Day: September 14, 2023

International rights activists tell VOA that their counterparts in Iran are preparing to mark Saturday’s first anniversary of the death in police custody of women’s rights icon Mahsa Amini with new protests in defiance of Tehran’s preemptive crackdown on peaceful dissent.

Amini was a 22-year-old Iranian Kurdish woman who was arrested by the Islamist nation’s morality police in Tehran last September for allegedly not wearing her hijab in accordance with Islamist rules. She died in custody three days later.

Her death, following what witnesses said was a physical assault perpetrated by authorities, triggered months of mostly peaceful nationwide protests that posed the greatest challenge yet to the 44-year rule of Iran’s ruling Shiite clerics.

“Iranian women have told us that they will continue the fight despite the government’s futile attempts to silence them,” said Skylar Thompson, global advocacy director for U.S.-based nonprofit group Human Rights Activists in Iran.

“I don’t believe the Iranian government’s preemptive arrests, fueled by a fear of Iranians returning to the street, are going to preempt renewed protests,” added Thompson while speaking on VOA’s Flashpoint Iran podcast this week.

Iran’s Islamist rulers suppressed the protests that began in September 2022 with a violent crackdown that the U.N. special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Iran said killed at least 520 people including 71 children. Authorities acknowledged incarcerating 22,000 others.

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi told U.S. network NBC in an interview that aired Tuesday that Iranians would pay another “big cost” if they tried to revive nationwide protests in the coming days.

Masih Alinejad, TV host of VOA Persian’s Tablet program, told last week’s Flashpoint Iran podcast that she has received videos from audience members in Iran showing women distributing pamphlets that urge people to gather publicly for the Mahsa Amini anniversary.

“I see that Iranians are ready and telling each other: ‘Let’s get back to the street. We have to end this regime, otherwise the regime will end each of us,’” Alinejad said.

Amini’s father, Amjad, who lives in her hometown of Saqqez in northwestern Iran’s Kurdistan province, told VOA Persian in an interview published September 6 that his family was organizing a ceremony to honor his daughter’s memory.

Three days later, Amjad Amini posted a photo of her on Instagram and said there would be a traditional religious ceremony at her grave in Saqqez. He also urged people to eschew violence.

Several news sources deemed credible by VOA Persian reported Tuesday that intelligence agents in Saqqez summoned Amjad Amini for questioning and were pressuring his family to keep quiet.

Asked by a VOA Persian journalist to respond to those reports, U.S. State Department spokesman Matthew Miller told a Thursday briefing that U.S. officials have information indicating Amjad Amini has been summoned for questioning four times in the past two weeks.

“The regime cannot intimidate the people of Iran into silence,” Miller said. “The world is watching its treatment of these families and the ongoing intimidation of journalists and abuse of peaceful protesters, and we will continue to watch it closely and take whatever steps are appropriate to respond to it.”

Relatives of other people killed in last year’s protests have told VOA Persian that intelligence agencies have warned them to avoid public places on Saturday’s anniversary.

An Independent International Fact-Finding Mission authorized by the United Nations Human Rights Council to investigate Iran’s suppression of the protests that began last September issued a statement Thursday saying that one year later, Iranian government harassment of women and girls is on the rise.

“Authorities are exacerbating punitive measures against those exercising their fundamental rights, including freedom of religion, freedom of expression and peaceful assembly,” the fact-finding mission said.

One protester wounded in last year’s crackdown made a bold prediction to VOA Persian about the ability of Iranians to overcome authorities’ latest efforts to deter new protests.

Kian Derakhshan was chanting protest slogans on the first day of last year’s protests in Saqqez when security forces opened fire and peppered him with bullets, leaving him needing multiple surgeries. In a September 7 interview from exile in Iraq, he said: “I am sure we will win and establish freedom and democracy in Iran.”

U.S.-based exiled Iranian crown prince Reza Pahlavi told VOA Persian while attending a Wednesday event in Washington that he sees Iranians coming together around a national goal that is not specific to one ethnic group or region of the country.

“If you look carefully, you will see that everyone in Iran welcomed the ‘Woman Life Freedom’ movement,” Pahlavi said. “Men in universities chanted, ‘Woman Life Freedom,’ and female students chanted, ‘Man Homeland Prosperity.’ That means they have unity.”

This story was a collaboration with VOA’s Persian Service. Guita Aryan, Manouchehr Pordel, Rozita Irandoost contributed to this report.

The Dominican Republic’s president announced Thursday that he would close all borders with neighboring Haiti beginning Friday morning over a feud about a Haitian canal that would use water from a river along their shared border.

Air, sea and land borders are set to close at 6 a.m. local time on Friday and will remain blocked “until necessary,” President Luis Abinader said. The Dominican Republic also deployed 20 armored vehicles to a military camp on the border.

“Unfortunately, they left us no alternative but to take drastic measures,” Abinader told reporters during a news conference on Thursday. “We have been prepared for weeks, not only for this situation but also for a possible peace force in Haiti.”

The decision came after Haitian and Dominican officials held talks on Wednesday and Thursday to try to come to a resolution. Those talks are set to continue.

The dispute is over the excavation of a canal by a farming group in Haiti that would use water from the Massacre River, which runs along the border that the two countries share.

The Dominican president has accused Haiti of trying to divert water from the shared river and said it would impact Dominican farmers and the environment.

Haiti’s government responded, saying it has the right to use the shared river, in line with a 1929 treaty.

The government said it “will take all necessary measures to protect the interests of the Haitian people.”

Work on the canal had been paused since the assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moise in July 2021, but construction has since resumed, according to the International Crisis Group.

The Dominican Republic last fully closed its border with Haiti following Moise’s assassination.

Relations between the two countries, which share the island of Hispaniola, have grown increasingly fraught in recent years, including over border security and the treatment of Haitian migrants and asylum-seekers, many of whom are fleeing deadly gang violence in Haiti.

Since the impending closure was announced, hundreds of Haitians have returned from the Dominican Republic.

In a statement, the U.S. embassy in Haiti said American citizens looking to cross the border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic will have to make other plans. The U.S. government discourages American citizens from traveling to Haiti due to safety risks.

Neither the Dominican Republic nor Haiti’s Washington embassies immediately replied to VOA’s emails requesting comment.

Some information in this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters. 

Ukraine on Thursday pressed on with a gruelling campaign to regain ground near the shattered Russian-held city of Bakhmut and inflicted heavy casualties on Russian forces on the southern front, senior military officials said.

The Ukrainian accounts outlined fierce fighting in many parts of the eastern front, but no new breakthroughs in the three-month old counter offensive.

Ukrainian advances have been much slower than gains they recorded last year in recovering territory in the northeast, as they proceed methodically in the face of deep Russian entrenchments.

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and other officials have dismissed Western critics who say the three-month offensive is too slow and hampered by strategic errors, like placing troops in the wrong places.

Russia’s Defence Ministry said its forces had repelled eight attacks in the east in hotly contested areas south of Bakhmut.

Ukraine’s Deputy Defence Minister, Hanna Maliar, said Kyiv’s forces were making gains around three villages south of Bakhmut – including Andriivka.

“Progress has been made there,” she said on the Telegram messaging app.

Maliar initially reported that Andriivka had been brought under Ukrainian control, but later said that was inaccurate as fighting was still raging around the village.

Russian forces captured Bakhmut in May after months of battles left the city in ruins. Ukrainian forces have since been chipping away at Russian positions, notably south of Bakhmut.

Maliar made no mention of the towns of Avdiivka and Maryinka, further south in Donetsk region, a day after she said both were being subjected to heavy Russian attacks.

On the southern front, where Ukrainian forces have focused on capturing clusters of villages in a drive towards the Sea of Azov, Maliar said Russian troops had sustained “significant losses” in attacks on key towns.

The Russian casualties, Maliar said, had “significantly reduced their ability to defend themselves”.

The drive southward is intended to split a land bridge created by Russian forces between the Crimean peninsula, annexed by Moscow in 2014, and areas they hold in the east, expanded by their full-scale invasion launched in February 2022.

Oleksander Shtupun, spokesperson for troops on the southern front, underscored the heavy extent of Russian losses in Moscow’s attempts to recover lost positions.

“The enemy, as a result of attempts to recapture at least some of the lost positions in the Tavria (south) direction in the last two days has lost 15 tanks and 12 armoured vehicles,” he said on national television.

He put Russian personnel losses at 665 over the two days.

Reuters could not verify any of the battlefield reports.

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Commercial casinos in the U.S. had their best July ever this year, winning nearly $5.4 billion from gamblers, according to figures released Thursday by a national gambling industry group.

The American Gaming Association said the casinos’ winnings were up nearly 6% from July 2022.

The association also said the casinos remain on pace to have their best year ever in 2023, with winnings from in-person casino games, sports betting and internet gambling at nearly $38 billion over the first seven months of this year, 11% ahead of what they won during the same period in 2022.

The association, the national trade group for the gambling industry, also revealed that revenue from traditional in-person casino games in July was $4.4 billion, a monthly record. It said those figures were aided by seasonal travel trends and the addition of several new physical casino properties around the country, including in Illinois, Pennsylvania and Virginia.

Sports betting generated nearly $498 million in revenue in July, up more than 28% from a year ago. Internet gambling in Connecticut, Delaware, Michigan, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and West Virginia generated $481.5 million, up nearly 23% from a year ago.

The group said 21 of 31 commercial gambling states that were operational a year ago and have complete data available posted year-over-year revenue growth in July.

Only five states reported their casinos won less over the first seven months of this year than they did a year earlier: Florida (-0.8%); Indiana (-0.5%); Iowa (-0.1%); Louisiana (-0.1%), and Mississippi (-3.8%).

The figures do not include money won at tribal-run casinos, which report their revenue separately.

Combined revenue from online sports betting and internet gambling increased 25.2% year-over-year in July. The rate of revenue growth from land-based casinos, which includes money won from gamblers at slot machines, table games and retail sports betting, remained steady at 2.5% in both June and July. It had been flat for the three months before then.

Through July, year-to-date commercial sports betting revenue reached $5.46 billion, exceeding the same period in the previous year by more than 63%.

Over that same period, internet gambling revenue was $3.45 billion, up 22.6% from a year earlier.

Volodymyr Zelenskiy to meet Joe Biden next week at White House; Cuba envoy ‘has nothing against’ Cubans who legally fight for Russia

• See all our Ukraine coverage

Cuba is not against the legal participation of its citizens in Russia’s war in Ukraine, the Russian state-run RIA news agency reported on Thursday, citing the Cuban envoy to Moscow. Last week, Cuban authorities said they had arrested 17 people over a human trafficking ring that allegedly had lured young Cuban men to serve in the Russian military. The Cuban ambassador to Moscow, Julio Antonio Garmendia Pena said: “We have nothing against Cubans who just want to sign a contract and legally take part with the Russian army in this operation. But we are against illegality and these operations that have nothing to do with the legal field,” RIA quoted the ambassador as saying.

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy is expected to meet Joe Biden in Washington next week. His visit comes as Congress is debating providing as much as $21bn in military and humanitarian aid for Ukraine as it fights the Russian invasion. Zelenskiy is expected to be in the US to attend the United Nations general assembly.

Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un gifted each other rifles when they met in far eastern Russia, the Kremlin said on Thursday, and confirmed the isolated Russian leader would visit North Korea though no further details have been revealed. The Russian president, who has sought to strengthen alliances with other hardline leaders, met Kim on Wednesday amid speculation they would agree on an arms deal to bolster Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Britain’s most senior military officer, Sir Tony Radakin, said that Ukraine “continues to hold the initiative, it is pushing Russia back” in a short assessment of the current state of the fighting.

Russia said it is expelling two US diplomats accused of working with a Russian national who is accused of collaborating with a foreign state. The US said the move was unprovoked and wholly without merit. Separately, Slovakia has expelled a diplomat based in Russia’s embassy, the Slovak foreign ministry said on its website on Thursday. The ministry said: “The reason is his activities, which were in direct violation of the Vienna convention on diplomatic relations.”

South Korea has expressed “deep concern and regret” over a meeting between the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, and the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, which apparently focused on expanding military cooperation.

Alexander Lukashenko left Belarus on Thursday for an official visit to Russia, according to his press service. Talks with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, are scheduled for Friday.

Satellite images appear to show the dismantling of a Wagner militia base south-east of the Belarus capital, Minsk. The images of activity in recent weeks showed tents being taken down at the Tsel military base in Mogilev region, and may indicate the winding down of the Russian mercenary company’s presence in the country after a brief mutiny inside Russia.

Bulgaria decided on Thursday not to extend a ban on Ukrainian grain imports in five eastern EU nations that is set to expire this week, AFP reported. Ukraine’s foreign ministry reportedly said that any decision by European states to extend import restrictions on Ukrainian food from 15 September would be illegal and harm common economic interests.

Ukraine’s military said on Thursday it had damaged two Russian patrol ships in the Black Sea in a morning attack. Ukraine also claimed to have destroyed a Russian air defence system near the town of Yevpatoriya in occupied Crimea in a drone and missile attack which was conducted by the Security Service of Ukraine and the navy on Thursday morning.

A six-year-old boy was reportedly killed and other people injured by Russian shelling in the village of Novodmytrivka, which is located in Kherson region.

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A first-ever simultaneous strike at the Detroit Three carmakers by the United Auto Workers grew all but certain on Thursday with little progress reported in talks hours before a contract deadline expires.

The union – which represents 146,000 U.S. auto workers – is asking for 40% pay raises through September 2027 and major improvements in benefits as part of what it calls “audacious” demands.

The UAW has outlined plans for a series of strikes targeting individual, undisclosed U.S. auto plants if agreements are not reached by 11:59 pm ET Thursday, rather than a full walkout. The union plans to disclose the initial plants during a 10 p.m. ET event.

Ford Motor (F.N) CEO Jim Farley told CNN the proposal to hike wages by 40% would “put us out of business.” He said there were no talks going on, and that the automaker has received no counteroffer to its plan to offer 20% pay hikes.

U.S. President Joe Biden on Thursday spoke with UAW President Shawn Fain and leaders of the car companies to discuss the status of negotiations, the White House said.

Just 10 days ago, Biden had expressed optimism that a strike could be averted, saying: “I’m not worried about a strike … I don’t think it’s going to happen.”

General Motors (GM.N) earlier said it hiked its contract offer to a 20% wage hike for U.S. autoworkers over four and a half years – including 10% in the first year – to avoid a strike that is set to begin at midnight if no deal is reached.

GM CEO Mary Barra told employees the company still hoped to reach a deal: “Remember: we had a strike in 2019 and nobody won.” GM reported a $3.6 billion pre-tax loss in 2019 after the 42-day walkout.

The third Detroit automaker, Chrysler parent Stellantis (STLAM.MI), has offered pay hikes of 17.5%, the union has said.

Coordinated strikes would represent arguably the most ambitious U.S. labor action in decades and could impact U.S. economic growth, depending on how long they last.

The UAW’s demands include restoring defined benefit pensions for all workers, 32-hour work weeks and additional cost-of-living hikes, as well as job security guarantees and an end to the use of temporary workers.

Ford’s Farley said if the UAW proposal had already been in effect the company would have lost about $15 billion from 2019-2022 instead of earning about $30 billion and “gone bankrupt by now.”

He criticized the lack of talks Thursday. “Nothing is going on,” he told CNBC.

The UAW responded to the comments on social media saying Farley “made $21 million last year.”

The UAW’s Fain said Wednesday a strike was likely as automakers rejected the pension, 32-hour work week and other benefit improvements sought. He also criticized proposed changes to profit sharing that would cut payments to workers.

UAW organizing director Brian O. Shepherd said in an online event Thursday that the strike strategy is to give “negotiators maximum flexibility” to get autoworkers “the contract they deserve.” He added a full walkout “is still on the table.”

Fain has said the pay raises offered by the Detroit Three to auto workers were inadequate even as automakers said the union had yet to formally respond to their latest, more generous offers.

“The clear winner in this Game of Thrones Battle between the UAW vs. GM/Ford is Tesla,” said Wedbush analyst Daniel Ives. The Detroit automakers could face higher costs and complexity in the future that Tesla and other non-union automakers will not face as they expand electric vehicle production, he said.

The U.S. auto sector, including parts manufacturers, employs almost 1 million people, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Biden administration officials are discussing emergency aid to protect smaller firms that supply U.S. auto manufacturers, according to a source with knowledge of the matter. The White House declined to comment.

Fain outlined a strategy to “create confusion” with a series of work stoppages targeting individual U.S. plants if no deal is reached.

Stopping work at a key engine or transmission plant, for example, could have a cascading effect by depriving other factories of parts they need to produce vehicles. Another option would be to strike at profitable pickup truck or SUV assembly plants.

Fain said it was still possible that at a later date all of the auto workers could strike.

A full strike would hit earnings at each affected automaker by about $400 million to $500 million per week assuming all production was lost, Deutsche Bank has estimated.

Some losses could be recouped by boosting production schedules after a strike, but that possibility fades as a strike extends to weeks or months. A UAW strike would not affect European and Asian carmakers like Toyota, Honda and Mercedes, whose U.S. plant workers are not represented by the union.

The UAW said it was planning a rally in Detroit on Friday that will include Fain, Senator Bernie Sanders and other members of Congress, coinciding with a first of day of expected walkouts.

Chief executives from a wide array of U.S. companies met White House Chief of Staff Jeff Zients on Thursday to discuss refugee resettlement and sponsorship programs as well as ways to help refugees get jobs and access to transport, the White House said.

The CEOs attending included Alphabet’s (GOOGL.O) Sundar Pichai, Walmart’s (WMT.N) Doug McMillon, Pfizer’s (PFE.N) Albert Bourla, HP’s (HPE.N) Enrique Lores and others. They are part of a council of leaders affiliated with Welcome.US, a group dedicated to helping support refugees in the United States.

They were meeting with Zients and other White House officials “to discuss specific ways we can continue to work together to support safe, orderly pathways for people in need of safety to come to the United States, including through refugee resettlement and new, expanded humanitarian sponsorship programs,” a White House official told Reuters ahead of the meeting.

Gap (GPS.N) CEO Richard Dickson, Accenture (ACN.F) CEO Julie Sweet, Lyft Inc (LYFT.O) CEO David Risher, Chobani (CHO.O) CEO Hamdi Ulukaya, and T-Mobile (TMUS.O) CEO Mike Sievert also attended, along with representatives from Airbnb (ABNB.O), Goldman Sachs (GS.N), Meta (META.O) and others.

The White House said after the meeting that the officials and executives discussed long-term needs of refugees but also solutions to immediate ones, including providing credits for ride-share services and money for public transportation, increasing offers of pro bono legal services, and helping people eligible to work to get jobs.

“Today’s meeting highlights the importance of public-private partnerships in building durable and scalable capacity to better respond to the global displacement crisis,” the White House said in a statement.

New York Governor Kathy Hochul met Zients and other senior administration officials last month to discuss an influx of migrants in New York City that has strained its resources.

Republicans have hammered Biden, a Democrat, for his policies on immigration, and the issue is likely to feature prominently in the 2024 presidential campaign, when Biden, who is running for re-election, is likely to face former President Donald Trump, the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination and an immigration hardliner.

Biden sought at the beginning of his administration to recast the U.S. immigration system, but appetite in Congress for comprehensive reform legislation has been low.

The White House, which says it wants to partner with the private sector to build a humane immigration system, worked with Welcome.US to help Afghan refugees coming to the United States after Biden pulled U.S. troops out of Afghanistan in 2021.

Welcome.US and its CEO Council have worked with the administration to “implement the largest expansion of humanitarian sponsorship pathways to safety in the United States in recent history,” a representative for the group said.

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Sen. Willard Mitt Romney is retiring from politics due to ill health.

The voters got sick of him.

Actually I wanted to start this column with the traditional, “And so, farewell, Mitt Romney….”

But the reality is, the odds are great that “Pierre Delecto” (for that was indeed his Twitter nom de plume) is not going anywhere, at least not for a while.

You know damn well Romney still fantasizes about becoming president. And believe it or not, there are a bunch of political has-beens and never-weres who are searching desperately for a doomed candidate to run for president under the “No Labels” label.

Romney and Joe Manchin may end up flipping a coin to see who gets to be the Jill Stein of 2024.

But when it comes to bust-out candidates for president, who better than the current senator from Utah and former governor of Massachusetts, who has already failed twice, in 2008 and 2012.

Mitt made his announcement with a videotaped message saying that it was “time for a new generation.”

Then, in true Mittens fashion, excerpts were leaked from a new biography in which he denounced two of his Republican colleagues in the Senate – Josh Hawley and J.D. Vance.

Hawley is 43 years old. Vance is 39. So much for that new generation.

Mitt is often described as a RINO – a Republican in Name Only. I don’t think he even rises to that sad level. He’s a charter member of the GOP’s “Useful Idiot” wing, meaning useful to the Democrats, especially when he attacks another Republican.

But No Labels isn’t the right name for Mitt’s new party. How about “No Principles?”

Remember when he bragged that he was “severely conservative?” Or when he told his landscaper in Belmont to stop hiring illegal aliens – “I’m running for president for Pete’s sake.”

So it was totally in character that Mittens would include in his announcement a blast at Donald Trump. He truly detests the former president, mainly, I think, because they are the same age. Both were born in 1946, Mitt on March 12 and Trump on June 14.

And yet Trump is the one who became president – on his first try.

A French leader once said that the Germans are either at your throat or at your feet. Trump could say the same of Mitt Romney. In 2012, Trump made him fly to Las Vegas.

“He was begging for my endorsement,” Trump recalled. “I could have said, ‘Mitt, drop to your knees.’ He would have dropped to his knees.”

Trump said this in 2016, when Mitt was denouncing him – he was at Trump’s throat, you might say. Then Trump won and Mitt flew to New York to beg – beg! – for a job in the new administration. At Trump’s feet, as it were.

Trump gave him the back of his hand, so Mittens decided to move to Utah and run for the Senate. You know, just like he moved back to Massachusetts in 2002 to run for governor.

After one term as governor, he got bored and decided not to run for a second term. Now after one term in the Senate, he gets bored and decides not to run for a second term.

Do you begin to detect a pattern here?

He quit as governor because he didn’t think it was improving his prospects for winning the presidency. I would suggest the same m.o. is in play here.

It’s all about Mitt’s father, George Romney, the late governor of Michigan, one of Mitt’s many home states. George ran for president in 1968, but his campaign imploded after he said on television that during a visit to Vietnam, he’d been “brainwashed.”

(Comedian Mort Sahl commented that given George Romney’s towering intellect, a brain wash seemed like overkill, and that a “light rinse” would have gotten the job done just as well.)

Mitt has always relished the fake accolades of state-run media. I’m sure that since his announcement, he’s been eagerly searching the Internet for any positive reviews.

That was the whole rationale behind his “Pierre Delecto” alias on Twitter – he wanted to give himself big wet slobbering kisses on social media!

It was pitiful, but this pathetic craving for approval is a blind spot for all RINO’s.

Remember John McCain – when he was running as the RINO candidate in 2008, state-run media swooned, talking about his bus, the Straight Talk Express.

Once McCain won the nomination against Obama, the Democrats’ amen chorus turned on him. The comrades began calling McCain’s bus the Strait Jacket Express.

Mitt learned nothing from this. The fellow travelers loved him when he was running against real Republicans in the primary, but then they turned on him like a pack of rabid jackals!

He gave women cancer! He was a homophobe in prep school!

And worst of all, he put his dog in a crate on the top of his car and drove the beast to Michigan. One morning during the Republican convention in 2012, the New York Times ran not one, but two columns on the same op-ed page denouncing his treatment of poor Seamus, the Irish setter.

Remember, Romney didn’t kill Seamus. And he was running against a guy who’d admitted eating dogs as a boy in Indonesia.

Then during the debates, the plus-sized moderator Candy Crowley teamed up with Obama to destroy Romney. And Mitt’s response was the same as when a drunk Ted Kennedy lunged for his throat in the 1994 Senate debate at Faneuil Hall.

Mitt dropped to the floor and went into the fetal position and began whimpering for his mommy.

Trump described him perfectly back in 2016:

“Mitt is indeed a choke artist. He choked like I’ve never seen anyone choke.”

But now Mitt is retiring from politics – again. He’s denouncing the lack of civility and bipartisanship – again. He’s ripping Trump – again.

I can see the editorials in state-run media now. He’s an elder statesman. He’s grown, evolved. Why can’t we get Republicans like Mitt Romney anymore?

There are five Sunday-morning political chat shows on TV that nobody watches anymore. Trump’s already booked for Meet the Press this week. That leaves four for Mitt to beg to go on. The over-under on how many he makes is three.

I’ll take the over.

(Buy Howie’s new book “Paper Boy: Read All About It!” at howiecarrshow.com or amazon.com.)