…given that thanks to a string of people being kind enough to volunteer for the DOT the last few days…to the point that I don’t think I’ve done one of these in a whole week…& to whom I’m at least as grateful as anyone dreading the upcoming quantity of scrolling to reach today’s comments…you might think I’d be smart enough to have got this lined up in good time…that would have been the grown-up thing to do after all…& I’m pretty sure I remember getting homework done before the last minute at least sometimes
…but somehow none the less I’m sitting here at no-sane-person-is-awake o’clock with nothing but an unrealistically long string of links to somehow whittle down to near-digestible levels…hopefully before the wings come off today’s flight of fancy
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/passenger-video-shows-terrifying-moment-united-flight-328-engine-caught-fire
…although
Ted Cruz’s latest Cancún spin shows the rot of GOP victimization runs deep [WaPo]
…that may be an impossible task if this is anything to go by?
“Here’s a suggestion. Just don’t be assholes. Just, you know, treat each other as human beings, have to some degree some modicum of respect.”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/feb/23/ted-cruz-press-cancun-trip-texas-freeze
…now I’m a fan of irony, generally speaking…I’ve even been known to suggest it might be the nearest thing we have in reality to the force in star wars…on the basis that it permeates all things & may very well hold the universe together
…but god damn
Rich Texans take spikes in energy prices in their stride. If the electric grid goes down, private generators kick in. In a pinch – as last week – they check into hotels or leave town. On Wednesday night, as millions of his constituents remained without power and heat, Senator Ted Cruz flew to Cancún, Mexico for a family vacation. Their Houston home was “FREEZING” – as his wife put it.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/feb/21/texas-freeze-greg-abbott-ted-cruz-oil-gas-green-new-deal
…that’s a lot of irony
…clearly the slack-eyed sickly-looking sanctimonious seditionist-apologist sycophantic scumbag is the very definition of an asshole
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/02/21/texas-high-electric-bills/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2021/02/22/texas-blackout-climate-change-resilience
Nobody is ever fully prepared for natural disaster. When hurricanes, blizzards or tsunamis strike they always reveal weaknesses — failure to plan, failure to invest in precautions.
The disaster in Texas, however, was different. The collapse of the Texas power grid didn’t just reveal a few shortcomings. It showed that the entire philosophy behind the state’s energy policy is wrong. And it also showed that the state is run by people who will resort to blatant lies rather than admit their mistakes.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/22/opinion/texas-electricity-storm.html
…& that would be plenty of irony all by itself
…but I implore you
Republican leader Steve Scalise refuses to admit Trump lost election to Biden [Guardian]
…don’t try to keep track of the news that wouldn’t be news to deplore if you eliminated the aspects of it that boil down to “hypocrites being assholes”
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/facebook-users-australia-can-again-share-news-links
…for yea, verily
‘The former guy’: Biden and his aides work to ignore Trump — but it won’t be easy [WaPo]
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/feb/20/donald-trump-cpac-republican-party
Trump to tell CPAC he is Republican ‘presumptive 2024 nominee’ [Guardian]
…that way madness lies
One of the most important and misunderstood facts about the politics of legislation is that the public is largely indifferent to the process of governing. But like every rule, there are exceptions. Every once in a while, a fight over legislation or rule-making can produce enough real-world effects that the public can’t help but notice. They can even properly apportion credit and blame.
Democrats are about to have an opportunity to produce just such an outcome, on what could be the one major piece of legislation they pass this year. They will likely soon pass a massive covid relief bill — and it’s possible that not a single Republican will support it.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/02/23/how-republicans-are-about-sabotage-themselves-covid-relief/
Deb Haaland, seeking to make history as the first Native American to hold a cabinet secretary position in the US, has weathered a torrent of hostile questioning from Republicans during her confirmation hearing as secretary of the interior.
In a striking opening statement, Haaland, a member of Congress for New Mexico, said “the historic nature of my confirmation is not lost on me, but I will say that it is not about me”, adding that she hoped her elevation would “be an inspiration for Americans, moving forward together as one nation and creating opportunities for all of us”.
[…]
John Barrasso, a Wyoming Republican, criticized Haaland for a tweet from October 2020 in which she stated that “Republicans don’t believe in science”. Barrasso, who has previously incorrectly said the role of human activity in climate change is “not known” and that ambitious climate action in the form of the Green New Deal would mean “cheeseburgers and milkshake would become a thing of the past”, said the tweet was “concerning to those of us who have gone through training, believe in science, and yet with a broad brush, we’re all disbelievers”.
[…]
The early exchange set the tone for more than two hours of questioning where Republicans repeatedly assailed Joe Biden’s decision to pause oil and gas drilling on federal lands as calamitous for jobs. As interior secretary, Haaland would oversee the management of lands that make up nearly a third of America’s landmass, including tribal lands.At times the questions were extremely pointed, with Bill Cassidy, a Louisiana Republican, asking Haaland: “Will your administration be guided by a prejudice against fossil fuel, or will it be guided by science?” Importantly for the chances for Haaland’s nomination, Joe Manchin, a Democrat who represents the coal heartland of West Virginia, said that he wanted to see the “evolution not elimination” of coal mining.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/feb/23/deb-haaland-confirmation-hearing-interior-secretary
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/02/18/winter-storm-deaths/
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/feb/22/neera-tanden-susan-collins-office-management-budget
In recent days, three key swing votes in that 50-50 Senate announced they wouldn’t vote for her: Sens. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.), Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Mitt Romney (R-Utah). Without Manchin’s vote, in particular, Tanden’s confirmation suddenly becomes very difficult. Tanden will now need at least one GOP vote, but Collins’s and Romney’s ensuing statements suggest that will be tough to wrangle, given any other Republican who crosses party lines would now come in for significant criticism as the potentially decisive vote.
But perhaps more significantly — and more applicable in this current circumstance — all Republicans and both Manchin and Collins voted for a Trump nominee with a checkered social media past. Richard Grenell in 2018 was Trump’s nominee to become ambassador to Germany. He was later elevated to a much-higher post for a brief time: the acting director of national intelligence. And he, too, was a very partisan warrior on Twitter, often going further than many lawmakers in deriding the opposition.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/02/22/so-what-is-neera-tanden-standard/
AOC criticizes Manchin over apparent targeting of Biden’s nominees of color [Guardian]
…& obviously when it comes to keeping things in perspective it’s harder to reconcile some things than others
“On January 5 and 6, Ms. Watkins was present not as an insurrectionist, but to provide security to the speakers at the rally, to provide escort for the legislators and others to march to the Capitol as directed by the then-President, and to safely escort protestors away from the Capitol to their vehicles and cars at the conclusion of the protest,” the court filing said on Saturday. “She was given a VIP pass to the rally. She met with Secret Service agents. She was within 50 feet of the stage during the rally to provide security for the speakers. At the time the Capitol was breached, she was still at the site of the initial rally where she had provided security.”
The US Secret Service, in response to Watkins’ claims in the Saturday filing, denied that private citizens were working with the Secret Service to provide security on January 6.
“To carry out its protective functions on January 6th, the U.S. Secret Service relied on the assistance of various government partners. Any assertion that the Secret Service employed private citizens to perform those functions is false,” a US Secret Service spokesperson said in a statement to CNN on Sunday.
[…]
Watkins is central to one of the most aggressive criminal conspiracy cases yet to emerge from the insurrection. The Justice Department indicted her and eight other alleged Oath Keepers on several charges related to the riot, including allegations that the group coordinated their travel to the pro-Trump event, discussed training and weapons beforehand, suited up in body armor and broke through the crowd heading into the Capitol in a military-style formation.
[…]
Watkins’ defense attorney, Michelle Peterson, wrote on Saturday that her client and other supporters of Trump had believed the then-President would invoke the Insurrection Act to use the military to overturn what he falsely said was the fraudulent election of Joe Biden. And Watkins and others believed “they would have a role if this were to happen,” the filing said.“However misguided, her intentions were not in any way related to an intention to overthrow the government, but to support what she believed to be the lawful government. She took an oath to support the Constitution and had no intention of violating that oath or of committing any violent acts.”
https://edition.cnn.com/2021/02/21/politics/oath-keepers-vip-security-capitol-riot/index.html
…yeah
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/02/21/officer-joseph-fischer-charged-capitol-riots/
‘The worst of the worst’: Capitol Police captain shares harrowing account of Jan. 6 riot
Former Capitol security officials blame intelligence lapses for deadly Jan 6 riot [WaPo]
Around 7 p.m. on Jan. 5, less than 24 hours before an angry mob overran the U.S. Capitol, an FBI bulletin warning that extremists were calling for violent attacks on Congress landed in an email inbox used by the D.C. police department. That same evening, a member of the Capitol Police received the same memo.
But the alert was not flagged for top officials at either agency, according to congressional testimony Tuesday — deepening questions about the breakdowns that contributed to massive security failures on Jan. 6.
[…]
But Tuesday’s joint hearing by two Senate committees also spotlighted the stark warnings that were issued before Congress met in a joint session to formalize President Biden’s victory.One came in the form of the Capitol Police’s own intelligence report three days before the attack, as The Washington Post first reported. In a 12-page memo, the agency’s intelligence unit warned that “Congress itself” could be targeted by angry Trump supporters who saw the electoral college vote certification as “the last opportunity to overturn the results of the presidential election.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/capitol-riot-intelligence/2021/02/23/story.html
The day’s testimony began with a Black woman with shoulder-length dreadlocks dressed in a Capitol Police uniform, with its epaulets and badges and her gold shield. The presence of Carneysha Mendoza, a captain and an Army veteran, spoke volumes about who stood up to protect democracy. She defined patriotic in a way that so many of the rioters, with their allegiances to white supremacy and misogyny, do not.
She had been prepared for violent mobs of racists and Proud Boys and other extremists because she’d dealt with them before, and doing so was part of her job. She was prepared for the hailstorm of vile personal attacks because she has “been called some of the worst names so many times that I’m pretty numb to it now.” She was ready for most anything because the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks had taught her that “the unthinkable is always possible.”
In preparation for a long shift that she expected to begin in the late afternoon, she began her day at home having lunch with her 10-year-old son. Although reports had officers fighting the rioters for three hours, she knew it was probably much longer. Her Fitbit told her so. She’d been in exercise mode for well over four hours, which meant that Mendoza had clocked a marathon fending off fellow Americans who were trying to demolish democracy.
She spent the next evening consoling the family of fellow officer Brian D. Sicknick, who had died in the line of duty. Her birthday was Jan. 8. She was still nursing chemical burns inflicted by the mob.
This was the truth. These were the optics. And they were painful to see.
This dedicated Black woman laid out the day, her day, in front of a group of senators that included several who had hand-fed falsehoods to the rioters, stuffing them full of tall tales.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/02/23/optics-arent-everything-sometimes-they-are-only-thing/
…so
A Bristling Standoff Rattles Gun-Friendly Vermont
…where was I?
‘The past is so present’: how white mobs once killed American democracy [Guardian]
The goal, according to lawyers and others supportive of such efforts, is to mete out some form of punishment for those who helped undermine confidence in the election results and fueled the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. But even more, they said, they hope to discourage other public officials from rerunning Trump’s strategy of attempting to overturn an election result by sowing doubt about the legitimacy of the vote.
[…]
And one side effect of the endeavors: They could provide new forums for Trump and his allies to showcase their false claims about the vote in 2020.Indeed, former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, who served as Trump’s lead post-election attorney and who is the target of several of the lawsuits that have been filed, said in a text message that he sees the court actions as “an opportunity” to defend his claims. Or, as he wrote, “it will give me a chance to get the truth past the Iron Curtain of Big Tech and Most Media censorship.”
[…]
Separately, two election technology companies are pursuing multibillion-dollar defamation suits against various Trump allies, alleging that they repeatedly told lies about the companies’ products in the weeks leading up to Jan. 6.
[…]
A second company, Smartmatic, which has said that during the November election it operated in only one U.S. county, a jurisdiction in California, has filed a $2.7 billion lawsuit against Fox News and several of its prominent commentators, as well Giuliani and Powell. Smartmatic argues that the commentators and lawyers used the network to propagate wild lies, including falsely claiming the company had been founded by Venezuelans close to former leader Hugo Chávez. Fox News earlier this month asked that the suit be dismissed, arguing that it “strikes at the heart” of the news media’s right to report on issues of public concern.Kleinhendler called the [Dominion] awsuits “empty, self-serving publicity stunts and pathetic attempts at obscene and unfounded damages claims” and said Powell looked forward to defending herself in court.
The lawsuits are a turnabout for Trump and his allies, who themselves filed more than 60 suits after the election, challenging the results in various states. They lost all but one in Pennsylvania that affected only a handful of ballots.
Impeachment is over. But other efforts to reckon with Trump’s post-election chaos have just begun. [WaPo]
[…]
Federal rules prohibit lawyers from filing frivolous suits or from using litigation for improper purposes such as to harass or delay. Lawyers also are not allowed to lie in court.
[…]
“Attorneys who use their license to fuel the fires of insurrection have no right to run and hide when their battle is lost,” said David Fink, a Detroit-based lawyer representing the city in the case. “They chose to misrepresent the facts to the court and participated in a scheme to persuade millions of Americans that this was not a free, fair and open election. They have to be held accountable for what they’ve done.”
At stake in Senate hearing Tuesday: The story of the Capitol riot, and who is responsible [WaPo]
US Capitol rioters ‘came prepared for war’, Senate hears in testimony [Guardian]
The worst way to respond to the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol would be to further undermine the democratic ideals that were under attack that day. The civil and human rights community is united in opposition to federal legislation that would create a new domestic terrorism charge, as some members of Congress and the Biden administration are considering. Such a change could be turned unfairly against communities of color, religious minorities and political dissenters. We must hold the violent insurrectionists accountable now using the federal criminal statutes that have long been available to address white-nationalist violence and give no cover for the failure to use these tools in the past.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/02/22/no-we-do-not-need-new-law-against-domestic-terrorism/
Within hours of the storming of the Capitol on January 6, the FBI began securing thousands of phone and electronic records connected to people at the scene of the rioting — including some related to members of Congress, raising potentially thorny legal questions.
https://theintercept.com/2021/02/22/capitol-riot-fbi-cellphone-records/
…something to think about, I guess…or at least pretend to?
This type of disagreement — progressive vs. moderate, ambition vs. incrementalism — is sometimes described as dysfunction. In fact, it is the beating pulse of a healthy party. There are people of influence within the Democratic Party who provide ideological energy, and people of influence (including Manchin and Sinema) who realize that governing means balancing. The latter group sees the inherent tension between liberality and fiscal prudence. It understands the conflict between a dramatically higher minimum wage and the health of small businesses. It realizes that ending the filibuster could empower the teetering Democratic majority in the Senate — but also unleash the destructive power of a second Donald Trump term with GOP control of Congress (a horrifying but not impossible prospect).
I watch these Democratic arguments with envy. Post-Trump Republicans have generally lost their standing to engage in these debates. Fiscal prudence? You’ve got to be kidding. Trump increased the national debt by some $7.8 trillion — nearly double the aggregate debt of Americans (not including their mortgages). Executive overreach? Come now. Trump was impeached for inciting a mob to attack the Capitol in an effort to overturn the constitutional order. Elected Republicans who cheered Trump are not just hypocrites on these matters. They are jokes.
From an ideological perspective, the Republican Party is a patient without a pulse. The only real question: Are we ready to declare time of death?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/theres-only-one-political-party-right-now/2021/02/22/story.html
Democrats have already written the kind of voting rights bill Obama spoke about. It’s the For the People Act, designated as H.R. 1 in the House and S. 1 in the Senate. If passed and signed into law, it would establish automatic, same-day and online voter registration, protect eligible voters from overly broad purges that remove them from the rolls, restore the Voting Rights Act with a new formula for federal preclearance (which would require select cities and localities to submit new voting rules to the Justice Department for clearance), re-enfranchise the formerly incarcerated, strengthen mail-in voting systems, institute nationwide early voting and increase criminal penalties for voter intimidation.
House Democrats introduced H.R. 1 in 2019 at the start of the 116th Congress. Mitch McConnell, then the majority leader of the Senate, denounced the bill as a “naked attempt to change the rules of American politics to benefit one party” and told reporters it was dead on arrival. “This is a terrible proposal,” he said that March, “it will not get any floor time in the Senate.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/23/opinion/republican-voter-suppression.html
…anyway
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/u-s-reaches-500-000-deaths-from-the-coronavirus
…however bad the rollout of vaccinations have been
…& however hard it might be to wrap your head around the US having lost over 500,000 lives to a mismanaged pandemic
Fauci laments ‘historic’ Covid death toll as US nears 500,000 [Guardian]
…the fact is that however scary you might find anything that smacks of the dreaded “radical socialist agenda”…it’s a fucking virus…& that shit mutates given a chance…so even the much vaunted “herd-immunity” doesn’t really pan out if you don’t mean the whole herd
The current inequality in vaccine availability and deployment is stark. According to UN secretary general António Guterres, just 10 countries account for 75% of all Covid-19 vaccination so far. More than 130 countries have not administered a single dose.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/feb/23/richer-countries-developing-nations-covid-19-g7
…it’s like…oh, I dunno…the attitude texas had to power-grid regulations…to pick an example just-about-randomly…but hey, there’s plenty more fish…right?
…something, something
A year of missed preventive medical care is endangering minority communities. [NYT]
…mistakes of the past
When New York prosecutors finally get to examine the federal tax returns of former President Donald J. Trump, they will discover a veritable how-to guide for getting rich while losing millions of dollars and paying little to no income taxes.
Whether they find evidence of crimes, however, will also depend on other information not found in the actual returns.
Trump’s Tax Returns Aren’t the Only Crucial Records Prosecutors Will Get [NYT]
[…]
In addition to the tax returns, Mr. Trump’s accountants, Mazars USA, must also produce business records on which those returns are based and communications with the Trump Organization. Such material could provide important context and background to decisions that Mr. Trump or his accountants made when preparing to file taxes.
Here’s What’s Next in the Trump Taxes Investigation [NYT]
…pride goeth before a fall
The U.S. government deserves considerable blame, of course, for its inadequate cyberdefense. But to see the problem only as a technical shortcoming is to miss the bigger picture. The modern market economy, which aggressively rewards corporations for short-term profits and aggressive cost-cutting, is also part of the problem: Its incentive structure all but ensures that successful tech companies will end up selling unsecure products and services.
Why Was SolarWinds So Vulnerable to a Hack? [NYT]
Tech executives revealed that a historic cybersecurity breach that affected about 100 US companies and nine federal agencies was larger and more sophisticated than previously known.
The revelations came during a hearing of the US Senate’s select committee on intelligence on Tuesday on last year’s hack of SolarWinds, a Texas-based software company. Using SolarWinds and Microsoft programs, hackers believed to be working for Russia were able to infiltrate the companies and government agencies. Servers run by Amazon were also used in the cyber-attack, but that company declined to send representatives to the hearing.
[…]
Brad Smith, the Microsoft president, said its researchers believed “at least 1,000 very skilled, very capable engineers” worked on the SolarWinds hack. “This is the largest and most sophisticated sort of operation that we have seen,” Smith told senators.Smith said the hacking operation’s success was due to its ability to penetrate systems through routine processes. SolarWinds functions as a network monitoring software, working deep in the infrastructure of information technology systems to identify and patch problems, and provides an essential service for companies around the world. “The world relies on the patching and updating of software for everything,” Smith said. “To disrupt or tamper with that kind of software is to in effect tamper with the digital equivalent of our Public Health Service. It puts the entire world at greater risk.”
[…]
Microsoft disclosed last week that the hackers had been able to read the company’s closely guarded source code for how its programs authenticate users. At many of the victims, the hackers manipulated those programs to access new areas inside their targets.Smith stressed that such movement was not due to programming errors on Microsoft’s part but on poor configurations and other controls on the customer’s part, including cases “where the keys to the safe and the car were left out in the open”
George Kurtz, the CrowdStrike chief executive, explained that in the case of his company, hackers used a third-party vendor of Microsoft software, which had access to CrowdStrike systems, and tried but failed to get into the company’s email. Kurtz turned the blame on Microsoft for its complicated architecture, which he called “antiquated”.
“The threat actor took advantage of systemic weaknesses in the Windows authentication architecture, allowing it to move laterally within the network” and reach the cloud environment while bypassing multifactor authentication, Kurtz said.
Where Smith appealed for government help in providing remedial instruction for cloud users, Kurtz said Microsoft should look to its own house and fix problems with its widely used Active Directory and Azure.
[…]
“This could have been exponentially worse and we need to recognize the seriousness of that,” said Senator Mark Warner of Virginia. “We can’t default to security fatalism. We’ve got to at least raise the cost for our adversaries.”Lawmakers berated Amazon for not appearing at the hearing, threatening to compel the company to testify at subsequent panels.
“I think [Amazon has] an obligation to cooperate with this inquiry, and I hope they will voluntarily do so,” said Senator Susan Collins, a Republican. “If they don’t, I think we should look at next steps.”
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/feb/23/solarwinds-hack-senate-hearing-microsoft
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/feb/23/amazon-bessemer-alabama-union
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/02/23/interest-rates-tax-code-help-apple
Facebook Strikes Deal to Restore News Sharing in Australia [NYT]
“Mark Changed The Rules”: How Facebook Went Easy On Alex Jones And Other Right-Wing Figures [buzzfeednews]
…yadda yadda
Independent Report Is Highly Critical of Colorado Police in Death of Elijah McClain [NYT]
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/02/23/daniel-prude-rochester-death-officers
With New Grand Jury, Justice Department Revives Investigation Into Death of George Floyd [NYT]
…just…ummm…be careful what you cling to in the face of the crazy out there
…hell…even cereal could kill ya
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/44-pounds-of-cocaine-soaked-cereal-seized-in-cincinnati-port
…still…I guess there’s always mars?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/02/22/mars-video-perseverance-landing-hd
That…was a tour de force. So much to process. Let me just leave this frivolous, somewhat tangential observation:
…& that was a very tactful way of saying it was a tad excessive…for which I thank you
…I’m blaming it on insomnia leading to insufficient ability to be concise, myself
…thanks for the tune, though…if I wasn’t sure I was awake rob zombie is certainly a good way to confirm it
I didn’t think this post was excessive at all! Just a cursory review of my FYCE posts and general comments will reveal that I’m a textual maximalist. Did you know that David Foster Wallace’s “Infinite Jest” was, as written, at least 600 printed pages longer, and he fought with his editor over every semi colon and word in every footnote, and I’ve read IJ twice and would have welcomed the uncut version. That is how crazy I am. I was once almost repeatedly thrown out of a book club because every time I recommended a book the group would institute a new rule. “It can’t exceed 300 pages.” “It has to be fiction.” “It has to have been published within the last few years.” “It has to have landed on some kind of ‘best-seller’ list.'” After each of my picks the group became more and mid-cult, in Dwight Macdonald’s famous phrase, reading all sorts of crap found, but unread, in homes all across America. The only books I remember were the ones I picked myself. A common complaint was, “I hated this book. I didn’t like any of the characters.” And I considered these people my friends and intellectual peers…
Anyway, I had something interesting to add. Oh, I know. I was reading another news roundup. One of the best politicians NYC has ever sent to DC, newly minted 2nd-term Rep. AOC, flew down to Texas over weekend and launched a fundraising effort to help out those beleaguered, abandoned citizens. I think this is well-known. In 96 hours she raised $5 MILLION. According to the roundup most House members can’t raise $5 million over a 2-year cycle for their own re-election, and she managed to mount an almost unimaginably successful nationwide campaign. This has sent shockwaves through the House. The only reason Nancy Pelosi is where she is (aside from longevity) is her fundraising prowess, and she did herself no favors by initially snubbing AOC because she (AOC) knocked off one of her (Pelosi’s) closest cronies, a Queen Democratic machine hack who, with any luck, will never be heard from again (he has since gone on to join a K St. lobbying firm, of course.) Sen. Chuck Schumer, Amy’s relative, is fearing for his political life because AOC has not ruled out primarying him (I’d vote for her over him. He’s long past his prime.) He is focusing all his efforts on chummying it up to her. Good luck, Chuck. The entire Democratic political establishment is studying her birth chart with extreme scrutiny. She turns 35 just before Election Day 2024, and everyone knows it, so she’s eligible to be elected President. Imagine. A President from NYC who’s non-eligible for Social Security. A Democrat who actually feels Democratic, and not some warmed-over Third Way triangulating Neo-liberal to the right of Nixon and Rockefeller and Eisenhower.
She has an upcoming test. It will be interesting if she endorses in the NYC mayoral primary, and how that might affect things. Then Gov. Cuomo is up for re-election in 2022, and he’s teetering on the precipice as it is, so she could have some influence there. AOC is not universally beloved by any means, but there is a restlessness that I can feel (I’m old enough to be her father) and I’m just so tired of my peers and the older Baby Boomers and the generation before me running everything.
How’s that for a pithy, concise comment?
It would be so fucking awesome of AOC ran against Schumer for the Senate seat and destroyed him. She, of course, wouldn’t ever become the leader, but I can’t imagine a more politically inept “leader” than Chuck Schumer, so anyone else (except for Manchin) would be an improvement.
Hmm I’ve never read Infinite Jest but I’ve always heard of David Foster Wallace as a favorite writer of Red Pillers… (To be clear, I’m not accusing you of being one, I’m actually wondering if there’s more value in his work than I’ve previously assumed.)
…I have a soft spot for “good old neon” which was a short story by david foster wallace…& indeed something of a soft spot for your good self @matthewcrawley
…both of which I’d have mentioned earlier today if I hadn’t been tied up in a seemingly endless bout of tech support
Too much is just right, @SplinterRIP
…thank you kindly
Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Poet Who Nurtured the Beats, Dies at 101
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/23/obituaries/lawrence-ferlinghetti-dead.html
My head asplode
Right? This DOT was … record-setting.
Rob Zombie is from my city! Kudos to him for getting out.
As for the news [sigh]. At least sometimes I think we’re heading in the right direction.
Speaking of long books @Cousin Matthew’s Tingling Leg I watched Anna Karenina over the weekend, the one with Keira Knightly, and felt the urge to reread, even though the book fills me with outrage, not the book itself, but the popular conception that it is a love story, oh, there is a love story in there all right, it’s just not anna and vronsky. The movie is visual stunning, but the idea that one would cheat on Jude Law with Aaron Taylor-Johnson just makes me laugh.
I’ve never seen the Knightly “Karenina” but I’ve read it, voluntarily, when I was in junior high or high school, because we had a paperback copy of it lying around. I’ve also gotten through “The Brothers Karamazov.” Have you ever seen “Dr. Zhivago?”? The Omar Sharif/Julie Christie version from the 60s? Wiki tells me that its run time is 3 hours and 20 minutes. I caught it a few months ago on some ad-ridden third-tier cable station and the runtime was five hours. The pandemic was in full swing so it’s not like I had much else on my schedule. I will never buy any of the products advertised (there were only four or five, so it was the same set on continuous loop every ten minutes or so) but every minute of the film was worth it.
I have seen Dr. Zhivago, trains, snow, potatoes, repeat. No, I’m kidding [a little] it is lovely.
I read the book as well. I went through this russian novel phase and totally wanted to live in czarist russia.
You must read War and Peace, I reread every few years, I think it may be my favorite book.
I think the thing I love most about Russian novels is how they always include something up front with names, patronymics, diminutives, nicknames, and sometimes short bios of the people you’re about to meet, because It’s all so confusing. I suppose 19th-century Russians were used to everyone have three or four names, depending on circumstance and familiarity, but it’s a challenge for 21st-century non-Russian readers!
It is a challenge but it’s real, how people really talk and interact. Like a college prof always calls you by your last name, at work I get called my initials because we fucking love acronyms there, friends call me by my first name, very good friends from a certain era use another. It’s that richness that keeps me going back to russian novels. That said, I recall keeping an index card of characters the first time I read W&P.
…it’s not as long as the ones you mentioned but I’d like to throw in an honorable mention for the master & margerita by mikhail bulgakov which is possibly my favorite russian novel (something I suspect is profoundly unoriginal of me)
…having been recommended it years ago by someone who grew up speaking russian I will say that I was grateful they nudged me to get a copy that came with copious footnotes because without those I think I would have missed well over half of what was impressive about it as a piece of work…but I think the story would have been a good read in any case
@SplinterRIP We need to discuss! When I finished that book I was all I don’t even know what I just read. I must reread now.
…I’ll see if I can dig out that footnote-tastic copy then…happy to discuss but there was a lot folded into the text if I remember rightly…& I’m pretty sure I’d need to brush up on at least some of it
Wait really? Are you still in the area? Because if so we live pretty close. We almost bought a home in Georgetown.
Howdy Neighbor! Yes, I still live there, in a house I used to walk past every day.
It’s a weird little corner of MA isn’t it?
It is! Definitely a unique pocket of the state. We ended up further west in Middlesex County but I have a friend there.
I find it interesting when science confirms the things we always think:
A key finding was that people with extremist attitudes tended to think about the world in black and white terms, and struggled with complex tasks that required intricate mental steps, said lead author Dr Leor Zmigrod at Cambridge’s department of psychology.
She said another feature of people with tendencies towards extremism appeared to be that they were not good at regulating their emotions, meaning they were impulsive and tended to seek out emotionally evocative experiences. “And so that kind of helps us understand what kind of individual might be willing to go in and commit violence against innocent others.”
As always, I mentally reference John Rogers’ “The Crazification Factor”:
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Crazification_factor
I hope Dominion takes the My Pillow guy for everything he is worth.
I am excited this morning because my 2021 desk calendar refill was shipped to my house this morning. WFH has really screwed with obtaining office supplies. Most things, like paperclips and highlighters I’ve already pilfered from the office through the years but a year-specific calendar is the sort of thing you need when you need it. And for some reason by boss was not able to get his hands on one until almost the end of Feb and I’ve been making do. Any other office drones know that some things you just NEED.
I also have a fucking headache. For three days. I woke up at 2am to take pills. Normally it is the kind of thing I’d go to the ER for, but I am really trying to NOT go to the ER in this pandemic. I have no idea what my local ER is like right now. I have managed to stay totally healthy and I don’t want to jinx it. Please wear your masks motherfuckers so one of these days I can go get my head straight.
*repeating myself … 2 “this mornings” are due to pain meds. I feel great!!!!
One thing with the TX grid collapse, which frustrates the everloving HELL out of me, and yet I see hardly anyone mentioning directly, is the fact that, apparently, some of the TX Leg’s reps & senators plan to use at least SOME of the Federal relief dollars (y’alls tax money and mine!), to simply pay the exorbitant bills sent to customers…
Even though those same companies have had a damn decade to reinforce their grid, and apparently they basically just decided to play chicken with mother nature…
Typical. Just keep enabling the shitty behavior because what else are they going to do–fix it?!
Some of the ERCOT directors have resigned, right on schedule. Next will be some bullshit pablum about “making sure this doesn’t happen again”, followed immediately by nothing actually happening. But, you can be damned sure that the energy companies will be made whole because socialism for them is perfectly acceptable.
Yep🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬
It’s the stories like these, which are REALLY pissing me off, about it all..
https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_6035a2d5c5b656e70b927b15
Because the asshats are literally stripping ALL the cash out of folks’accounts, and running them into overdrafts (and I can’t even IMAGINE the fees, for folks who have the bill attached to bank/savings accounts which charge you if you go *over* _____ many transactions per month!🙃😳😬🥺😱)…
And THEN *BecauseTexas!!!* (🙄🙄🙄), those SAME price-gouging companies will be the FIRST to be made whole (“Gotta make sure they get PAID, don’tcha know!”😒😒😒), while the people who REALLY need the assistance will end up waiting…
And THEN you all KNOW those same companies are going to lobby the federal government, so that it’s all of US who pay for them to upgrade their goddamned equipment & grid….
Because they just *couldn’t* tap into the colossal revenues they got, from profiteering during a disaster(😒😠😡🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬)… because “That would be unfair to the shareholders!”
😒
And all is right with the world:
That’s a lot to chew on, but two things really made me angry.
1. AOC is completely right about how non-white-male nominees are facing way more scrutiny than Trump’s good-ol’-boy network ever did. Fuck Manchin with a coal mining auger.
2. This goddamn quote: “I think [Amazon has] an obligation to cooperate with this inquiry, and I hope they will voluntarily do so,” said Senator Susan Collins, a Republican. “If they don’t, I think we should look at next steps.” Leadership through wishful thinking. Hallelujah. Let me massage that for you, Sue-bot: “If a corporation that doesn’t historically consider the greater need fails to do so, we might have to discuss taking some vague form of action.” Fuck Collins with a Maine lighthouse.
The Keats link was great. The thing about his poems is they always come across at first as Victorian effervescence, but as soon as you start to dig into them you realize how stripped down and loaded they are.
…keats is another favorite of mine & you’re absolutely right about that…it never ceases to amaze me that someone who died so young & who didn’t really start in on the poetry thing as a career basically until after getting most of the way to qualifying to practice medicine…but consciously set out to be one of the great poets of his age…actually succeeded…more or less on the basis of about five or six years’ worth of material, no less…hell, for my money he’s one of the all-time greats, even
Update. I am considering going to the ER. Conditions have declined. I can’t get thru to my doctor and I’m sure even if I did she wouldn’t have an appointment for a month. My head hurts.
sorry to hear that… i hope they’ll be able to help you quickly
Hope you feel better Pumpkin!
I hope you get fast treatment. A several-day headache is very concerning.