Monday (Bannon’s in Jail) Reads

Posted: November 15, 2021 | Author: | Filed under: Black Lives Matter, Black Women Lead, Civil Rights, Climate change, Congress, Criminal Justice System, Democratic Politics, FBI, Feminists | 11 Comments

Good Day Sky Dancers!

Wow! Is there a lot of news today, and it continues to baffle me! Let’s start with a good story.  Bannon is in jail.  He continues to devolve into something less than human.  Take a look at that picture.  Something that lives under a bridge and demands tolls?  Animated spud? Zombie?  Your guess is as good as mine!  The protestor has one appellation correct:  “Coup Plotter.”

We also have some history worth celebrating. Ruby Bridges integrated New Orleans Public Schools 61 years ago. 

And I was just this years old when I found out that Rosa Parks became a practicing Buddhist in her golden years. She practiced the same tradition as Tina Turner.

What would happen if we continue to teach our children what brave women of color do after that one moment they changed history?

So, back to the country’s ugliest spud.

His face continues to make an excellent argument for not using drugs. It’s much better than a fried egg. He’s been arrested. He’s in the custody of Federal Officials. He’s scheduled to appear before a judge later today. Get that TV turned on because I’m sure there will be coverage.

Justice moves slowly sometimes, but it’s moving.  Then, there’s the anti-justice and law and order party. This is from WAPO: “In wake of Bannon indictment, Republicans warn of payback. GOP lawmakers say Democrats, by pursuing contempt charges against a Trump ally, are paving the way for them to go after Biden aides if they retake the House in 2022.”

BENGHAZI!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  HER EMAILS!!!!!!!!!!! JUST MAKE SHIT UP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Many GOP leaders, however, are seizing on Bannon’s indictment to contend that Democrats are “weaponizing” the Justice Department, warning Democrats that they will go after Biden’s aides for unspecified reasons if they take back the House majority in next year’s midterm elections, as most political analysts expect.

“For years, Democrats baselessly accused President Trump of ‘weaponizing’ the DOJ. In reality, it is the Left that has been weaponizing the DOJ the ENTIRE TIME — from the false Russia Hoax to the Soviet-style prosecution of political opponents,” Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), the third-ranking House Republican, tweeted Saturday.

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) suggested that Republicans would seek payback if the GOP regained control of the House, signaling that in challenging the doctrine of executive privilege, Democrats were making it easier for Republicans to force Biden’s top advisers to testify before a future GOP Congress.

I have a good response for that:

So, let me just shake it off and move on to some more good news about Black Women in Leadership. Mayor Latoya Cantrell has won overwhelming support to serve a second term.  Not everyone agrees with it but they certainly did not show up and vote. The words of disapproval appear to be coming mainly from men. That’s not surprising.  There’s general excitement that Beto O’Rorke is running for Texas governor but not much enthusiasm expressed in the MSM about the barn burner campaign run by Val Demings to unseat little Marco Rubio.  This was what I could find that wasn’t from a month ago.  The site is Sunburn which is basically a Florida Political blog.

“Val Demings rips Marco Rubio for skipping 14 Senate hearings amid GOP boycotts” via Steven Lemongello of the Orlando Sentinel — U.S. Sen. Rubio has missed as many as 14 Senate hearings over the past two months, a practice the Republican was criticized for six years ago as he launched a bid for the presidency. But many of his absences since September have been part of either a GOP boycott of the Small Business Committee or a pledge to not vote for any of Biden’s State Department nominees. U.S. Rep. Demings, his likely opponent in next year’s U.S. Senate race, blasted Rubio’s absenteeism. Rubio did not appear at nine Foreign Relations hearings since Sept. 22, most of which focused on Biden nominations. Rubio has so far opposed all of Biden’s nominees to the State Department.

Meanwhile, the MSM is turning its need for drama to our Vice President Kamala Harris.  I like this guy that calls CNN the “Perez Hilton” of the political world. The piece is basically rumor-mongering and not much else.

Here’s the CNN article: “Exasperation and dysfunction: Inside Kamala Harris’ frustrating start as vice president”

Worn out by what they see as entrenched dysfunction and lack of focus, key West Wing aides have largely thrown up their hands at Vice President Kamala Harris and her staff — deciding there simply isn’t time to deal with them right now, especially at a moment when President Joe Biden faces quickly multiplying legislative and political concerns.

The exasperation runs both ways. Interviews with nearly three dozen former and current Harris aides, administration officials, Democratic operatives, donors and outside advisers — who spoke extensively to CNN — reveal a complex reality inside the White House. Many in the vice president’s circle fume that she’s not being adequately prepared or positioned, and instead is being sidelined. The vice president herself has told several confidants she feels constrained in what she’s able to do politically. And those around her remain wary of even hinting at future political ambitions, with Biden’s team highly attuned to signs of disloyalty, particularly from the vice president.

She’s a heartbeat away from the presidency now. She could be just a year away from launching a presidential campaign of her own, given doubts throughout the political world that Biden will actually go through with a reelection bid in 2024, something he’s pledged to do publicly and privately. Or she’ll be a critical validator in three years for a President trying to get the country to reelect him to serve until he’s 86.
Few of the insiders who spoke with CNN think she’s being well-prepared for whichever role it will be. Harris is struggling with a rocky relationship with some parts of the White House, while long-time supporters feel abandoned and see no coherent public sense of what she’s done or been trying to do as vice president. Being the first woman, and first woman of color, in national elected office is historic but has also come with outsized scrutiny and no forgiveness for even small errors, as she’ll often point out.

So, a “few” unnamed people created all this projection.  I call shenanigans!  This is a 3-year-old article from Forbes but I don’t think much has changed.  “Black Women Are Besieged On Social Media, And White Apathy Damns Us All.”  This was written by Janet Burns

In the past year or so, I’ve been particularly disturbed to see members and allies of the current administration lob such undermining and vitriolic slurs at Black women leaders on Twitter and elsewhere (often following cable news’ example) with virtually no backlash, including repeated attacks on two sitting U.S. congresswomen.

Surely a lifetime of undoubtedly backbreaking work and overcoming fierce adversity to become a prominent politician would earn both Representatives Maxine Waters (D-CA) and Frederica Wilson (D-FL) more respect from anyone, as well as an equally fierce outcry and defense from their white colleagues — even despite the various biases and (at best) blind spots in both parties.

After all, when film, stand-up, and Saturday Night Live! comedian Leslie Jones suddenly found her Twitter feed overwhelmed with racist and sexist abuse and extremely violent threats from thousands of users in response to her role in the female-led Ghostbusters remake last year (the worst part of a broader freak out over the film, as many of us will remember), some white fellow cast members and comedy peers quickly joined the Twitter fracas in her defense, or condemned the abuse in no uncertain terms, in the very least.

When it comes to the targeting and demeaning of Black women by prominent white male figures, however, it seems the political community has largely given this abuse a pass on platforms like Facebook and Twitter, as have tech companies themselves, for all intents and purposes.

I’m now working on a campaign to make certain the new sheriff in town is a black woman.  While working to see that our new congressional rep was a black woman I ran into the same kinds of things.   I’m solid of the opinion is that nothing will really change unless women band together to change it because the men all jump to the man when push comes to shove.

“How dare we to dream that we can do something about this system that is punitive, discriminatory, and inequitable,” Hutson said in a speech to ecstatic supporters at her election party at Soule’ Cafe on Banks Street when runoff was called by WWL-TV. “But we are gonna do just that.”

I have a few other bits and pieces of breaking news.

From Roll Call: Leahy, longest-serving sitting senator, to retire.

From NBC News:  Judge dismisses weapons charge in Kyle Rittenhouse homicide trial

From Max Boot, Washington Post: A newly disclosed memo reveals Trump’s plot to turn the military into his personal goon squad

So much crazy still going on that it’s getting easier to turn the TV off with each passing day.

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

Worn Out Friday News and Infrastructure Week

Posted: November 12, 2021 | Author: | Filed under: Climate change, failing infrastructure, infrastructure week, New Orleans | 15 Comments

Across the street from me on October 26, 2021, about a month after Hurricane IDA. Kathryn Huff

Hi Sky Dancers!

It’s Friday, and it’s been quite a week for me. I want today’s post to be a more personal story. I live in a city with worn-out infrastructure that’s on the frontline of climate change. We have all the usual urban problems that all cities have these days, including opioid abuse and challenges with families and people struggling to make ends meet.

Let me introduce you to the place that used to be my favorite neighbor when I moved down to my neighborhood about 23 years ago from the French Quarter. I lived 5 doors up from an active navy base filled with marines and sailors. It had been the center of the Navy’s Logistics and Supply since World War I.

Daily, I was greeted with the “sound off” song of marines and soldiers jogging down my avenue. The street was filled with houses owned by gay men, and I frequently went over to drink some coffee on a porch during the daily jog that happened slightly after reveille sounded. I always felt relatively safe here even though tourists and many people didn’t venture here, which was fine by me. Most everyone was either in the service industry or some work related to the port. We had the usual neighborhood bars and old-school food places. That was until Hurricane Katrina.

Afterward, the base’s operations were moved to Jackson, Florida, in one of those Dubya Bush/Turd Blossom political moves because Jeb was Florida’s Governor and Florida was and still is a critical swing state. They gave the base to the city with money to maintain it. Here’s what it looks like today.

Let me tell you about my day-so-far and month. Today, I woke up to the sound of a rape happening there. I hear everything because it’s a big echo chamber pointed at my house. There was some kind of music for a few hours before dawn back there near the old gas station. However, it wasn’t as bad as what happened Saturday night, when an illegal rave went on again from dusk to dawn with its loud, thunka thunkas repetitively screeched out by driving electric bass and drums.

Last week, I had to call 911 because there was essentially a shoot-out that was still going on when I was talking to the operator. Over a dozen rounds from two guns endlessly ringing out. They sent three cars, but I have no idea what went on. I told the operator I wasn’t going to go out and take a look. Thank you very much, and I’m sorry I have to keep sending police over there.

Abandoned Navy Base New Orleans Bywater Waxing Gibbous moon, October 20, 2021, Kathryn Huff

The place is home to about 300 homeless–mostly drug addicted–people. They’re also pretty young. There’s an encampment behind a locked gated area with tents. Then, there are the folks that grab a room in the base and essentially live there. There’s even a free store over there where everyone dumps their extra street grabs. There are frequent fires too. If you’re suspected of stealing someone’s stash, your room gets set ablaze. Stuff also gets dumped out the window. All the furniture and things the navy left there have been essentially destroyed or sold off.

I also lost my power early this morning for the second time this week. This time there was no reason given. The early Monday fire that burned a friend’s house mostly down was associated with a power outage. Two weeks ago, a blazing transformer caused another power outage. Our feeder lines fell in the Mississippi during Ida, and I was without power for over 2 weeks and I’m wondering if it’s all due to that and old wiring in old houses. Now, my laundry room has no power in it, and I’m trying to get an electrician out to see what happened. However, I just got told by my dearest Allstate that my damage didn’t meet my $7,800 named hurricane deductible that has reduced some from the $12,000 named hurricane they gave me after Katrina. It was suspiciously the amount of money they gave me for damage too. I’ve got to go back to FEMA yet again.

So, my point with all of this is that this shouldn’t be normal in any city, but it is expected here. We’re lucky the Corps of Engineers up-armored our flood defenses with new and expensive equipment after Katrina. We didn’t flood this time. We’re fortunate the Public Sewerage and Water Board figured Entergy outages into their plans a few years back, and their backup generators stayed on, or the entire area would have lost potable water. Entergy–a for-profit company–failed and is failing us miserably. It still is, as far as I can tell.

After Hurricane Katrina, the LLC that serves New Orleans declared bankruptcy and passed all the costs on to us. Even before then, we had some of the highest electric rates in the country. I was in charge of the budget of the Atlanta Fed and its branches for several years. One of the extensive reports I always had to write was why the New Orleans Fed had higher power bills than the SF Fed, the NYC Fed, and all of the Fed Branches in the country. Take a guess. And this was way before Katrina. Privatization of Public Services should not be a default option for policy. Letting them literally get away with murder during storms should be a disqualifier.

So, I would like some sympathy and help like the rest of my neighbors, but that’s not why I’m writing this. Well, maybe a little. However, I want to warn you that it’s coming to a city near you if it hasn’t already. Think of Texas and its adventure in being out of the grid during a winter storm. Think of Florida, where buildings are collapsing because they were built near sandy buildings where water has encroached and exposed bad building practices and again, maintenance on the structure.

This is what you get with years of ignoring infrastructure and undermining nature by ignoring the impact fossil fuels have had on the climate and geography of the one planet we all live on. It impacts our health and our ability to live safely with what should be normal services in a developed country like ours.

So, this brings me to why we should be fighting like hell for all the Build Back Better Plan components and thankful that it’s really infrastructure week. The funds going to Louisiana and New Orleans are much needed. Both of my Senators are educated men with a tendency to kowtow to idiots. However, this is one bill that we owe thanks to one of my Senators who is now experiencing the full treatment of the confederacy of dunces. He helped write, sponsor, and cast a yes vote for the bill. He did have some coverage from McConnell but the Republican Base has been threatening every Republican who voted yes.

Please stay on top of all the infrastructure, climate change initiatives, and social structure needed to truly correct our course that got so skewed starting in the Reagan years. My neighbors and I stand as anecdotal evidence to all that bad policy from closing down mental health facilities to privatizing things that didn’t need to be privatized and selling out to the drug and fossil fuel industries. Let’s take our no war atm bonus and solve those problems.

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

Happy Birthday to hometown hero Jon Batiste and congratulations on all the success with this album! Here’s everything that’s right about my home town! Watch him and the band play his beautiful music!

Monday Reads: Darwin Award Issue

Posted: November 8, 2021 | Author: | Filed under: Afternoon Reads, COVID19, Right Wing Angst, social media, The Insurrection Fallout | 12 Comments

Masks, 1911, Emil Nolde

Good Afternoon Sky Dancers!

The state of Louisiana and the City of New Orleans opened up right before Halloween dropping some of the mask mandates. I’m not sure how smart of an idea that was given that we’ve seen the same pattern of plague rat invasion as tourists come back to the city from places where vaccine adoption is low.  The 4th of July comes to mind.  However, we did have good numbers, and I’m now starting the countdown to Thanksgiving to see if we surge again. I’m still masking and staying my fat ass home mostly. I’ve come to enjoy having things delivered.  Halloween should have been a big party with best mask awards.

So, anyway, today’s New York Times and David Leonhardt have some startling–but not surprising–statistics to report. “U.S. Covid Deaths Get Even Redder. The partisan gap in Covid’s death toll has grown faster over the past month than at any previous point.” This is essentially why I worry when we just invite the surrounding parishes and states to let their people out of the state to aim a deadly cough at anyone.  The differences in death rates between this year and last are astounding.

Then the vaccines arrived.

They proved so powerful, and the partisan attitudes toward them so different, that a gap in Covid’s death toll quickly emerged. I have covered that gap in two newsletters — one this summer, one last month — and today’s newsletter offers an update.

The brief version: The gap in Covid’s death toll between red and blue America has grown faster over the past month than at any previous point.

In October, 25 out of every 100,000 residents of heavily Trump counties died from Covid, more than three times higher than the rate in heavily Biden counties (7.8 per 100,000). October was the fifth consecutive month that the percentage gap between the death rates in Trump counties and Biden counties widened.

Some conservative writers have tried to claim that the gap may stem from regional differences in weather or age, but those arguments fall apart under scrutiny. (If weather or age were a major reason, the pattern would have begun to appear last year.) The true explanation is straightforward: The vaccines are remarkably effective at preventing severe Covid, and almost 40 percent of Republican adults remain unvaccinated, compared with about 10 percent of Democratic adults.

And while we’re on the subject, how can you possibly get triggered by Big Bird?

Jackson Pollock, Mask,
1941

Plague rats indeed.  Red is Dead.  Meanwhile, the worst of them are triggered by Big Bird talking to kids about his vaccine. There’s a lot of a pearl-clutching about doing mass vaccinations in schools while many of us are old enough to have stood in line for a lot of those in the 1950s and 1960s. Many Republicans are acting like that never happened.

So, if they think public health actions are a governmental overreach, why are they down with authoritarianism?  Is it because it wears a white face?  This is from The Bulwark. ” Notes on an Authoritarian Conspiracy: Inside the Claremont Institute’s “79 Days to Inauguration” Report. Claremont’s post-election war game provides a window into the group’s ambitions.”

John Eastman has a prominent place in all of this along with all the white nationalist domestic terrorists. It’s a tough read but a necessary one.

The sun rises on January 6, 2021 while a nation is in crisis.

Michigan’s presidential electors are in dispute after a mysterious fire in Detroit destroyed thousands of mail-in ballots, ultimately throwing the election to Congress.

The nation’s capital is overwhelmed by riots organized by left-wing radicals.

A Republican member of Congress is attacked and critically injured in the violence, potentially depriving Donald Trump of the decisive vote.

However, the representative heroically insists on being taken to the House floor. “With IVs and blood transfusions being administered, the member casts the deciding vote, giving Trump 26 state delegations and the needed majority.”

This is the grisly climax of a report published in mid-October 2020 by the Claremont Institute and Texas Public Policy Foundation’s (TPPF) called “79 Days to Inauguration,” prepared by “Constitutional scholars, along with experts in election law, foreign affairs, law enforcement, and media . . . coordinated by a retired military officer experienced in running hundreds of wargames.”

Among these luminaries were figures such as John Eastman—lawyer for Donald Trump and author of a memo advising Vice President Mike Pence to unilaterally block certification of Joe Biden’s win in order to buy time for GOP-controlled state legislatures to send competing slates of electors—and K.T. McFarland, who served as deputy national security advisor under Michael Flynn in the Trump White House.

Other participants include Kevin Roberts, then-executive director of the Texas Public Policy Foundation (soon to be head of the Heritage Foundation), Jeff Giesea, “a [Peter] Thiel protégé and secret funder of alt-right causes,” and Charles Haywood, a fringe blogger who anxiously awaits an American “Caesar, authoritarian reconstructor of our institutions.”

Masks, 1925′ James Ensor

The MSM needs to be screaming a lot louder about this than talking about sausage-making behind any policy.  Leave the latter worry to Nancy, Chuck, Kamala, and Joe.  More from that Bulwark article:

Remember, this narrative is the result of a role-playing exercise in which the participants imagined themselves as key decision-makers in the federal government. The actions described, therefore, might be best understood as a combination of group therapy and suggestions for how they believe the federal government and law enforcement should behave in a moment of constitutional crisis.

Some of the report is revealing. Some of it is sad. Some of it is darkly funny. For instance, the authors’ recommendation for mass, politically motivated arrests “to remove the players from the picture” sits oddly next to the right’s outraged reaction to the prosecution of Trump supporters who stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6.

There’s more irony in how the task force imagines right-wing gangs would operate during such a period: with quiet discipline and in cooperation with law enforcement.

A lack of social media activity and overt action by the rioting by members of the Proud Boys draws the attention of law enforcement officials suspecting they may be operating covertly on the ground in several major urban rioting areas, but their exact involvement is unknown. Reports of militias moving into suburban areas is being monitored. Several groups affiliated with the Three Percenters and Oath Keepers have openly offered to assist law enforcement in putting down the violence via social media, touting significant current and retired law enforcement and military membership.

Which is . . . not how the Trumpist forces behaved during the actual crisis:

Go read it and try to open a few eyes around you by sharing it.  Then see who they really are when you read this.

A man who allegedly participated in the Capitol riot Jan. 6 and is wanted by the FBI is now seeking asylum in Belarus, the country’s state media reported Monday, presenting him as a “simple American whose shops were burned by Black Lives Matter activists.”

Evan Neumann, who appears to have sat down for an interview with Belarusian state television in a segment titled “Goodbye, America,” is wanted in the United States on charges of violent entry and disorderly conduct on the Capitol grounds, as well as for assaulting, resisting and obstructing law enforcement during civil disorder.

Both Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko and his close ally, Russian President Vladimir Putin, have frequently referenced the Capitol riot, calling the prosecution of those involved an example of “double standards” by the United States because it frequently criticizes crackdowns on anti-government protests abroad.

When mass protests broke out across Belarus last year over its presidential election, which the international community has widely denounced as rigged, thousands of demonstrators were brutally beaten by police and arrested. Many said they were tortured in prison.

But Neumann could be welcomed in Belarus as part of the regime’s anti-Western propaganda efforts. Lukashenko, who has been in power since 1994, has said the United States stoked last year’s opposition movement to unseat him.

Tim O’Connor, a spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in Belarus, which is based in Vilnius, Lithuania, said in a statement that the embassy has “seen Belarusian state media reporting about Mr. Neumann. Due to U.S. privacy laws, we are limited in what we can say about individual U.S. citizens.”

“The United States is a country where the rule of law is respected and where government is transparent and accountable for its actions,” O’Connor added. “Every citizen can count on an impartial and objective court system. There has not been a single case of transparent, accountable investigation into and prosecution of the actions of Belarusian police that resulted in deaths, systemic torture and the continued repression of Belarusian citizens, of whom over 800 remain in jail for peaceful protest against the regime.”

Death and the Masks, 1897, James Ensor

Maybe Belarus could take all the Trumps and the Trumperz in and deal with them.  That way we’d have a lot fewer problems.  NBC reports on a poll that shows deep partisan differences in social media usage. Well, if they all went to Belarus they wouldn’t have to worry about social media at all.

Our most recent NBC News poll asked respondents about their social media consumption, and the results told a clear story that doesn’t require 280 characters.

Twitter isn’t real life — at least when it comes to party identification and political attitudes.

In the poll, 69 percent of adults say they have an account on Facebook, 28 percent say they use Twitter, 27 percent use TikTok and 27 percent don’t have an account on any of these social media platforms.

And those who use Twitter and TikTok are more likely to be Democrats than Republicans; are more likely to be Democrats who supported Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren than Joe Biden during the 2020 Democratic primary season; and are — not surprisingly — more likely to be younger than the general population.

That figures.  Most people I know on Twitter use it to find breaking news.  I don’t really look for news on Facebook other than that related to my friends’ cats, dogs, bunnies, and grandchildren.

So, I’ll leave all this to you to discuss.  Are you still masking everywhere?  I walk Temple sans mask but I don’t go near people without one in a building if I go at all.  Like I said, I’m beginning to enjoy front door service.

What’s on your news and reading list today?

Friday Reads: The Fourth Estate is Failing Us

Posted: November 5, 2021 | Author: | Filed under: Media | 27 Comments

Lessons of history: How to boost newspaper sales with Sarah Bernhardt

Good Afternoon Sky Dancers!

My body is screaming for our brief respite from Daylight Savings time!  It switched maybe a month ago while the clock changes over the weekend.  So while I know I’m late for everything recently, my body tells me that sleeping is ok because this should be standard time. So, go ahead and do it!

My brain is also telling me to turn off the tv and stay away from most of today’s headlines.  We’ve never been at a place in history where journalism is more required and all we get is a group of hacks with very narrow vantage points.

This conversation is going on between a group of us on the Facebook page of a retired CNN producer.

Just wanted to let you know that all your whining about Dems’ “messaging” means absolutely nothing when my beloved colleagues aren’t gonna talk about what they say anyway.If a Dem shouts from the rooftops but those colleagues only care what Republicans say, will anybody hear the message?

No, my friends, no they won’t. And it’s bad enough that CNN, MSNBC, and the Big Three can barely be bothered to talk about anything beyond the Republican viewpoint, but in many parts of rural America, cable only has Fox News, which outright lies about what’s going on.

So think of some other way to get the “message” across. Better yet, ask yourselves why YOU think it’s not being heard. Is it really because no one’s delivering it? Or is it because the message gets delivered to and processed through a delusional political press that hasn’t learned anything since at least 2016 and probably much earlier?

The first response to her post brings the receipts. He explains why he’s given up on cable news altogether.

I stopped watching cable news when we cut the cord a couple of years ago. Usually watch NBC News Now in the morning, which is free, on YouTube. Not a single mention today of Biden when covering the jobs report. In fact, “Today’s job report wasn’t that good compared to previous months,” was the only comparison made. Cherry on top for me? A long rambling story about how everyone is getting a taste of winter “early” cause it is chilly for the NYC marathon, despite the fact that many frost and freeze warnings are running 2 weeks later than average. No one’s getting a taste of winter “early.”

This brings us back to a few more revolting recent headlines where research was the last thing on a reporter’s mind.  This one is recent from CNN.  Joshua Espinoza points a few things out at this independent media outlet that weren’t particularly well-searched.

So, many folks didn’t realize that the family has 10 kids which include foster and adopted children. So, 12 gallons of milk a week could be a reasonable amount. But, the real story is what’s the average price of milk been over the last few years?  Is there really that much inflation in ag products?  Is this truth or perception formed by sloppy reporting? Also, check the grocery cart out. Maybe buying less brandnames would help you make ends meet?

Even after adjusting for inflation, this concern really does hold up to the data.

I think this story should have been left on the cutting floor.  Either that or they need to talk to Texas about the amount of money they’re allotting homes with so many foster children.  This just isn’t adding up.

Then, I saw this on Brian Williams last night.  Maybe Brian got one thing right this year.

He has a point so watch this.

https://twitter.com/IAmPoliticsGirl/status/1456101658501345283

So, where are we at today?

And our politics girl has something to say about the inflation/shortage thing too …

https://twitter.com/joebarton1238/status/1456642030428246017

Reporters in Washington in 1920

So, I’m with her on that. My other piece of advice is to go on a sabbatical for a year every few years if your journalist life is spent in Washington D.C  or New York City. Try existing somewhere with the rest of us.  I’m old enough to remember when a right-wing activist on CRT tricked you–New York Times–into thinking he just tripped across it because someone was mean to his granddaughter and you didn’t background check him either.  You seem to be always chasing the elusive characters in Hillbilly Elegy rather than talking to the majority of us who are real.

You should offset Fox New’s lies rather than compete with them! Like, take this turkey and deep fry it! From Vice: “Tucker Carlson Pumped Full of Fentanyl, Emerges With New Understanding of the Opioid Crisis.”  As if he wasn’t insane enough before.

Something happened to Tucker Carlson Monday morning that caused him to get emergency back surgery later in the week. It was, he said, according to a recording obtained by Motherboard, “one of the most traumatic things that’s ever happened to me in my whole life, ever.”

What exactly was so traumatic isn’t clear. A Fox News spokesperson said, “Tucker Carlson had emergency back surgery yesterday and did the show anyway. He thanks all those who tuned in and watched closely.”But before Wednesday night’s broadcast of his Tucker Carlson Tonight program, Carlson—who by all accounts doesn’t drink or use drugs—spoke in detail on set to his production team about what he experienced, and said that because he was treated with intravenous fentanyl and other powerful painkillers, he now understands America’s opioid crisis in a deeper way.

Carlson is the most-watched news host in America, a hugely influential figure whose team, as he says on the recording, “changed American politics.” His newfound insight into the suffering opioids cause is thus of potentially immense importance. (Motherboard described the comments to the Fox News spokesperson, who did not dispute their authenticity. Carlson, they said, would “take a pass” on discussing the topic with a reporter.)

“This is just like a miracle,” a production worker told him. “I, like, truly cannot believe you’re standing right now.”

“That was one of the most intense experiences of my life,” said Carlson. “They hit me up, they told me this morning, with such a huge dose of dilaudid, which is more powerful than morphine, when I got there, that I had trouble breathing.” (Dilaudid is a powerful opioid painkiller.) “Scared the shit out of me. Didn’t have any effect at all. And then all night, I lay there, the nurse finally upped my dosage of dilaudid to the point where every eight minutes I hit it and it was like getting shot. Just like bam, feel it hit me, and it didn’t touch the pain.”

1937 photograph of the offices of the Louisville Courier Journal. Photograph: Margaret Bourke-White/Getty

I’m also old enough to remember watching Geraldo Rivera open an empty vault on live tv in 1986 and later in 2003 , he broadcast his position from an active battle site in Iraq.  The military promptly kicked him out of there. He was just one of thousands of journalism who were more in love with being war time reporters than caring about the truth and saving American lives.

Still, all these hacks are still around some one and still creating ‘look at me ma!’ moments passing as news.  Like Politics Girl says and my friends, the media is really not going to address anything that makes Biden or the Democratic party look good. They better step up and serve their message cold and consider the press hostile.

Just an additional thought while I’m at this.  When is the last time a Democratic pol showed up on the Sunday Talk shows? (via Vox) “The staggering overrepresentation of white, conservative men on Sunday political shows. ”  This is from 2016 but still holds true. Here’s a study from 2020.

This research will compare guests between the first two years of Barack Obama’s
presidency and the first two years of Donald Trump’s presidency. A quantitative content analysis of television transcripts was used to identify changes in both the political affiliations and profession of the guests who appeared on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” CBS’s “Face the Nation,” ABC’s “This Week” and “Fox News Sunday” between the two administrations. Findings indicated that the dominant political viewpoint of guests differed by show during the Obama administration, while all shows hosted more Republicans than Democrats during the Trump administration. Furthermore, U.S. Senators and TV/Radio journalists were cumulatively the most frequent guests on the programs.

“That’s just the way it is Somethings, they never change.”

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

Monday Reads: It’s one of those days where I’m just speechless

Posted: November 1, 2021 | Author: | Filed under: Reproductive Rights, Republican Code Words and Concepts, Republican politics, Republican presidential politics, Revisionism, Treason and Sedition Republican Style | 20 Comments

Free South Africa- Keith Haring- 1985

Well, it’s Monday Sky Dancers!

I’m just going to put these items up and see if you’re as shocked and speechless as I am.  The Supreme Court is holding oral arguments on the unconstitutional Texas Abortion Law that’s designed to make women chattel property of whatever state decides that’s their political wish.    You can watch it on C-Span 2 where you can see that Clarence Thomas actually can speak from the bench and not just from political fundraisers.

The artwork today is from this link: “Famous Political Art Pieces”  and this link: “15 Influential Political Art Pieces. Artwork(s) In Focus, Top Lists, Art History, Socially Engaged Art”.

Shepard Fairey-George Orwell Print Set with Books (2008)

There really never was a day in America when political discourse wasn’t wrapped up in testosterone posing but this tit-for-tat shit is really out there.   I just learned about the “Let’s go Brandon” thing and here’s Dan Rather to damn it so I don’t have to fire a synapse thinking about college boys at football games creating a national meanness meme.  “A Party Embraces Vulgarity.”

The issue at hand can succinctly be summed up in three words: “Let’s go Brandon.” If you have no idea what I am talking about, consider yourself fortunate. For reasons too mundane to fully outline here, “Let’s go Brandon” has become a favorite chant and rallying cry for many Republicans as a stand-in for another three-word chant that you may also have heard : “F- Joe Biden,” with F-, for the purposes of decorum in this newsletter, standing for a four-letter vulgarity.  Search for “Let’s Go Brandon,” and you will start finding it everywhere – all over social media, a song with a ton of downloads on iTunes, at political rallies, and among snickering Republicans in Washington.

In a compelling column in the Washington Post, Dana Milbank uses the phrase to dive into the stark differences between the seriousness and propriety of the two political parties at this moment. He writes:

“Democrats clear the way for passage of a $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill that will provide broadband Internet and lead-free drinking water to every American, and better roads, bridges and ports for all to enjoy. And Republicans reply: Let’s go Brandon…

Could the contrast be any greater? Half of America’s leaders are trying to govern, and the other half are hurling vulgarities.”

The entire piece is worth the read, but for our discussion here I would like to delve a little deeper into what I think these vulgarities really mean, what motivates them, and what should be our – particularly the media’s – response.

Politics has never been a genteel pastime. The volume of vulgarities I heard covering the White House, Congress, and politics at the state and local level over the decades would rival any comedy special on HBO. In the passionate pursuit of power, discourse, especially behind the closed doors where the real action takes place, is often reduced to words that can be spelled with only four letters, or their adjectival equivalents. And no matter what side of the political divide you might be on, there have likely been moments when you are reading something or listening to an opposing politician speak and you have been moved to at least think of obscenities, if not utter them out loud. There have certainly been many Democratic politicians who have sworn about Republicans. But what we are witnessing here is fundamentally different.

“F- Joe Biden,” or the slightly less explicitly obscene but no more clever “Let’s go Brandon,” is about much more than political passion or anger. It’s about weaponizing the vulgar dehumanization of our entire democratic – small d – experiment. Joe Biden is not only a person; he is the President of the United States, whether your tinfoil-shrouded conspiracy brain cares to recognize that fact or not. How many times have we heard Republicans sanctimoniously preach about how Democrats don’t “respect” the office of the presidency for such things as President Obama not saluting properly or wearing a tan suit?

Golden Future of America- Robert Indiana- 1976

Not to be outdone, The Wall Street Journal Op-Ed page which is a favorite thing of those seeking to line rat cages is pearl-clutching over 5 young people dressed up as the Torch Terrorists in Charlottesville and stood in silent ironic protest in front of the Trumpist running for governor in Virginia’s campaign bus. Wow, they really let the Lincoln Project get to them this time.  “A Dirty Campaign Trick in Virginia. The Lincoln Project plays the race card in a false-flag operation.”  As usual, there are two right-wing conspiracy theory signals dog-whistling from the headline.  Everything surrounding racism is playing “the race card” and I can’t even figure how this is a “false-flag operation,” but hey, get down with your crazy stupid selves!  How long do we have to wait before we read the next attempt to label it “virtue-signaling”?

Democrats routinely play the race card when they’re worried about losing an election, and that’s exactly what the operatives from the Lincoln Project did last week in staging a dirty campaign trick against surging GOP candidate Glenn Youngkin.

It started Friday when a reporter for a local NBC affiliate tweeted a photo of four men and one woman dressed in white shirts, khakis and sunglasses and holding tiki torches. They were standing in front of Republican gubernatorial candidate Glenn Youngkin’s bus during a campaign stop in Virginia.
“These men approached @GlennYoungkin’s bus as it pulled up saying what sounded like, ‘We’re all in for Glenn.” tweeted Elizabeth Holmes. The tiki torches were meant to tie Mr. Youngkin to the infamous torchlit, white nationalist march in Charlottesville in 2017.

Twitter exploded, with various people claiming to have identified people in the tiki-torch photo as Democrats. They hadn’t been positively ID’d by the time we went to press on Sunday.

But as evidence grew that this was a setup, the Lincoln Project finally fessed up. It presented its attempt to play the white supremacist card as an exercise in civic virtue, saying it was “our way of reminding Virginians” about Charlottesville, “the Republican Party’s embrace of those values,” and Mr. Youngkin’s “failure to condemn it.” This is a slur against Mr. Youngkin and the Virginia GOP.

Massacre in Korea, 1951 by Pablo Picasso

So, this is all pretty radically nuts because the latest craziness by the Republicans in Virginia is all about that Critical Race Theory nuttiness. Juan William states it plainly.  ‘Parents’ rights’ is code for white race politics’.  I remember living through this same craziness in 1992 when the code word was “multiculturalism” which basically means if it wasn’t spat out by a white christianist it shouldn’t be taught to children.

After white supremacists spilled blood in defense of keeping up Confederate statues in 2017, the GOP candidate for governor of Virginia, Ed Gillespie, said the monuments should stay up as a matter of heritage and history.

His TV advertising featured threatening images of Latino gangs, labeled illegal immigrants, involved in murder and rape.

The racially loaded “Culture Wars” campaign, straight from then-President Trump’s playbook, gave Gillespie a push, but he ultimately lost the race to Democrat Ralph Northam.

Now Virginia Republicans are back with a new and improved “Culture Wars” campaign for 2021. The closing argument is once again full of racial division — but this time it is dressed up as a defense of little children.

The rallying cry is “Parents’ Rights.”

It is a campaign to stop classroom discussion of Black Lives Matter protests or slavery because it could upset some children, especially white children who might feel guilt.

And this time, the Trump-imitating Republicans think they have struck political gold.

Unlike their earlier defense of Confederate monuments, the “Parents’ Rights” campaign message at first glance looks to have zero to do with race.

That puts Democrats on the defensive. They are in the uncomfortable position of calling the attention of suburban white moms to divisive racial politics being used by Republican Glenn Youngkin’s campaign.

Terry McAuliffe, the Democratic candidate, calls the Republican message a “racist dog whistle.”

The Problem we all live with, Norman Rockwell, 1963

Still, that race–that will be determined tomorrow–is a dead heat.  This is from the NYT: “In the Final Days Before Virginia Votes, Both Sides Claim Momentum.”

The high-stakes race for governor of Virginia entered its final stretch with Glenn Youngkin and Terry McAuliffe trading accusations of sowing division, as voters appeared closely divided over returning a Democrat to office or electing a Republican to lead their state for the first time in more than a decade.

The size and atmosphere of dueling events during the last weekend of campaigning before Election Day on Tuesday reflected the trends in the most recent polls. Mr. Youngkin, the Republican candidate, greeted crowds of more than 1,000, while Mr. McAuliffe, the Democrat, hustled through sparsely attended events from morning to night.

Mr. McAuliffe, who served one term as governor from 2014 to 2018, has displayed a rising sense of urgency lately, dispatching some of the Democratic Party’s biggest stars to campaign for him and push people to vote early. In 11 hours on Saturday, Mr. McAuliffe traveled more than 120 miles, making eight stops in six cities amid a whirlwind day of campaigning in which he urged supporters not to be complacent.

“We are substantially leading on the early vote, but we cannot take our foot off the gas,” Mr. McAuliffe told a crowd on Saturday in Norfolk, where he met with labor leaders who were planning to spend the day knocking on doors.

Meanwhile, The Bulwark’s Tim Miller just had to put this headline in front of me today: “Donald Trump Is Now the Odds-On Favorite to Be President in 2025 .”  I’m gagging over here.

So, Donald Trump is now the odds-on favorite to be president of the United States in 2025.

I know that lede sentence was also the headline, but I wanted you to read it one more time just to let it really settle in the ol’ noggin before pressing forward.

The twice-impeached, disgraced loser who was schlonged in the 2020 election, tried to stay in power against the will of the people, and then came ten cowardly Republican senators away from being disqualified from ever running for office again, is now more likely than any other person in the world to take the next oath of office on the Capitol steps on January 20, 2025.

How is that for some weird shit?

Now I’m sure some will roll their eyes when this headline comes across the Twitter feed. Attribute this article to my raging Trump Derangement Syndrome or The Bulwark’s Cady Heron-level obsession with Mar-a-Lago’s in-house wedding toastmaster.

But this ain’t about my compulsions. It’s the actual, real-world reality being presented by those who have the most skin in the game.

Both the major off-shore gambling quants and the online trading markets have moved in Mr. Trump’s favor in the past couple weeks.

Banksy, The Flower Thrower, 1963

Here’s some more crazy shit that I’m speechless about.

Why does the press keep trying to incite a civil war instead of elucidating the danger in all of this?  Rad idea below  Atlantic writer suggests Never Trumperz support DeSantis.  (Connor Friedsdorf warning) What drug is this guy on? Or Read this shake-down in New York Magazine describing DeSantis worship.

I’m going to go play music and eat chocolate now.  Hope you have a great day and that you’re not as depressed and confused about all this is and derp as I am.

I had to steal this image from my blogging buddy Peter Athas  Get his take on that TNR article here.

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

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