Today’s edition of quick hits.
* Five years to the day after his predecessor lobbed paper towels at hurricane victims: “President Joe Biden visited Puerto Rico on Monday to survey damage caused by Hurricane Fiona last month, announcing $60 million in federal funding to help the island rebuild.”
* On a related note, Hurricane Ian’s death toll keeps climbing: “Hurricane Ian’s death toll reached 100 Monday as Florida’s top emergency administrator pushed back on growing criticism of Lee County officials who were allegedly slow to evacuate low-lying communities.”
* And speaking of Lee County: “Few events are as ripe for second-guessing public officials as hurricanes. And as we continue to try to grasp the scope of the damage done by Hurricane Ian, one big early question has emerged: Should evacuations have begun sooner in Florida’s Lee County?”
* The recapture of Lyman: “Ukraine said it had retaken full control of a key eastern city on Sunday, handing the Kremlin another stinging setback just days after Russian President Vladimir Putin proclaimed that the area would belong to his country forever.”
* Quite a sentence: “The Kremlin said on Monday that it did not know where the borders are for the regions in Ukraine it recently claimed to have annexed, the latest sign of the political disarray and improvisation that has accompanied Moscow’s setbacks on the battlefield.”
* Watching a fiasco unfold slowly in the U.K.: “British Prime Minister Liz Truss on Monday ditched her signature plan to cut taxes for the country’s top earners after it triggered market turmoil and a huge domestic outcry.”
* A run-off election in Brazil: “Jair Bolsonaro considerably outperformed expectations in Brazil’s presidential election, proving that the far-right wave he rode to the presidency remains a force and providing the world with yet another example of polls missing the mark.”
* One of Marco Rubio’s biggest flaws is his eagerness to prioritize ideology over real-world successes: “Many lawmakers are applauding the release of seven Americans — who have been held captive in Venezuela for years— in a prisoner swap that granted clemency to two nephews of Cilia Flores, Venezuela’s first lady. But not Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who’s pushing back against the president’s willingness to negotiate with ‘anti-U.S. dictators.’” * I find this utterly baffling: “The new, redesigned Covid booster, which now protects against Omicron and its extremely contagious subvariants, appears to have a visibility problem. Federal authorities authorized the shot at the end of August, but by mid- to late September, nearly half of adults had heard little or nothing about it, according to a report by the Kaiser Family Foundation, based on the latest of its monthly surveys about attitudes toward the Covid vaccines.” * Former acting U.S. Attorney General Sally Yates led the independent probe of the U.S. Soccer Federation: “Emotional abuse and sexual misconduct were ‘systemic’ in women’s soccer with exploitation rife at virtually every level of the sport, according to a damning report made public on Monday.” See you tomorrow.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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