Blissonance

I wrote yesterday that the nasty guy has an enemies list and, with his acquittal, will feel free to act on it. And today he started.

Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman was one of the important witnesses during the House impeachment inquiry. Today he was fired from his National Security Council job and escorted out of the White House. He is active military, so he isn’t out of a job, just out of that job. Vindman’s twin brother Yevgeny, also a part of the NSC was also escorted out.

Gordon Sondland, ambassador to the European Union and also an important witness, has also been fired.



Senator Sherrod Brown wrote in the New York Times that the GOP Senators who voted to acquit did so out of fear. Fear of the nasty guy’s tweets and that he might campaign against them in their primary. Fear of being attacked by Fox News hosts. Fear of the hosts on conservative talk radio. Fear of Twitter trolls attacking.



At the end of the State of the Union Speech on Tuesday evening (which I avoided) Speaker Nancy Pelosi ripped up her copy of the speech. She did so because she said it was filled with lies, what she called a “manifesto of mistruths.” Her actions were a way of prompting the media to talk to her about it. Which she did in detail.

Mark Sumner of Daily Kos reviewed the speech and said Pelosi’s action was “far more courtesy than this toilet stain of a speech deserved.”

Since then Pelosi has said her actions were thought out ahead of time – about as soon as she received a copy of the speech. There’s more shredding to be done.



Jill Lawrence in USA Today wrote that she used to have respect for all politicians, even those she passionately disagreed with. Then came the nasty guy and respect is gone.



The satirical newspaper The Onion says that the Democratic National Committee has offered a startup company $500 million to manufacture a “cutting-edge tabulation device that will be able to legibly report vote totals on a sheet of paper 99% of the time.” The hexagonal marking implement will be stress tested by the business venture known as Sharpen. DNC Chair Tom Perez reportedly said in the article:

It may not be easy to encase a cylinder of graphite with wood or put a slick coat of glossy paint on its outside. But with this new partnership, we believe we will soon have at our disposal a pencil that is both reliable and totally resistant to any attack by foreign powers.

The article concludes:

At press time, sources confirmed plans for the pencil had been scrapped after election security experts warned the rubber eraser on its tip would quickly erode public trust in the product.

I hear the final tally of the Iowa Caucuses has been announced. Jared Yates Sexton, a political analyst tweeted that it was embarrassing watching the media throw tantrums because their product wasn’t delivered on time. Because of that some in the media are saying the results don’t matter.



There’s an old saying (though new to me) that there are at most three tickets out of Iowa. Laura Clawson of Kos notes we’re hearing that Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttigieg are pretty close to tied. We’re hearing a lot about how Joe Biden underperformed and came in fourth. And … silence.

There isn’t a lot of talk that Elizabeth Warren came in a respectful third and well ahead of expectations and of Biden. Some are declaring it’s a two-man race now.




Kerry Eleveld of Kos reviews this four person field:

Buttigieg doesn’t poll well with people of color and will probably hit a wall in South Carolina and beyond.

Sanders is saying he can inspire enough Democrats to win – but didn’t actually do that in Iowa.

Biden is an uninspiring campaigner.

Which leaves … Warren.

She did better than expected in Iowa. She could pull together a coalition to win. If she can get past the first few states. And gets the media to report on her.



Bree Newsome Bass tweeted a thread calling on us to stop allowing the GOP and their fake outrages to frame the debate. They take the extreme position to pull everyone further to the right. An example:

Republicans deliberately take an extreme action & institute child separation policy.

Instead of shutting down border camps, Dems compromise by asking for more transparent reporting when children die there & give Repubs $$$.

GOP successfully moves goal posts.

Bass agrees with those pointing out that Dems engage only in “performative opposition.” They do the bare minimum.

Ripping up a speech is cool but refusing to fund the border camps, the wall & the militarization of outer space would go further.

A quote of the day:

One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.
~~Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark (1996)

CBS did pretty good at showing what income inequality looks like. News anchor Tony Dokoupil set up a table in a mall with a pumpkin pie and asked people to slice up that pie onto five plates to correspond with how money is distributed in the economy. Those who gave it a try didn’t come close to getting it right. The richest got nine slices out of ten. The next two plates shared a slice. The fourth plate got some crumbs. And the plate representing the poor got the bill – representing that most of them are in debt. This is a very good way of explaining why we need the proposed wealth tax – until he went to get the opinion of yacht salesmen.



Besame of the Kos community says we need new words to talk about climate change. How about the word “blissonance” made up from “bliss” and “dissonance” to describe the feeling of enjoying some nice warm February weather while knowing it shouldn’t be this warm. Another example is enjoying a brightly colored sunset but knowing the intensity of the colors is because of the extra forest fire smoke in the atmosphere. A third is appreciating that the car windshield isn’t smeared with bugs but knowing that’s because the insect population has declined.

So talk about the weather of your youth. People born after 1985 will never experience a colder-than-average month and don’t understand what our weather used to be like. So tell them.



In honor of Adlai Stevenson’s 120th birthday Bill in Portland, Maine offered up a few quotes. For those who don’t remember the 1950s Stevenson ran for president against Dwight Eisenhower. And lost. Twice. But who could have won against Ike? Here’s one of the quotes:

We travel together, passengers on a little space ship, dependent on its vulnerable reserves of air and soil; all committed for our safety to its security and peace; preserved from annihilation only by the care, the work and, I will say, the love we give our fragile craft.

We cannot maintain it half fortunate, half miserable, half confident, half despairing, half slave to the ancient enemies of man, half free in a liberation of resources undreamed of until this day. No craft, no crew can travel with such vast contradictions. On their resolution depends the survival of us all.