Seldom Balanced – Usually Fair
Like, sure, it’s logically possible that every Republican state election authority and all the cybersecurity agencies, have totally missed the electoral equivalent of a whale in the bathtub. It’s logically possible we’re all brains in vats & all reality is an illusion.
— Julian Sanchez (@normative) November 30, 2020
From Infidel753:
Thursday’s Supreme Court ruling against New York state’s efforts to fight covid-19 by restricting church gatherings is an example of what we can expect now that the appointment of Coathanger Coney has entrenched the religio-wingnut majority on the highest court in the land. Decisions will be made based on the interests of Christian supremacism, with some threadbare “reasoning” tacked on as an afterthought.
An example of the latter would be Gorsuch’s comparison of church services with going to a store to buy a bicycle or a bottle of wine, as if just one person stepping inside a building for the few minutes such a transaction requires could be compared with packing many people indoors for an hour or two of singing, chanting, and whatever other intensive virus-spreading behaviors their particular sect’s weird occult rituals require. We already know how this works. There have been countless examples of church services and events causing large-scale outbreaks of covid-19. I have yet to hear of any such disasters being traced to liquor stores.
More salient is the assertion that New York’s restrictions infringed the First Amendment guarantee of freedom of religion. Here’s why that’s nonsense.
From News Corpse:
Trump must be suffering tremendously knowing that he made history by becoming the first television game show host to lose the White House to a candidate that he maligned as a mentally deficient commie. If you can’t beat someone you honestly believe is that unfit, you must be picking up wood splinters on your behind from scraping it on the barrel bottom. Trump acknowledged the scope of this defeat a few weeks ago when he speculated that he would have to leave the country if he lost. Can he be legally held to that?
From PZ Myers:
I’m thinking about all those times I agreed to debates with creationists, and I’d show up at the venue to see church buses lined up outside and a crowd of people clutching Bibles filling the seats. There was no hope that I’d convince them (OK, maybe I deluded myself that I’d win over a few), and really, my role was to play the heel at a fixed match, to draw in the congregation to listen to the face, who got all the adulation. That really got to me at one event, held in a fairly swanky hotel ballroom, where afterwards the preacher who’d brought me in told the audience that my antagonist was staying in a suite there, that they were going to have a dinner with select donors, and that he’d be staying in town to speak at the church the next few days. Then he took me aside, gave me a check for $100, and told me there was a Motel 6 just down the road.
The creationists were smarter than I was. They knew these events weren’t intended to inform or educate; the debate was all about rallying a crowd, drawing in more true believers who wanted to see that university egghead taught a lesson — and it didn’t matter that I wasn’t crushed, because they’d gather together all the conservative Christians and they’d find each other. It’s both sides, too. Debates at atheist events are also a sham, primarily about grooming a particular audience rather than teaching anything new.
Doctorow is focused on politics and the media, but it’s the same old story. The goal isn’t to persuade, it’s to align people with a gang.
Continue reading “Trump Exit, Escape, Tantrums, Nap, Tiny Table, Corrupt Senator, GOP Gone Bad”
From John Scalzi at Whatever:
Biden gets 80 million votes: According the Cook Political Report’s Popular Vote Tracker. That’s ten million more than Obama got in 2008 — the previous record for a winning presidential candidate — and currently about six million more votes than Trump got. Percentage-wise Biden’s above 51% while Trump’s at a hair above 47.1%. And this is apparently the best voter turnout in about a century, percentage-wise, with roughly two thirds of eligible voters having voted. As a fan of voting, this warms my heart.
Also, this is a reminder that this election, on the presidential level at least, was not actually anything approaching close: Biden won by a lot in the raw numbers of the popular vote, won by a sizable percentage of the popular vote, won most “battleground” states by wider margins than Trump won in 2016, and, of course, bested Trump in the electoral vote battle with quite a lot of room to spare. I understand it is in the nature of the Trump partisans to suggest this election was closer than it was, and I likewise understand it is in the nature of many Biden voters to want to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, but, once again: This was not anything approaching close. Trump lost, big time, definitively, and unambiguously.
But the Democrats lost seats in the House and might not take the Senate! Some of you are likely saying. To which my response is: And? I don’t think the modern GOP should be held up as a model of good governance in just about any respect, but I will tell you this much, if everything were reversed, the Republicans would be screaming from the top of their lungs about their “mandate.” I don’t think it would be a bad thing for the Democrats to take a moment from hand-wringing and take a goddamn victory lap or two. And also to tell GOP-leaning people warning them against hubris to take a whole seat and enjoy sitting for a bit.
From Max’s Dad:
A recent poll taken in this state shows 83% of respondents want a state ordered mask mandate. Thats overwhelming support but in a red state like this, the loudmouth Trump supporting maniacs make a lot of noise. The recently took over a Columbus, Nebraska city council meeting by hollering and booing and refusing to socially distance even after being asked by the Mayor. That mandate passed anyway with the courageous Mayor breaking a 4-4 tie. In Omaha, despite an AWOL Mayor (more on that later) the City Council extended an existing mask mandate thru February much to the chagrin of a few Q Anon deniers who had to be dragged from the meeting. Cities in very red counties have voted to mandate masks as this state, led by a wet noodle dick, sits on its ass and does nothing. Did I mention Pete Ricketts being in quarantine for being around diseased supporters? For chrissakes, Ricketts got caught at an election night super spreader event at a local bar with no mask, hugging babies, posing for pictures with no masked right wing nitwits, and acting like the asshole he is. In fact, the waitress who caught him , taped him and posted it was fired for her act of heroism.
Granted, this state isn’t South Dakota, yet. That state, led by a true murderous psycho named Kristi Noem, started this shit here by allowing Sturgis to go on. Not only go on, but encouraged it. Noem, a true succubus, cares nothing about life, but only about spending federal Covid funds on luring people to her diseased filthy fiefdom. She is as close to a mass murderer as one can get. Fuck her. But Nebraska is headed that way. With a bird brained Governor like Pete Ricketts, aka Trumps bitch, we are heading for number one!
From Nan’s Notebook:
Beyond the fact the decision favored the churches in this case, I found the overall reasoning lacking in so many ways. It was Justice Neil Gorsuch’s comments, in particular, that really stood out to me.
He noted that other businesses, such as bicycle repair shops, did not have similar restrictions and went on to say: … “according to the Governor [of New York], it may be unsafe to go to church, but it is always fine to pick up another bottle of wine or shop for a new bike.”
Does anyone else see the fallacy in this reasoning?
From The Moderate Voice:
According to the report, here are a few of the 26 changes Trump will shove through:
Meanwhile, the tone, style and priorities of the Biden administration are quickly emerging and it’s going to be the anti-Trump administration — an administration much like the bulk of Presidential administrations. CNN:
Joe Biden has already kept his first promise — his approach to the presidency will be a top-to-bottom repudiation of the behavior, policies and obsessions of President Donald Trump.
The President-elect is building his administration on old-fashioned notions that facts matter, that commanders-in-chief must project stability, that Cabinet officials need experience and expertise, that a fractured nation is governable and that the world wants the US to lead.