Hey, Mom! The Explanation.

Here's the permanent dedicated link to my first Hey, Mom! post and the explanation of the feature it contains.

Saturday, September 12, 2020

A Sense of Doubt blog post #2034 - Justice is what love looks like - Weekly Hodge Podge 2009.12

Justice is what love looks like in public." -Cornel West

A Sense of Doubt blog post #2034 - Justice is what love looks like - Weekly Hodge Podge 2009.12

Oh, it's been a good week!!

So much great news on every front. More Trump lies. More of Trump's criminal shit coming out. Conservatives scrambling to defend the lunacy of Donald Trump.

And in other news, great African Americans who we have lost in Lou Brock and Chadwick Boseman.

I am always searching for a theme, and this week I found one in the sage words of Dr. Cornel West of Dartmouth.

“Justice is what love looks like in public, just like tenderness is what love feels like in private.” ~ Dr. Cornel West


When we have real justice, we will see the love.

But when will we see the justice?

Black people are silenced and imprisoned and kept from voting.






The white people have broken the social contract.

The "game" is rigged, the African Americans who built this country have any ownership of it that they manage to gain taken from them.

This next video is SO POWERFUL.





Oh and this on FOX NEWS scrambling to defend their demagogue.



So much great stuff in this edition, plus some non-polticial goodies, like historical evidence that Bronze Age people could not digest milk products AND the progress George RR Martin is making on the long awaited WINDS OF WINTER, next and sixth installment int he Songs of Fire and Ice series better known to the world at large by the name of the first book: Game of Thrones.

I am still not doing a lot of extra work, and the WEEKLY HODGE PODGE is my most time consuming work of the week, so here you go.

ENJOY.


BASEBALL AND LOSS (again)


https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/29826660/the-greatness-late-lou-brock-went-baseball

The greatness of the late Lou Brock went beyond baseball


Tim KurkjianESPN Senior Writer
Sep 6, 2020

Lou Brock will be remembered for being part of one the most lopsided trades of all time in Major League Baseball history, the 1964 deal that sent him from the Chicago Cubs as part of a package to the St. Louis Cardinals for veteran pitcher Ernie Broglio. Brock will be remembered for his 3,023 hits -- 2,713 of them for the Cardinals. His having the second-most stolen bases in history and his postseason greatness are things that won't just be remembered in St. Louis or in Cooperstown, where you will find his plaque in the Baseball Hall of Fame.

On top of all of that, I will remember Lou Brock as one of the kindest, sweetest, gentlest men I have ever met.
In 1991, when Rickey Henderson broke Brock's career record for stolen bases, the two became close friends, and together they wrote a short speech that Rickey would read, on the field, immediately after he eclipsed the milestone. Rickey would keep the speech in the pocket of his uniform. But when Henderson stole base No. 939 to set the new standard, he was understandably caught up in the moment. He pulled the third-base bag out of the ground, raised it above his head and announced to the crowd at Oakland Coliseum, "Today, I am the greatest of all time."
Brock could only smile and say, "No, Rickey, the speech?! What about the speech?" He saw Henderson after the game. Brock smiled again and said, "Rickey told me, 'Sorry, I forgot.'"
Brock told that story to my son, Jeff, and me in the golf pro shop in Cooperstown 10 years later. My son was 10 years old. Lou Brock talked to us, mostly to my son, for 20 minutes, not just about baseball -- mostly about life.
"You have a great smile," he told Jeff. "Let everyone see it. A great smile can disarm people like nothing else. Smile as much as you can. We don't smile enough in the world today."
Today is a sad day. But every time I have ever thought of, and will ever think of, Lou Brock, I will smile.
Lou Brock Obituary: St. Louis Cardinals legend, dies at 81 - Legacy.com








https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/29826575/hall-famer-lou-brock-cardinals-base-stealing-icon-dies-81

Hall of Famer Lou Brock, Cardinals base-stealing icon, dies at 81


Hall of Famer Lou Brock, one of baseball's signature leadoff hitters and base stealers who helped the St. Louis Cardinals win three pennants and two World Series titles in the 1960s, died Sunday at 81.
The Cardinals and Chicago Cubs observed a moment of silence in the former outfielder's memory before their game at Wrigley Field.
"Lou Brock was one of the most revered members of the St. Louis Cardinals organization and one of the very best to ever wear the Birds on the Bat,'' Cardinals chairman Bill DeWitt Jr. said in a news release.
"He will be deeply missed and forever remembered.''
Brock retired in 1979 as the single-season and all-time leader in stolen bases -- marks since surpassed by Rickey Henderson. Brock was elected into the Hall of Fame in 1985.
"Lou was an outstanding representative of our national pastime and he will be deeply missed,'' baseball commissioner Rob Manfred said in a release.
Although he showed flashes of his potential with the Cubs, Brock's career took off after he was traded to the Cardinals on June 15, 1964. Acquired in a swap for pitcher Ernie Broglio, Brock became St. Louis' left fielder and hit .348 with 12 homers, 44 RBIs and 33 steals in 103 games.
The Cardinals won the World Series in seven games against the New York Yankees in 1964.
Brock led the team back to the Series in 1967 and 1968. He had 12 hits in 1967, when St. Louis beat the Boston Red Sox in seven games, and had 13 hits a year later, when the Detroit Tigers took the title.
Those two years were part of a 12-season stretch starting in 1965 in which Brock averaged 65 steals and 99 runs scored, with a batting average above .300 in six of those years. He hit 21 homers and stole 52 bases in 1967, making him the first player to hit more than 20 homers with at least 50 steals in a season.
In 1974, Brock surpassed Maury Wills' single-season mark with 118 stolen bases, and he eclipsed Ty Cobb for the career mark in 1977, finishing with 938.
Brock's death came after Hall of Fame pitcher Tom Seaver died Monday. Brock faced Seaver 157 times in his career. That was Brock's most plate appearances against any pitcher, and he was the batter Seaver faced the most, according to ESPN Stats & Information research.
Along with starter Bob Gibson and center fielder Curt Flood, Brock was an anchor for St. Louis as its combination of speed, defense and pitching made it a top team in the '60s and a symbol of the National League's more aggressive style at the time in comparison to the American League.
"There are two things I will remember most about Lou,'' former Cardinals teammate Ted Simmons said in a statement. "First was his vibrant smile. Whenever you were in a room with Lou, you couldn't miss it -- the biggest, brightest, most vibrant smile on earth. The other was that he was surely hurt numerous times, but never once in my life did I know he was playing hurt.''
The El Dorado, Arkansas, native ended his 19-year career with 3,023 hits, 149 homers, 900 RBIs and a .293 average.
Brock was even better in postseason play, batting .391 with four homers, 16 RBIs and 14 steals in 21 World Series games. He had a record-tying 13 hits in the 1968 World Series, and in Game 4, he homered, tripled and doubled as the Cardinals trounced Detroit and 31-game winner Denny McLain 10-1.
Brock never played in another World Series after 1968, but he remained a star for much of the final 11 years of his career.
He was so synonymous with base-stealing that in 1978 he became the first major leaguer to have an award named for him while still active: the Lou Brock Award, for the National League's leader in steals. For Brock, base-stealing was an art form and a kind of warfare. He was among the first players to study films of opposing pitchers and, once on base, relied on skill and psychology.
In his 1976 memoir, "Lou Brock: Stealing is My Game," he explained his success. Take a "modest lead" and "stand perfectly still." The pitcher was obligated to move, if only "to deliver the pitch." "Furthermore, he has two things on his mind: the batter and me," Brock wrote. "I have only one thing in mind -- to steal off him. The very business of disconcerting him is marvelously complex."
Brock closed out his career in 1979 by batting .304, making his sixth All-Star Game appearance and winning the Comeback Player of the Year award. The Cardinals retired his uniform number, 20, and he was inducted into the Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility in 1985.
The soft-spoken Brock was determined, no matter the score, and sometimes angered opponents and teammates by stealing even when the Cards were far ahead.
He also made two damaging mistakes that helped cost St. Louis the 1968 World Series.
In Game 5, with the Cards up 3-2 in the top of the fifth and leading the Series 3-1, Brock doubled with one out and seemed certain to score when Julian Javier lined a single to left. But Brock never attempted to slide, and left fielder Willie Horton's strong throw arrived in time for catcher Bill Freehan to tag him out.
The Tigers were among many who cited that moment as a turning point. They rallied to win 5-3 in Game 5 and take the final two in St. Louis. In Game 7, won by Detroit 4-1, Brock made another critical lapse: He was picked off first by the Tigers' Mickey Lolich after singling to lead off the sixth inning, when there was no score.
After his playing career was over, Brock worked as a florist and a commentator for ABC's "Monday Night Baseball" and was a regular for the Cards at spring training. He served as a part-time instructor while remaining an autograph favorite for fans, some of them wearing Brock-a-brellas, a hat with an umbrella top that he designed.
"Our hearts are a little heavy for the passing of Lou, but we know he's in a better place,'' Cardinals manager Mike Shildt said.
Brock was a nominal churchgoer since childhood, but his faith deepened after he endured personal struggles in the 1980s, and he and his third wife, Jacky, became ordained ministers, serving at Abundant Life Fellowship Church in St. Louis. He spoke of having a "Holy Ghost-Filled Alarm Clock'' whenever tempted to resume his previous ways.
"Your old lifestyle's not going away; it's going to be around you for a long time. But you'll find it has no room to enter,'' he once told the Christian Broadcasting Network.
Brock was married three times and had three children, among them Lou Brock Jr., a former NFL cornerback and safety.
The seventh of nine children, Lou Brock was born in Arkansas and grew up in a four-bedroom house in rural Collinston, Louisiana. His introduction to baseball came by accident. Brock spat on a teacher and for punishment had to write a book report about baseball, presumably to teach him about life beyond Collinston.
A star athlete in high school, he was accepted into Southern University on a work-study scholarship and nearly failed but remained with the college when a baseball tryout led to an athletic scholarship. Brock signed with the Cubs as an amateur free agent in 1960, made his major league debut late the following season and was in the starting lineup by 1962.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Lou Brock was the rock that helped make me a Cardinal fan for life – Crescent City Sports

MLB BLM: Jacob Blake

By Wyrd Smythe
Because of the shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin (the most recent in a horrifying long list of names), the Minnesota Twins postponed yesterday’s game until today, which is designated baseball’s official Jackie Robinson day — the day all the players wear #42 in honor of the great Jackie Robinson (it’s normally April 15th, but baseball didn’t start this year until the end of July).

Today would have involved a double-header, yesterday’s game plus the scheduled one against Detroit today, but the Twins voted to postpone both those games.
Baseball teams across the country are standing down in solidarity and support for Black Lives Matter.

The text reads:
“The Minnesota Twins remain committed to using our platforms to push for racial justice and equality. Therefore, we fully respect our players for their decision to not play tonight’s game versus the Detroit Tigers. The recent shooting of Jacob Blake, a mere three months after the killing of George Floyd, shows again that real change is necessary and far overdue in our country, and it is our responsibility to continue playing a role in efforts to affect meaningful reform. We stand in solidarity with the Black community and, as full partners with others in the Twins Cities and beyond, we are committed to creating the change we want to see in the world — where everyone is protected, safe and welcome. There is no place for racism, inequality or injustice in our society.“
Yes, yes, and yes!
Bravo and kudos to the Minnesota Twins and all those other teams standing up by standing down. I support them 100% in this (apparently not everyone does, which is pathetic).
The Twins also posted this in their Twins Diversity twitter account:

Which I thought was pretty cool.
§
Stay committed to racial justice, my friends! Black Lives Matter!

EVEN MORE LOSS























3 recent Oregon wildfires started by people

One Meteorologist Tries to Explain Why Oregon Caught Fire Overnight - Willamette Week


FIRE


 https://www.wonkette.com/western-usa-burning-like-end-of-world-yes-its-climate-change
Western USA Burning Like End Of World. Because Climate Change.
Doktor Zoom
September 11, 2020 09:05 AM
KPIX-TV screenshot, not Blade Runner


Dry weather and high winds have led to massive wildfires that have burned through California, Oregon, and Washington, killing at least seven people, two of them children, and forcing the evacuations of tens of thousands. Oregon Gov. Kate Brown said yesterday that the fires could cause "the greatest loss in human lives and property due to wildfire in our state's history."

Nick Nauslar, a meteorologist with the National Interagency Fired Center in Boise, Idaho, told the Washington Post the rapid spread of fires over such a large area is virtually unprecedented, comparable only to the "Big Blowup" of 1910, which burned some three million acres in northern Idaho, western Montana, and parts of Washington and British Columbia:
"Multiple fires made 20-plus mile runs in 24 hours over the last few days in California, Oregon and Washington," Nauslar said. Such distances traveled so quickly may not be all that rare in grassland fires, Nauslar noted. "However, most of these fires are making massive runs in timber and burning tens of thousands of acres and in some cases 100,000-plus acres in one day," he said. "The sheer amount of fire on the landscape is surreal, and no one I have talked to can remember anything like it."

This wildfire event "rivals the past fire season in Australia," he said, noting that more acres burned overall in Australia's devastating fire season, however.

It's very bad. Donald Trump has been too busy complaining about outbreaks of arson during a small percentage of protests, and about James Comey for some reason, to offer any support to people facing the deadly disaster in the West. Probably just as well since he'd only say something incredibly stupid again.



It should be noted that none of the western fires were started by burning flags.
This seems an opportune time to remember that just a few weeks ago, Trump was ranting about not sweeping the forests enough, and that former DHS official Miles Taylor revealed that the sociopath in chief often ranted about cutting all emergency aid to California because the state didn't vote for him, making its residents non-American anyway.

California

In California, 28 fires are being fought by more than 14,000 firefighters. Roughly 30,000 people have been evacuated due to the Creek Fire in the central part of the state, northwest of Fresno. North of Sacramento, the Bear Fire, part of the larger "North Complex Fire," killed at least three people and has destroyed or damaged about 2,000 structures. The North Complex fire is so far just 23 percent contained, and has been feeding on trees killed by California's 2011-2017 drought.

The US Forest Service closed all 18 of the state's national forests Wednesday as well.
I have to confess that the idea of dying in a fire is among the most horrifying things I can think of.

Butte County Sheriff Kory Honea said in a news conference Wednesday that two of the three dead were found in the same location. The other victim was discovered near Berry Creek by a California Highway Patrol officer who suspected they fled from their car in an unsuccessful attempt to escape the fire, the San Jose Mercury News reported. The sheriff's office was working to identify the victims and notify their families, Honea said.

In much of the Bay Area yesterday, a temperature inversion caused smoke so thick that street lights stayed on all day and the sky turned orange. CBS affiliate KPIX posted this drone footage of the apocalyptic scene.


Oregon

In Oregon, fires are burning in several large parts of the Cascade mountain range, as this NOAA satellite image shows.


The Santiam Fire, which started in Santiam Canyon about 50 miles south of Portland, has forced the evacuation of thousands of people. It's believed to have been caused, or made worse by, downed power lines due to high winds. Gov. Brown said that some communities in the area had been "substantially destroyed." In the southern part of the state, parts of Medford were threatened, and two small towns in the area, Talent and Phoenix, were almost completely destroyed. WaPo reports that one person was found dead in Ashland, and that a 12-year-old boy and his grandmother were killed in the Santiam fire farther north Wednesday.
The Oregon coast is normally known for being wet and rainy, but not this year; the winds that have been driving the fires are expected to die down in the next few days.
And because deadly wildfires are no reason to stop rightwing idiots from spewing fear and paranoia, the Douglas County Sheriff's Office in Eugene issued a plea on Facebook to ask people to stop spreading false stories about the wildfires being set by evil antifa terrorists, because emergency responders have better things to do than to update residents on whether anarchist supersoldiers are the culprits.


And it's not just rumors on the internets; there are reports of militia dudes with rifles setting up "checkpoints" to interrogate anyone they look suspicious, isn't America the best?

Robyn will have more on that shortly.

Washington

In Washington, more than half a million acres had burned by Wednesday, which is already half the amount of the state's worst fire year,


In Okanogan County, in the northern part of the state, a one-year-old boy died as his family tried to escape the Cold Springs Fire. His parents were severely burned. Okanogan County Sheriff Tony Hawley said his office received a call about the couple, Jacob and Jamie Hyland, on Tuesday afternoon. Searchers found their burned-out pickup truck empty, and eventually found the family along the bank of the Columbia River Wednesday morning. The baby, Uriel Hyland, was deceased when the rescue crew found them. The Hylands were airlifted to a hospital in Seattle, where they're in critical condition with third-degree burns. KING-TV reports that extended family say Jamie Hyland is pregnant.

Good Christ.

Sheriff Hawley said that since the fire may have been caused by human activity, the baby's death is tentatively being investigated as a homicide.

No Shit, This Is Climate Change

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which is somehow still allowed to say the phrase "climate change," reported Wednesday in its monthly climate report that 2020's "meteorological summer" — June through August — was the fourth hottest on record in the US. Six states — Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and Utah — had their hottest August in history, and on August 16, Death Valley reported a temperature of 130 degrees F.

Penn State atmospheric science prof Michael Mann (he has a new book coming out in January, if we survive that long) told CBS News that while climate models have predicted increases in extreme weather events as the planet warms, some past models may have been too optimistic.
This is yet another example of where uncertainty is not our friend. [...] As we learn more, we are finding that many climate change impacts, including these sorts of extreme weather events, are playing out faster and with greater magnitude than our models predicted.

It's not simply that forests are getting hotter and drier due to global warming, though those are entirely bad enough. Fire seasons are lasting longer, as much as two to three months longer than decades ago. And as we've noted in previous fire stories, it doesn't help that people really like building houses in scenic forested areas, which increases the danger to property and lives.

And while we're worried about fascism and the Supreme Court and bad cops and everything else, let's all remember that currently in the US there's one party that thinks climate change is real, and another that laughs at the very idea that driving SUVs has anything to do with fires, because that's stupid. Catastrophic fires are likely to continue as the planet warms, but we do have some control over how much worse they'll be in the coming decades. Boat parades won't help.

[Al Jazeera / WaPo / CNN / Oregon Public Broadcasting / KVAL / Seattle Times / KING-TV / NOAA / CBS News]

Yr Wonkette is supported entirely by reader donations. Send us some money, and maybe set the thermostat a degree higher.
Do your Amazon shopping through this link, because reasons.


CNN Profiles - Bianna Golodryga - Senior Global Affairs Analyst - CNN

Bianna Golodryga - JOURNALISTS I LIKE - WOMEN WHO AMAZE ME

https://twitter.com/biannagolodryga

https://biannagolodryga.com/








Bianna Golodryga - IMDb

 https://www.cnn.com/profiles/bianna-golodryga

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bianna_Golodryga




Opinion: Editorial Cartoons for September, 2020 - The Globe and Mail


THE ELECTION

............the following, SYMBOLIC........











Cartoons: US coronavirus cases hit new high; Russian bounties


Biden puts two feet in the ring as Trump wobbles

Analysis by Gregory Krieg, CNN
Updated 7:29 PM ET, Sat September 5, 2020


Joe Biden's do-no-harm campaign is taking a sharper edge as his race with President Donald Trump enters the home stretch and the incumbent, now a week removed from the Republican convention's sugar high, is again lashing out in response to a new series of self-made controversies.
On the eve of Labor Day weekend, Biden, in his second press conference of the week, reacted furiously to a report that Trump, in private conversations, described American soldiers killed in combat as "suckers." Biden called the remarks "absolutely damnable" and called on the President, if the story's details are true, to apologize to the families of US military veterans and war dead.
The alleged comments, as first recounted in The Atlantic on Thursday, have been met with a frenzied onslaught of denials from the White House and Trump personally, who has called the report a "hoax." But their rush to undermine the story, which a former senior administration official largely confirmed to CNN on Saturday and which various other outlets have partially corroborated, underscores the political peril Trump sees ahead -- and, if nothing else, its potential to detract from their efforts to turn this election into a partisan choice and not simply a referendum on his first four years.
Here's the problem for Donald Trump with the Atlantic storyBiden made the issue -- which could dampen Trump's support with military families and veterans -- personal during a back-and-forth with reporters in Wilmington, Delaware, on Friday, recalling the record of his late son, Beau.


...............................................


But if it was Trump's goal to cast doubt on the details in the magazine, to suggest he couldn't have denigrated the war dead because of his purported reverence for the military, he chose a strange way of communicating it.

Reminded of his past derogatory comments about the late Sen. John McCain, the President said he "respected" the man who served nearly six years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, before repeatedly dumping on veterans legislation that McCain, along with Sen. Bernie Sanders, co-authored and passed during the Obama administration.
Trump also suggested that his former chief of staff, John Kelly, might have been a source for The Atlantic's piece, before trying to convince Americans that the former US Marine Corps general had crumbled in the crucible of Trump's plush West Wing office space.

Stepping into the ring

Engaging with Trump on Trump's terms has proven itself over the years to be a losing endeavor, for both Republicans and Democrats. Biden and his campaign have sought to keep at least one foot out of the President's mud pit. That decision was made to look all the wiser this week as a variety of polls showed Biden leading Trump, as he does in every reputable national poll, and ahead of Trump or running neck-and-neck with him in key swing states.
Biden campaign manager Jen O'Malley Dillon told reporters on a call on Friday that she believed the race is "pretty stable under the hood" as she ticked off a number of demographics -- including suburbanites and independents -- with which polls showed Biden outperforming 2016 Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.
View Trump and Biden head-to-head polling
Mike Donilon, Biden's chief strategist, said on the same call that the coronavirus would remain the campaign's prime focus, for the simple reason that -- whether viewed as a health or economic issue, or both -- it remains a consuming worry to millions of Americans.
Trump's efforts to move on from the pandemic, he said, would not be successful, because "that is where voters are," adding that the President's attempts to shift the conversation with headline-grabbing, outlandish comments would backfire.
"When there is intense focus on President Trump and what he is saying and what he is doing," Donilon said, "I think there's a lot of evidence over the course of this race that his numbers tend to drop."
    For parts of a week and a few captivating hours at its end, though, Biden committed to leaving his own mark. Now, as the first rounds of ballots begin to go out to voters ahead of an election less than 60 days off, Biden and his team appear determined to help Trump along a path they believe ends with the President's political demise.
    September editorial cartoon gallery



    https://www.wonkette.com/trump-wants-fox-reporter-who-confirmed-atlantic-story-fired-for-hurting-his-wee-feelings

    Trump Wants Fox Reporter Who Confirmed Atlantic Story Fired For Hurting His Wee Feelings

    Robyn Pennacchia
    September 05, 2020 01:30 PM


    On Thursday, The Atlantic published a story on several disparaging things Trump had been heard saying about soldiers and veterans. Because the story relied on multiple anonymous sources, Trump and his people spent all of Friday calling it fake news and his supporters agreed. After all, everyone knows you can only trust an anonymous source when they are telling you that Obama's birth certificate isn't real.

    Later on Friday, however, reporter Jennifer Griffin ... of Fox News, of all places, confirmed most of the story with her own sources, who also shared some other appalling things the president. For instance, about the Vietnam War, he reportedly said "It was a stupid war. Anyone who went was a sucker." While the first sentence of that statement is certainly true, those who went did not have the luxury of bone spurs and had to go — or else go to prison.
    I have watched it approximately 25 times since yesterday, and let me tell you, it is extremely satisfying.

    Pentagon officials respond to report Trump disparaged fallen American soldierswww.youtube.com




    Now, no one is as anti-war as I am, but I still wouldn't insult veterans the way Donald Trump reportedly has. They're not the problem. It's the people in charge of the military, the people responsible for sending them to war, who are the problem. Duh. Donald Trump isn't anti-war, he's just a rich, spoiled asshole who can't believe everyone's daddy didn't buy them a Bentley for their Sweet Sixteen.

    Trump, who is still denying he said any of this (though to be fair, it must be hard for him to keep track of all of the awful things he says about people), is now calling for Fox to fire Griffin:


    The part the Breitbart story says Griffin could not confirm was the part where he reportedly called Americans who died in wars "losers" and "suckers." Just the ones who died in Vietnam, I suppose.

    The Breitbart story also hilariously attempts to justify one of the quotes that Griffin did confirm and finds a way to spin it positively.
    Griffin also said that she confirmed that Trump had asked why veterans served, "What's in it for them? They don't make any money."

    That reflected a similar claim by the Atlantic about a remark Trump was alleged to have made at Arlington National Cemetery — though without context, it is impossible to know whether Trump was praising them for volunteering regardless of personal or financial gain, rather than (as the Atlantic and Griffith presumed) mocking them for doing so.

    Oh, sure. That is definitely very plausible.

    Of course, don't let any of this get your hopes up. Trump's supporters have no true loyalty to anyone but him. They'll turn on Fox News on a dime. He already has, to a large degree, and started giving all his love to One America News Network. If there was a recording of this, if there were absolute proof, they would suddenly decide that veterans were hot garbage, even if they themselves were veterans. And, as long as he says it's not true, they will believe him. That is how this works.

    Though perhaps on the bright-ish side, this might lead to Republicans being less thirsty for stupid wars, which would be nice. I'll take "no war" however I can get it, frankly.
    On that same note, we have to be careful to not do something similar ourselves. While Trump is grotesque, while the things he says about people are grotesque, let's not 180 and suddenly decide that actually, war is pretty great and the military should be worshiped uncritically. That's not good, either. Nor is it a very popular position these days.

    [The Guardian]

    Do your Amazon shopping through this link, because reasons.


    Was Trump Acting As POTUS When He Said E. Jean Carroll Not Hot Enough To Rape?


    File:Ejean-two hands.jpg


    Turns Out Rudy's Been Colluding With Russian Spies All Along. Whaaaaaaat???



    So yesterday Treasury dropped sanctions on three individuals from the Russian troll farm "Internet Research Agency" and Derkach, the Ukrainian who's been feeding Giuliani, Devin Nunes, and Senate Intelligence Chair Ron Johnson misinformation about Joe Biden for a year now.
    From at least late 2019 through mid-2020, Derkach waged a covert influence campaign centered on cultivating false and unsubstantiated narratives concerning U.S. officials in the upcoming 2020 Presidential Election, spurring corruption investigations in both Ukraine and the United States designed to culminate prior to election day. Derkach's unsubstantiated narratives were pushed in Western media through coverage of press conferences and other news events, including interviews and statements.

    Between May and July 2020, Derkach released edited audio tapes and other unsupported information with the intent to discredit U.S. officials, and he levied unsubstantiated allegations against U.S. and international political figures. Derkach almost certainly targeted the U.S. voting populace, prominent U.S. persons, and members of the U.S. government, based on his reliance on U.S. platforms, English-language documents and videos, and pro-Russian lobbyists in the United States used to propagate his claims.
    HUH. That's exactly what National Counterintelligence and Security Center Director Bill Evanina told the House Intelligence Committee, before Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe pulled the plug on in-person election security briefings. Because you know how pissy the president gets when someone admits out loud that Russia is once again doing its darnedest to get him elected despite the will of the American people.

    Bob Woodward book 'Rage:' Trump admits to concealing true threat of coronavirus - CNNPolitics


    https://www.wonkette.com/trump-thought-bob-woodward-would-be-impressed-with-him-thats-it-thats-the-joke

    Trump Thought Bob Woodward Would Be *Impressed* With Him. That's It, That's The Joke.

    Evan Hurst
    September 10, 2020 04:34 PM
    sarcastic state of the union GIF
    Giphy

    We are starting to get hilarious palace intrigue tick-tock accounts of who in the White House was so stupid as to let Donald Trump sit for 18 taped interviews with Bob Woodward. The answer, as you might imagine, is that Donald Trump was so stupid as to let Donald Trump sit for 18 taped interviews with Bob Woodward. He gave Bob his private cell phone number. He thought he would impress Bob.

    Donald Trump hates the media, but he also craaaaaaaaaves the media's approval. On top of that, Trump is a very stupid man who thinks he is smart, who thinks his very good brain inspires awe, who thinks he speaks good English, who thinks he's a human people like. If he ever admitted to himself how pathetic he really is, he'd immediately spontaneously implode into an orange pile of shit and dust.

    During Trump's morning (allegedly!) Adderall 'n' Twitter session, after obsessively retweeting Mollie Hemingway tweets from August 26 and saying weird shit about how awesome Kim Jong-un is, he threw out this thing that one person on the internet noted reads like a "taunting note from a serial killer":


    And yesterday, Trump whined about Woodward's "boring" book, and insisted he definitely won't read it (probably because he can't).

    Oh but yet!

    CNN reports that Trump was REAL MAD he didn't get to talk to Bob Woodward for his first book about the Trump presidency. That one made him look very bad! CNN says "this was supposed to be the do-over," and that Trump was just so sure that if he talked to Woodward a lot this time, it "would provide the best chance of securing a positive take on his rollicking tenure." The Daily Beast reports he was "ecstatic" about the opportunity, according to a White House official.

    That's right, because when Trump talks, he makes it better.

    laugh laughing GIFGiphy
    And now everybody in the White House is like "YOU let him do it!" and "No, YOU let him do it!" and we imagine by the end of this Stephen Miller and Mark Meadows are going to end up oil-wrestling-mad at each other, at least until one of 'em pops an accident boner, allegedly.

    Fingers have been thrust at ex-press secretaries, longtime confidants and old friends.

    Oh no, not fingers a-thrust!

    But no, this was Trump:
    [P]eople familiar with the situation say it is Trump himself who ultimately determined at the outset he could talk Woodward into writing a positive portrayal of his administration, reckoning the powers of salesmanship that have sustained him his entire adult life would yield another unlikely success.
    This is what happens when your entire life people have been lying to you and saying you're doing a good job and you're smart and that you deserve your "success," rather than saying the truth, which is that you're nothing without the money Daddy gave you, and that you've failed ever since.

    So Trump would call Woodward late at night and talk about how cool he is, and try to impress him by leaking American nuclear secrets, the way he tried to impress the Russians in the Oval Office by leaking code-word level intel from our allies the Israelis. And he would confess he'd been lying to the American people the whole time about how coronavirus could kill them, which has directly led to the deaths of 190,000 people who were sons, daughters, grandmas, grandpas, moms, dads.

    This was his plan. Again, he gave Bob his personal cell number.

    He wouldn't tell anybody he was calling Bob. He would just call Bob.

    At some point, as the Beast reports, Trump seems to have figured out that actually maybe Bob Woodward wasn't that impressed, which is why he started rage-tweeting about Woodward last month.

     Annnnnyway, all of this totally caught the White House with its panties around its ankles. Nobody knew what the fuck to say, so they just lied as usual. Kayleigh McEnany went up there and said NUH UH! Trump was not lying about how dangerous coronavirus was, he just was trying to tell folks to stay calm and don't panic. You know, kinda like when your house is on fire, and the fire department very calmly says "It's probably just a flu" and doesn't even bring hoses to your house.

    Then Trump just fuckin' admitted yesterday that he had downplayed the coronavirus, just like he said on the Woodward tapes, after McEnany lied for him.

    "The fact is, I'm a cheerleader for this country. I love our country, and I don't want people to be frightened. I don't want to create panic, as you say. Certainly I'm not going to drive this country or the world into a frenzy," said Trump, who is well known for how he just hates making people "frenzy" or "panic," except when he's telling his supporters that Antifa is coming to eat them in their beds or Black people are moving in next door.
    Apparently the White House argued with itself about whose fault it was ALL DAY LONG. Probably still is arguing. Oh well, at least it probably distracted them from arguing about whose fault it was that The Atlantic published all those science facts about how Trump literally hates the troops.

    They are mad at the former officials who don't work there anymore, who let Bob Woodward into the White House too much. They are mad at Lindsey Graham, who in one of his moments of kiss-ass-ing apparently told Trump he should totally talk to Woodward. (Tucker Carlson was V. MAD about this and yelled a whole lot at Lindsey on Fox News last night.)
    Oh, and they all swear they told Trump it was a bad idea to talk to Bob Woodward all the time. After all, Trump isn't impressive to any sentient human being, but he's probably gonna be DOUBLEPLUS unimpressive to the fucking Watergate guy.

    But as CNN says, "Trump rarely accepts communication advice that counters his own view of himself as a natural salesman."

    Mothers Day Lol GIF by reactionseditorGiphy
    Oh Donald. You're not good enough, you're not smart enough, and doggone it, nobody likes you.

    [CNN]

     Follow Evan Hurst on Twitter RIGHT HERE, DO IT RIGHT HERE!
    Wonkette is fully funded by readers like YOU. If you love Wonkette, WE NEED YOUR LOVE GIFTS TO KEEP US GOING.






    THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC






    THE WEEKLY PANDEMIC REPORT


    Photo of flu patients during the First World War

    I want to add this link to the weekly report. It's important to remember:

    A Sense of Doubt blog post #1983 - Is Coronavirus more contagious and more deadly than the flu? YES.


    ALSO... I am seeing a big discrepancy between the Johns Hopkins data in death totals and WORLDOMETER data, which aggregates data from many more sources. Could this be the slow down due to the change in how the CDC obtains the data, having it filter first through Health and Human Services department.

    WEEKLY PANDEMIC REPORT - JOHNS HOPKINS

    Anyway, as usual, here's the weekly links to the data about cases (lower than reality) and deaths (lower than reality, also) due to COVID-19.



    Data can be found here, as always:

    COVID-19 Dashboard by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University (JHU)

    This is also a good data site:

    Worldometer - Coronavirus info

    Last updated: September 12, 2020, 16:12 GMT

     United States

    Coronavirus Cases:

    6,648,387

    Deaths:

    197,664

    Recovered:

    3,919,483


    About Worldometer
    Worldometer manually analyzes, validates, and aggregates data from thousands of sources in real time and provides global COVID-19 live statistics for a wide audience of caring people around the world.
    Our data is also trusted and used by the UK Government, Johns Hopkins CSSE, the Government of Thailand, the Government of Vietnam, the Government of Pakistan, Financial Times, The New York Times, Business Insider, BBC, and many others.
    Over the past 15 years, our statistics have been requested by, and provided to Oxford University Press, Wiley, Pearson, CERN, World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), The Atlantic, BBC, Milton J. Rubenstein Museum of Science & Technology, Science Museum of Virginia, Morgan Stanley, IBM, Hewlett Packard, Dell, Kaspersky, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Amazon Alexa, Google Translate, the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20), the U2 concert, and many others.
    Worldometer is cited as a source in over 10,000 published books and in more than 6,000 professional journal articles and was voted as one of the best free reference websites by the American Library Association (ALA), the oldest and largest library association in the world.


    Coronavirus Is No 1918 Pandemic - The Atlantic

    A Red Cross worker in the United States, 1918
    https://www.historyextra.com/period/20th-century/spanish-flu-the-virus-that-changed-the-world/

    No image available
    Trump Health Appointees Reportedly Edit CDC Reports to Fit White House Message

     For decades, the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Reports put out by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were seen as decidedly uncontroversial. Written by careers scientists the reports are a key way for the agency to transmit information to doctors, researchers and the public at large. Recently, it had become a way to give reliable, up-to-date information about the spread of Covid-19 across the country. But all that changed in April, when Michael Caputo, a Trump ally with no scientific background, was named spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services, reports Politico. Caputo and his allies at the CDC have taken lots of effort to make sure the CDC reports are in line with what the White House has been communicating about the virus.

    Leading Coronavirus Vaccine Trial Halted Over Suspected Adverse Reaction

    By 

    SEPT 09, 20208:43 AM


    The race to develop a coronavirus vaccine careened into a speed bump Tuesday when the U.K.-based pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca announced it was pausing late-stage global trials of its leading vaccine candidate after one of the trial’s volunteers experienced a serious suspected adverse reaction. The company signed a deal to manufacture and distribute a vaccine developed at Oxford University and had hoped that the vaccine would be ready and available by the end of the year. The company announced it was voluntarily pausing its vaccine to investigate whether or not the illness in the volunteer was linked to the vaccine.
    For the Trump administration, which has badly mishandled the U.S. response to the pandemic, the near-singular focus now rests on producing an effective vaccine as fast as possible that could potentially let the country resume some semblance of normal daily life. President Donald Trump has played fast and loose with COVID cures of all sorts over the last six months and, never being one to let reality get in the way of what serves him best, caused concern over the sanity and safety of the well-established trial process
    Pick Up A Black Lives Matter Face Mask For Your Trips Out Of The House
    https://www.mensjournal.com/health-fitness/pick-up-a-black-lives-matter-face-mask-for-your-trips-out-of-the-house/black-lives-matter-mask/

    https://science.slashdot.org/story/20/09/08/2052247/a-new-theory-asks-could-a-mask-be-a-crude-vaccine

    A New Theory Asks: Could a Mask Be a Crude 'Vaccine'? (nytimes.com)


    Posted by BeauHD  from the provocative-and-unproven dept.

    Iwastheone shares a report from The New York Times:As the world awaits the arrival of a safe and effective coronavirus vaccine, a team of researchers has come forward with a provocative new theory: that masks might help to crudely immunize some people against the virus. The unproven idea, described in a commentary published Tuesday in the New England Journal of Medicine, is inspired by the age-old concept of variolation, the deliberate exposure to a pathogen to generate a protective immune response. First tried against smallpox, the risky practice eventually fell out of favor, but paved the way for the rise of modern vaccines.

    Masked exposures are no substitute for a bona fide vaccine. But data from animals infected with the coronavirus, as well as insights gleaned from other diseases, suggest that masks, by cutting down on the number of viruses that encounter a person's airway, might reduce the wearer's chances of getting sick. And if a small number of pathogens still slip through, the researchers argue, these might prompt the body to produce immune cells that can remember the virus and stick around to fight it off again. "You can have this virus but be asymptomatic," said Dr. Monica Gandhi, an infectious disease physician at the University of California, San Francisco, and one of the commentary's authors. "So if you can drive up rates of asymptomatic infection with masks, maybe that becomes a way to variolate the population."

    That does not mean people should don a mask to intentionally inoculate themselves with the virus. "This is not the recommendation at all," Dr. Gandhi said. "Neither are pox parties," she added, referring to social gatherings that mingle the healthy and the sick. The theory cannot be directly proven without clinical trials that compare the outcomes of people who are masked in the presence of the coronavirus with those who are unmasked -- an unethical experimental setup. And while outside experts were intrigued by the theory, they were reluctant to embrace it without more data, and advised careful interpretation.







    COVID-19 = Speeding

    By Wyrd Smythe
    If it isn’t one thing, it’s another. An article in Jalopnik, “You Idiots Are Going To Kill People”, talks about the increase in traffic fatalities and speeding tickets during the pandemic. Because, sure, that’s just what we need right now —  people driving like maniacs.
    Theories range from it being due to there being less traffic, to thinking the cops might be avoiding contact due to the virus, to just general frustration and unrest in these strange times. (I do have a sense of social unraveling sometimes.)
    I have to say, driving around I’ve seen it. Lots of speeders!

    The article mentions that, in July, Ohio saw its deadliest month since 2007. In Vermont, in August, there were 43 traffic fatalities compared to 22 the previous August.
    It getting insane. Quoting the article quoting the AP:
    The Iowa State Patrol recorded a 101% increase from January through August over the four-year average in tickets for speeds exceeding 100 mph, along with a 75% increase in tickets for speeds of 25 mph or more over the posted speed limit.
    California Highway Patrol officers issued more than 15,000 tickets from mid-March through Aug. 19 for speeds exceeding 100 mph, more than a 100% increase over the same time period a year ago. That includes a continuing spike from May on.
    Okay, 15,000+ tickets for fools going faster than 100 mph? Yikes!
    That same quote mentions a ticket issued in the Cincinnati area for someone going 147 mph.
    I do love this paragraph from the article:
    If your modern car detects you going over 120 mph around other living people in a public area, it should spontaneously combust inside. Most American cars used to come like that from the factory, though not intentionally.
    These days you might blow out a head gasket, but cars these days are very capable of high speeds, especially the sportier models.
    §
    Like my Ford Fusion with the 3.6 liter sport package and (regrettably expensive) tires that look like fat rubber bands wrapped around the rims.
    A car that I know from personal experience is fully capable of going 100 mph (90 almost effortlessly).
    Not that I do normally, but one does need to know the full capabilities of one’s car. A brief test under safe conditions by an experienced driver with a strong sense of his capabilities is a risk I’m willing to take once or twice per vehicle I own.
    (Even rental vehicles I’ll often find an empty parking lot or totally empty road for a quick, entirely legal, test of acceleration, braking, and general handling. That knowledge can come in handy if one gets into a dicey traffic situation. If I know a car is slow to respond, for instance, my driving “envelope” has to be bigger than for a more responsive car.)
    FWIW, in 45+ years of driving, if I can deduct a few parking lot fender benders and one instance of bad luck, all in the first year or so I was learning, then I’ve never had an accident (and very few close calls).
    I know I’m too aggressive of a driver to be called a good driver, but I do think, compared to most, I’m a skillful driver. Not on par with trained professionals and people who drive for a living, but maybe just a rung or two down?
    In any event, experienced enough to never get over confident and to always, always, always pay full attention to the road.
    §
    I learned to drive in Los Angeles, the car capital of the USA, if not the world, so my sense of ability is well-earned and well-deserved, I think.
    The decade or so I was driving around LA was the decade the other drivers shot at you if they didn’t like your driving.
    It never seemed to be with the intention of actually hitting anyone. It was more a way of saying, “Hey! This is Los Angeles, and we take driving seriously around here! Drive Right!!”
    I have to say, absent the shooting, driving in LA back then was a kind of cooperative dance that made the sheer volume of traffic work much better than it could have. But it really does take knowing how your “partners” will respond.
    I’ve never really experienced that in other cities. I’ve been driving in the Twin Cities now for over 35 years, and I still can’t read the flow the way I could in LA. Drivers here continue to be far more unpredictable.
    Although that, too, might be a sign of the times. Perhaps driving in the LA area is just as chaotic with just as large a spread of possible driver behaviors as I see here.
    (I’m not sure that aspect has gotten worse, though, since I moved here in the mid-1980s. I noticed the lack of predictability right away. Honestly, to my LA-trained eyes, the drivers here are rank amateurs. The question might be whether LA, now, is filled with amateurs.)
    §
    I’ve wandered far from where I started and probably severely undermined the point I intended. (Which was: “Don’t speed!”)
    But it’s my blog, and I’ll irony if I want to.
    I was trained and steeped in Los Angeles (were you?), and I’ve taken driving very seriously all my life (do you?) — because it actually is a matter of life and death. It doesn’t get much more serious than that.
    And it should go without saying to leave your damn cellphone OFF.
    Let me emphasize the OFF part. I don’t want to hear about hands-free. Fuck that. You don’t need to chatter with someone who isn’t present while you pilot a 2000+ pound killing machine.
    It’s actually not wise to chatter with someone who is present, but the one saving grace there is that a present person can see when the traffic situation requires more attention and pause the conversation while you drive.
    Placing your attention out of the car with someone else is just plain stupid. (I’ll confess to driving a little faster than I should when I’m alone in the car and fully focused and conditions permit. When it comes to cellphones, as Meat Loaf famously sang, “But I won’t do that.”)
    Turn your cellphone OFF. Enjoy the drive.
    Enjoy living! And not killing anyone.
    §
    Stay under (or darn close to) the speed limit, my friends!

    My Sister’s Family Ignored Social Distancing and Got COVID. Now She’s Crowdfunding Their Bills.

    She has asked me not only to donate but to spread the word in my networks.

    My sister and her family live in a state with very loose COVID regulations and, partly due to this, they have not been taking the health risks seriously at all. Her family works out at indoor gyms, eats indoors at restaurants, and has taken three vacations since lockdown started. We aren’t that close, and I knew better than to engage, so I just sat back and watched it unfold. Well, it did. Her husband and two of their kids caught COVID. Her husband had to go to the hospital and was extremely sick for weeks. Her children recovered fairly quickly but were understandably scared. She and her husband have now started a GoFundMe to pay for hospital bills (after railing against “socialism” in health care, go figure). She has asked me to not only donate but to spread the word in my networks. I made a small donation, but I refuse to publicize this in my circle. I think it’s unconscionable that she and her husband put many other people’s health at risk due to their selfishness and stubbornness. Our brother shares many of my views but is still sharing the GoFundMe because he feels browbeaten by our sister. I don’t want to cause a permanent rift over this. Breaking off relations with family members seems to be a fraught decision, especially these days. But I can’t handle the thought of asking my friends to bail my sister’s family out of a situation they 100 percent created for themselves. What should I do?

    DEFUND THE POLICE, BLACK LIVES MATTER and PROTESTS

    bustthepoliceunions

    https://reason.com/2020/09/06/bust-the-police-unions/

    Bust the Police Unions

    They're a consistent force of organized resistance to calmer, safer, less aggressive policing.

     | 




    In 2018, as a gunman murdered 17 students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, Sgt. Brian Miller, a deputy with the Broward County Sheriff's Office, hid behind his police cruiser, waiting 10 minutes to radio for help. For his failure to act, Miller was fired. The official cause was "neglect of duty."
    In May 2020, however, Miller was reinstated and given full back pay. His 2017 salary was more than $138,000. Miller had challenged his firing, and he had done so with the full backing of his union.
    Miller's reinstatement is notable in that it relates to a high-profile case. But the essential story—an officer performs poorly, with fatal results, and the union comes to his defense—is all too common. That is what police unions do: defend the narrow interests of police as employees, often at the expense of public safety. They start from the premise that police are essentially unfireable and that taxpayers should foot the bill for their dangerous, and even deadly, negligence. And although unions are not the only pathology that affects American policing, they are a key internal influence on police culture, a locus of resistance to improvements designed to reduce police violence. To stop police abuse and remove bad cops from duty, police unions as we know them must go.
    In case after case, police unions have defended deadly misdeeds committed by law enforcement. In 2014, for example, New York City police officer Daniel Pantaleo put Eric Garner in a chokehold for selling loose cigarettes. As a result of Pantaleo's chokehold, Garner died, gasping the words, "I can't breathe."
    The incident, caught on video, helped galvanize the Black Lives Matter movement. A grand jury declined to indict Pantaleo, but five years after Garner's death, he was fired from the force following a police administrative judge's ruling that the chokehold was, indeed, a violation of department policy.
    ................................and......................
    For a study in the ways that police unions can foster cultures of corruption and self-protection at the expense of public safety, consider the case of Camden, New Jersey. For decades, the city was among the most violent in the country, plagued by one of America's highest murder rates and commensurate levels of property crime. In 2012, The New York Times reported, with the murder rate approaching record highs, police acknowledged "that they have all but ceded these streets to crime." City officials said the police union was to blame. Union contracts made hiring officers prohibitively expensive. The cops on the payroll were being paid too much, and they weren't getting the job done.
    So the city made a novel decision: Fire the police. All of them. That year, Camden began the process of terminating hundreds of officers and hiring a new force, controlled by the county and initially made up of less expensive, non-union labor.
    It was a decision meant to address both budget and crime problems. Naturally, the police union opposed the plan, saying it was "definitely a form of union-busting." City officials, the union said, were relying on a reform that was "unproven and untested," putting faith in an agency that did not yet exist.
    By many measures, however, the unproven and untested new police force worked. After Camden disbanded the city police department and reorganized it under the county with lower pay, while adding a focus on rebuilding trust with the community (which is among the nation's poorest), murders declined. The city is still dangerous compared to some others, but there's been clear progress in reducing crime and improving community relations. In May, as residents took to the streets to protest disparate and abusive treatment in black communities, Camden police officers marched with the protesters.
    Eight years after the shakeup, Camden police are once again represented by a union. But the new labor representation signed off on a use-of-force policy that is aimed at de-escalation. Police unions have tended to object to such proposals: In 2016, for example, after a think tank put forward a de-escalation policy suggesting that cops think about how the public might react to the use of violence by police, the vice president of the Association for Los Angeles Deputy Sheriffs called it "a ridiculous piece of claptrap," and the Fraternal Order of Police and the International Association of Chiefs of Police collaborated on a joint statement opposing the idea.
    ..................................................... and ...................................
    Police are public servants granted enormous power over the citizenry. They are tasked with protecting the public and serving their interests. Police unions, in contrast, are tasked with protecting police and serving their interests—even in direct contravention of serving the public. That distinction makes them a barrier to reforms aimed at improving public safety and increasing oversight of law enforcement. If union busting is what it takes to reduce this pernicious influence on policing, then it's time to bust some police unions.













    Racial justice protester suspected in Portland shooting death killed by law enforcement

    By Conrad Wilson (OPB) and Kimberley Freda (OPB)
    Sept. 3, 2020 5:11 p.m. Updated: Sept. 4, 2020 8:42 a.m.


    Officials work at a scene late Thursday, Sept. 3, 2020, where a man suspected of fatally shooting a supporter of a right-wing group in Portland, Ore., the week before was killed as investigators moved in to arrest him in Lacey, Wash. Michael Reinoehl, 48, was killed as a federal task force attempted to apprehend him in Lacey, a senior Justice Department official said. Reinoehl was the prime suspect in the killing of 39-year-old Aaron “Jay” Danielson, who was shot in the chest Saturday night, the official said.

    https://www.opb.org/article/2020/09/04/michael-forest-reinoehl-protest-fatal-shooting-self-defense/

    Just hours after an interview was posted online in which Michael Forest Reinoehl took responsibility for the fatal shooting of a Patriot Prayer supporter in downtown Portland, Reinoehl was killed in an attempted arrest in Lacey, Washington, near Olympia.
    A Multnomah County Circuit Court judge authorized a warrant Thursday for Reinoehl’s arrest in the Aug. 29 shooting on a charge of murder. Just before 7 p.m., members of the Pacific Northwest Violent Offender Task Force were waiting outside an apartment where they believe Reinoehl was staying.
    They confronted Reinoehl as he was trying to get into a vehicle, and the shooting began.
    The U.S. Marshals Service said Reinoehl had a gun and was “threatening the lives of law enforcement officers.” It’s not clear whether Reinoehl fired at them.
    U.S. Marshals were present but were not the officers who killed Reinoehl, according to the Thurston County Sheriff’s Department. Other jurisdictions involved in the task force were the Pierce County Sheriff’s Department, the Lakewood Police Department and the Washington Department of Corrections.
    Police officials work at a scene where a man suspected of fatally shooting a supporter of a right-wing group in Portland, Ore., last week was killed as investigators moved in to arrest him in Lacey, Wash., Thursday, Sept. 3, 2020. Michael Reinoehl, 48, was killed as a federal task force attempted to apprehend him in Lacey, a senior Justice Department official said. Reinoehl was the prime suspect in the killing of 39-year-old Aaron “Jay” Danielson, who was shot in the chest Saturday night, the official said.

    https://www.wonkette.com/rochester-police-chief-retires

    Rochester Police Chief Retires Because Y'all Being Really Prissy About The Man They Smothered

    Doktor Zoom
    September 09, 2020 09:26 AM
    Rochester Police Chief La'Ron Singletary and Mayor Lovely Warren. Video screenshot, WROC-TV


    Most of the police leadership of Rochester, New York, "retired" or took "voluntary demotions" Tuesday, just days after details of the March police killing of Daniel Prude were made public. Prude, 41, was going through a mental health crisis on March 23 when his brother called 911 for help, because Prude was running through the streets naked. Instead of helping, police handcuffed Daniel Prude, covered his head with a "spit bag" to protect themselves from COVID-19, and then knelt on his back. He died in a hospital a week later, in what a coroner's report determined was a homicide, caused by "complications of asphyxia in the setting of physical restraint."

    Until Prude's family successfully pursued a public records request, the city and police had released almost no information on Prude's death for months. Last week, the city finally turned over the autopsy report and horrifying body cam video of police restraining Prude. New York Attorney General Letitia James announced Saturday that she will empanel a grand jury as part of her office's investigation of Prude's death. Prude's family has accused the city and police department of covering up his death. No doubt Fox News will call that a crazy conspiracy theory, since it only took four months for the truth to come out. (We are kidding of course. Fox News is only focusing on the scary Black Lives Matter protests that have gone on for a week, because Law And Order.)

    Rochester Mayor Lovely Warren announced yesterday that Police Chief La'Ron Singletary would retire at the end of the month. In addition, three other top officials in the police department are retiring, and three others resigned their command positions and returned to lower ranks, The Rochester Democrat and Chronicle explains those three are "moving back to civil service-protected positions, meaning they cannot be fired by the next chief." In addition to yesterday's retirements and self-demotions, Mayor Warren last week suspended the seven officers involved in the arrest of Daniel Prude.

    It's a start.

    Initially, Singletary had told Warren that Prude had died of a drug overdose (he had PCP in his system, which probably led to his erratic behavior, but he died because cops asphyxiated him). She said she didn't see the video of the arrest until August 4. Since the video was released last Wednesday, Rochester has seen nightly protests, as well as calls for the resignations of Singletary and Warren. Warren said yesterday that she had not asked Singletary to resign, and expressed tepid sorta-kinda support for the police chief:

    I think that the chief feels that his career and his integrity you know, has been challenged. He has dedicated 20 years to the city and to the citizens of Rochester, and feels that you know, the events that have happened, were not done in a way that…you know, could have been handled differently. But, you know, he didn't in any way try to cover this up.

    That was in contrast to her stronger comments Sunday, when she said, "I do not believe there's another person more dedicated to changing the culture of policing than La'Ron."
    Singletary issued a statement saying he had to retire to preserve his honor, somehow:

    As a man of integrity, I will not sit idly by while outside entities attempt to destroy my character. [...] The events over the past week are an attempt to destroy my character and integrity. The members of the Rochester Police Department and the greater Rochester community know my reputation and know what I stand for. The mischaracterization and the politicization of the actions that I took after being informed of Mr. Prude's death is not based on facts, and is not what I stand for.

    We bet his honor and integrity would be in far better shape if he had actually kept the mayor and the public informed of what had happened to Mr. Prude. Or even better, if the city sent out mental health workers with police on mental health calls. But the important thing here is to remember that Rochester's top cop is a very honorable person of integrity and you should not speak ill of him just because his department killed a man who needed help and then had to be dragged kicking and screaming to release any information about it.

    [Rochester Democrat and Chronicle / NPR / NYT / WaPo / NPR]

    Yr Wonkette is entirely supported by reader donations. Please help us keep the servers humming, the writers paid, and this little mommyblog advising police on how they could have a bit of fucking honor.


    Do your Amazon shopping through this link, because reasons.







    MORE VIDEOS





























    MY RECENT TWITTER MESSAGES

















































    RANDOM


    How to Have the Sex Talk With Your Teenage Kid

    A cheat sheet for making that dreaded conversation a little less awkward, and a lot more effective.

    According to experts, if your son is 12, he’s probably seen porn. Have you talked about this with him yet? Do you know what to say? Journalist Peggy Orenstein has interviewed more than 100 teenage boys about their experiences with sex, porn, and gender for her book Boys & Sex, and she says we need to pay more attention to boys’ sense of male identity. Masculinity doesn’t always have to be “toxic,” but we need to find better ways to teach our sons what it means to have a healthy understanding of relationships. In this recent episode on How To!, Peggy breaks down how to have a productive conversation with your son about sex in a way that won’t make you—or your kid—die of embarassment. This transcript has been condensed and edited for clarity.
    Charles Duhigg: How did you get to writing about toxic masculinity?
    Peggy Orenstein: I have spent 25 years writing about girls and women—before Boys & Sex, my most recent book was Girls & Sex, which was about the kind of contradictions that young women still faced in their intimate encounters. As I went around the country after publishing that book, everywhere that I went, parents and boys themselves would say, “What about boys? When will you write about boys?” The more I thought about it, the more I realized that, in fact, nobody was talking to boys. More importantly, nobody was really listening to boys. So I started doing some interviews and then very quickly after I started that, the MeToo allegations began and suddenly everybody was talking about sexual misconduct and the idea of toxic masculinity. It created this imperative to reduce sexual violence, but also, I thought, a positive opportunity to engage young men in conversations about issues of sex and intimacy and gender dynamics because we really have to know what’s going on in their heads so that we can guide them toward better and more informed choices.
    And what is going on in their heads? 
    I felt there were two things going on at once. On the one hand, they saw girls as equal in the classroom, deserving of educational professional opportunities, and so on. But, on the other hand, when I would say, describe the ideal guy to me, it was like they were channeling 1955. It went immediately back to dominance, aggression, athleticism, and sex as status-seeking. And the really big one, of course, was emotional suppression. What they would say most often was that they felt that the two emotions they were allowed were happiness and anger. So that whole bucket of emotions that boys learn around sadness, betrayal, frustration—anything like that gets funneled into one emotion.
    I would ask boys what they liked about being a guy and that was a lot harder for them to answer honestly. I think that with girls—this is not to say that everything is OK in girl world—but we’ve given them this alternative identity to traditional conventional femininity that they can embrace and grow into and feel good about, but that hasn’t happened with boys.


    https://science.slashdot.org/story/20/09/06/034221/researchers-baffled-as-warrior-skeletons-reveal-bronze-age-europeans-couldnt-drink-milk

    Researchers Baffled as Warrior Skeletons Reveal Bronze Age Europeans Couldn't Drink Milk (sciencemag.org)


    Posted by EditorDavid  from the how-now-brown-cow dept.

    sciencehabit quotes Science magazine:About 3000 years ago, thousands of warriors fought on the banks of the Tollense river in northern Germany. They wielded weapons of wood, stone, and bronze to deadly effect: Over the past decade, archaeologists have unearthed the skeletal remains of hundreds of people buried in marshy soil. It's one of the largest prehistoric conflicts ever discovered. Now, genetic testing of the skeletons reveals the homelands of the warriors—and unearths a shocker about early European diets: These soldiers couldn't digest fresh milk...

    The results leave scientists more puzzled than ever about exactly when and why Europeans began to drink milk. "Natural genetic drift can't explain it, and there's no evidence that it was population turnover either," says Christina Warinner, a geneticist at Harvard University and the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History who was not involved with the study. "It's almost embarrassing that this is the strongest example of selection we have and we can't really explain it."

    Perhaps something about fresh milk helped people ward off disease in the increasingly crowded and pathogen-ridden European towns and villages of the Iron Age and Roman period, says the study's co-author. But he admits he's baffled too. "We have to find a reason why you need this drink."
    https://science.slashdot.org/story/20/09/08/2056257/astronomers-find-no-signs-of-alien-tech-after-scanning-over-10-million-stars

    Astronomers Find No Signs of Alien Tech After Scanning Over 10 Million Stars


    Posted by BeauHD  from the empty-handed dept.

    A new large-scale survey of the sky looked into the dark forest of the cosmos, examining over 10 million stars, but failed to turn up any evidence of alien technologies. CNET reports:The study, published in Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia on Monday, details a search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) using the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA), a collection of 4096 antennas planted in the red soil of Western Australia that detects radio signals from space. "They are little spider-like antennas that sit on the ground," explains Chenoa Tremblay, co-author on the study and astrophysicist with CSIRO, an Australian government scientific research organization.

    Tremblay and co-author Stephen Tingay, from the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research, used the MWA to listen out for "technosignatures," or evidence of alien technology, in a portion of the sky around the Vela constellation. Tremblay explains this region is scientifically interesting because a large number of stars have exploded and died, creating ideal conditions for new stars to form. The search for extraterrestrial life "piggy-backs" on other work studying this region to understand the life cycle of stars. [...] After listening to the Vela region for 17 hours, no unknown signals were detected. While the survey was able to capture over 10.3 million stellar sources and contained six known exoplanets (likely many more exist in the region), the team notes it was like trying to find something in an ocean, but only studying "a volume of water equivalent to a large backyard swimming pool." And there's another big caveat. "Looking for technosignatures is assuming that the civilization have technology similar to our own," says Tremblay.

    https://tech.slashdot.org/story/20/09/10/0214238/digital-cockpits-will-become-the-norm-this-decade-research-says

    Digital Cockpits Will Become the Norm This Decade, Research 



    Posted by BeauHD  from the what-to-expect dept.

    Future cars will, by and large, say goodbye to analog gauges as digital clusters and more screens become mainstream. CNET reports:Big screens at least 12 inches large, virtual assistants powered by artificial intelligence and both video and game streaming will all trickle down to hundreds of millions of cars by 2030, ABI Research believes. We don't want to know what this will do the average cost of a new vehicle. With the advanced technologies, cars will become even more like rolling computers, the researchers believe. A single ECU will, in the future, control everything from front and rear seat infotainment, advanced driver assist functions, the digital instrument cluster and more. ABI Research named a few companies, Nvidia, Qualcomm and others, that will likely shine as automakers tap them for powerful processors to handle so many tasks. And not only that, but they'll have reserves to ensure there's extra computing power for features rolled out via over-the-air software updates.
    https://news.slashdot.org/story/20/09/11/0324219/hundreds-of-americans-planted-chinese-mystery-seeds

    Hundreds of Americans Planted 'Chinese Mystery Seeds' (vice.com)


    Posted by BeauHD  from the plot-thickens dept.

    An anonymous reader shares a report from Motherboard, written by Jason Koebler:In late July, America was briefly enthralled with "Unsolicited Seeds from China," which started showing up in mailboxes in all 50 states. These mystery seeds prompted warnings from the USDA, which said people should not plant them, and should instead alert their state agricultural authority and mail them to the USDA or their local officials. Many Americans heeded this advice. Many more decidedly did not. According to documents obtained by Motherboard from state departments of agriculture, at least hundreds, perhaps thousands of Americans planted the seeds. Since the seed story originally broke, I have been obsessed with learning more. To do this, I filed 52 freedom of information requests; one with each of the departments of agriculture (or their state-level equivalent) in all 50 states plus Washington DC and Puerto Rico. I also filed requests with the USDA and several of its labs. Thousands of pages of emails, spreadsheets, reports, and documents, as well as audio voicemail recordings, have been trickling in for the last month, and they have been enlightening in many ways.

    While scanning through thousands of pages of documents about the seeds, it became clear that, for at least the first few weeks, no one had any idea who sent the seeds, where they came from (other than "China"), or the goal of the seed mailing campaign. Eventually, the official line became that this was a "brushing" campaign, in which items of small value are sent to people whose online accounts have been compromised, or are sent to people as a "gift." In order to leave a positive review from a "verified buyer" (which is weighted higher because the person nominally bought and used the product), you need to have actually bought or received an item, so by receiving seeds, reviews from that account or name will be weighted higher. The "brushing" idea is still what USDA and other agencies are saying, but, at least in the emails I've reviewed there's very little talk about how the scam worked or why it happened. This campaign also seems to be much larger than any other known brushing campaign or any other seed mailing campaign.

    One thing is clear to me, from reading these documents. American people do not seem particularly well-prepared for scams of this nature. The emails between public officials and scientists, who were dealing with a difficult situation, seem efficient, professional, and appropriately cautious. But communication from the general public is concerning. People planted seeds even when expressly told not to. Hundreds of people had no idea whether they had ever ordered seeds, or how to check. Some people called 911. Others ate the seeds. Others ordered something specific, got what they ordered from who they ordered it from, then still panicked. Others were furious they had to pay for postage to send the seeds to the government. From one recipient in North Carolina: "I did not receive seeds. I received a suspicious package from China with a spoon and a fork in it my concerns are that it is full of Covid."
    https://science.slashdot.org/story/20/09/11/0311250/earth-barreling-toward-hothouse-state-not-seen-in-50-million-years-epic-new-climate-record-shows

    Earth Barreling Toward 'Hothouse' State Not Seen In 50 Million Years, Epic New Climate Record Shows (livescience.com)


    Posted by BeauHD  from the projected-warming dept.

    [I]n a new study published in the journal Science, researchers have analyzed the chemical elements in thousands of foram samples and found that Earth is barreling toward a hothouse state not seen in 50 million years. Live Science reports:The new paper, which comprises decades of deep-ocean drilling missions into a single record, details Earth's climate swings across the entire Cenozoic era -- the 66 million-year period that began with the death of the dinosaurs and extends to the present epoch of human-induced climate change. The results show how Earth transitioned through four distinct climate states -- dubbed the Warmhouse, Hothouse, Coolhouse and Icehouse states -- in response to changes in the planet's orbit, greenhouse gas levels and the extent of polar ice sheets.

    The zig-zagging chart (shown above) ends with a sobering peak. According to the researchers, the current pace of anthropogenic global warming far exceeds the natural climate fluctuations seen at any other point in the Cenozoic era, and has the potential to hyper-drive our planet out of a long icehouse phase into a searing hothouse state. "Now that we have succeeded in capturing the natural climate variability, we can see that the projected anthropogenic warming will be much greater than that," study co-author James Zachos, professor of Earth and planetary sciences at the University of California, Santa Cruz, said in a statement. "The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) projections for 2300 in the 'business-as-usual' scenario will potentially bring global temperature to a level the planet has not seen in 50 million years." (The IPCC is a United Nations group that assesses the science, risks and impacts of climate change on the planet.)

     https://science.slashdot.org/story/20/09/11/033213/nasa-wants-to-buy-moon-dirt-from-private-companies

    NASA Wants To Buy Moon Dirt From Private Companies (space.com)


    Posted by BeauHD  from the money-is-a-great-incentive dept.

    NASA aims to pay private companies to collect moon dirt in an effort to stimulate and normalize the extraction and sale of lunar resources. Space.com reports:The agency just issued a request for proposals (RFP) to this effect, [NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine] explained in a blog post today. NASA wants private companies, from the United States or abroad, to snag 1.8 ounces to 18 ounces (50 to 500 grams) of lunar material by 2024 and officially transfer ownership of the stuff to the space agency on the lunar surface. NASA will pay $15,000 to $25,000 for each of these caches, with 80% of the money delivered after sample collection. Companies will get 10% upon signing a contract and 10% after launching their spacecraft, Bridenstine added.

    NASA will eventually bring the lunar material down to Earth, if all goes according to plan. (The space agency already has a considerable stash of moon rocks here, of course. The Apollo astronauts brought home 842 lbs., or 382 kilograms, of lunar material between 1969 and 1972.) The main goal of the new RFP, which you can find here, is to stimulate and normalize the extraction and sale of lunar resources, Bridenstine said. For example, participating companies may choose to collect far more than 18 ounces of material and sell the excess to non-NASA buyers.

    https://www.wonkette.com/things-you-want-to-reconsider-wearing-on-a-plane-tabs-fri-sept-11-2020

    Things You Want To Reconsider Wearing On A Plane. Tabs, Fri., Sept. 11, 2020

    Rebecca Schoenkopf
    September 11, 2020 07:00 AM
    Tabs gifs by your friend Martini Ambassador!


    I stopped watching after "five times. You ever hear the expression 'five times'?" No, in fact, I have not heard the expression "five times."


    Laura Wagner yells at Bob Woodward quite nicely. (Vice)

    Topless New Hampshire voting woman is the best woman.
    The unidentified woman cast the bare-breasted ballot after showing up at the Talbot Gymnasium polls wearing a shirt with images of President Donald Trump and the late Sen. John McCain and the legend "McCain Hero/Trump Zero."

    Town Moderator Paul Scafidi told the woman, who appeared to be about 60, that she would have to remove the shirt or cover it up because of laws against electioneering inside polling places — though Trump's name wasn't on
    Tuesday's state primary ballot.

    When the woman, who was wearing a mask, pointed out someone wearing a shirt with an American flag, she was told that was different.

    "She said, 'You want me to take my shirt off? That's what you want?'" Scafidi recalled.

    He told the woman it was her choice, and before he could say anything more, the shirt was gone. She was not wearing a bra.

    Of course she wasn't, IDIOTS. Bras are from the Before Times. (Union Leader)

    And here's Harry Reid. He forgot Kansas. "I think we're going to win in Colorado, Montana, Maine, North Carolina, (Sen. David) Perdue's seat in Georgia — we're going to win in Arizona. And we're in good shape in Iowa." — NBC News

    Trump is using the executive branch to pick business winners and losers. Losers: Capital and finance that has to contend with horrendous risk. Winners: The most psychopathic businesses and industries in the country. — Eric Levitz at New York mag

    How the pastor who runs a nursing home that hasn't had a single case of COVID-19 (at least as of July when PBS did this story) did it:
    But, then, being a faith-based facility, a lot of people said, hey, you're overreacting. I thought you were a man of God and you had faith in God.

    And I just simply replied that, to be forewarned is to be forearmed. And I have faith in God, but I still wear my seat belt when I get in the car.
    — PBS

    Barbara McQuade breaks down why Trump's defamation of E. Jean Carroll actually might be "within the scope of his employment." (Mother Jones)

    Trump harassed a woman for 14 years after she was like "what, you don't own the Empire State Building." (He owned half.) — Mother Jones

    Why do all you sexists have a problem with Seema Verma, head of Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, spending more than $3.5 million on outside public relations consultants to get her puff pieces and awards? (Politico)

    As usual, ProPublica teaches me things I didn't know, in this case all the politicians dropping like flies in Alaska due to their constant sexual harassment. But I would like to point out it is interesting that some million words into the story it focuses on the very odd rightwing blogger Suzanne Downing, who was outraged that the lieutenant governor resigned. She wasn't outraged that she (incorrectly) thought the 75-year-old man had propositioned a 16-year-old girl. (He had actually propositioned the 16-year-old's mother, a Native American law enforcement officer and equality activist.) She was outraged he was pressured to resign for it. Aren't rightwingers strange? (ProPublica)

    Elizabeth Holmes might plead affluenza or some shit. — CNN

    How We Got Here. No, not us. The Deadspin staff, now at Defector.

    A growing number of Americans are untethered from reality. And not in a good way! — Charlotte Alter at Time


    What's this? A HANDCRAFTED Shut the Fuck Up Chuck Todd coffee mug, by which I mean we literally just sharpied out Luke Russert's name and wrote Chuck Todd's in, by hand? FUCK YEAH.
    https://wonkettebazaar.com/products/shut-the-f-ck-up-chuck-todd-coffee-mug

    Handwash only! Or else, if you forget and stick it in the dishwasher by accident, just write his name on there in Sharpie again.

    Slow roast your leeks! Slow roast your leeks! Do not leave them in the oven 10 minutes too long! Slow roast your leeks! — The Fitchen

    Also chicken thighs with zucchini and cherry tomatoes. Woman's Day? Really? Woman's Day.
    GRRM

    Back in Westeros

    AUGUST 15, 2020
    I am back in my fortress of solitude again, my isolated mountain cabin.   I’d returned to Santa Fe for a short visit, to spend some time with Parris, deal with some local business that had piled up during my months away, and of course fulfill my duties to CoNZealand, the virtual worldcon.   But all that is behind me now, and I am back on the mountain again… which means I am back in Westeros again, once more moving ahead with WINDS OF WINTER.
    It is curious how my life has evolved.  I mean, once upon a time, I actually wrote my books and stories in the house where I lived, in a home office.   But some decades ago, wanting more solitude, I bought the house across the street and made THAT my writer’s retreat.   No longer would I write all day in my red flannel bathrobe; now I would have to dress and put on shoes and walk all the way across the street to write.  But that worked for a while.
    Things started getting busier, though.   So busy that I needed a full-time assistant.   Then the office house had someone else in it, not just me and my characters.   And then I hired a second assistant, and a third, and… there was more mail, more email, more phone calls (we put in a new phone system), more people coming by.   By now I am up to five assistants… and somewhere in there I also acquired a movie theatre, a bookstore, a charitable foundation, investments, a business manager… and…
    Despite all the help, I was drowning till I found the mountain cabin.
    My life up here is very boring, it must be said.  Truth be told, I hardly can be said to have a life.   I have one assistant with me at all times (minions, I call them).  The assistants do two-week shifts, and have to stay in quarantine at home before starting a shift.   Everyone morning I wake up and go straight to the computer, where my minion brings me coffee (I am utterly useless and incoherent without my morning coffee) and juice, and sometimes a light breakfast.  Then I start to write.   Sometimes I stay at it until dark.   Other days I break off in late afternoon to answer emails or return urgent phone calls.   My assistant brings me food and drink from time to time.   When I finally break off for the day, usually around sunset, there’s dinner.   Then we watch television or screen a movie.  The wi-fi sucks up on the mountain, though, so the choices are limited.   Some nights I read instead.   I always read a bit before going to sleep; when a book really grabs hold of me, I may read half the night, but that’s rare.
    I sleep.  The next day, I wake up, and do the same.  The next day, the next day, the next day.   Before Covid, I would usually get out once a week or so to eat at a restaurant or go to the movies.   That all ended in March.   Since then, weeks and months go by when I never leave the cabin, or see another human being except whoever is on duty that week.  I lose track of what day it is, what week it is, what month it is.   The time seems to by very fast.   It is now August, and I don’t know what happened to July.
    But it is good for the writing.
    And you know, now that I reflect on it, I am coming to realize that has always been my pattern.   I moved to Santa Fe at the end of 1979, from Dubuque, Iowa.   My first marriage broke up just before that move, so I arrived in my new house alone, in a town where I knew almost no one.   Roger Zelazny was here, and he became a great friend and mentor, but Roger was married with small kids, so I really did not see him often.   There was no fandom in Santa Fe; that was all down in Albuquerque, an hour away.  I went to the club meetings every month, but that was only one night a month, and required two hours on the road.   And I had no job to meet new people.   My job was in the back room at the house on Declovina Street, so that was where I spent my days.  At night, I watched television.   Alone.   Sometimes I went to the movies.   Alone.
    That was my life from December 1979 through September 1981, when Parris finally moved to Santa Fe, following Denvention.   (Not quite so bleak, maybe, I did make some local friends by late 1980 and early 1981, but it was a slow process).   When I think back on my life in 1980-1981, the memories seem to be made up entirely of conventions, interspersed with episodes of LOU GRANT and WKRP IN CINCINNATI.
    Ah, but work wise, that same period was tremendously productive for me.   Lisa and I finished WINDHAVEN during that time, Gardner and I did a lot of work on “Shadow Twin,” and then I went right on and wrote all of FEVRE DREAM.   Some short stories as well.     My life, such that it was, was lived in my head, and on the page.
    I wonder if it is the same for other writers?   Or is it just me?   I wonder if I will ever figure out the secret of having a life and writing a book at the very same time.
    I certainly have not figured it out to date.
    For the nonce, it is what it is.   My life is at home, on hold, and I am spending the days in Westeros with my pals Mel and Sam and Vic and  Ty.    And that girl with no name, over there in Braavos.

    +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
    +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
    +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


    - Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2009.12 - 10:10

    - Days ago = 1898 days ago

    - New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I plan to continue Hey Mom posts at least twice per week but will continue to post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.

    Justice is what love looks like in public, just like tenderness is what love feels like in private. ― Dr. Cornel West - Love Quotes




    Posted by at
    Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

    No comments:

    Post a Comment

    Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)