what is about to come, is going to require a lot of conflict and a lot of curiosity.
Javier E

A Nation Divided Against Itself - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • a new study on public opinion on Wednesday and found that: “Americans often say they want their representatives in Congress to put the country’s needs over local concerns. But four novel experiments suggest that the public does just the opposite.”
  • “Respondents rated a member of Congress far more favorably if the lawmaker put the interests of his or her district or state over those of the country as a whole.”
  • we as a country continue to self-sort into ideological islands.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • “In 1976, only about a quarter of America’s voters lived in a county a presidential candidate won by a landslide margin. By 2004, it was nearly half.”
  • we are becoming less blindly religious and more blindly militaristic.
  • the percentage of Americans saying that they have quite a lot or a great deal of confidence in “the church or organized religion” went from 68 percent in 1975 to 48 percent in 2013. Over the same period, those expressing the same amount of confidence in the military has gone from 58 percent to 76 percent.
katyshannon

Philippines' Typhoon Koppu brings severe floods - BBC News - 0 views

  • Heavy rain and floods are affecting dozens of villages, after Typhoon Koppu swept through the northern Philippines.The slow-moving weather system has killed at least two people and forced tens of thousands from their homes.
  • Koppu has now been downgraded to a severe tropical storm by the Japanese Meteorological Agency, which is responsible for naming and tracking it.However, the Philippines' own weather agency, which calls the weather system Lando, is still characterising it as a typhoon.
  • Despite weakening, Koppu is expected to keep dumping rain on the country for a considerable time to come. Some forecasts suggest it may not be until Wednesday that it moves past the Philippines and on to Taiwan.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • Unlike previous tropical cyclones, the threat from typhoon Koppu is not so much from the wind but from the massive amount of rain. More than a metre of rainfall is forecast in just a few days in Luzon province. That is double what London gets in an entire year. In the south of Luzon, it has brought severe flooding with whole villages under water. But perhaps more dangerous are massive landslides. The fear is that with the ground heavy and saturated with water, whole hillsides could collapse.
  • Typhoon Koppu made landfall near the town of Casiguran on the main island of Luzon on Sunday morning, bringing winds of close to 200km/h (124mph) and cutting power to vast areas.
  • A teenager was killed by a fallen tree in Manila which also injured four others. A concrete wall also collapsed in the town of Subic, northwest of Manila, killing a 62-year-old woman, officials said.
  • dawn on Monday, wind speeds were down to 150 km/h (93 mph) in the northern town of Santiago, according to the state weather service.But floodwaters are preventing even military vehicles reaching many of the worst-hit villages, and rescuers report a shortage of boats."We haven't reached many areas. About 60% to 70% of our town is flooded, some as deep as three metres," said Henry Velarde, vice mayor of Jaen, a town in Nueva Ecija province."There are about 20,000 residents in isolated areas that need food and water."
  •  
    Philippines' Typhoon Koppu flooding endangers thousands
lindsayweber1

The changing face of the Republican Party | History Today - 0 views

  • Nixon in the 1970s and Ronald Reagan in the 1980s won landslides that swept the country. Yet the scope of their victories disguised the emergence of new regional biases. As the Democrats took a more leftward turn from the mid-20th century, so the Republicans shifted to the right and the electoral map flipped. The GOP is now a nearly all-white party with a political base in the South and West, while the Democrats have taken over the 19th-century Republican strongholds of the North. 
rachelramirez

If The Media Investigated Hillary Like They Did Watergate, We Wouldn't Need WikiLeaks - 0 views

  • If The Media Investigated Hillary Like They Did Watergate, We Wouldn’t Need WikiLeaks
  • By September, though, the Post and New York Times were fully on board with the investigation, and the administration had gone into full cover-up mode. Even though the FBI had confirmed that the administration had conducted a political sabotage conspiracy, it was not enough to keep Nixon from being reelected in a landslide in November.
  • the “two lions of journalism” have little interest in covering the avalanche of revelations pouring forth against the Clinton campaign. Instead, both publications are working around the clock to bring the Democratic nominee to power.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • They’re going to keep digging dirt on Trump, and they’re going to continue to minimize, to the best of their ability, a story that may well have historic and damaging implications, both for the nation as a whole and our entire political system moving forward.
  • it is likely to forever damage the reputation of mainstream American journalism, and it most certainly will continue to encourage the American public to look elsewhere for the unvarnished truth.
  • There is no doubt that, whatever his reasons, if Putin is involved he is not acting on behalf of or for the benefit of the American people.
  • One thing is certain: reporters didn’t always adhere to standard journalism protocols when attempting to get to the bottom of this vital story.
  • It was also revealed that 18.5 minutes of tape had been erased. The furor that erupted from all corners, including the media, was enormous. It was considered one of the most reprehensible single acts in the history of American politics.
1 - 20 of 78 Next › Last »
Showing 20 items per page