;)
November 28, 2021
Marie: So far, this is not a slow-news day; it's a no-news day, unless you consider it news that looming death & destruction, in the form of a microscopic virus, is coming your way.
Alanne Orjoux & Veronica Stracqualursi of CNN: "First lady Jill Biden will reveal the theme and decor for the White House holiday trimmings on Monday, her office announced. Biden will be joined by a National Guard family in honor of the National Guard's role in responding to the Covid-19 pandemic, a statement from her office said Saturday. The presence of the National Guard family also honors all the Guard families spending their holidays away from loved ones." MB: Oh, please, Dr. Jill, let it be trees covered in blood-red plastic tinsel again.
Will Sommer of the Daily Beast: "Former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn has embraced his position as a hero to QAnon conspiracy theorists. He took the QAnon oath, sold QAnon T-shirts, and even auctioned off a QAnon quilt. He appeared at a QAnon convention and signed books with a QAnon slogan. Some QAnon followers even believe that Flynn is 'Q,' the mysterious figure behind QAnon. But a recording released late Saturday night by a one-time Flynn ally suggests that the retired three-star general privately believes QAnon to be 'total nonsense.'... [In a phone call between Flynn & loony Trumpy lawyer Lin Wood & recorded by Wood,] Flynn attempts to disown QAnon, claiming it's a 'disinformation campaign' created by the CIA [... and the left]." Firewalled. ~~~
~~~ Marie: So even when Flynn claims not to hold to a crazy potpourri of conspiracy theories, he comes up with a new one: that QAnon conspiracies are part of some kind of plot in which CIA agents & leftists got together to make up & disseminate a bunch of coocoo stuff. Yeah, Mike, I can see where that probably happened. No doubt that's where the idea arose that JFK, Jr. would be Donald's new veep.
Matthew Cappucci of the Washington Post: "The first images of Earth from Landsat 9 have been released this month, ushering in a new chapter in the longest-running continuous satellite program dedicated to Earth observation. The satellite, launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California on Sept. 27, is in the midst of a 100-day test period and will offer an ultra-detailed glimpse at changes in land use and natural resources.... 'The incredible first pictures from the Landsat 9 satellite are a glimpse into the data that will help us make science-based decisions on key issues including water use, wildfire impacts, coral reef degradation, glacier and ice-shelf retreat and tropical deforestation,' said USGS acting director David Applegate in a news release." MB: But can they tell if you're growing a marijuana crop in the back yard?
The Pandemic, Ctd.
The New York Times' live updates of Covid-19 developments Sunday are here.
Pan Pylas of the AP: “The new potentially more contagious omicron variant of the coronavirus popped up in more European countries on Saturday, just days after being identified in South Africa, leaving governments around the world scrambling to stop the spread. The U.K. on Saturday tightened its rules on mask-wearing and on testing of international arrivals after finding two cases. New cases were confirmed Saturday in Germany and Italy, with Belgium, Israel and Hong Kong also reporting that the variant has been found in travelers. In the U.S., Dr. Anthony Fauci ... said he would not be surprised if the omicron variant was already in the United States, too. 'We have not detected it yet, but when you have a virus that is showing this degree of transmissibility ... it almost invariably is ultimately going to go essentially all over,' Fauci said on NBC television." A related Washington Post story is here.
Charley Locke in the New York Times Magazine: "Covid-19 put American infrastructure to the test -- and by most measures, it failed.... Students without access to the internet tried to get by on once-a-week printed packets. Nurses wore trash bags as medical equipment. Nobody could buy toilet paper. But these failures, along with so many more, may also have provided the impetus -- in the form of unprecedented federal funding -- for the United States to modernize itself, filling cracks and bridging gaps in our technological, medical and manufacturing capabilities that have been widening for decades. To date, the federal government has allocated $4.52 trillion in response to Covid-19 -- a staggering figure, one that exceeds the entire federal budget in 2019. Most of that funding comes from just two bills: the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security, or CARES, Act, passed in March 2020 ($2.2 trillion), and the American Rescue Plan Act, or A.R.P., from March 2021 ($1.9 trillion). These bills covered a huge range of funding, much of it focused on short-term recovery: Together, they allocated more than $1 trillion in direct aid to Americans in economic need.... But the two bills also made huge investments in the future.... The Covid funds are functioning as a one-time injection to compensate for what has been a trend toward disinvestment in recent years."
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Reader Comments (9)
A Sunday sermon is not news either, but here's one nonetheless.
When Emerson said, "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines," he suggested that absolute consistency can blind us to learning and possible growth.
Could it be that Republicans have taken Emerson’s wise aphorism to heart?
When it comes to infrastructure, love of country, and respect for the law, Republicans have apparently learned a lot since Biden’s election. They have certainly proven to be very open to changing their minds.
During the Trump administration, repairing the nation’s roads, rails, and bridges, expanding our electric and internet grids, and upgrading water and sewer service in local communities was a rhetorical centerpiece of the Republican Party.
But the recent passage of the bi-partisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act that will do all that Republicans promised, and more, has made Republicans change their minds. They no longer like infrastructure so much. In fact, some Republicans have called for punishing House Republicans who voted for the bill (washingtonpost.com), treating them as traitors to their party.
The party of President Lincoln, under whom the Union Army withstood a Confederate invasion of Washington, D.C. in 1864, now maligns the two Republican House members willing to serve on the committee investigating the January 6th attack on the same capital.
Leaders of the “law and order” party now casually defy Congressional subpoenas (politico.com), while most Republicans still swear allegiance to a president who repeatedly showed little respect for the law by pardoning scores of convicted criminals, whose offenses ranged from fraud to murder (wikipedia.org).
What would Emerson make of so much inconsistency?
Would he think that by taking his advice, today’s Republican leaders were transformed into superhuman statesmen, possessing minds large enough to span galaxies?
Or would Emerson, himself a theologian, say their behavior demonstrates an entire absence of principle?
Well, I always wondered what Emerson meant by a "foolish" consistency compared with let's say, an admirable one or a just plain regular one that is essential to getting things accomplished–-and on time. We do know that young children thrive much better when there is a routine they can count on and older people seem to revert to that kind of consistency, makes them feel secure. The old adage, "Hook your line with the guy you can count on" means he's not going to do a one-eighty on you.
But you, Ken, are talking about a party that has lost its moorings and I think Emerson would weep at their inconsistency writ large and coin their behavior "the hobgoblins of little minds that have lost their way"––he wouldn't use our "rough" language –-always a gentle man or so they say but I suspect he didn't suffer fools gladly.
We have a joke in our family about consistency––I happen to wear that label–-proudly I might add–-but at times when it seems extreme, someone will say, "Fridays we have rice pudding"––the line from "Rainman", Dustin Hoffman's character insists on no deviation from what he's comfortable with. Wonder if Emerson ever studied a mind like Ray Babbit's.
@Ken Winkes & @PD Pepe: There's no doubt that Republicans, individually and as a party, engage in both foolish consistency & foolish inconsistency. It's the way they operate.
If Democrats & the press had managed to get this across to low-information voters (that is, most voters), the Republican party would cease to be viable. Yesterday, I happened to hear the rerun of actor Jeff Bridges' interview by Nicolle Wallace of MSNBC. There's no reason to interview Bridges about political matters except he seems to have starred in some political drama AND he fancies himself a very savvy individual. So Nicolle asked Jeff what he would do to "fix" Washington, and his brilliant idea was that politicians should get together to solve problems. Wow, Jeff, thanks! Wish I'd thought of that. There was no acknowledgement by either interviewer or interviewee that maybe, just maybe, there was ONE party that resisted "getting together to solve problems."
Similarly, nearly every article I've read in the MSM this year about "Democrats in disarray" fails to mention that it's only Democrats who are doing anything but obstruct. Maybe way down in Graf 17 a NYT story will mention that Republicans filibustered a bill, but there's never any emphasis on the fact that the only people who are negotiating the terms of a bill are Democrats. Republicans are filing their nails or chatting with donors or something.
In a functioning Congress, the majority leaders would be negotiating with members of the minority party to come up with bills that -- however imperfect -- would pass & become law. If there were a few members of the majority party who didn't play well with others (Manchin, Sinema), it wouldn't matter too much, because there would be 25 or 30 members of the minority party who would be pitching ideas that could at least help "solve the problem" at hand.
Americans do not know this. And Republicans have been able to hide it -- in plain sight -- from the American people because Democrats don't know how to publicize it. Democrats have left it a big secret, kept from all but the most engaged of voters, that Republicans do nothing but obstruct. Ninety-nine percent of Americans wouldn't get our Mitch McConnell jokes. At best, they'd sort of get the jokes, but accuse us of being "partisans" who trashed Republicans out of habit.
Until Democrats raise the Republican party's obstruction to a national scandal, and until reporters learn to follow that story, Republicans will continue to thrive, and the U.S. will become a worse & worse country.
Democrats can't become a strong majority party again until they make voters understand that the problem isn't "Washington" but "Republicans."
Here's a story I found most interesting:
"In a citywide [Minneapolis] overhaul, a beloved Black high school was rezoned to include white students from a richer neighborhood. It has been hard for everyone."
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/27/us/minneapolis-school-integration.html
In 1996 the junior high school ( from a white and mostly wealthy town) where I was teaching, bused several Black students from a New Haven school––all special- ed. students which at the time I complained bitterly about. It was as if the N.H, school was throwing out their most challenged students and expected us to deal with them. We did the best we could but these particular kids resented being there, acted up, refused to comply to the academics and who could blame them? One kid told me he felt like a "throwaway." In another town, Hamden, where we lived at the time, our son went to the only High School in town and it was integrated and fully functioned academically (AP students could take classes at Yale) and socially.
Stories like the above show us the battle we still have re: race and integration in our school systems. What I find compelling is how white liberal parents are dealing with this –--thinking in some cases that they harbor racist tenancies after all.
Soooo….”leftists”, whatever that means (environmentalists? Liberals? Social justice warriors? BLM activists? Feminists? Gun control supporters? People who aren’t wed to stupidity?) and the See Eye Ay? Sounds like the beginning of a joke…Michael Moore and Jason Bourne walk into a bar…and what’s the punchline? They order a Qanon pizza (from the pizza parlor with the child sex ring in the basement of a place that doesn’t have a basement) and invent the Dec. 6th attack on the capitol to blame it on very nice people?
No, the punchline is MICHAEL FLYNN!
Hahahaha…
Okay, not that funny after all.
(But I’m remembering a quote from some movie or other in which a character says “It’s all so very horrible. How is it that I feel like laughing?”)
Marie: Just read your comments. The complaint about Democrats unable to convey the positives while the GOPees are running roughshod over them–- hence the voters aren't getting the REAL story is something I have heard over and over. Yet––if one is watching MSNBC, for instance, you get the real deal and lots of shouting from the airwaves about the corruption and lies from the other side. All of this is not heard by those who (1) do not watch the news or read newspapers and (2) do watch Fox and its equivalents. S0––- as you say, "Until Democrats raise the Republican party's obstruction to a national scandal, and until reporters learn to follow that story," we ain't moving in the right direction. My question is: How exactly would we raise this to a national scandal if those who need to hear it or read it don't hear it or read it?
@PD Pepe: Advertising. On Fox "News." Also news stories on local TV: like that new bridge? Brought to you by Democrats.
More dire than having a minority party that doesn't wish to solve the nation's problems is one that actively works to create them. That's exactly what we have in today's Greedy Old Party.
Rather than merely sitting on the sidelines and carping, it attempts to deepen our social, racial and economic divisions, and with the help of Fox and the internet, it's done a very good job of doing so, especially since the Obama years.
It's the old divide and conquer strategy amped up and weaponized (literally with the gun issue). The more anger, resentment and dissatisfaction it can create, the more opportunity it has to present itself as the "I alone can fix it" alternative to the chaos it has done all it can to create.
If we were a healthy, sane society, the Chaos Party would have no chance. But we're not, and the sicker and more irrational we are, the more the Chaos Party benefits.
And in the background are all the Chaos Party's big donors who support the scam that depends on continuing chaos to distract from any careful questioning of the economic arrangements that keep funneling more money and power from the bottom and middle to the top.
It's sunset in West Michigan. So, happy hanukkah, even though I
suspect none of us are of that persuasion. But just in case.