It's all about the vaccines, stupid

      As the vaccination rate in the US stalls and the Delta variant surges through the unvaccinated population, the economy shows signs of stalling in mid-recovery.   As the president suggested in a national address yesterday, most, if not all the blame for this falls on those who for mostly political reasons have chosen not to get the jab.

     Thanks to toxic misinformation spread by some hosts on Faux News and the continuing debacle which is Facebook, not taking the vaccine is seen in some quarters as an heroic act.   Owning the libs is a secondary, but also attractive reason for defying the science behind the vaccine.  President wannabes like Florida's Ron DeSantis have made vaccine defiance part of their political brand and for that reason will refuse to follow the science even in the face of overwhelming evidence of vaccine efficacy.   It seems Republicans are willing to sacrifice their own supporters in a quixotic attempt to overturn the rules of nature.

Another Kumbaya moment

      The wonders of bipartisanship were touted once again in the mainstream media as the watered down "hard" infrastructure bill was advanced in the Senate to the debate and amendment stage.   Spending money on roads and bridges is the most popular cause in the country, but I sense Republican participation in the latest iteration of "infrastructure week" is mostly performative and after another dilatory round of negotiation, it is doubtful 10 unicorn republicans will be found to advance a final bill for a vote.  

      Meanwhile, the human infrastructure bill beloved of House progressives is already being targeted by Krysten Sinema as too expensive and expansive and since she holds a decisive vote, it is dead in the water.  This will cause liberals in the House to hold up any bill the "bipartisans" in the Senate may finally vote for.  In any case, the two sides will talk until the clock starts to run out.  We've been to this rodeo before...

Yesterday

       Emotional, electric, powerful, are all adjectives that can be used to describe the testimony of 4 Capitol and Metro police officers before a bipartisan select committee investigating the events of January 6.   Only committed supporters of the authoritarian wing of the GOP could or would dispute the officers' accounts of what happened that day.  

      All four of the men who experienced the hand to hand combat with the insurrectionist mob which sought to halt the verification of the electoral college ballots which confirmed the election of Joe Biden to the presidency confirmed in most observers' minds the validity of attack on American democracy.  Absent the antics of Gym Jordan and the other tRump supporter denied membership on the select committee, it is evident the Republican and Democratic members are focused on ferreting out the details of the ordeal the police went through at the hands of their nominal supporters.   Who knew of , planned, financed and set the mob in motion that day is something we must ascertain.  We must also hold those people responsible.  The committee made a good start yesterday but there is much yet to be done.

E Pluribus whatever

       As the vaccination debate rages along with Covid 19 throughout the nation, it seems to be breaking more and more along partisan lines.   Many, but not all states where vaccine hesitancy is greatest correspond with the boundaries of the Confederacy.   The remainder supported the former guy in the last two presidential elections.   

     Most of the aforementioned states are in process of approving legislation designed to abridge citizens' right to vote.  From limiting drop boxes and early voting to allowing state legislatures to replace independent Secretaries of State in the election certification process, the goal of many Republican led states is to permanently ensure minority rule.   Free and fair elections are the antithesis of this goal.

     How the nation can stand as an entity in the face of increasingly partisan and sectional conflict is an existential crisis we have not faced since the Civil War.  What we do as we grapple with the climate change crisis along with political division in the next few years will define the legacy of the great democratic experiment.

Anti Vax BS

         Supposedly, up to 81% of unvaccinated adults in America probably/definitely will refuse Covid 19 vaccines, despite the avalanche of stories about the spread of the Delta variant of the coronavirus among the unvaccinated.

       How to process this absolute stupidity among our fellow citizens?   Among teachers, healthcare workers and public safety professionals the vaccination rates hover in the 60 to 70% rate.  This seems inconceivable to me.  I remember the distribution of the oral Sabin polio vaccine in the early 1960s.  Despite some hiccups, including 200,000 defective shots of the Salk vaccine which caused thousands of cases of polio in the midwest in the 1950s very few people denied the effectiveness of the medicine or questioned the distribution.

       Today, the antivaxx propaganda and conservative "own the libs" ideology has affected public acceptance of safe and effective vaccines.   It is time to protect people despite their collective stupidity.  The government must step in and mandate vaccination for health care workers, public safety officers and teachers.  Public information campaigns advocating getting the jab is another necessary feature moving forward.    

Weather there is the will

      I have always imagined the countries of Europe to be way ahead of the US when it comes to policies and attitudes towards climate change.   After all, there is no European equivalent of the GOP standing in the way of progressive climate legislation.  Then came last week's devastating flood in the most powerful member of the European Union, Germany.

      The floods were very unusual for the country, which unlike America has not been regularly pummeled by floods, tornadoes and hurricanes.   Occasional bouts of high temperatures in summer and exceptional winter storms have been the main harbingers of crisis on the continent.  The heavy rainfall and subsequent flooding is a reminder things will get significantly more dicey in Germany's and the world's future.   How the Germans respond to the challenge will shape how many people see our role in meeting the challenge.

Inside Politics

      I would guess less than 5% of Americans were aware of the House select committee to investigate the insurrection that occurred on January 6.   Therefore hardly anyone was aware House minority leader Kevin McCarthy pulled all his members (except Liz Cheney) off the committee when Nancy Pelosi refused to seat two supporters of the events on 1/6.  

     However, the inside the beltway pundits were all over it and for the most part delivered the message the GOP wanted;  the Democrats, by depriving two conspiracy theorists of membership on the committee, have denied America a "bipartisan" look at the events leading up to the insurrection.  More reality based reporters and commentators pointed out the spectacle of Gym Jordan barking at witnesses and turning the proceedings into a circus would hardly lead to a sober examination of the first assault of the Capitol since the War of 1812.

     The pundits who were so very wrong during the former guy's administration continue to deny reality in service of their delusions.

Lucy brings out the football again

     It looks like "infrastructure week" has become another punchline for late night comedians once more.  Earnest sounding hypocrites like Susan Collins are playing Chuck Schumer by asking for just a few more days to iron out the details to the bipartisan bill to repair the nation's hard infrastructure.

     Any Democrat who witnessed the excruciating, dragged out negotiations on Obamacare in 2009 is right to be skeptical of Collins, Romney and other GOP senators who say they will oppose the bill they helped write if the vote to move it to debate is not pushed off.  I believe Republicans' ultimate goal is to push the debate into the August recess and then continue obstruction thereafter.  

    Schumer should call their bluff by cancelling the recess and keeping the Senate in session until the details are hammered out.  That should deflate Lucy's football.

A cult without a personality

      With the publication of "I Alone Can Fix It", the dissection of the final year of the former guy's presidency, Philip Rucker and Carol Leonig have illuminated the cult which grew in intensity even as power slipped from tRump's grasp.

      Paul Krugman has researched the cult of personality in societies as different as Caligula's Rome to the Kim dynasty in North Korea and he says the Republican party is so far down that rabbit hole its members feel they must provide ever more outrageous displays of loyalty to the now powerless leader of the party.  Krugman's example of this is many prominent Republican's opposition to Covid 19 vaccination.  In most cases, these bootlickers are themselves vaccinated, yet they continue to advocate their followers avoid life saving vaccines.  

     As Leonig and Rucker point out, the demented and delusional leader of the party continues to peddle his Bizzaro world point of view and many of his closest advisors encourage this nihilism.  Another commentator wonders how so many people are entranced by someone who fits the profile of your crazy uncle.  I guess there are enough crazy uncles out there to keep the tRump cult of personality going at least through the next election.

They really are killing people

        President Biden was right to call out Facebook for enabling the spread of Covid 19 conspiracy theories and misinformation on Friday.  Despite the presence on the site of plenty of high quality information showing how the vaccines work and how to access them, there are still plenty of debunked theories being published and believed by many.    However, Biden did not go far enough.  He neglected to point the finger at the worst actor in the Covid drama.   Faux News and performers such as Tucker Carlson and their guests are sowing vaccine skepticism among their viewers.

      Carlson, who has raised innuendo to an art form has given oxygen to charlatans such as Alex Berenson who celebrate the failure of up to 40% of the population who have not been vaccinated for various reasons.  A fair number of these people are hesitant to receive the vaccine due to the "many people are asking questions" blather that Carlson, his guests and other Faux News personalities continue to foist on their viewers.

      I understand the Biden administration's hesitancy to name Fox as perhaps the number one purveyor of vaccine misinformation, but as the main source of news for a significant portion of  Americans, the network deserves pushback against the lies regarding vaccine safety and efficacy.

The Manchin dilemma

      Democrats are on the cusp of delivering a hefty dose of democratic socialism to their constituents and the country in general.  Monetary payments of $250-300/per month per child for parents who make less than $150.000/year are appearing in bank accounts across the country as I write this and will have the effect of reducing child poverty by nearly half.   This is part of the Covid relief bill passed at the beginning of president Biden's term when even Republicans were spooked by the disease and its effects and provided bipartisan cover for what the GOP would now label socialism.

     The 3.5 trillion spending plan Democrats want to piggyback on the "hard" infrastructure plan in the works is the brainchild of progressives who feel the wind is at their backs  in this moment.  The problem with this plan as well as Democratic legislation to protect the election system is the existence of a conservative caucus within the party's Senate majority.   Led by Joe Manchin and supported by Krysten Sinema and several nameless Democratic sympathizers, this small coterie of naysayers can derail progressive's plans in a heartbeat.   Motivated in some cases by ideology, but in most by lobbyists, the "killjoy caucus" with it's ability to stifle legislation by denying Dems 50 vote unity to overcome Republican all consuming opposition is the single greatest hurdle that needs to be overcome to make progressive dreams reality.

    Barring a "come to Jesus" moment on Manchin's part, Democrats will have to try to woo an electorate with promises instead of accomplishments next year.   Meanwhile, Republicans will have a chance to test their voter suppression measures in the real world in preparation for the next presidential election.  Dog help us all.

Reichstag moments

      There is a spate of new books supposedly chronicling the last days, weeks, or months of tRump administration.   Most of them are in the gossipy, breathless prose of sensationalists like Michael Wolff, but two teams of Washington Post reporters have come up with possibly the definitive accounts of the Covid crisis (The Nightmare Scenario) and the coup plotting that went on before the January 6 insurrection (I Alone Can Fix It).  In particular Carol Leonig and Philip Rucker's book on the events and discussions held in the White House after tRump's election loss to Joe Biden is a scary look at the possibility of military coup to keep the 45th president in office.

     The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Mark Milley is the unsung hero of Leonig's and Rucker's book.   Whether this is true or Milley is just puffing up his reputation is open to question.  However, the authors' logged hundreds of hours of interviews, including 2 hours with one of the least self aware subjects on earth, aka, the former guy.  According to Leonig and Rucker, Milley was afraid of a "Reichstag moment", referring to the actions of Hitler' s paramilitary brownshirts and their actions to put him in power.  I don't usually pay much attention to books on contemporary politics, but I look forward to reading both of the above.

Anti-vax nihilism

      According to reports from the NYT and Washington Post, Tennessee health officials have been instructed to not only stop pushing Covid 19 vaccinations among teenager, but to stop recommending vaccines for measles, mumps, HPV and other childhood diseases.   Have we reached peak Republican nihilism yet?

      It is perversely fitting Tennessee should be the epicenter of the new science denialism.  Nearly a century ago, the Scopes Monkey trial pitted science against evangelism.   The state of Tennessee prosecuted high school teacher John Scopes for the crime of teaching evolution to his biology class.  The state won, although in the long run, evolution was the victor.   Now comes news another high school teacher is being fired for teaching "Critical Race Theory" because he assigned students readings from contemporary black authors who are critics of white supremacy.

    I don't know what is in the water many Tennesseans are drinking, but they need some heavy duty filters.

The canaries are still singing

      It's getting dark in the mines of democracy, but at least 51 members of the Texas legislature are still willing to shine a light on the egregious actions of Republicans designed to curtail many citizens' right to excercise their right to vote.

      By leaving Texas for DC, the Texas legislators are denying Republicans the quorum they need to ram anti voting rights bills through during a special session called by mini-Trump governor, Greg Abbot.  They are also putting pressure on Senate Democrats like Joe Manchin and Krysten Sinema who seem more ready to protect the filibuster than voting rights.  As the national media covers the Quixotic actions of the Texas house members, more and more light will be shining on Republican voter restrictions across the country.

     Many liberals claim anti voter legislation will backfire by motivating black and brown voters to overcome legislative hurdles and actually increase turnout.   What the Manchins and Sinemas of the world either don't realize or prefer to ignore is the legislation designed to empower state legislatures and judges to nullify the will of the people on the flimsiest of excuses.  In some cases, the mere claim of voter fraud would be enough to overturn and election result.

    Congress needs to pass the For the People Act and the companion John Lewis Voting Rights Act in order to counteract the worst of the Republican voter suppression laws.   President Biden is scheduled to speak in Philadelphia today regarding voting rights.  I hope he exhorts fellow Democrats to action on this crucial legislation.  

Room at the top

       Acting like a consummate fanboy yesterday, Ali Velshi at MSNBC reported breathlessly as billionaire owner of Virgin Galactic, Richard Branson, rocketed to an altitude of 52 miles above the earth.  Branson became the first billionaire in space, beating out Amazon's Jeff Bezos by a few weeks.   

      Yes, it was a feat of engineering sponsored by Branson, but you have to ask in the era of gross income inequality and fast moving climate change if we need the service Branson, Bezos and Elon Musk seem to think we do.  The spectacle of the uber wealthy among us shelling out 6 figures for a few minutes of weightlessness on the edge of space is hardly something I will cheer for.   The 70 year old Branson was nearly incoherent as he praised the view from space.   Just another way to look down at all the little people he has left behind.

School and home influences

    Over at his blog, "Jabberwocking", Kevin Drum raises an important question, namely what is actually being taught to our children in school these days.  Drum is not referring to shop or science classes, but to history curriculums in the wake of the critical race theory, Black Lives Matter and Me Too movements.

     While my own children graduated high school many years ago and their offspring are not yet in the upper grades, it strikes me there has not been enough time since these movements started for them to influence the textbooks on which much of the instruction is based.   That leaves current events and their influence.   Here again, based on my own experience, I am doubting there is much weight being placed on current events in classrooms around the country, while freely admitting I have not sat in on any history classes in over 50 years.

    I would speculate that home influences are much stronger for good or ill.   This is especially true where there is a strong family unit with both mother and father present and in agreement about political issues.  The strong beliefs of the parents, be they left or right seem to me to trump whatever influences school and even classmates views may have  on impressionable minds.

Farmworkers and climate change

       Because of its rarity, I remember it with crystal clarity.  It was a bright, hot day on Long Island in the mid 1960s and I was a 13 year old working on my uncle's farm.  As I hoed what seemed like an endless row of peppers in a haze of dust and sweat, uncle Lewis appeared at the end of the field and signaled for me to come out of the field.  "It's too hot" was all he said.  We spent the rest of the  afternoon under a willow tree in my grandmother's yard.  That's the only time I remember leaving a farm field due to the chance of heat prostration and I'm willing to bet the temperature barely reached 90 degrees.

     Reflecting on that episode the other day after reading about a farmworker who died in the Oregon during the recent record breaking heat wave, I'm amazed more workers didn't die as temperatures reached 118 degrees.   Dehydration leading to unconsciousness can occur within a few hours without frequent water breaks.   According to climate scientists, heat domes such as the one which lead to the inferno in the Pacific Northwest will become more frequent as the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere continues to climb.  Some areas of the earth near the equator will become inimical to human life for long stretches of the day as the heat and humidity index will climb to unbearable levels.

    How many people will have to die from heat related illnesses before action is taken to mitigate human driven climate change?

Six months later

      It has been six months since a mob of tRump supporters stormed the Capitol in D.C. in an effort to overturn the results of a free and fair election.   I suspect the country will never be the same.

     Right wing media has tried to spin the insurrection in several different ways.  The most stupid explanation advanced by apologists is the MAGA supporters were hapless tourists in the wrong place at the wrong time.   A 40 minute video put together by the NYT shows these "tourists" using American flags to beat Capitol police officers among other egregious acts.

    Another favored Faux News explanation for the insurrection is the mob had legitimate questions regarding the 2020 elections and were pursuing answers from their elected representatives.  Chanting "hang Mike Pence" and erecting a gallows for the purpose seems like a somewhat radical interpretation of free speech.

    A new story now making the rounds is trying to unmask the police officer who shot and killed Ashli Babbit as she tried to break into the House of Representatives.   Right wing media assume the officer is black and the racist narrative taking shape over the incident is right in their wheelhouse.

    When the history of the tRump insurrection is written, it will note the devolution of one of the major political parties in America into a cult of personality dedicated to holding power at all costs.   

Late Afternoon in America

       I am seeing two very different takes on the Biden presidency since his inauguration.  On one hand, the vaccine roll out overseen by Biden's appointees has been a rip roaring success.  Nearly 70% of the adult population has had at least one Covid 19 shot and new infections and deaths due to the virus have plummeted.  The economy is getting more robust every month, with an average of 600,000 new jobs added each month since January.  As Paul Krugman points out, the economy under Biden is doing better than Reagan's "morning in America" economy in the mid 80s.

     That brings me to the other phenomenon left over from the tRump administration;  namely the firehose of disinformation flooding the media and the internet.  For anyone who doesn't want to credit Biden with any good news, self validation is only a click away.  That's why many of my conservative facebook friends see America now as a hellhole and the economy in the tank.   Democrats may run on favorable news and the average citizen has seen marked improvement in her life since January, but a sizable portion of the population does not see it that way.   Even if they themselves are doing well, everyone else must be victimized by Democratic policies.  Otherwise how can they make sense of the dark news being spread by right wing media.

     It's late afternoon in America.   We need to come to terms with the legacy of lies left by the former guy and push back with the truth.  It is the only thing that will let us keep our hard earned freedom.

Democracy under attack

     To most people who get their news through mainstream and legacy media, aka the NYT, Washington Post, CNN, etc., the consensus is our right to vote is under attack.  Red State legislatures are passing bills which make it harder for young people, people of color and the poor to vote.  In addition, some of these laws enable the legislative branch to usurp the legitimately elected choice of the people with little more than the implication there was voter fraud involved.

     Of course, those who depend on Faux News or even further right wing outlets for their information are being bombarded by claims of massive voter fraud and the Big Lie the election was stolen from our former Dear Leader.  These two baseless assertions are used to cheerlead voter suppression legislation and continue the massive grift on the average GOP voter.    Judging by the posts i see on Facebook by some of my conservative friends, Republican sabotage of democracy is well under way.   The only remedy i can see is massive repudiation of those who advocate for the Big Lie at the ballot box in the 2022 mid term elections.

The rise of incompetence and mendacity

        Once again, Paul Krugman at the NYT, makes the point the GOP is the last haven for charlatans, kranks and the incompetent when it comes to what passes for policy.  Krugman's first example of this catastrophe is the rise of Stephen Moore, an economist, to one of tRump's go to advisors on policy regarding the pandemic gripping the country in March of 2020.   Moore told the president he ought to push to reopen the country by Easter.

       This outright disdain for science probably resulted in several hundred thousand preventable deaths between then and now.  Sycophancy, incompetence and contempt for the truth was always the coin of the realm for tRump and his ilk.  Unfortunately, the same can now be said for most of the GOP as well.

knowing what we don't know

         Donald Rumsfeld is dead.   We know that.  Beyond that, we, as opposed to the late unlamented former Secretary of Defense don't know where he has gone.  He did go with the soul he had, not the soul he may have wished he had.

       I'm sure few Iraqis knew anything about Rumsfeld before he engineered the invasion of their country and the hundreds of thousands of casualties which resulted from his decisions.  We rightly blame the Shrub and his VP, Dick Cheney for much of the chaos and unnecessary death in Iraq, but much of the bloodshed can and should rest on Rumsfeld's shoulders.   His lack of planning for the aftermath of the invasion and his lies concerning weapons of mass destruction as well as his tacit agreement regarding torture of Iraqi nationals should earn him a place in the halls of infamy. 

       Instead, he will be lauded by many Republicans and not a few Democrats as a "patriot" and a public servant.  I doubt history will be as kind to his reputation.