Monday Reads: Rule of Law! What a Concept!

Posted: February 22, 2021 | Author: | Filed under: Mid Day Reads | Tags: , , | 14 Comments

Good Day Sky Dancers!

I’ve been watching the Merrick Garland confirmation and have been just so overwhelmed with wonky joyness over the discussion between Senator Amy Klobucher from Minnesota and the Judge up for the AG position.  I’ve been hearing basic American Economic liberty concepts like tougher Merger & Analysis scrutiny and trust law enforcement for huge, monopolistic companies including all the usual suspects in social media.

Then, I  watched him worddance with glee around some Republican Senator obsessed that their gun fetish and penis enhancer opportunities would be stolen in the name of protecting citizens from armed terrorists and criminals.  He waltzed around them like a professional ballroom dancer.

I feel ready to bring out my Nina Simone again!   It’s a new dawn! It’s a new day! 

Merrick Garland: “I would not have taken this job if I thought that politics would have any influence over prosecutions and investigations.”

More on that in a minute.  Here’s a bit of good news via the Supreme Court with the exception of Uncle Clarence Thomas who still is looking to convince every one he’s just a melatonin-capable version of wipipo.  They did, however, reject Stormy Daniel’s appeal of her defamation of character suit against Trump.

The Supreme Court on Monday refused to hear an appeal by adult film star Stormy Daniels in a defamation suit she brought against former President Trump.

Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, sued Trump in 2018 after he suggested on Twitter that Daniels had lied about being threatened by an unknown man in 2011 in relation to her alleged affair with the former president.

Daniels appealed to the Supreme Court after her case was dismissed in the lower courts. The justices on Monday denied her petition without comment.

Oh,  and I’m not quite done with Ted Cruz memes either.  I think JJ, BB, and I have all had a lot of fun with them this week but not quite enough.  But anyway, here’s the other SCOTUS decision for NYC.

More  from Scotus Blog from Amy Howe: “Justices will not block New York grand jury subpoena for Trump’s records.”

The Supreme Court on Monday cleared the way for a New York grand jury to obtain former President Donald Trump’s financial records. Over four months after Trump asked them to intervene, the justices turned down a request by the former president to stay a ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit that permits Cyrus Vance, the district attorney for Manhattan, to enforce a subpoena to Mazars USA, the president’s longtime accountant. Monday’s order means that Vance and the grand jury likely will finally acquire eight years of Trump’s tax returns and other related records, although grand jury secrecy laws may preclude them from becoming public.

The court’s order came in a dispute that began in 2019, when Vance issued a subpoena to Mazars as part of a state grand jury’s investigation into criminal violations of New York law. The investigation includes a probe into hush-money payments that were made to two women who claimed to have had affairs with Trump. A federal district court in New York and the 2nd Circuit rebuffed the president’s request to quash that subpoena, prompting Trump to appeal to the Supreme Court. The justices ruled in July that the president is not categorically immune from state criminal subpoenas, but they sent the case back to the lower courts to allow the president to challenge the subpoena on other grounds.

When the case returned to the district court, the president again asked the judge to quash the subpoena, arguing that it was a “fishing expedition” issued in “bad faith” to harass him. But the judge rejected the president’s contention and granted Vance’s motion to dismiss the president’s claims, prompting the president to appeal to the 2nd Circuit, which upheld that ruling.

So, this is where the Trump family crime syndicate gets its fortunes, freedom, and time ate up by courts, lawyers, and fees.  And this is where he looks to use Republicans again for fundraising and personal gain.  From Axios and Mike Allen: “Scoop: Trump to claim total control of GOP.”  Couldn’t happen to a better group of insurrection enablers.

In his first post-presidential appearance, Donald Trump plans to send the message next weekend that he is Republicans’ “presumptive 2024 nominee” with a vise grip on the party’s base, top Trump allies tell Axios.

What to watch: A longtime adviser called Trump’s speech a “show of force,” and said the message will be: “I may not have Twitter or the Oval Office, but I’m still in charge.” Payback is his chief obsession.

Axios has learned that Trump advisers will meet with him at Mar-a-Lago this week to plan his next political moves, and to set up the machinery for kingmaking in the 2022 midterms.

  • Trump is expected to stoke primary challenges for some of those who have crossed him, and shower money and endorsements on the Trumpiest candidates.
  • State-level officials, fresh off censuring Trump critics, stand ready to back him up.

Why it matters: Trump’s speech Sunday at CPAC in Orlando is designed to show that he controls the party, whether or not he runs in 2024.

  • His advisers argue that his power within the GOP runs deeper and broader than ever, and that no force can temper him.
  • “Trump effectively is the Republican Party,” Trump senior adviser Jason Miller told me. “The only chasm is between Beltway insiders and grassroots Republicans around the country. When you attack President Trump, you’re attacking the Republican grassroots.”

The big picture: The few Republicans who have spoken ill of Trump since the election — including House members who voted to impeach him, and senators who voted to convict — have found themselves censured, challenged and vilified by the parties in their home states.

What’s next: Trump’s leadership PAC, Save America, has $75 million on hand, and he has a database of tens of millions of names.

The long game: Many Trump confidants think he’ll pretend to run but ultimately pass. He knows the possibility — or threat — gives him leverage and attention.

A Trump source said some Republicans have told him: “If you endorse me, I’ll run.”

Hope he keeps their nuts in cracker for a few years at least a few years. So, back to the Merrick.  Garland Hearing and Senator Klobucher whom I still love from the presidential primaries.

This is the sort of thing economists live for …  And of course the Republican think he’s going to make the DOJ a hotbed of political activism and gunhating.  They’re just the part of white outrage and hypocrisy any more with Tax Cuts for the rich thrown in.

Additionally, there was a strong statement on the current state of Domestic Terrorism which is probably why the gun nut senators were out in force today.  From Chris Strohm at Bloomberg: ”

“We are facing a more dangerous period than we faced in Oklahoma City,” said Garland, who led the prosecution of the worst domestic attack in the U.S., the truck bombing of the federal building there in 1995.

Garland, who’s now a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, appears headed for a bipartisan vote of approval in the Senate. Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa, the committee’s top Republican, called Garland “a good pick to lead the Department of Justice,” and Republican Senator Lindsey Graham said he’s “very inclined” to support him.

As the Justice Department pursues criminal cases stemming from the Capitol riot, Garland pledged to lead the effort. “If confirmed, I will supervise the prosecution of white supremacists and others who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 — a heinous attack that sought to disrupt a cornerstone of our democracy: the peaceful transfer of power to a newly elected government,” he said.

Garland also signaled he’ll make decisions independently from Biden. “The president nominates the attorney general to be the lawyer — not for any individual, but for the people of the United States,” he said.

All of this is still very much breaking news as the hearing continues/

So, I’ll let us continue the discussion down thread as we continue to learn more about Garland and his views.  Sen. Lindsey Graham  asked Judge Merrick Garland the single most idiotic question I’ve seen so far .

“Do you promise to defend the Portland courthouse against anarchists?”

Next he’ll be asking to check the Biden Dog Beds for hidden communists I suppose.

So, hope everything is okay with y’all and you’re up for the vaccine or done with them by now!  It’s warming up down here so I’m feeling much better just with that!

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

Friday Reads: It’s Brutal Out there!

Posted: February 19, 2021 | Author: | Filed under: Mid Day Reads | Tags: , , | 15 Comments

Good Day Sky Dancers! 

We’ve got brutal weather around the country and the headlines are a bit brutal today too!  The brutal headlines are mostly about the Party of Sociopaths.  Take this one, for example on Senator Cold Hearted Cruz (Republican, Texass): “Ted Cruz Abandons Millions of Freezing Texans and His Poodle, Snowflake”. This from New York Magazine and the keyboard of Michael Hardy.

For most, though, especially Texans like me who have suffered through a week without heat or water in freezing overnight weather, the notion of Cruz leaving his dog behind to hit the beach was all too much — especially the thought of the power being out when they left. (The New York Times reported that Cruz’s wife Heidi had complained that the house was “FREEZING” in a group chat to friends and neighbors that proposed leaving the blackout behind for the Ritz-Carlton in Cancún.)

Like far too many of us, I’ve been without power and water for most of the week. I spent one night at the apartment of a friend who still has power, but the rest of the time I’ve been bundled up in multiple layers of clothing, shivering beneath four blankets, leaving the apartment only to charge devices in my car. With only an electric stove, I couldn’t heat up food. I haven’t showered since Sunday. And it could be worse — my parents in Austin still have no power or water, and yesterday one of their pipes burst, flooding the first floor of their house. To watch our junior senator escape to Cancun while the rest of us freeze is the ultimate indignity.

But Ted’s not the only Republican taking the proverbial heat for the lack of heat. This is from Marc Caputo at Politico:  “Top Texas Republicans on the ropes after tone-deaf storm response . The swaggering, Texas brand of free-market governance that’s central to the state’s political identity is taking a beating.”  Ah, aint that a shame?

The brutal winter storm that turned Texas roads to ice, burst pipes across the state and left millions of residents shivering and without power has also damaged the reputations of three of the state’s leading Republicans.

Sen. Ted Cruz was discovered to have slipped off to Mexico on Wednesday night, only to announce his return when he was caught in the act. Gov. Greg Abbott came under fire over his leadership and misleading claims about the causes of the power outages. And former Gov. Rick Perry suggested Texans preferred power failures to federal regulation, a callous note in a moment of widespread suffering.

It’s more than just a public relations crisis for the three politicians. The storm has also battered the swaggering, Texas brand of free-market governance that’s central to the state’s political identity on the national stage.

“Texans are angry and they have every right to be. Failed power, water and communications surely took some lives,” JoAnn Fleming, a Texas conservative activist and executive director of a group called Grassroots America, said in a text message exchange with POLITICO.

“The Texas electric grid is not secure,” said Fleming, pointing out that lawmakers “have been talking about shoring up/protecting the Texas electric grid for THREE legislative sessions (6 yrs),” but “every session special energy interests kill the bills with Republicans in charge … Our politicians spend too much time listening to monied lobbyists & political consultants. Not enough time actually listening to real people.”

Chad Prather, a popular Republican humorist who is running for governor against Abbott next year, echoed similar sentiments about the three politicians.

Then there’s was the death of Rush Limbaugh where the obits sound as harsh as the Big Fat Liar was air.  This is from Conor Friedersdorf at  The Atlantic:  “Don’t Read This If You Were a Rush Limbaugh Fan”

As a proponent of conservatism in America, Limbaugh was a failure who in his later years abandoned the project of advancing a positive agenda, culminating in his alignment with the vulgar style and populist anti-leftism of Donald Trump. Character no longer mattered. Budget deficits no longer mattered. Free trade no longer mattered. Nepotism no longer mattered. Lavishing praise on foreign dictators no longer mattered.

All that mattered was owning the libs in the culture war, in part to avenge a deeply felt sense of aggrievement. Limbaugh and Trump were alike in attaining great wealth and political influence while still talking and seeming to feel as though society was stacked against guys like them.

In obituaries and commemorations, many right-leaning commentators are crediting Limbaugh with advancing movement conservatism, as if he were the William F. Buckley Jr. of the Baby Boomer generation. That’s certainly how it felt in the 1990s when I would hear him in the car with my grandparents. Back then, before Fox News, no one on the right was as popular with the public.

Yet he wasn’t for everyone with conservative instincts, and the proposition that Limbaugh helped conservatism thrive or grow is unsubstantiated. National Review and Barry Goldwater reinvigorated conservatism in postwar America. The high-water mark of American conservatism, Ronald Reagan’s presidency, was over before Limbaugh was a force in American politics.

Over the ensuing decades, as Limbaugh grew in fame and gained as much influence in the Republican Party as anyone, the conservative movement suffered from political and intellectual decline. “In place of the permanent things, we get Happy Meal conservatism: cheap, childish, familiar,” a writer at The American Conservative once complained. “Gone are the internal tensions, the thought-provoking paradoxes, the ideological uneasiness that marked the early Right.” The seesaw of partisan politics gave conservatives occasional victories, such as the 1994 Republican takeover of the House and the 2010 Tea Party wave, but once in office the GOP tended to squander those victories quickly and never accomplished much conservative change. The government kept getting bigger. The country kept getting more socially liberal. The right delighted in the fact that the left was never able to create its own Rush Limbaugh, despite various attempts. But perhaps that supposed failing has helped progressives make gains.

Since Limbaugh’s political radio career took off in the late 1980s, each successive Republican president has been less conservative than the last, and Trump was the least conservative GOP president since Richard Nixon. Looking at that trajectory and thinking that Limbaugh helped advance conservatism in America is as delusional as believing Jeb Bush’s claim that his brother kept Americans safe on 9/11.

And that’s from a liberatarian bernie bro so  you can imagine the roasting and toasting from the progressive democrats.  Grave dancing would basically be kind characterization.  This is from  Dean Obeidallah, MSNBC Opinion Columnist: “How Rush Limbaugh helped to create Trump’s America.  It can be hard to tell where Trump begins and Limbaugh ends — but Limbaugh did it first.”

Shortly after news broke that Rush Limbaugh had died on Wednesday, 2020 election loser and former President Donald Trump held a phone interview on Fox News, where he praised Limbaugh as “irreplaceable” and as “a fantastic man, a fantastic talent.”

Limbaugh more than earned those words from Trump; even the one-term president likely gets that it was Limbaugh’s open embrace of racism, bigotry and sexism that laid the groundwork for Trump to win the White House in the first place. Perhaps more than any other one person, Limbaugh employed his media platform to weaponize America’s far-right into a political force that helped many conservative Republicans — including, of course, Trump — win elections.

Barack Obama’s former chief of staff Rahm Emanuel once called the conservative radio commentator “the voice and intellectual force of the Republican Party.” He showed Trump that you could be as vile and hateful as you want — and there was still a mass audience on the right who loved it.

Before Trump slithered down the escalator of Trump Tower in 2015 to smear Mexicans as “rapists,” there was Limbaugh in 2013 praising Cuban immigrants (who tend to vote Republican) as hard-working, while suggesting Mexicans were lazy. Even before then, in 1993, Limbaugh “joked” on his show that the U.S. should let Mexicans into America to do the “stupid and unskilled” work.

Trump himself made despicable comments about Black and brown members of Congress, like Democratic Reps. Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts and Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, saying they should to “go back” to their countries. He repeatedly called Black American celebrities “low IQ,” a common white supremacist trope.

In doing so, Trump was conjuring up Limbaugh’s own racist playbook. Years before, Limbaugh had told a Black caller on his radio show, “Take that bone out of your nose and call me back.” He also once said, “Have you ever noticed how all composite pictures of wanted criminals resemble Jesse Jackson?”

Vile words from  two vile men.  Maybe I should be playing dead presidents for today’s music but I thought I’d pick this one instead.

Speaking of the vile one down there in Florida, today’s Telegraph has a Martin Fletcher Fauci interview that’s amazing. “Anthony Fauci exclusive interview: ‘When I publicly disagreed with Trump he let terrible things happen’. Labelled a ‘disaster’ by President Trump, who publicly lobbied against his top Covid adviser, Dr Anthony Fauci is now back in the spotlight”

Fauci’s challenge was to correct the president’s dangerous falsehoods as diplomatically as possible, often while sharing the stage with him at televised White House briefings, but he says that ‘when it became clear that in order to maintain my integrity and to get the right message [across] I had to publicly disagree with him, he did things – or allowed things to happen – that were terrible.

‘Like he allowed Peter Navarro [Trump’s trade adviser] to write an editorial in USA Today saying that almost everything I’ve ever said was wrong. He allowed the communications department of the White House to send out a list to all of the media, all of the networks, all of the cables, all of the print press, about all of the mistakes I’ve made, which was absolute nonsense because there were no mistakes.’

Trump also began to denigrate Fauci in tweets and press conferences, setting him up as a target for the extreme Right’s hatred. ‘Which I became, to the point that to this day I have to have armed federal agents guarding me all the time,’ Fauci says. And he was not the only target. To his dismay, his wife and three adult daughters were also harassed and threatened.

Liberated under President Biden, Fauci can now speak frankly in a way he couldn’t last year. He tells me that in the final two months of his presidency Trump almost completely abandoned his duty to protect the nation from the pandemic. ‘We [the scientists] were trying, but we were acting almost alone, in the sense of without any direction.’

The vile offspring continue to be vile also.

So, while that side of the aisle continues viley on there is good news for the rest of us. The vacines are working and being improved.

and a bit more.

It might be possible we’ll have a more normal life by summer.  The only bad news on that front is this as reported by Jonathan Lemire “White House says winter weather has temporarily delayed shipment of 6 million coronavirus vaccine doses.”

And LOOK!  There’s a normal presidential response to the Texas disaster.

We also are having an actual conversation with our allies too on adult topics!

So, it looks like there’s the new reality with the old reality still lingering.  At least there’s less Trump presence in the TV news.  I can’t stand to see him animated any more unless it’s in a cartoon.

So, have a good weekend!  Hope the weather is good where you’re at! It’s supposed to improve here.

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

 

Monday Reads: Moving Right Along!

Posted: February 15, 2021 | Author: | Filed under: Biden’s First 100 Days | Tags: | 6 Comments

Good Day Sky Dancers!

Here we are again with another set of winter storms pummeling the country from sea to shining sea and also from the Great Lakes to the Gulf Coast. There’s a lot of other news too now that the second impeachment of Trump failed to bring a conviction.  I’m not quite sure Republicans got what they wanted as they played to their White Nationalist Men(ace) base.

Gallup is reporting that there’s a lot of support for a third party now. There usually is some momentum for that but it never quite reaches any serious fruition. But, it appears to be at a record high as the Party of Trump is losing supports after his attempt at insurrection. There’s always been some grumbling about that among Democrats.

Americans’ desire for a third party has ticked up since last fall and now sits at a high in Gallup’s trend. Sixty-two percent of U.S. adults say the “parties do such a poor job representing the American people that a third party is needed,” an increase from 57% in September. Support for a third party has been elevated in recent years, including readings of 60% in 2013 and 2015 and 61% in 2017.

Meanwhile, 33% of Americans believe the two major political parties are doing an adequate job representing the public, the smallest percentage expressing this view apart from the 26% reading in October 2013.

The latest results are from a Jan. 21-Feb. 2 poll. The survey was conducted before recent news reports that dozens of government officials in prior Republican administrations were in discussions to form an anti-Donald Trump third political party.

The survey found Americans’ favorable opinion of the Republican Party has declined to 37%, while 48% view the Democratic Party positively. The poll also shows 50% of U.S. adults identifying as political independents, the highest percentage Gallup has ever measured in a single poll.

There also may be some indication that the press may give up the both-siderism that was a major part of getting Trump elected to begin with.  This is from The New Republic: “The Capitol Riot Killed “Both Sides” Journalism. Trump’s acquittal notwithstanding, these violent events have forever changed the way Beltway reporters should do their jobs.”  I personally will believe it when I witness consistent amounts of it

On January 6, terrorists—encouraged by former President Donald Trump and enabled by his Republican supporters in Congress—attacked the United States Capitol. And as they came for the republic, they also came for something else: Beltway journalists.

This is true in the literal sense, as rioters etched “Murder the Media” into a Capitol door. But it is also true in a more challenging philosophical sense, as this violence imploded at the very altar of political journalism: the shrine of detached, “both-sides” reportage erected by media outlets to avoid specious accusations of bias and provide cover for Republican politics that were, at best, deeply shameful and, at worst, lethally illiberal.

Mainstream media editors of political coverage in Washington are at a crossroads, though they may not yet have fully realized their predicament. After years of investing in an approach to politics popularly characterized as the “view from nowhere”—in which “objectivity” is performed by reporters as a “he said, she said” dance without regard to either news value or truth—they have had their once-comfortable performance space invaded by the rioters. To move forward from here without confronting the long-deflating bubble of “both-sides” journalism, which is profitable for the D.C. book party circuit but ill-suited to maintaining both good government and a public trust in the media, is to ensure that illiberalism will continue to flourish.

It’s a bit of a long read so hunker down with a blanket and cuppa.  So, if you’re like me and awaiting your second dose of a vaccine you may want to check out this article in The Atlantic.

cover art from “Dead Love Has Chains” (1907)

I keep  being warned about this from some friends.

When the immune system detects a virus, it will dispatch cells and molecules to memorize its features so it can be fought off more swiftly in the future. Vaccines impart these same lessons without involving the disease-causing pathogen itself—the immunological equivalent of training wheels or water wings.

The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines accomplish that pedagogy via a genetic molecule called mRNA that’s naturally found in human cells. Once delivered into the upper arm, the mRNA instructs the body’s own cells to produce a coronavirus protein called spike—a molecule that elicits powerful, infection-fighting antibody responses in people battling COVID-19.

To ensure safe passage of mRNA into cells, the vaccine makers swathed the molecules in greasy bubbles called lipid nanoparticles. These strange, fatty spheres don’t resemble anything naturally present in the body, and they trip the sensors of a cavalry of fast-acting immune cells, called innate immune cells, that patrol the body for foreign matter. Once they spot the nanoparticles, these cells dispatch molecular alarms called cytokines that recruit other immune cells to the site of injection. Marshaling these reinforcements is important, but the influx of cells and molecules makes the upper arm swollen and sore. The congregating cells spew out more cytokines still, flooding the rest of the body with signals that can seed system-wide symptoms such as fever and fatigue.

“It’s the body’s knee-jerk reaction to an infection,” or something that looks like it,  Mark Slifka, a vaccine expert and an immunologist at Oregon Health and Science University, told me. “Let’s spray the area down with antiviral cytokines, which also happen to be inflammatory.”

Claude Monet reading a newspaper, 1872 – by Pierre-Auguste Renoir

EJ Dionne argues that it’s the “Beginning of the End of Trumpism.”  He writes in an OP Ed for WAPO.

Don’t waste time mourning the Senate’s failure to convict Donald Trump for crimes so dramatically and painstakingly proven by the House impeachment managers. The cowardice of the vast majority of Republican senators was both predicted and predictable.

Led with extraordinary grace by Rep. Jamie B. Raskin (D-Md.), a diverse and able group of prosecutors laid out an indelible record not only of what happened on Jan. 6 and why, but also Trump’s irresponsibility throughout his term of office: his courting of the violent far right; his celebration of violence; his habit of privileging himself and his own interests over everything and everyone else, including his unrequitedly loyal vice president.

This record matters. We often like to pretend that we can move on and forget the past. But our judgments about the past inevitably shape our future. Every political era is, in part, a reaction to the failures — perceived and real — of the previous one. The Hoover-Coolidge Republicans loomed large for two generations of Democrats. Ronald Reagan built a thriving movement by calling out what he successfully cast as the sins of liberalism.<
By tying themselves to Trump with their votes, most House and Senate Republicans made themselves complicit in his behavior. And Trump will prove to be even more of an albatross than Hoover, who, after all, had a moral core.

Given the chance to cast a vote making clear that what Trump did was reprehensible, only seven Republicans in the Senate and 10 in the House took the opportunity to do so.

But, then there is this.

I still want him and his family and his presidential library of porn in some wing of Fort Leavenworth.

President Joe Biden should follow his own sage advice from the statement he released hours after the “not guilty” vote by 43 Republican senators in Donald Trump’s impeachment trial led to his acquittal. Biden implored us to be vigilant in protecting our “fragile” democracy and noted that “each of us has a duty and responsibility as Americans, and especially as leaders, to defend the truth and to defeat the lies.”

To that end, the most effective way Biden can defend our fragile democracy is by calling for a full criminal investigation into the role Donald Trump played in the January 6 attack on our Capitol.
At the outset, let’s be 100% clear that no criminal prosecution should ever be commenced for political reasons. That’s illegal and truly un-American. Conversely, no prosecution should ever be rejected for political reasons either — such as hoping that by not prosecuting a political figure it will foster more “unity.” That approach is just as wrong.

But look at the facts surrounding the January 6 deadly attack, which appears to meet the legal definition of “domestic terrorism” since it was intended to “to intimidate or coerce a civilian population” and affect the conduct of government by measures that included mass destruction.

After this week’s impeachment trial, there’s no denying Trump’s significant role in inciting the attack on our Capitol. Even GOP Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell declared after the trial that, “Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day,” suggesting that Trump could indeed face criminal charges for his role in the attack.

“We have a criminal justice system in this country. We have civil litigation,” said McConnell. “And former Presidents are not immune from being held accountable by either one.”

Have a great week Sky Dancers!  Stay warm and dry!

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

 

 

Friday Reads: Regime Change and Relief

Posted: February 12, 2021 | Author: | Filed under: morning reads | Tags: , , | 12 Comments

Happy Friday Sky Dancers!

It would have been Muses parade Thursday last night up town but instead we had a flood of rain and the French Quarter under a heavy shut down order.  The Krewe of Muses was not to be left out of whatever fun we were trying to have at home.  Operation Shoe Fairy was on last night!  Glitter shoes were going to nurses and doctors and random people who bump into a muse driving her car full of glittery shoes around the city. Glittery Shoes from Muses and Glittery Coconuts from Zulu are the winning lotto tickets of parade throws.

“New Orleans is really resilient, and we rise to the occasion and we’re seeing that this year,” said Krewe Creator/Captain, Staci Rosenberg.

Rosenberg says not rolling this year is heartbreaking, however there is a plan in place to keep the magic alive. It’s called Operation Shoe Fairy.

“We’re going to be walking, driving, flying around the city, flitting around and landing in different parts of New Orleans giving glitter shoes to unsuspecting people,” she said.

All deliveries will follow COVID-19 safety guidelines. They’ll also be made at 12 local hospitals to recognize the heroic work being done during this tough time. They call it, “Heels for Healers.”

“We’re doing that because we so appreciate what the healthcare warriors at all levels have done for us this year,” Rosenberg said. “Their sacrifices have been unbelievable and if we can give them a tiny bit of joy, we want to do that.”

It’s not just New Orleans Krewes sending out  love and support this time of year!  Look what’s happening at the White House today!  No morbid red trees! No ripping up trees and flowers!  The First Lady Dr. Jill Biden sends out love for Valentine’s day!

Her predecessor is not amused.  Poor lil Melania did not get the same treatment  and like her husband, she doesn’t get it that people find her basically unpleasant and cold.  You can go read about her bitterness at the link at CNN.  Be sure to bring along the smallest violin in the world

Muses fill up the Community Food Fridges

But then there’s the big news that we may all have our vaccinations by summer!  I just got my first dose of Pfizer on Wednesday.  This is terrific news!  Via CBS “Biden announces deal for 200 million more COVID-19 doses.”

President Biden announced Thursday his administration has finalized an order for 200 million more doses of COVID-19 vaccine to be delivered by July 2021, adding to the 400 million doses that the Trump administration had already ordered from Pfizer and Moderna by that date. The two drug companies both produce a two-shot regimen, so the total 600 million doses will vaccinate 300 million people — most of the U.S. population.

The president also said the companies were on track to supply their initial orders of each vaccine weeks earlier, distributing their first 200 million doses each by the end of May.

“That’s a month faster,” said Mr. Biden. “That means lives will be saved.”

Though snafus with complicated vaccination scheduling systems and mishandled doses have hampered the vaccine rollout, local and state health authorities have insisted the key issue they faced was that demand far outstripped supply at most clinics.

The Muse Krewe’s Houses float entitled Cosmos.

Okay, so no we’ve really made some changes!  There’s a FACT SHEET posted on the development at the White House website.  Facts!  What a concept!

One of the most interesting things to read today is in Nature. “This COVID-vaccine designer is tackling vaccine hesitancy — in churches and on Twitter. Immunologist Kizzmekia Corbett helped to design the Moderna vaccine. Now she volunteers her time talking about vaccine science with people of colour.”  Here’s the blurb about her and you can read her interview at the link.

Kizzmekia Corbett, an immunologist at the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), is one of the scientists who in early 2020 helped to develop an mRNA-based vaccine for COVID-19. Developed in collaboration with biotech firm Moderna of Cambridge, Massachusetts, the vaccine is now being distributed across the United States and elsewhere. And Corbett is taking on another challenge: tempering vaccine hesitancy by talking about COVID-19 science in communities of colour.

Corbett is one of many Black scientists and doctors who are doing this outreach, often virtually, in their free time. Researchers say it’s necessary to make scientific knowledge accessible in public forums, to ease health disparities.

In the United States, COVID-19 has affected Black, Native American and Latino American people at higher rates than white people, for reasons rooted in racism and historical segregation. At the same time, people in these groups are more wary of COVID-19 vaccines. In a December survey by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 46% of Black adults said they probably would not get vaccinated against the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, compared with 30% of white respondents. Those who were hesitant cited worries about side effects, and the speed at which the vaccines were developed. A legacy of exploitative medical research, such as infamous syphilis studies in Tuskegee, Alabama — in which doctors withheld treatment from hundreds of Black men from the 1930s and 1970s — contributes to this scepticism.

Before the COVID-19 outbreak, Corbett was part of a team at the NIH in Bethesda, Maryland, and elsewhere, that was designing vaccines for other coronaviruses in collaboration with Moderna. The scientists’ mRNA technology delivers a piece of genetic code to a person’s cells to create immune-stimulating virus proteins. When the outbreak began, the team mobilized to quickly identify the SARS-CoV-2 genetic sequence it would need to make a vaccine for COVID-19, which Moderna then produced. Before trials began in people, Corbett designed tests of the vaccine in animals, and perfected assays that measured its effectiveness in clinical trials.

Oh, and if you’re wondering, Why YES!  I am actively ignoring the Trump side show on the senate floor today.  They may not give him the guilty verdict but we know what he’s done and what he is not done and why things like the following are happening.  This is from the US District Attorney’s office in North Carolina as it appears on the DOJ’s website.  “Individual Charged With Threatening The President of The United States Appears In Federal Court”.   Trump’s “Big Lie” will continue to cost lives.

According allegations in the affidavit filed in support of the criminal complaint, between January 28 and February 1, 2021, Reeves contacted multiple times the White House switchboard via telephone and made threats against President Biden and others. The criminal complaint alleges that, on February 1, 2021, a Secret Service agent contacted Reeves to discuss the threats. Reeves allegedly called back the Secret Service agent multiple times throughout the day, and repeated the threats against the President, the Secret Service agent, and others. According to filed court documents, on the same day, Reeves also contacted the U.S. Capitol Police switchboard and communicated similar threats.

Following today’s hearing, Judge Keesler ordered Reeves to remain in custody.

The charge of making a threat against the President of the United States carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison, and a $250,000 fine.

Well, it seems a few Republicans have decided their political interests don’t link with KKKremlin Caligula.

Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley issued stunning remarks breaking with former President Trump, telling Politico in an interview published Friday that she believes he “let us down.”

“We need to acknowledge he let us down,” Haley, who served in her ambassador role under Trump, said. “He went down a path he shouldn’t have, and we shouldn’t have followed him, and we shouldn’t have listened to him. And we can’t let that ever happen again.”

Haley’s remarks are her strongest yet against the former president in the aftermath of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot and come as Trump’s legal team is set to present its defense of Trump on Friday in his second Senate impeachment trial.

Muse float of notorious RBG waiting in its Den for another day in the sun.

It’s still not a very brave statement but at least a few of them are speaking out still.  It’s a Politico interview with her so you’re forewarned about this link.   But to me, the take away is this.  I’m still shaking my head and laughing about “stunning” remarks because if you read the interview I don’t think they meant stunning the way I was stunned.

What was more striking was Haley’s underlying position: that because Trump believed he had been robbed, he was therefore justified in saying and doing whatever he pleased.

“You have the president of the United States telling everyone that he was cheated, that the voting systems are corrupt, that we’re living in a banana republic where the deep state has rigged this election against him,” I told her. “Isn’t that dangerous?”

“He believes it,” she smiled.

Yeah, That just means y’all need to send the nice young men in their clean white coats to take him away.  Just because he believes he’s following his oath means he should be absolved too.  Enabling delusion when it basically brings the country’s democracy to its knees ain’t pretty. Just say no to any public life for Ms Haley.  I’ve really had it with this tripe.

Here’s a real Muses Parade from 2018 if you want to see some of what goes on down here in a normal year.  I have a feeling with Joe and Kamala and all the professionals they have surrounded themselves with that we will have a more normal Mardi Gras next year.

I would also like to wish you Happy Chinese New Year!  Tashi Losar!  Happy Valentine’s Day!  And Best of Mardi Gras to you for the season that I consider the only Holiday season I recognize as worth the effort!  And to all of you who know any one who is even thinking about coming here tell them we do not want them here.  Auntie Latoya ain’t playing!

What’s on your reading and blogging list!  And let us know how things are going with you on getting that vaccine!

Monday Reads: House Floats and Senate Trials

Posted: February 8, 2021 | Author: | Filed under: morning reads | Tags: | 7 Comments

Good Day Sky Dancers!

I was awakened last night by the blast of the emergency system tone really early this morning or late last night.  A ten year old girl from New Iberia Parish had gone missing. Some one had seen her get into a car with a man who turned out to be a known sex offender.  Fortunately, an alert sanitation worker in the next parish over recognized the car when his crew passed by it early today.  The girl is now undergoing a medical examination and the police have the suspect in custody.

I was also greeted by my cat spilling my coffee all over my laptop.  So far it appears to be doing okay but we’ll see how long that lasts.  I scrambled to get it turn upside down immediately.  I also have to finish grading a bunch of things.  So, how’s your day going?

Today’s pictures are of the Mardi Gras House floats that have been popping up all over the city. It’s easy to guess which ones are uptown and which are downtown by me!  I’m behind on mine because of this class I’ve been teaching and all the assorted headaches.  I get my covid-19 vaccine on Wednesday afternoon and I still won’t have a day off until Friday so this week seems absolutely frazzled compared to the last year where sitting at home was de rigueur.

Another Republican Congress Critter has died from covid-19.    Not sure if he was of the anti maskers but if not, his colleagues likely killed him with their anti masking antics.

Rep. Ron Wright (R-TX) has died. Wright tested positive for coronavirus several weeks ago. Wright had also battled lung cancer last fall. Wright was 67 years old. Wright succeeded fmr GOP TX Rep Joe Barton in 2019 after Barton retired.

However I have found some interesting tweets including a deathbed crusade to fully open schools.  Since the debacle with the empty stockpile, we’ve had quite a few teachers unable to get their vaccines.  Anecdotally, I know several who are now home with the virus.  UNO is supposed to start opening campus in March.  Fortunately, I’m pretty much zoom bound in this class but at least I should have both doses if I have to go back.

https://twitter.com/ApocalypticaNow/status/1358814359963721732

It’s really hard to imagine that Republicans are still pushing free range herd immunity but pictures in Tampa Bay after the Super Bowl seem to show that it’s a different world out there in places with Republicans in charge.  Our Mayor is doing everything possible to keep people out of the Quarter including closing bars down.  Last night, however there was still a convergence to the bars all over.  I watched the parade to bars by young white couples while walking Temple and chatting with my neighbor who already got her double dose as she hit the 70 year mark last year. I just don’t get how anything is more important than keep you and  your healthy but I guess I’m officially on old coot now.

The British variant of covid-19 is “Spreading Rapidly in U.S. A new study bolsters the prediction by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that the so-called B.1.1.7 variant will dominate Covid-19 cases by March.”  This is reported in the NYT.

A more contagious variant of the coronavirus first found in Britain is spreading rapidly in the United States, doubling roughly every 10 days, according to a new study.

Analyzing half a million coronavirus tests and hundreds of genomes, a team of researchers predicted that in a month this variant could become predominant in the United States, potentially bringing a surge of new cases and increased risk of death.

The new research offers the first nationwide look at the history of the variant, known as B.1.1.7, since it arrived in the United States in late 2020. Last month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned that B.1.1.7 could become predominant by March if it behaved the way it did in Britain. The new study confirms that projected path.

“Nothing in this paper is surprising, but people need to see it,” said Kristian Andersen, a co-author of the study and a virologist at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, Calif. “We should probably prepare for this being the predominant lineage in most places in the United States by March.”

So, will we get another huge surge? Dr Fauci did say we need to keep an eye on those variants and some of the vaccines do better than others with them.

Trump’s impeachment trial continues.  Politico reports that “POLITICO Playbook: Democratic impeachment managers feeling muzzled”.

Democrats who’ve struggled for years to hold DONALD TRUMP accountable are at a crossroads again: Do they go all out to convict Trump by calling a parade of witnesses to testify to his misdeeds? Or do they concede it’s a lost cause, finish the trial ASAP — and get on with President JOE BIDEN’S agenda?

Several of the House impeachment managers wanted firsthand testimony to help prove their case that Trump incited the Jan. 6 riot, our sources tell us. But Senate Majority Leader CHUCK SCHUMER, Speaker NANCY PELOSI and Biden administration officials have been eager for the process to move quickly, we’re told.

It’s been a source of frustration for some Democrats privately. Trump, these people have noticed, is already on the rebound politically, at least among Republicans. The GOP base has rallied to his defense, and many Republican lawmakers who witnessed the terror of the Capitol invasion are back in Trump’s corner.

That’s why there had been talk among the managers about calling individuals who could change minds — if not the minds of 17 GOP senators needed to convict, then perhaps a slice of the GOP electorate that still supports Trump. Some of the ideas floated: having Capitol Police officers tell their stories about fighting the mob, or inviting Republican officials in Georgia who were pressured by Trump to overturn the state’s election tally.

There’s also been chatter about bringing in former White House officials who observed Trump on the day of the riots.

Schumer and other Senate Democrats argue, however, that they don’t necessarily need witnesses since Trump’s crimes were in plain sight and documented in videos and tweets. Privately, senior Democrats also note that 45 Senate Republicans have already decided they think the trial is unconstitutional because Trump is no longer president, so why bother dragging this out?

Trump’s team continues to argue that the Senate cannot impeach a former President.  However, a top Republican lawyer has disagreed publicly.  From the NYT: “Breaking With G.O.P., Top Conservative Lawyer Says Trump Can Stand Trial. Charles J. Cooper, a stalwart of the conservative legal establishment, said that Republicans were wrong to assert that it is unconstitutional for a former president to be tried for impeachable offenses.”

Many legal scholars disagree, and the Senate has previously held an impeachment trial of a former official — though never a former president. But 45 Republican senators, including Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader who is said to believe that Mr. Trump committed impeachable offenses, voted last month to dismiss the trial as unconstitutional on those grounds.

Mr. Cooper said they were misreading the Constitution.

“The provision cuts against their interpretation,” he wrote. He argued that because the Constitution allows the Senate to bar officials convicted of impeachable offenses from holding public office again in the future, “it defies logic to suggest that the Senate is prohibited from trying and convicting former officeholders.”

Mr. Cooper’s decision to take on the argument was particularly significant because of his standing in conservative legal circles. He was a close confidant and adviser to Senate Republicans, like Ted Cruz of Texas when he ran for president, and represented House Republicans — including the minority leader, Representative Kevin McCarthy of California — in a lawsuit against Speaker Nancy Pelosi. He is also the lawyer for conservative stalwarts like John R. Bolton and Jeff Sessions, and over his career defended California’s same-sex marriage ban and had been a top outside lawyer for the National Rifle Association.

At this point I do not care who agrees that he can be impeached I just want to see his ass in place where he can never run for public office again.  I’d also rather hear from the staffers who saw what he was saying and doing at the time.  I never what to see his fat freaky face on TV again nor do I want to hear his icky voice.

The WSJ is reporting that Senate leaders are reaching an agreement on what the next schedule in the Trial will look like.

On Monday, Mr. Trump’s lawyers said that in that speech Mr. Trump only used the word “fight” a “little more than a handful of times and each time in the figurative sense,” and noted that he urged supporters to march peacefully and made no explicit mention of rioting. The lawyers said the president was exercising his rights under the First Amendment.

They also argued that news reports that law-enforcement officials had missed warnings about an attack on the Capitol indicated the riot had been planned in advance and “therefore had nothing to do with the president’s speech.”

The Senate trial begins on Tuesday. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell are closing in on an agreement for a resolution that would outline the rules and schedule for the trial, according to the person familiar with the talks.

I can at least report that purging Trumpist policy is still on the Biden/Harris team platter. Chait has never been a favorite of mine but here is a bit of analysis that at least provides some hope.

Chait writes this about the ongoing deficit size fixation Obama inherited compared to Biden who inherits a new situation following Trump.  I still personally expect the republicans to suddenly get deficit size religion again but here’s is argument.

The rise of Donald Trump is the largest single cause of the transformation. It was obvious to some of us all along that Republican claims to have a passionate concern for fiscal probity were insincere. Trump has made it impossible to ignore. The beliefs that sincerely animated reporters and officials in Washington during the Obama era — that the Tea Party was a reaction to debt levels, that Republican leaders were willing or able to deal with Obama — were turned into a running joke by a Republican president who won the nomination in part because he never fooled himself into believing any of these things. Trump’s ability to blow out the budget deficit and wantonly pick winners and losers without any shame or meaningful Republican blowback destroyed the whole premise.

Democrats in Congress also learned an important lesson from the Obama era. Many moderate Democrats shared a belief with the mainstream media that bipartisanship was both possible and necessary. Democrats in Congress squandered much of their time pursuing fruitless negotiations with Republicans, chasing a deal they were sure lay just around the corner. Only in retrospect did they realize that Republicans were stringing them along to allow opposition to build while they ran out the clock.

One of the biggest obstacles Obama faced in 2009 was the excessive confidence of his putative congressional allies that they could strike an agreement with Republicans. Biden’s congressional allies have fewer illusions about the incentives of their Republican counterparts.

Economic thinking itself has changed in important ways over the last decade. Economists previously feared that the federal government floating trillions of dollars in additional debt would cause interest rates to rise. (Indeed, this seems like a straightforward application of supply and demand.) Instead, interest rates have failed to budge, eliminating the austerity pressure that exerted such a powerful impact in the 1980s and 1990s.

This is the center piece of my House float. It’s a painting by a friend Rex. She does some nice work. All the people will have surgical masks and the assorted critters will have Mardi Gras masks. You have heard of the Mardi Gras Penguin?  Right? Just have to get them all up.

I can say that the entire deficit fixation was more of a political fixation than economic thinking.  Most main stream economists have know for some time that a deficit has a place in the policy box and that it’s necessary to run them up in desperate times.   What the deficit chicken hawks showed was that even in good times deficits can be run up as long as it’s the name of tax cuts to businesses in the wealthy. This is anathema to any serious student of economics. But then, the proved what we though all along. Deficits are fine with they comport with Republican values like unnecessary. They’re just not to help regular Americans.  That’s Roosevelt socialism!

Anyway, I’m off to grade and praying that my little laptop survives Dinah’s leap into my coffee cup disaster.

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

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