As the medical staff at [United Memorial Medical Center] witnessed the psychological effects of isolation in patients, [chief of staff Dr. Joseph] Varon instructed staff to wear large photographs of their faces hung around their necks, so that patients could recognize the person who was caring for them behind those “space suits.”
One day, he went in to see patients with a picture of Brad Pitt attached to his personal protective equipment suit, eliciting laughter from even those who were the sickest. [WaPo]
The Iran Nuclear Deal (JCPOA) that was abandoned by President Trump still may have a life, if the Iranian leadership can hold on:
Iran’s president Wednesday dismissed a bill that would reduce Iran’s compliance with international regulations on its nuclear energy program.
On Tuesday, Iranian lawmakers voted for a draft bill that would significantly increase Iran’s nuclear enrichment. The 20% jump would put Iran above the 3.67% enrichment rate Iran agreed to under the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).
However, on Wednesday, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said he disagrees with the bill, calling it “harmful to the trend of diplomatic activities,” state-run Press TV reported. [AL-Monitor]
But its fate may lie in higher hands, as President Rouhani can be overruled by Supreme Leader Khamenei:
It is unclear what will come of the proposed law. On Wednesday, the speaker of the parliament officially asked Rouhani to implement the legislation. Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has yet to take a position on it, Reuters reported.
Khamenei is quite elderly and, reputedly, ill. What the Biden Administration will be facing when it comes to Iran is hard to decipher. But there may be a good chance to cleaning it up, according to this follow up article:
Rouhani: Biden can just sign the “good piece of paper”
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani this week called for President-elect Joe Biden to reenter the Iranian nuclear deal by reversing sanctions imposed by the United States after the Donald Trump administration withdrew from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the deal’s formal name, in May 2018.
Rouhani told a Cabinet meeting Wednesday that the next president “can put a good piece of paper on the table and sign it nicely so that we could return to the first place, and it does not take time at all.”
His message echoes that of his Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, who said last month that if the incoming Biden administration revokes “only three executive orders” that imposed sanctions on Iran, there is no need for “preconditions or negotiations.” [AL-Monitor]
We’ll have to see how Biden and his advisors like this idea. Keep in mind that current Secretary of State doesn’t qualify as an expert, so we can ignore this:
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo issued a statement Friday that “the international community must not reward the regime’s dangerous gamesmanship with economic appeasement.”
I recognize I’m pathological on the subject, but I think Erick Erickson is a sort of barometer for the far-right. He’s more honest in his evaluations, has some relevant expertise as a former elections lawyer, and I hope – but not expect – that others will gradually follow him down the path of reluctant rationality:
I am truly disappointed with my own side for the hucksterism, lies, and denial of reality. Too many friends have no knowledge they are wet. They cannot appreciate the real world around them and live now in a fantasy land of grievance, theft of elections, and mythology. Principles have been abandoned and all that remains is coveting power and keeping power.
Some good friends have even signed a letter wanting multiple states to ignore their voters and appoint replace electors to the Electoral College. It is disappointing to see.
I just assumed my side was better than the left, which has spent four years lying about 2016, engaged in petty grievances, and screaming about stolen elections and Russia. Turns out, in the end, everybody sometimes disappoints. Lord knows a lot of you are disappointed in me for merely trying to tell you the truth.
He’s not all that far down the path, though, is he? That last paragraph is worth contemplating for how he clings to his own truths, while admitting his fellows are worse than himself. Perhaps he needs to review the Mueller Report and its indictments, particularly of the Internet Research Agency. Asking voters to operate on false information does, indeed, result in a stolen election.
One of my minor themes when it comes to political blogging – which I hope will decrease as the Biden Administration takes its place and begins to undue the damage of the Trump Administration – is that the third-raters leading the far-right “conservative” movement are well aware that they are third-raters, and for that reason they try to paint the Democrats as similarly third-rate. It’s part of the strategy of retaining relevance and position as the years pass and demography works against them. For that reason, I assume nothing will come of the recently announced investigation into Hunter Biden.
And Erickson made the mistake of thinking that, because his fellows were ideological brothers, they must all be great. Or good. Or at least passable.
And now he’s coming to the bitter realization that many are fairly awful: arrogant embracers of victimhood. Unwilling to learn, unwilling to leave the right-wing epistemic bubble, they have the taste of Trumpian power in their mouths and they find it addictive.
This problem is the result of three conservative mistakes in confluence. We’ll start with the mistake of prioritizing ideology over competency and character. Look, I agree a competent Communist is not what we want in a legislature, as their description of the world, humanity, and how it all works is at serious divergence from how most Americans think about it.
But a corrupt or incompetent Democrat or Republican is little better. But the Democrats – strictly from informal observations – appear to be better at not electing despicable specimens such as Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), Mitch McConnell (R-KY), or Paul Ryan (R-WI). Why? Long time readers may be surprised to see me not cite toxic team politics, which, given the performance of Republican Congressional candidates vs the performance of President Trump, may be fading a bit if the ballot-splitting hypothesis holds true, but rather single-issue voters.
I suppose I should stop right here and say that, having made this observation to myself a few days ago, I then asked if I was a single issue voter. It’s a bad phrase, in a way, because nearly everyone will have an issue which will be their sticking point.
Mine? It’s this: If a candidate campaigns on the promise to abolish democracy if they win, well, no vote for you, dude. I’ll either not vote at all, or, if your opponent isn’t equally bad (think Cthulhu), I’ll vote for the opponent.
Does it seem ridiculous? Yes, it does. But it’s worth discovering and acknowledging that my sticking point is one which I don’t expect will ever come into operation. Now, back to the flow:
Right now, I consider single-issue voters to be the knife between the shoulder blades of the United States. The most popular issue appears to be abortion, and so what we see in the storm of deeply radical Republican candidates is the ability to do the anti-abortion polka with great facility. Add in a bit of the 2nd Amendment Absolutist rag, and a trifling bit of Christian Paranoia waltzes, as demonstrated at various times by Erickson, as well as recent candidates Reprensentative-elect Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), Senator Kelly Loeffler (R-GA, currently in the runoff for reelection to her seat), and many, many others, and there’s no need for any candidate to demonstrate their competency and character. I hate abortion (Erickson), I love machine guns (Kobach – he lost his race for governor of Kansas, but he’s emblematic of so many others), I hate experts (Ryan) – hell, on this last one, if you’re willing to conflate competency with expertise, the conservatives loathe this key American virtue.
The point is that these positions determine the voting preferences of many, many voters, with no reference to character or competency. In Republican primaries, everyone must take these positions and demonstrate just how conservative they have become, for fear of being RINOed. Here’s just one example – one I actually admire for its artistic merit in a political context – during Loeffler’s run against Rep Doug Collins (R-GA) for the Senate seat to which she was appointed, in the jungle primary which left her and Rafael Warnock (D-GA) as the runoff survivors:
If they don’t, they fall victim to ridiculous accusations – and this is from their own ideological cellmates!
This required ideological rigidity by single-issue voters is vividly illustrated by the pathologies on display by the far-right that currently controls the GOP. I hope we’ll be seeing a gradual diminishment in the numbers of single-issue voters, particularly with regard to abortion and gun control, as more and more of these mistaken voters come to the reluctant conclusion that the dancers, no matter how loudly they shrill their favored issues, do not get to advance without demonstrating other positive attributes.
And, if those attributes are not demonstrated, perhaps their rivals, whether in primary or the general election, deserve their votes more than the merely power-hungry dancers.
A reader responds to my ignorance concerning recent wars and how we really waste money:
This is precisely why people are mistaken about the military being grossly inefficient and wasteful. It’s not the military itself that causes the most egregious expenses, it’s the politicians. Those extra airplanes? That’s so the manufacturer makes more money, so that the elected officials in the districts where they are manufactured make more money, and those officials get re-elected. Same with the submarine. Same with the Pentagon’s repeated attempts to close unneeded bases which are likewise repeatedly rebuffed by Congress. There’s likely waste within the uniformed ranks, as well, but it’s like nickels and dimes compared to these huge, corrupt expenditures.
I agree. And the political problems of closing bases has been approached through bipartisan commissions, which make recommendations that cannot be amended, only voted up or down.
The military has always been a black hole as far as politics go, regardless of the governmental system in use.
The Democrats have more than one club to use on those Members-elect of Congress who signed on to the lawsuit Texas v. Pennsylvania, which sought to invalidate the votes of citizens in Pennsylvania and three other states:
U.S. Rep. Bill Pascrell, Jr. (D-NJ-09) today called on House leaders to sanction Members and exclude from the 117th Congress any Members-elect who are supporting Donald Trump’s efforts to invalidate the 2020 presidential election. Pascrell cites the text of Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment which disqualifies from service any individuals who seek to attack American democracy, as well as Congress’s power to exclude Members by majority vote as acknowledged by the U.S. Supreme Court in Powell v. McCormack.
“Stated simply, men and women who would act to tear the United States government apart cannot serve as Members of the Congress. These lawsuits seeking to obliterate public confidence in our democratic system by invalidating the clear results of the 2020 presidential election undoubtedly attack the text and spirit of the Constitution, which each Member swears to support and defend,” Rep. Pascrell writes House leaders. “Consequently, I call on you to exercise the power of your offices to evaluate steps you can take to address these constitutional violations this Congress and, if possible, refuse to seat in the 117th Congress any Members-elect seeking to make Donald Trump an unelected dictator.” [Insider NJ]
I fear this is only meaningful if Speaker Pelosi actually undertakes to prevent the seating of those House members who signed on, and I don’t see that happening; meanwhile, the electorate won’t give a shit. They’re tired of the drama. I know I am.
That said, this is illustrative of the ball-breaking machine that the Republican Party has become. The tenet of toxic team politics has bred a culture of Yes-men, a culture in which the only way to get ahead was to agree with the figures higher up the ladder (or RINO them out of the Party). They’ve done the anti-abortion polka dance, kissed asses above, taken advantage of gerrymandering and the Republican marketing machine, and seized for themselves a position of prestige and power.
But now they find themselves between Scylla and Charybdis, the legendary monsters from Greek myth which ground incautious Greek ships and sailors mercilessly to their doom. Republican House members, frantic to remain in the good graces of the would-be dictator, supinely do his bidding and find themselves caught in a shredder, brought on by their own lust for power, misunderstanding of what it means to lead, and, if they were in earnest, the foolishness of the entire abortion issue.
Ah! If only it were all true, that I have written! But I’d be surprised if this even makes it into national news, much less actually occurs. I think Rep Pascrell has a case, but it doesn’t seem practical to cast out more than half of the incoming Republican class of 2020.
Which is too bad. I’d guess filling the empty seats could lead to some real surprises.
The Supreme Court on Friday dismissed a long-shot bid by President Trump and the state of Texas to overturn the results in four states won by Democrat Joe Biden, blocking the president’s legal path to reverse his reelection loss.
The court’s unsigned order was short: “Texas has not demonstrated a judicially cognizable interest in the manner in which another state conducts its elections. All other pending motions are dismissed as moot.”
Justices Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Clarence Thomas said they did not think the court had the authority to simply reject a state’s filing, a position they have taken in the past. But they said they would not have allowed Texas more than that.
“I would . . . grant the motion to file the bill of complaint but would not grant other relief, and I express no view on any other issue,” Alito wrote in a statement joined by Thomas. [WaPo]
No remarks from Trump’s prize judges, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett, either. Will angry remarks be made about their failure? A word to the US Marshals: keep an eye out for threats to those Justices. I’ve never heard of a Justice being assassinated, and I don’t want to start now.
Will Trump give up? I’m inclined to agree with the view that this is the Shearing of the sheep phase of his political life, and the money will dry up if he concedes now.
So he’ll fight on – hopelessly, painfully, to no legitimate purpose, but he’ll suffuse his coffers with wealth stripped from the credulous far-right fringe who call themselves conservatives, rich and poor alike, and all quite possibly in order to satisfy his creditors. The next few weeks may prove bumpy.
In the next hundred years, many Ph.D.s will be awarded to historians for research on this Presidency. And political science types will be exploring the various rips and tears that this has opened in the flank of the governance system called Democracy, and its incompatibility with religion.
The Texas lawsuit against four other states concerning voting procedures, rejected just hours ago by SCOTUS, was, in reality, a publicity platform hosting a number of stunts – and not just for a desperate Texas AG who has the FBI on his tail, or GOP members of Congress trying to pacify a thuggish base. This one may be more serious than it first appears:
The GOP’s desperate attempt to have the Supreme Court overturn the results of the presidential election has attracted powerful support from … states that have yet to come into being, according to a Thursday court filing.
The “states” of New California and New Nevada filed an amicus brief in support of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s attempt to have the Supreme Court block states that voted for Joe Biden from casting their electoral votes for the president-elect.
Sounds like a joke, doesn’t it?
For now, New Nevada and New California are represented by Pahrump, Nevada attorney Robert E. Thomas, III.
From his erstwhile capital of Pahrump, Thomas has been nurturing the fledging state of New Nevada since the 2018 midterms.
According to Thomas’s website for the “New Nevada” State Movement, he began to assemble insurrectionists after being angry about GOP losses in the 2018 midterms.
The movement’s slogan is “What Would You Change, If You Could Do It Over Again?,” a reference to the state slogan as well as being a potential descriptor for the kinds of thoughts in which introspection among the plaintiffs could result.
Armed with that slogan and his website, Thomas has been fighting for nearly two years to divorce Nevada’s rural counties from Las Vegas, leaving the gambling mecca (home to a Trump hotel and top GOP fundraiser Steve Wynn) to wither on the vine as the state’s bucolic heartland presumably unites under the banner of New Nevada.
New polities are often started by angry people – after all, that’s the definition of a revolutionary.
So it appears Thomas found a short-lived but high profile platform for advertising what he thinks can be a paradise, if only they can break away from the sins of the big city.
Can he succeed? Hard to say. Without a doubt, he’ll be hearing from people who surveyed the amicus briefs of the ill-fated Texas lawsuit and found in his filing references that rings their bells. The problems, though, pertain to how many respond: if not enough, then he won’t have the population to try to split either state, and, if too much, he’ll have those damn cities popping up, and stable cities will attract liberals, and, oh, there goes the whole deal.
But I think it’s more interesting than most folks would consider. If Nevada split, that’d make for four Senators representing a remarkably small number of people; meanwhile, for decades I’ve been hearing of proposals to split California into four regions, and given how blue California is currently, you have to wonder if that would result in a net gain – and possibly a large one – for the left side of the political spectrum.
A simple five-page per curiam opinion genuinely could end up in the pantheon of all-time most significant rulings in American history. Every once in a long while, the court needs to invest some of its accumulated capital in issuing judgments that are not only legally right but also respond to imminent, tangible threats to the nation. That is particularly appropriate when, as here, the court finds itself being used as a tool to actively undermine faith in our democratic institutions — including by the members of the court’s bar on whom the justices depend to act much more responsibly.
In a time that is so very deeply polarized, I cannot think of a person, group or institution other than the Supreme Court that could do better for the country right now. Supporters of the president who have been gaslighted into believing that there has been a multi-state conspiracy to steal the election recognize that the court is not a liberal institution. If the court will tell the truth, the country will listen. [SCOTUSblog]
Even if not all the Justices sign on, it would be effective. And if any of them did indicate an interest in assenting to the demands of the Republicans, an immediate petition for their retirement would be in order.
Chief Justice Roberts has had his run-ins with President Trump, so it may be that, at this very moment, he’s inveighing his fellow conservatives to sign on to exactly such an opinion. While it won’t have much effect on Trump cultists, the balance of the Republican Party may take a rebuff from the SCOTUS conservatives to heart.
And, if not, at least history will record that they did the right thing.
The Orlando Sentinelexpresses grief at its mistaken endorsement:
We apologize to our readers for endorsing Michael Waltz in the 2020 general election for Congress.
We had no idea, had no way of knowing at the time, that Waltz was not committed to democracy.
During our endorsement interview with the incumbent congressman, we didn’t think to ask, “Would you support an effort to throw out the votes of tens of millions of Americans in four states in order to overturn a presidential election and hand it to the person who lost, Donald Trump?”
Our bad.
Trust us, some variation of that question will be asked of anyone running for Congress in the future, particularly Republican candidates whose party is attempting to upend the way we choose a president.
Waltz, to our horror, was one of the nine Florida Republican members of Congress who, on Thursday, signed up to support a lawsuit brought by Texas in the U.S. Supreme Court that’s attempting to throw out the election results in Georgia, Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania — all states where Donald Trump lost to Joe Biden.
The Sentinel understands that its freedoms rest on the United States remaining a land of laws, not a land run at the whim of some dude in a big building.
We learned that’s the wrong way to run a country back in the 18th century, didn’t we?
Without that foundation, the Sentinel’s soul would soon be swallowed up in butt kissing and paying bribes.
I hope someone makes it their business to track down all of the media endorsements of the fools in Congress that are signing on to this insane lawsuit, and asking those endorsers how they feel about their endorsements now.
It’s one way to differentiate the honest media source from the partisan hacks who shouldn’t be trusted.
NOTE: Representative Emmer (R-MN), a leader in the House, didn’t receive the StarTribune endorsement this year. He did sign on to the insane lawsuit.
Because the [Catalpa] worms are also native, they have ample natural predators, including various wasp and fly parasitoids. Worms from the catalpa tree have long been valued as fish bait, and some fishermen plant the trees just for this purpose. When fully grown, they’re around 2.5-3 inches long, and somewhat variable in color, though primarily either dark or pale with a black stripe or dots down the middle of the back.
I’ve never heard of a tree that’s only 3 inches long. Poor little guy.
During World War II, one of the burdens the Japanese unconsciously carried was philosophical: they were always looking for the one great battle that would wipe out the United States.
The United States, while it participated in such battles as those of Midway and Coral Sea, preferred to pick and pick and pick away at the Japanese, stretching and weakening the enemy when it could. Given the superior resources of the United States, as Admiral Yamamoto had pointed out before the war started, it was a foregone conclusion of American victory, absent any superweapons.
So I think E. J. Dionne Jr. is somewhat mistaken if he thinks President-elect Biden’s opening tactic of Listen to the science will win the war in a single battle:
President Trump’s success in politicizing mask-wearing has been destructive to human life. By encouraging his followers to ignore the advice of scientists, Trump has made the pandemic worse. None of this means that repeating “Listen to the science” as a quasi-religious mantra will undo the damage he’s done.
It won’t work because it’s a sentiment that appeals only to the already converted. It feeds the war against expertise that has become a favorite propaganda tool for the political right. And without intending to, it reinforces the deadly and false dichotomies that Trump has ginned up to avoid accountability.
Except it’s not. Listen to the science is a reminder to those who voted for Trump out of habit, or out of allegiance to the words Republican Party, or those who believed the Republican assertions that their opponents are socialists, or devotees of Critical Race Theory, or that Biden is so weak that Harris will push him out and push her own, radical agenda.
As these baseless allegations become apparent for what they are, those who have the ears to listen, the brains to think, and the humility to admit fault will hear and remember Listen to the science. It’s a reminder that, at one time, we put men on the Moon, that we invented vaccines for TB and polio, that we invented machinery to do the hard jobs and the dangerous jobs. To this day, we utilize science to do amazing things.
And, contra-Dionne, it’s a reminder of what the war on expertise has cost us: world leadership, nearly 300,000 lives and counting, farming income, manufacturing jobs, a monstrously inflated Federal deficit, and our honor..
Dionne, unconsciously, wants that home run that solves the problem of the far-frantic-right, and there’s no one that can hit that home run. It takes time for people to think, to act, to acknowledge error, and begin to correct it. Some will come at it quickly, encouraged to return to sanity by the illnesses and deaths of friends and family, or the close observation of the failure of Republican policies. For others, their deadly delusions, whether of a divinity that’s killing them, or a political drama that they can’t have lost, will hold them longer, and only with vast reluctance will they change, a bitter pill that will leave them bitter.
And, of course, there will be a core that won’t change: the leaders addicted to power and prestige, and their followers, those that have made up their minds, they’ll follow Paula White and Kenneth Copeland into the depths of Hell and still chant that This must be Heaven. There will always be those who won’t dare to deny what has made them important, self or in the eyes of others, in the world: the ego is a terrible thing.
But Biden is chipping away at those who can be convinced. He’s not saying, Hey, dumbfucks! See how wrong you were! Now stop being stupid and be a progressive! Progressives can grate on my nerves, too, just as they grate on the nerves of conservatives.
Instead, Listen to the science. Biden’s message is non-threatening, even diplomatic, but it is a reminder that reality will slap away those destructive delusions, and that rationality is how one understands reality.
And, with luck, silently and with an embarrassed air, hundreds, thousands, and eventually even millions of Americans will, so reluctantly, look around at their devastated friends and family, and finally let go of those delusions.
Last night there was some excitement about coronal mass ejection (CME) from the Sun hitting the earth and sparking northern lights. It was, apparently, a big fizzle, as Spaceweather.comexplains:
Every CME brings with it some magnetic field from the sun. If that magnetic field points south, it opens cracks in Earth’s magnetic field, allowing solar wind to flow inside and fuel auroras. On the other hand, if the CME’s magnetic field points north, it seals cracks in Earth’s magnetic field, blocking the solar wind and quenching storms.
This CME brought a storm-killing north magnetic field. So, even though the velocity of the solar wind in the CME’s wake flirted with a high value of 600 km/s, it was ineffective in causing geomagnetic storms and auroras.
Despite the chaos of election night and the days which followed, the media has consistently proclaimed that no widespread voter fraud has been proven. But this observation misses the point. The constitutional issue is not whether voters committed fraud but whether state officials violated the law by systematically loosening the measures for ballot integrity so that fraud becomes undetectable. [Texas v. Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, and Wisconsin: Motion of Donald J. Trump to Intervene]
Or, in other words, The fact that we can’t find widespread fraud means fraud occurred.
But I’m not here to poke fun at this blot on someone’s legal history, but to present a question that applies to Trump and, by implication, every single Trump supporter who’s running around with their eyes bulging and their hair on fire:
Prior to the Election, what were your criteria for accepting that Joe Biden won the election?
If the response is
Well, none. We couldn’t lose!
Then it’s time to ask them when they abandoned the principles of the United States and embraced the principles of the Chinese Communist Party, where it’s seize power and never let go, laws be damned.
It’s a question I plan to use if a MAGA hat lover ever accosts me.
Far right pundit and former election lawyer Erick Erickson is entertaining me this morning:
Ken Paxton, the Attorney General of Texas, is under a federal investigation and would love a presidential pardon. His lawsuit is just more performative leg humping by someone desperate to curry favor with President Trump.
The various attorneys general who have joined his lawsuit all want to either get re-elected or seek higher office. Joining the lawsuit gives them some measure of ring kissing or protection from any rabid Trump supporters who wanted a “just fight” moment.
Ron DeSantis, mentioned in the title of this post, is Governor Ron DeSantis (R-FL), who, when he entered the primary for his current position, was immediately considered an also-ran. But he knew his constituents and made it his business to appear on Fox News far more than his competitors, won the endorsement of President Trump, and won both primary and the general.
And so Florida is now saddled with a sadly incompetent Governor who has been accused, among other things, of manipulating the Covid-19 numbers in his state to make his management of the pandemic look good, firing his chief data scientist when she, the scientist claims, refused to cooperate, and lately said scientist’s home was raided by Florida law enforcement, who claimed she had been hacking.
So Texas AG Paxton – who, as Erickson notes, is under Federal and, I think, also State investigation, as his own employees blew a whistle alleging wrong-doing in the office of AG, and so he fired all of them – yeah, a real class act he is – knows what he’s about. The world is a reality TV show, in his view.
I personally think my company should pay me workers compensation for brain damage for having to read that lawsuit and related filings. It really is one of the stupidest bits of performative leg humping we have seen in the last five years. These attorneys general are willing to beclown themselves and their states all to get in good with the losing presidential candidate.
A reality TV show where no one – no one – will remember your spectacular incompetence.
The level of debasement these people [other State AGs who’ve joined the Texas lawsuit] have been willing to engage in makes them seem more the ball-gagged gimp from Pulp Fiction, humiliating themselves for their master. They should be ashamed and embarrassed.
I would hope that anyone who might find themselves employing Ken Paxton and the other AGs responsible for joining this impotent lawsuit asking for un-Constitutional actions on the part of SCOTUS will take one look at this ludicrous maneuver and take a pass on them. That includes voters who might find themselves asked to vote for this person.
Lately, I’ve been thinking about the right-wing extremists and their followers, trying to characterize them, and all I can come up with self-centered and deeplyimmature. Somewhere I read that long-time radio pundit Rush Limbaugh claims secession is our only option. He, or his successors and adherents, will look awfully damn stupid when the Russians and Chinese take world leadership away from us, and relegate democracy to an also-ran of governance models. Hell, the New York National Guard may find itself fighting invading Russian armies at Niagara Falls.
Not the US Army. Because there won’t be one.
That’s how stupid Limbaugh, and the far-right, have become.
A federal judge dismissed Michael Flynn’s prosecution Tuesday after President Trump’s pardon, but said the act of clemency does not mean the former national security adviser is innocent of lying to FBI agents about his talks with the Russian government before Trump took office. [WaPo]
And then sitting on Flynn’s trial, in which Flynn has plead guilty twice and then tried to withdraw his pleas – the weasel – until after Inauguration Day.
Of course, this means the guilty pleas were the legal reality of the situation, and Flynn’s record will forever bear those marks of dishonor – no matter how he and his defenders scrub at them.
And I think Sullivan was right in this:
In formally ending Flynn’s three-year legal saga, U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan said he probably would have denied the Justice Department’s controversial effort this year to drop the case, which Democrats and many legal experts said appeared to be an attempt by Attorney General William P. Barr to bend the rule of law to help a Trump ally.
It’s a pity that legal battle didn’t go forth, as the precedents would have set the ground rules for future attempts at corruption in the future.
There have been reports that AG Barr is considering resigning rather than “risk” being fired. I have to wonder if his eyes have been opened to the culture of corruption he was so eager to defend in his early days in the Trump Administration.
On the last Saturday of the month, two visitors from Nome, Alaska, attended a standing-room-only service in the small local chapel. The Nome visitors relayed that many people back home were sick, but no one was seriously alarmed, wrote Gina Kolata, a science and medicine reporter for The New York Times, in her book “Flu: The Story of the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 and the Search for the Virus That Caused It.”
Two days after the service of singing, prayer and feasting, villagers became sick with the flu. Of the 80 local Eskimo villagers, 72 died and their bodies were left frozen in igloos. In one igloo, dogs had scavenged corpses.
“Another igloo looked at first like the site of utter devastation,” Kolata wrote. “And as rescuers peeked inside, they saw only a pile of corpses. Then, suddenly, three terrified children appeared from under deerskins and started shrieking. They had survived somehow on oatmeal, surrounded by the bodies of their family.”
By the end of the three-week outbreak, the village housed only five adults and 46 orphaned children. According to Kolata’s book, Clara Fosso, a missionary’s wife who didn’t get sick, wrote a regretful letter to the Eskimos years later:
“There was a spiritual revival among the Eskimos at the Mission on the last Sunday in November 1918, before the influenza disaster fell upon us. The whole settlement of Eskimos had crowded into the new school room for worship. We felt the spirit of the Lord among us, as the communicants stood at the altar and later met in prayer; many confessed to their faith. We were deeply moved. This was the last time we were gathered together.
“By the following Sunday most members had gone to a more beautiful service with their Savior. You, who are the sons and daughters of these children of God, may remember that many of them died testifying to their Lord and singing the hymn that we had shared on that last Sunday, ‘I Can Hear My Savior Calling.'” [CNN/Health]
And so 46 kids ended up as devastated orphans. The author of this article, Kristen Rogers, later interviews a religious studies dude or two, who make the case that some sects virtually require that members get together to worship, but in the eyes of Nature, that’s just a sect that dies out and doesn’t propagate.
And at the tragic loss of so many people.
Fortunately, between medical advances and a lot less grim virus in SARS-CoV-2 than Spanish Influenza, we needn’t worry so much about that, except possibly for isolated groups that cannot get medical support. But it’s not hard to see Evolution In Action here, is it? Engage in behaviors which deliberately put you at risk, and, by God, Nature will have its way with you.
But that doesn’t stop me from mourning those Inuit who died at the hands of the unthinking.
There’s a number of videos on the subject, but I ran across it yesterday on Max Miller’s Tasting History series. He starts in on nixtamalization at about the 1:57 mark.
When I lived in Colorado, my experience was that conservatives/Republicans/libertarians there were just as big dope smokers as the liberals — if not more so.
To be sure. Largish political parties have many small fault lines, both ideological and geographical. The libertarians have long railed against laws making marijuana use and growth illegal. And I don’t doubt that the Colorado Republicans smoke as well – I’ve always had the impression that the non-Deep-South GOP has had a more relaxed attitude towards marijuana, even if there’s still a token gesture towards the position.
I recall reading a libertarian article on how all anti-recreational drug laws were pushed by the religious right – or maybe religions in general, this was 30+ years ago – because general drug experiences could be interpreted as mystical in nature, suggesting that the mediation of the clergy might not be necessary to achieve connection with the Divine. And we just couldn’t have that, now could we. Take that for what you will.
Also related to this issue: this post by Andrew Sullivan, back in October, celebrating the potential legalization of psilocybin. It’s worth a read, although whether or not I should be taking drug experiences seriously is an open question. I’ve never done any myself, believing that I don’t have enough neurons as it is, so why endanger the ones I have already?
But back to my point, the general push for making marijuana illegal has always been a conservative cause, nationwide. And because the Republicans are loathe to abandon political positions – particularly those considered important to their Religious Right base – as they would then be considered soft, I think the Senate won’t even take up this bill, and, if they do, it won’t be passed.
And the Democrats in Georgia might use that fact against Perdue and Loeffler.
And now – you knew this was coming – Reefer Madness! No, this isn’t a parody! (I’m not quite sure what that 2004 copyright’s doing on the print.) Good ol’ government propaganda at it’s best!
This fall has certainly been one of distraction, so this Max Boot article in WaPo left me breathless:
Now add this fall’s Nagorno-Karabakh war to the list. In six weeks of fighting, the oil-rich nation of Azerbaijan defeated Russia’s ally Armenia to reclaim territory it had lost in the early 1990s. A key to Azerbaijan’s triumph was its use of killer drones such as Turkey’s Bayraktar TB2, which is armed with antitank missiles and is similar to the U.S. Reaper, and Israel’s “kamikaze drones,” which home in on radar emissions.
Wait. What war?!?!?!?!
Why doesn’t anyone ever tell me about these things!
Well, since I’m here, I’ll quote Boot on the chronic American problem:
That inertia is reinforced by the “iron triangle” of defense contractors, members of Congress and the Pentagon bureaucracy. The new defense authorization bill set to be passed by the House on Tuesday authorizes 93 F-35 fighters — 14 more than the Pentagon requested — and an extra Virginia-class submarine that the Pentagon did not ask for. A Virginia-class submarine costs about $3 billion and an F-35 at least $80 million.
And there’s no guarantee that those extras were the idea of Republicans, because Democrats are vulnerable to the pressures that can be brought to bear by huge defense contractors. And then:
That’s a lot of money — but it’s chicken feed compared with the cost of building new aircraft carriers that could become target practice for Chinese missiles. The new Gerald R. Ford, still not complete, cost $13 billion, and the Navy is building two more in its class. In 2018, then-Defense Secretary Jim Mattis proposed that the Harry S. Truman be retired halfway through its service life. But President Trump overruled him. The Navy will need to spend $20 billion to keep this flat-top, already a quarter-century old, at sea for another 25 years.
And I wonder at our bloated defense budget. We should probably retire the USS Harry S. Truman and abort construction of the USS Gerald R. Ford, and begin looking into small vessels capable of transporting large numbers of small, unmanned (remotely controlled? Or take a big change chance on autonomous?) fighting vehicles.
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Erick Erickson is bewildered by the, well, culture of the far-right that he’s periodically helped to engender, and expresses this in a post entitled “How the F— Am I the Sane One?“:
I’m just not down for cults of personality and I continue to note that many of the people most enraged and most convinced that the election is stolen are newcomers to the process who haven’t been around for all the fights before. I like ideas. People? Meh.
What infuriates me the most are the people I know who don’t really believe this stuff, but they’re doing the dog and pony show and performative leg humping so they don’t have people driving past their houses screaming “stop the steal,” like what happened to me last week.
How did I become the sane person in all of this? How did I become the reasonable voice? Me — Erick “let me tell you what he said about David Souter” Erickson!
I used to be a super political animal and now I am less so and find I am surrounded by people who have become more political. The 24/7 news cycle, social media, the atrophication of in-person social networks, the political demands resulting from a small base of persuadable voters turning America into an “us v them” society, the realization that much of the media really does hate conservatives and Christians — it has all turned into a perfect storm of polarization, politicization, and theological supplementation. As I was disentangling from a lot of it, a lot of people were getting tangled up in it.
Most of the media is run by Christians. Erickson’s problem is that if you aren’t in his sect, well, you’re not Christian. Ask him if he thinks Pastor Rafael Warnock, who is pro-choice, is Christian. Sure, go for it.
So long as Erickson insists on litmus tests, he’ll continue to not understand that he has contributed mightily to the right’s feeling of victimization, and its subsequent decay into the moral depravity of supporting a chronic liar, incompetent, and buffoon over Joe Biden, a man of experience and principles and good reputation.
Yes, moral depravity.
So long as Erickson is convinced the Democrats are evil bastards, he’ll be confused that the right can be even worse.
Readers may remember the recent assassination of top Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh in Absard, Iran. The story is evolving:
Officials from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) have divulged new information regarding the Nov. 27 assassination of nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh.
Deputy commander Ali Fadavi said during a Q&A session at Tehran University Dec. 6 that Fakhrizadeh had 11 guards with him at the time of his assassination. He was assassinated in the suburbs of Tehran. Fadavi added that 13 bullets were fired at him from the Nissan and that the only other bullets fired were from the Iranian bodyguards.
Fadavi also claimed that the Nissan was controlled through satellite and used artificial intelligence to zoom in on the target. He said that Fakhrizadeh was shot in the back, hitting his spinal cord. [AL-Monitor]
Do I trust the word of the IRGC? Of course not. They’re a conduit for the spread of Iranian arms and propaganda, or at least so the story goes. But the story they’re telling isn’t raising any red flags in terms of consistency or likelihood – everything I read here seems to be easily in the realm of technology.
And it’s interesting to see the evolution of the story:
Fadavi’s statements conflict with earlier reports from Iranian media, which described multiple shooters and a shootout. These reports also suggested an explosion took place. Ali Shamkhani, secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, was one of the first individuals to briefly discuss the use of the satellite-controlled attack.
I presume the consumers of this story are primarily the Iranian public, so this leads me to wonder how the Iranian public is affected by a story of a remote control assassination as compared to an account of …multiple shooters and a shootout. Will this stir up the Iranians more than a brazen attack by a group of assassins on-site? Or will it calm the nerves of people fearing those same assassins will be taking out other targets. The psychology of communication has fascinated me for decades, and this may be an example of a communication used purely to manipulate the target audience.
And … the new account may be entirely true. If so, I wonder why the attackers chose this approach rather than using a drone, as has been used previously by the Yemenis for offensive attacks.
Steve Benen reminds me that, strictly speaking, President Trump’s entreaties to various State entities that they discard the election results and pronounce him the victor are illegal:
Yes, those efforts are clumsy and ridiculous. Yes, his gambit is failing and will continue to fail. But that doesn’t negate the fact that this is one of the most momentous presidential disgraces Americans have ever seen.
What’s more, Trump’s antics may not be legal. As Rachel noted on the show last night, if you or I called election officials, and lobbied them to produce deliberately bogus election results, there’s a pretty good chance we’d face an indictment.
Andrew Weissman, a longtime Justice Department official who helped lead Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, explained in more detail last night how Trump’s election interference may very well run afoul of federal law.
NBC News’ First Read team recently framed the larger story in a compelling way: “Forget Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. Or Trump’s impeachment for asking Ukraine to dig up dirt on Joe Biden. Arguably the biggest political scandal we’ve ever seen in this country is playing right before our eyes: President Trump and his allies are trying to reverse the election results of a contest he lost.”
In a very real sense, it may be up to FBI Director Christopher Wray to decide if he wants to spring a December surprise on President Trump. To see President Trump marched off in handcuffs before January 20, 2021, would be both a surprise and deeply satisfying for “the left,” as well as NeverTrumpers on the right. And independents, such as myself, who’ve loathed Trump’s terrible, terrible behaviors and morals since he entered the political scene and began his Niagara Falls of lying.
Of course, that raises the question of what would happen to the Trump cult? My guess is they’d take it as a sign of further persecution and become even more firm in their opposition to the election results.
But this might release the silent Republicans who haven’t dared to affirm the election results. We might see a cascade of “Biden will be President” admissions. And with Trump under indictment, who knows what may come out? Perhaps his tax returns, which I suspect will indicate he’s little more than a con-man when it comes to his claims of billions of dollars, will be released, dismaying his followers in the prosperity church community.
Hell, maybe a President Pence would arrange to destroy Trump’s reputation in hopes of salvaging and commanding the GOP.
I don’t really expect Wray to arrest Trump. I don’t expect Barr’s prosecutors to take the case. I don’t expect them to argue Trump’s a flight risk and should not be permitted to pay bail and get out of jail.
Every CME brings with it some magnetic field from the sun. If that magnetic field points south, it opens 
