Day: September 16, 2023

Study: The Indo-European language family was born south of …  Big Think

President Ilham Aliyev attends award ceremony for Chairman of People’s Council of Parliament of Turkmenistan …  Trend News Agency

The Federal Reserve is unlikely to raise interest rates at its Oct. 31-Nov. 1 meeting, Goldman Sachs strategists wrote on Saturday, while also forecasting the U.S. central bank would lift its economic growth projections when policymakers gather next week.

“On November, we think that further labor market rebalancing, better news on inflation, and the likely upcoming Q4 growth pothole will convince more participants that the FOMC (Federal Open Market Committee) can forgo a final hike this year, as we think it ultimately will,” the investment bank’s strategists wrote in a report.

Goldman’s strategists, however, wrote that they expect the Fed’s “dot plot,” which reflects policymakers’ interest rate projections and will be updated on Wednesday, to show “a narrow 10-9 majority still penciling in one more hike, if only to preserve flexibility for now,” they wrote.

As market participants try to gauge the Fed’s monetary policy trajectory, some big investors, including J.P. Morgan Asset Management and Janus Henderson Investors, have said the central bank is likely done hiking rates, following the most aggressive monetary policy tightening cycle in decades.

Futures tied to the Fed’s benchmark overnight interest rate were factoring in a 98% chance that the central bank would leave rates unchanged at the end of its Sept. 19-20 meeting, according to CME Group’s FedWatch Tool. The odds for the policy rate, which is currently in the 5.25%-5.50% range, staying unchanged at the Oct. 31-Nov. 1 gathering stood at roughly 72% on Saturday, CME’s data showed.

Next year could see “gradual” rate cuts if inflation continues to cool, Goldman’s strategists added.

They also said the central bank could raise its estimates for 2023 U.S. growth to 2.1% from 1%, when policymakers update their economic projections on Wednesday, reflecting the economy’s resilience.

Goldman’s strategists also expect the Fed to lower the estimate for the 2023 unemployment rate by two-tenths of a percentage point to 3.9%, and reduce the estimate for core inflation by four-tenths of a percentage point to 3.5%.

On his first trip to Cuba during his third term in office, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva called the embargo imposed by the United States on the island “illegal” and denounced the island’s inclusion on the list of state sponsors of terrorism.

Former U.S. President Donald Trump included the island nation on the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism, and though the Biden administration has reversed other Trump-era measures, it has so far not removed Cuba from the list.

“Cuba has been an advocate of fairer global governance. And to this day it is the victim of an illegal economic embargo,” Lula said in a speech opening the G77 Summit of developing nations in the capital, Havana. “Brazil is against any unilateral coercive measure. We reject Cuba’s inclusion on the list of states sponsoring terrorism.”

The comments were made just hours before Lula left for New York, where he will attend the United Nations General Assembly and have bilateral talks with Biden.

Earlier, Cuba expressed concerns over the label and Washington’s decades-old Cold War-era economic embargo against the island governed by the Communist Party of Cuba. The 27-member European Union, the country’s top trade partner, has also repeatedly rejected trade embargo. Cuba and critics of the economic sanctions say the embargo prevents and hampers access to food, medicine and other critical development supplies.

The U.S. State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Lula’s remarks.

The Biden administration has previously said U.S. law includes exemptions and authorizations for exports of food, medicine, and other humanitarian goods to the island.

During the Assembly, Brazil is expected to return to its historic position of condemning the embargo on Cuba, one of the motions that is usually voted on every year at the United Nations and passes overwhelmingly. In 2019, during the first year of right-wing Jair Bolsonaro’s administration, Brazil voted against the motion along with the United States and Israel.

Lula also used his speech to call once again for the investment promised by developed countries to reduce the impact of climate change, as established in the Paris Agreement, but which has not been fulfilled. The president said that developing countries do not have the same “historical debt” as the rich for global warming.

“The principle of common but differentiated responsibilities remains valid. That is why all developing countries must be guaranteed climate funds, according to their needs and priorities,” he said.

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Happy Saturday. Let’s check in on the media this week.

Where’s Hunter?: Hunter Biden’s slow-motion journey to the underside of the bus accelerated this week amid news of the first son’s federal indictment and President Joe Biden’s impeachment inquiry.

The mainstream media suggested the felony gun charges were a bit much. But few journalists disputed Hunter Biden’s criminality or corruption. Instead, they insisted that none of it could be tied to the president.

‘As far as Hunter Biden is concerned, I will admit this: Republicans have succeeded in convincing me not to vote for Hunter Biden for president,” says @chrislhayes. pic.twitter.com/hLMXlmJnAW

— All In with Chris Hayes (@allinwithchris) September 15, 2023

News outlets—spurred by a White House memo demanding even more critical coverage of the GOP’s impeachment inquiry—redoubled their reporting that no evidence substantively links Joe Biden to his son’s drug-addled influence peddling.

NBC News: “In a memo to news organizations, the administration rebutted seven Republican claims and called the impeachment inquiry ‘all politics and no evidence.’ …

“[House Speaker Kevin] McCarthy does not appear to have the full support of his party and has faced criticism for the lack of evidence in GOP allegations of the president’s wrongdoings.”

CNN: “While news organizations have published innumerable fact checks on the matter, they have also often failed to robustly call out the mis- and disinformation peddled by Republicans in their coverage, frustrating officials in the Biden White House who believe that the news media should be doing more to dispel lies that saturate the public discourse. …

“The Republican House-led investigations into Biden have yet to provide any direct evidence that the president financially benefited from [his son] Hunter Biden’s career overseas.”

Associated Press: “The White House has said that Joe Biden was not involved in his son’s business affairs. And so far, despite months of investigations, Republicans have unearthed no significant evidence of wrongdoing by the elder Biden, who spoke often to his son and as vice president did stop by a business dinner with his son’s associates. Hunter Biden is not a public figure.”

Joe Biden was in fact involved in Hunter Biden’s business dealings, and the impeachment inquiry is meant to uncover more evidence, as House Speaker Kevin McCarthy explained to a skeptical reporter.

Fact checking the fact checkers: Biden, speaking in Alaska on the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, claimed that he was at ground zero the day after Al Qaeda terrorists felled New York City’s Twin Towers. In reality, he first visited the site over a week later, on Sept. 20, 2001.

CNN’s Daniel Dale did a rare fact check of Biden for the false story. But much of the media ignored the president’s latest tall tale. The New York Times paraphrased the relevant section of Biden’s speech: “Mr. Biden recalled how he stood at ground zero after the attacks, looking at the wreckage.” The Washington Post, the Associated Press, Reuters, and Axios simply omitted any mention of Biden’s falsehood.

As Dale noted, Biden “has repeatedly made false claims about his past.”

Meanwhile, in a phone call with rabbis ahead of the Jewish High Holidays, which started this week, Biden said he “was raised in the synagogues of my state.” He has previously claimed to have been raised by various other religious and ethnic communities.

According to Biden:

He was raised by Irish, Polish, and Puerto Rican communities

Meanwhile he was ‘raised in” synagogues, Black churches, and went to Catholic Mass. pic.twitter.com/YSi4cPVsCl

— John Hasson (@SonofHas) September 15, 2023

Elder abuse: Even as the media largely deferred to the president on impeachment and his muddled memory, the Washington Post’s David Ignatius penned a bombshell column under the headline “President Biden Should Not Run Again in 2024.”

“It’s painful to say that, given my admiration for much of what they have accomplished. But if [Biden] and [Vice President Kamala] Harris campaign together in 2024, I think Biden risks undoing his greatest achievement—which was stopping Trump,” wrote Ignatius, who is reportedly required reading in the West Wing.

“Because of their concerns about Biden’s age, voters would sensibly focus on his presumptive running mate, Harris. She is less popular than Biden, with a 39.5 percent approval rating, according to polling website FiveThirtyEight. Harris has many laudable qualities, but the simple fact is that she has failed to gain traction in the country or even within her own party.”

Ignatius’s column was discussed on CNN, and he was allowed to make his case on MSNBC.

WaPo’s David Ignatius calls on Biden to drop out of the 2024 race:

“The heart of it is whether Joe Biden is the best person to carry this legacy forward .. I felt it was time to have a more public discussion about this. What a journalist like me should do is take issues like… pic.twitter.com/KXD1Yn01vb

— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) September 13, 2023

In related news, New York magazine’s Eric Levitz argued for Biden to drop Harris from the 2024 ticket, and CNN anchors pressed leading Democrats on whether the vice president is the “best running mate.” Neither Reps. Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) or Jamie Raskin (D., Md.) would say so.

This is fine: The media initially seemed untroubled by New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s suspension of Second Amendment rights in response to recent gun violence in the state.

New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D) said the state is temporarily suspending open and concealed carry of firearms in Albuquerque and the surrounding county for 30 days, describing the unusual move as a necessary response to gun violence there. https://t.co/8ubzWpaWh9

— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) September 10, 2023

But, after even the most unlikely defenders of the gun rights—like David Hogg, Rep. Ted Lieu (D., Calif.) and the ACLU—questioned the constitutionality of the governor’s ban on carrying firearms, journalists had to ask a few questions.

“We also have, Governor, the Constitution … and you’re an attorney. Do you think you’re on solid constitutional ground?”

New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham: “I have the right”

“But where is the right?”

Lujan Grisham: “We’ll see what all of these court actions do” pic.twitter.com/Rb3MeBZcVH

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) September 12, 2023

Still, there was little substantive scrutiny of the executive order, let alone the kind of line–by–line takedowns regularly directed at such controversial Republican policies as restricting LGBT indoctrination of kindergartners.

Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida is expected to sign House Bill 1557, which limits what educators can say about gender and sexuality. Opponents call it the ‘Don’t Say Gay” bill.

Here is a line-by-line reading of the bill’s most consequential language.https://t.co/NoH5kztun3

— The New York Times (@nytimes) March 19, 2022

Gold nugget: One liberal journalist did do some reading on his own side—and he was “shocked” to learn that the “book banners” might have a point.

“I watched ‘book bans’ happen in real time. I thought they were all hysteria. Then I opened one of the most-challenged titles,” wrote Slate‘s Aymann Ismail, referring to It’s Perfectly Normal, an LGBT-friendly sex-ed book for children ages 10 and up:

I felt sure that as a 34-year-old father of two there would be nothing in there that would offend my sensibilities. I’d heard nothing but glowing reviews from sex-ed pros about the child-friendly language in the book. But flipping through the book’s pages finally, I was a little shocked. I had an involuntary reaction to seeing the nude cartoons, like I needed to make sure I was alone and hide the book. I skimmed ahead to look at the rest of the book briskly. On virtually every page I stopped to examine, I was confronted with detailed drawings of genitals. It felt like every page had a cartoon of a naked body. …

In the chapter ‘Making Love,’ there are three graphic images that show adult bodies having sex. There is no visible penetration, but it’s still eye-popping. I began to wonder if I had been a little too dismissive of the parents at the root of this fight.”

A day after Ismail’s essay was published, Sen. John Kennedy (R., La.) performed a similarly shocking reading of two LGBT young adult books at a Senate hearing on “book bans.”

Sen. Kennedy reads passages from pornographic books Genderqueer and All Boys are Blue.

The Illinois Sec. of State Alexi Giannoulias responds by saying “those words are disturbing coming from your mouth.”

His state’s new law stops parents from being able to remove it from… pic.twitter.com/eDehdhctQL

— Greg Price (@greg_price11) September 12, 2023

Stay safe out there, and see you next week.

The post Drew’s Receipts: The Media Play Defense for Biden—With One Bombshell Exception appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

Storm Lee toppled trees and cut power to tens of thousands Saturday as it lashed New England and eastern Canada, threatening hurricane-force winds, a dangerous storm surge, and torrential rains across an enormous swath even though its center had yet to come ashore.

The storm, still dangerous after being downgraded from hurricane to post-tropical cyclone, was expected to make landfall at or just below hurricane strength around the Maine-New Brunswick border Saturday afternoon, then turn to the northeast and move across Atlantic Canada on Saturday night and Sunday.

The storm skirted some of the most waterlogged areas of Massachusetts that experienced flash flooding days earlier, when fast water washed out roads, caused sinkholes, damaged homes and flooded vehicles.

But the entire region has experienced an especially wet summer — it ranked second in the number of rainy days in Portland, Maine — and Lee’s high winds toppled trees stressed by the rain-soaked ground in Maine, the nation’s most heavily wooded state.

“We have a long way to go, and we’re already seeing downed trees and power outages,” said Todd Foisy, a National Weather Service meteorologist.

The storm’s center was just off the southwestern tip of Nova Scotia, about 105 miles (170 kilometers) southeast of Eastport, Maine, and about 149 miles (240 kilometers) southwest of Halifax, Nova Scotia, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said Saturday. It had maximum sustained winds of 74.5 mph (120 kph) and was moving north at a fast clip of about 21.7 mph (35 kph).

Its weakened state belies its reach — hurricane-force winds extend as far as 140 miles (220 kilometers) from the center, the National Hurricane Center said. Tropical-storm-force winds of at least 39 mph (62 kph) extend outward up to 390 miles (630 kilometers) — enough to cover all of Maine and much of Maritime Canada.

Storm resembles nor’easter, says expert

A dangerous storm surge will produce coastal flooding in Atlantic Canada, accompanied by large and destructive waves, forecasters said.

The storm was so big that it was causing power outages several hundred miles from its center. About 25% of Nova Scotia lacked power around midday Saturday.

“At this point, the storm is resembling a nor’easter,” said Sarah Thunberg, a National Weather Service meteorologist, referring to fall and winter storms that often plague the region and are so named because their winds blow from the northeast.

In typical tropical cyclones, Thunberg said, winds are concentrated around the eye. But Lee, a very large storm, has a wider wind field.

Federal aid is headed to Massachusetts after U.S. President Joe Biden declared an emergency Saturday.

A tropical storm warning stretched from the New Hampshire-Maine border through Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island to northern New Brunswick. A hurricane watch was in effect for New Brunswick and Nova Scotia.

Utilities reported nearly 200,000 customers without power from Maine to New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. Nova Scotia’s largest airport, Halifax Stanfield International, had no incoming or outgoing flights scheduled for Saturday.

Peak gusts are projected to be 70 mph (113 kph) on the coast in eastern Maine, but there will be gusts up to 50 mph (80 kph) across a swath more than (400 miles) (644 kilometers) wide, from Maine’s Moosehead Lake eastward all the way into the ocean, Foisy said.

Cruise ships found refuge at berths in Portland, while lobstermen in Bar Harbor — the touristy gateway to Acadia National Park — and elsewhere pulled their costly traps from the water and hauled their boats inland, leaving some harbors looking like ghost towns on Friday.

Two lobstermen — one of them Billy Bob Faulkingham, House Republican leader of the Maine Legislature — survived after their boat overturned while hauling traps Friday ahead of the storm, officials said.

The boat’s emergency locator beacon alerted authorities, and the two fishermen clung to the hull of the overturned boat until help arrived, said Winter Harbor Police Chief Danny Mitchell. The 42-foot boat sank.

“They’re very lucky to be alive,” he said.

Lee lashes islands

Lee lashed the U.S. Virgin Islands, the Bahamas and Bermuda before turning northward, and heavy swells were likely to cause “life-threatening surf and rip current conditions” in the U.S. and Canada, according to the hurricane center.

Even as they prepared, New Englanders seemed largely unconcerned. Some brushed aside Lee as a glorified nor’easter.

In Canada, Ian Hubbard, a meteorologist for Environment and Climate Change Canada and the Canadian Hurricane Centre, said Lee won’t be anywhere near as severe as the remnants of Hurricane Fiona, which a year ago washed houses into the ocean, knocked out power to most of two provinces, and swept a woman into the sea.

But it was still a dangerous storm. Kyle Leavitt, director of the New Brunswick Emergency Management Organization, urged residents to stay home, saying, “Nothing good can come from checking out the big waves and how strong the wind truly is.”

Lee shares some characteristics with 2012’s destructive Superstorm Sandy — both were once strong hurricanes that became post-tropical cyclones before landfall. But Lee is expected to produce far less rain than Sandy, which caused billions of dollars in damage and was blamed for dozens of deaths in New York and New Jersey.

Destructive hurricanes are relatively rare so far north. The Great New England Hurricane of 1938 brought gusts as high as 186.4 mph (300 kph) and sustained winds of 121 mph (195 kph) at Massachusetts’ Blue Hill Observatory. But there have been no storms that powerful in recent years.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton was acquitted Saturday of all charges at a historic impeachment trial that divided Republicans over whether to remove a powerful defender of former President Donald Trump after years of scandal and criminal charges.

The verdict reaffirmed Paxton’s durability in America’s biggest red state and is a broader victory for Texas’ hard right after an extraordinary trial that displayed the fractures within the GOP nationally heading into the 2024 elections. In the end, Paxton was fully cleared by Senate Republicans, who serve alongside his wife, state Senator Angela Paxton.

Angela Paxton was not allowed to vote. But she attended all two weeks of the trial, including the reading of the verdict, when all but two of her fellow 18 Republican senators consistently voted to acquit her husband on 16 impeachment articles that accused him of misconduct, bribery and corruption.

Ken Paxton, who was absent for most of the proceedings, did not attend the verdict.

The Senate also voted to dismiss four impeachment articles that weren’t taken up at the trial. It clears the way for Paxton to reclaim his role as Texas’ top lawyer, more than three months after his stunning impeachment in the Texas House forced him to temporarily step aside.

The outcome far from ends Paxton’s troubles. He still faces trial on felony securities fraud charges, remains under a separate FBI investigation and is in jeopardy of losing his ability to practice law in Texas because of his baseless attempts to overturn the 2020 election.

The jury of 30 senators spent about eight hours deliberating behind closed doors before emerging for the historic vote.

In the Senate gallery, among those who staked out an early seat for the impeachment vote were three of Paxton’s former deputies who reported him to the FBI in 2020 and were key witnesses during the trial for House impeachment managers. One of them left before the conclusion of the verdict as it became clear the votes were going Paxton’s way.

There was no visible reaction from the former deputies — David Maxwell, Ryan Vassar and Blake Brickman — after Paxton was acquitted on Article 6, termination of whistleblowers.

The trial had plunged Texas Republicans into unfamiliar waters as they confront whether Paxton should be removed over allegations that he abused his office to protect a political donor who was under FBI investigation.

The trial confronted Paxton, whose three terms in office have been marred by scandal and criminal charges, with a defining test of his political durability after an extraordinary impeachment that was driven by his fellow Republicans. For nearly a decade, Paxton has elevated his national profile by rushing his office into polarizing courtroom battles across the U.S., winning acclaim from Donald Trump and the GOP’s hard right.

Making one final appeal to convict Texas’ top lawyer, impeachment managers used their closing arguments Friday to cast him as a crook who needed to go.

“If we don’t keep public officials from abusing the powers of their office, then frankly no one can,” Republican state Representative Andrew Murr, who helped lead the impeachment in the Texas House, said in his closing arguments.

In an angry and defiant rebuttal, Paxton lawyer Tony Buzbee on Friday unleashed attacks on a wide-ranging cast of figures both inside and outside the Texas Capitol, mocking a Texas Ranger who warned Paxton he was risking indictment and another accuser who cried on the witness stand.

Leaning into divisions among Republicans, Buzbee portrayed the impeachment as a plot orchestrated by an old guard of GOP rivals. He singled out George P. Bush, the nephew of former President George W. Bush who challenged Paxton in the 2022 Republican primary, punctuating a blistering closing argument that questioned the integrity of FBI agents and railed against Texas’ most famous political dynasty.

“I would suggest to you this is a political witch hunt,” Buzbee said. “I would suggest to you that this trial has displayed, for the country to see, a partisan fight within the Republican Party.”

The case centers on accusations that Paxton misused his office to help one of his donors, Austin real estate developer Nate Paul, who was indicted in June on charges of making false statements to banks. Paul has pleaded not guilty.

Eight of Paxton’s former deputies reported him to the FBI in 2020, setting off a federal investigation that will continue regardless of the verdict. Federal prosecutors investigating Paxton took testimony in August before a grand jury in San Antonio, according to two people with knowledge of the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity because of secrecy rules around the proceeding.

During closing arguments, the defense told senators there was either no evidence for the charges or that there wasn’t enough to rise beyond a reasonable doubt. The House impeachment managers, by contrast, walked through specific documents and played clips of testimony by the deputies who reported Paxton to the FBI.

One of the impeachment articles centers on an alleged extramarital affair Paxton had with Laura Olson, who worked for Paul. It alleges that Paul’s hiring of Olson amounted to a bribe. She was called to the witness stand but ultimately never testified. Another article alleges the developer also bribed Paxton by paying for his home renovations.