More fitting obituaries for Donald Rumsfeld

The smug and arrogant Rumsfeld, an utterly odious man, died yesterday at the age of 88. In a just world, he would have been tried, convicted, and sentenced to prison for war crimes. But given that he was an American leader and we all know that by definition Americans never commit war crimes, that would never would have happened.

To get a more accurate recounting of his career, we can read Jon Schwarz who calls him a “dreary war criminal” who “managed to do terrible things throughout his life while remaining tremendously banal”.

[L]ess than six hours after the first plane hit the north tower of the World Trade Center, Rumsfeld was anxious to “hit SH [Saddam Hussein] @ same time.” And he wasn’t especially concerned whether Iraq or any target was responsible for the attacks. He wanted to conduct “massive” attacks on targets “related & not” (emphasis in original). That is, he saw the deaths of thousands of Americans as a wonderful opportunity to do whatever the George W. Bush administration wanted.

At that moment, Rumsfeld was doing what he did best throughout his life: spinning the unspeakable suffering of others into the desired ends of himself and his political allies.
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New Pew analysis of 2020 election

There are many interesting features about the 2020 election, especially the way that various demographic groups voted that do not quite fit into a simple picture. Analyses of voting patterns in the election keep coming in. One of the most comprehensive is a new one by the Pew organization.

Every piece of evidence since the November election suggests Donald Trump made significant inroads among blocs of voters thought to be out of reach to the controversial now-former president.

And he still lost the popular vote by roughly twice the margin he did in 2016 — enough for Joe Biden to flip five states Trump won and capture the Electoral College.

A new analysis from the Pew Research Center shows why: Even as Trump was narrowing Democrats’ margins with white women and Hispanic voters, Biden was surging with other groups, like suburbanites, white men and voters who identified as independents, that propelled him to victory.
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According to the Pew analysis, Trump won white voters by 12 percentage points, 55 percent to 43 percent, down from 15 points in 2016. Biden narrowed Trump’s margin among white men — from 30 points in 2016, to 17 points in 2020 — but Trump won white women by a larger spread (7 points) than he won them in 2016 (2 points).

Meanwhile, Biden held steady among Black voters, carrying them by an 84-point spread (92 percent to 8 percent), virtually identical to Hillary Clinton’s 85-point lead four years ago.

But Biden only won Hispanic voters by 21 points, 59 percent to 38 percent, down significantly from Clinton’s 38-point advantage, 66 percent to 28 percent. There was a slight gender gap — Biden won Hispanic men by 17 and Hispanic women by 24 — but Trump surged broadly among Hispanics, especially among Hispanic voters without a college degree.

You can read the Pew report here.

How long can Trump sing the same old songs?

Donald Trump held a rally in Ohio on Saturday, his first since leaving office. It was ostensibly in support of a Republican candidate mounting a primary challenge to an incumbent Republican congressperson who had committed the sin of voting in favor of Trump’s impeachment. But of course, the rally was about him. Everything is always about him.

So what did Trump say to the thousands who turned out to hear their Dear Leader? Did he have anything new? Apparently not.

Appearing to relish being back in front of thousands of supporters, Trump repeated his false claim that his defeat in the November 2020 election was marred by fraud.
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Trump survived a second impeachment on a charge linked to the violence and has kept broad influence over the Republican Party, in part by leaving open the question of whether he will run for office again in 2024.

He dangled that possibility on Saturday to the crowd.

“We won the election twice and it’s possible we’ll have to win it a third time. It’s possible,” he said.
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The former president highlighted parts of his regular grievance list at the rally, with particular focus on the rising number of immigrants crossing over the U.S. southern border, an issue Republicans have zeroed in on to rally their voters.
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Trump repeatedly attacked what he called “woke generals,” following an exchange this week in which the top U.S. military officer hit back against a growing conservative movement opposed to teaching certain theories about racism.

“Our generals and our admirals are now focused more on this nonsense than they are on our enemies,” Trump said.

He criticized the media, a regular foil, and tried to co-opt the phrase “Big Lie,” which critics have used to describe his efforts to discredit the 2020 results.

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John Oliver on Christian health scam

Health care is something that everyone needs and sometimes urgently. Because the health industry in the US is mostly private, this leaves it wide open for unscrupulous people to take advantage of this need for their own profit. Add to that the wide leeway that the US gives to religious organizations and it should not come as a surprise that groups acting under the umbrella of religion are making money claiming to support for people’s health care needs without actually doing so.

John Oliver looks at one such program that goes by the name of Health Care Sharing Ministries and shows how easy it is to claim that an entity is a religious organization and take advantage of all the loopholes.

An encouraging result for LGBT rights

The US Supreme Court, by a 7-2 margin, has declined to hear a case where a school board appealed a lower court verdict against their policy of demanding that students only use bathrooms according to the gender assigned to them at birth, thus providing a victory for transgender rights.

The case involved a former high school student, Gavin Grimm, who filed a federal lawsuit after he was told he could not use the boys’ bathroom at his public high school.

The policy of the school board for Gloucester county, Virginia required Grimm to use restrooms that corresponded with his biological sex – female – or private bathrooms.

Last August, the US court of appeals for the fourth circuit ruled that the board had practiced sex-based discrimination and violated Grimm’s 14th amendment rights by prohibiting him from using the boys’ restroom.

Judge Henry Floyd wrote: “The proudest moments of the federal judiciary have been when we affirm the burgeoning values of our bright youth, rather than preserve the prejudices of the past.”

Nonetheless, on the supreme court Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, two of the most hardline justices on a panel slanted 6-3 in favor of conservatives, voted to hear the board’s appeal.

Upholding the decision of the appeals court sets a strong legal precedent. But because the supreme court has chosen not to hear the case itself, there is still no nationwide ruling on the issue.

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The Covid Delta variant is hitting the unvaccinated

The Delta variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus is now rapidly becoming the dominant strain. This variant is more easily transmissible and more dangerous, and Dhruv Kullar warns that from the evidence gained so far from the UK, it poses a greater risk to the unvaccinated.

Earlier this year, scientists estimated that lineage B.1.1.7-the Alpha variant, first isolated in England-could be some sixty per cent more transmissible than the original version of sars-CoV-2. Now experts believe that the Delta variant is sixty per cent more transmissible than Alpha-making it far more contagious than the virus that tore through the world in 2020. It hasn’t yet been conclusively shown that Delta is more lethal, but early evidence from the U.K. suggests that, compared to Alpha, it doubles the risk of a person’s being hospitalized. Even if the variant turns out to be no deadlier within any one person, its greater transmissibility means that it can inflict far more damage across a population, depending on how many people remain unvaccinated when it strikes.

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Boris Johnson loses his health minister over multiple scandals

Over in the UK Matt Hancock, the minister of health in Boris Johnson’s government, who presided over a poor handling of the covid-19 pandemic that saw the UK have relatively high totals of deaths and infections, has resigned just a day after it was revealed that he was having an affair. Johnson had earlier said that he had accepted his apology and that he considered the matter closed but Hancock resigned soon after.
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Cricket, race, and politics

There are those who would argue that politics has no place in sports. But the reality is that it is almost impossible to keep politics out, especially in international competitions. The history of cricket is inextricably tied up with race and politics. The game originated with the English upper classes and was taken by them to their colonies. But racism was always part of the backdrop to the game. In the colonies of the West Indies, India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka, the game was initially dominated by English expatriates while in South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand it was played almost exclusively by white people. Furthermore, South Africa was under a system of apartheid that excluded people of color from playing on mixed teams while Australia had a ‘whites only’ immigration policy and was infamous for the racist abuse that spectators would hurl at visiting teams that had players of color.
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The fake outrage over ‘critical race theory’ may make the label mainstream

We have seen a clear pattern. Republicans and their allies in the right wing media seize upon a label or phrase that contains a term that can be exploited to gin up rage among the base and then relentlessly flog falsehoods about it with the goal of making it toxic. The current favorite is ‘critical race theory’, the label given to the academic study of the way that racism has been institutionalized in the US via its laws. It is usually taught at the college level in selected courses that deal with race and society. In right-wing hands, however, it is being portrayed as a massive propaganda effort that seeks to portray all white people as evil and is being taught all the way down to the level of primary schools.
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The UFO/UAP story will never die

The US government has released its much awaited (by UFO enthusiasts at least) report on what it calls Unidentified Aerial Phenomena and it is just what you might expect.

The mystery of UFOs seen in American skies is likely to continue following the release of the US government’s highly anticipated UFO report.

The report released on Friday afternoon made clear that while American intelligence officials do not believe aliens are behind the UFOs – or what scientists prefer to call unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) – that were observed by navy pilots, they cannot explain what the flying objects are.

The report confirms that the observed phenomena are not part of any US military operations.

The Pentagon studied over 140 incidents reported by navy pilots of UAP seen over the last two decades for the report. Many were seen from the summer of 2014 into the spring of 2015.

While the report said that some incidents could be the result of technological errors in sensors or observers, it noted that most of the UAP reported “probably do represent physical objects” since they were registered across multiple sensors.

The only UAP intelligence officials were able to identify “with high confidence” turned out to be “a large, deflating balloon”.

“The others remain unexplained,” the report reads.

There are two things to keep in mind. (1) There are always unexplained phenomena. (2) One can never rule out a favored hypothesis for any unexplained phenomena. Those two will ensure that people who believe that extraterrestrials are, for some reason, choosing to buzz around us without making contact will never run out of reasons to believe.

I for one am going to wait until one of them unambiguously contacts us before getting all excited.