The Commentariat -- September 10, 2021
Afternoon Update:
Elizabeth Dwoskin & Jeff Stein of the Washington Post: "Facebook executives have been meeting with senior Biden administration officials in recent weeks as the social media giant tries to assuage concerns about its controversial cryptocurrency project, but the effort is running into some of the same fears from regulators that have plagued it for more than two years. Despite rebranding and overhauling the project -- which aims to establish a global network for instantaneous payments -- Facebook and its partners still face scrutiny from some Treasury Department officials who feel the plans could undermine the stability of the financial system, according to two people briefed on the deliberations.... Government officials are concerned that the proposed new network -- an independent association backed by Facebook that is now known as Diem -- could proliferate and then threaten the broader economy if its value crashed.... Though Diem is formally independent, its association with Facebook compounds the risk because Facebook has the ability to scale its products to billions of people all over the world." ~~~
~~~ Marie: I think pretty much everything Facebook does is alarming, and messing with currency tops that list. Governments around the world are bad enough; allowing a private company to run the world -- which seems to be Facebook's aim -- is intolerable.
Nick Miroff of the Washington Post: "The Department of Homeland Security flagged 44 Afghan evacuees as potential national security risks during the past two weeks as the government screened tens of thousands for resettlement in the United States, according to DHS vetting records reviewed by The Washington Post. Of the more than 60,000 evacuees who have arrived on U.S. soil since Aug. 17, the lists show 13 Afghans remain in U.S. Customs and Border Protection custody awaiting additional screening and review procedures, including interviews with FBI and counterterrorism teams. Another 15 evacuees who were considered security concerns have been turned over to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), sent back to transit sites in Europe or the Middle East, or in some cases approved for release after additional review. There are 16 Afghans on the DHS lists who have not been cleared to travel and remain overseas at the transit sites U.S. officials call 'lily pads.'"
Paul Krugman: "... that golden moment of unity [many claim enveloped the U.S. right after 9/11] never existed; it's a myth, one that we need to stop perpetuating if we want to understand the dire current state of American democracy. The truth is that key parts of the American body politic saw 9/11, right from the beginning, not as a moment to seek national unity but as an opportunity to seize domestic political advantage. And this cynicism in the face of the horror tells us that even at a time when America truly was under external attack, the biggest dangers we faced were already internal. The Republican Party wasn't yet full-on authoritarian, but it was willing to do whatever it took to get what it wanted, and disdainful of the legitimacy of its opposition. That is, we were well along on the road to the Jan. 6 putsch -- and toward a G.O.P. that has, in effect, endorsed that putsch and seems all too likely to try one again." Thanks to P.D. Pepe for the link.
Uh, Wow! Betsy Swan of Politico: "Just two days before armed rioters stormed and ransacked the Capitol, about 300 law enforcement officials got on a conference call to talk about the possibility that Donald Trump's supporters would turn violent on Jan. 6. They specifically discussed the possibility that the day's gatherings would turn into a mass-casualty event, and they made plans on how to communicate with each other if that happened.... The extent of the FBI's awareness that the rally by Trump backers could turn violent raises fresh questions about why national security and law enforcement officials didn't do more to protect the Capitol on that volatile day. A few days after the riot, a top FBI official told reporters that the Bureau 'did not have intelligence suggesting the pro-Trump rally would be anything more than a lawful demonstration,' according to The Washington Post. But the call summary shows that hundreds of officials at fusion centers around the country in fact saw the threat coming...."
Shayna Jacobs of the Washington Post: "A Soviet-born businessman who assisted Rudolph W. Giuliani in his Ukrainian political efforts on behalf of ... Donald Trump pleaded guilty Friday to violating campaign finance laws, as others charged in the case prepare to stand trial. Igor Fruman, 56, who was arrested with co-defendant Lev Parnas at Dulles International Airport in 2019, entered a guilty plea to one count of soliciting foreign campaign contributions and is expected to be sentenced Jan. 21 by U.S. District Court Judge J. Paul Oetken. Prosecutors previously said there were two wire transfers from a Russian national totaling $1 million -- in September and October 2018 -- given with the expectation that the money would be donated to politicians in states where Fruman and his business associates believed they could get retail marijuana licenses. In federal court in Manhattan, Fruman admitted to knowing he could not make donations to candidates in U.S. elections on behalf of a foreign national.... Fruman's attorney, Todd Blanche, said in a statement after the court appearance that his client 'is not cooperating with the government....'"
Anabelle Timsit of the Washington Post: "Republican leaders are blasting President Biden's sweeping new coronavirus vaccine mandates for businesses and federal workers, decrying them as unconstitutional infringements on personal liberties and promising to sue. Biden took not-so-thinly-veiled swipes at Republican politicians in his address on Thursday outlining his plan to mandate immunization for federal employees and contractors, as well as health-care workers in facilities that treat patients on Medicare or Medicaid. Biden aims to require businesses with more than 100 employees to mandate vaccinations or test their employees weekly." This is an expansion of an item in Friday's WashPo Covid-19 live updates, linked below. ~~~
~~~ Michael Shear, et al., of the New York Times: "On Friday, facing accusations from Republicans of an abuse of power and threats of lawsuits, [President] Biden had a simple retort. 'Have at it,' he said. The right of government to impose vaccines has been established since at least 1904, when the Supreme Court issued a 7-to-2 ruling that Cambridge, Mass., could require all adults to be vaccinated against smallpox. But more recent cases -- including the first Supreme Court ruling on the Affordable Care Act -- call into question whether Mr. Biden or any president could simply order all Americans to get shots. That is not what Mr. Biden is doing. By requiring that companies maintain safe workplaces through vaccination, legal experts said Friday that the president was relying on the federal government's well-established constitutional power to regulate commerce and the 51-year-old law establishing the Occupational Safety and Health Administration."
Louisiana. Sophie Kasakove & Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs of the New York Times: "... in New Orleans East sits a new, 128-megawatt gas power plant that ... tens of thousands of ... New Orleans residents help fund each month when they pay their bills to Entergy, the city's sole electric utility. The plant went online last year with a promise that it would provide quick, reliable start-up power to a city that has struggled to withstand the ever-more-powerful storms that blow in from the Gulf of Mexico. But more than a week after the Category 4 storm toppled transmission lines and severed the city's connection to the outside power grid, [many of the residents of] New Orleans were still sitting in dark, humid homes, with the last major parts of the city brought back online only on Wednesday. As many as 10 deaths may have been caused by the heat in the midst of the extended power outage, the coroner said, after the city's new power plant did not achieve the 'black start' that Entergy had promised -- a quick delivery of power in the middle of a blackout.... Why it took so long to ramp up and how an entire U.S. city could have remained without power for so long is now the subject of extensive finger-pointing and blame, with the city pledging a full investigation that could take months." ~~~
~~~ Marie: Oh, I know why: because no commercial operation that sells you stuff has less of a commitment to delivery than your power company. Whether it's Entergy, or Pacific Electric or Florida Power & Light, those companies will tell you to your face they don't guarantee you power, and they'll get it to you when the get it to you, maybe around the time you get your next rate hike.
~~~~~~~~~~
Annie Linskey, et al., of the Washington Post: "President Biden announced sweeping new coronavirus vaccine mandates Thursday designed to affect tens of millions of Americans, ordering all businesses with more than 100 employees to require their workers to be immunized or face weekly testing. Biden also said that he would require most health-care facilities that accept Medicare or Medicaid funding to vaccinate their employees, which the White House believes will cover 50,000 locations. And the president signed an executive order compelling all federal employees to get vaccinated -- without an option for those who prefer to be regularly tested instead -- in an effort to create a model he hopes state governments will embrace. He is also ordering all staffers in Head Start programs, along with Defense Department and federally operated schools for Native Americans, to be vaccinated. (This is an update of a story linked yesterday.) ~~~
~~~ Although President Biden is not much of an orator, it was a pretty good speech:
~~~ Lauren Hirsch of the New York Times: "Some 80 million workers will be affected. The requirements will be imposed by the Department of Labor and its Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which is drafting an emergency temporary standard to carry out the mandate, according to the White House. The move, though, is sure to face political pushback and litigation.... OSHA oversees workplace safety, which the agency is likely to contend extends to vaccine mandates." ~~~
~~~ Here's the White House's breakdown of President Biden's plan. ~~~
~~~ Jim Tankersley of the New York Times: "President Biden's aggressive move to expand the number of vaccinated Americans and halt the spread of the Delta variant is not just an effort to save lives. It is also an attempt to counter the continuing and evolving threat that the virus poses to the economy.... After weeks of playing down the threat that a new wave of infections posed to the recovery, the president and his team blamed Delta for slowing job growth in August. 'We're in a tough stretch,' he conceded on Thursday, after heralding the economic progress made under his administration so far this year, 'and it could last for a while.'... A surge in deaths crippled consumer confidence in August and portends a possible chill in fall spending as people again opt for limited in-person commerce.... The explosion of new cases and deaths also appears to have deter red many would-be workers from accepting open jobs in businesses across the country, economists say." ~~~
~~~ Mary Astor of the New York Times: "On Monday, Representative Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio, tweeted that vaccine mandates were 'un-American.' In reality, they are a time-honored American tradition. But to be fair, so is public fury over them.... The roots of U.S. vaccine mandates predate both the U.S. and vaccines. The colonies sought to prevent disease outbreaks by quarantining ships from Europe and sometimes, in the case of smallpox, requiring inoculations: a crude and much riskier predecessor to vaccinations in which doctors rubbed live smallpox virus into broken skin to induce a relatively mild infection that would guard against severe infection later. They were a source of enormous fear and anger. In January 1777, George Washington mandated inoculations for the soldiers under his command in the Continental Army.... Over the next century, many local governments [mandated inoculations].... But by the end of the 1800s, opposition was louder and more widespread.... One thing distinguishes today's anti-vaccination protesters from those of the past. The opposition was always political. It wasn't always partisan." An interesting read. Thanks to Ken W. for the link. ~~~
~~~ Speaking of Partisan.... Oliver Darcy of CNN: "'An Authoritarian.' 'Rotting bag of oatmeal ... tyrant.' 'Very frail and very weak.' Those are only a handful of the vile attacks directed at President Biden on Fox News Thursday night following his address to the nation announcing sweeping new vaccine mandates. Biden's move has prompted an all-out declaration of war in right-wing media. While he is getting a fair amount of praise from mainstream sources, with some analysts even saying he still did not go far enough, the reality is entirely different in the media consumed by the individuals Biden actually needs (and has tried) to persuade. It is difficult to overstate the degree to which right-wing commentators are slinging venom at Biden, the White House, and public health officials following the speech.... Their language -- which essentially characterizes Biden and public health officials as evil tyrants -- is key to understanding why so many Americans are not protecting themselves with a vaccine. Huge communities of Americans are being lied to and misinformed by bad-faith media personalities and politicians who seek profit and power." See also a bit about the response from GOP "leaders" linked under The Pandemic, Ctd.
Devlin Barrett & Ann Marimow of the Washington Post: "President Biden's Justice Department sued the state of Texas on Thursday to try to block the nation's most restrictive abortion law, which bans the procedure as early as six weeks into pregnancy and allows private citizens to take legal action against anyone who helps a woman terminate her pregnancy. At a news conference to announce the lawsuit filed in federal court in Austin, Attorney General Merrick Garland said the ban 'is clearly unconstitutional under longstanding Supreme Court precedent.' The suit asks a judge to declare the measure unlawful, block its enforcement and 'protect the rights that Texas has violated.'" The AP story is here. (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~
Marie: Yesterday I suggested, based on no information, that Joe Manchin might be the reason President Biden withdrew his nomination of David Chipman, a gun-control advocate, to head the ATF. It turns out I was right. Manchin & Angus King (I-Maine) both said that would not vote to confirm Chipman.
There Is a Debt Ceiling Only When the President Is a Democrat. Hayes Brown of MSNBC (Sept. 8): "During the Obama presidency, Republicans used the threat of the U.S. defaulting on its loans to force sharp budget cuts to nonmilitary spending. And now they're set to do the same to President Joe Biden as Congress prepares to pass the cornerstone of his economic agenda. However, when Donald Trump was in the White House, and the GOP controlled Congress, the debt ceiling apparently was less of a concern. The cap on government debt was boosted under Trump first in late 2017 for three months in a deal with the Democrats. That had to be raised again -- thanks to the GOP's huge tax cuts for the wealthy and businesses -- as part of a broader spending bill he signed in 2018. Then, after Democrats took control of the House in 2019, Trump signed a budget that suspended the debt ceiling, then $22 trillion, entirely until this July.... Now ... Republicans have suddenly started warning that they won't support another boost to the debt ceiling. 'I can't imagine there will be a single Republican voting to raise the debt ceiling after what we've been experiencing,' Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., told Punchbowl News in July."
Amy Wang of the Washington Post: "House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) is asking the Supreme Court to review and overturn the House's proxy voting rules, which were adopted last year to allow lawmakers to cast votes remotely as a pandemic precaution. In a statement Thursday, McCarthy blasted proxy voting as a 'power grab' and 'a raw abuse of power' by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who along with many Democrats pushed for the historic rule change at the beginning of the pandemic. The House adopted the new protocols in May 2020 in a 217-189 vote along party lines.... Left unmentioned was that lawmakers from both parties, including nearly 100 GOP members of the House, have since taken advantage of the ability to cast votes remotely -- and not always for reasons directly related to covid.... Meanwhile, the Supreme Court -- which stopped conducting in-person hearings last March -- announced this week it would resume in-person hearings but keep the buildings closed to the public." MB: Yeah, convenient timing, Kev.
Dana Farrington of NPR: "Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., announced Thursday that she underwent radiation treatment for breast cancer earlier this year and her doctors recently confirmed that the treatment went well.... A mammogram in February alerted Klobuchar to a possible issue, and a biopsy later confirmed it was stage 1A breast cancer. She completed a course of radiation in May. In her post, Klobuchar noted that many people have delayed routine exams because of the pandemic -- including her." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Jeanna Smialek of the New York Times: "Federal Reserve officials traded stocks and other securities in 2020, a year in which the central bank took emergency steps to prop up financial markets and prevent their collapse -- raising questions about whether the Fed's ethics standards have become too lax as its role has vastly expanded. The trades appeared to be legal and in compliance with Fed rules. Million-dollar stock transactions from the Dallas Fed president, Robert S. Kaplan, have drawn particular attention, but none took place when the central bank was most actively backstopping financial markets in late March and April. However, the mere possibility that Fed officials might be able to financially benefit from information they learn through their positions has prompted criticism of perceived shortcomings in the institution's ethics rules, which were forged decades ago and are now struggling to keep up with the central bank's 21st century function."
Gene Robinson of the Washington Post: "... the architects of Jim Crow repression ... chose [Robert E.] Lee as the dignified, slightly tragic hero of their fanciful retelling of what they called 'The War Between the States.' They painted Lee as an honorable man, personally opposed to slavery, who reluctantly chose loyalty to his state of Virginia over allegiance to the Union -- and who, albeit in a losing cause, was the most brilliant general in U.S. history. Lie after lie after lie. Lee was, first and foremost, a traitor. A graduate of West Point, he decided to take up arms against the nation he had sworn an oath to serve. The choice he made cost hundreds of thousands of Americans their lives. Treason was, and remains, a capital crime.... Not only did Lee and his wife, Mary Custis, own slaves inherited from his mother and her father, but Lee actually petitioned Virginia courts to allow him to keep some of those people enslaved for longer than the five years specified in his father-in-law's will." Read on. See also Akhilleus' commentary in yesterday's thread, which runs along these same lines and isn't subscriber-firewalled.
Dan Friedman of Mother Jones: "The FBI is investigating 'seditious conspiracy' charges related to the January 6 attack on the US Capitol, according to a search warrant served Tuesday night on a lawyer for the far-right Oath Keepers' militia group. Kellye SoRelle, the Oath Keepers' general counsel, tweeted Wednesday that the FBI had seized her phone. The action would seem unusual, since SoRelle is a lawyer who says she has provided advice to defendants facing prosecution or investigation due to their actions on January 6. '[T]hey have all my clients and my comms,' she commented in a message to Mother Jones. '[It's] unethical as shit on their part.' SoRelle is close to Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes, who has not been charged with crimes related to the siege of Congress, but who remains a subject of investigation.... Prosecutors have charged 17 Oath Keeper members with conspiring to stop Congress from certifying Joe Biden's electoral victory; Rhodes is not named, but is identifiable as 'PERSON ONE' in court documents detailing his extensive online and phone communications with Oath Keeper members ahead of and during the siege of Congress. FBI agents seized Rhodes' phone in May as part of their investigation."
Jordan Green of the Raw Story: "A neo-Nazi terror cell enmeshed in the US Marine Corps made plans to attack the power grid last fall, hoping to set the stage to carry out assassinations in their quest to create a white ethno-state, according to a new indictment issued last month. Arrests in the government's takedown of the terror cell, whose members called themselves 'BSN,' began in October 2020, starting with founders Liam Montgomery Collins and Paul James Kryscuk, and gradually expanding to include three others through June 2021.... Members fantasized about shooting Black Lives Matter protesters in Boise, Idaho in the summer of 2020. The most recent indictment, handed down on Aug. 18, adds a new charge of conspiracy to sabotage an energy facility. The purpose, according to the government was 'to attack the power grid both for the purpose of creating general chaos and to provide cover and ease of escape in those areas in which they planned to undertake assassinations and other desired operations to further their goal of creating a white ethno-state.'"
The Pandemic, Ctd.
The New York Times' live updates of Covid-19 developments Friday are here. The Washington Post's live Covid-19 updates for Friday are here: Republicans are livid that President Biden is trying to save American lives & improve the economy: "Texas Gov. Greg Abbott called the mandates 'an assault on private businesses' and said the state is 'already working to halt this power grab.' Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon said he asked his state's attorney general 'to stand prepared to take all actions to oppose this administration's unconstitutional overreach of executive power,' and South Dakota Gov. Kristi L. Noem said, 'See you in court.' Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said the group 'will sue the administration to protect Americans and their liberties.':
California. Dakin Andone, et al., of CNN: "All eligible students attending Los Angeles Unified public schools -- the nation's second largest school district -- will be required to be vaccinated against Covid-19 by the end of the calendar year, the school board of education has voted. In a special meeting held Thursday, the Los Angeles Unified School Board decided by unanimous vote that a mandate was appropriate based on the sudden surge of the virus brought about by the Delta variant and data showing lower rates of infection and hospitalization among those who are vaccinated. The proposal approved Thursday requires all eligible students 12 years of age and older to receive their first Covid-19 vaccine doses by no later than November 21, and to be fully vaccinated by December 19. Students who participate in in-person extracurricular activities, including sports, face an earlier deadline of October 3 for a first dose of the vaccine and a second dose no later than October 31."
Florida. Mychael Schnell of the Hill: "Lawyers for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) filed an emergency appeal Wednesday evening after a circuit judge earlier that day rejected a previous appeal from the governor, a move that put his ban on school mask mandates on hold and allows school districts to require face coverings in academic buildings for the time being. DeSantis's lawyers are now calling for the automatic stay on his mask mandate ban to be reinstated, which would allow the ban on the mandates to once again take effect." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Mississippi. Ashton Pittman of the Mississippi Free Press: "Fetal deaths have doubled among unvaccinated pregnant women who suffer COVID-19 infections, State Health Officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs said during a Mississippi State Department of Health press conference today. 'We've identified 72 fetal deaths associated with pregnant moms who had COVID, which is twice the background rate of what we would've expected' prior to the pandemic, he said. A 'fetal death,' also known as a 'stillbirth,' refers to deaths that occur after 20 weeks gestation. The statistic does not include miscarriages, which are deaths that occur at 20 weeks or earlier.... Dr. Dobbs revealed the statistic on fetal deaths hours after MSDH reported the state's first known COVID-19 death involving an infant younger than 1 year old.... Mississippi health leaders said last week that multiple pregnant women died with COVID-19 at a single hospital in August, with health-care workers delivering babies by c-section shortly before their mothers' deaths. Today, Dr. Dobbs said that MSDH is currently investigating eight deaths that occurred during the past four weeks. The infants in those cases 'were born premature but were alive,' Dr. Dobbs said [Wednesday]."
Beyond the Beltway
Florida. Lori Rozsa of the Washington Post: "... a federal judge on Thursday squelched one of [Gov. Ron DeSantis]'s key pieces of legislation by blocking enforcement of a so-called anti-riot law, saying that it chills free speech. U.S. District Judge Mark Walker wrote that DeSantis's 'new definition of "riot"' is vague and overbroad and criminalizes 'vast swaths of core First Amendment speech.' DeSantis (R) made passage of the measure his top priority in the 2021 legislative session. He and the Republican-controlled legislature sought the law in response to the massive civil rights protests that took place nationwide in 2020 following the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer. While acknowledging that most of the protests in Florida were tame, DeSantis said in April that he was glad to sign 'the strongest anti-rioting, pro-law enforcement piece of legislation in the country.'"
Kansas. AP: "A federal grand jury on Thursday indicted former Kansas state Rep. Michael Capps [R] on 19 counts alleging that he tried to defraud federal, state and county government organizations out of more than $450,000 in coronavirus relief funding. The U.S. Attorney's office in Kansas said in a news release that Capps, a Republican from Wichita, filed forms inflating the number of employees he had at two businesses and a sports foundation, and then applied for loans to pay the non-existent employees. The alleged fraud involved the Small Business Administration's Paycheck Protection Program and Emergency Injury Disaster Loan programs, which are designed to provide assistance to businesses that struggled during the pandemic."
Way Beyond
Afghanistan. Victor Blue, et al., of the New York Times: "Ten days after the chaotic evacuation of Afghanistan came to an end, a lone jetliner lifted off from Kabul's airport on Thursday, the first international passenger flight since American forces ended their 20-year presence in the country. The departure of the chartered Qatar Airways Boeing 777, with scores of Americans, Canadians and Britons on board, was hailed by some as a sign that Taliban-ruled Afghanistan might be poised to re-engage with the world, even as reports emerged that the group was intensifying its crackdown on dissent.... More flights were promised in the days ahead. But an untold number of people remained in limbo, including at the airport in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif, where dozens of Americans and hundreds of Afghans were waiting for the Taliban to let them leave on charter flights."
Iceland. Michael Birnbaum of the Washington Post: "A major new facility to pull carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere started operating in Iceland on Wednesday, a boost to an emerging technology that experts say could eventually play an important role in reducing the greenhouse gases that are warming the planet. The carbon capturing plant, perched on a barren lava plateau in southwest Iceland, is the biggest of its kind, its builder says, increasing global capacity for the technology by more than 40 percent. Many climate experts say that efforts to suck carbon dioxide out of the air will be key to making the world carbon neutral in the coming decades.... The plant in Iceland will be able to capture 4,000 metric tons annually -- just a tiny fraction of what will be necessary, but one that Climeworks, the company that built it, says can grow rapidly as efficiency improves and costs decrease."
News Lede
Some Would Be Heroes. New York Times: "Joseph I. Kramer, who tended to the afflictions of the poor as the self-described 'country doctor' of Manhattan's Lower East Side for nearly three decades, a period, beginning in 1969, when the neighborhood was infamous for urban squalor, died on Aug. 30 at his home in Leonia, N.J. He was 96." An obituary worth reading.
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Reader Comments (8)
I'm confused.
The COVID anti-vaxxers correlate highly with partisan MAGA types.
MAGA types correlate highly with authoritarian fandom.
Those folks denounce President Biden for tyranny, even though they love authoritarians.
Must be some kind of Sadomasochistic cult, because it sure doesn't seem like an excluded middle.
After viewing the 9/11 documentary that aired on MSNBC, I said to the mister that it gave one the sense that our country really came together although soon enough the Muslim rants poured forth and of course you had punks like Trump making up stories about thousands in New Jersey celebrating, but still––that unity was palpable. So this column by Krugman this morning caught my eye and after reading it I thought, of course, another myth to dissolve and face the facts of a nation always on the brink but today, instead of forging forward, we have slid back to Civil War cries of opposite sides.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/09/opinion/foreign-terrorists-domestic-extremists.html
"But that golden moment of Unity never existed; it's a myth, one that we need to stop perpetuating if we want to understand the dire current state of American democracy."
Krugman's crucial point here is that the real threat to this nation is not coming from some foreign entity but from our own right wing and its off-shoots that want to cleanse this country of all colors except white while taking the law into their own hands and perpetuate their leader's ( the Fat Fuck) BIG LIE while doing everything possible to stop important legislation from moving forward.
And something to tuck away for a rainy day:
Social insects ( notably ants) were fully evolved by 50 million years ago; HomoSapiens in contrast only emerged 200,000 years ago.
Patrick,
Ah, you're just joshing.
Autocrats who don't like autocrats? Of course, those MAGA types are exactly that. Not a contradiction at all.
Instead, it's the essence of being an anti-democrat. You tie yourself tightly to the leader who tells you what you want to hear and rebel against a leader who delivers the message you don't.
The Pretender did a fine job of grooming his adherents, with his I'm OK, You're OK patter. You're smart to be a bit racist. You're superior because you don't fall for all that science-y stuff. You're tough because you have guns. And Covid is an overblown Leftist plot. They liked what they heard and ate it up. Addictive, it was to them.
And now the menu has changed. Racism is out. Science is in. The unvaccinated are the problem. They've been bad boys and girls and the new boss is going to make them behave.
Not at all the kind of king they like. Off with his head.
As you say, no middle ground. No compromise. That would be too much like democracy.
To add to the discussion of Lee yesterday–-this from my friend who sends me items from time to time.
"There is one stature of Lee that should be left alone. It is in the Gettysburg National Battlefield Park. An equestrian stature, very similar to the one just taken down in Richmond, sits at the spot where Lee sat on his horse during Pickett’s Charge, and retreat. In was there, at that moment, Lee knew the war was lost---
I had read the history of the battle since I was a child. But only when I took a tour of the battlefield on horseback did I feel I viscerally understood. Nothing can better convey an understanding of that moment than to sit on horseback, beside that statue, today, seeing the ground exactly as Lee did."
@Patrick: Yeah, I know you're just kidding, but like Ken, I think you're onto something. It's easy to see where wingers are sadists: they're all for putting everybody in jail who doesn't look like them, and failing that, they want to make sure they themselves have rights and "freedoms" that "those people" don't have, and they especially like their rights when those rights infringe upon other people's rights. Ergo, I have a right to control my body and you can't make me get a vaccine even though if I don't I might make you sick & die. Oh, and I can control your body by depriving you of your constitutional right to an abortion. And so forth.
But wingers are masochists, too. They pledge allegiance to a man who regards them as white trash -- and I think they know it. They oppose measures that will help them and their own children -- like vaccines, climate-change measures, Medicare for all, food stamps, early childhood education, etc., because these things also help "those people." They're glad to suffer to make sure you suffer, too.
One can think of dozens of examples on both sides of the sado-masochist equation that fit the Trumpbot profile. Wingnuttiness is a pathology more than a political philosophy.
@ P.D. Pepe and re: "The Memory Box" on MSNBC. I watched it as well on Wednesday, with my brother who was in the documentary. (He's the one who said it looked like the building was bleeding into the sky and, later, that he sat on a bench and sobbed.) He sent the full 15-minute video of his interview to our family last week. I watched the first six minutes, up to when he describes seeing the second plane hit, and shut it off. Maybe I can watch that later. As we watched the documentary Wednesday, there were parts he couldn't look at, even now, 20 years later.
In the documentary, a few of the people, back in 2002, commented on how the country rallied, came together. Then when they spoke again in 2021, they mourned that it didn't last. Images of the Twin Towers, the Pentagon, and Shanksville PA didn't linger in my mind as I went to bed, but rather how the bleeding has gone on and on and on. Deaths from the pandemic, hundreds and hundreds of thousands more than those who died on 9/11, have not fostered that same sense of unity. I'm not sure what that means for us as a country.
Will all the "vaccine hesitant" and anti-vaxxers who have said they will quit their jobs if their employers require vaccination be eligible for unemployment benefits, SNAP (food stamps) and other social aid programs?
@Bobby Lee: Food stamps & other benefits, probably yes; but unemployment insurance, probably no. Essentially, to get unemployment insurance, you have to lose your job through no fault of your own: you get laid off, the factory shuts down, the business can't operate (or has to downsize) because of Covid. Stupid dickhead doesn't count.
@Elizabeth: I can't watch any of the 9/11 memorials because I know they would upset me too much. As for feeling compassion for pandemic victims & their families, I felt plenty last year. My heart broke for every death or serious illness I heard about. But that changed this year after the vaccine became available to nearly everyone except children. I still feel heartache for sick children and for the hospital workers who are being run ragged. But most of the people who are dying now are dying because they refused or were too lazy to get the vaccine and because they didn't care if they made other people sick. I know that isn't everyone, and I do feel a deep sadness for those who get sick or die through no fault of their own. But the people who die because they adamantly refused to act responsibly have not only robbed me of my own safe environment, they have robbed me of my natural inclination to grieve for people who die untimely deaths. I don't mean they "deserved to die," but I do mean they don't deserve my tears.