Florida governor Ron DeSantis has banned mask mandates in his state. Read that again. He didn’t mandate masks, he didn’t ban venues from opening without mask mandates, no for DeSantis the problem isn’t the virus, it’s combating the virus.
Governor Abbott has similarly banned mask mandates in Texas making it impossible for local officials to combat the spread of the virus while he takes no action on the state level. The daily average of cases in Texas was over 8,000 according to the New York Times.
Clearly DeSantis and Abbot are not interested in saving the lives of their constituents…
The Q-anon types have a new favourite theory ‘Devolution.’ A substack author ‘Patriot Patel’ wrote up his theory that sometime in December Trump transferred the powers of the U.S. government to some other power structure, which he became head of when he left the White House.
I’m not interested in the particulars of the ‘devolution theory’ though of course I’ve lined the above paragraph so you can explore the latest right wing nonsense to your heart’s content. I am however interested in the progression of the Q-anon cult and how it parallels the development of early Christianity.
While Republicans are raving about ‘stop the steal’ and invading the Capitol building as they do, there are some details that are getting overlooked. Republicans actually far outperformed in the election compared to the polling. In fact they did so to a wildly improbably degree. In 27 House races marked by political experts as ‘toss up’ ie. roughly 50–50 or too close to call, Republicans won every single one. Every single one.
That’s an incredibly strong claim so let me give you the quote from the source, a CNN article on 11/17/2020
Being wrong is awful. Double plus ungood as they would say in 1984 ‘newspeak.’ And yet, as the saying goes ‘to err is human…” as Alexander Pope put it. Or as a later wag said “to err is human, to really screw things up requires a computer” (Most likely Bill Vaughan according to Quote Investigator)
My own approach to owning up to a mistake is taken from Nero Wolfe, written by Rex Stout, and I say, with as much superciliousness as I can muster “I love to make a mistake. …
Once again the Senate Parliamentarian has told the Democrats “I say thee nay” as the old Thor comics used to put it. And Democrats, the eponymous mice in the title of the article, folded like a 99 cent card table.
In 2004 there was an attempt to make voting appeal to young people with the slogan “Vote or Die.” In Texas it might be more accurate to say ‘vote And die’ when a man killed a woman and shot her husband for casting their vote for Joe Biden.
According to the Insider article from Sept 11, 2021 “Police have now charged Joseph Angel Alvarez, 38, with the crime, after finding emails in which he admitted to targeting the Kauffmans because they had a Joe Biden flag.”
In 2019 there were 42 deaths linked to Domestic terrorism, and of those 90…
I have been struggling for the last few weeks to come up with the right metaphor for contemporary American Politics. Republicans push their agenda of tax cuts for the rich and the culture wars of the Christian Right with ruthless efficiency. Dems pursue their stated goals with the agility of an aging tortoise with a gammy leg.
I’ve never been patriotic. That might sound odd for someone who enlisted two separate times in the military but it’s true.
I joined the Coast Guard when I was 17 because I wanted to rescue people, save the environment and generally be in the military without having to kill people because I was kind of a pacifist. Later on I signed up for the California National Guard because I was going through a states rights phase, and also needed money for Brazilian Jiu Jitsu lessons.
And maybe this is part of being Jewish, where your identity is all bound up…
When I refer to the filibuster what I am referring to is the post 1975 form where no talking is required, not the filibuster as it existed for about 150 years without seriously disrupting the democratic process. I am talking about the version where someone can disrupt debate and passage of a law not by reading the phonebook for as long as their voice holds out but by merely saying “I’m filibustering” and then nothing can happen until 60 Senators agree to vote for ‘cloture’ to move things along.
Effectively this requires a 60 vote super majority to do anything…
