Feeling Petty About Ramaswamy

 

What Vivek Ramaswamy said last night regarding his quotes to the Atlantic about 9/11 compared with the audio that disproves his claim that he was misquoted. pic.twitter.com/FXNJjRovJ8

— Kaitlan Collins (@kaitlancollins) August 23, 2023

So anyway, last night, our lad was like "Caitlin, Caitlin, Caitlin" about being called out for being a regular humbug.  Just a total condescending, deflecting, argumentative self-justifier. He went on to call her a "petulant teenager" for calling him out when she had performed a act of journalism on him.  Which is fun and sexist and totally for the bros and everything, but I think I know what he reminded me of:

He could stand to grow up a little if he wants to do this politics thing. Maybe he could try not even thinking he should start from the top. Maybe run for mayor of Uphisass City. Population, himself.

Also speaking about his being a CEO did you know he was getting sued?  I think the Trump Handbook says you are supposed to claim "election interference" as a defense, but I don't know if that is a real thing. 

Famine of Choices

WATCH: As California farmers make the hard decision to plow through crops no one is buying, analysts say the drop in food supply will be felt in a few months by consumers eager to buy produce at grocery stores https://t.co/F4LVLT5Gct pic.twitter.com/ecrWcGja7c

— Reuters (@Reuters) April 16, 2020

Some portion of my ancestors came to the US because there was, quite purposefully, no food where they came from. The one crop poor people mostly ate, failed. Just about every other kind of food a rich land produced, was exported. If it mattered enough, just a tweak of economics could have saved lives (a million people may have died, maybe a million more were saved by leaving). It wasn't that they couldn't have lived off what the land provided--it's that that nourishment was intended for other paying customers' tables. This sort of thing happens the whole world round. People starve not for a lack of food, but because the political climate doesn't allow it to be on their plates. It's either deliberately withheld, as can happen where the government is oppressive, or because there is no foresight on a government's behalf that food insecurity is a national security issue.

It's not just in light of the above story I consider that--it's a painful thing for farmers to produce good food and watch it go to waste and also know that it isn't just money they are out for their labor, but that the demand exists (people still need fed), it only needs a different path to the ultimate consumer. It's in light of images like this:

image of the line of cars waiting for food aid. Surely, they has to be a way for other plans to be made for more produce to be canned, dairy to be powdered, etc. possibly by an act of government, to make food more available for the people temporarily in want? The logistics for such a thing must exist. I know when I was a kid, people talked shit about government cheese (but it was good for grilled cheese) but that was a staple. We need the USDA to get it's top game on.

I'm not a logistics kind of person that knows exactly how to translate not plowing crops under into filling the bellies of people who just need tiding over until this virus crisis is licked, but taking inspiration from folks like Chef Andres, I know if the will existed we could find a way to do it.

That's the kind of thinking we should want in government. And the sort of thing I think government can make happen on a meaningful scale--but which shouldn't stop food relief groups, local governments, etc. from trying to manage, because I think the crisis is still unfolding, and future food shortages could drive inflation and just some really fucked-up realities. Basically, capitalism Venezuela. I could be wrong about that part, but I am not wrong about feeding the people and subsidizing the farmers. We all need to eat and we all need to take care of one another when things are rough. We are all in this together.

That is what makes a nation great.

Capitalism is Sick

#BREAKING
WATCH: Rick Santelli suggests infecting everyone with coronavirus — to lessen the economic impact
https://t.co/NskH4LuIS9

— Raw Story (@RawStory) March 5, 2020

It's hard to think of a more apt encapsulation of what is wrong with the short-term gain, small-picture view of modern capitalism: in the clip above, CNBC's Rick Santelli, famous for his inane "moral hazard" rant that launched the Tea Party movement, thinks it would be a great idea if everyone just got COVID-19 at once so we could all get it out of our system.

Except that is not how anything works. I mean, we aren't actually talking about a 2% lethality rate (which is bad enough compared to ordinary flu) but possibly 3.4% even assuming adequate healthcare infrastructure. The figure I'd be concerned about is the 15-20% who require hospitalization. Under a scenario in which everyone was infected at once, the healthcare system would be too overwhelmed to accommodate care for all those seriously afflicted, and the lethality rate would soar because people who need ventilators, etc., would not get that care. The afflicted would include health care workers. Ordinary diseases and injuries would still occur, in some cases as secondary opportunistic infections for people already afflicted with COVID-19.

Beyond the nightmare this poses for health care, work productivity and consumerism would be at a standstill. Shelves would go empty. The likelihood of price gouging (like we're seeing with masks and hand sanitizer, but for things like tinned beans and bottled water), looting or riots would increase. Weather events like flooding, severe thunderstorms, straight line winds, blizzards, etc., major fires, accidental explosions through things like gas leaks, would all have more devastating impacts on local communities because the emergency support would be down. People would lose their habitations and not have the means or support structure for easily finding temporary shelter. Suicide rates would climb. Substance use/abuse would climb. Service industries could just go under. People who live paycheck to paycheck would go under. People who can't afford an unplanned $2000 emergency would go under. There would be misery for everyone.

And no, the stock market would probably not rebound in a short time after all that.

Scenes from a Presidential Trip Abroad

Of all the things I was prepared to grimace about regarding President Trump's foreign travels, the idea of him giving a speech vaguely described as being "about Islam" in Saudi Arabia struck me as being obviously the most fraught with peril. The Muslim ban thing--not likely to be the greatest advance word-of-mouth recommendation regarding his opinions on things Islamic, you know? But the speech wasn't really terrible--given where many are setting the bar for such things on Trump's behalf, anyway. I'm not of the Muslim faith, so the eye-rolling parts might not stand out so much to me--I think that hitting on Iran's support of terror might be a little bit slanted to his SA audience (they just re-elected a moderate and ahem! SA also has their history with terror--and current events!)

But the part about "not lecturing" to the Islamic world also comes at the risk of admitting to the US turning its back to human rights issues in the Muslim world. I don't see that as a useful step for the US to be making, and it erodes the idea we've long-projected of American exceptionalism. The US has had its failings, but I don't think that means uselessness in the attempt to face what is, alongside of terrorism, a form of evil. It is this concern that casts a pall over the arms deal that has been signed--how are these weapons being used, and isn't Trump's Administration not, in signing this deal, also signing off on how they will be used?

I don't know what to make of the $100 million donation being made to Ivanka Trump's nascent women's empowerment fund that will be set up through World Bank and should not be, as I understand it, managed by Ms. Trump herself. (I basically think there's lots of room for crony capitalism in Trump's orbit.) Whether this is exactly like Trump's campaign criticisms regarding the Clinton Foundation strikes me as almost in the vicinity of the question of whether President Trump appeared to be curtseying like a lady--really? This is where we go? (Yeah--of course it is!)

But I have to give extra points to whoever set up the "hands on the glowing globe" photo, which is almost like movie shorthand for "we're just joining forces for world domination like villains do!" Of course, it's not a Giant Globe.  (We've seen how these can go wrong.) But it glows!

Climate Sunday: Climate is a Moral Issue

The Pope visited the US, and particularly my own city this weekend, so I am going to frame this post in light of the Pope's visit, and his urgent message, downplayed to the US Congress, but stated a bit more forcefully to the UN--We have got to do something about this climate change.

Marco Rubio, presidential candidate and Catholic, reminds us that the Pope "is not a politician". Bless his heart.

Jeb Bush, presidential candidate and Catholic, advises us that the Pope "is not a scientist".

The Pope is the head of the state called "Vatican City" (can you say that Marco Rubio?--Knew you could!) and represents a religion whose adherents number over a billion. You tell me that guy isn't any kind of  politician, I will laugh at you for a long damn time. The Pope also is qualified to understand science. Actually, notwithstanding the Galileo stuff, the Catholic Church is pretty reality-based regarding science. Teilhard de Chardin and Gregor Mendel were notable religious who advanced the cause of human scientific knowledge. It's not unheard of for the Church to be ahead of the curve--look at all the educational facilities and hospitals the Church has created. They aren't anti-knowledge (says the Catholic-adjacent militant agnostic).