Month: December 2020

 

From The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser:

Atheists will argue amongst themselves over whether there is anything such as an “atheist community.” Sure, there are atheist, freethought, and humanist groups scattered here and there, but for the most part individual atheists are on their own. And here in rural America? Atheists are typically lone rangers. Is this how atheists want it to be?

Part of the problem is that American atheist groups are dominated by college educated white men. One of the things that irritated me during my Evangelical days was that the conferences I attended featured the same “stars” every time. These big-name preachers became the face of Evangelicalism. So it is with atheist groups. Year after year, the same people are featured at conferences. As a result, these people become the face of American atheism. While there has been an increase of non-white speakers in recent years, the fact remains white dudes rule the roost.

These conferences also tend to be prohibitively expensive for working-class people, and for those of us who live in the heartland, these conferences are often thousands of miles away. Thus, atheist conferences tend to attract the same people over and over and over again.

The future of any atheist group depends on attracting new members. If all godless outsiders see are the same people as the face of the various atheist groups, there’s not much incentive for them to want to join.

– More –
 

 

From Wisconsin conservative James Wigderson:

In an interview with the New York Times, Hagedorn described some of the reaction his decision has received:

Talk radio in Wisconsin, particularly on the conservative side, is very prominent. I turned on the radio one morning driving to work and heard what a horrible person I was. So it’s hard to miss it.

Yes, I’ve been called a traitor. I’ve been called a liar. I’ve been called a fraud. I’ve been asked if I’m being paid off by the Chinese Communist Party. I’ve been told I might be tried for treason by a military tribunal. Sure, I’ve gotten lots of interesting and sometimes dark messages.

In his Tweets attacking Hagedorn, the president made a number of errors starting with the election results. Trump lost Wisconsin by over 20,000 votes and did not win in a “landslide” as the president claimed.

As far as endorsing Hagedorn, a search on Google, Twitter and Ballotpedia revealed no endorsement by the president. It’s possible that Trump did endorse Hagedorn but given it’s lack of visibility the endorsement, if it was made, did not impact the race. On Twitter, Trump did congratulate Hagedorn after his victory.

The president was also wrong in claiming “Hagedorn easily won!” Hagedorn managed a victory of just over 5000 votes out of 1.2 million cast.

Finally, Trump was incorrect in saying his state lawsuit to overturn Wisconsin’s election was about “fraud.” As National Review’s Andrew McCarthy (a Trump supporter and a former federal prosecutor) pointed out, there were no cases of fraud alleged in the lawsuit.

– More –
 

 

From Infidel753:

Despite official warnings, despite the disaster which has already unfolded, it’s projected that 85 million Americans will be traveling during the “holiday season”, down only one-third from a normal year. Most will be going by car, but several million have already gone by plane. Large-scale air travel for family visits is the perfect scenario for a gigantic explosion in infections. With a hundred or so people together in a plane for a couple of hours or more, breathing the same air, one infected person could spread the virus to many more — and each of those newly-infected people will still be non-symptomatic and unaware while spending days with the group they are visiting.

That so many are taking such risks may seem incredible, but it’s likely that most of them are among the “stupid one-third” of the population who still mostly refuse to recognize the crisis, militantly disdain and reject basic precautions like mask-wearing, and diligently confine their “news” intake to sources that reinforce their delusions.

Red America no longer has the spirit that animated this country against the great challenges of the past.

– More –
 

 

From Jonathan Bernstein:

In any case, Biden would be fooling himself if he thought that adding a Republican to his administration would buy him goodwill from Republicans in Congress. And any Republican who would be willing to do it would be attacked as a RINO who doesn’t belong in the party in the first place. Nor is it remotely plausible that Republican voters would be more inclined to support Biden because of such a gesture. Even for people who pay close attention to politics, the selection of a Cabinet secretary is a barely noticeable one-day story.

The idea of seeking to build good relations with interest groups is more worthwhile. Most of the task of hiring for the Cabinet and executive branch is about internal party relationships — such as rewarding allies and reassuring groups whose candidate didn’t win the nomination battle.

But even during these polarized times, there are interest groups that are either unaligned with either party, or only loosely aligned. A Trumpist Republican Party has frayed ties with business. While Republicans still offer low taxes, they also have become the party of trade wars, restrictions on immigration, and perhaps even a breakdown in the rule of law, none of which makes the Chamber of Commerce very happy.

– More –
 

 

From Ted McLaughlin at jobsanger:

Some of those supporting the Black Lives Matter movement, including many progressive Democrats, have talked about defunding the police. They never suggested doing away with the police — only taking some of the money and funding others to do the work that police are not adequately trained to do (like having mental health professionals handle calls regarding a mentally-ill person).

But Republicans saw an opportunity in that. That campaigned saying Democrats wanted to do away with the police. It wasn’t true, but it scared a lot of people and probably did help the GOP in the election.

That’s why it’s strange that the Republicans in the U.S. Congress are doing the opposite of what they campaigned on. They are actually DEFUNDING THE POLICE (and many other services in both red and blue states). How are they doing this?

– More –
 

 

From our favorite Earth-Bound Misfit:

Last May, the House of Representatives sent a second COVID relief bill to the Senate. Only now has the Senate gotten serious about getting something enacted.

Key for Trump was restoring the three-martini lunch deduction.

– More –
 

 

From Hackwhackers:

Literally mocking the U.S., Russian thug Vladimir Putin today praised the efforts of his foreign intelligence service, the SVR, in a ceremony marking the 100th anniversary of SVR’s foreign intelligence predecessor, Cheka’s Special Section. This comes just days after Russia was exposed as the perpetrator of a massive hack of the U.S. government and major corporations, the extent of which has yet to be assessed.

– More –
 

 

From libertarian Michael A. LaFerrara:

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos:

We’ve heard shrill calls to ‘cancel,’ to ‘forgive,’ to ‘make it all free.’ Any innocuous label out there can’t obfuscate what it really is: wrong.

The campaign for ‘free college’ is a matter of total government control. Make no mistake: it is a socialist takeover of higher education.

DeVos speaks the truth.

It’s not an overt takeover, of course. And that’s not what she meant. Government agents are not going to come in, kick the administrators out, and literally install government administrators in their place. It’s actually much more insidious than that, because the control takes place largely behind the scenes. But make no mistake. It’s government control. Making college “free” means the government will have to pay colleges directly. With the responsibility to pay comes the responsibility, and power, to set conditions for both the college and the student. “Who pays the piper, calls the tune.”

So, how does DeVos’s opponents respond? One opponent, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, fires back with:

“Tuition-free public college is a dangerous socialist takeover of higher ed, as opposed to the far superior capitalist takeover of higher ed, which reliably buries millions of Americans in trillions of dollars in debt & graduates them into low paying jobs without good healthcare.”

This self-described socialist is apparently ignorant of the difference between socialism and capitalism—or wants deliberately to deceive us on the true natures of both.

Capitalism logically cannot “take over” higher education, or any other industry, because its government is limited in the scope of its power. Capitalism is by definition individual self-governance and determination under a government limited to protecting the inalienable rights to life, liberty, and property of all individuals.

– More –
 

 
From Vixen Strangely at Strangely Blogged:

It doesn’t even seem that long ago that Sidney Powell was deemed even a little bit too out there for Rudy Giuliani (just short of one whole month, in fact). And now Donald Trump is entertaining the idea of unloosing the Kraken as a special counsel to investigate voter fraud. It’s kind of funny because it wasn’t even that long ago that Trump had a voting integrity commission that was disbanded because it never found any voting fraud. But on they go, into the (alleged) breach….

It should probably be bigger news, however, that Trump also entertained Ms. Powell’s client, the recently-pardoned Michael Flynn, who, like Lin Wood or the My Pillow guy, has been arguing in favor of martial law so that Trump can get a do-over in the swing states that he lost. I don’t believe there is an armed do-over clause in the Constitution, and Flynn has been singing in the key of batshit for so long it’s hard to believe anyone does listen to him–but there are people who do! And Trump is apparently being one of them!

This almost makes Rudy Giuliani’s request for DHS to commandeer the voting machines look sane. I mean, it’s not. But it almost does.

– More –
 

• @momwino98 tries very hard to explain why cornflakes were invented:
   
  
   
• Iron Knee at Political Irony draws an unfortunate holiday-in-the-night-of-COVID parallel as one phrase has a tragic double meaning.
   
• tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors has news on how our madcap Trump administration can screw up everything but a lightbulb. State officials are being told that up to 40 percent of scheduled vaccines will not be delivered after all.
   
  Pfizer has warehouses filled with millions of ready to go doses, but can’t get the okay from federal authorities to ship. I can only speculate, but my guess is that nobody has explained to Trump and company that vaccines can’t work without vaccinations.
   
• Yikes. It’s documented. Trump COVID policies, the downplay of risks, the denigration of simple protective masks, the mega-spreading events, the lack of preventative action were not a series of simple myopic bumblings. Vixen Strangely at Strangely Blogged reacts to recently revealed memos showing deliberate, directed policy. No longer a conspiracy theory, this administration actually ordered policies calculated to get as many unsuspecting people infected as fast as possible.
   
  The internal memos confirm the horror: a deadly experiment testing a Darwinian construct. As the amateur theory went, several million deaths would have been in the past and forgotten by accountability time. A sort of survival game. The fittest would survive and the world would go on. Modeled after the black death plagues of the middle ages that wiped out large sections of Europe, it would be herd immunity: curing through culling.
   
• So Vladimir Putin’s cyber-intelligence people have successfully penetrated every computer on every desk of pretty much all of the executive branch, including the military, the State Department, and agencies in charge of our nuclear weapons.
   
  Our favorite Earth-Bound Misfit listens carefully to my president’s outraged reaction ‑ ‑ ‑ ‑ outrage against those supporting accurate election counts. Nothing about the Russian cyber attack campaign. She draws one obvious conclusion.
   
• In Letters from an American, Heather Cox Richardson details the attack and the horrific damage to national security. Contrasting reactions show President-elect Joe Biden taking on the role of a responsible Commander-in-Chief, and Donald trump taking on the role of ‑well‑ whatever he plays these days.
   
• John Scalzi at Whatever sees Biden winning and winning until everyone is tired of all that winning. To those who insist it isn’t over for my president, John has a message involving a crudely expressed description of a common biological urge.

Continue reading “Flakes, Vax Held, Hack, Trickle Downed, Trump Bounced, Dr Jill, Barr None”