Tag: Wanker

Trump Acquitted in Impeachment Trial*

So, Donald Trump was acquitted in his second impeachment trial, by a vote of 57-43, which means that 7 Republicans voted to impeach.

It’s clear that he was guilty as hell, but the Senate Democrats decide not to call witnesses, after the House managers wanted to call witness because, Chris Coons (D-DE) was planning a hot date with his wife for Valentines day, (also here). seriously? 

Former president Donald Trump was acquitted Saturday of inciting the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, becoming the first president in U.S. history to face a second impeachment trial — and surviving it in part because of his continuing hold on the Republican Party despite his electoral defeat in November.

That grip appeared to loosen slightly during the vote Saturday afternoon, when seven Republicans crossed party lines to vote for conviction — a sign of the rift the Capitol siege has caused within GOP ranks and the desire by some in the party to move on from Trump. Still, the 57-to-43 vote, in which all Democrats and two independents voted against the president, fell far short of the two-thirds required to convict.

The tally came after senators briefly upended the proceeding by voting to allow witnesses — only to reverse themselves amid Republican opposition and following hours of negotiations with House Democrats and Trump’s defense team.

I am not exaggerating about the Valentines day thing:

During the Senate break after the witness vote Saturday, Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) twice came into the managers’ room off the Senate floor, according to multiple Democratic sources. Coons pressed House Democrats to relent, saying their quest for witnesses would cost them Republican votes to convict and maybe even some Democrats.

“The jury is ready to vote,” Coons told the managers, according to a senior House Democratic aide. “People want to get home for Valentine‘s Day.”

Coons is up for reelection in 2026, and it would do well for Democratic voters to remember his bit of rat-f%$#ery during the impeachment.  

If wants to spend every valentines day with his wife, he can get himself a job that he is better suited to.

*I sure picked the wrong month to stop swearing.

Not Walking the Walk

In response to years of poor decisions by upper management, they Ohio Democratic Party is laying off most of its employees and replacing them with temps, because the new management thinks that short term MBA style thinking and abusing your employees is a good look for the Democratic Party.

This is the single stupidest thing that I’ve ever heard of a member of the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) doing who was not working on Hillary Clinton’s 2016 Presidential campaign:

More than half of the permanent staffers at the Ohio Democratic Party have been let go under the leadership of the party’s new chairman, multiple Democratic sources have confirmed.

………

Earlier this month Democrats installed a new chairman, Liz Walters, an elected official from Summit County, to replace ex-chairman David Pepper, who decided to step down after the election.

Ms. Walters promised an overhaul of the party, which has struggled in recent statewide election cycles. Both parties are now looking ahead to a newly competitive U.S. Senate race with Rob Portman’s surprise retirement announcement and a gubernatorial race in 2022.

Sam Melendez, director of the party’s Main Street Initiative, said on Twitter on Friday that he was being let go. The program he headed was started in 2015 to recruit and train local candidates.

………

The party’s data department staffers are among those also let go, sources say.

Yeah, outsourcing your IT to high priced consultants always results in lower costs and more effective services, said no one ever.

Employees were laid off with no more than a week’s notice and no severance, sources say, and the staffers being let go are expected to be replaced with independent contractors in a bid to save money.

………

“I have a bunch of information to share with stakeholders before I comment to the press,” [Liz Walters] said.

………

In 2018 the Ohio Democratic Party became the first state party to recognize a chapter of the Campaign Workers Guild, which represented seasonal campaign organizers during the 2018 midterm election who sought better pay and working conditions.

Interesting factoid at the end, and I can’t help but wonder if maybe this is about taking out the union as well.

Outsource the seasonal campaign organizers to a Washington consultancy group, and let them treat your workers like shit, because this is what the Democratic Party is all about in Ohio, I guess.

Hypocrites and morons.

Tweet of the Day

Larry Hogan is still Governor of Maryland, but TBF Covid is blocking Tom’s primary source of information – a humble taxi driver with sharp geopolitical insights. pic.twitter.com/URQgqNx0OV

— Don Moynihan (@donmoyn) January 25, 2021

Just so you know, as New York Times Pulitzer Prize winning reporter and columnist Tom Friedman does not, Larry Hogan is still governor of Maryland, where Friedman lives.

Seriously, Tom “The Mustache of Inanity” Friedman has finally exceeded the capacity for others to mock him.

Maybe he should get a Pulitzer for self-mockery.

A Terrorist and His Mommy Arrested

Remember this guy?

It turns out that  the only way he was allowed to go out and play with his friends was if his mommy came along

Man, this is lame:

A mother-son duo who wielded flex cuffs at the Capitol on Jan. 6 — and openly talked of a violent revolution — are facing conspiracy charges related to the assault on Congress last week, with the FBI describing a plot that may include others “known and unknown” to federal authorities.

In a Saturday legal filing, the FBI indicated that Eric Munchel — who was seen masked and wielding the plastic cuffs inside the Senate chamber in a now widely circulated image — and his mother Lisa Eisenhart would face charges of conspiracy for their efforts to disrupt lawmakers’ efforts to certify the presidential election.

Munchel and Eisenhart are facing charges of “knowingly and willfully conspiring with persons known and unknown” to impede law enforcement, unlawfully entering a restricted building and violently forcing their way into the halls of Congress.

Munchel had been apprehended earlier in the week, but Eisenhart was arrested Saturday in Tennessee and the charges updated to include conspiracy.

………

Although Munchel was masked in the Senate image, the FBI relied on open-source information and distinct patches and symbols on his clothing, as well as surveillance footage and other video shot at the hotel where the pair were staying to identify them. They have since searched Munchel’s home and discovered the items seen in the Capitol picture, including “distinctive black in color Black Rifle Coffee Company hat with American flag and rifle logo, black boots, black camouflaged pants and shirt, and black tactical vest with patches to one of a Punisher logo.

It is reassuring that these losers’ operation security is so unbelievably poor.

This is Morally Bankrupt

James Clyburn (D-SC) is calling for any impeachment trial of Donald Trump to be delayed by 100 days so that the Biden administration can get off to a quick start.

I get that the House Majority Whip wants to get down to business as quickly as possible once Biden is sworn in, but what he is saying is that incitement and conspiracy to conduct an insurrection against the US Government, and Congress in particular, is “Just Politics,” and so it can wait for Biden to assemble permanent staff at the White House and present some legislative initiatives.

This is wrong.

This was an attempt to overthrow an election, and by extension, an attempt to overthrow the government of the United States of America.

Judgement, and consequences, must be administered without delay.

Relegating this to a political ploy is worse than a crime, it is a mistake.

What Took You So Long?

Months after being invaded by gun toting fascist and white supremacist terrorists, the Michigan legislature has finally decided that maybe allowing any Tom, Dick, and Harry to open carry in the state house is a bad idea:

Michigan banned the open carry of guns inside its Capitol building on Monday, following mob violence last week at the US Capitol and last year’s storming of the Michigan statehouse.

The Michigan ban came as reports detailed FBI warnings about possible violence at state capitols and in Washington in the run-up to the 20 January inauguration of Joe Biden.

………

Security officials are preparing for a large crowd in Washington for the inauguration, and state officials are preparing for protests.

On Monday, ABC News reported a similar FBI bulletin warning of armed protests “at all 50 state capitols” and in Washington, but neither the date of that bulletin nor the evidentiary basis for its advice was given.

………

Security around the Capitol has been stepped up.

Armed men stormed the Michigan capitol in April, protesting social restrictions aimed at curbing the spread of Covid-19. It later emerged that a group had plotted to kidnap and perhaps kill the governor, the Democrat Gretchen Whitmer.

April ……… May ……… June ……… 9 Months?

It too them 9 Fucking Months to realize that it’s a bad thing for the legislature to be threatened by mooks carrying assault rifles?

Seriously? 

I get that Republicans controlled both state houses, but I would figure that they would have a have enough of a self preservation instinct to act sooner.

Worst ……… Idea Ever

An employee of the Cato Institute who was fired for planting articles on behalf of Jack Abramoff for money, (And was later rehired) is now suggesting that the best way for America to deal with China’s increasing power is to encourage our allies to develop their own nuclear arsenals.

This is way worse than invading Iraq, drafting Heath Shuler, or the New Coke:

Nobody envies U.S. President-elect Joe Biden at the moment. The problems he faces seem insurmountable.

China likely will be the administration’s most serious foreign challenge. The United States is wealthier and more powerful, but remains committed—overcommitted, in fact—around the globe. The world’s finest—and most expensive—military goes only so far.

………

Can the United States defend Taiwan, destroy Chinese naval outposts on artificial islands, keep sea lanes open, protect territories claimed by Japan and the Philippines, and so on? Beijing is focused on developing Anti Access/Area Denial capabilities: It costs much less for China to build missiles and submarines capable of sinking aircraft carriers than for the United States to construct, staff, and maintain the latter. The Pentagon is concocting countervailing strategies, but they will be neither cheap nor risk-free. How much can Americans, facing manifold, expensive challenges at home and elsewhere abroad, afford to devote to containing the PRC essentially within its own borders?

………

It is difficult to make a credible case for extended deterrence even for Japan. Would any American president really trade Los Angeles for Tokyo? The promise is made on the assumption that the bluff will never be called: Advocates simply assume perfect deterrence. However, history is littered with similar military and political presumptions, later shattered with catastrophic consequences.

What to do? There is one way to square the circle. The Biden administration should reconsider reflexive U.S. opposition to “friendly proliferation.” Ironically, current policy ensures that nuclear weapons are held by only the worst Asian states—authoritarian and revisionist China and Russia, Islamist and unstable Pakistan, illiberal and Hindu nationalist India, and totalitarian and threatening North Korea. Against all these, Washington is supposed to defend Japan and South Korea, certainly, the Philippines and Australia, possibly, and Taiwan, conceivably. That is dangerous for everyone, especially the United States.

Reversing a policy supported by neoconservative nation-builders, unilateral nationalists, and liberal internationalists would not be easy. The change would be dramatic, and not without risk, whether from potential terrorism, nuclear accidents, or geopolitical provocations. Although the nuclear age has been surprisingly stable, proliferation necessarily creates additional risks for conflict and leakage. Nevertheless, the existence of nuclear weapons probably helped contain conventional conflict, especially between the United States and the Soviet Union. Even more, nations are convinced that modest arsenals keep rival states at bay, which is why countries as disparate as Israel, North Korea, and India have developed arsenals at great cost.

This is completely bonkers. 

This makes Dick Cheney look like Mahatma Ghandi.

To quote Terry Pratchett:

If complete and utter chaos was lightning, then he’d be the sort to stand on a hilltop in a thunderstorm wearing wet copper armour and shouting ‘All gods are bastards!’

Dumb Ass

Luke Letlow, a Republican congressman-elect, after consistently campaigning without a mask, has died of Covid-19.

Thoughts and prayers, I guess.

As the saying goes, “バカにつける薬はない”.*

*Pronounced in Japanese, “baka ni tsukeru kusuri wanai”, which means, “There is no medicine for stupidity.” Apologies for any inaccuracies in the text, I do not know Japanese.

Do Not Let This Man Anywhere near to the Levers of Power

Between grossly mismanaging the Harvard endowment, using school funds to bail out a corrupt protege, making Obama’s economic team a cesspool of sexism, his championing the repeal of Glass Steagall, and his suggestion that it might make economic sense to use African countries as toxic waste dumps, Larry Summers has a long and inglorious record. 

Now he is making the talking heads tour, claiming that a one time stimulus payment of $2,000.00 might overheat the economy.

Assuming that every single person in the United States got a check, (They won’t, it would probably be less than half that) this would be about $660 billion, or about 3% of GDP.

I do not know how Larry Summers has achieved the positions of authority and prestige that he has, but he may very well be the single most overrated person inside the Washington, DC establishment:

Liberal economist Larry Summers said Thursday sending out $2,000 stimulus checks to Americans would be a “mistake,” making him the first prominent Democratic figure to come out against more direct relief.

Larry Summers is not a liberal economist. He is a a Robert Rubin Democrat.

He has made his career out of carrying water for corrupt finance.

  • In an interview with Bloomberg, Summers argued the federal government shouldn’t focus on boosting consumer spending with direct assistance because it runs the risk of a “temporary overheat” of the economy.
  • Summers noted he’s not “enthusiastic” about $600 checks either, which both parties in Congress already agreed to, for the same reason.

    ………

  • Summers is generally seen as a left-of-center economist—but he’s previously drawn criticism from progressives for favoring policies that helped big banks as well as mismanaging stimulus negotiations during the Great Recession under Obama.

Why this guy is not treated as if he were as radioactive as bottled water from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant?

He’s always wrong, he’s is toxic to his co-workers and subordinates, and he’s shown this again, and again, and again, and again.

This Does Not Bode Well

It turns out that Biden was involved in negotiations for the Stimulus package, and he actively worked to keep it small.

I knew that he has fetishized deficit reduction for years, but these are extraordinary times, and Joe Biden appears unable to move behind old habits.

When Biden said, “Nothing would fundamentally change,” he meant it, and and he intends to stick to it.

This is a recipe for disaster:

If there is any consistent throughline in Joe Biden’s long career, it is his commitment to the ideology of austerity.

He has obsessively pushed for Social Security cuts for decades, and he is stocking his administration with deficit hawks — including today’s announcement that notorious Social Security cutter Bruce Reed will be White House deputy chief of staff. Biden has even threatened to veto Medicare for All legislation on the grounds that it costs too much (even though Congress says it would actually save a lot of money).

Now, in the whittling down of the stimulus legislation, we see the first concrete example of how Biden’s ideology can change policy in the here and now — and in deeply destructive ways.

………

However, the New York Times reminds us today that Biden was “not an idle bystander in the negotiations.” On the contrary, the paper of record tells us that the president-elect played a decisive role in making sure the legislation was cut in half. Here is the key excerpt:

With Republican and Democratic leaders in the House and Senate far apart on how much they were willing to accept in new pandemic spending, Mr. Biden on Dec. 2 threw his support behind the $900 billion plan being pushed by the centrist group. The total was less than half of the $2 trillion that Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York, had been insisting on.

Mr. Biden’s move was not without risks. If it had failed to affect the discussions, the president-elect risked looking powerless to move Congress before he had taken the oath of office. But members of both parties said his intervention was constructive and gave Democrats confidence to pull back on their demands.

………

That last line of Biden’s statement is arguably the most disturbing foreshadow of all: He is depicting the process — which starved America for months and now skimps on benefits — as a terrific “model” for the future.

………

But now we see what Biden austerity means in practice. It means meager $600 survival checks instead of $1,200 checks in the same package that pours money into the Pentagon, gives rich people big new tax breaks and doubles funding for Congress’s own private health care system. It means inadequate unemployment benefits in a bill that devotes $6 billion to making business executives’ meals tax deductible and $3 billion to a tax break for landlords.

If Biden is allowed to be Biden, the way that Obama was allowed to be Obama, and the activists and progressives allow themselves to be put back into the “veal pen,” in 2024, we are going to see someone far worse, and far more competent, than Donald Trump elected in 2024.

This Exceeds My Capability for Mockery

Mike Pence has announced a name for members of the US Space Force, Guardians. (Yes, I am linking to The Guardian for this story, because ……… Guardian) 

Let the mockery begin:

Members of the new US space force will be known as “guardians”, Vice-President Mike Pence announced on Friday, at a ceremony to mark the first birthday of the newest branch of the US armed forces, one of Donald Trump’s signature policy initiatives.

“It is my honour,” Pence said, “on behalf of the president of the United States, to announce that henceforth the men and women of the United States Space Force will be known as guardians.

“Soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines and guardians will be defending our nation for generations to come.”

On Twitter, the space force said: “The opportunity to name a force is a momentous responsibility. Guardians is a name with a long history in space operations, tracing back to the original command motto of Air Force Space Command in 1983, ‘Guardians of the High Frontier.’

………

Nonetheless, Pence’s announcement prompted familiar mirth on social media. As Military.com put it: “Space enthusiasts and military members were quick to point out the name Guardians evokes the Marvel Comics’ Guardians of the Galaxy film franchise, about a motley crew of superheroes in space.”

With the Trump administration on its way out of power, the future of the space force seems uncertain. On Saturday, the president tweeted that the “authorisation and start up of the SPACE FORCE” would be seen as “one of the Trump administration’s great achievements”.

But as the Associated Press put it, delicately: “President-elect Joe Biden has yet to reveal his plans for the space force in the next administration.”

My suggestion for the Biden administration: Shut down the, “Space Force,” and take all the people who are not actually doing real work, generals, middle managers, etc. and muster them out of the service, because if they have been assigned to the service in that capacity, they don’t have productive purpose.

The Problem with the Democratic Party Establishment (There Is No Democratic Party Establishment)

A good post mortem of how the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) made it impossible for Sara Gideon to beat Susan Collins.

Basically, it comes down to the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) selecting an uninspiring candidate, and then flooding the zone with so much money in negative ads, mailers, etc. that Gideon still has $14 million in campaign funds left over, (over $10 unspent for every man, woman, and child in Maine) that any she might have beyond the, “Collins is a Republican,” message was obscured.

The Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) needs to be dismantled root and branch:

Democrat Sara Gideon’s bid to unseat Sen. Susan Collins was doomed the day after she announced she was running.

Gideon, a state legislator from Freeport who was then Maine’s Speaker of the House, formally announced her candidacy on Monday, June 24, 2019. The next day, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC), a powerful political organization controlled by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and other top members of the party establishment, announced it was backing her campaign.

At the time, the DSCC’s endorsement was perceived as a huge boost for Gideon. It would ensure her campaign would be well funded and guided by the brightest political minds in the business.

In retrospect, it was the kiss of death — a guarantee her campaign would be ugly, uninspiring, obscenely expensive, and out of touch with local concerns. Despite spending nearly $60 million, twice as much as Collins’ campaign did, Gideon lost by over 8 percentage points, more than 70,000 votes, in a state where Joe Biden beat Donald Trump by over 74,000.

………

Incessant negative advertising by outside groups helped make this race the most expensive in Maine’s history. It also made a mockery of Gideon’s oft-repeated pledge to “limit the influence of big money in politics.” Republicans were quick to call the DSCC’s endorsement proof that Gideon was a puppet of Beltway powerbrokers, and her two Democratic primary challengers were equally critical. “The DC elite is trying to tell Mainers who our candidate should be,” Betsy Sweet, one of those challengers, tweeted that summer.

But, crucially, the DSCC’s endorsement also limited the impact of Gideon’s positive messages, the campaign promises she made to improve the lives of everyday Mainers.

………

In the aftermath of Election Day, some top Democrats sought to blame progressives for the party’s poor showing in Senate and House races, but the DSCC’s record speaks for itself. Of the 18 Senate candidates endorsed by the committee, only four were victorious last month (two contenders, both in Georgia, failed to win on Nov. 3 but qualified for runoff elections next month).

As the campaign gained speed, the pandemic and the national uprising against police brutality gave Gideon two big opportunities to break from the moderate pack and distinguish herself from Collins, who denied that “systemic racism” is a “problem” in Maine, and whose Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) was a fraud-riddled failure. But Gideon’s position on racial justice was limited to training-manual adjustments like banning chokeholds and racial profiling, as well as further study of the problems that have plagued Black Americans since Reconstruction. Her credibility to criticize the PPP was compromised by the million or more dollars her husband’s law firm got from the program. And Republican critics took to social media daily to point out that, as far as anyone could tell, the House Speaker was doing practically nothing to help Mainers crushed by COVID-19.

While her constituents worried about keeping their jobs and homes, Gideon’s campaign bombarded them with tens of millions of dollars’ worth of ads, including pleas for them to give her money. The fundraising juggernaut engineered by her highly paid political consultants badgered Mainers for more cash till the bitter end.

………

Lisa Savage, a longtime Green Party activist and educator who ran as an independent in this ranked-choice Senate race and finished third, said a member of her team calculated how much each candidate spent per vote received. Savage spent $4.69 per vote, Collins about $65, and Gideon over $200.

………

“The model this cycle — and the model I am certain we’ll see repeated as Chuck Schumer continues on as Minority Leader — is that the party chooses a candidate they expect to bring in money, a candidate who will go along with corporate interests that fund the legions of Democratic campaign professionals that keep the machine running,” [Bre] Kidman [One of Gideon’s primary opponents] continued. “Mainers could smell the disingenuousness a mile away and, frankly, I don’t think the top-dollar, out-of-state consultants who worked on the campaign did anything at all to mask it.”

Gideon “didn’t have a single Maine person on her [communications] team,” said Savage. “Not one. They just don’t understand Maine.”

A review of the Gideon campaign’s finance filings reveals page after page of big payments to out-of-state consulting firms and media companies. DSCC executive director Mindy Myers personally received over $100,000 from Gideon’s campaign for consulting services. Bully Pulpit Interactive, a Democratic ad agency that also worked for Biden this year, was paid over $8 million. Aisle 518 Strategies, a D.C. digital fundraising outfit, raked in over $6 million.

This is not political consulting, this is looting.


………

A key race for a Maine Senate seat this year illustrates how Gideon’s result may have been different had she run a less toxic and more responsive campaign. Democrat Chloe Maxmin, a progressive state lawmaker from the midcoast town of Nobleboro, challenged Republican Dana Dow, then the Minority Leader of the Maine Senate, and won. Maxmin ran a “100% positive” campaign “grounded in community values, not Party or ideology,” her website declared.

Maxmin and her local team created all their ads and adjusted content based on voter feedback. They knocked on over 13,000 doors in her rural, Republican-leaning district. The voters they encountered had no interest in the type of who-took-money-from-who sniping that characterized the U.S. Senate race. “The things I hear from people are, ‘We want good jobs here, we want to live in a rural place and make a good living,’” Maxmin said. “‘We want to know our children will have the same opportunity.’”

The goal of the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) is not to win elections, it is to profit from Democratic Party campaigns.

They are parasites.

Good

A spokesman for Republican Senator John Cornyn has declared that Neera Tanden’s nomination for head of the Office of Management and Budget is dead on arrival

This is a good thing, even if the reason, “She says mean things about Republicans on Twitter,” is stupid beyond belief, because she yet another case of a member of the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) failing upwards while wasting millions dollars of donors.

The bill of particulars against Tanden is extensive:

The bigger case against her nomination is that it is CLEARLY motivated, at least in part, as another indignity directed towards Bernie Sanders that the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment).

Neera Tanden has been the most vociferous critic of Bernie Sanders online, accusing him of being racist, sexist, a Russian agent, and everything short of the Lindbergh baby kidnapping.

As OMB chair, her nomination would be managed the ranking member (or chairman if the sky falls in Georgia) of the Senate Budget Committee, one Bernard Sanders of Vermont.

It’s clearly an attempt to, “Try to publicly humiliate,” Sanders.

To quote someone not named Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, “It is worse than a crime, it was a mistake.”

Spending political capital on “Hippie Punching” because it gives the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment) a stiffie is stupid and wasteful.

There is a midterm election in 2 years, and neither Nancy Pelosi nor Chuck Schumer are going to bring out the base.

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:

Egregious Enough for Even the Supreme Court to Waive Qualified Immunity

Except, of course, for Clarence Thomas, of Course, who thinks that prison officers throwing aprisoner in a sh%$ filled cell, and then threw him naked into a cold cell, is OK, because even in comparison to likely rapist wannabee Brett Kavanaugh, Thomas is a deeply evil man.

The case is Taylor v. Rojas:

In their orders on Monday, the justices struck down a ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit that had blocked a Texas inmate’s lawsuit against prison officials. The inmate, Trent Taylor, was forced to spend six days naked in cells that contained feces from previous occupants and overflowing sewage. Taylor alleged that prison officials’ conduct violated the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment, but the 5th Circuit, invoking a doctrine known as qualified immunity, ruled that the officials could not be sued because it was not “clearly established” that their conduct violated Taylor’s constitutional rights. Taylor went to the Supreme Court in April, asking the justices to clarify what it means for a constitutional violation to be clearly established.

In a brief unsigned opinion on Monday, the Supreme Court invalidated the 5th Circuit’s decision, without calling for briefing on the merits or oral argument. The justices acknowledged that qualified immunity protects an official who makes a decision that, “even if constitutionally deficient, reasonably misapprehends the law governing the circumstances she confronted.” But in this case, the justices emphasized, “no reasonable correctional officer could have concluded that, under the extreme circumstances of this case, it was constitutionally permissible to house Taylor in such deplorably unsanitary conditions for such an extended period of time.” The court of appeals, the court noted, did not identify any emergency or other need for the prison officials to hold Taylor in these conditions, and the record in the case suggests that at least some of the officials were well aware of – but ignored – the conditions in the cells: One officer, putting him in a cell that was covered with feces, said to another officer that Taylor would “have a long weekend,” while a second officer, putting Taylor in a “frigidly cold” cell, expressed hope that Taylor would “f***ing freeze.” The justices sent the case back to the lower court to allow Taylor’s lawsuit to move forward.

Justice Clarence Thomas dissented from the court’s decision, although he did not file a separate opinion to explain his vote.

Thomas might very well be the worst Supreme Court Justice since Roger Taney.

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.