The Greenland, Canada, and Panama talk is to distract us

My Sunday movie was Wallace & Gromit, Vengeance Most Fowl. Wallace is an inventor of things that most people don’t see a need for (a mechanical hand to pet your dog, another to feed you your toast). Gromit is his dog, who seem smarter and more aware of what’s really going on than his owner. This is the sixth film in this British series and I’ve seen at least four, likely five of them. This film is definitely a sequel where the rest are standalone stories. When I realized it is a sequel I thought of stopping this film and finding the previous one, but kept on anyway. Good that I did – I had seen the first one ... thirty years ago. These films are claymation or stop motion and take a long time to create (a minute of movie is a good week’s work). That’s why four of the six movies are only 30 minutes and this one was only 80. In this film Wallace has invented a garden gnome robot run by AI. He thinks the gardening Gromit does is too much actual work. Of course, the gnome had a very different idea of what the yard should look like that Gromit does. The gnome does beautiful work, the neighbors are impressed, and Wallace now has a business of renting gnome robots to the neighborhood, which he can monitor from home. The bad guy from the previous film is able to reset the settings of the gnome from “good,” past “dull” and “grumpy” all the way to “evil.” The neighbors complain about theft and it looks like Wallace will be blamed. And Gromit goes out to find learn what’s really going on. The workroom in the basement has an odd mix of computer equipment. The computer has a CRT monitor and there are reel-to-reel tape drives in the background (I used those in college). Yet, there is also internet access and the ability to program robots. I enjoyed it as I had enjoyed the previous films in the series. However, it’s the sort of humor, loaded with puns, I don’t think I could binge watch. Jay Waagmeester of Florida Phoenix, in an article posted on Daily Kos, reported that the Board of Governors for the State University System in Florida plans to pay for a study of the economic return from Women and Gender Studies programs. They would compare these programs against Computer Science, Civil Engineering, Finance, and Nursing. In 2023 lawmakers proposed dropping the Women and Gender Studies programs, but were told eliminating the programs based on content would violate free speech. So they’re trying the economic argument instead. The programs are to be evaluated on career roles, expected starting compensation and expected career earnings contrasted with state funding expenditures and student expenditures. That gives a return on investment (ROI). The reasons for the study include: (1) Nearly 21,000 students were enrolled in computer science and related fields in the fall of 2023. At the same time 224 students were enrolled in ethnic, cultural, gender, and group studies. (2) Universities too often fail to align programs with the labor market, leading to disappointed graduates and public. (3) “Truck driver” tax dollars should not have to pay for someone else’s degree in gender studies (yeah, that’s intentional choice of opponent). (4) Universities, not the state government, should back student loans, so schools need an economic way to evaluate what kind of loans will get paid back. Democratic state Rep. Anna Eskamani from Orlando provided the objections: (1) The study is just a way to find a reason to eliminate gender studies. It’s politically motivated. (2) The university system already has metrics to evaluate programs, as do accreditors and groups that compile national rankings. (3) It’s an “apples to oranges” comparison. It’s bogus to say humanities programs, like gender studies, as not being valuable to higher education and civil society. Oliver Willis of Kos explained why the right keeps blaming Biden for the open border. They are doing that even though the border isn’t “open” – Biden only overturned the worst of the nasty guy’s border policies. Also, Republicans were the ones to blow up the bipartisan bill to reform immigration. So, why?

Fear about border security is an extremely potent motivator for conservative voters, so it’s in the GOP’s best interest to keep those voters in a fevered pitch of worry about who or what could be coming across the southern border into the United States.

An Associated Press article posted on Kos reports that sales of nuclear bunkers are on the rise around the globe. This is in response to global security leaders warning that nuclear threats are growing and that spending on weapons passed $91.4 billion last year.

Critics warn these bunkers create a false perception that a nuclear war is survivable. They argue that people planning to live through an atomic blast aren’t focusing on the real and current dangers posed by nuclear threats, and the critical need to stop the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

Disaster experts say that staying inside away from outside walls or in a basement for a day or so is enough to protect from radioactive fallout. If you’re not killed in the initial blast the chance of surviving is pretty good. Except...

“Bunkers are, in fact, not a tool to survive a nuclear war, but a tool to allow a population to psychologically endure the possibility of a nuclear war,” said Alicia Sanders-Zakre at the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons. Sanders-Zakre called radiation the “uniquely horrific aspect of nuclear weapons,” and noted that even surviving the fallout doesn’t prevent long-lasting, intergenerational health crises. “Ultimately, the only solution to protect populations from nuclear war is to eliminate nuclear weapons.”

Collapse of health care and society in general is something not talked about but would affect survivability. So you survive the fallout. Then what? In a pundit roundup for Kos Chitown Kev quoted David Frum of The Atlantic about the Capitol attack four years ago (which didn’t happen this year).

If you’re a normal journalist trying to report on inauguration plans or the staffing of the Cabinet or the administration’s first budget, your job depends on access, and access depends on playing ball to a greater or lesser degree. If you keep banging on about an attempted coup that happened four years ago, you are just making yourself irrelevant. And when you encounter somebody else who bangs on about it, you will be tempted to dismiss them as irrelevant, too. The coup makers won. The coup resisters lost. Washington is not a city that spares much sympathy for losers.

Down in the comments is a cartoon by J.L. Westover. A woman is holding big a sign saying, “Anything helps.” A man lectures her:

Man: You don’t need help. You need to put on your big boy pants, roll up your sleeves, and pull yourself up by your bootstraps. Woman: But I can’t afford clothes. Man: Well tighten your belt... No, buckle down... S---, wait...

In another roundup Greg Dworkin quoted Ruth Braunstein of Religion News Service:

The right’s support for democratic institutions like elections has always been contingent. Specifically, it has been contingent upon those institutions maintaining a traditional social hierarchy. For the past decade, large shares of white Christians have lamented the demographic and social shifts that have made them a minority in “their own country.” Trump rose to power, in part, by promising this group that he would return them to a position of power and privilege in a country they believe God intended for them to rule. The MAGA movement has coalesced around this political theology of hierarchy, which sanctifies a social order resting on hierarchies between social groups—racial, religious, gendered and moral. Moreover, it asserts that the nation’s very survival depends on the maintenance of this hierarchical social order in which conservative white Christian men are at the top. But one need not feel invested in all of these forms of hierarchy in order to embrace the general package Trump offers, or to feel anxious about threats to this hierarchical system in general. The MAGA movement has masterfully stoked fear that threats to any one prong of this hierarchical system augurs social collapse.

Down in the comments is a cartoon by Mike Luckovich in which Justice Roberts is trying to administer the oath of office to the nasty guy: “Do you swear to, bwa-ha-ha, uphold, the bwa-ha-ha, Constit... wait, lemme, giggle, giggle, start over...” There are many cartoons about the nasty guy wanting to annex Greenland, including a meme posted by exlrrp quoting Congressman Jim McGovern:

Donald Trump’s Greenland, Canada, and Panama talk is a distraction so everyone forgets what he promised. He said he would end the war in Ukraine before he even becomes president. He promised chaper groceries, $2.00 per gallon gas and no more taxes on overtime. Don’t let him move the goalposts.

And a cartoon by Robert Leighton posted by The New Yorker showing a man at a US customs check at an airport. The agent says, “Fine, you travelled for pleasure. I’m asking why you’re coming back.”