Is shooting a puppy good for a MAGA politician?

The governor of South Dakota Kristi Noem reveals in her new book that she shot dead her 14-month old puppy.

The Guardian revealed Noem’s story, which is contained in a book out next month. In No Going Back: The Truth on What’s Wrong with Politics and How We Move America Forward, Noem describes her frustrations with Cricket, a 14-month-old wirehair pointer who Noem says ruined a pheasant hunt and killed a neighbouring family’s chickens.

“I hated that dog,” Noem writes, saying Cricket was “untrainable … dangerous” and “less than worthless … as a hunting dog”.

“At that moment,” Noem says, “I realised I had to put her down.”

Noem describes taking Cricket to a gravel pit on her farm and shooting her. Remarkably, Noem then describes how she also chose to kill an unruly, unnamed, un-castrated goat, first botching the job then finishing the animal off with a third shotgun shell.
…

Dan Lussen, a hunting dog trainer, told Rolling Stone a 14-month-old dog was a “baby that doesn’t know any better”, adding that unruly dogs were the result of a lack of guidance, training or discipline by the owner.

The pressure group Peta – People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals – said: “Most Americans love their dogs, and we suspect that they will consider Governor Noem a psychotic loony for letting this rambunctious puppy loose on chickens and then punishing her by deciding to personally blow her brains out rather than attempting to train her or find a more responsible guardian who would provide her with a proper home.

[Read more…]

Campus protests over Gaza escalate

The horrific situation in Gaza where the Israeli government has unleashed a reign of terror on the people there killing over 34,000 people (two-thirds of whom are women and children), destroying hospitals, infrastructure, and homes, leaving almost two million people destitute and in a state of famine, has galvanized protests around the world. In the US, students at over 40 universities have organized protests demanding justice for Gaza and also protesting the attacks on Palestinians in the Occupied West Bank by settlers, who have taken this opportunity to further encroach upon the lands owned by Palestinians and to attack them, shielded by the Israeli Defense Forces.

Sometimes, a story about one person captures the horror of what is going on better than a recitation of facts and statistics. I was deeply moved by this story on NPR about a 12-year old Gazan boy who was shot by Israeli troops when he went to get food from one of the air drops. He was later kicked in the head by one of the soldiers as he lay on the ground and is now in agony because of the lack of pain medication.


[Read more…]

Approaches to the end of life

Dhruv Khullar writes about the differing opinions about how to approach the so-called “‘marginal decade’ at the end of our lives, when medicine keeps us alive but our independence and capacities bleed away.” He points out that in 1900, the life expectancy at birth was 47 years. But at that time, one in five children died before the age of 10. Now life expectancy at birth is close to 77. Much of this improvement came about rapidly due to improved sanitation, antibiotics, and vaccines that have reduced infant and child mortality considerably.

But in the last six decades, increases in longevity have slowed, to only about seven years, and are more due to extending the lives of of old people, many of whom are in ill health. In other words, Khullar says, “we are prolonging the time it takes to die.” The goal of compressing mortality, i.e., shortening the gap between the end of a healthy life and death, may be slipping away.

If anything, longer lives now appear to include more difficult years. The “compression of morbidity may be as illusory as immortality,” two demographers, Eileen Crimmins and Hiram Beltrán-Sánchez, wrote in 2010. According to the World Health Organization, the average American can expect just one healthy birthday after the age of sixty-five. (Health spans are greater in countries such as Switzerland, Japan, Panama, Turkey, and Sri Lanka.)

[Read more…]

There is no indignity that some people will not accept

This is especially true for people who worked with serial sex abuser Donald Trump (SSAT) in his administration who, after they left office, tried to reclaim some shred of credibility by distancing themselves form some of his actions. But even after SSAT severely ridiculed them, they still go back to him with their tails between their legs.

Bill Barr, the U.S. Attorney General under former President Donald Trump — who once called his former boss “erratic” and “petty” and dismissed his false claims of a stolen 2020 election — told Fox News that he would still vote for the former president in November.

“The real danger to the country — the real danger to democracy, as I say — is the progressive agenda,” Barr said, calling the prosecution of Trump for illegally covering up hush-money payments to Stormy Daniels a “perversion of justice.”

Trump rewarded Barr’s renewed allegiance with a mocking Truth Social post that doubled down on past name-calling. “Former A.G. Bill Barr, who let a lot of great people down by not investigating Voter Fraud in our Country, has just Endorsed me for President despite the fact that I called him ‘Weak, Slow Moving, Lethargic, Gutless, and Lazy’ (New York Post!),” he wrote. “Based on the fact that I greatly appreciate his wholehearted Endorsement, I am removing the word ‘Lethargic’ from my statement.”

Before distancing himself from Trump, Barr was one of the administration’s most prominent figures, using his position to protect Trump from legal probes, enforce his orders targeting anti-fascist protesters, and echo his inflammatory rhetoric on everything from pandemic restrictions to the security of mail-in ballots. But the fallout of the 2020 election persuaded Barr to jump ship, at least for a time, as he rejected Trump’s false claims of mass fraud. When Barr published a book to defend his own reputation, Trump called him “a disappointment in every sense of the word.”

There are many things that one can criticize Joe Biden for, but representing a threat to democracy is not one of them. He is like every mainstream Democrat, a devoted defender of the status quo, only willing to tweak policy at the margins.

I expect many of the other people who criticized SSAT to also slink back to him as the election gets closer.

Ban on noncompete clauses gets challenged in court

I wrote yesterday about how the FTC had banned noncompete clauses for all but high-level employees. It is absurd to think that low-level employees in places like fast food and the hospitality industry have valuable proprietary information that they could give to their new employers. These clauses are nothing but a way to prevent such employees from finding better jobs, and thus has the effect of suppressing wages.

It should come as no surprise that the US Chamber of Commerce immediately filed a lawsuit challenging the power of the FTC to ban those clauses.
[Read more…]

Good riddance to non-compete clauses

When people are hired, their contracts can sometimes include what are called non-compete clauses. These were originally designed to prevent someone from learning trade secrets at one company and then switch to another company or start their own business using that knowledge to the detriment of the original employer. As you can imagine, the only people who are likely to know valuable insider information are high-level employees. But companies realized that they could use those clauses to keep many more of their workers captive and started extending the clauses to cover lower and lower level employers, thus preventing them from finding better jobs.

Now the Federal Trade Commission under the admirable leadership of Lina Khan has forbidden the use of such clauses for all but top-level employees. As Kevin Drum says:

The vote was 3-2 in favor of banning noncompete agreements for new workers and voiding them for all existing workers (except C-suite executives). This will eliminate the ridiculous practice of fast food chains hiring sandwich makers and then prohibiting them from quitting and going to work for a different fast food chain—and giving their valuable, proprietary sandwich making expertise to the competition.

Corporate America has only itself to blame for this. Noncompetes used to be limited to high-end jobs like coders or lawyers. But then, as usual, some bright boys got the idea of expanding the idea to poor shlubs working minimum wage jobs. That was outrageous enough that it finally produced support for killing noncompetes completely.
…

A Labor Department study published in June 2022 estimated that 18 percent of Americans are bound by noncompete agreements, while other research suggests it could be closer to 50 percent. They are used in a wide range of industries, including technology, hairstyling, medicine and even dance instruction, while imposing restrictions on both high- and low-wage earners.

The FTC estimates that banning noncompete agreements could create jobs for 30 million Americans and raise wages by nearly $300 billion per year.

All good free-market capitalists—as opposed to those who are merely shills for big corporations—should be happy about this. The United States will do nothing but benefit from it.¹

Apparently California banned these clauses over a century ago and and despite that has had a booming economy.

Trump did not have a good day in court

After the jury was seated last week, yesterday was the second day of the trial for serial sex abuser Donald Trump (SSAT) on the charges of fraud arising from his payment of hush money to porn star Stormy Daniels just before the 2016 election. The only witness yesterday was the former publisher of the tabloid newspaper National Enquirer David Pecker who testified to working with then SSAT fixer Michael Cohen about arrangements to buy the rights to any damaging stories about SSAT’s affairs and then not publish them. He testified that his newspaper would be on the look out for those stories.

But that was not all. Pecker was also asked earlier in the campaign to publish negative stories about SSAT’s opponents in the Republican primaries

David Pecker is saying that during the campaign, Michael Cohen would call him and said “we would like you to run a negative article” on a political opponent, such as Ted Cruz, or Ben Carson, or Marco Rubio.

[Read more…]

What is the size of a ‘majority’?

The full US House of Representatives consists of 435 voting members. Currently there are 218 Republicans and 213 Democrats with four seats vacant.

So how should one describe the size of the Republican majority? The answer ‘five’ sounds reasonable since it is the difference between the numbers in the two parties. But many news articles, such as in this one, say it is ‘two’,

This is because if three Republicans decide to vote against their party on any issue and join with Democrats who all vote together, then the Republican party loses 215-216. So saying that the Republicans have a majority of two is shorthand for saying that the party can only afford two defections on an otherwise party line vote and still win.

It kind of makes sense but I don’t like it. If used that way, then a 218-216 or 218-217 margin would mean that they had no majority at all since they cannot afford even a single defection.

The Good Liars confront Trump supporters

Jason Selvig and Davram Stiefler are two comedians who call themselves ‘The Good Liars‘ and pull political pranks such as attending a rally for serial sex abuser Donald Trump (SSAT) and then yelling “boring” and saying that they “came here to be entertained” before they were escorted out. In the clip below, they do something similar to what Jordan Klepper does, and that is attend an SSAT rally in Greensboro, North Carolina and talk to the people waiting in line to get in.

The convoluted ‘reasoning’ of SSAT supporters is a source of endless fascination. Listen (first at the 4:58 mark and then again later) to the guy who insists that he has no problem with gay people existing (how generous of him!) but objects to how the gay community is forcing their lifestyle on everyone. When pressed by Selvig as to specifics as to how the presence of gay people adversely affects him, he of course could not say, but then finally resorts to saying that nowadays gay people are everywhere in the media, even in cartoon shows, and hence he feels oppressed.

I wished that Selvig had asked him whether, by that same logic, the much greater prevalence of heterosexual people in the media meant that heterosexuals were forcing their lifestyles on everyone else and oppressing them.

In another case, the duo interviewed school book banners and got them to confront the fact that the Bible is full of the kinds of things that they claim to deplore in books.