;)
Thursday
Nov262020
The Commentariat -- Nov. 27, 2020
Late Morning Update:
Patrick Wintour & Oliver Holmes of the Guardian: "An Iranian nuclear scientist described as the guru of Iran's nuclear programme has been gunned down in the street in a town near Tehran. Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was ambushed in the town of Absard, about 40 miles east of Tehran. Four assailants opened fire after witnesses heard an explosion.... An adviser to Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, vowed that the country would retaliate against the perpetrators.... Iran's foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, identified Israel as the likely culprit. 'Terrorists murdered an eminent Iranian scientist today,' he tweeted. 'This cowardice -- with serious indications of Israeli role -- shows desperate warmongering of perpetrators. Iran calls on international community -- and especially EU -- to end their shameful double standards & condemn this act of state terror.'"
Kent Babb of the Washington Post: "... when it comes to coronavirus testing, this is a nation of haves and have-nots. Among the haves are professional and college athletes, in particular those who play football. From Nov. 8 to 14, the NFL administered 43,148 tests to 7,856 players, coaches and employees. Major college football programs supply dozens of tests each day, an attempt -- futile as it has been -- to maintain health and prevent schedule interruptions. Major League Soccer administered nearly 5,000 tests last week, and Major League Baseball conducted some 170,000 tests during its truncated season. [Meanwhile, nurses & other front-line coronavirus workers are among the have-nots.]... This month, registered nurses gathered in Los Angeles to protest the fact that UCLA's athletic department conducted 1,248 tests in a single week while health-care workers at UCLA hospitals were denied testing. Last week National Nurses United, the country's largest nursing union, released the results of a survey of more than 15,000 members. About two-thirds reported they had never been tested.
~~~~~~~~~~
A Thanksgiving Day Message from Joe & Jill Biden ends like this: "May the emptiness at our tables and in our hearts be filled with memories of love and laughter. May we cherish our traditions, even when they are out of reach, and hold on to the hope of what's still to come. We're going to get through this together, even if we have to be apart. Happy Thanksgiving, from the Biden family to yours."
A Thanksgiving Day Message from Donald Trump goes like this: Jill Colvin of the AP: "... Donald Trump said Thursday that he will leave the White House if the Electoral College formalizes President-Elect Joe Biden's victory -- even as he insisted such a decision would be a 'mistake' -- as he spent his Thanksgiving renewing baseless claims that 'massive fraud' and crooked officials in battleground states caused his election defeat.... But Trump -- taking questions for the first time since Election Day -- insisted that 'a lot of things' would happen between now and then that might alter the results.... While there is no evidence of the kind of widespread fraud Trump has been alleging, he and his legal team have nonetheless been working to cast doubt on the integrity of the election and trying to overturn voters' will in an unprecedented breach of democratic norms. Trump spoke to reporters in the White House's ornate Diplomatic Reception Room after holding a teleconference with U.S. military leaders stationed across the globe.... Trump announced that he will be traveling to Georgia to rally supporters ahead of two Senate runoff elections that will determine which party controls the Senate. Trump said the rally for Republican Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler would likely be held Saturday. The White House later clarified he had meant Dec. 5.... At one point he urged reporters not to allow Biden the credit for pending coronavirus vaccines. 'Don't let him take credit for the vaccines because the vaccines were me and I pushed people harder than they've ever been pushed before,' he said." ~~~
~~~ Marie: Joe Biden is not going to try to "take credit for vaccines" because Joe Biden (a) knows he did not develop the vaccines and (b) is not so stupid as to think scientists around the worldlogged overtime because U.S. president*. Trump, on the other hand, thinks that because his whining & barking orders causes the fraidycats who work for him to jump, that real people everywhere must do the same thing. They don't. ~~~
~~~ Michael Crowley of the New York Times: "The president was also strikingly testy at one point, lashing out at a reporter [-- Jeff Mason of Reuters --] who interjected during one of several of his rambling statements about the supposedly fraudulent election. 'You're just a lightweight,' Mr. Trump snapped, raising his voice and pointing a finger in anger. 'Don't talk to me that -- don't talk -- I'm the president of the United States. Don't ever talk to the president that way.'... At times, Mr. Trump shifted his explanation of his defeat from claims of fraud to complaints that the political battlefield had been slanted against him.... 'If the media were honest and big tech was fair, it wouldn't even be a contest,' he said. 'And I would have won by a tremendous amount.' After seeming to concede reality, Mr. Trump quickly caught himself and revised his conditional statement. 'And I did win by a tremendous amount,' he added." MB: Sorta like Donald is caught between two ferns: the reality tree & the fantasy plant. ~~~
~~~ Josh Dawsey of the Washington Post: "Even as most of his lawyers have quit and many campaign officials say the effort to overturn the election is going nowhere, Trump said it was going 'very well.'" ~~~
~~~ In an official presidential* Thanksgiving "proclamation," a White House writer conveyed Trump's message. Arris Foley of the Hill: "President Trump issued a proclamation encouraging Americans to gather 'in homes and places of worship' ahead of Thanksgiving, even as his successor and public health officials have urged people to practice social distancing and avoid large gatherings during the holidays to curb the spread of COVID-19." ~~~
~~~ Marie: The proclamation itself actually interested me as it pegged the Mayflower Compact as a precursor to American democracy. I had always thought of the Mayflower Compact as more of a religious document describing church rules & regs. But historians point to its democratically-established rule of law & to the reason it was necessary to work out the agreement in the first place: non-Puritan Mayflower passengers had proclaimed their "own liberty" & vowed not to follow church rules. It was, therefore, a secular social contract that bound all settlers, & which 41 of the passengers (all men, of course!) signed.
Rich Guy Notices Trump, et al., Defrauded Him. Mary Papenfuss of the Huffington Post: "A major contributor to a group backing ... Donald Trump's fight to overturn the presidential election sued to recover $2.5 million in donations after the campaign failed in several court cases and was unable to prove any fraud. The lawsuit filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in the Southern District of Texas by North Carolina venture capitalist Fred Eshelman argued that the nonprofit group True the Vote promised to keep him informed of how his millions were being used in what was pitched as a strong case against alleged election fraud. Instead, the suit alleged, he was fed 'vague responses, platitudes and empty promises of follow-up' that never occurred. He was kept in the dark when weak cases filed in Wisconsin, Michigan, Georgia and Pennsylvania were voluntarily withdrawn in a decision the investor claimed was made in 'concert with counsel for the Trump campaign,' the suit said."
Pardon Me. Sky Palma of the Raw Story: "Writing in The Atlantic this Wednesday [firewalled], columnist David Frum says that when it comes to ... Donald Trump's recent pardoning of former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, one must remember that the crime Flynn is accused of committing was not about lying to protect himself -- he lied to protect Trump. 'Flynn had dubious dealings of his own to cover up, yes,' Frum writes. 'He had failed to register as an agent of the Turkish government as he should have. But that omission -- and Flynn's lies about it -- only became an issue after Flynn was caught lying about the ... conversations [Flynn had with Russian Ambassador to the U.S. Sergey Kislyac]. In the end, Flynn was never charged for violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act [re: the Turkish affair].... 'Flynn sensed that Trump's preferred Russia policy was based on motives that everybody around Trump recognized as dangerous, even if they could not quite define where the danger lay,' Frum continues. 'So when asked by the FBI about the conversation, Flynn acted like a man aware of a terrible secret that must be concealed at all costs.'" Frum's Atlantic column is here.
The Way We Are. A Gruesome Thanksgiving. Thanks, Don & Bill! Hailey Fuchs of the New York Times: "The Justice Department has created new regulations allowing for the use of more methods for federal executions, including firing squad and electrocution. The new rule, which is scheduled to be published in the Federal Register on Friday, comes as the administration rushes to execute five more prisoners before the end of President Trump's term. It is part of a spate of moves and rule-making processes before he leaves office.... President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr., who can rescind the rule, has signaled his opposition to the federal death penalty. Last week, the Justice Department announced that it plans to execute three more inmates on federal death row. If the administration does so, along with two other executions already scheduled, it will have put 13 prisoners to death since July, marking one of the deadliest periods in the history of federal capital punishment since at least 1927...." ~~~
~~~ Marie: Biden could save himself from possible carpal tunnel symptoms by signing just one executive order: "What he said ... is out!"
The Way We Were. Ramin Ganeshram of the Washington Post: "On the third Thursday of February 1795, President George Washington proclaimed a day of national thanksgiving to thank God 'for the Constitutions of Government which unite and by their union establish liberty.' The second such proclamation by Washington, it called for a religious rather than a feasting holiday, and that day's menu is unknown. As a regular night for the Congress dinners hosted by the president, it would have been presided over by Washington's cook, Hercules Posey -- a chef so notable that he was famous in his own time. Yet, the liberty Washington extolled was not something Posey enjoyed: He was enslaved.... Working in the kitchen of a fine household -- much less a presidential one -- would not have been easy. Meals were elaborate, multicourse affairs.... As described by Rep. Theophilus Bradbury (Federalist-Mass.) in 1795, the average Thursday Congress dinner would have put any modern Thanksgiving feast to shame, featuring 'an elegant variety of roast beef, veal, turkeys, ducks, fowls, hams, & puddings, jellies, oranges, apples, nuts, and almonds, figs, raisins, and a variety of wines and punch.' Producing these meals meant a 12-to-16-hour workday with a variety of cooks and assistants working under Posey. Remarkably, the Washington household accounts tell us that these staff members would have been hired and White indentured laborers -- all taking orders from an enslaved Black man."
The Midnight Ride of Amy & the Confederates. Adam Liptak of the New York Times: Around midnight Thursday morning, the Supreme Court "justices issued six opinions, several of them unusually bitter, in upholding challenges from churches and synagogues to state pandemic restrictions on religious services.... Justice [Amy] Barrett dealt the chief justice a body blow. She cast the decisive vote in a 5-to-4 ruling that rejected restrictions on religious services in New York imposed by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo to combat the coronavirus, shoving the chief justice into dissent with the court's three remaining liberals. It was one of six opinions the court issued on Wednesday, spanning 33 pages and opening a window on a court in turmoil.... The most notable signed opinion came from Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, Mr. Trump's first appointee. His concurrence was bitter, slashing and triumphant, and it took aim at Chief Justice Roberts.... 'Even if the Constitution has taken a holiday during this pandemic, it cannot become a sabbatical,' he wrote.... Roberts made a point of defending his colleagues from Justice Gorsuch's attacks, saying they were operating in good faith.... In a separate dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justice Elena Kagan, said the majority was being reckless. 'Justices of this court play a deadly game,' she wrote, 'in second-guessing the expert judgment of health officials about the environments in which a contagious virus, now infecting a million Americans each week, spreads most easily.'" ~~~
~~~ Marie: One of these days, when things get back to "normal" post-pandemic, Col. Gorsuch will show up in court carrying a sheathed sword & will challenge Justice Sotomayor to a duel. ~~~
~~~ As unwashed pointed out in yesterday's thread, it's a shame the righty-right Roman Catholic Supremes don't read the elite-leftist New York Times, where they might have explored Pope Francis's op-ed -- adapted from his recent book -- on how to respond to the pandemic: Francis comes to Covid-19 with his experience as a young man suffering from a deathly illness that concentrated in his lungs. He praises both the nurses who saved him then & those who are now risking their own lives to save Covid-19 patients. As for the overall worldwide pandemic response, he writes "With some exceptions, governments have made great efforts to put the well-being of their people first, acting decisively to protect health and to save lives. The exceptions have been some governments that shrugged off the painful evidence of mounting deaths, with inevitable, grievous consequences. But most governments acted responsibly, imposing strict measures to contain the outbreak.... Looking to the common good is much more than the sum of what is good for individuals.... If we are to come out of this crisis less selfish than when we went in, we have to let ourselves be touched by others' pain." ~~~
~~~ Marie: It's almost as if Francis is speaking directly to nasty Neil, the same empathetic guy who thought a trucker should freeze to death if his boss told him to do so.
Wherein recently-hired Trump lawyer a/k/a recently-fired Trump lawyer Sidney Powell (or is it "Sydney"? -- who cares, she misspells her top expert's name twice in one complaint) filed election fraud suits in Michigan & Georgia Wednesday night. Unfortunately, she (or an aide) drunk-typed the complaints & drunk-pasted them together. (Also, it would help if she turned off full justification & if sheputspacesbetweenwords.)
The Trumpidemic, Ctd.
Rebecca Robbins & Benjamin Mueller of the New York Times: "The announcement this week that a cheap, easy-to-make coronavirus vaccine appeared to be up to 90 percent effective was greeted with jubilation.... But since unveiling the preliminary results, AstraZeneca has acknowledged a key mistake in the vaccine dosage received by some study participants, adding to questions about whether the vaccine's apparently spectacular efficacy will hold up under additional testing. Scientists and industry experts said the error and a series of other irregularities and omissions in the way AstraZeneca initially disclosed the data have eroded their confidence in the reliability of the results.... It was ... Moncef Slaoui, the head of Operation Warp Speed..., not the company -- who first disclosed that the vaccine's most promising results did not reflect data from older people."
Jennifer Steinhauer of the New York Times: "When President Trump talks about efforts to deliver the coronavirus vaccine to millions of Americans eager to return to their normal lives, he often says he is 'counting on the military' to get it done.... In reality, the role of the military has been less public and more pervasive than this characterization suggests. When companies have lacked the physical spaces needed to conduct their drug trials, the Defense Department has acquired trailers and permits to create pop-up medical sites in parking lots.... [The military has facilitated vaccine development & trials with logistical support through its contracting system.] But the distribution of vaccines will be left largely to their producers and commercial transportation companies. Black Hawk helicopters will not be landing next to neighborhood drugstore to drop off doses. No troops will be administering shots." ~~~
~~~ Marie: No doubt Trump makes this claim about the military because (a) he's too stupid to understand the details, and (b) he wants people to think -- as he does -- that he has personally ordered & orchestrated vaccine distribution. And you can bet there will be plenty of Trumpbots who sit for the shots & and exclaim, "Ouch! Donald Trump has saved the country!" Ironically, President Biden likely will get personally involved in some of the details, & he might specifically order the military apparatus to facilitate particular aspects of the distribution. Trump likes to pretend he is doing presidenty things; real presidents do them.
Jesse McKinley & Liam Stack of the New York Times: "In a 5-4 decision [released around midnight Thursday morning], the [Supreme C]ourt struck down an order by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo [D-N.Y.] that had restricted the size of religious gatherings in certain areas of New York where infection rates were climbing. The governor had imposed 10- and 25-person capacity limits on churches and other houses of worship in those areas.... "Cuomo accused the court of partisanship, suggesting the[ir] ruling [for religious organizations] reflected the influence of the three conservative justices who have been nominated by President Trump in the past four years. 'You have a different court, and I think that was the statement that the court was making,' Mr. Cuomo ... said on Thursday. 'We know who he appointed to the court. We know their ideology.'... Mr. Cuomo maintains that those outbreaks have since been brought under control, in large part by the measures that the court struck down." MB: Apparently the confederate Supemes believe some religious services can't be Zoomed even though many places of worship do just that.
Tim Elfrink of the Washington Post: “Earlier this month, with coronavirus cases rising dramatically across Wyoming, a coalition of medical experts and nearly every county health officer in the state wrote to Republican Gov. Mark Gordon with an urgent demand: to issue a statewide mask mandate. Gordon declined. While he has stressed the importance of wearing masks, he has also argued that it's an individual choice to do so.... Now Gordon, 63, has tested positive for the virus, his office announced Wednesday. 'He only has minor symptoms at this time and plans to continue working on behalf of Wyoming remotely,' Gordon's office said in a news release." ~~~
~~~ Marie: I know we've said this hundreds of times before, but it seems to be even the most obtuse winger could understand this: "You do not have an individual right to spread a deadly illness to others."
Bonnie Rubin of the Washington Post: "When the pandemic upended their wedding plans, Emily Bugg and Billy Lewis tied the knot at Chicago's city hall last month instead. But ... what to do about their $5,000 nonrefundable catering deposit? The newlyweds decided to turn it into 200 Thanksgiving dinners for people with severe mental illness. 'This just seemed like a good way to make the best of a bad situation,' said Bugg, 33, an outreach worker at Thresholds, a nonprofit dedicated to helping people with bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and other psychiatric conditions. In the week leading up to Thanksgiving, dozens of Thresholds clients received a boxed dinner of turkey, dressing, mashed potatoes, green beans and other fixings from Big Delicious Planet, a high-end Chicago-based caterer." MB: Hey, what do you think Trump would have done in a similar situation? Gone ahead with a superspreader ceremony anyway? Or sue the caterer?
AP: "Bruce Carver Boynton, a civil rights pioneer from Alabama who inspired the landmark 'Freedom Rides' of 1961, died Monday. He was 83.... Boynton was arrested 60 years ago for entering the white part of a racially segregated bus station in Virginia and launching a chain reaction that ultimately helped to bring about the abolition of Jim Crow laws in the South. Boynton contested his conviction, and his appeal resulted in a U.S. Supreme Court decision that prohibited bus station segregation and helped inspire the 'Freedom Rides.'"
Way Beyond the Beltway
AP: "Cambridge University launched an appeal Tuesday to find two valuable notebooks written by Charles Darwin after they were reported as stolen from the university's library. The notebooks, estimated to be worth millions of pounds, include the 19th-century scientist's famous 'Tree of Life' sketch. They haven't been seen since 2000, and for years staff at the library believed that the manuscripts had probably been misplaced in the vast archives. But after doing a thorough search, library staff now conclude it's likely that the notebooks were stolen. Police are now investigating and Interpol has also been notified." MB: Talk about cold cases. It took them 20 years to decide the notebooks had not been misshelved?
News Lede
New York Times: "Dr. Mary Fowkes, a neuropathologist at Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan whose autopsies of Covid-19 victims early in the pandemic discovered serious damage in multiple organs -- a finding that led to the successful use of higher doses of blood thinners to treat patients -- died on Nov. 15 at her home in Katonah, N.Y., in Westchester County. She was 66. Her daughter, Jackie Treatman, said the cause was a heart attack. When Dr. Fowkes ... and her team began their autopsies, little was known about the novel coronavirus, which was believed to be largely a respiratory disease. The first few dozen autopsies revealed that Covid-19 affected the lungs and other vital organs, and that the virus probably traveled through the body in the endothelial cells, which line the interior of blood vessels."
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Reader Comments (15)
https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/26/politics/trump-leave-office-electoral-college/index.html
Maybe too much pumpkin pie but had a pleasant vision of the Pretender lumbering out of the White House, scowling of course, immediately after the Electoral College vote, not hanging around even a moment longer in the place that treated him so poorly.
Then for the last seven weeks of his pretend presidency, off on a triumphal tour of his golf courses, cheating on his scorecard, running up more big bills for taxpayers, and trailing sheafs of pardons for everyone who has ever done him the favor of covering his large ass.
Through the years we on R.C. have had fun with David Brooks but through those years Brooks has changed significantly from singing a "Let's all get along" tune to reality hitting him squarely in the old puddle of love stuff. Today his column smacks of this kind of change:
"The Rotting of the Republican Mind: When one party becomes detached from reality."
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/26/opinion/republican-disinformation.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage
PD,
Had an odd experience with the Brooks yesterday.
Post-walk and waiting for turkey wrote a comment on the column but tho' the site seemed to invite them, the Times didn't accept any 'til this AM, when you prompted me to look at it again..
So they got it now, slightly revised, noting the same change in Akhilleus' Our Miss Brooks, but absent yeserday's Happy Thanksgiving greeting.
"Been interesting to see how our faux president of the last four years has moved you into more reasonable territory, Mr. Brooks. This very sensible column serves as a fine example of the migration and I thank you for it.
Would add only one thought to it. You use the word “evangelical” in its midst, I assume with a deliberately sly wink.
Let's make its implication, intended or not, explicit.
Fundamentalist religion of any stripe has always provided a fertile soil for all brands of irrationality, so is no accident that the coalition that brought us the last four horrible years was in large part grounded in the enthusiasm of Evangelicals for Trump's patently bogus anti-abortion, I'll save Christmas campaign con.
It is also no accident that the same people are, against all evidence to the contrary, still eager for more of the same.
What I don’t understand is why those who feel badly victimized so often seek their own salvation by offering themselves as sacrifices on someone else’s altar, but it seem that they do, time and again.
Whatever compells them, it goes beyond mere masochism.
Maybe you can explain that in you next column."
@PD Pepe & @Ken Winkes: Okay, you made me read Brooks. It's as if he's had an epiphany, isn't it? Who knows? He might break down & write (with possible difficulty, from a catatonic crouch), "Krugman was right all along."
The tell is here: "That can only be done first by contact, reducing the social chasm between the members of the epistemic regime and those who feel so alienated from it. And second, it can be done by policy, by making life more secure for those without a college degree."
How to do that? How to do that? Why, with some form of -- Oh My God -- SOCIALISM! That seems to be the policy that David Brooks, after lo these many years as a dyed-in-the-wool conser-vo-tive is advocating. "With policy," sez 'e.
However, you may have noted that creeping into Brooks' "socialist policy" is what he & his ilk have been telling us since the advent of Trumpism: those of us who reside -- actually or metaphorically -- in the "epistemic urban regime" are responsible to "understand" the Trumplodytes and cater to them. It is not, for some reason, up to the "precarious," isolated peasants "awash in anxiety & alienation" -- as it is for Brooks' and Paul Ryan's "urban people" -- to lift themselves up by their bootstraps. No, indeed. The rest of us must provide & fit the bootstraps to the lumpenproletariat of the hinterlands & PUSH! I guess, in Brooks' thinking, the "urban people" are supposed to derive some proximate benefit of self-lifting footwear by living within a city bus-ride (if they can afford the token) of the "epistemic ecosystem."
@Marie: It is delightful to read your dissection of the "reasonable" Brooks. I will continue to admire your insight, no matter what the by-line.
Completely unrelated: The buttermilk brined spatchcock turkey recipe from the NYT came out very well, will keep my wife fed for a good portion of my next road trip.
Marie,
Did think the Brooks column interesting enough to comment on, but didn't mean to and don't think I did suggest Brooks had made the complete trip to sanity, just the first baby steps in a rational direction, which is all I could have hoped for from a conservative whiner....
And my cynical self won't be surprised to see some hasty backsliding from this faux philosopher after Jan 20.
BTW I realize that in my deliberately light-toned post last night I didn't convey my real fears about all the awfulness I still expect to issue from the Pretender in his final days. He is one mean son of a bitch.
Hope you had a pleasant Thanksgiving.
Trump and Lord Franklin in charge of the maps...
Yes, yes, yes. We are the ones who have bend over backwards—again—to “understand” Trump voters. The not so sub rosa implication is two-fold: first, they are the real Americans and we all can learn from their salt of the earth, homespun, heartland wisdom, and second, we need to validate and accommodate their many hurts and grievances.
To the first, they ain’t, and as for second no, no, no, and no. Did I mention “no”?
First, we are ALL Americans. Trumpists see no need to understand any population group that does not look, act, and believe like they do. As far as most of them are concerned, “urban” types are socialists, commies, gays, and blahs, none of whom count.
Sorry, Harry and Louise (remember them?), we are Americans too. Just saying BLM doesn’t matter don’t make it so.
And as for the “wisdom” of the heartland, these people voted for Trump. Wisdom got nothing to do with it, nor smarts, nor decency, nor homespun nothin’. QE fucking D.
Secondly, yes, it’s important to try to understand the other side and validate their complaints. That is, in a respectful and mutual relationship. But in this instance there is no attempt on their part to do that for anyone else, which does not make the outcome of a “you must validate me but fuck you and your problems” relationship anything but healthy. In fact, it’s the definition of an abusive relationship and I, for one, ain’t gonna take it no more.
You want to make America great again? Then you need to do some work like the rest of us. You don’t get to sit on your hay bale and bitch and moan about how terrible everyone else is and how they’re stealing your freedoms just by being alive and demanding equal treatment (of course, to most of these types, a request for equal treatment is a demand for special treatment). If we’re all in the same boat, we need to all help each other.
As long as these conditions exist, to any further one sided demands that I understand them while they tell me I don’t count, I say “Bite me”.
If they’re not gonna budge from their delusions, I say we don’t ignore them, but we don’t treat them as members of the crew either.
In the mid 19th century, a British expedition to the Arctic under the command of Lord Franklin, failed miserably. Almost everyone died. When they needed to head east, they went west. Many died only miles from safety because they were delusional. The cans containing the food they brought along were badly made and sealed with lead. After ingesting the poison, they became so irrational that on one attempt to trek to safety, they brought along rocking chairs and writing desks.
Those people all died.
I say let the Trumpbots schlep their writing desks around on their backs heading the exact opposite direction from reality.
I’m going the other way. Buh-bye now.
And as for Our Miss Brooks, he’s been doing some pretty impressive writing desk schlepping for a long time. If he’s all of a sudden realizing that this does not put him squarely in the company of rational people, sorry, you’re a little late to the battlements. You don’t get to say, at this point, “Well, my goodness, look at all those idiots carrying those writhing desks! I never!” You’ve got a writing desk crease in your back you’ll carry to perdition. Oh look, Dave! A hippie. Going in the right direction! Better pick up your writing desk again. There’s a good boy.
"What's the harm in humoring him for a few days?" they asked.
Now we know.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/27/world/middleeast/mohsen-fakhrizadeh-iran-scientist-killed.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage
Is this what pompeo considers "a smooth transition to a second term of the T**** administration"?
I hope I'm wrong, but it sure looks like Somebody is doing his darndest to avoid the $421 Million in loans coming due in the next four years.
It's strange how rational people can rationalize irrationality.
Bobby Lee,
A fundamental tenet of cognitive dissonance:
Humans are not rational animals. They are rationalizing animals.
....Hazily remembered from a popular book on the subject of C.D.
@KW: Strewth, at least for those of us that even bother to rationalize. That percentage seems to be declining.
On the subject of rationalizing animals: When Bernie Sanders was on "Finding Your Roots" what he did find out about his Jewish ancestors was ten times worse than what he had thought and what he had thought was horrific. At the very end of this ancestral journey , he closed the booklet, head down, then raised his whole body forward and exclaimed, almost tearfully––
"I feel ashamed to be part of this human race! What is it that makes so many so full of hate––so evil–-so bent on destruction.?"
So perhaps "If they’re not gonna budge from their delusions, I say we don’t ignore them, but we don’t treat them as members of the crew either."–– is the sane way to deal with this division and destruction. I want to say I need to understand those dyed in the wool "delusioners" but have accepted the fact that it's somewhat of a fool's folly and all we can do is fight off the lot of them including the Lord Franklins who are steering this shit ship. There comes a time when that golden rule loses its purchase–-if indeed it ever had any.
PD,
Regarding wingnut applications of the Golden Rule? There aren’t any. Their rule is do unto others before they do unto you. And this is Trump’s rule as well, informed by the belief that everyone is as slimy and lying and as much of a cowardly con man as he is.
These people are faux Christians just as they are faux Americans.