Nature indicts Trump

Good morning! Nature has a long article titled “How Trump damaged science — and why it could take decades to recover”, and everyone should read it.

The US president’s actions have exacerbated the pandemic that has killed more than 200,000 people in the United States, rolled back environmental and public-health regulations and undermined science and scientific institutions. Some of the harm could be permanent.

It goes through some of the areas Trump has damaged: climate science has been deeply compromised, the environment has been thrown open to destruction, the pandemic is ravaging the country, and he’s been closing the doors to international collaboration and has been dismantling our international reputation. It doesn’t even touch on the fact that he’s packing the judiciary with science deniers, or his dangerous enabling of racists.

Yet here we are, seriously considering re-electing this corrupt vandal back into office where he can do even more damage. Some of his terrible decisions are going to take decades to repair if they’re reparable at all, if he gets four more years we can just forget about any delusion of leadership in science, or of having any kind of technological edge. It’ll all just be…gone.

Rivers running to the sea!

Trump has something novel to complain about. In addition to failing to rake their forests, California allows their rivers to flow.

To add to the irony, he complains to Hannity that AOC and others are “not-bright people” who “don’t have any experience with the environment”.

Why is this nincompoop still president?

We bearded white guys all look alike

It’s creepy. Even the expressions are the same. If one of them committed a crime, I wouldn’t be able to pick him out of a lineup.

Fortunately, it’s easy this time, because they all committed a crime. These are some of the Michigan yahoos who plotted to kidnap the governor and start a civil war.

The FBI revealed Thursday that it thwarted a plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, unsealing charges against six people who it said contemplated a violent overthrow of the government as state authorities charged seven more who they said wanted to attack police and ignite a civil war.

The plotters, according to an FBI affidavit, seemed to be motivated by their belief that state governments, including Michigan’s, were violating the Constitution. One of those involved complained in June that Whitmer (D) was controlling the opening of gyms — an apparent reference to coronavirus shutdown restrictions. But unbeknown to them, the FBI had confidential informants recording many of their discussions, according to the affidavit.

President Trump has been publicly critical of Michigan’s leaders because of the state-imposed measures to stem the spread of the coronavirus, tweeting in April, “LIBERATE MICHIGAN.”

I don’t think they’re antifa supporters. These are members of a right-wing militia, and our president hasn’t yet figured out who is really fomenting the violence. Lock them up, and hey, let’s get a president who can figure out who the real problems are.

Meanwhile, am I going to have to shave? No, wait, then I’d look like a neo-Nazi. Maybe it’s not the beards, or the sullen expressions…is it the skin color? Because I can’t fix that.

Should I regret missing the VP debate?

I’m done for the day at the university — I’ve still got hours of grading to do — and I’m recuperating at home. My voice is gone! I’m hungry, but I have to do dishes first. Then grading.

I finally caught up on last night’s debate. I didn’t watch it, so I’m getting second-hand impressions. Mainly what I’m hearing is that Kamala Harris was the clear winner, but that she was also somewhat restrained and didn’t disembowel Pence on stage like I’d hoped she would. I also heard there were sound political reasons why she was cautious…in particular, that a black woman would never be able to get away with that kind of assertiveness. I would like to point out, though, that no matter how meek and demure she might have been, the Right was going to accuse her of being mean and unladylike.

Also, in a surprising twist of an argument, she isn’t even black. You can trust Dave Rubin, he assures us he isn’t racist at all before springing that on us. She is apparently Indian and Jamaican, which some people say isn’t really black.

Wow. I am so looking forward to Trump using that line of defense.

Also, Harris was “unlikable”, says the smarmiest, sleaziest, dumbest pundit on YouTube.

The Raccoons of the Resistance have a realistic perspective

As long as they can avoid getting all duckist.

Yes! Recognize the flaws in our democracy, but the first step in correcting them is to vote for a party that isn’t amplifying them. It’s a tiny step, and don’t assume voting for Biden fixes anything — it’s just the beginning of the fight.

The choice also ought to be easy for any reasonable person: that other party is the home of QAnon, the emerging prion disease that is eating brains softened by decades of Republican propaganda. QAnon alone is the one issue that ought to resolve the debate for any atheist (not you, David Silverman), because that crap is one terrifying cult.

Bloody-minded stupid people bother me

I thought I was pissed off when Trump took a joyride after being hospitalized with COVID-19. That was disgracefully irresponsible and exposed who knows how many people to his disease — at least his driver, that’s for sure — to accomplish nothing, other than to advertise his insensitivity. I mean, I had a few symptoms two weeks ago, and went in for a coronavirus test that turned out to be negative, and I was still told to quarantine myself for 10 days in case it was a false negative, and I did. That was ten days in which I didn’t even leave my house, and my spiders were hungry and I was desperate for escape, and I was scrupulous in following the recommendations of my doctor.

Trump was diagnosed with a positive case, the disease is spreading rapidly through the White House staff, and he decided to do a ridiculous publicity stunt? Fuck him, and all his little sycophants.

But my annoyance is nothing compared to this woman’s.

I can’t even imagine. I don’t want to imagine. My family has been spared so far, but I fear every day that the slapdash stupid way we implement basic hygiene procedures is going to catch up to me and mine personally, and I’ll probably snap and turn into the avenging angel who wanders through the local grocery store punching every ignorant asshole who wears a mask below their nose in the face.

Hey, Americans — do you even realize how idiotic you look when you wear a mask below your nose, or worse, below your chin?

Does it even cross their little, selfish minds that their irresponsibility might cause suffering?

I voted last week, and I already regret it

Collin Peterson does not belong in the Democratic party.

I made a mistake in my ballot, and I can’t correct it. I mailed it in last week. I voted Democratic party across the board, and I came to Collin Peterson’s name (our conservative DFL representative, who is anti-choice and anti-conservation), and I hesitated — I generally don’t vote at all for that guy because he’s a regressive dinosaur. But then I thought, maybe this one time, because we have to crush the Republican party. And then I thought of all the laughable attack ads the Republicans made against him, painting him as hippy-dippy liberal who votes with Nancy Pelosi 4 out of 5 times, and … I moved my pen and blacked out the spot next to his name. I felt bad about it. But I felt worse about his Republican challenger.

Then I read this account of an encounter with Collin Peterson.

“Do you have any comment as to why you defended Ilhan Omar?” an employee with the National Republican Congressional Committee asked Peterson on Capitol Hill on Thursday.

“I don’t defend her. She doesn’t belong in our party,” the 16-term lawmaker responded.

When asked to clarify himself, a COVID-19-masked Peterson repeated, “She doesn’t belong in our party,” as he walked away.

I will have Collin Peterson know that an archaic toad who panders to the right-wing jerks that populate rural Minnesota and has spent his entire long career walking the line to avoid offending conservatives doesn’t belong in my Democratic party, while a Muslim woman who promotes progressive ideas and aligns herself with forward-thinking colleagues does. I won’t ever make the mistake of voting for him again. I feel like I voted for a Republican last week, and it leaves me feeling tainted.

I possess a little spirit of vengeance

Donald Trump has been admitted to Walter Reed hospital “as a precaution”. More likely, the big ol’ bullying coward has been taken by a fear of death — he’s suddenly realizing that the Secret Service cannot protect him, nor can Mitch McConnell, and that he could become one of the statistics that he treats with so little regard.

Awww, poor little preznit. Cheer up! Here is a happy song for him.

Personally, I’m torn, because my humanist values tell me every life is valuable and we should do all we can to alleviate human suffering and even a creature as contemptible as Trump should have a right to basic human dignity…but at the same time, I want him to suffer long and terribly, I want him intubated, I want him to emerge from his ordeal a month from now drained and broken and weeping and helpless to discover that he’d lost the election by a landslide and that his creditors have snatched away all his assets and that the law is serving him a stack of subpoenas and that he has lost everything his greedy, amoral heart thinks is precious. I want him to discover that his trusted inner circle of friends have all been laid low by his own stupid, unconscionable policies. I want karma. I want retributive justice. I want what Damon Young wants.

Normally, I detest those stupid, lazy political cartoons that emerge after the death of a well-known figure, showing them arriving in an afterlife, but I’d make an exception for one that showed a screaming, feculent corpse of an orange man rocketing downwards, jet-propelled by a column of fire shooting out of his ass, with a splashdown in a flaming pit of feces. No pearly gates for that guy. Get to work on that, cartoonists. Just in case.

I feel bad for feeling this way, but the heart wants what the heart wants, and I have to acknowledge my feelings.

Voter fraud! By Republicans Wohl and Burkman

We all know who really commits massive voter fraud — Republicans. Intimidation, gerrymandering, suppressing the vote, those are all in their bag of tricks. So it’s not at all surprising that Jacob Wohl and his pal Jack Burkman were robocalling to minority voters in Michigan to tell them that they’d be in trouble with the authorities if they exposed themselves by voting.

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

What is surprising is that warrants have been issued for their arrest.

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

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

Both Wohl and Burkman face four felony counts and a maximum sentence of 24 years in prison.

Oh I wish. This is the fate dim duo have been reaching for all these years, and they’ve consistently acted so stupidly that that they’re not likely to put up a reasonable defense. Please let them choose to be their own lawyers, please!

There’s nothing new about QAnon

It’s an old evil that keeps reappearing over and over again: blood libel, anti-semitism, witch hunts (the real ones, not the fevered persecution fantasies of terrible people), the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, government sponsored genocide, the McMartin preschool moral panic, satanic ritual abuse, and now…QAnon. They’re all the same. Talia Levin chronicles them all, and adds another organization to the ranks: The Republican party.

For now, QAnon remains in a curious position with regard to the formal party apparatus of the GOP. While QAnon adherents have been warmly lauded by the president—“I’ve heard that these are people who love our country,” he said—other elected Republicans have proceeded with more caution. The past few years have proved that there is an enormous amount the Republican Party is willing to absorb; cryptic clocks, coded messages, and the sating of Democratic appetites on child-flesh seem as yet just out of the bounds of propriety.

Nonetheless, the increasing popularity of the theory among the Republican base—which has exploded following the mixed and often conspiratorial messages proffered by the party during the Covid-19 pandemic—has meant that QAnon is no longer relegated to the fringes. The researcher Alex Kaplan, at Media Matters for America, has kept track of no less than 81 candidates for Congress in the 2020 cycle who have “endorsed or given credence to the conspiracy theory or promoted QAnon content.” Twenty-four of those candidates have made it to the November ballot, by winning their primaries or fulfilling other requirements. (Kaplan has identified an additional 21 current or former candidates for state legislatures affiliated with QAnon.) A number seem poised to win their contests, ensuring a QAnon-believer presence amid the ranks of the political elite next year. One wonders how closely they will monitor their colleagues’ veins for signs that they are pulsing with adrenochrome, extracted from the pituitary glands of tortured children, and how such discoveries will affect bonhomie in the cloakroom.

The McMartin story is illustrative and familiar. I remember the insanity that gripped so many people over that one: there were secret tunnels under the preschool! Children were dragged down there and forced to participate in satanic and sexual rites! Babies were being horribly murdered as part of evil rituals! Of course, there were no tunnels — authorities actually dug up the grounds to search for them — and there was no evidence of tortured, abused children, or of any of the outlandish acts anyone was accused of. Yet lives were ruined and people were jailed and spent years in court, all over this unbelievable nonsense.

Now QAnon is up to the same tricks with claims of tunnels under pizza parlors and Democrats indulging in child trafficking so they can steal the blood of innocents. When will we learn that none of this is happening and these are lies peddled by fearmongers?