Good morning. It is August 21st. It is a wet morning in New York City, and this is your Indignity Morning Podcast. I'm your host, Tom Scocca, taking a look at the day and the news. 

Hurricane Erin, a category two storm, but an immense one, is grinding past North Carolina right now, on a course that forecasters expect to remain offshore, but to still inflict flooding and other storm damage up the East Coast. Yesterday, the hurricane showed its ability to inflict drastic results at a distance, in Tampa, Florida, whereas the local NBC TV meteorologist, Jeff Berardelli explained in a fascinating video post online, a mass of hot air that the hurricane had pitched up and over Florida. after being fended off all day by Tampa's own supply of rising hot air, came crashing down as soon as the city started to cool at day's end, so that shortly after 7 p.m., the temperature spiked from 90 degrees to 97 in the span of five minutes, accompanied by wind gusts of 28 miles an hour. That, apparently, is one more thing that the weather can do. The name for it is a heat burst.

In other startling and amazing things that happened yesterday evening, The City published a story about an interaction between one of its reporters, Katie Honan and Winnie Greco, Eric Adams's former liaison to the Asian community and alleged organizer of some of Adams's straw donor campaign finance fraud schemes. The event centered around a bag of Herr’s sour cream and onion potato chips, rippled ones. The story says that Greco saw Honan at an event and texted her to ask for a face-to-face meeting near an Adams campaign office. The City writes,”Greco and Honan walked to the Whole Foods next door. While inside the store, Greco handed Honan the opened bag of chips with the top crumpled closed. Honan, thinking it was an offer of a light snack, told Greco more than once she could not accept the chips, but Greco insisted that she keep them. The two parted ways. Before entering a nearby subway station,” the story continues, “Honan opened the bag and discovered a red envelope inside stuffed with cash, at least $100 bill and several $20 bills. The reporter then called Greco and told her she could not accept the money and asked if she was still nearby so she could give it back. Greco said she'd left the area. Then she stopped responding to texts. When the city asked Greco about it, she told him it was a mistake and said, ‘I’m so sorry, it's a culture thing. I don't know. I don't understand. I'm so sorry. I feel so bad right now.’” To be clear, putting money in a red envelope, a hongbao, is a normal part of Chinese culture. Hiding that envelope in the greasy interior of an open bag of potato chips is not. To the extent that Chinese people do do things along those lines, they do them when they are quite consciously trying to slip someone an illegal bribe. 

And speaking of bribes, in further adventures of the Eric Adams administration this morning, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg indicted Adams' longtime close advisor, Ingrid Lewis Martin, and her son, and a batch of other people in an assortment of alleged bribery schemes. Bragg charges that Lewis Martin and her son allegedly conspired to steer city contracts for asylum-seeker shelter sites for preferred property owners and to help fast-track permit approvals for a karaoke bar in Queens. The shelter deal and the karaoke bar are treated as a package deal with an alleged $50,000 cash payment behind them. Bragg's office also writes that Lewis Martin allegedly conspired to have the New York City Department of Transportation withdraw its approval for a street redesign of McGinnis Boulevard in Brooklyn, which would have included new protected bike lanes. That's part of a long-running saga between people who want to stop pedestrians from being killed on McGinnis Boulevard, and the powerful owners of the film production company Broadway Stages whose facilities are in the area and whose trucks use the Boulevard. The alleged return on that one, the DA writes was a $2,500 payment and other personal benefits, including a speaking role on a TV show and thousands of dollars of catering for an event at Gracie Mansion. 

The next indictment is about Louis Martin, her son and the deputy commissioner for real estate services, supposedly fast-tracking development and steering city contracts. In exchange, the office writes, for renovations on their homes. And the last one accuses Louis Martin of trading approval for a residential renovation project for thousands of dollars of catering for events at Gracie Mansion and City Hall. 

These are all on top of other bribery charges that Bragg's office had already filed against Lewis Martin. 

James Dobson, the evangelical bigot who founded Focus on the Family and spent his life fighting against freedom and liberty, died at the age of 89 in the fake moralistic fascist police state that he did so much to bring about.

On the front of this morning's New York Times, the lead news column is “Moves by Israel Risk Imperiling Hope for Peace / Hardliner Influence /  Settlements Approved for West Bank as Assault on Gaza Looms.” As usual, the news is insulated behind a whole bunch of indirection and abstraction. What Israel is doing is not risking imperiling hope for peace, but taking specific steps to aggravate and accelerate its ongoing violent subjugation of the Palestinians. 

The lead of the story is “Israel on Wednesday approved new settlements in the West Bank and announced that it was moving ahead with plans to take over Gaza City, bucking international criticism and defying growing support for the creation of an independent Palestinian state. The moves raised questions about whether a new ceasefire proposal, which officials have said is similar to terms that Israel previously endorsed, could move forward.”

Again, “as usual” seems like “raised questions” means answered questions. “Experts,” the Times continues, “said the two moves suggested that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was bending to the ideologies of extremists in his coalition in order to remain in power, even at the cost of isolating Israel internationally.” Again, that's not really something experts suggested. That's pretty much how the extremist faction described it. The Times writes, “‘the idea of a Palestinian state Is being erased from the table,’ Bezalel Smotrich, the hard-line finance minister, declared after the government approved a settlement project of 3,400 housing units in the heart of the occupied West Bank. ‘Every town, every neighborhood. every housing unit is another nail in the coffin of this dangerous idea,’ Mr. Smotrich said on Wednesday.” The dangerous idea here being that Palestinians would have any identifiable place to live.

On the left-hand side of the page, the headline is “Democrats See Profound Loss in Registration / Bleeding Voters Across Red and Blue States.” 

“The Democratic Party, the story says, is hemorrhaging voters long before they even go to the polls. Of the 30 states that track voter registration by political party, Democrats lost ground to Republicans in every single one between the 2020 and 2024 elections, and often by a lot. That four-year swing toward the Republicans adds up to 4.5 million voters. a deep political hole that could take years for Democrats to climb out from.” These turns happen in political parties' fortunes, naturally, but it is pretty remarkable to see the Democratic Party circling the drain at a moment when opinion polling about the president and Congress suggests that people would flock to an opposition party if they believed one existed. 

Then there's a story about Trump's purge of international students from the United States, and down in the bottom right corner, a story about Sherry Redstone, the media executive who just bribed the Trump administration to cash out her ownership of Paramount. “Sherry Redstone, the 71 year old daughter of the billionaire mogul Sumner Redstone, spent much of her adult life,” the Times writes, “trying to take control of her father's media empire, which became known as Paramount Global, and the Redstone family legacy. Along the way, she was often belittled and dismissed by her father, underestimated by his top executives and sidelined by his romantic companions. She succeeded, finally, and in December 2019 became the controlling shareholder of a company then valued at over $25 billion. Ms. Redstone, it seemed, had achieved her life's goal.” The Times then frames it as a mystery why Sumner Redstone's daughter would then turn around and sell the whole thing to Larry Ellison's son for $8 billion, or the Times writes, “about a third of the company's value when she took over.” The answer would seem to be that the energy and focus that she brought to the job of helping herself to the company that her father built in no way prevented her from being an incompetent and a dilettante. “For Ms. Redstone,” the Times writes, “the life of a media mogul and controlling shareholder proved far less glamorous and satisfying than public perception might suggest. She took over just as streaming upended Hollywood, and Ms. Redstone felt her hands were often tied by independent board members more worried about avoiding lawsuits than confronting the obvious business challenges.” That's a reasonably friendly way of saying she wasn't any good at doing her job, although the story then goes on at considerable length to illuminate the various ways that she was not up to the responsibility. 

Facing the last page of that jump, on page A15, the story at the top of the page is “ICE wrongly suggests lawmaker doxed agents. Racist threats follow. Federal officials share inflammatory posts from right-wing group.” 

A state lawmaker from Stamford, Connecticut, Corey Parris, posted something telling people to remain vigilant about ICE operations. After which, the Times writes, “the influential right-wing account Libs of TikTok then shared his post on X, claiming that he was doxing ICE's live location and helping illegals evade arrest and impeding ICE, even though Mr. Paris had not named any specific places where agents had been seen. The lawmaker said in an interview that he has never shared exact locations of ICE activity. The Libs of TikTok post tagged ICE's official account and urged the agency to charge him, referring to Mr. Paris. ICE officials republished the post the next day, and tagged the Justice Department's account.” That threats followed, as they so often do when Libs of TikTok goes after somebody, but nowhere in this story about malicious and defamatory behavior by the so-called group Libs of TikTok, the account, the Times writes, “did not respond to questions regarding its post about Mr. Paris.” Is there a single mention of the name Chaya Raichik, who runs Libs of TikTok? The state legislator gets his name dragged all over the internet by Chaya Raichik, and the Times, for some reason, protects her from being named in the story about the things she did. 

These abuses are being carried out by specific people. They're identifiable. With a little digging, the Times might even be able to figure out who it was running the ICE socials who joined Raychick and applied the power and influence of the United States government to harass a public official in retaliation for his criticizing the agency. That's the story that belongs in a national newspaper. 

That is the news. Thank you for listening. The Indignity Morning Podcast is edited by Joe MacLeod. The theme song is composed and performed by Mack Scocca-Ho. You, the listeners, keep us going through your paid subscriptions to Indignity and your tips. Continue sending those along if you are able. 

The Indignity Morning Podcast will not be recording tomorrow due to an all-day obligation. But if nothing unexpected gets in the way, we will talk again on Monday.