A Sense of Doubt blog post #2181 - THE ENEMY WITHIN - Weekly Hodge Podge for 2102.06
Greetings readers, Thanks for tuning in.
This is the WEEKLY HODGE PODGE. Only one day late, so that’s bonus.
This is a quickie and a lazy HODGE PODGE as I did not vet or convert all the content. Some of the content remains raw links.
But I am busy.
There’s still some good reading here, and some fun.
Not sure where my topper image came from, but I want that t-shirt!
That’s true.
And the idea expressed by the slogan “racism is so American that when you protest it, people think you are protesting America” also coincides with the theme of this HODGE PODGE: “The Enemy Within.”
The theme comes from something Nancy Pelosi said about the current situation in Congress with representatives refusing security checks and refusing to pass through the metal detector because they are packing fire arms.
After one representative, not that long ago, but prior to being elected, liked, retweeted, and even affirmed that some current representatives should be executed, including putting a bullet in Nancy Pelosi’s head, then it’s no surprise that we’re on the verge of a major social upheaval, possibly all out civil war.
Welcome to TRUMP’S AMERICA: a place in which lies become so viral and potent that they overcome people’s good sense and reason to commit treason, to threaten violence against their colleagues, to embrace outlandish conspiracy theories, and to glorify the agendas of the number one domestic terrorist threat: white supremacists.
The enemy is not at our borders; the enemy is not in other countries.
THE ENEMY IS HERE.
The enemy is your neighbor, your co-worker, your peers, your colleagues in the government.
Something must be done. We must heal. We must unify.
But how do we unify when so many “republicans” even after a violent insurrection incited by the president to overthrow our government and its fair-free elections, STILL VOTED to object to the election results, effectively objecting to the mandate that puts them in office: the will of the American citizens who elected them.
We need unity, but not at the cost of our principles.
Insurrection has consequences, not just for the president, chiefly responsible for spreading the lies, but also for all the power-hungry politicians motivated solely by dreams of re-election and keeping in the good graces of the nation’s hateful, racist terrorists. (Okay, not all 70 million who voted for Trump can be so categorized... but those left over and are not disgusted by all the terrorism are... who know how many that is).
What we have here is all the usual: the political insanity from crazy pants land, the pandemic that is still raging, black lives that still do not seem to matter to a lot of the white folk, and then a few random bits, including the usual space news.
That’s all. I have to get to work.
See you all next week.
SERO: "I am not in the "making life easier for the republicans" business."
(MTG story - https://www.wonkette.com/ignoring-marjorie-taylor-greene-like-an-ingrown-toenail-wont-make-her-go-away).
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/12/trump-stochastic-terrorism-violence-rhetoric/
Trump is using a tactic known as “stochastic terrorism,” says Juliette Kayyem, a national security expert and former assistant secretary at the Department of Homeland Security. It’s a method of political incitement that provokes random acts of extremist violence, in which the instigator uses rhetoric ambiguous enough to give himself and his allies plausible deniability for any resulting bloodshed. Violent threats or attacks linked to the rhetoric usually generate muted denials and equivocal denunciations, or claims to have been “joking,” as Trump and those speaking on his behalf have routinely hidden behind.
https://www.motherjones.com/mojo-wire/2021/01/msnbc-trolls-donald-trump-and-kevin-mccarthy-with-jerry-maguire-clip/
MSNBC Trolls Donald Trump and Kevin McCarthy With a Jerry Maguire Clip
Video mix-up or intentional gag? MSNBC’s 11th Hour host Brian Williams announced last night that the station would be airing exclusive video from House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s Thursday meeting with former President Trump. But what rolled instead was a famous scene from Jerry Maguire.
“You complete me,” Tom Cruise says. Renee Zellweger’s character responds, “You had me at hello.”
“Obviously we have rolled the wrong clip,” Williams deadpanned, while his guests, Baratunde Thurston and Bill Kristol, each cracked a smile. “We were sold a bill of goods here. I thought this was going to be of the McCarthy and Trump meeting, and someone’s gonna be of course in big trouble.”
As far as I can tell, no such video of McCarthy and Trump actually exists. Thurston followed up on the segment with a statement from the “Office of the Not-President” lauding the joke:
https://whatever.scalzi.com/2021/01/28/five-things-1-28-21/
Five Things, 1/28/21
Posted on January 28, 2021 Posted by John Scalzi 66 Comments
Oooohhh, let’s look at what’s out there today:
Republicans decide to double down on craven know-nothing fascism: Well, I mean, this isn’t really a surprise, now, is it? A few weeks ago I wrote about how the general GOP plan, with regard to even relatively simple moral and ethical issues, is “But… what if we didn’t?”, and predicted that when confronted with the necessity of turning away from the sort of dipshit authoritarian populism of the Trump years, would revert to form. I guess my only real surprise it that it only took a week; I thought they might eke out a couple of weeks, or even a month, before they reverted to form.
Look, I’ve said it before, and you should probably get used to me saying it a lot from here on out: The Republican party as it stands today is a morally bankrupt political tool for white supremacy with no other motivating ethos. It will throw aside actual democracy at the first opportunity — we know that because it already tried — and it will lead the country to ruin because fascism doesn’t play nice with either facts or competence. They couldn’t even pretend for a week that they are anything other than this.
On one hand — cool, we have that out of the way, and the rest of the nation can plan accordingly. On the other hand, well. It’s a shame, isn’t it.
The Gamestop stock drama: Small investors ganged up on the hedge funds to drive up the stock price of Gamestop and other distressed companies, forcing the hedge funds to cover their short positions, and predictably the forces that be put a stop to that, because it’s one thing if you can’t cover your rent, and quite another thing if rich people lose money betting on the death of a retailer.
As an observer of this all, I’ve had two thoughts: One, it really does go to show that there are two different sets of rules for the truly rich and for everyone else; two, as someone with fairly significant stock holdings, this shit is complete madness. I was asked if I had been participating in this stock run-up, and my answer is “hell, no” — my investments are in (relatively) safe and (definitely) boring index funds, and I’m not tempted to day trade in any way because it’s a very fine way to lose all the money you and the next six generations of your family will ever have. Call me conservative, if you like. When it comes to money, I don’t mind.
The New York Times editorial board thinks Biden is making too many executive orders: Which a) is bullshit, b) shows that the New York Times editorial board has the luxury of not living in the real world. I don’t mean this as a generalized diss on the New York Times or its editorial board; I’m a former journalist and I’m usually more than willing to give editorial writers (and the newspapers they work for) the benefit of the doubt. The gig is literally to make hot takes. But the reason this hot take is bullshit is that the majority of Biden’s EOs are reversing the terrible EOs of Trump, and the ones that are not are generally understood to be an immediate action that will hopefully be followed by congressional action; i.e., Biden offering an EO doesn’t preclude congressional action later.
Those latter type of EOs also tend to be ones that benefit the poor, working class and marginalized folks. The NYTimes editorial board is more diverse than it used to be, but ain’t none of them broke at the moment. Basically, the editorial board was making a busy work editorial, and it was foolish.
Sandman series casting: Gwendoline Christie as Lucifer? Yes, please! The rest of the cast also looks pretty good so far, and it’s nice to see that they’re willing to fiddle with the roles in the comics to get good people into the parts. Looking forward to seeing who else gets cast (and also, the series in general).
Google fixing Night Sight on Pixels: Most of you are aware that I really like my Pixel 5 phone, more even than I expected to, but a regular frustration of mine was Google’s decision to let the camera decide automatically when to switch into “night mode.” The problem with that was the camera is super-aggressive in switching over to that mode (much of the time it’s totally unneeded), and in that mode the camera can take up to several seconds to take a picture. You can turn it off, but that takes time. Basically between the camera turning on Night Mode automatically and/or me trying to turn that shit off, grumbling whilst I did so, I missed a whole bunch of photos I wanted to take. It significantly mars what is otherwise a really positive phone experience.
Now Google’s updating so that users can permanently disable automatic switching into night mode, so guess what I’ll be doing as soon as I get that update? Seriously, I think this may be the thing that makes me the happiest this whole week. What can I say, I’m easy.
— JS
'Recovering' QAnon Members Seek Help from Therapists, Subreddits, and On Telegram (go.com)
ABC News reports that some QAnon adherents "are turning to therapy and online support groups to talk about the damage done when beliefs collide with reality," including Ceally Smith, a working single mom in Kansas City:"We as a society need to start teaching our kids to ask: Where is this information coming from? Can I trust it?" she said. "Anyone can cut and paste anything." After a year, Smith wanted out, suffocated by dark prophesies that were taking up more and more of her time, leaving her terrified....
Another ex-believer, Jitarth Jadeja, now moderates a Reddit forum called QAnon Casualties to help others like him, as well as the relatives of people still consumed by the theory. Membership has doubled in recent weeks to more than 119,000 members. Three new moderators had to be added just to keep up. "They are our friends and family," said Jadeja, of Sydney, Australia. "It's not about who is right or who is wrong. I'm here to preach empathy, for the normal people, the good people who got brainwashed by this death cult." His advice to those fleeing QAnon? Get off social media, take deep breaths, and pour that energy and internet time into local volunteering.
Michael Frink is a Mississippi computer engineer who helps administer a QAnon recovery channel on the social media platform Telegram. He said that while mocking the group has never been more popular online, it will only further alienate people. Frink said he never believed in the QAnon theory but sympathizes with those who did. "I think after the inauguration a lot of them realized they've been taken for a ride," he said.
The New York Times tells the story of one Bernie Sanders supporter who entered — and then exited — the QAnon movement:Those who do leave are often filled with shame. Sometimes their addiction was so severe that they have become estranged from family and friends... "We felt we were coming from a place of moral superiority. We were part of a special club." Meanwhile, her family was eating takeout all the time since she had stopped cooking and her stress levels had shot up, causing her blood pressure medication to stop working. Her doctor, worried, doubled her dose...
When she first left QAnon, she felt a lot of shame and guilt. It was also humbling: Ms. Perron, who has a master's degree, had looked down on Scientologists as people who believed crazy things. But there she was...
She agreed to speak for this article to help others who are still in the throes of QAnon.
And CNN reporter Anderson Cooper recently interviewed a recovering QAnon supporter, who tells him there were many theories about Cooper, including one that said he was actually a robot. The embarrassed former QAnon supporter admits that he had once believed that the people behind Q "were actually a group of 5th dimensional, intra-dimensional, extraterrestrial bi-pedal bird aliens called blue avians."
During that interview, he also tells Anderson Cooper, "I apologize for thinking that you ate babies."
Why The Pandemic Is 10 Times Worse Than You Think
Ever since the coronavirus reached the U.S., officials and citizens alike have gauged the severity of the spread by tracking one measure in particular: How many new cases are confirmed through testing each day. However, it has been clear all along that this number is an understatement because of testing shortfalls.
Now a research team at Columbia University has built a mathematical model that gives a much more complete — and scary — picture of how much virus is circulating in our communities.
It estimates how many people are never counted because they never get tested. And it answers a second question that is arguably even more crucial — but that until now has not been reliably estimated: On any given day, what is the total number of people who are actively infectious? This includes those who may have been infected on previous days but are still shedding virus and capable of spreading disease.
The model's conclusion: On any given day, the actual number of active cases — people who are newly infected or still infectious — is likely 10 times that day's official number of reported cases.
The model has not been published or peer-reviewed yet, but lead researcher, Jeffrey Shaman, an infectious disease specialist at Columbia University, shared the data exclusively with NPR. Here are more of the startling takeaways.
Missed cases remain a massive problem
To come up with their bottom line estimate, the researchers' first step was to estimate, for each day of the outbreak so far, how many people actually became infectious. Then they compared that with the number who got tested and counted as a confirmed case.
This discrepancy alone was huge: Shaman estimates that over the entirety of the pandemic, five times more people have been infected than were reported.
"The numbers amplify greatly," says Shaman. "When we look at confirmed cases, we're really only seeing the tip of the iceberg."
The rate of testing in the U.S. has improved over time. Shaman's model finds that at the very start of the pandemic, only 1 in 10 cases were being reported. By early May, it had risen to 1 in 6. By September, it was up to 1 in 5.
Shaman estimates that, on average over the past three months, the official tally has been counting only 1 in 4 infections. In other words, says Shaman, to get a rough sense of the actual number of new cases per day, you should multiply the daily reported number by four.
It gets worse — once you consider current active infections
Even estimating the true number of daily new infections fails to provide the full picture of how risky it may be to mingle with people in your community right now.
Shaman's estimated figures for how many people became infectious each day only tell you who is a new case. But people stay contagious for "three or four days on average," says Shaman.
So to fully appreciate the threat level on any given day, you would also want to count the people whose infection started earlier and who are still shedding the virus.
"There are a lot of people walking around with this virus who never know they have it," says Shaman. "Even the people who are ultimately swabbed and confirmed, they were contagious before they even had their symptoms."
So this is the next step to Shaman's model: He estimates that the number of people actively shedding virus on any given day is about 10 times the number of daily new reported cases.
How many people does this add up to? Well, on the worst day for reported new cases so far — Jan. 2 — 91 out of every 100,000 people in the U.S. tested positive. But Shaman estimates that on that day, 998 per 100,000 people were actually actively shedding the virus.
The peak was even worse in many jurisdictions. In Los Angeles County, says Shaman, at the height of the winter surge, 3% of the county's population was contagious, or roughly 3,000 per 100,000.
Transmission has slowed down considerably since then across the United States. But it is still well above the summer highs. And Shaman estimates that as of last Saturday, 1.25 million people nationwide were actively shedding virus.
"That's a very, very high level," says Shaman. "That still means there are a lot of people out there who are actively infected, who are passing it on, and who could expose people at risk."
Why this means we can't rush to open up
The findings lend urgency to the rush to vaccinate Americans, says Shaman. And it suggests that Americans will need to keep up a high degree of physical distancing and masking until many more people are vaccinated.
"If we let up now, given how much infection is out there, we're going to make it so that many, many more people are going to get the virus before they ever have the chance to get the vaccine," says Shaman.
Ashish Jha, a public health researcher and dean of Brown University's School of Public Health, says he considers these new models "really important" although he cannot assess the model's methodology since it's not public.
"What people really care about is not: 'How many people in my town or my state became a case yesterday?' " says Jha. "It's: 'When I'm out and about, how many people around me are infectious? How many people around me are potentially spreading the virus?' This is the first [work] I have seen that really tries to get at that."
One-third of the U.S. population has already been infected.
The sustained periods of high transmission in the U.S. also mean that by now, quite a large share of the U.S. population has been infected beyond what the tallies of reported cases would indicate. Nationwide, Shaman estimates that about 120 million people have now been infected, just over a third of the U.S. population.
The model also provides estimates for each state.
There's a fair amount of variation: In North Dakota and New York, for instance, Shaman estimates about half of the population has now been infected. "They may even be approaching herd immunity there," he says.
But Shaman also cautions that it's possible the immunity gained through infection — especially from mild or asymptomatic cases — might wane before enough people get vaccinated to tamp down outbreaks. It's also not known what degree of protection prior infection will confer against some of the new variants that were recently detected in the United Kingdom, South Africa and Brazil — and which many scientists assume will become increasingly common in the U.S.
Also, in many states, the share of infected people is much lower. And the U.S. overall — with the estimated one-third infected — is nowhere near the 70 to 85% level that scientists estimate must be immune before the pandemic may begin to wind down here.
Shaman's conclusion: "I don't think we should psychologically be thinking about any sort of move into a post-pandemic phase and a real reopening until the summer."
"The important thing," he adds, "is not to get overly exuberant right now and think that we're done with this thing."
How this model compares with previous estimates
Shaman is not the first to attempt to estimate how many infections are missed by testing. This part of his analysis — though not the modeling of total active infections — echoes earlier research.
In fact, in finding that actual new daily infections are about four times greater than reported, Shaman is somewhat more optimistic than earlier estimates by researchers with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. These studies include several that extrapolated from blood sampling that looked for antibodies for the coronavirus — which is evidence of prior infection. They suggested that the numbers of actual infections were 10 times higher than reported.
In another study by researchers with the CDC, a model that was similar but more rudimentary than the version Shaman's team used had found actual infections were likely eight times higher than reported during the first seven months of the pandemic.
So how did Shaman's team come up with their estimates? They started with two pieces of known information: First was the number of people who have tested positive each day since the start of the pandemic. The second was a set of anonymized cellphone location data — provided by the company SafeGraph — that told them, for each day, how much people were intermingling by moving outside of their homes, including, says Shaman, "to places of interest like grocery stores and restaurants."
The team then fed this data into a computer program that essentially tried to find the best possible answer to the variables whose value the team did not know — things like, how many cases were being missed each day? And how long were people remaining infectious?
The program effectively ran multiple simulations to see, for each day of the pandemic, which combination of answers allowed it to correctly predict how many reported cases were produced in the days afterward. In a nutshell, says Shaman, "it searches for the optimal solution that best fits the observable data."
NPR's Sydney Lupkin contributed to this report.
THE WEEKLY PANDEMIC REPORT
If you prefer your data in a visual format, here's the current map from COVID Exit Strategy, using data from the CDC and the COVID Tracking Project.
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.
United States
Coronavirus Cases:
Deaths:
Recovered:
 |
 |
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2021/01/deborah-birx-trump-coronavirus-data/
Why Scientists Are Very Worried About the Variant From Brazil (npr.org)
While the variant from the U.K. took about three months to dominate the outbreak in England, P.1 took only about a month to dominate the outbreak in Manaus. In addition, Manaus had already been hit extremely hard by the virus back in April. One study estimated that the population should have reached herd immunity and the virus shouldn't be able to spread easily in the community. So why would the city see an even bigger surge 10 months later? Could P.1 be evading the antibodies made against the previous version of the virus, making reinfections easier? Could it just be significantly more contagious? Could both be true? "While we don't *know* exactly why this variant has been so apparently successful in Brazil, none of the explanations on the table are good," epidemiologist Bill Hanage, at Harvard University, wrote on Twitter.
Reinfections are a serious concern for several reasons. First off, like the variant from South Africa, P.1 carries a cluster of mutations along the surface of the virus where antibodies -- especially the potent antibodies -- like to bind. "They are kind of the major targets of the immune system," says virologist Penny Moore at the National Institute for Communicable Diseases in South Africa and the University of KwaZulu-Natal. "So when we see a whole lot of mutations in [those surfaces], it raises the possibility that the mutations might be conferring immune escape." That is, the mutations are helping the virus evade antibodies or escape recognition by them. In essence, the mutations are providing the virus with a type of invisibility cloak. And thus, now we have a game of "cat and mouse," says virologist Ravi Gupta, between the virus and the vaccine. The virus finds ways around the vaccine (and our immune system), says Gupta, and so the manufacturers have to reformulate the vaccines (or else we run the risk of getting infected twice).
US Intelligence Officials Say Chinese Government Is Collecting Americans' DNA (cbsnews.com
Biden Orders Sweeping Review of Government Science Integrity Policies (sciencemag.org)
"Scientific and technological information, data, and evidence are central to the development and iterative improvement of sound policies," states the memo. "Improper political interference in the work of Federal scientists or other scientists who support the work of the Federal Government and in the communication of scientific facts undermines the welfare of the Nation." Today's memo largely restates policies outlined in laws passed by Congress and in memos released by former President Barack Obama in 2009 and by his science adviser, John Holdren, in 2010. In general, those policies attempt to create uniform practices across the federal government for handling and sharing data, using technical evidence, and insulating researchers from political concerns.
https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-hard-lessons-of-modeling-the-coronavirus-pandemic-20210128/
SAVING THE SOUL OF THE NATION
https://www.wonkette.com/biden-has-racial-equity-agenda-that-extends-beyond-comparing-himself-to-abraham-lincoln
https://www.wonkette.com/weirdo-us-president-talks-to-putin-doesnt-even-try-to-slip-him-the-tongue
https://news.slashdot.org/story/21/01/25/0311209/does-facebook-have-a-joe-biden-problem
Does Facebook Have a Joe Biden Problem? (bbc.com)
That could be devastating for Facebook.
Its most obvious problem is the potential repealing of Section 230... Joe Biden has said he wants it removed. In fact, in that same New York Times interview from a year ago he said he wanted it "revoked immediately". That could spell disaster for Zuckerberg. Suddenly all the things people post, all of the defamatory and fraudulent things people say — would be the responsibility of Facebook. It's hard to see how Facebook functions in its current form without Section 230.
And that's before we get into Facebook's anti-trust problems. It's currently being sued by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and 46 states for "illegally maintaining its monopoly position" by buying up the competition. The FTC has also said it's looking at "unwinding Facebook's prior acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp" — i.e. breaking the firm up. Facebook will, of course, fight that. But Biden seems a pretty willing ally to those who want to split up Big Tech. In 2019, he said that breaking up companies such as Facebook was "something we should take a really hard look at".
Jameel Jaffer, a media legal expert at Columbia University, told me: "I would expect the Biden administration to be pretty aggressive in enforcing the anti-trust laws. And to have the whole spectrum of harms in mind, not just the democratic harms, but harms relating to user privacy and consumer welfare."
Shit wouldn't melt in their mouths. The 45 Republicans who are very definitely not "angry, unhinged partisans," that's the Democrats who think there should be consequences when you sic a ravening mob on Congress. (Politico)
Dems should give up the myth of fingerprints bipartisanship. — Amanda Marcotte at Salon
Sounds like the (acting) Capitol Police chief's testimony to Congress about what they did to prepare for the Capitol Riot (nothing) was a clusterfuck. (CNN) Capitol Police union, with 140 members injured, are piiiiiissed. (Roll Call)
Fred Guttenberg, whose daughter Jamie was murdered at Parkland, does not care for the recently revealed video of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene stalking David Hogg like a fucking asshole, demanding to know where he gets off calling for "red flag laws," which allow the police to confiscate weapons from people who are a danger to themselves or others. I am shaking.
"He [David Hogg] had 30 appointments where he went around and got to talk to senators. I got to talk to none," Greene said, adding "Guess what? I'm a gun owner. I'm an American citizen. And I have nothing. But this guy with his George Soros funding and his major liberal funding has got everything."
Yes, everything except 17 of his friends who are no longer alive. What a victim piece of shit she is. (Politico)
A man was arrested this week for threatening to shoot up an elementary school in Polson, Montana. Oh, nothing, Marjorie Taylor Greene, nothing at all.
Rep. Jimmy Gomez would like Greene expelled please. — Resolution
Ha
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2021/01/thedonald-win-deleted-posts/
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2021/01/trump-attack-on-congress-terrorism-law-enforcement/
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/12/trump-stochastic-terrorism-violence-rhetoric/
Trump is using a tactic known as “stochastic terrorism,” says Juliette Kayyem, a national security expert and former assistant secretary at the Department of Homeland Security. It’s a method of political incitement that provokes random acts of extremist violence, in which the instigator uses rhetoric ambiguous enough to give himself and his allies plausible deniability for any resulting bloodshed. Violent threats or attacks linked to the rhetoric usually generate muted denials and equivocal denunciations, or claims to have been “joking,” as Trump and those speaking on his behalf have routinely hidden behind.
How do you solve a problem like Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Republican congresswoman from Georgia and coveter of Jewish space lasers? White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki refused to comment on Greene during a press briefing Friday, claiming that would only “elevate conspiracy theories." However, Greene isn't Beetlejuice or Candyman where you can avoid any unpleasantness if you don't say their names out loud. Greene is a sitting member of Congress.
It stands out to me that a Black woman reporter sounds alarms about a white supremacist in Congress and the press secretary's response is “We have more important things to worry about." It's not elevating Greene's crackpot beliefs to acknowledge they exist and that Greene is an active threat to the nation.
Charlie Warzel at the New York Times also warned against directly engaging Greene. We run the risk of making her a big star, a CELEBRITY, somebody everyone knows!
Twitter
The problem with this argument is that not even Democrats believe the GOP making Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, and Rashida Tlaib "stars" was a positive for Democrats at the ballot box. Moderate Democrats complained on a conference call that they got "killed" because of the supposed "socialist" wing. Do white moderates believe that liberal women of color are more damaging politically than complete wackjob white congresswomen? That's a rhetorical question.
Warzel suggests that the media and Democrats “ignore" Greene, who is after all just a freshman House member with limited power, but Republicans made gains down ballot in 2020, in part because they argued that the Squad would call the shots for Democrats. Supposed “good Republican" Nancy Mace rose to fame after attacking Ocasio-Cortez's fashion choices at the State of the Union. She later went on to defeat moderate South Carolina Rep. Joseph Cunningham.
It's also incredibly short-sighted to think that Greene, whose unfitness hasn't stopped her so far, won't advance higher in politics. She could conceivably run for the Senate in 2022 and win. She's popular with the base and has the full support of the previous White House occupant.The so-called “good Republicans" will still vote for her in the general election against incumbent Raphael Warnock because they want to win back the Senate. Hell, Gabriel Sterling voted for David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler even after everything those clowns did.
Twitter
If a significant segment of the Republican electorate is QAnon-curious, we should hammer them with this fact until the remaining Republicans can no longer remain the same party. There is strength in numbers and every superficially benign Republican from Nancy Mace to Claudia Tenney benefits from the Greenes and Lauren Boeberts, especially if they pay no political cost for associating with them.
Twitter
There's a solid argument that ignoring Greene is how she won in the first place. Republican leadership issued tepid rebukes of her racist, anti-semitic, Islamophobic, and otherwise crazypants statements. They did very little to actually stop her, and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy remain neutral in her GOP primary. Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff, and Rep. Jim Jordan were critical early supporters. Democrats didn't directly link Republicans in swing districts with Greene, and the media didn't hit Republican leadership about her daily. Going into the midterms, which are historically hostile to the party in the White House, it would behoove Democrats to saddle every supposed “normal" Republican with Greene, who is messy and loves drama.
But beyond political calculations, there's the reality that violent white supremacists don't foster a healthy working environment for minority House members. Greene walks around the Capitol with her face hanging out during a pandemic. Rep. Cori Bush asked her to put on a mask, which CNN interpreted as Bush “starting the altercation." Please note that Congress members have caught the coronavirus after spending time in close quarters with maskless idiots. Greene and her equally terrible staff berated Bush and targeted her on social media. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi moved Bush's office for her own safety. I hope it's a better office, not just separate and potentially less equal.
The New York Times wrote:
Ms. Greene, 46, has also created a dilemma for Republican leaders, who for months have been unwilling to publicly rebuke or punish her in any way for her inflammatory statements, in part for fear of alienating voters delighted by her incendiary brand of politics and conspiratorial beliefs.
Democrats and the media should force Republicans to choose between their most deranged voters and the respectability they still somehow possess. Ignoring Marjorie Taylor Greene just makes it easier for them. However, I'm not in the “make life easier for Republicans" business.
Follow Stephen Robinson on Twitter.
New Site Extracts and Posts Every Face from Parler's Capitol Hill Insurrection Videos (arstechnica.com)
A recent upgrade to the site adds hyperlinks from faces to the video source, so that visitors can click on any face and see what the person was filmed doing on Parler. The Faces of the Riot creator, who says he's a college student in the "greater DC area," intends that added feature to help contextualize every face's inclusion on the site and differentiate between bystanders, peaceful protesters, and violent insurrectionists. He concedes that he and a co-creator are still working to scrub "non-rioter" faces, including those of police and press who were present. A message at the top of the site also warns against vigilante investigations, instead suggesting users report those they recognize to the FBI, with a link to an FBI tip page....
McDonald has previously both criticized the power of facial recognition technology and himself implemented facial recognition projects like ICEspy, a tool he launched in 2018 for identifying agents of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency... He sees Faces of the Riot as "playing it really safe" compared even to his own facial recognition experiments, given that it doesn't seek to link faces with named identities. "And I think it's a good call because I don't think that we need to legitimize this technology any more than it already is and has been falsely legitimized," McDonald says.
But McDonald also points out that Faces of the Riot demonstrates just how accessible facial recognition technologies have become. "It shows how this tool that has been restricted only to people who have the most education, the most power, the most privilege is now in this more democratized state," McDonald says.
https://www.wonkette.com/marjorie-taylor-greene-thinks-of-nothing-but-murder-all-day
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/01/arizona-gop-censures-cindy-mccain-ducey-flake-trump.html
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2021/01/kevin-mccarthy-capitol-insurrection-trrump/
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2021/01/national-rifle-association-membership-magazines/
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2021/01/donald-trump-thirty-thousand-lies/
Three weeks ago, the thug who once squatted in the White House incited a violent mob that invaded the Capitol. Members of Congress fled for their lives, and five people died, including a Capitol Police officer. Almost 140 officers were wounded, many with severe, permanent injuries: Two officers have smashed spinal discs and another will lose his eye. Two officers who responded to the attack have now died by suicide in its aftermath.
The Senate has no excuse not to convict the one-term, two-time impeachment loser. That's not stopping Republicans, who specialize in the inexcusable. They're OK with some low-key, under-the-radar arrests and prosecutions of the MAGA mob, but they won't dare hold accountable the man whose unhinged lies sparked the attack.
Texas GOP Senator Ted Cruz, a walking black hole from which shame can ever escape, argued that if the insurrectionist-in-chief is impeached and convicted for something he did within this lunar cycle, there's no telling where it'll end. Next, we'll probably keelhaul Jimmy Carter, whose presidency ended 40 years ago. No, seriously.
This was the best Cruz could do when he showed up this week on Sean Hannity's wacky puppet show. He whined that Democrats “hate" the 45th president.
"They hate Donald Trump," Cruz said. "For anybody who hadn't been paying attention, they made it very very clear."
It's true. We loathe the previous White House occupant, but way back in 2016, we weren't alone. Here's Cruz himself dragging the guy.
Cruz was apparently able to bond with a man he described as a “pathological liar" and a “narcissist," who smeared his father and insulted his wife. That's his business, but I don't think our seething contempt is unreasonable, especially after January 6.
Cruz compared the re-peachment to the movie Groundhog Day “where apparently every January we're going to be doing another impeachment." Bill Murray's character breaks the Groundhog Day cycle after untold years during which he slowly becomes a better person. Cruz's pitch would have us impeaching the former president until the heat death of the universe.
This is when Cruz brought up past Democratic presidents, who apparently were spared rightwing persecution.
"So I guess next year, I don't know, maybe it'll be the impeachment of Jimmy Carter or the impeachment of Bill Clinton or the impeachment of Barack Obama because that's what we do in Januaries."
Conservative victim mentality metastasized during the past administration, so they'll never understand that the previous president was impeached twice because he kept committing crimes. There were so many! He probably could've been impeached once a month. He definitely should've been impeached (again) last year when it was revealed that he'd knowingly lied about the severity of COVID-19, which has killed more than 400,000 Americans.
Republicans still complain about Carter “giving away" the Panama Canal, but that wasn't an impeachable offense. Neither was Willie Nelson smuggling weed into the White House. Bill Clinton was impeached for lying about a blowjob, and even if we learned of more Oval Office blowjobs, Clinton left office 20 years — not seven days — ago. He also served two full terms, as did Barack Obama. There is no risk of either running for president again.
Cruz isn't alone on Fantasy Impeachment Island. His fellow GOP senator from Texas, John Cornyn, also has a copy of the same bad script.
Twitter
CORNYN: No evidence impeachment of a former President, now a private citizen, was ever contemplated by founders, and they didn't explicitly provide for it. Also, can't imagine them embracing an open ended procedure to pursue political opponents. Would current case allow Republicans to try former President Obama if they had the votes? Bad idea, extra constitutional, and divisive when unifying the country should be our goal.
Cornyn claims there's no evidence the noble Founders, while riding their slaves to work, “ever contemplated" impeachment of a former president. This is a lie. There's not only evidence supporting impeaching a former elected official, there's also precedent.
GTFOH.
Republicans claim pursuing impeachment in this specific incident would lead to an “open-ended" pursuit of political opponents. This is farcical. The House impeached a sitting president, while he was still in office, and with all due speed. (House Republicans even complained about a rushed process.) It was the Republican-controlled Senate that delayed the trial until after the previous occupant's term had expired.
Conversely, Republicans had their bite at the apple for whatever impeachable offenses they think past Democratic presidents committed. Republicans controlled the House for six years when Obama was in office. There was a lot of talk about impeaching the illegitimate Kenyan socialist.
The Atlantic
Former GOP Senator Tom Coburn, who considered Obama a “personal friend," nonetheless believed his BFF's administration was a lawless, incompetent shitshow and was "getting perilously close" to impeachability. This was in 2013, and Cruz, the new kid on the Senate block, didn't dismiss impeaching Obama on the merits but admitted “that's not a fight we have a prospect of winning."
Maybe Republicans are pissed they failed to put an asterisk next to Obama's name, like they did Clinton, but there are no backsies on impeachment. Cornyn imagines future Republicans impeaching Obama “if they had the votes," but they'd also need an actual crime.
[Newsweek / The Atlantic]
Follow Stephen Robinson on Twitter.
https://theconversation.com/what-those-mourning-the-fragility-of-american-democracy-get-wrong-153813
BLACK LIVES MATTER
https://www.theroot.com/michigan-cop-fired-for-arresting-black-man-who-was-coll-1846121617
https://www.theroot.com/proposed-missouri-bill-would-authorize-deadly-force-aga-1846136194
https://www.theroot.com/louisiana-family-denied-burial-plot-for-black-man-at-wh-1846160661
RANDOM
The Ethical Source Movement Launches a New Kind of Open-Source Organization (zdnet.com)
The world has changed since the Open Source Definition was created — open source has become ubiquitous, and is now being leveraged by bad actors for mass surveillance, racist policing, and other human rights abuses all over the world. The OES believes that the open-source community must evolve to address the magnitude and complexity of today's social, political, and technological challenges...
How does this actually work in a license...?
The Software shall not be used by any person or entity for any systems, activities, or other uses that violate any Human Rights Laws. "Human Rights Laws" means any applicable laws, regulations, or rules (collectively, "Laws") that protect human, civil, labor, privacy, political, environmental, security, economic, due process, or similar rights....
This latest version of the license was developed in collaboration with a pro-bono legal team from Corporate Accountability Lab (CAL). It has been adopted by many open-source projects including the Ruby library VCR; mobile app development tool Gryphon; Javascript mapping library react-leaflet; and WeTransfer's entire open-source portfolio...
The organization adds, though, the license's most significant impact may be the debate it sparked between ethical-minded developers and open-source traditionalists around the primacy of Freedom Zero.
The article includes this quote from someone described as an open source-savvy lawyer.
"To me, ethical licensing is a case of someone with a very small hammer seeing every problem as a nail, and not even acknowledging that the nail is far too big for the hammer."
Puzzling Six-Exoplanet System With Rhythmic Movement Challenges Theories of How Planets Form (phys.org)
The five outer exoplanets of the TOI-178 system follow a much more complex chain of resonance, one of the longest yet discovered in a system of planets. While the three Jupiter moons are in a 4:2:1 resonance, the five outer planets in the TOI-178 system follow a 18:9:6:4:3 chain: while the second planet from the star (the first in the resonance chain) completes 18 orbits, the third planet from the star (second in the chain) completes 9 orbits, and so on. In fact, the scientists initially only found five planets in the system, but by following this resonant rhythm they calculated where in its orbit an additional planet would be when they next had a window to observe the system.
More than just an orbital curiosity, this dance of resonant planets provides clues about the system's past. "The orbits in this system are very well ordered, which tells us that this system has evolved quite gently since its birth," explains co-author Yann Alibert from the University of Bern. If the system had been significantly disturbed earlier in its life, for example by a giant impact, this fragile configuration of orbits would not have survived.
Astronomers Detect Extended Dark Matter Halo Around Ancient Dwarf Galaxy (phys.org)
The team used an imaging filter on the telescope to spot primitive, metal-poor stars beyond the galaxy's core. Analysis shows a kinematic connection, that these far-out stars move in lockstep with the inner stars, like bathwater going down the drain. The results suggest that Tucana II must have an extended dark matter halo that is three to five times more massive than previously thought, in order for it to keep a gravitational hold on these far-off stars. "Without dark matter, galaxies would just fly apart," Chiti. says. "[Dark matter] is a crucial ingredient in making a galaxy and holding it together." The team's results are the first evidence that an ultrafaint dwarf galaxy can harbor an extended dark matter halo. "This probably also means that the earliest galaxies formed in much larger dark matter halos than previously thought,"The findings appear in the journal Nature Astronomy.
South Korea Leads World In Innovation; US Drops Out of Top 10 (bloomberg.com)
Korea's return to the top spot is mainly due to an increase in patent activity, where it ranks top, alongside a strong performance in R&D and manufacturing. Second-placed Singapore, which has been allocating budget funds to help workers and companies transition to a digital economy, also scores high for manufacturing -- and its globally competitive universities put it top of the tertiary education gauge. Switzerland, a leader in financial and biological technology, ranks near the top in both of the index's research categories. Germany's loss of the crown follows a warning two years ago by Juergen Michels, chief economist of Bayerische Landesbank, who said the country lacked skilled workers and a proper strategy for next-generation technology. As the two biggest economies, the U.S. and China account for much of the world's innovation. But both saw their rankings decline this year.
The U.S., which topped the first Bloomberg Innovation Index in 2013, dropped two places to 11th. The country scores badly in higher education, even though U.S. universities are world-famous. That underperformance was likely made worse by obstacles to foreign students, who are usually prominent in science and technology classes -- first due to the Trump administration's visa policies, and later to the pandemic. China, which fell one place to 16th in the 2021 index, is locked in a battle with the U.S. over key aspects of innovation policy. Other gainers in this year's index include India, which climbed back into the top 50 for the first time since 2016, and Uruguay, which qualified for the first time. Algeria and Argentina were among the countries that fell furthest.
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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2101.06 - 10:10
- Days ago = 2045 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.
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