Tag: Stupid

Elon Musk!!!!! Space Karen!!!!

I will never not laugh at Space Karen https://t.co/InvR5sTRMy pic.twitter.com/92vQfIyzHi

— dan hett (@danhett) November 16, 2020

Total 0wn493

Call it confirmation bias, but I think that my assesment of Elon Musk, that he is a privileged self-important stupid person’s idea of a smart person has been validated:

SpaceX boss Elon Musk was forced to miss his firm’s historic rocket launch after testing positive for Covid-19.

Four astronauts were blasted into orbit aboard SpaceX’s Dragon capsule from Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Sunday night, marking the company’s first fully-fledged crewed mission to the International Space Station.

Mr Musk, who is usually present during major launches, could not attend after receiving two positive coronavirus tests and exhibiting minor symptoms of the virus.

Nasa rules forbid anyone from entering their facilities following a positive test, no matter what their position or role.

………

Mr Musk had previously questioned the legitimacy of the results, claiming that he had tested both positive and negative for Covid-19 on Thursday.

“Something extremely bogus is going on,” he tweeted. “Was tested for covid four times today. Two tests came back negative, two came back positive. Same machine, same test, same nurse. Rapid antigen test.”

………

In March, Mr Musk declared that “the coronavirus pandemic is dumb.”

Since then, nearly more than 11 million people have been infected and nearly a quarter of a million people have died from the virus in the US alone.

One Twitter user dubbed him “Space Karen” for his perceived indifference towards the pandemic, causing the term to trend across the platform.

Dr Emma Bell responded to his tweet by noting that rapid antigen tests only detect Covid-19 “when you’re absolutely riddled with it”.

She tweeted: “What’s bogus is that Space Karen didn’t read up on the test before complaining to his millions of followers.”

Now, whenever I refer to Elon Musk in the future, he will be “Space Karen”.

Dr. Emma Bell should get a Pulitzer for that.

Can We Please Give Texas Back to Mexico?

In the episode of the continuing series, Of Course They Did, It’s Texas, a bill has been submitted in the state house that would tax solar and wind power, but not fossil fuels, because ……… I don’t know, maybe owning the libs?

There are fools, there are damn fools, and then there is the Texas legislature:

Power bills likely would rise next year for Texas consumers who get their electricity from wind, solar, coal and nuclear generation if the Legislature approves a bill filed this week.

The bill from state Rep. Ken King would add 1 cent to every kilowatt hour of energy generated. The tax likely would be passed on to consumers, adding about $12 a month to bills for households that use 1,200 kilowatt hours of renewable power sources each month. Power generated from natural gas would be exempt from the tax.

Wind produced about 20 percent of electricity last year in Texas, which is the nation’s leader in wind power generation, and 47 percent came from natural gas, according to the state’s grid manager, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas.

Luke Metzger, executive director of the Austin-based clean energy advocacy group Environment Texas, said the bill makes no sense.

It flies against the rhetoric of Texas’ market-based system of electricity, putting the thumb on the scale for natural gas and raising taxes on Texans by $2.3 billion every year,” he said in a prepared statement. “It would also discourage wind and solar power, which are reducing pollution, helping us tread more lightly on the planet, and boosting rural economies.

Seriously, this guy should have been drowned at birth.

What a Dump F%$#ing Mook

Ironically, this is also the name of serial malpractice political consultant Robbie Mook.

In 2016, he ran Hillary Clinton’s campaign, and lost to an inverted traffic cone, and now:

The Democratic Super PAC in charge of House races is going to face serious questions about how it lost seats when projected to pick them up.

House Majority PAC’s president is Robby Mook.

— Ryan Grim (@ryangrim) November 5, 2020

So the guy who lost by neglecting the ground game and local reports in 2016, lost in 2020 by doing the same thing.

Why does this motherf%$#er have a job? 

Seriously, when it comes to failing up, Dick Cheney looks at Robby Mook, and thinks:

This is a Metaphor for Something………

In North Dakota, the uncool Dakota, a dead man won a seat in the state house.

Honestly, if there is a better metaphor for the incompetent Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment), I have not seen it:

David Andahl died of covid-19 in early October, just as the coronavirus was pummeling his home state of North Dakota. But that did not keep the 55-year-old rancher from winning his race for the state House of Representatives on Tuesday.

With an apparent victory in North Dakota’s 8th District, Andahl’s election marks an unusual overlap between two of the most consequential events in the United States this year: a pandemic that has killed at least 232,000 people in the United States and the unprecedented election season it upended in the process.

………

A cattle rancher and land developer, Andahl had spent 16 years serving on the zoning and planning commission in Burleigh County, including eight years as its chair, according to the Bismarck Tribune. Earlier this year, he won a heated GOP primary against longtime state Rep. Jeff Delzer, who chaired the chamber’s powerful Appropriations Committee.

………

When the coronavirus reached North Dakota, Andahl — who was already grappling with several health issues — was “very cautious,” his family wrote on Facebook. They did not elaborate on what medical challenges he was facing.

As the largely rural state saw a sharp increase in coronavirus cases this fall — at one point leading the country in the number of new cases per capita — Andahl contracted the potentially deadly virus. After four days in the hospital, he died Oct. 5.

The Democratic Party lost to a dead man, and right now, it’s still not settled in the Presidential campaign when they are running against a man whose brain serves only as a launch pad for his hair. 

The current Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) is incredibly, and ineluctably, incompetent.

We cold fire them all and replace them with drinking bird toys, and get better results.

Trump Pushing Derp Immunity

In case you are wondering, it appears that Donald Trumo is giving up whatever miniscule f%$#s that he used to have about dealing with Covid.

He is going full birther herd immunity. 

To quote Michael Cain in The Dark Knight, “Some men just want to watch the world burn.”

Despite publicly downplaying it, President Donald Trump and his team of White House advisers have embraced the controversial belief that herd immunity will help control the COVID-19 outbreak, according to three senior health officials working with the White House coronavirus task force. More worrisome for those officials: they have begun taking steps to turn the concept into policy.

Officials say that White House adviser Scott Atlas first started pushing herd immunity this past summer despite significant pushback from scientists, doctors and infectious disease experts that the concept was dangerous and would result in far more Americans getting sick and dying. Since then, various White House advisers have tried to play down the idea that the administration has implemented a strategy for COVID-19 based on herd immunity, which holds that if enough people contract a disease and become immune from it, then future spread among the broader population will be reduced.

………

But those working on the government’s COVID response say that the attempts by the White House and Atlas to steer clear from using the phrase “herd immunity” are merely a game of semantics. Privately, one of those sources said, the actual policy pursuits have been crafted around a plainly herd immunity approach; mainly, that the government should prioritize protecting the vulnerable while allowing “everyone else to get infected,” that source said.

In a recent call with reporters, in which The Daily Beast participated, administration officials laid out a new emphasis in the president’s coronavirus policy which underscored “protecting the vulnerable,” key among them nursing home patients. One official said the coronavirus was “dangerous for a certain subset of the population” and that “most people do extraordinary well.”

Officials on the call pointed to a Great Barrington study, which was assembled by a team of scientists who advocate for trying to reach herd immunity through the uncontrolled spread of COVID-19.

………

Health officials say that the practical acceptance of herd immunity by the president could lead to a dangerous and potentially deadly new phase in the pandemic, even if it is accompanied by a simultaneous effort to screen and protect seniors and those with comorbidities. Scientists warn that if the administration continues to focus just on protecting, for example, individuals in nursing homes, it will overlook those people who fall outside of the most vulnerable population but who could still contract the virus, survive it, and have long-lasting health complications.

………

For Trump, Atlas’ advocacy of this approach has represented an opportunity. The president has long pushed for less restrictive public health measures to combat COVID, under the belief that the country needed to prioritize economic interests. Herd immunity as a theory “basically gave him permission to reopen the country even if we hadn’t flattened the curve,” one official said.

If, as the polls indicate, Trump loses on Tuesday, I would expect even more bizarrely destructive actions from Trump and his Evil Minions, on their way out the door.

I expect to see actions that make Herbert Hoover’s hissy fit following the 1932 election look like a tea party.

There Is a Metaphor Here ……… and a Joke

Trump held a campaign rally in Nebraska, at Omaha’s Eppley Airfield, and because of a shortage of buses and traffic congestion his supporters were left on the tarmac in freezing weather for hours.

At least 5 of the MAGAts were hospitalized for exposure:

By the time President Trump finished speaking to thousands of supporters at Omaha’s Eppley Airfield on Tuesday night and jetted away on Air Force One, the temperature had plunged to nearly freezing.

But as long lines of MAGA-clad attendees queued up for buses to take them to distant parking lots, it quickly became clear something was wrong.

The buses, the huge crowd soon learned, couldn’t navigate the jammed airport roads. For hours, attendees — including many elderly Trump supporters — stood in the cold as police scrambled to help those most at risk get to warmth, and some were taken to hospitals.

………

By the end of the night, 30 people needed medical attention, Omaha police spokesman Michael Pecha said, though that was over the course of the event. Seven were taken to hospitals “with a variety of medical conditions.” It was not immediately clear how many of those were related to the lengthy wait.

………

After Trump’s speech, in which he promised that “we’re making that final turn” on the pandemic in a state where positivity rates exceed 20 percent, per the World-Herald, Trump flew away on Air Force One around 9 p.m. Attendees began lining up for buses to return to their cars.

By nearly 10:30 p.m., though, they were still waiting.

………

The crowds didn’t fully clear the rally site until after 12:30 a.m. — more than 3½ hours after Trump departed. A spokeswoman at one hospital network, CHI Health, told The Post that five people were treated “with minor complaints” at the nearby by Creighton University Medical Center. She declined to release additional information.

………

“Supporters of the President were brought in, but buses weren’t able to get back to transport people out. It’s freezing and snowy in Omaha tonight,” tweeted Nebraska state Sen. Megan Hunt (D). “He truly does not care about you.”

Seriously, you cannot make this sh%$ up.

This is Not the Mark of a Winning Foreign Policy

That the US is supporting the Taliban in its fight against Isis in Afghanistan indicates that it’s not a particularly coherent foreign policy either. 

This is a direct consequence of our regime change Mousketeers misguided attempt at the overthrow of the Assads in Syria.

The Council on Foreign Relations crowd have absolutely no concept of blowback, despite our being the recipient of this phenomenon over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over again:

Army Sgt. 1st Class Steve Frye was stuck on base last summer in Afghanistan, bored and fiddling around on a military network, when he came across live video footage of a battle in the Korengal Valley, where he had first seen combat 13 years earlier. It was infamous terrain, where at least 40 U.S. troops had died over the years, including some of Frye’s friends. Watching the Reaper drone footage closely, he saw that no American forces were involved in the fighting, and none from the Afghan government. Instead, the Taliban and the Islamic State were duking it out. Frye looked for confirmation online. Sure enough, America’s old enemy and its newer one were posting photos and video to propaganda channels as they tussled for control of the Korengal and its lucrative timber business.

What Frye didn’t know was that U.S. Special Operations forces were preparing to intervene in the fighting in Konar province in eastern Afghanistan — not by attacking both sides, but by using strikes from drones and other aircraft to help the Taliban. “What we’re doing with the strikes against ISIS is helping the Taliban move,” a member of the elite Joint Special Operations Command counterterrorism task force based at Bagram air base explained to me earlier this year, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the assistance was secret. The air power would give them an advantage by keeping the enemy pinned down.

Last fall and winter, as the JSOC task force was conducting the strikes, the Trump administration’s public line was that it was hammering the Taliban “harder than they have ever been hit before,” as the president put it — trying to force the group back to the negotiating table in Doha, Qatar, after President Trump put peace talks there on hold and canceled a secretly planned summit with Taliban leaders at Camp David. Administration officials signaled that they didn’t like or trust the Taliban and that, until it made more concessions, it could expect only blistering bombardment.

In reality, even as its warplanes have struck the Taliban in other parts of Afghanistan, the U.S. military has been quietly helping the Taliban to weaken the Islamic State in its Konar stronghold and keep more of the country from falling into the hands of the group, which — unlike the Taliban — the United States views as an international terrorist organization with aspirations to strike America and Europe. Remarkably, it can do so without needing to communicate with the Taliban, by observing battle conditions and listening in on the group. Two members of the JSOC task force and another defense official described the assistance to me this year in interviews for a book about the war in Konar, all of them speaking on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to talk about it. (The U.S. military headquarters in Afghanistan declined to comment for this story.)

As Rita May Brown (not Albert Einstein) said, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results.”

Signs of the Apocalypse

Sen. Ted Cruz is appearing virtually. He has tested negative for COVID but has been self-quarantining after coming into contact with Sen. Mike Lee…who tested positive and delivered his in-person maskless opening statement in the hearing room.

— Hallie Jackson (@HallieJackson) October 12, 2020

We Are Doomed

OK, imagine a situation where there are two people in a similar situation.

One behaves responsibly, and the other acts likes an asshole.

One of the people is Ted Cruz, and the other ……… Isn’t Ted Cruz.

And finally, the asshole in this situation ……… Isn’t Ted Cruz.

If this is not an end of the world scenario, if not an end of all existence.

At the very least, Thanos is snapping his fingers like Frank Sinatra right now.

Boy, This is Turning into a Sh%$ Show

First, former Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale creates the most convincing shirtless suspect audition tape for an episode of Cops ever, and now serial securities fraudster Jacob Wohl, and his partner in crime Jack Burkman, have been charged with election fraud and face the prospect of decades in prison.

The wheels really do seem to be coming off of Trump’s Evil Minions™ right now:

Conservative operatives Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman were charged on Thursday for allegedly orchestrating a series of robocalls aimed at suppressing the vote in the November presidential election, Michigan authorities said.

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel filed a slew of charges against Burkman, 54, and Wohl, 22, including conspiracy to commit an election law violation and using a computer to commit the crime of election law – intimidating voters. Prosecutors allege the two political operatives were using a robocall system aimed at scaring Detroit voters away from using mail-in voting ballots. The calls, which were made in August, went out to nearly 12,000 Detroit residents.

Both Wohl and Burkman face four felony counts and a maximum sentence of 7 years in prison.

The voice on the call attributed to Wohl and Burkman attempts to trick listeners into not sending in mail-in ballots, falsely warning that the information would be used to track fugitives, collect on credit card debts, and enforce “mandatory vaccines.” The calls also told residents to “beware of vote by mail.”

………

Wohl and Burkman didn’t respond to immediate requests for comment. In August, Burkman denied being behind the robocall, claiming it was suspicious that it was connected to his personal cell phone number.

“No one in their right mind would put their own cell on a robocall,” Burkman told The Daily Beast.

Ummmm ………We’ve seen your other frauds and scams (also here, here, and here

You areally ARE that f%$#ing stupid.

………

The attorney general’s office added that during the investigation into the robocalls, investigators communicated with officials in New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Illinois—all of whom reported similar robocalls being made to residents in their states. All the calls, they said, were made to residents in “urban areas with significant minority populations,” the Michigan attorney general’s office said.

………

The Michigan charges aren’t the only legal charges facing the pair. Wohl has been charged with two felonies over alleged violations of California securities law. On Saturday, The Daily Beast reported on a secret FBI investigation into Wohl and Burkman over the leak of confidential juror questionnaires and grand jury testimony in the trial of Trump associate Roger Stone.

Wohl and Burkman became notorious online in 2018, after a failed attempt to manufacture a sexual assault allegation against Robert Mueller collapsed in spectacular fashion. Since then, they have tried to create hoaxes against other Trump opponents, but the schemes always fail almost immediately, often due to Wohl and Burkman’s own errors.

Seriously, these folks are flipping out. 

My deepest wish is that the inevitable shrapnel that results from their flying to pieces so spectacularly only injures their fellow travelers.

They Have Forgotten Nothing, and They Have Learned Nothing

It appears that the Biden campaign is determined to repeat the litany of f%$#ups that the Clinton campaign used in 2016.

Case in point, the Biden campaign is nearly invisible in crucial states that Hillary Clinton lost, including ignoring the ground game in crucial swing states.

The campaign is studiously avoiding creating campaign offices in swing states.

These mooks (including in 2016 one named Robbie Mook) spent a huge amount of money duing things like running the numbers up in California through a large media buy that served no purpose but to enrich politically connected consultants.

The Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) is less the party leadership than it is a group of bunco artists who find the party convenient for lining their own pockets:

Contrary to the mantra of the “Resistance.” “Russia, Russia, Russia,” the primary reason for Clinton losing in 2016 was most likely that she didn’t campaign properly in many battleground states. This is something Clinton had control over, and she just refused to do it.

Biden apparently feels or thinks or some perverse combination of the two, similarly. Time:

“I can’t even find a sign,” Sabbe says outside a Kroger’s in Sterling Heights, where surrounding cars fly massive Donald Trump flags that say “No More Bullsh-t” and fellow shoppers wear Trump T-shirts for their weekend grocery runs. “I’m looking for one of those storefronts. I’m looking for a campaign office for Biden. And I’m not finding one.”

The reason Sabbe can’t find a dedicated Biden campaign field office is because there aren’t any around here. Not in Macomb County, the swing region where Sabbe lives. It’s not even clear Biden has opened any new dedicated field offices in the state; because of the pandemic, they’ve moved their field organizing effort online. The Biden campaign in Michigan refused to confirm the location of any physical field offices despite repeated requests; they say they have “supply centers” for handing out signs, but would not confirm those locations.

This is truly insane. Absolute and complete malpractice.

Democrats are completely vicious when taking down someone like Sanders, but they don’t even bother to try when it comes to winning national elections against Republicans. To all appearances they actually don’t care if Biden wins, or Trump loses.

Or they are completely incompetent.

Why not both? 

……… 

I suspect Democrats lose because not just because they are incompetent but because they don’t actually care. Losing is fine, they’ll still be OK. Pelosi will still be rich as Croesus, Biden will be fine, Harris will fine. Winning is nice enough, but they don’t need to win. They don’t even have a power drive, they’re people with sinecures protecting them savagely, but since they don’t need to win to keep their comfortable lives, only keep control of the party, they are only savage to those who threaten their control of the party (the left), not to the right.

Let me remind you of the Iron Law of Institutions, which states that power WITHIN an organization is pursued at the expense of the power OF that organization.

They care less about winning and losing, even losing to Trump, than they do about maintaining their power, status, and revenue streams.

Over 260,000!!!

We now have an estimate on the total number of Covid-19 cases from the idiots who whent to the Sturgis motorcycle rally, over 260,000, or nearly half of all of the new cases over the past few weeks:

Last month’s Sturgis Motorcycle Rally drew upwards of 450,000 attendees to the small city of Sturgis, South Dakota, marking the largest physical gathering since the pandemic began. While many feared the Sturgis would prove to be a “super spreader” event, the true magnitude of the spread is only now becoming known. And it isn’t pretty.

A new study published by health economists Dhaval Dave, Andrew Friedson, Drew McNichols, and Joe Sabia concluded that Sturgis is responsible for 260,000 new cases of COVID-19 – or, 19% of the total number of US cases during the month of August — and $12 billion in new medical care.

………

In the case of Sturgis, attendees generally did not wear face masks and congregated in confined spaces (restaurants, bars, Smash Mouth concerts, etc.) over the course of 10-day event, and did not self-isolate once the event was over. As a result, an estimated 263,708 cases of COVID across the country can now be attributed to the rally. Already, one person who attended the rally has died from the virus, but unfortunately that number is also expected to grow.

As the Japanese say, “バカにつける薬はない.”*

*There is no medicine for stupidity.

Arizona, It’s the New Florida, Man!

In Tucson, Arizona, a “Christian” group has organized protests at a McDonalds against a statue of a dinosaur, because ……… Ummmm ……… It’s not in Genesis, I guess?

This is not The Onion:

A Tucson landmark won’t be going extinct anytime soon. Attempts to remove a fiberglass dinosaur statue outside of a McDonald’s have been thwarted.

A group called Christians Against Dinosaurs denounced the T. rex statue on its Facebook page and called for its followers to rally in an effort to remove the statue.

“Please help! This McDonald’s has this dinosaur and refuse to remove it!” according to the Arizona Daily Star. “This is in Tucson, Arizona. Call the manager and demand the removal of this blasphemy!”

………

When reached via Facebook, Christians Against Dinosaurs told Patch that the group’s mission is no joke.

“We’re fed up with everybody acting like the people of Tucson are imbeciles and we want to help,” a spokesperson for the group said. “Having a big dinosaur outside a cultural hub like McDonald’s makes Tucsonians look like they’re mentally deficient and that isn’t right.”

No, YOU are making, “Tucsonians look like they’re mentally deficient.”

Cheap Harleys at Estate Sales

A Minnesota biker who attended the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally has died of covid-19 — the first fatality from the virus traced to the 10-day event that drew more than 400,000 to South Dakota.

The man was in his 60s, had underlying conditions and was hospitalized in intensive care after returning from the rally, said Kris Ehresmann, infectious-disease director at the Minnesota Department of Health. The case is among at least 260 cases in 11 states tied directly to the event, according to a survey of health departments by The Washington Post.

Epidemiologists believe that figure is a significant undercount, due to the resistance of some rallygoers to testing and the limited contact tracing in some states. As a result, the true scope of infections stemming from the rally that ran from Aug. 7 to Aug. 16 is unlikely to ever be known. Public health officials had long expressed concern over the decision to move forward with the annual event, believed to be the largest held anywhere in the U.S. since the pandemic shelved most large-scale gatherings.

Now, just over two weeks after the conclusion of the rally, the Midwest and the Dakotas in particular are seeing a spike in coronavirus cases even as infections decline or plateau in the rest of the country. South Dakota’s seven-day averages for new cases stood at 347 on Sept. 2 compared to 107 two weeks earlier and its total caseload was 14,003, up from 10,566, according to The Post’s tracking. In North Dakota, the seven-day averages for new cases was 257, up from 142 two weeks earlier and its total caseload was 12,267, compared to 8,968.

If you are looking for a deal on a low mileage Harley, you are in luck.
Not so much the idiots who went to Sturgis.

H/t BS at the Stellar Parthenon BBS.

Killing Social Security and Boosting His Reelection Chances

He is hoping to force Congress to make this a permanent tax cut, because the bill comes due in January, millions of Americans may be owing thousands of dollars in back taxes.

It will have the effect of increasing take home pay in the short term, which might give the economy a temporary boost, particularly for a tax as regressive as the Social Security tax, which cuts off at $137,700.00.

It will also have the effect of emptying the Social Security Trust Fund in about 2 years.

On the bright side, I think that many, and possibly most, of employers are going to collect the taxes anyway, because the money is still owed, just deferred, particularly since there is a cost to rewrite their payroll withholding software:

The Treasury Department began implementing President Trump’s plan to allow a payroll tax deferral, an executive action he says will help households weather the pandemic-ravaged economy but which faces significant practical hurdles and skepticism from employers.

The government’s announcement came late Friday, just four days before it is scheduled to take effect. It postpones some payroll taxes that would normally be due between Sept. 1 and Dec. 31 and makes them due between Jan. 1 and April 30, 2021. Under this approach, employers who opt to stop some paycheck withholding now could withhold twice as much as usual early next year.

Mr. Trump on Aug. 8 ordered the Treasury Department to allow the tax deferrals under a law that lets the Treasury secretary postpone tax deadlines after a disaster. It still could take time for private payroll companies to reprogram their systems, and employers concerned about costs and legal exposure may not bother changing workers’ tax withholding.

………

The government’s action doesn’t actually change the underlying taxes, because only Congress can do that. Employees would still owe the taxes eventually. So someone making $75,000 annually could save as much as $1,550 in 2020 but would have to pay that same amount later.

Mr. Trump wants Congress to forgive that tax liability. The IRS document issued late Friday says employers must pay those taxes in the first four months of 2021 or “may make arrangements” to collect the taxes from employees.

“The guidance makes it clear the only purpose of this scheme is to give the illusion of a tax cut before the election,” said Seth Hanlon, senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, a group aligned with Democrats.

………

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Council of Chain Restaurants and other trade associations warned that it would be unfair to impose potential future costs on workers and said a system where employees could choose whether to participate would be unworkable.

………

One very large employer looks likely to participate—the federal government that Mr. Trump controls. The National Finance Center at the Department of Agriculture, which processes payrolls for more than 600,000 federal workers at multiple agencies, said last week it was preparing to implement the tax deferral in September.

Forcing hundreds of thousands of federal employees to take tax deferrals could put pressure on lawmakers to forgive the taxes later, as Mr. Trump wants them to do.

When a policy developed to help Republican electoral prospects runs afoul of the U.S Chamber of Commerce, you know that this policy is f%$#ed up and sh%$.

Worst Argument for Identity Politics Argument

I get that these folks want equal opportunity corruption, but that does not mean that they should some sort of special permission to install a revolving door at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue:

A battle is brewing on K Street over an effort by progressives to ensure a Biden administration is devoid of any former Wall Street executives or corporate lobbyists.

Black and Latino lobbyists say a ban of that sort would end up shutting out minorities and could make the administration less diverse if Democrats win back the White House.

The tensions date back to April, when eight progressive groups wrote a letter calling on former Vice President Joe Biden to vow not to appoint any “current or former Wall Street executives or corporate lobbyists, or people affiliated with the fossil fuel, health insurance or private prison corporations” to his transition team, Cabinet or as top aides.

That demand did not sit well with some minority lobbyists, who argue that corporate lobbyists shouldn’t be denied a spot in the administration.

“Given the wokeness of these people, I find it odd they are so comfortable lumping a large group of people together. They have an agenda that is limiting and it has always been limiting,” said Michael Williams, founder of the Williams Group, one of the few Black-owned lobbying shops in D.C.

………

“Vice President Biden has made it clear that he’s going to make it a priority to clean up Trump’s mess by putting in place tough safeguards against the sort of rampant cronyism and lobbyist influence we’ve seen over the last four years, even as Biden ensures that his administration’s staffing reflects America’s diversity,” Biden for President spokesman Michael Gwin said.

Nicole Venable, a lobbyist at Invariant, criticized the effort by progressives, saying their goal to have a Biden administration filled with staff reflecting all of America is undercut by these types of restrictions.

………

Alliance for Youth Action, one of the groups that signed the April letter to Biden, stressed that progressives are particularly concerned about corporate lobbyists serving in a future administration.

“The letter we’ve sent doesn’t call for a ban on lobbyists, it calls for a ban on explicitly CORPORATE lobbyists like the ones who have been able to push a harmful agenda within the Trump administration which have taken away government’s ability to protect people of color, young workers and children from pollutants in our air and water and predatory economic practices which continue to hold them in poverty,” Carmel Pryor, senior director of communications at Alliance for Youth Action, told The Hill in an email.

They are literally arguing for corruption.

You want equal rights to profit off of government service.

I want no one to profit off of government service.

Epstein and Trump And Clinton and the Democratic National Convention

Seriously, if Clinton gets taken down, or embarrassed, or just hauled into court, as a result of the Ghislane Maxwell trial, more power to the prosecutors.

So reports that there are photographs of show Clinton apparently receiving a neck massage from alleged Jeffrey Epstein victim Chauntae Davies don’t bother me, though I think it is mind bogglingly stupid to have them as featured speakers at the Democratic National Convention.

It is worse than a crime, it is a mistake: (Not actually a Tallyrand quote)

Hours ahead of former President Bill Clinton’s appearance at the Democratic National Convention, the Daily Mail published photos Tuesday that show Clinton apparently receiving a neck massage from alleged Jeffrey Epstein victim Chauntae Davies following a previously-reported flight that Clinton and Epstein took to Africa together in 2002, with Davies telling the Mail that Clinton was a “perfect gentleman” on the trip.

………

Donald Trump Jr. tweeted a link to the Daily Mail article, and suggested that if Clinton brought it up during his Tuesday DNC speech, it “would be a lot more interesting then garbage we saw last night.” His father, President Trump, was also once friendly with Epstein and Maxwell. After Epstein’s 2019 arrest, however, Trump said he had not spoken to Epstein in over a decade.

I get that you need to throw some bones to the Clintonistas at the convention, but the prominence being afforded to Billary is counter-productive and stupid.

A Toxic Combination of Stupidity and Entitlement

This is my volunteer, Martina Velasquez, who was shoved & accosted. #DebbieMustGo https://t.co/OGVWym6tH4

— Jen Perelman For Congress (@JENFL23) August 16, 2020

Worse than a Crime, a Mistake

I am talking about the Queen of stupidity and entitlement, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who is alleged to have assaulted a 16 year old girl who was canvassing for her primary opponent.

Even if the campaign worker WEREN’T a minor, it’s stupid for a candidate to get into an argument with an opponent’s campaign worker.

You just walk away.  It’s like wrestling with a pig:  You get dirty, and the pig loves it.

My guess is that this was primarily a screaming match, though a police report was filed, though the kid, Martina Velasquez, declined to file charges.

My guess is that it was a “Karen” moment with excessively overbearing personal space which could probably be described as shoving, but it does make me wonder if DWS’ internal polling is not a as strong as she would like, because this Karen is losing her sh%$ completely.

What is the Democratic Socialists of America?

Obviously, they are a political group that has seen explosive growth since the Presidential campaigns of Bernie Sanders that claims to support “Democratic Socialism”, though whether that term means actual state ownership of the means of production, or something akin to Roosevelt’s New Deal, is unclear.

On a deeper, and far more important. level, the question is whether the organization is interested in systemic or societal change, or is merely a vehicle for virtue-signaling.

We have an answer now, at least for the New York chapter, and it is that the comfortable merely want to feel comfortable about being comfortable, which is why they black-balled a talk by one of the most prominent African American Marxist scholars in the nation, Adolph Reed.

They did so, because he argues that class struggle is at the core of the current problems in our society, rather than eschewing class analysis to focus exclusively on racial and ethnic oppression.

I will admit that I am not an expert in the finer points of socialist theory, but I cannot see how one can possibly call themselves a Socialist if you deny the centrality of class struggle:

Adolph Reed is a son of the segregated South, a native of New Orleans who organized poor Black people and antiwar soldiers in the late 1960s and became a leading Socialist scholar at a trio of top universities.

Along the way, he acquired the conviction, controversial today, that the left is too focused on race and not enough on class. Lasting victories were achieved, he believed, when working class and poor people of all races fought shoulder to shoulder for their rights.

In late May, Professor Reed, now 73 and a professor emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania, was invited to speak to the Democratic Socialists of America’s New York City chapter. The match seemed a natural. Possessed of a barbed wit, the man who campaigned for Senator Bernie Sanders and skewered President Barack Obama as a man of “vacuous to repressive neoliberal politics” would address the D.S.A.’s largest chapter, the crucible that gave rise to Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and a new generation of leftist activism.

His chosen topic was unsparing: He planned to argue that the left’s intense focus on the disproportionate impact of the coronavirus on Black people undermined multiracial organizing, which he sees as key to health and economic justice.

………

Amid murmurs that opponents might crash his Zoom talk, Professor Reed and D.S.A. leaders agreed to cancel it, a striking moment as perhaps the nation’s most powerful Socialist organization rejected a Black Marxist professor’s talk because of his views on race.

“God have mercy, Adolph is the greatest democratic theorist of his generation,” said Cornel West, a Harvard professor of philosophy and a Socialist. “He has taken some very unpopular stands on identity politics, but he has a track record of a half-century. If you give up discussion, your movement moves toward narrowness.”

The decision to silence Professor Reed came as Americans debate the role of race and racism in policing, health care, media and corporations. Often pushed aside in that discourse are those leftists and liberals who have argued there is too much focus on race and not enough on class in a deeply unequal society. Professor Reed is part of the class of historians, political scientists and intellectuals who argue that race as a construct is overstated.

………

“Adolph Reed and his ilk believe that if we talk about race too much we will alienate too many, and that will keep us from building a movement,” said Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, a Princeton professor of African-American studies and a D.S.A. member. “We don’t want that — we want to win white people to an understanding of how their racism has fundamentally distorted the lives of Black people.”

What the f%$# does, “We want to win white people to an understanding,” mean, beyond perhaps, “I’m a tenured professor living a comfortable life, so f%$# the poor to keep my taxes low, and stop the cops from pulling me over for driving a nice car.”

A contrary view is offered by Professor Reed and some prominent scholars and activists, many of whom are Black. They see the current emphasis in the culture on race-based politics as a dead-end. They include Dr. West; the historians Barbara Fields of Columbia University and Toure Reed — Adolph’s son — of Illinois State; and Bhaskar Sunkara, founder of Jacobin, a Socialist magazine.

They readily accept the brute reality of America’s racial history and of racism’s toll. They argue, however, that the problems now bedeviling America — such as wealth inequality, police brutality and mass incarceration — affect Black and brown Americans, but also large numbers of working class and poor white Americans.

………

In years past, the D.S.A. had welcomed Professor Reed as a speaker. But younger members, chafing at their Covid-19 isolation and throwing themselves into “Defund the Police” and anti-Trump protests, were angered to learn of the invitation extended to him.

………

None of this surprised Professor Reed, who sardonically described it as a “tempest in a demitasse.” Some on the left, he said, have a “militant objection to thinking analytically.”

Professor Reed is an intellectual duelist, who especially enjoys lancing liberals he sees as too cozy with corporate interests. He wrote that President Bill Clinton and his liberal followers showed a “willingness to sacrifice the poor and to tout it as tough-minded compassion” and described former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. as a man whose “tender mercies have been reserved for the banking and credit card industries.”

………

“I’ve never led with my biography, as that’s become an authenticity-claiming gesture,” he said. “But when my opponents say that I don’t accept that racism is real, I think to myself, ‘OK, we’ve arrived at a strange place.’”

Professor Reed and his compatriots believe the left too often ensnares itself in battles over racial symbols, from statues to language, rather than keeping its eye on fundamental economic change.

“If I said to you, ‘You’re laid off, but we’ve managed to rename Yale to the name of another white person’, you would look at me like I’m crazy,” said Mr. Sunkara, the editor of Jacobin.

………

“Liberals use identity politics and race as a way to counter calls for redistributive polices,” noted Toure Reed, whose book “Toward Freedom: The Case Against Race Reductionism” tackles these subjects.

DSA, at least the New York chapter to be more interested in mental masturbation than it is in either socialism or real change.

Florida, Man

It’s always Florida, isn’t it?

In this Marion County Florida, and future plague victim, Billy Woods has banned his officers, and all people who want to enter the sheriff’s office from wearing masks.

On Tuesday, as Florida set a daily record for covid-19 deaths, Marion County Sheriff Billy Woods prohibited his deputies from wearing masks at work. His order, which also applies to visitors to the sheriff’s office, carves out an exception for officers in some locations, including hospitals, and when dealing with people who are high-risk or suspected of having the novel coronavirus.

In an email to the sheriff’s department shared with The Washington Post, Woods disputed the idea that masks are a consensus approach to battling the pandemic.

“We can debate and argue all day of why and why not. The fact is, the amount of professionals that give the reason why we should, I can find the exact same amount of professionals that say why we shouldn’t,” Woods wrote in the email, which was first reported by the Ocala Star-Banner.

………

All visitors to sheriff’s department buildings will be asked to take off their masks in the lobby, Woods said, linking that rule to the ongoing protests against police brutality.

“In light of the current events when it comes to the sentiment and/or hatred toward law enforcement in our country today, this is being done to ensure there is clear communication and for identification purposes of any individual walking into a lobby,” he wrote.

Seriously, what the actual f%$#?