Monthly Archives: January 2021

Axios is reporting that our local-to-Minnesota MyPillow eminence, Mike Lindell, lover of Donald Trump, has some hot legal trouble coming down:

Dominion Voting Systems on Monday sent a cease and desist letter to My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell over his spread of misinformation related to the 2020 election.

That’ll be followed by a lawsuit. And Lindell is either going to be really disrupting in 2021 … or groveling at the feet of Dominion:

Lindell told Axios, “I want Dominion to put up their lawsuit because we have 100% evidence that China and other countries used their machines to steal the election.”

I used the analogy of S & C on the left mostly because I like this picture a lot.

If he has this evidence, then he’ll be disruptive.

As I see it, Lindell’s not too bright, like most of Trump’s satellites. He’s already tried to get Trump to declare martial law. What he’s learned from Trump is to talk big and never back down, and double down when attacked. I think he’s about to learn that the justice system isn’t Play-Doh, but rather the rocks of Scylla and Charybdis, which will grind him to dust and then use it as a heroin substitute.

And, yes, I know Lindell claims to be an ex-drug user.

I’m looking forward to this trial, and I hope it doesn’t get delayed for five years. Justice delayed is justice denied. I wonder if Biden has any ambition to increase the size of a judiciary that is well-known for being way behind on cases….

I was interested to read this lament from Robert Carlin on 38 North, not only for historical purposes, but for how it fits into the Republican pattern of arrogance:

January 8 marks 15 years to the day that the last ship carrying the last group of workers from the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization (KEDO) light water reactor project left the small harbor serving the construction site on North Korea’s northeast coast and headed home to the South Korean port of Sokcho. Unlikely, I realize, that anyone will mark the anniversary, except perhaps some of us who huddled on the stern of the fast ferry Hankyoreh, watching in mute disbelief as the project site—hundreds of acres of South Korean engineering and construction marvel (including a driving range and two churches), floodlit 24 hours a day using enough power to light a small city, all in easy sight of the North Koreans living nearby and many others who traveled up the east coast railway— slipped from view in the cold, gray afternoon. Maybe even a few of the North Koreans who stood sadly on the pier, waving their caps as the ship pulled away, will recall how they were witness to the final end to a decades-long effort at cooperation.

Does it really matter, thinking back to the day? After all, didn’t KEDO fail? Isn’t it only one of a series of failures in dealing with North Korea over the past 25 years?

No, in fact, KEDO did not fail. In those days of anything-but-Clinton, the Bush administration pushed it off a cliff. In the organization’s four-party Executive Board (US, Japan, ROK and European Union), Washington led the way, Tokyo was close behind, then, only reluctantly, did the South Koreans join the band. If anything, up to the end, the Europeans were the most sensible of the lot.

The rejection of the Clinton handoff is the key here. The Republicans were, by 2000, already suffering from Not Invented Here syndrome, which persists to the current day. Of course, the Republicans considered it appeasement – because, well, my conclusions on the matter scarcely rise above sarcasm. Briefly, this agreement, if it had reached fruition, would have sidelined North Korean efforts, and given cover for military strikes if they had continued military development of nuclear weapons; they would have replaced probable dirty power or dangerous antiquated nuclear plants with safer Western-designed power plants; and given the West influence over North Korea.

Instead, we’re left with nothing but moldy grapes. All because the Republicans couldn’t swallow that Clinton’s, and Democrat’s, accomplishments were legitimate. A sadly immature attitude has come back to bite us.

The replacement for the Republicans had best discard that damn attitude.

Perhaps my reader has heard of the latest sleazy episode of the Trump Presidency:

A onetime top adviser to the Trump campaign was paid $50,000 to help seek a pardon for John Kiriakou, a former C.I.A. officer convicted of illegally disclosing classified information, and agreed to a $50,000 bonus if the president granted it, according to a copy of an agreement.

And Mr. Kiriakou was separately told that Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani could help him secure a pardon for $2 million. Mr. Kiriakou rejected the offer, but an associate, fearing that Mr. Giuliani was illegally selling pardons, alerted the F.B.I. Mr. Giuliani challenged this characterization. [The New York Times]

Trump has already been known to use the pardon power to save political allies from the clutches of Justice, but this is different. This is the confusion that results from mixing two sectors of society – Private and Public – in which the currency of the private sector, which is money and debt, is substituted for the currency of the public sector, which is honor and public obligation.

In other words, the pardon power should be used to correct injustices and to reward exemplary behavior by federal felons; it’s not a party favor to be sold by a President and his aides & allies in order to satisfy pecuniary lusts. But that latter is not really a strong enough statement. By using the pardon power as a party favor, potentially dangerous felons may be loosed, once again, upon the public, because the ability to pay for a pardon does not correlate with the injustice, if any, suffered by the felon; and, further, the mitigating and salutary powers of punishment are thereby reduced.

The President is thus inviting more such abuses. All in the name of, well, money. The moral degradation of the Republic is on public display.

Bari Weiss has an interesting post concerning the events of the week, but I’m a little troubled by her quote of David Sacks:

I think David’s advice is wise: “The good news is that the most important events of my life, and your life, will always take place more or less within a 25-foot radius of wherever we are standing. Like the Beatles said, all you need is love. So, try to be kind, and avoid making sweeping statements about large classes of people. Give food to the hungry. Tell your children that you love them. And please, whatever you do, don’t embrace anyone’s sweeping program for remedying historical injustice, because history’s victims are already dead—and soon, there will be plenty more of them. I can hear the sound of the engines revving up, even from here.”

This is quite the transactional view of history, a view that is implicitly rebuffed by economic studies which conclude that family wealth is often deeply enhanced by inheritance – the opposite of this transactional view. That is, if you view the Black community as being notably economically disadvantaged, that’s easily enough traced back to the systemic racism practiced against them, going all the way back to the retraction of the promise of Forty acres and a mule.

In other words, history’s victims still live and are among us.

That said, I have no intention of this rebuttal being used to endorse any particular sweeping historical program; I do not believe any have been properly debated. I prefer to follow the progress of such models as that of Asheville, NC, which I expect will feel its way along, make mistakes as well as strides, and produce a model from which we can build. I have little trust in the work of theoreticians who hardly get their hands dirty with the politics necessary, particularly if they include the likes of Professor Singh.

I enjoyed reading Weiss’ post, but if she can make the mistake of thinking Sack’s post is wise, I wonder what else she may have wrong. For example, she laments the control of the public square by technology companies and worries about Twitter shutting her down if it can shut Trump down.

It’s not that Trump was permanently banned from Twitter. I’d be happy to never hear that voice or see those CAPS again. It’s that Twitter can ban whoever it wants whenever it wants for whatever reason. It’s that all the real town squares have been shuttered and that the only one left is pixelated and controlled by a few oligarchs in Silicon Valley.

We were promised the Internet would be better than democracy. But then it got privatized. Corporations own it. There is no online bill of rights. There is only the frenzy of the mob and fickle choices of a few billionaires.

But the Golden Age Weiss implicitly yearns for never existed. There are always constraints on speech beyond the basics. Speakers are ignored because they say something unpopular, or because they’re incomprehensible; speakers are shouted down; speakers are despised. The implicit yearning for inflicting one’s thoughts on another being has never been guaranteed.

The Age over which Weiss is agonizing is interesting for those who want to speak because, to a more effective extent than ever before, speakers can self-publish. That’s what she’s doing, and I’m doing, right now. Weiss might argue that our hosts (Bluehost in my case) could shut us down, just as Parler was shutdown by Apple, Google, and Amazon, but this ignores an important capability – you can always write your own publishing platform. If you can’t find a technology provider with a notion of freedom that suits you – and there are some really relaxed standards out there – you can even build your own company to do it.

So, to some extent, I have to wonder how much of this is navel staring, rather than trying to understand how to safely limit speech that is destructive to society. Several years ago I argued with a conservative friend about the limits of political speech for non-citizens such as other countries, especially those who did not reveal that they weren’t Americans, and he seemed to feel that the natural wisdom of the citizenry would win out.

I remain deeply unconvinced.

But I also remain deeply disturbed at the problem of governmental & corporate interference in communications. I don’t deny the problem. But I don’t really feel Weiss has contributed to that discussion beyond wailing about the very technology that enables this new age of Mass Communications. I wish she’d gone further in her analysis in understanding the antecedents.

From British cartographer Peter Fretwell:

A beautiful map, found in NewScientist (2 January 2021), and there’s your Pole of Ignorance. I see it really exists and is addressed here.

Annular:

: of, relating to, or forming a ring
an annular skin lesion [Merriam-Webster]

Noted in “Researchers develop unique process for producing light-matter mixture,” University of Minnesota News and Events:

Annular holes in a thin gold film filled with silicon dioxide enable ultrastrong coupling between light and atomic vibrations. This structure provides opportunities to probe molecules interacting with quantum vacuum fluctuations and develop novel optoelectronic devices.

Ya know, if Senator Cruz (R-TX) were so delusional, in view of his opposition to the electoral votes of several states back on January 6, as to run for President in 2024, my guess is that VP Harris, or President Biden if he were to choose to run for reelection, would kick his butt.

And then Cruz would also be out of the Senate.

Yeah, gotta like that.

Right Wing Watch summarizes Pastor Johnny Enlow’s prophetic interpretation of a … college football score:

Johnny Enlow, a right-wing pastor and QAnon conspiracy theorist, appeared on the Elijah Streams YouTube channel Thursday, where he declared that the outcome of the college football national championship game was a prophetic sign that President Donald Trump will remain in office.

Despite the fact that Trump’s term is set to end in less than a week, Enlow claims to have found a message from God hidden in the final score of Monday’s national championship game between Alabama and Ohio State, which Alabama won by a score of 52-24.

Enlow said that when the game began, he fully expected the final score to contain the number 45, which he said would be a prophetic sign regarding Trump, who is the 45th president of the United States.

Though there was no 45 in the final score, Enlow nevertheless found prophetic significance in the score when he saw it displayed on ESPN as “Ohio State 24 – 52 Alabama.”

To Enlow, the number 45 surrounded by two 2s was a clear sign from God that Trump is going to serve a second term.

And no doubt Enlow would be enraged if I suggested that his God is really rather pathetic.

And I’ll say it’s true. If the Divine wanted Trump to win, then it should have come down in all its glory, demonstrated a few miracles, and stated its desire. Then we could have had a lovely discussion about why this particular Divine hates freedom.

Fucking encode that desire in a college football score? That is really pathetic.

So I’ll just state the other obvious fact: Enlow is just a grifter. He wiggles a hand over here, says something outrageous, and plunges his other hand into the pockets of the faithful while they’re busy being in delirium over their pastor’s secret connection to the Divine.

I wonder how many secretly wonder why the Divine is so mysterious – and then put that question firmly away because its answer might endanger their position in the faith community.

As we near the end of the Trump Administration’s disastrous tenure, we need to learn and understand that this has not been a aberration, but that this has been the result of an ideology which featured a frenzied rejection of the expert, and not only those experts which expressed opinions at variance from that dictated by the right wing ideology, but virtually all expertise which had not proven itself in a tangible manner. The argument that, if you wouldn’t employ a ten-year old to fix your $40,000 truck’s engine, why would you employ someone with no expertise in government and a chronic habit of lying as your President, was never taken seriously by those who thought themselves conservatives. Such is conservative ideological blind loyalty.

While long time readers may remember that former and most incompetent Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) preached the virtues of amateurism, that did not mark the appearance of entrenched amateurism. We can go back to 2000, when the Republicans won the House and Senate and, by all accounts, “spent like drunken sailors” the surplus it inherited from the Clinton Administration, led the country into two wars, for which it also refused to budget and tax, and passed foolish legislation, such as the repeal of Glass-Steagall, which brought upon us the Great Recession. They mistook position & responsibility for prestige & absolute power. Such are the mistakes of the avaricious amateurs.

Or we can go further back to the Iran-Contra scandal of the Reagan Administration (1981-1989), the very picture of ambitious, ideologically-driven amateurs, blundering about and damaging the country.

And it’s even possible that we could make an argument that the adherents of the John Birch Society (JBS), an early component of the conservative movement, which has since lost prestige and influence but still exists.

Why did JBS lose influence? Because of their fantasy-prone delusions about the world. They advanced absurd notions about the Federal government being controlled by communists and other such rot. The founder, Robert Welch, Jr., was eventually chased out of the Republican Party by such personages as Buckley and Goldwater, but I believe the delusions which characterized them had already contaminated the Republican Party, judging from the right-wing email streams I’ve had inflicted on me over the years, as well as much of the political commercials we’ve seen from them.

But today we can judge the “conservative movement,” and the judgment is harsh. The offspring of the conservative movement, motivated by toxic team politics, baseless economic theories such as the Laffer Curve, frantic absolutism on such topics as gun control, abortion, and religious freedom, and, perhaps most importantly, the infection of the Party with absolute loyalty to a Apocalyptic End-Times religious philosophy, which gives its promoters positions of power and wealth to which they have no right, has led to the following, an incomplete list:

• A party unable to screen out unqualified candidates for office, such Donald J. Trump;
• A party base so credulous as to believe the documented, objective lies of Donald J. Trump;
• A party prone to believing the most fantastic notions, such as the idea that regulation and taxation are absolute evils;
• To take as truth utter lies concerning political opponents, such as the Pizzagate conspiracy theory of QAnon, or even about each other;
• Vast incompetence, in which the latest example is the failure in having sufficient vaccine on hand and distributing it efficiently, and making promises which cannot be fulfilled, but for which there many, many examples;
• Insurrection based on false claims;
• The notion that unsupported belief is sufficient to be a responsible American citizen;
• Possible betrayal during said insurrection by members of Congress;
• Insistent use of fake talking points by members of Congress in order to score political points;
• A Party so dedicated to winning that it uses gerrymandering, and even less savory tactics to suppress the votes of non-Republican voters, rather than dedicating itself to making it possible for all qualified voters to vote;
• Threats of further insurrection by a far-right which has nurtured racist grievances for decades;
• & Etc – which you may take to mean I’m tired of typing this crap.

Perhaps one of the oldest and most accurate aphorisms is The proof is in the pudding. The above list of failures embodies that, and leads to the pro forma question of Why? I say it’s that toxic team politics; religious mania led on by the delusional, grifters, and conmen; the taking as religious tenets such dubious concepts as regulation and taxation are automatically evil; white privilege; and all the rest lead to a toxic and deadly disaster when it comes to dealing with the challenges of crisis, as well as daily, governing.

Source: PRC

We should taken the hints provided by the Iraq War, in which the CIA was exposed for torturing terror suspects, a practice both barbarous and ineffective, and the response to the Katrina hurricane disaster, which left New Orleans in ruins and its inhabitants in desperate straits – all preventable. The Bush Administration, along with the aforementioned Republican control of the legislative branch for the first six years of the Bush Administration, should have been a broad hint concerning the intellectual bankruptcy of the notions of the “conservatives”.

Source: FiveThirtyEight

But the pudding we’re now experiencing is what I think may turn out to be the endpoint. True, some 74 million American citizens voted for President Trump in the 2020 Presidential election – but latest polls suggest that if the election was run again, he’d get less than half that. And the allegations of deadly conspiracy that are beginning to mutter against certain Republican members of Congress suggest that suspicion against the entire Republican Party operation may become strong enough to argue for its crippling.

What do I want to see? The ejection of religious elites, the grifters and conmen and, as I said before, the wildly delusional from the Party would be a fine beginning. If it is emphasized that Paula White and her ilk, currently advisers to the President, wear that badge not as an honor, but as a badge of shame, I’d be encouraged. The shrinkage of the numbers of their adherents would signal a return to old fashioned American common sense, and an abandonment of the hedonic selfishness which is, even for an agnostic such as me, indicative of profound blasphemy within Christianity.

An expungement of the celebration of incompetence, a return to asking candidates Are you qualified?, and the realization that a career in business doesn’t make one qualified for government leadership. An embracement of voting and excellence and, hell, democracy, and an expungement of voter suppression tactics. A rethinking of the tenets of the Party, and the realization that business and government are not one and the same.

Oh, I could go on and on. I’ve been doing the responsible citizen thing since before I started this blog in 2014, and I’m really, really sick of the corruption of the Republicans. I sincerely hope the Trumpian disaster, his epitomization of libertarian selfishness, will lead more and more Republicans to realize their Party has been eviscerated by rogues and devils, and that the libertarian philosophy that Greed is good! needs some serious rethinking – or junking.

With Biden running a responsible Administration, the responsibility for the free press and pundits may now be appropriate coverage and critiques of the new Administration, countering the inevitable lies from the dead-enders, such as Tony Perkins and others who’ve come to power and influence with Trump, and making it clear that a conservative party dedicated to democracy and good governance is still welcome, and even needed – but the Republican Party, the liars and prevaricators and manipulators who’ve enabled it since at least the time of Gingrich, and President Trump are not that party. Not in the least.

An insistent bit of madness:

Religious-right leader Tony Perkins claims impeachment is "a double-edged sword for Democrats" because if there is a Senate trial, Trump will be able to introduce heretofore unseen evidence of voter fraud in his defense. pic.twitter.com/dqcKy6Sdbp

— Right Wing Watch (@RightWingWatch) January 13, 2021

Because … Trump’s kept it in reserve just for an impeachment trial? Trump’s flair for the dramatic comes to the fore?

No. Perkins has been around for decades, and his grip on being an honest, grounded commentator has never been strong. Evidently it’s getting worse.

Or he deeply resents losing his influence over national culture.

Apophenia:

Berkowitz compared the experience of becoming involved with QAnon with that of someone playing “experience fictions.” Some of these games have been elaborate efforts to bridge the gap between fiction and reality. Participants may receive mysterious packages in the mail. Or get a panicked late night phone call. They may be directed to a seemingly innocuous web site that turns out to have hidden information if you look at it just right. These games can also happen in person in the form of escape rooms or other participatory events.

In discussing these games, Berkowitz touches on the idea of “Apophenia,” — the tendency of human beings to find patterns, even where they don’t exist. Give people a handful of random information, and they will find a pattern, even if they have to create elaborate rules to make that pattern fit. It’s sort of the broader version of the way people will find faces in the patterns of wallpaper or the leaves of a tree.

In game design, apophenia is a problem, because it can cause people to plunge off in the wrong direction, losing the thread that the game designer meant them to find. In QAnon … it’s all there is. The sporadic bits of “information” issued from Q or other supposed sources at the heart of the conspiracy don’t have to make sense. They don’t have to go anywhere. Through apophenia, someone is sure to create an apparent set of connections. Then, through a community process that rewards the most elaborate, most obscure, most twisted interpretations, the theory adds new layers of complexity. [“QAnon was at the center of the Capitol assault, and could get worse after Trump is gone,” Mark Sumner, The Daily Kos]

A family of anti-vaxxers is exhibiting a bit of … well … grasping arrogance:

A group of Missouri parents told an Eighth Circuit panel on Tuesday that the state requires them to go through a forced indoctrination session to religiously opt out of vaccines required for their children to attend school.

“This is a hybrid rights case,” plaintiffs’ attorney Linus Baker told the three-judge panel via a teleconference hearing. “It has many fundamental rights. These parents cannot raise these children the way they want, they cannot provide informed consent, the children’s bodily integrity is violated. The parents have to violate their own religious beliefs, and they have to speak, they have to communicate, and all that together says that neutral generally acceptable law does not apply.” [Courthouse News Service]

No, of course … These parents cannot raise these children the way they want. Being part of a society means there are out-of-bounds areas in the field of raising children. How about if someone wants to raise their children such that they should kill at least one cop per year?

Yeah, that wouldn’t go over so well, either.

That there’s even a religious exemption for vaccination is a weird bit of madness. I vote the United States should buy an island and let smallpox reign free on it. Whoever wants to be vaccination-free is sent to the island, becomes infected, and long videos taken of the righteous, ummmm, victims.

Let anti-vaxxers deal with that. OK, so they’d just deny the authenticity of the video. Sorry, sorry, I’m feeling a bit peevish today, and I’m at work, which means I’m staring at detail, so when I read this article, this attorney’s argument tripped the red flag wire.

Professor Richardson provides a fine summary of President-elect Biden’s plan for recovery:

But Biden’s plan is far larger than a way to address our current crisis. It outlines a vision for America that reaches back to an older time, when both parties shared the idea that the government had a role to play in the economy, regulating business, providing a basic social safety net, and promoting infrastructure.

That vision was at the heart of the New Deal, ushered in by Democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt after the Great Crash of 1929 and the Depression that followed it illustrated that the American economy needed a referee to keep the wealthy playing by the rules. Government intervention proved so successful and so popular that the Republican Party, which had initially recoiled from what its leaders incorrectly insisted was communism, by 1952 had adopted the idea of an activist government. Republican President Dwight Eisenhower added the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare to the Cabinet on April 11, 1953, and in 1956 signed into law the Federal-Aid Highway Act, which began the construction of 41,000 miles of interstate highways.

While this system was enormously popular, reactionary Republicans hated business regulation, the incursion of the federal government into lucrative infrastructure fields, and the taxes it took to pay for the new programs (the top marginal tax rate in the 1950s was 91%). They launched a movement to end what was popularly known as the “liberal consensus”: the idea that the government should take an active role in keeping the economic playing field level.

The takeaway? The more a Republican throws a tantrum over the plan, the more threatened they feel threatened concerning their position in the power structure of society.

Oh, this isn’t entirely true. A lot of Republicans are well-meaning, but have been trained to bray out talking points concerning socialism, free enterprise, etc etc. But it provides a useful metric for understanding how much a person is concerned for their country, vs how much is selfish.

President Eisenhower might be quite ashamed of them.

Erick Erickson has the latest in bizarre right wing fantasies:

Many adherents of QAnon still believe Donald Trump will be sworn in to a second term.  Over the last week, on social media channels that promote Donald Trump, wild claims circulated that banks will close on January 18th, which they will because it is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.  But the conspiracists claim it will be to prevent the global child traffickers and traitors from fleeing.  On the nineteenth, Donald Trump will finally round up all the traitors in Washington and he will be sworn in on the twentieth.  As proof of this scheme playing out, they claim the Pope was arrested the other night (do not ask which night), as part of the President’s global sting operation against elite child traffickers.

For Erickson, this is a cry of woe and proof that we’re just not religious enough.

I’ll choose a far shorter path. For my right wing, QAnon, MAGA readers, I’ll pose a simple challenge, something even a computer programmer like me can dream up.

If the Pope is indeed jailed by next Wednesday, the day Donald Trump has his second inauguration, hey, you win.

But if neither comes true, you don’t simply lose. This is not a game, you see. If neither comes true, you should promise yourself – not me, but yourself – to do something monumental.

That monumental thing is to rethink your basis for believing things. Ask yourself why you’ve believed these horrible frauds. Why have you separated from the American mainstream?

That’s the challenge, if the Pope still walks free – and Trump is on the run, or even already arrested. To change the basis on which you believe things.

Grifter Brandon Burden of KingdomLife in Frisco, Texas puts on his show.

Video compilation courtesy Hemant Mehta of Friendly Atheist.

The real trick is right in the first minute, as he tries to move the private information he claims to have, that Donald Trump would have eight years in office, into the public as if it were objective information, by calling on the audience to agree with him concerning other private information as if it was public information.

In fact, as if they themselves had received that information. Thing is, I’ll bet a quarter of the audience will actually claim they did receive such a communication, because social pressure can lead to some truly odd results – and this one isn’t that odd. A lot of people will nod right along with everyone else in groups.

But any properly skeptical – or cynical – watcher would simply shake their head immediately and head for the exits. Sadly, these folks, these victims, are sucking it right down.

My Arts Editor, a former fundamentalist herself, simply said “Tax him. It’ll shut him up.” She refers to the Johnson Amendment, of course. He’d scream, of course, about First Amendment rights, but that’s just because these grifters want to eat their cake and have it, too.

A number of sources have reported that Representative Steve Scalise (R-LA) and Republican leader has called for “unity” and “healing” upon the announcement of the Democratic push for another lick of the impeachment cone, since accomplished. For instance, here‘s Yahoo! News:

Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., said that he will not vote to impeach President Donald Trump after the Capitol riot because he believes it will divide the country when it is “calling out for healing.”

Open mouth, insert foot. Push. Push. Push!

Someone should inform the good Representative that healing begins with removal of the entity causing the dysfunction, whether it’s a pathogen, cancerous cells, President Trump, or his enablers in the Senate and House.

Only when he acknowledges that the analogy he calls upon requires the removals I’ve just described can he be taken seriously. In the meantime, he’s just another bloviating Republican hack.

Time for the Senate to step up to its responsibilities!

In case you want a current snapshot of the Trump Organization empire, here’s WaPo with an article entitled “Backlash to riot at Capitol hobbles Trump’s business as banks, partners flee the brand,” which more or less summarizes their incoming disaster:

Impecunious:

having very little money:
I first knew him as an impecunious student living in a tiny apartment. [Cambridge Dictionary]

Noted in “Lindsey Graham had a lock on most ludicrous senator — until Josh Hawley pounced,” George F. Will, WaPo:

Marie Griffith, Director and John C. Danforth Distinguished Professor in the Humanities

From multiple origins, a conglomeration of superhero narratives have converged, luring countless numbers of Americans to see themselves as, in Ross Douthat’s words, “actors in a world-historical drama, saviors or re-founders of the American Republic.” Analyzing the Capitol insurrectionist whose military gear included patches sporting slogans like “Armor of God” and “God will judge our enemies. We’ll arrange the meeting,” Peter Manseau marvels at “the danger of comic book notions of faith meeting comic book notions of nation,” concluding, “We are being held hostage by permanent adolescents.” The armed so-called freedom fighters are doing their best to bring their comic book, their superhero movie, their violent video game, or their Book of Revelation revenge fantasy (isn’t it all the same?) to real life, and their target list includes all of us who don’t accept their reality.

Great. We’re under assault from pathological comic book nerds. It’s a grim humor.

Erick Erickson continues to disbelieve what he’s helped to create:

Instead of exercising any level of humility, Republicans either believed a bunch of lies and would not accept any facts to the contrary or they simply didn’t care and decided to build an army of lies to overwhelm and defeat the truth. Either way, with a clown show of characters straight out of B-Movie casting for Sharknado 27, they failed to persuade the majority of the public that they had real claims.

But they persuaded some, whipped them into a frenzy, told them to fight, fight, fight, and held a rally in Washington. WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU PEOPLE THINKING WAS GOING TO HAPPEN?

No, I am not sympathetic to you over major corporations deciding not to give you a penny. No, I am not sympathetic to you getting your internet social media accounts canceled. No, I am not sympathetic to you having your rising career in politics ruined.

You tried to undermine a lawful election, sold a bunch of well meaning and caring people a bill of lies many of them believed while you all knew better behind the scenes, and saw multiple people die in a storming of the Capitol after encouraging these people with fists in the air and atta-boys.

What the hell did you think would happen?

He still wants to blame the Democrats, but that’s getting harder and harder. It’s a long, hard road for confirmed zealots, even those who try to hide behind some fig leaf of disinterest. At least Erickson admits Trump lost and should be graceful about it.

The corporate world has awakened to the reality that some of the politicians to which it has contributed appear to be in favor of overturning elections rather than accepting defeat – a recipe for the chaos that businesses abhor.

So, as Politico reports, some are beginning to halt donations, some to everyone, some only to Republicans who favored rejecting duly decided Electoral College votes.

But this is what caught my eye:

Losing corporate PAC support — if the bans last — will sting Republicans who have come to rely on such contributions, especially as the Democratic Party builds a big online fundraising advantage. But the consequences could reach even farther than that, with the GOP also confronting the prospect of losing the support of white-collar company workers and executives who are infuriated over the insurrection.

Which brings to the fore the reality that the business world is mostly secular, with some exceptions such as Hobby Lobby – while the Republican Party is increasingly the Party of the Evangelicals.

This means that some of the ‘litmus tests’ used by the faithful of the Party are not going to be acceptable to those in the business world. Such as, say, applying ‘faith criteria’ to the results of the recent Presidential election. The Trump faithful have no evidence for their claims of electoral fraud, but, for them, with the promises of Trump, Giuliani, and Powell ringing in their ears, their belief, their faith, that faith that takes them to church every Sunday, is good enough.

But, for a serious, successful business, that’s just gibberish.

Republican leaders may be shocked:

Some of the corporate shifts have shocked the party. GOP officials were taken by surprise when Jay Timmons, the president and chief executive officer of the National Association of Manufacturers, released a statement two days before the Electoral College vote excoriating those who planned to object.

But that’s a measure of their naivete, their incompetence, because they should know that businesses do not flourish despite governmental structure and stability – but because of it. The United States provides a fertile soil for companies, from old empires to startups, but that can only occur because the political world, for all its clash and frenzy, does not indulge in madness.

And that’s the best definition of last Wednesday: madness. Lies. A brutal attempt at overthrow by treasonous individuals, lead by Unindicted Co-Conspirator #1 (from the Cohen prosecution, who is commonly understood to be President Trump).

I called for the deprivation of political donations by the corporate world late last year, and now it’s taking place. It should have taken place the moment President Trump started yammering about stolen elections, that very moment. The business world is very tardy, and six people paid the price for that tardiness with their lives.

But at least they’re moving. More businesses need to move, and the focus needs to sharpened to Republicans only, not just all politicians indiscriminately, as some are doing. But finally they’re beginning to tug, oh so tentatively, at the chains they need to pull.

This one has become annoying over the last few days:

The assault on the U.S. Capitol and on democracy was unacceptable. – T-Mobile, on announcing a pause in political donations

Unacceptable? Please. So anodyne.

It’s fucking treasonous and that’s the word that should be used. Someone’s feelings are hurt? Too bad.

Governor Kristi Noem (R-SD), who I’ve suggested on at least one occasion should resign in shame, has written a remarkable piece for The Federalist.

No, she neither takes responsibility nor offers to resign.

Rather, she manages to write a piece in which just about every paragraph contains a falsehood (whether she thinks it or not) or glosses a fact. It’s the sort of thing where you can shake your finger at each prevarication or misleading statement, but you’ll end up with a sprained finger. Here’s one that really embodies the problems of the Republican Party these days:

Republicans got our butts kicked in Georgia on Tuesday. A 33-year-old with no accomplishments and a smooth-talking preacher wiped the floor with us. The idea that Georgia, of all places, could elect two communists to the United States Senate was ridiculous.

Communists? That pair? With regards to Pastor Warnock, surely Governor Noem has not forgotten the terrible hatred communist governments traditionally show towards religion, which they rightly see as competitors in the field of country domination. No? You don’t remember?

Go learn some history, Governor.

And how is Ossoff, a guy with a Masters degree from the London School of Economics and an investigative journalist, how is he someone with no accomplishments and a communist? He just beat a sitting Senator. Hell, a free press is another institution hated by communists.

And do you know why? It’s because the communists believed truth was not a factor in being successful. To them, much like President Trump, the truth value of a fact wasn’t important. It only mattered how it played to its, or his, supporters.

But that belief that truth and honesty didn’t matter turned out to be the Soviet’s Achilles’ heal, because they believed it internally as well, and after a while, with their supermarket shelves bare of all but lies, and citizens, for so long loyal yet despairing, finally rising up and peacefully telling their rulers that they were finished. The little lies, the political correctness, the commissars, the listening for what you want to hear rather than truth: those were a major factor in the collapse of the Soviets.

This little missive of Noem’s embodies all that’s wrong with the Republican Party, why their endpoint seems to be coming into view. If, in some alternative universe, they had the guts to ask how to begin to fix themselves, the best approach would be to look back to our parents and grandparents.

Stop the lies. A lie here, a lie there, and soon you don’t know if that important fact is true or not. And everyone’s doing it because you’re doing it. Now you’re so fucked you don’t even understand it. Like fish and water, you don’t realize how deeply you’re in the toxic pool. Dedicate yourself to Truth. Not the Party, not God. Truth and truth only.

Stop the ad hominen. Demonizing your opponent legitimizes any and all urges to hate your fellow Americans for smaller and smaller differences, and each person is a model for everyone around them. I’m an agnostic, but even I know your Bible doesn’t encourage you to engender hate against fellow humans. Or did you get a special edition? Warnock and Ossoff are not communists, and you know it. Show some respect, and maybe you’ll get some respect, if only as an American.

Stop misleading for political advantage. You write about Covid-19:

COVID didn’t crush the economy. Government crushed the economy. And then, just as quickly, government turned around and held itself out as the savior. Frankly, the Treasury Department can’t print money fast enough to keep up with Congress’ Christmas list.

What is so troubling is that by April, we knew that there was a specific vulnerable population that we needed to protect from COVID-19. But we also knew that the vast majority of people would recover from this virus with no serious difficulty. Despite this, very few changed course.

And how many mentions of overwhelmed hospitals and medical systems did I see? None. That is shameful, Governor. You’ve intentionally omitted the key fact in that entire debate, that we’re, in part, trying to avoid destroying our health system, and I think you’ve done that since February. If for no other reason, this is why you should resign in shame.

There’s more I could write about, but I’ll stop addressing the governor now. It’s really, for the informed, skeptical reader, a missive that is a horror in that it misleads, strips context, omits inconvenient facts, and no doubt there are more sins that I’m too sleepy to discern. I’ve just glanced at it again and the gall to quote President Eisenhower’s remarks about mortgaging the future, from a member of the Republican Party, is just stunning – and I just know she’ll recommend lowering taxes as the key to the deficit problem! Such drivel.

So long as “thinkers” such as this governor dominate the Republican Party, they may win elections, but they’ll be failures at governing. They don’t dare go near the truth, because it didn’t help them get elected in the first place. But it’s only adherence to truth, facts, and experts (which, I’ll grant, can be dangerous in this world of charlatans) that makes good governance a possibility.

This is how women in my sorority greet each other. It’s known as the “My eyes are right here, dude!” ditty.

Mesa of Lost Women (1953) … oh … ah … urgh …

Told through a flashback, this is the story of a mad scientist, Dr. Aranya, and his quest to produce humans with regenerative capabilities. He invites a famous scientist (“a specialist!”), Dr. Masterson, to visit, and reveals his experiments on tarantulas have produced specimens that grow to be larger than humans, while his human experiments have produced women who can regrow limbs and appear to have a lifespan of several centuries.

And the habits of spiders.

The results with the men are more problematic.

Masterson, asked to help, is horrified and denounces Dr. Aranya. His timing is poor, as he’s overpowered and becomes yet another subject for experimentation. But he breaks free and escapes, while losing his mind in the process.

A year later, he is out on a pass from the insane asylum, under the care of George, a large male nurse. He stops at a tavern, and, in his innocent, dominating way, shoots to death a dancer who is performing. Escaping with George, who doesn’t dare go up against the gun, he and Jan Van Croft, Croft’s manservant, and Croft’s fiancee, Doreen – a gold digger who’s found her sugar daddy – that Masterson has taken hostage drive to the airport, where Croft’s plane – under repair – and pilot, manly but humble Grant, are waiting.

Forced to take off, the plane’s problems means they’re immediately in trouble and are forced to land on the Zarpa Mesa, and soon enough they’re being picked off, one by one, by the men and women who’ve been experimented on by Dr. Aranya.

With a little help from you-know-what.

And, yeah, it’s all cobbled together. The acting ranges from adequate to awful, technically it’s nothing good, special effects are dubious at best, and the accompanying music … must have been provided by a first year music student.

But I’ll admit, the work of one of the experimental subjects, Tarantella (Tandra Quinn) wasn’t awful. Whether she’s a good dancer is a question for a dance expert, but I thought her dancing evoked a spider quite well, and when she wasn’t dancing she had a fixed stare that was unexpectedly effective in context. She had no dialog, which turned out to be true for Quinn throughout her career.

If you’re an Ed Woods completist, then I will sigh and say, This is for you.

But, as my Arts Editor stated, “Boy, did that stank.”