So I’m both elderly and juvenile.
But at least I’m happy.
- The United States took the lead in developing COVID vaccines. Iron Knee at Political Irony interrupts our self-congratulation with a bit of bad news. We rank 36th in the world on actually applying those vaccines and getting vaccinated. Iron Knee has an idea about the reasons.
- Tommy Christopher recounts Jim Cramer’s step by step explanation of just why a potential employee might not want to risk his life and the lives of his family for a $22 an hour job with an infected, unvaccinated co-worker.
- In Hackwhackers the NYTimes interviews an anti-vax healthcare professional who is baffled that colleagues consider her dangerous to be around.
- At The Onion, a nurse carefully weighs whether she will be better off getting the vaccine or losing her job and dying.
- CalicoJack in The Psy of Life takes a close look at parallels between today’s illusions about the pandemic and stolen election conspiracies vs medieval witch hysteria.
- Green Eagle often takes on what I would consider the dreary task of cataloging and refuting a week’s worth of right wing misinformation, yet does it with swift enthusiasm and a bit of humor. This week, the distortions, with a concentration on the Arizona attempt at an audit, all come from a site here in St. Louis. The Gateway Pundit seems to publish any old thing that pops into credulous minds. This week’s crop are obvious enough to justify simply listing them with the notation that they are all lies.
I was already familiar with this, repeated in several forms on the site.
Doug Logan from Cyber Ninjas Speaks After Dr. Shiva – Uncovers Additional 57,000 Issues (Not Counting Shiva’s 17,000 Issues)
Doug Logan seems to have a history of involvement in spinning absurd sounding conspiracy theories, but this one went a few bridges too far. He felt compelled to deny ever saying what Gateway said he said. In fact, he pointed to the purported draft report published by Gateway as having been doctored to say what the real draft report itself didn’t say.
- Frances Langum observes how tunes change when they’re sung under oath.
For example Rudy Giuliani kind of sort of remembers reading that the 2020 election was stolen, but he doesn’t remember where and has no idea if it’s actually true.
Her real live actual in-the-deposition quote includes:
I had no idea if it was true or not. I didn’t even try to check. Why would I try to check? You wouldn’t have a story then.
- Vixen Strangely at Strangely Blogged encounters a sign on the back of a pickup suggesting that Biden, and anyone who voted for him, be subjected to a reproductive biological experience. Oh, come on. You do too know what I mean. Since the pickup driver implicitly acknowledges that the Trump-person lost, Vixen appreciates his honesty and his pain.
I was especially taken by this candidate for best phrase of the week about our once-upon-a-president Trump:
…if he was used as fertilizer, even the corn would come up stupid.
- In The Borowitz Report, Donald Trump claims he won the election to succeed Angela Merkel, saying he always wanted to be the Chancellor of Germany.
- News Corpse has read the book. Trump White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham writes that president Donald Trump warned Vladimir Putin that he would act tough, but assured him it would only be to fool his MAGA followers.
- In Letters from an American, Heather Cox Richardson delivers a daily reconstruction of major events. Yesterday morning’s edition covered a temporary funding measure that kicked the shutdown of pretty much all federal government functions down the road to December 3.
One note catches the eye. Senator Tom Cotton(R-AR) tried to attach amendments attacking any help for immigrants from Afghanistan. You may recall that these refugees had been in danger from the Taliban for helping US troops stationed there. This part especially stands out.
For all their talk of concern about taking care of our Afghan allies during the evacuation of Afghanistan, all 50 Republican senators voted for Cotton’s measure. Democrats killed it on a strict party line vote.
Yup. Almost makes you think their original angry concern was a political ploy, an opportunity to attack Biden. The concern vanished when it came to doing anything. They’ll pound the table and demand we help, as long as it involves no time, money, or inconvenience.
- Infidel753 argues compellingly that our mainstream view of progress in China is remarkably off base.
- At The Moderate Voice Thomas Hoffman lays out the reasons that Joe Biden’s economic mandate ought to be adopted as policy.
- Libertarian Michael A. LaFerrara says that COVID relief during the past year, the relief that everyone thinks lifted lots of people out of poverty, actually did no such thing. Why? Because anything from government is artificial.
- Nojo doesn’t much care for unrepresentative legislatures. In this, he follows those founders who were in the mode of James Madison. Like Madison, Nojo doesn’t much care for the US Senate. He outlines why.
- A primary purpose of Supreme Court rulings is to establish precedent, so lower courts have an idea how to predictably rule on similar cases. Litigants make arguments, Justices ask questions, and issues become defined.
Sometimes, the Supreme Court schedule gets a little crowded and the deliberative process gets hard to maintain. If issues are already as clear as they are ever likely to be, or there is some other reason to clear the docket, the Court can issue a ruling outside of normal procedure.
In the recent Texas abortion decision, the Supreme Court upheld the vigilante provisions of Texas law outlawing abortion after 6 weeks of pregnancy. Texas would not enforce the law directly, but would let any citizen sue a woman, a doctor, a driver, a relative, a friend, or anyone contributing to a decision to have an abortion after 6 weeks. If a suit is successful, the person bringing suit can collect up to $10,000 from each person sued.
SCOTUS upheld the whole mess without hearings, arguments, or reasoning, at least at first. Justices later issued an explanation saying, in essence, that the issues were just too complex for a contemplative decision. Judicial reasoning would be too difficult.
It made explicit what has become a pattern. Because the shortcut is opaque and reasoning is not required, it has come to be known as the Shadow Docket. The Court has increasingly relied on side stepping the deliberative process for controversial, conservative rulings: avoiding hearings or published reasoning.
The Shadow Docket has been attacked for unnecessary secrecy, and because the purpose of the court is not fulfilled. Lower courts get no guidance on difficult issues when rulings are made with no explanation. Because I say so doesn’t help much.
Our favorite Earth-Bound Misfit reports that Justice Samuel Alito has gotten a bit impatient with all the impatience. Comrade Misfit lectures the Justice on democracy and the inherent right of citizens to bitch.
Since you don’t have to be a lawyer, or even a legal expert, to exercise that right, I …well… exercise that right:
- What is at stake is more than a woman’s right to choose. Imani Gandy knows the law and more. She knows what threatens our rights under the law. The Bill of Rights protects citizens from authoritarian violation of those rights by the federal government. The 14th Amendment goes further: Our rights also cannot be taken from us by individual state governments.
Some of my religious brethren are working hard, along with White Supremacists, to rewrite the 14th Amendment.
- For those of us unfamiliar with the devolution of one-time conservative group Claremont Institute, it has gone over to extreme conspiracy theorists, pizzagate enthusiasts, and veiled – but thinly veiled – racists.
The racism part skits along the edge of almost deniability. Black people, pretty much regardless of party or ideology – the line going from Republican Senator Tim Scott to Black Lives Matter – are attacked with identical language. They must be taught to know their place, and take a knee to MAGA.
Racial diversity is the enemy of authentic Americanism. One grave threat that must be countered is posed by Urban America. You get the drift.
Vice President Kamala Harris should have been barred from office because she does not qualify as a real American. She was born in the United States, which would qualify most of us. Had some quirk put my mother into the Presidential succession (both of her parents came from Ukraine), there would have been little controversy about national origin. But Kamala’s mother came from India, and her father was an immigrant from Jamaica.
Some of the writings go a little further. The enemy is not only anything smacking of diversity or minority rights, but also those folks who do not exhibit enough fidelity to the ideal. The recent election, which did go to Biden, presents evidence of another truth: Most people living in the United States today—certainly more than half—are not Americans in any meaningful sense of the term.
Wisconsin conservative James Wigderson get’s a little impatient with conservative racism:
- Cato Institute’s Julian Sanchez doesn’t think highly of the campaign against Critical Race Theory:
- M. Bouffant at Web of Evil waves bye bye to Trumplican secessionists.
- PZ Myers is not really all that unhappy that conspiratory speculator Alex Jones is losing multiple lawsuits to parents of murdered kids. Seems Alex has been telling audiences those parents had faked losing their small children to a crazed gunman.
- Back when I was a good deal younger, my President, Richard Milhous Nixon, fought vigorously against a Social Security increase. Eventually, Democrats attached the increase to legislation he really really wanted, so he swallowed hard and accepted it.
When the increase finally went out to retirees, Nixon had a letter attached to each and every check, taking credit for the increase he had opposed.
Times change, but stolen credit seems eternal. Scotties Toy Box picks up the story.
Florida’s legislature passed a routine $1,000 annual bonus for teachers. This is usually sent to individual school districts to include in paychecks.
But Florida Governor Ron DeSantis wanted to make a political splash. So he changed things just a bit.
Instead of sending the money to school districts to add to paychecks, the annual bonus would be sent directly to individual teachers along with a letter giving DeSantis the credit. Hey, applause for our Governor!
But bureaucracies move in mysterious ways upon unusal violations of procedure and things got a bit screwed up.
- The Palmer Report reminds by example that sometimes a headline tells as much as the story that follows. As in Jen Psaki just ate a reporter alive.
- Michael John Scott, in MadMikesAmerica, is running a deficit of warm fuzzy feelings toward Joe Manchin and explains why the Senator is what he is.
- Ted McLaughlin at jobsanger has the numbers as a remarkable percentage of Democrats in Arizona have formed a negative opinion of Democratic Senator Krysten Sinema.
- driftglass does not think much of Senator Marco Rubio(R-FL) or his free-floating definitions of Socialism and Marxism.
- North Carolina pastor John Pavlovitz went in for brain surgery.
Immediate prognosis is encouraging.And he maintains a high level of Christian wisdom.
- In The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser, atheist Bruce is told he should be nicer to Evangelical Christians.
- Vincent at A Wayfarer’s Notes goes a bit mystical, waking, as he says, dishevelled and unshaven in some rural wasteland. How did I get here? How can I get back?
- What we really lack in this country is advice on parenting. Reductress explains how to avoid one danger by stopping your child from participating in discourse.
- @momwino98 discovers that one of the hidden perils of parenthood is what it can do to you when you leave your kids home:
@momwino98 ##groceryshopping ##fyp ##foryourpage ##tiktokmom ##producesection ##embarrased
- Vagabond Scholar celebrates 10 books significant enough to be banned and challenged. Celebrate the fact that they have been banned? Not so much.
- A young Black student notices a fellow student wearing a Did not vote for Biden shirt and possessing a Police Lives Matter sticker. She goes into an incoherent objection.
Kids.
But have no fear. My long time friend Darrell Michaels, who is Unabashedly American, comes to the rescue with an instant diagnosis:
This is the absolute crap that our children have been indoctrinated with from many of our centers of “higher education”.
Oh dear.
- tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors wishes a great but under-appreciated President Happy Birthday.
- SilverAppleQueen reacts profoundly to the painful end of a toxic relationship.
- Even if he tries, can Max’s Dad write a review that isn’t funny, informative, hitting its mark like a cannonball? He takes a look at the musical Cats. He hated it, then he really liked it.
– Podcasts –