Disease Rules Everything Around Me

"I don't believe you need 40,000 or 30,000 ventilators. You know, you go to major hospitals, sometimes they have 2 ventilators." -- Trump suggests Cuomo is exaggerating about the medical gear he needs to keep people alive pic.twitter.com/ADZb8fznOw

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 27, 2020

My work schedule this time of year usually disrupts my posting somewhat, and in that sense, nothing has changed. The staff of the floor of the building where I work has been reduced to something like a tenth of the usual workforce. It's about the same throughout the downtown area. My usually forty-odd minute commute is a near-thirty minute breeze. But there's a pulse of low-level stress, dislocation and uncertainty. Some of the people I'm talking to in the course of my work have lost their jobs or have their money-making opportunities severely reduced. They might love to go back to work, and yet--

They don't want to be sick. They don't want the people around them to be. They can't afford to be out of work, but they also sure as hell don't need corona in their lives. I'm in the NY/PA/NJ tristate area, and there are people who don't want to be outside if they can help it. I sympathize. I feel weird about that "Everybody wants to get back to work" construction though--Trump doesn't talk to everybody, and not everybody even stopped working. I want people to stay home. I want vulnerable people to stay safe. I want people to avoid having to go to the hospital right now, because things are not, as Trump wants to believe, levelling off. I want health care workers not to be worked to death. Things won't be miraculously better by Easter, for a kind of special resurrection of our social life.

I hate posting about everything through the view of the pandemic. For me, so far, it has mostly been a bloody boring inconvenience, but tinged with the incredible sorrow that it has been a nightmare and a tragedy for others, and was nursed along at the teats of ignorance and neglect. The voices of people who think it is okay to send people back into regular contact with one another for the stimulation of the economy are something worse than fiends--they are fiendish fools. Billionaires want people to go back to work--and they are the class of people who think they can finagle their own personal ventilator, if it worst comes to worst. Imagine this line of thinking:

Dick Kovacevich, who ran Wells Fargo & Co. until 2007, wants to see healthy workers below about 55 or so to return to work late next month if the outbreak is under control. “We’ll gradually bring those people back and see what happens. Some of them will get sick, some may even die, I don’t know,” said Kovacevich, who was also the bank’s chairman until 2009. “Do you want to suffer more economically or take some risk that you’ll get flu-like symptoms and a flu-like experience? Do you want to take an economic risk or a health risk? You get to choose.”

This "flu-like experience" of which Kovacevich speaks? Can involve death and orphaning of one's little children. Is this tough-minded capitalism pose prepared for the widows/widowers and orphans? ("Are there no prisons? Are there no work houses? If they would rather die, they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.") Young workers, it turns out, are not invincible. It isn't that "some may even die"--some most certainly will. Without mitigating the spike in infections and hospitalizations, this supposed "stop the financial bleeding" thinking is simply wrong, though. The workers are also your customers, the consumers. The workforce itself, the lifeblood of everything, is at risk. Fuck the capital--save the people!

For those who need a religious lens to look at this, think of this as a time of jubilee. Let's put a pin in the stock market for a minute, and release the bonds of the worker and consider paid the debts of the bondman. (See also: Do not muzzle the ox that treads the grain.)

And for what it's worth, there is a spirit of judgment from a certain giddy and ignorant corner about the affliction of blue states over red states, which seems to be in the same state of mind as Trump's potential determination to withhold aid to states that don't flatter him aren't working with him acceptably. Trump has singled out Cuomo, Inslee and Whitmer as being governors that haven't directed the correct pleasant-smelling offering in the general direction of his taint. This isn't too far away from being a self-fulfilling prophecy--at first. But I wonder what exactly red states will be going through in the future as the disease continues, and whether, once things are proceeding, they have the infrastructure to save lives and hold back the human toll. And I hope they do. But they need to heed science, not Trump.

I don't think I can avoid my future posts being at least tangentially concerned with covid-19 (Hey 19-no we can't dance together--no we can't talk at all!) for the foreseeable.

But just to leave a little bad taste in your mouth, I came across one of Trump's former serious fans who might have spit him out because he was lukewarm, Pastor Wiles (anti-Semite bigot). Trump has enjoyed saying that no one knew how much covid-19 would be a wasting force in our world, but Wiles as early as January 29 viewed this as a "purge". Even though some of the people who succumb to covid-19 will be of the formerly faithful and COVID-19 denying, still some will enter out from the mouth of the crucible, and feel no heat. This is because, verily, they are numb. (But they could fucking read a book or something.)

And don't get me started on the paranoia of the president who thinks that governors could even be asking for ventilators and all just to fuck with him. Or his belief that "the media" (journalists) might cover whether things he says and does happened and/or actually helped at all, instead of what they generally tend to do, which is not helping.

Anyways, everything looks like viral content to me. How are you all doing?

No Heroes, No Villians

At some point, I was going to have to get into this, because my dumb brain won't let me move off of it until I've aired it--I don't like heroes. The idea of "hero" doesn't nestle comfortably in my political bosom. People who go into politics are sometimes abrasive jerks. This is because politics is oppositional. I gave up on the idea of anyone being out in the arena and being above criticism. If someone wants to do the work of influencing public life, there's good strategy and bad strategy. Good tactics and bad tactics. Shit that's effective and shit that is not effective. 

Hillary Clinton is not above criticism. I admire, but don't idolize her. I think her trashing of Bernie Sanders right now doesn't do anything positive. He's running, right now in 2020, he's a front-runner, he has considerable support, and any criticism from her is liable to just make those who support him double-down. Maybe the criticism is going to be pointless, especially because it comes from her. She is not some blameless lamb just trying to make a point--she knows very well what's she's doing, and what the stakes are.

I also admire, but don't idolize Bernie Sanders. He is a 78 year man who ran second in a very divisive primary last time around, who does not quite seem to understand that stocking his campaign with people who seem almost created in a lab to piss off Clinton die-hards might be a tad controversial. There are a few who voted for Jill Stein--that's some fraught shit. (The Joe Rogan stuff is also kind of oddball.)

I also admire, but do not idolize The Squad. I like the idea of fresh faces with very progressive ideas who do not step back regarding confrontation with the idea of "how we always did it before" or "conventional wisdom says." I appreciate that these strong women have backgrounds that have informed their opinions and they carry those histories with pride--they are earning their place by fighting for what they believe in. 

But, and this goes back to what I've been saying about audiences--no one is ever just among their target audience anymore. Booing Hillary Clinton's negativity towards Sanders and referring to her as a liar count as criticism that might even be legit regarding her statements, but--this is a goddamn primary race, and sooner or later, it might help if Clinton fans didn't come away thinking "These folks are exactly who she said they were." 

See, for Clinton backers, Sanders fans were the ones who heckled Dolores Huerta and John Lewis and sprinkled dollar bills to shame Clinton at a fundraiser. I don't know directly how many Clinton folks outside of Twitter feel like Sanders' support was too little too late or that he should have had more talk of unity, but the sentiment is obviously there. Booing Hillary Clinton does nothing. 

I don't want to rehash 2016. It's the worst. It strikes me that this kind of thing is wasting ammo on dead horses and live asses that should be trained on Republicans. So, rather than demonize anybody, I guess I just in general want to say--get your shit together, you guys. There are no villians here.

Except the GOP. They are always the villians.

UPDATE: Just tacking on this, though--Michael Moore has not one useful or necessary thing to say about electoral politics and should just go fucking do laundry or whatever.

It's all Fun and Games until Someone Heils Hitler

Jeff Lord served exactly no purpose on CNN whatsoever besides being a not-terribly-bright knee-jerk Trump defender. His act was so tired that always-professional and not-terrible-person Anderson Cooper lost his shit at him, stating he would entirely defend Trump shitting on a desk. And he even sort of walked it back, despite entirely being true. The hypothetical Cooper posited probably had Lord sitting there, contemplating the circumstances under which the desk-deuce option was not only acceptable, but masterful and damn-near obligatory.

So, it really doesn't alarm me that CNN decided to part with Lord over what might have even been a joking castigation of regular RW target, alleged Soros-backed MMFA.

Sigh. He decided to be that guy who thinks Nazi symbolism is treated as "Funny:ha-ha" in the real world, when it is often seen as "Funny, HR will not approve" in the corporate world that was paying him.

Is this weak? Yes. The problem a lot of free speech-oriented lefties will have is why CNN gave this particular crap-for-brains  a berth when he was regularly racially offensive and intellectually dishonest for a long time. (The "Trump is the MLK of health care" nonsense is especially weird and a stretch and a great reason why this guy never needed to be taken very seriously. Ends have no qualitative merit in his world? All means are acceptable for what Trump intends--even if it means people lose access to health care? He's arguing a civil rights position for someone trying to deny access to a right. It's disingenuous and appalling.)

I'm all for free speech, but not everyone is entitled to all platforms. CNN gave this guy a platform, and he regularly proved to be both a vigorous partisan, but a poor commentator. His failure to be sensible to why Nazi humor isn't humorous was just the latest outrage--but it is questionable why CNN tried so hard to cater to Trump partisans, without regard to quality, in the first place.

Fire and Fury; Sound and Fury

There is an argument to be made for talking tough with North Korea--I don't have the expertise to say whether it is a good argument. But if there was an argument, it would sound something like "We tried diplomacy, we gave relying on China a whirl, and if war with the US is what Kim Jong Un is hoping for, he needs to know he just might get it." Which is what I think is the message Trump et als are putting out there. North Korea has had the understanding that war wasn't a possibility because of diplomatic efforts, talks both multilateral and unilateral, and so on.  Trump's shocking articulation that war--especially a promise of "fire and fury like the world has never seen"--is a definite possibility, would be sobering to a rational person (hell--it scares me, and I'm on the coast that's not liable to be hit by the Norkulatron Bomb).

It's a kind of "Mad man theory" of Nixon, isn't it? Try to let the bad actors think that a desperate and nuclear-armed US is capable of anything, and nukes are a possibility, and see if they are willing to live with that possibility (how did Vietnam go, anyhow?)

The thing of it is, North Korea is the result of that thinking never working. I'm not sure you can pretend to out-crazy a third generation tyrannical dictator propped up with a populace conditioned by decades of propaganda and possibly no concept of "acceptable risk" at all. This is a place where droughts have forced people to eat grass, where malnutrition has created a height gap between North and South Korea of between 1-3 inches, because North Koreans babies don't get as much to eat.

And the response by North Korea to the US is--"Well, we might attack Guam." That's not a cooling-off at all. That's 160,000+ US citizens. And that would demand retaliation--because of course it does. We would be sucked into a costly and bloody war, because why? Because Trump has an inconsistent and possibly fantastical notion about how nuclear warfare would pan out, and because he is stuck with military-based solutions to North Korea's boundary-testing because he surrounded himself with generals, and lacks any good diplomatic advisors concerning this region?

This isn't sitting well with US lawmakers, and it obviously can't be sitting well with our allies. And consider the grimmest possibility--this reaction by Trump isn't even a risky strategy, but just something he's saying because his poll numbers are low and war-talk might boost them a little?

I can't even discount that as being a possible thing in the mind of this President. I wish it was not, but, well. I think it could be.

On the Google Manifesto

Sometimes (there just isn't an easy way to say this) people are just wrong, go to a lot of trouble to be wrong, stay wrong, and need to get told that they are wrong. I think the instance of the Google Manifesto is just such an example of wrongness. This might seem like an authoritarian or absolutist position--and I am okay with it. I feel that way about evolution, climate change, the roundness of our planet and the heliocentrism of our local planetary system. You want to get all flat-earthy or talk about humans as being created separately from the rest of the flora and fauna on this planet, and I'll just say it--wrong. Sometimes a person is just wrong. It isn't about opinions or politics, it's about facts. A person can have sincerely held opinions that don't relate to any damn facts, and this is what makes that person wrong.

Google Manifesto Guy is wrong. He is assuming his generalizations based on "what is happening now" can be divorced from socialization (that changing culture won't fix it) and that inequality is probably justified. A statement that reads like: 

I value diversity and inclusion, am not denying that sexism exists, and don’t endorse using stereotypes.

falls under the "I'm not a racist, but" rule, which is, if anyone ever says they are "not a racist, but"--then they are totally a racist butt. "I'm not a sexist, but" = "totally sexist butt". He doesn't endorse using stereotypes, but goes on to describe women as being "about feelings not ideas" and "people rather than things" and art and aesthetics and also they are neurotic for some reason. Sure. That's not sexist or stereotypical aaaaattt aaaaalllll. (All the eyeroll gifs Google can even.)

Let me just stop that for a minute to note that if not for Ada Lovelace, Grace Hopper, and Hedy Lamarr, my dude doesn't even have a thing to be about. Women helped make this internet thing a thing happening on various mechanical platforms. So ladies helped make the things.  But if he wants to talk about the primacy of things over people--who is using your products? Bots? No--people are. Over 50% of whom are women. Who is posting those selfies? Who is downloading Beyoncé content? Who runs the world?

Girls. All up in the phones. All over the internet. Making content, saying things. We use tech to say our things. We use tech because this internet thing gives us a platform and a voice. This series of tubes makes connections that demonstrate the value of diversity because we regularly can hear from people outside of our own limited communities--the key thing is listening. And we get enriched because of these expanded connections--knowing people who have diverse life experiences and listening to them gives one the benefit of not being a bubble-boy. You can legit talk to people unlike you any old time. It's amazing. And be challenged. And get told you are wrong. And the beauty of it is--you might even have to defend your premises and discover they are not right. It's a great thing!

I also just want to make a wee foray into one odd assertion--the idea that empathy for the weak is specifically  a "left" concern. The last I checked, many conservatives agree with the idea that babies should be fed and cared for, that sick people should have medical care, and that crime victims should have justice. These are forms of empathy for others that I don't think really have a political bias.

As for the firing of Manifesto guy--he poisoned his ability to be a team leader in any unit that had female employees by demonstrating a bias against their abilities. It's a shame--but not that his expressed opinions were countered. It's a shame that he was just so dreadfully wrong. How was he not aware women are people, have interests and skills, and can employ them in multiple ways? How? 

No Chaos in this TrumpWorld Grab-Bag!

Highest Stock Market EVER, best economic numbers in years, unemployment lowest in 17 years, wages raising, border secure, S.C.: No WH chaos!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 31, 2017

Before I get down to the news of a busy news day, I just want to ruminate on the above Tweet--do you ever, in the midst of saying glowing things about your various blessings, really feel the need to say something like, "and by the way, my job is totally secure" or "and my marriage is stronger than ever" if there wasn't an inkling something was wrong? That's how I'm reading the above Tweet--"Things are going so great: Ignore the mess!" It's almost as if Trump is either certain enough of his own hoodwinking prowess to believe he can Jedi Mind-Trick the appearance of chaos away by merely saying so, or has finally begun to accept "Hey, maybe this does look kind of bad" into his outlook.

But as I said some time ago: It looks bad because it is bad. Trump's problems are revealed through bad news, not "fake news". That news might be coming out because of leaks, but those leaks attest to something about the nature of his administration, that his staff feels the need to try and shape the narrative by letting bad news out, even if it might be damaging to the president or other members of his circle. That is pretty extraordinary, but not a problem of "spin". It's a problem of actual deficiencies in leadership and competency in staffing. It's the girders, not the paint.

Take the departure of Anthony Scaramucci, bombastic almost-Communications Director, as a case in point. He was named to the position 10 or 11 days ago depending upon your take, but -15 days from when he was officially to take office. In that time, he prompted the resignation of Press Secretary Sean Spicer, forced (one could believe) the firing of COS Reince Priebus, and launched a tirade of unique and memorable scatological importance. (One of the things that fascinates me about the infamous call to Ryan Lizza is that, despite having said many things on the record that anyone else abiding by the idea that a communications professional might have prefaces with "off the record", actually did ask for something he said to be off the record during the exchange, from what I understand. How the hell bad was that part, given all the other parts!?) But my question is--how did he get there and why?

The answer might be Javanka and specifically to target Priebus. That's some manipulative stuff. This is the kind of thing one could hope will be managed by appointing a more discipline-oriented character in the form of John Kelly to Chief of Staff.  This is especially true if he actually is given freedom to manage. But I still suspect at least some members of Team Trump are going to rankle at stern step-dad Kelly coming in and trying to be the boss of them. (Just a theory. In other news, Priebus seems to have been undermined by micro-management at the top. Just sayin'.)

Netflix Finds: Salt and Fire

This evening, I watched a movie I did not personally pick out. It was the choice of my spouse, who sometimes sees something he thinks he might like and clicks on it even though I am in the same room and he could ask if I have any interest at all. Sometimes, he picks something really good. I recently enjoyed Lo Chiamavamo Jeeg Robot, which, while definitely reminding me of the problematic relationship so-called "(super)heroic" themes have with respect to female characters (vide The Refrigerator Monologues by Catherynne M. Valente which explores the "women in refrigerators" trope and The Geek Feminist Revolution by Kameron Hurley) also was a send-up of the application of fantasy to the "real world". And then there was this film I saw just now: Salt and Fire.  

I did not enjoy this movie. About 20 minutes in, I did a thing I often do after watching a movie, where I consult with online reviews to see if other people felt the way I did. (I seldom consult reviews before--for one thing, there is a risk of spoilers and setting expectations, which I just hate. I like to see a movie with little more than the trailers to get me going.) I was happy to know many felt the way I was feeling about this thing.

There's an irony to the theme of the movie (a hostage scenario) and my getting "trapped" into watching it. Me--I'm no sentimentalist when it comes to films. I will walk the hell out or quit viewing if I'm on my own watching a film. Not sposo mio. He commits. And I, as a part of our unspoken joint adventure together as media co-consumers, have decided it is better to just be part of the ride. I have watched, for fun, really wretched B-movie schlocky-ass stuff I would never subject him to--I understand my tolerances for crap. So I tolerate. I forbear. I bitch strongly afterwards. I know if something was truly unacceptable, violent, exploitative, he'd shut it off and not watch with me if I gave the word. But this time, because I'm trying to get away from just doing politics all the time, I'm submitting my multiple grouses with this nonsense in a review.

The actors did well with what they had. Michael Shannon and Veronica Ferres are not to be faulted for the dialogue that could not help but be leaden. I genuinely think they did as convincing a job as could be done with a story which is kind of The Worst. Veronica Ferres plays Dr. Laura Sommerfeld, a scientist who is part of a UN delegation to an ecological disaster in South America. Her delegation is taken hostage when they arrive at the airport, and the male members of the delegation have been segregated and afflicted with food poisoning to disable them. She comes to be aware that she is singled out by the kidnappers because of their mission, and she is told by Matt Riley (the head kidnapper played by Michael Shannon), after some weird nonsense about perspective in an Italian Renaissance mural and a little inquisition about her not being the custodian of her little girl, who lives in Morocco with her birth father (thanks, patriarchy!) , that the area is under threat because of a potential supervolcano threat which is more drastic really, than the ecological disaster in the long run, isn't it?. And then she is abandoned in a salt flat miles from anywhere with two blind little boys who basically just speak Spanish and the local dialect. 

And she perseveres. She takes the kids under her supervision, and works out how to speak with them, feed them, rationing water and trying to spare them the ugly truth of their situation, not understanding at all why they were abandoned this way. She plays with them, becomes affectionate with them. And then, as things look desperate, the head kidnapper and his guys show up and apparently he was the boys' adoptive father, and the ecological disaster he created (I don't care if I'm spoiling you regarding this movie--watch it at your own risk because it is dumb!) is what killed their natural mother and made them blind. (Also he abandons them with a female scientist he just thinks might be a hell of a mothering type because she has a child she is removed from--not father of the year material, him.)  He wants a cookie from her because he's going to "turn himself in" (I guess to the "ecological disaster police"?) and doesn't think she deserves an apology for being kidnapped or abandoned with these kids in a completely inhospitable situation because he's feeling sort of noble about owning up to his fuckery, and he's only done it to get her to be the very best witness possible to the full extent of his stupid fuckery so she could tell his story the way he perceives it.

A TrumpWorld Grab-Bag Full of Interesting People

The G20 (or was it G19?) Summit in Hamburg has given us the first glimpse of President Trump's potential working relationship with respect to the guy many of us have been wondering about, Mr. Steal Your Election, Vladimir Putin. I'm just going to come out with it--it went as one would expect.  Mr. Trump has not ever unequivocally stated that he thought Russia was behind the hack of the DNC and the emails of Clinton associate John Podesta, and in fact, his Tweet just prior to meeting Putin conflated the two separate but important hacks to deride their importance:

Everyone here is talking about why John Podesta refused to give the DNC server to the FBI and the CIA. Disgraceful!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 7, 2017

Notes: no one was talking about this because the US election happened in 2016 and the hacks are not actually relevant anymore, unless somehow, world leaders are curious about how everything in the US was so shambolic as to somehow result in a Trump presidency--alleging this is not a great look for POTUS. But John Podesta didn't run the DNC, and the CIA had nothing to do with that investigation, and also, the FBI didn't need the server to uncover the DNC hack because they already knew about it. So much wrong in one Tweet? Or--so much deliberate obfuscation when Trump's war to establish his legitimacy will never end because of the Russian asterisk?

But as to the actual meeting between Putin and Trump--the warm handshake and backslap instead of Trump's usual tug-o-war approach to manual greetings? The supposedly 30 minutes scheduled that became nearly 2 1/2 hours? The lack of note-taking and the letting Russia get out their message first: that Putin expressed that he had nothing to do with the hacks and Trump accepted that, getting right under the statement the WH and US State Department wanted to make about Trump "confronting" Russia with the allegations?

It's fucking dumb, and we have no reason at all to believe Trump really pressed an issue he is pathologically incapable of dealing with publicly. He still wants to have it both ways--deny Russia had bugger-all to do with anything, and blame the previous administration for not doing more. Why would that somehow change now that he's meeting his hero, who points out the mean reporters who insults him with the kind of menace only an autocrat-lover can really appreciate?

But what can I say that doesn't sound obvious to people who know my point of view? Trump's entourage think (publicly) that Trump handled himself brilliantly.  I'd respect them more if I had a sense their nonpublic thoughts were any different. Trump never seems able to act like his ass isn't owned by Putin. He wanted his foreign policy team to provide "deliverables" and had no foreign policy "asks" of his own set up. He ended up with a possible commitment to partner on cybersecurity with a nation that is trying to hack us on the regular.  Because if I'm mugged, I want to go fight crime with my mugger. It's insulting to any functioning intelligence, is what it is.

There's more grab-bag than just Trump's conduct at G20, though. The NYT just came out with a fascinating story about Donald Trump Jr. meeting with Paul Manafort and a Kremlin-backed lawyer.  This is crazy-interesting. For one thing, most folks know what Manafort was about. But the lawyer in question, Natalia Veselnitskaya, is interesting because of a thing called the Magnitsky Act, which targets human rights abusers. Russia has done considerable lobbying to try and effect US position on this. It's not Trump Jr's first connection with dodgy Russian business.  It just seems to go to show that weird Russian connections were a family affair. But keep in mind, Magnistsky is also about money-laundering.  I feel like this will come up in future Mueller-related proceedings, in which money-laundering and assorted business contacts could feature heavily.

All this is just to say that while Trump wants to "move on" and Putin wants to "move on" from the 2016 election interference, this is not likely to happen. They still have some stuff to answer for.

Trump Went Boom Again

This is a snippet of the Twitter feed from Donald J. Trump, POTUS. In the mind of Donald J. Trump, Supergenius, a Democratic candidate for president working with her own party to win a democratic election is so on a par with a candidate for president of the US of any party working with a hostile government to undermine our democratic system of government. Democrats own Obamacare (which was by and large a Democrat idea--so, there's one!) and are OBSTRUCTIONISTS for wanting to keep their thing instead of having it thrown over for a very bad thing. The Russian hacking that Trump has gone out of his way to dismiss as a hoax is so a completely real and bad thing if he can somehow blame President Obama for it. "Colluded" and "obstructed" are words that Trump thinks might possibly be synonymous, even if they don't mean similar things, at all.

He does not seem to realize that Obama did try to do SOMETHING and in fact did do various things, but was OBSTRUCTED in part by Mitch McConnell. Obama did make the political calculation that making a unilateral instead of a bipartisan statement might cause more harm than good, and did so in the face of a great orange crybaby bellowing "Rigged!" into every hoot and holler he visited. And, since Obama has always been the kind of good-hearted soul who believes in America's vast capabilities despite ourselves, he, to use the coinage of a former president, "misunderestimated" us.

Trump also seems to think that collusion can only be proved by "tapes". I don't know how anyone ever could have been found guilty of anything before electronic recording devices existed, but while I'd like to give Thomas Edison his due, it remains that people have been found culpable on the basis of rather a lot of other kinds of evidence, like paper trails and financial records.

If Trump wants an apology for anything, it should be from all the ass-kissers in his life who ever let him get away with thinking he was more than middling-intelligent. And he is the one who is fucking up Obamacare, but even a fucked Obamacare might be better than what the GOP has in store.

And yes--I call this "going boom!" This series reminds me a lot of his fateful 3/4/2017 Tweetsplat that accused Obama of "tapping" him--which presaged his weird, and ultimately self-debunked claim that "tapes" might exist of his conversations with former FBI Director Jim Comey.  (He maintains now that he posed the existence of "tapes" to ensure the honesty of Comey's testimony--which sounds a lot like trying to lean on a witness, to me. But taking him at face value, if he feels his witness-tampering gambit worked, then it must be true that he tried to lean on Comey to end the investigation into Flynn, and then fired him for not doing just that. It's a "triple-klutz"--he just copped to three kinds of obstruction of justice.)

None of these are the Tweets of a sound mind or a smart individual. They are like a cry for help. But I have no sympathy either for him or people who find this nonsense moving. It's just bizarre and unbecoming the leader of a great nation.

Don't Cut Medicaid, No AHCA

The people with the most at stake recognize this secretive, half-hearted, spiteful, nonsense ACHA bill as the danger it is, because they have lived their lives conscious of the world as threat. Those with just a little less to lose need to see the same thing--an ethos that doesn't give a damn about your weak, potentially failing human body, so much as it cares about tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires. We have a government that wants to be pro-life for the life-long disabled, but provides no assurances about how they will live; that pretends to admire workers and veterans, but fails to understand their possible disability and needs. The reality is, so many people rely on our health care system we need to consider it a right--it is for the premature and the congenitally ill their life-raft, for the elderly their peace of mind.

This whole bill promises to be a shambles--worse than the status quo before Obamacare. But when you see a Senate that prefers to see protestors who have laid their fragile bodies down removed before they even care to think about those people's needs? What more do you need to know? They don't want to see them, because they don't know how to cover or consider them.

And that is a shame. A crying shame.

This Steve Bannon Picture has been bothering me...

I don't really believe in body-snarking against people, especially on the subject of fatness, because I am not a small person and have had my own struggles with weight, but the picture of Steve Bannon, above, has been the subject of some Twitter snark, and I get it--the guy is not healthy-looking, or a particularly great representative of a fit human animal. This is what makes punchlines like "Sean got fatter" sort of weird, and some have latched onto it as a kind of answer to white supremacy in general, like saying "This is genetic superiority? This?"

I think it seems bad especially because there's this weird bulge on the left. I note it mostly because it is roughly the same size and shape and placement where you'd expect a liver to be:

And that sort of matches the jokes people tell about Bannon as looking like a great huge drunk.  But that's massively unfair. Lots of people have bad skin and lots of people have drinking issues--I drink, myself, rather more than I would always like at times. And this does not make someone "bad people"--you can be fat and have bad skin and even drink a shitload, and that doesn't make you a bad person. I am a little fat and drink a bit and am not a Nazi. But it is very probable that Bannon is, in fact, an actual bad person based on his personal history and editorial output.

In short, you just don't know from a picture what a person is about, even a grossly unflattering one.  You should judge them based on what they do.

And for all we know, he might just have an alien in his guts.

And how would you answer that, SJW cuckflakes? You can't. Long story short, Steve Bannon is a Nazi who looks terrible, but it could just be he has an alien in his liver. I don't know why I'm shitposting my own blog like this. I blame the culture.

Just Not Presidential

The above string of Tweets show the President right away using a terror event to justify his "Travel Ban", rail against "political correctness", and make a half-assed NRA point. He's not even being terribly original and, in slamming Mayor Sadiq Khan, he shows a lack of understanding and sensibility that is wholly inappropriate.  He will now, after having been a massive ass on social media, golf and think of how this tragedy can be used as a photo op.

He's an embarrassment.

Foreign Policy by Twitter?

North Korea is looking for trouble. If China decides to help, that would be great. If not, we will solve the problem without them! U.S.A.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 11, 2017

Oh. OK. (This was exactly the sort of thing we could have expected. And yes, I think it is worrisome.)

The Presidential Speech

I don't actually have a lot to say about President Trump's address to the joint session of Congress, and went to bed without bothering to watch any tv news commentary about it because, frankly, I was knackered. But I awoke to find that pundits seem to have watched a different speech from the one I had. They seem to have largely judged it a very "presidential" speech. Which I think begs the question: Whose definition of "presidential"?

The word "presidential" is used like everyone is assuming the same meaning. But I'm not sure we all do have the same definition in mind when using the term. I think the connotation we've been assuming is "competent, professional, statesmanlike, credible". I think the best I can do to define the term, currently, is "of or about the current duly sworn-in occupant of the White House, who also resides at Trump Towers and Mar-A-Lago." Did President Trump give a speech--well, then, it was presidential!

He started at the top of the speech reacting to the crying need to address multiple acts of domestic terror against the Jewish community and the shooting in Kansas City. This is appropriate, if a high-profile and specific way to do so, on a day when he just earlier appeared to be implying that certain acts were hoaxes to make his administration look bad. I don't think this messaging alone should grant his office a pass when a response was delayed until it could be made in a particular display, when it seems like he discounts the real fears of minority communities, and when he (whether consciously or unconsciously) apes the opinions of a (former) Klansman.

He also gave space to honor the sacrifice of U.S. Navy Special Operator Senior Chief William “Ryan” Owens by pointing out his widow, Carryn Owens. I have nothing but sympathy for her fresh grief and the obvious depth of her sorrow. But I turned the sound down through that spectacle, because I felt like he was using her as a prop. (I am not alone--earlier that day Trump seemed to blame the Generals, anyone but himself for signing off on the raid. Despite White House claims that it was wildly successful, except for the dead civilians, mostly children, the dead Navy SEAL, and not actually gathering actionable intelligence--I'm not sure what the WH definition of "successful" is. But I can't applaud Trump using a man's widow as a human shield to deflect against criticism.)

Also, Trump lied, because he does that. A lot. Many of his claims, countered even when he was on the campaign stump, have been oft-repeated by Trump, and he can't help himself. His policies are and will be based on false claims. I don't think this is helpful.

None of this was to my taste, not raised my estimation of him one iota, and I don't get what those who found this speech to be especially compelling were looking for--if it was honestly, competence, and not being a huge manipulative con, sorry, that wasn't what he provided. At best, it was a reasonable act. But listen closer, put it in context--he did not "become presidential". He is President. But he's still Trump.

Well-Dressed Young Racists are Still Racists

Just because a group of hard-right bigots have gone "out of the sheets and into the streets" and the skinheads have gotten better grooming advice, is no reason to downplay what they stand for. They are claiming to be the intellectual epicenter of the right-wing now. It's really quite troubling, you know. Even if the appearance of folks like Tila Tequila put a "cute face" on it. (This attention-fiend is anything but cute.)

Don't know why it needs to be repeated--but just as a reminder: Well-dressed young racists are still racists. And dressed-up or not, they are deplorable.

Trump Gave a Stupid Teleprompter Speech Wednesday

For what it's worth, Trump tried to respond to the very good speech that Hillary Clinton did about his bullshit economics/business record and sort of stayed on Teleprompter. I guess that's good, in that he got some very needed Teleprompter experience because without one, he kind of dives into incoherent bs. But he did give fact-checkers a bit of a workout.

It sort of disappointed me because I was hoping for just a little bit more fact-challenged conspiracy-theory obvious batshit--but I guess he's trying to take this running for president thing seriously, and that he cites completely debunked gossip stuff is maybe not such a surprise after all from the big bad celebrity "Birther" whose investigators were turning up fascinating things in Hawaii.  OMG you guys! This could retroactively affect that whole 2012 election where Obama kicked the ass of the guy Trump endorsed and stuff while Clinton was still his Sec. of State and whatnot--but YOU DO YOU THE DONALD! Really feel right now that as a patriot, if Trump had the goods, he could have totally ended the Democratic White House farce with so much knowing of the stuff, but he didn't, so. (?!)

Also in the news, Donald Trump is still a racist misogynistic bigot whose speech got eated by House Democrats having a sit-in. Still getting in formation? Yes, very much so. Thanks for asking!

This Waco Rampage Worries Me

Although it seems like we're in the "aftermath" stage of the violent skirmish between rival biker gangs at the Twin Peaks restaurant that claimed 9 lives and left another 18 injured, I am a little fearful for people, especially law enforcement, in the area.

Just looking at what took place, law enforcement had provided warning beforehand that there was liable to be a problem at the "Confederation of Clubs" taking place there, and the alert continues to be high, especially for anyone in a uniform--but to be honest, if I were in the area and thought there might be another shootout as a civilian, I'd be pretty damned alarmed.

It strikes me as a bizarre scene--described by one officer as "the worst crime scene" he'd ever seen--but the backdrop is an entirely familiar-looking suburban strip mall. It seems like such a bizarre venue to be the host of violent potential. Which makes me wonder a bit at the sense of the Twin Peaks chain restaurant (which appears to be losing their franchise license) to host the event when there were warnings. We don't have this chain in my area, but I understand they are kind of like "Hooters" in that they cater to a sort of man-cave idea of a place just for things "guys" like. So maybe the idea of a biker "club" event seemed to the management to be apropos.

This was a mistaken point of view. There's a certain "romance" involved with biker life, I think, that we get mostly from movies. I think there is a romance we get with the idea of "the outlaw" in general--wild west desperados, thug life, Goodfellas and the Sopranos. Bonnie and Clyde. But when you see images of the crowd (from which 170 people have now been arrested) and start picking out things like white supremacist tats, you start to realize these are not just manly men who ride bikes. The Bandidos are like a motorcycle mafia. A whole lot of weapons were confiscated, which strikes me as meaning people were expecting to see some damage.

With so many members of one percenter gangs held with high bonds, I kind of feel wary--like something else will drop. This isn't a demographic that shies away from violent confrontation.

Even Hate Speech is Protected Speech

So, there was a little "Draw Muhammed" free-speech thing held by Muslim-hater Pam Geller, and featuring Geert Wilders, so, really, what could go wrong?

Uh, what one might expect if one was impressed with the furor over the Jyllands-Posten cartoons and the fatwa against Lars Wilks, or the fairly recent Charlie Hebdo massacre?  There was a shooting, but a security guard was shot non-fatally, and both the suspects were killed. And this is a shitty thing to happen, but as outcomes go, it certainly could have been worse.

You know, I had been trying to work in a Charlie Hebdo post regarding the PEN Awards abstainers. It's not that I give a fig about whether Charlie Hebdo had great satire or good cartoonists, it's just that I don't think it makes sense to slag people when several of their number actually died, having even received threats, for doing the kind of commentary they believed in and which was understood by people who "got" the joke as actually anti-racist.

I don't celebrate Pam Geller's Muhammed to-do the same way. I think she is unnecessarily incendiary in her rhetoric, and I think she provokes.

Which still doesn't mean I condone a shoot-out as the answer to her rhetoric. I deplore the kind of single-minded dope who just added legitimacy to her rhetoric, by once again highlighting how some speech is deemed punishable by death by intolerant Islamists. (And yet, I can imagine even a similar event, where the threat of a distortion of the image of Jesus might at least garner death threats. Single-mindedness in the service of faith isn't any one creed's bugbear.) But would it not be much better to let the speech go, so as not to make Geller and her coterie able to claim martyrdom-status?

I believe in free speech. I think armed assault is not free speech, but terrorism. I can excuse one, even if I disagree with it. I can not condone the other. Shoot your mouth off all you like--just not guns and bombs.

Malevolent "Lone Wolf" Takes Hostages, Kills Decent People in Sydney

 

The blurred line between terrorism and random, senseless violence displayed itself when Man Haron Monis, an Iranian-born asylum-seeker in Australia, took a number of hostages at the Lindt Café in Sydney. I call it a "blurred line" because although this miscreant seems to have meant to portray his actions as being aligned in some way with militant Islamicism, he genuinely seems to have been a pretty run-of the mill basic human horror-show of abusive behavior, predation, and self-aggrandizement.

Any culture could generate one of these--he sent hate letters to families of dead Australian soldiers killed in the Afghanistan conflict; pretty Westboro Baptist, I think. He apparently claimed to have "black magic" powers and sexually assaulted numerous women, as a kind of predatory guru-type. He played up his own sense of victimization.

It's hard--no, impossible, to reconcile this personality-type with doing anything for a "cause", because I see someone like this as feeling his biggest cause is himself. So all that Islamic-flag in the window business is stage-dressing for his personal drama.

And if his despicable hostage-taking and murders leave us despairing of whether humans just suck out loud--here is something genuinely touching. #illridewithyou is a reminder that there's something other than bigotry and a mindset of retribution. Most people don't suck--being a good human being means caring about others. And we mostly do. It's those that don't who make things so shitty for the rest of us.

Welp--No good Obviously Comes From This.

I will be on Fox & Friends tomorrow morning at 7.00. Ebola and ISIS will be topics.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 13, 2014

I'm not really sure what The Donald's level of expertise is on the topic of Ebola or ISIS, but he reeeeeaaaallly likes criticizing the president, so, I dunno. I guess he will be doing that thing. Since he was the guy who suggested just letting ebola-stricken Americans die, I'm sure whatever he's planning on saying will be most illuminating.

But now that there has been a second person in Dallas diagnosed with this disease, it might not be a bad idea to look rationally at what has happened. For one thing, as I've mentioned before in the comments, the decision by ER staff at Texas Health Presbyterian to let Duncan go with just a prescription for antibiotics when his fever had spiked to 103 F strikes me as shocking. That's a dangerous fever--a person's kidneys could shut down! A person could experience seizures! I'm not sure why they turned him out for sure--but I suspect to some degree they weren't trained to look twice at what should have been a major warning sign that this guy needed immediate isolation and observation. The infection of the health care worker who tended to him appears to be due to a breach of protocol, and it seems like there is some question about whether this particular facility was equipped to handle this kind of case. (I think it bears thinking about that a health care worker became infected--but as yet, not a single one of his family in isolation show signs of the disease.)