Half million

Meteor Blades of Daily Kos posted a photo and video of President Biden’s memorial moment marking a half million dead from COVID-19. Biden commented this is the same number of dead as from WWI, WWII, and the Vietnam War combined. I am thankful he did this, even if it was just a 10 minute speech and a moment of silence in an outdoor display of lots of candles. It was only a month ago, on the eve of his inauguration, he marked 400,000 dead. Artur Galoncha and Bonnie Berkowitz of the Washington Post offered a few ways to think about 500,000 dead. https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/interactive/2021/500000-covid-deaths-visualized/ A motor coach – most of us call it a bus – that one can take from one city to another holds 50 people plus a driver. A bus is about 45 feet long. If the buses are spaced six feet apart, the 9,804 buses to hold a half million would stretch 94.7 miles, the distance from Philadelphia to New York. The Vietnam Memorial on the Mall in Washington holds more than 58,000 names. It is 493 feet long and the center of it is just over ten feet high. To hold the names of those who had died of the virus it would need to be 87 feet tall. Arlington Cemetery covers one square mile. Troops from every major conflict dating back to the Revolutionary War are buried there. There are also national dignitaries there, for more than 400,000 graves. There is room for about 95,000 more. The people who have died from the virus would fill another Arlington. Brittany Packnett Cunningham tweeted:

I really get confused when folks say America is “more polarized” than ever before. Like...ever?! EVER?!? Also is polarization our WORST problem because I am perfectly fine being polarized *by white supremacy.* We’ve framed this entire conversation wrong. When “division” is framed as the root issue, people will make perverse decisions in the name of “unity.” They’ll have us all singing Hands Across America, meanwhile few material circumstances have actually changed. “Division” isn’t the virus-its a symptom of injustice. That’s at the root. And folks fighting said injustice isn’t “division,” it’s a freedom struggle. Just cause we now see the “division” on Facebook doesn’t mean it’s new or novel. Guarantee you: equity, justice and liberation...a country where all people can *thrive*...you won’t have to worry about “division.” … Just a reminder that we had a WHOLE CIVIL WAR in this country. *Pretty sure* we were divided. More importantly: when DIVISION, and not INJUSTICE became the most important enemy, “unity” cost Black folks Reconstruction and Jefferson Davis never stood trial. All the confederate soldiers were pardoned, enslavers got to keep their property and forced a bunch of our ancestors into sharecropping, and the American institutions that built their foundations on enslaved labor kept their $$. “We are more divided than ever” ain’t as far from “make America great again” as you might think. Both are completely ahistorical, and are weaponized against marginalized people. We we’re never unified. You just want us to be quiet. … Don’t be more committed to order than you are to justice.

Bill Potter replied:

I’ve learned that “we’re more polarized” just means “oppressed people have more power.” Y’all taught me that.

A couple days ago Kate Starbird tweeted a thread:

The “big lie” (claiming massive voter fraud in 2020 election) has multiple features of a classic disinfo campaign, including: designed to sow doubt (rather than convince of a single explanation), pushes multiple (even conflicting) narratives, functions to undermine democracy. Mail-in votes. Ballot harvesting. Dead voters. Sharpie pens. Ballots lost, ballots found. Suitcases of ballots. Voting machines. Voting machine software. This isn’t about finding a coherent narrative. It’s about creating doubt via throwing voter fraud spaghetti at the wall. And quite unsurprisingly, the next move is to use these same false and misleading narratives for future voter suppression, making it harder for people to vote next time (and the time after that and the time after that…)

John McLaughlin replied with an important question:

When will there be a price for pushing the big lie?

Leah McElrath responded to Starbird:

And EVERY major network and cable “news” show gave air time to this Big Lie today, in the supposed name of balance. We simply will not make it as a democracy if news media continue to fail us this way. This isn’t “news”—it’s dissemination of the Big Lie:

She then quoted Matt Negrin on MSNBC who noted the Big Lie was pushed on ABC, NBC, CBS, and Fox. The attack on the Capitol was seven weeks ago (tomorrow), Biden’s inauguration was five weeks ago, and they’re still pushing this Big Lie. Looking at a similar video on CNN, A. R. Moxon tweeted a suggestion and included an example:

Make public the list of people who have betrayed the public trust, how they betrayed the public trust, and what the result was. If you must bring them on, lead with those facts, then state the reason you're platforming them anyway. Otherwise you're laundering lies. "My guest today is Henry Kissinger, who worked as Secretary of State for disgraced former President Nixon, for whom he ran a secret bombing campaign in Cambodia that was both unconstitutional and a war crime, and murdered hundreds of thousands of civilians. Mr. Kissinger, hello." "Mr. Kissinger, we're having you on today because you have some opinions about Syrian President Assad, and we want the perspective of somebody who has also murdered untold thousands of people." "A reminder: Mr. Kissenger is a known and unrepentant liar. Sir, my first question... … You might say, "But if they knew they'd face such an accurate and devastating framing of themselves and their past offenses, why would known liars agree to make any appearances? They'd stop going on the air altogether!" Yep.

Here come the claims that Texas was hit by fake snow. A tweet from McElrath, which farther down the thread includes videos of what she described.

I watched two videos on TikTok by a mom with her very young daughter. The first video showed her holding a lighter to snow and saying how it “proves” it’s fake because she interpreted the black soot from the lighter as burning of alleged non-snow. She was gleeful about it. The next video showed her holding her daughter on her hip as they put a bowl of snow in the microwave to prove it supposedly isn’t snow because they think it won’t melt. Of course, the snow melts. Nonetheless, she and her daughter both say they still “know” it’s “fake.”

Greg Dworkin in his pundit roundup for Kos quoted Naomi Klein of the New York Times:

For decades, the Republicans have met every disaster with a credo I have described as “the shock doctrine.” When disaster strikes, people are frightened and dislocated. They focus on handling the emergencies of daily life, like boiling snow for drinking water. They have less time to engage in politics and a reduced capacity to protect their rights. They often regress, deferring to strong and decisive leaders — think of New York’s ill-fated love affairs with then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani after the 9/11 attacks and Gov. Andrew Cuomo in the early months of the Covid-19 pandemic. Large-scale shocks — natural disasters, economic collapse, terrorist attacks — become ideal moments to smuggle in unpopular free-market policies that tend to enrich elites at everyone else’s expense. Crucially, the shock doctrine is not about solving underlying drivers of crises: It’s about exploiting those crises to ram through your wish list even if it exacerbates the crisis.

Scott Huffman, who ran for Congress, tweeted a jab at Texas and their blaming the electrical collapse on green energy.

It's -454F degrees in space and the solar panels on the International Space station are working fine. Nasa has been using the Green New Deal for 23 years.

Nefarious Newt added solar power has been a staple of NASA spacecraft since the 1950s, so 70 years. McElrath tweeted the video of the press conference at NASA that included video of the landing of the Perseverance Rover. It’s cool because they included cameras on the skycrane and rover so we could see what happened. Walter Einenkel of Kos reported that Nzambi Matee of Kenya is a Young Champions of the Earth winner selected by the United Nations Environment Program. Her company, Gjenge Makers, takes used plastic, adds sand, and turns the mix into building materials. The product is stronger and lighter weight than concrete. Enjoy the video at the end.

The act of coming together to do what the American people want

Hunter of Daily Kos reported a story in two parts. One part is the news. The other part is how the news was reported. The news part: After the insurrection some corporations halted to political donations to GOP lawmakers who participated in the insurrection by voting to nullify a United States presidential election based on hoax claims of fraud. They did this even after the claims were proven to be false (all those losing court cases) and after the Capitol – their place of work – was attacked. In response these GOP lawmakers issued threats of banning the lobbyists of those corporations and PACs from their offices. The reporting part: The Wall Street Journal reported the story without any hint of the underlying problem. Wrote Hunter:

Republican lawmakers are issuing a plain threat to their corporate once-donors: Keep the checks coming or we'll refuse to take meetings with you. Keep paying us and we will keep listening to what you have to say; cut that money off, and we'll hang you all out to dry. … If nothing else it lays the heart of conservatism bare, yet again. You may have been under the impression that Republican lawmakers had earnestly held beliefs about business freedoms and other yada. In actuality, "aides for lawmakers" say, what they fight for depends on who's given them money and who hasn't. It is not bribery, no indeedy. It is just exchanging money for legislation, and it is so institutionalized that the most formidable business-centric newspaper in the country reports it with no particular fanfare. … In the end, nobody seems to be taking these threats very seriously. Institutionalized bribery via political coffers is so ingrained into our system that the system cannot function without it, and the Journal notes that lobbyists themselves believe that corporations will give up their attempts to distance themselves from Republican insurrectionists as new laws and policies are proposed that will affect them. The money faucets will turn back on, even for seditionists.

Hunter isn’t so sure those faucets will resume flowing. Cozying up to seditionists is not a good corporate look. Mark Sumner of Kos noted how quick Moscow Mitch fell in line behind the nasty guy the moment the nasty guy talked about starting a new conservative party. Yet, there are moderate Republicans who have talked about starting a new moderately conservative party. The first members could be the lawmakers who have already been driven from the GOP, such as Justin Amash and Jeff Flake. This effort could threaten the GOP as much as a nasty guy inspired effort. The effort has gotten little attention from leadership, even when that talk appears in various op-ed pieces. After filling in the details Sumner wrote:

So again, why aren’t they doing it? The biggest reason is … they don’t really mean it. Or at least they don’t mean it enough to put in more work that writing a guest column.

David Nir of Kos discussed the difference between unity and bipartisanship. Biden talked about unity a lot in his inauguration address and in speeches since then. He didn’t mention bipartisanship. Nir wrote:

So what exactly does unity mean? Biden and his team have defined it very simply: It’s the act of coming together to do what the American people want. In this way, it lays out a future guided not by whatever the largest number of politicians are able to agree on, but instead by the desires of the people those politicians were elected to represent. It reroots our democracy in the very soil that gives it life in the first place.

Doing what the people want makes a president popular (who’da thought?) and they don’t like popular Democratic presidents.

To prevent such an outcome, Republicans are pretending that unity is indeed an interchangeable synonym for bipartisanship and using it as a bludgeon to cow Democrats. By demanding that Biden only pass legislation acceptable to them, only the most watered-down measures could ever become law. More likely, nothing ever would. If Democrats were so weak-willed as to be fooled by this bullying, it would leave the party with no accomplishments to show to voters in two or four years’ time—precisely what Republicans dream of. But today’s Democrats, Joe Biden included, are far tougher and savvier than their easily intimidated forebears. They know precisely what game Republicans want to play and refuse to participate.

Do Republicans really want bipartisanship? They could vote for Democratic proposals. An Associated Press article posted on NBCNews reported that Sen. Chuck Schumer and Moscow Mitch have finally reached a power sharing agreement. Once it is voted on (soon!) the Senate committee chairs will be turned over to Democrats. This article says Mitch’s refusal to agree has been going on for a week. It’s actually been two – the two new Georgia senators who tied the Senate were sworn in on Inauguration day. And it is important that Dems are in control of committees. Sen. Lindsay Graham, the outgoing chair of the Judiciary Committee, has been refusing to hold confirmation hearings for Merrick Garland, Biden’s pick for Attorney General. You might remember Garland as the guy cheated out of a Supreme Court seat by Moscow Mitch five years ago. Jared Yates Sexton tweeted about a recent incident, though he did not name or link to it.

By saying something stupid, offensive, cruel, and misogynistic, the troll set off an outrage that grew his profile and undoubtedly raised disturbing levels of money from people who love it when people are rightfully outraged. This political economy is broken. … As long as people see a financial incentive to being cruel and racist and misogynistic and fascistic and in destroying shared society they’re going to take it and it’s going to continue to cost us lives and valuable, precious time. … Bad faith actors don’t care if you’re sharing or talking about something because you agree or disagree. In this attention economy it’s all the same. This is why media puts out shockingly bad faith op-eds and articles. Because it captures everybody and just results in more revenue. This system is currently working only to hurt discourse and shared society. Reject it and learn from our time with Trump.

There is a famous photo of four young black men sitting at the lunch counter at the Woolworth store in Greensboro, North Carolina in early February of 1960. They sat there in defiance of the store’s policy to not serve black people. This sit-in was part of an effort to overturn that policy which happened a few months later. There is a fifth young black man in the photo. He’s working behind the counter. His name is Charles Bess, now 82. Sayaka Matsuoka wrote up his story for The Bitter Southerner. Bess is now a regular at the International Civil Rights Center & Museum in Greensboro, where that lunch counter is on display. Of that day in 1960 Bess watched the protesters but said nothing to them. Though he looks reserved in the photo he was ecstatic on the inside. This is a good read for Black History Month.

From anarchy to no malarkey

Kerry Eleveld of Daily Kos reported that Liz Cheney, third highest Republican in the House is facing a vote of removal from her leadership role for voting to impeach the nasty guy. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who subscribes to every conspiracy theory and making a nuisance of herself in the House is getting a lot of praise. In a more responsible party the reverse would be true. Jared Yates Sexton tweeted:

The entire reason we have rules to expel members of Congress is to expel members of Congress who have openly endorsed the murder of their colleagues, traffic in racist, virulent conspiracy theories, and have worked to overthrow the government. Also, just so we're clear, Taylor Greene has staked her entire career on being an open and proud extremist. That's how she got elected. On the first day of this administration she filed impeachment charges. This isn't going to tamper down. She's only going to push the envelope.

Mark Sumner of Kos reported several examples of GOP members of Congress who were tied to the insurrection, some even meeting with violent white militias and encouraging violence. Their standing in the party has risen since the Capitol attack and they are using their standing to bully those in their party who aren’t on board. One of these is Matt Gaetz, who has attended events popular with the Proud Boys. A few days ago Gaetz visited Wyoming, the state Liz Cheney represents, to hold a rally against her. This was a warning to all other GOP members that they no longer belong to a normal political party. Wrote Sumner:

The Republican Party of 2016 no longer exists. It’s not even clear that the party of Jan. 5 is still in sight. Gaetz and Co. aren’t cowed by their close association with a murderous mob. They are empowered by it. Now they’re relishing the role of enforcer, bringing the message of extremism or else to every Republican who dares think about stepping back from the brink. [Paul] Gosar isn’t in trouble for declaring that a second Civil War was underway. [Lauren] Boebert’s not in trouble for coordinating with insurgents from the House chamber. The core group of the worst in Congress are not just raising money off their calls for violence, they’re rising in the ranks.

Ben Franklin tweeted:

The focus on the antics of Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene consumes so much oxygen, I worry what is not being noticed while everyone is gawking at the dumpster fire raging inside the Republican party. Reminds me of Trump's daily outrages hiding more serious crimes. The Infowarsification of the Republican party is an important story to take note of, I just think that being transfixed by it is a waste of time and only serves to elevate the worst elements of the GOP and build their followings.

Dartagnan of the Kos community noted a few things that didn’t happen this week. First, the GOP has said very little about Joe Biden’s flurry of executive orders nullifying the orders of their hero. It is hard to object to a president governing through EO because their hero did the same thing. Second, because the nasty guy has been banned from Twitter we’ve had “a full week without hysterical edicts, missives, or barbs” from that account. Because of that silence the GOP doesn’t know how to respond to Biden. Third, because of that silence, Biden can talk uninterrupted about policy ideas based on evidence. Dartagnan wrote:

And that’s why Republicans are now at a loss. They don’t do “evidence,” and they can’t do “policy ideas.” They gave up on those things long ago.

Laura Clawson of Kos listed several things that have happened in Congress recently – the insurrection aided by Republicans. The attempt to block the EC certification by Republicans. The antics of Greene. Democrats trying to add some level of accountability. And a few more. Yet, the news media seems to still want to Both Sides the story. Clawson put out a nice rant:

Republicans have pushed and pushed and pushed the extremes that led to Donald Trump and to the refusal to accept the results of the election and to the attack on the Capitol. Republicans embrace Marjorie Taylor Greene and her violent rhetoric and harassment of teenagers. Republicans are trying to bring guns into Congress. Republicans are trying to block the COVID-19 aid that voters support. It is not on Democrats to unify with people who want them dead. Pelosi offering some real talk about what’s happening with guns in the House, or Ocasio-Cortez doing likewise with Cruz’s participation in an insurrection that threatened her life, are not some breach of decorum that deserves a both-sides treatment.

Kos of Kos commented on what he sees in Washington and it’s wonderful:

Republicans have long gotten big mileage from playing to historical Democratic desperation for “bipartisanship.” Obama made countless concessions on legislation like the Affordable Care Act trying to win Republican support, only to see those Republicans keep moving the goalposts … then providing zero support in the end. The Beltway media loves to sit on the sideline and bleat about Democratic “failures” to reach “consensus.” No one every bothered asking Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell about bipartisanship, and certainly not Donald Trump. But Democrats? They’re expected to win elections, then do what Republicans want anyway in the name of “unity” and “bipartisanship.” But Democrats aren’t playing that game anymore.

Democrats are focused on doing what the country needs to get done. If the GOP joins them, great! If not, they’re going to work around the GOP. After an atrocity a day it’s good to wake up to good news. Sarah Kendzior tweeted:

I wrote years ago that Kushner being held accountable is my litmus test for US national security and elite criminal impunity, and that is still the case. Even more so than Trump -- esp now that we can add his covid crimes to the long list.

So why hasn’t he been arrested yet? Michael Harriot, who describes himself as a master race-baiter, tweeted a thread. He first described “bright baby season” which tended to happen 5-6 months after the wife of a plantation (forced labor camp) owner (who called himself a gentleman) gave birth. While his wife was pregnant he would sexually assault his human property. That means the Confederate flag is more than a racist flag, it is a flag for legal rapists. Then he discussed Fort Pillow and what happened there on April 12, 1864. The Union soldiers holding the fort had to surrender. And the Confederates slaughtered all 350 black people. But Lincoln didn’t retaliate as he could have. Instead, he pardoned the perpetrators in the name of unity. The leader of the Fort Pillow massacre was Nathan Bedford Forrest. He went on to become the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. So white people got their unity.

But Black people had to endure a terror campaign. When they said "unity" they mean "white people united with other white people" They mean "we get to keep doing what we were doing the whole time." They mean "white people don't EVER EVER EVER have to face the consequences." It means "f--- Black Lives"

Douglas Emhoff, husband of Kamala Harris, tweeted:

Well, now it's official. @MerriamWebster just added "Second Gentleman" to the dictionary. I might be the first, but I won't be the last.

Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos, collected some late night commentary. Here’s a bit:

We are officially one week into Joe Biden's presidency, and for the first time in awhile, a week actually felt like a week. In one week we've gone from insurrection to cool-and-collected, from anarchy to no malarkey, from drinking bleach to boring speech. It's been a ride. —Jimmy Fallon

The Late Show included a picture with this caption:

12 year-old Champ Biden, seen here waiting patiently for the most powerful man in the world to pick up his poop.

Unity means doing what Americans need to get done

Moscow Mitch has been stalling the start of the new Senate by filibustering to protect the filibuster. His preventing the Democrats from taking over Senate leadership has been going on for almost a week. Today, as reported by Joan McCarter of Daily Kos, he decided that recent statements by Joe Manchin and Krysten Sinema met his demand that the filibuster will be preserved (though what they said is what they’ve been saying), and he will allow the organizing resolution to pass. Mitch has been taunting the Dems to kill the filibuster on something arcane, which would allow him to declare it was a partisan choice. If Mitch and the rest of his caucus keep using it to block necessary legislation, such as virus relief (and they will), the Dems now have the edge, able to label the GOP as obstructionist. Laura Clawson of Kos reported there are still threats against members of Congress. The greatest threats will be during the upcoming impeachment trial and include plans to attack members as they travel to and from the Capitol complex. It is to the point that House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, a supporter of the insurrection, has told his caucus to not name other members when making public statements, especially if those statements are attacks. A couple of Kos cartoons. The first is by Nick Anderson and is about the Arizona Republican Party who censured three members for not being sufficiently radical in their support of the nasty guy. One of the Doug Ducey, the state governor, for trying to actually do something about the high COVID caseload in his state (after such a long time of not). Another is Cindy McCain, the widow of John McCain. The third is former senator Jeff Flake. The second is by Jen Sorensen and is titled Freedom vs. Freedom. She contrasts such things the freedom to carry guns into state capitols against the freedom from intimidation. David Neiwert of Kos reported that while leaders around the globe were shocked and horrified by the attack on the Capitol, leaders of the global radical right were watching with glee and taking notes. The German right was delighted because they had attacked the Parliament building in Berlin last August and failed. That our Capitol was breached gave them hope. The global far right is growing in many countries around the world. No surprise it’s a white supremacist movement. Adherents believe they face a “white genocide” – what Neiwert calls a “hysterically fallacious belief” that black and brown people will infiltrate and overthrow white culture. Kerry Eleveld of Kos reported that because Republicans have been trying to redefine “unity” to mean they should not be held accountable for their crimes, President Biden gave his definition. It does not mean bipartisan, though if bills are passed with bipartisan votes that’s great. Unity means getting done what a majority of Americans of either or no party think needs to get done to make their lives and the lives of Americans better. Whether or not Biden gets GOP votes he intends to deliver what he promised. Lulu Garcia-Navarro of NPR’s Weekend Edition Sunday talked with reporter Miles Parks about voting rights. When Democrats took power in the House they passed HR 1 with has a series of voting related measures. It, of course, gathered dust in Moscow Mitch’s office for two years. HR 1 is ready for another run in the House and a corresponding bill is being readied in the Senate. Wendy Weiser of the Brennan Center for Justice said that elections should not be about the rules of voting, they should be about the candidates. That Senate bill could pass if the filibuster is eliminated (though it hasn’t been yet). However, Parks warns of consequences. One is that a change in which party is in power could lead to changes in voting laws. Another is if Democrats make changes without GOP support they could be seen as rigging future elections. There are people who think this last one was stolen. If Dems make the rules they’ll think the next one is also stolen. I’ve got a few thoughts on this piece. First, how legit are these opinions? I ask because there are a lot of people (some in media, though I don’t know about NPR) who make a big noise and toss out reasons saying that the Dems shouldn’t try to do too much or it will piss off Republicans (they’re pissed off anyway) and voters will turn against them. I’ve also heard lots of voices that say what will piss off voters are Democrats who don’t accomplish anything because they’re too afraid of the GOP. If Democrats are wimps Americans could end up in 2022 and 2024 not any better than they are now. Second, if Democrats change the law make access to voting more universal it would indeed benefit Democrats, for the simple reason the GOP platform (when they have one) is sufficiently unpopular they can’t win without rigging the vote through gerrymandering and various types of suppression. We, of course, think that’s a good thing because if your platform doesn’t appeal to a majority of citizens you shouldn’t get elected. That’s what democracy means. Under Democrat (democracy) rules the GOP may never get back in power. In the same way, if the GOP does get in power they’ll change the rules (heavy on keeping those people from voting) and Democrats may never get back in power. However, in this case we would be ruled by people who are in favor of the recent insurrection. Ruled, not governed, because they’re not interested in governing. Jared Yates Sexton has comments similar to my first point:

A lot of the members of the "LIBERAL MEDIA" are only really good at saying the things that sound inclusive to shield themselves but are alarmingly conservative in that they've benefited from incredible privilege and wealth and aren't interested in anything actually changing. I know this is SHOCKING considering how correct and innovative and thought-provoking a lot of pundits and writers are, but media is not exactly a meritocracy and is actually lousy with privilege. So much of what is now considered "liberal" is actually just a kinder, gentler face put on corporatism and brutal hierarchical thinking that hides behind numbers, figures, and the "hand of the market." A lot of media reports only within the scope of what maintains status quo.

I would unite with nobody to do wrong

Wally Sierk tweeted a thread about chronically ill patients such as himself.

In areas where critical care is being rationed, I.e Lombardy, [Italy], comorbidities like diabetes and transplant are being used as reason to exclude patients from critical care. This means all critical care, not just CoVid19, so if I, or other people need care for another issue, we will still be triaged away from care. How bad the triage will get, I don’t know, but many non ICU hospital beds will be converted to ICU units, or post ICU care. So, a dialysis patient has 1-2 hospitalizations/ yr on average, either with infection, hyperkalemia, cardiac issues, and their hospital stay includes in- hospital dialysis. It’s not unreasonable to assume some portion of those routine hospitalizations will be disrupted and people will be excluded from care, because their aren’t enough rooms. This means that if you, or someone you love is chronically ill, with diabetes, kidney disease, or a transplant, this pandemic can kill them, even if they don’t get infected.

Rev. Magdalen tweeted:

Remember in the lead-up to J6, people said that Republicans' formal acts for the Big Lie "weren't sedition" because they weren't advocating violent overthrow? Yeah, that whole time violence was def being planned, by the people who later carried it out, for the same Big Lie. It's unbelievable that people who participated in the sedition will be allowed to sit on the jury of the man who incited it. This is not the reaction of a country that understands what just happened. Barring the one strongman for life isn't enough if the seditious org remains. The reason we don't let seditionists keep sitting after a failed insurrection is that they will try again, and this time when they give the insurrectionists tours, they might let them hide weapons in their offices, too.

Mark Sumner of Daily Kos created a timeline of events aiming to overturn the election. He didn’t include most of the 62 lawsuits filed by the nasty guy legal team, because they had little consequence. He did list the important cases and the rest – signature challenges, efforts to get state officials to lie, using government to defy election results, and actual calls to violence. I counted 60 events in the list between November 4 and January 15 when the My Pillow guy urged the nasty guy to invoke martial law. And 14 of those were calls to violence. Sumner also reported on the evidence for the upcoming impeachment trial. The actual articles of impeachment are just five pages and the first of those is taken up with the names of the sponsors. Only four pages? There are also detailed supporting documents with all the evidence, a more detailed version of Sumner’s timeline. Sumner wrote:

But there is more than enough in the provided documents to show that the crowd that pushed through police to hunt hostages in the halls of Congress wasn’t just inflamed by a few offhand words Trump delivered on that Wednesday morning. The insurgency was the result of weeks of incitement and of planning by both Trump and other members of his team. It was neither spontaneous nor an accident. It was an attempted coup.

Walter Shaub, former director of the Office of Government Ethics, tweeted a thread. He’s hounding Biden on government ethics, but not because he wants Biden to fail.

Presidential administrations don't get more ethical over time. They get less ethical, not because they're necessarily filled with bad people. They are filled with people who learn just how hard governing is, and those people get frustrated. They start looking for shortcuts. So whatever we get at the beginning of an administration is ALL we are going to get. And, trust me, whatever we don't get at the start of an administration is a conscious choice on the part of the administration --especially an administration like this one, filled with experts. Biden's team knows what it's doing. They had all the best people advising them. They KNOW what the watchdog groups want. They gave what they were willing to give. Anything lacking from the ethics executive order is lacking because a decision was made not to include it. … We need reform because the fascist movement won't die with Trump's presidency. The foreign AND domestic enemies of the republic are still out there. They will win some victories. They may win big ones. The future is not guaranteed. We have only a limited window of time in which to strengthen the republic and its anticorruption mechanisms. After that, whatever we have accomplished will have to be strong enough to withstand the next fascist onslaught.

Sahil Kapur of NBC News tweeted about what Elizabeth Warren said to Republicans who say unity is incompatible with impeachment:

How about if we're unified against insurrection? How about if we're unified for accountability? Unity starts with accountability. … Unity is about doing things the American people want to see us do: like a $15 an hour minimum wage, like canceling student loan debt, like expanding Social Security, like giving us more universal childcare and universal pre-K—things that are popular across this country.

Amazing Douglass added:

“I would unite with anybody to do right; and with nobody to do wrong.” Frederick Douglass Republicans fear uniting against insurrectionist because members the GOP Senate and House incited the insurrection — and they vaguely remember that a House / Senate divided cannot stand.

A geode is a rock that looks ordinary on the outside and is filled with crystals on the inside. Dr. Jacqueline Antonovich tweeted that she cut open a geode and found it looks like Cookie Monster of Sesame Street. She’s got pictures. I didn’t post last night because I took a break from blogging to watch the film IKARIE-XB1 offered by the Detroit Film Theater. It is a Czech film that came out in 1963 and is now considered a Cannes Classic. It is the story of a spaceship traveling from earth to planets around the star Alpha Centauri in the year 2163 and about what happens along the way. The actors spoke Czech and there were subtitles in English. DFT is offering online through the end of the month. Part of the admission price benefits DFT. Some thoughts about the film: This is an Eastern Bloc Cold War movie. One of the things they encountered along the way is another spaceship that left earth around 1987 in which some passengers got greedy and they all died. The style of the sets is very much 1960s projected into the future. The art on the image screens when they’re not showing something useful (like video from another part of the ship) was a style I remember from the 60s, though I don’t have a name for it to show examples. The crew consoles around the bridge did not have computers or computer screens. I was a little surprised how few controls there were at any one station. Several times the image screens show output from an oscilloscope. The special effects were very much limited to what was possible in 1963. This was three years before Star Trek on TV and five years before 2001: A Space Odyssey. The promos for Ikarie say this movie influenced Stanley Kubrick as he designed A Space Odyssey. Star Trek is known for various characters having to crawl through the “jeffries tubes” to secretly get from one part of the Enterprise to another. Yup, Ikarie had that first. The crew is shown doing their exercises to keep in shape. In these scenes the men are wearing only a 22nd Century version of the speedo and the women are wearing bikinis. This wasn’t great drama (though it wasn’t boring). It was more of an interesting cultural artifact.

Unifying against the mob should be the easiest decision of your life

Last night I finished the book The Starless Sea by Erin Morganstern. I’m pretty sure I bought it because of a glowing review of a story about a gay guy in a world of stories. Within the first few pages I was entranced by the fine descriptive writing of the stories. The Starless Sea is without stars because it is underground. It is a major feature in a world in which stories are gathered, archived, and guarded. Zachary is a grad student in new media (storytelling through computer games). He encounters a book which seems to describe an incident in his childhood, though the book seems much older than he is. In trying to find out how that happened he enters that underground world. I enjoyed the way the author described characters so at a later time the author could mention one small detail and I knew which character was meant. I enjoyed many of the stories told between chapters of Zachary’s story. That enjoyment lasted to about page 300 of the almost 500 pages. It is only then that Zachary being gay had any consequences in the story and the lovers were soon parted. However, what sapped my enjoyment was why I tend to avoid fantasy novels – the fantasy elements tend to feel arbitrary and in this case not well explained. As the story progressed they tended to become stranger and go on for much too long. I’m sure someone more attuned to Literature might revel in the Symbolism, Metaphor, and Allegory, but all of that went over my head – even the parts where the author makes it explicit. The novel begins this way:

There is a pirate in the basement. (The pirate is a metaphor but also still a person.)

And the symbolism of that underground sea actually made of honey is a mystery to me. If it isn’t symbolism it’s another reason why fantasy seems so arbitrary. After all that ranting about fantasy there is a fantasy world I very much enjoyed, that of Harry Potter. Rather than feeling arbitrary that world felt incredibly well thought out and complete. I downloaded Michigan’s COVID data this morning. Since Michigan assigns cases to the onset of symptoms rather than the day recorded the numbers can be in flux for a couple weeks back. That means the data for the first week of January is just now firming up. That is suggesting that after a dip at Christmas the cases per day isn’t dropping, but starting a plateau. The numbers are certainly much (about a third) lower than the peak in early November but also more than three times higher than the plateau in July, August, and half of September. The cases per day for those couple of weeks averages about 3000 a day with spikes above 4500 a day. During that same time deaths per day has hovered at about 75 a day. I get my data here. In Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s virus update yesterday she announced that limited indoor dining may resume on February 1st. I suspect cases will go up again, threatening her desire for schools to resume in-person learning in March 1. Part of the announcement of indoor dining Whitmer stressed that those in high risk categories should stick to takeout. So I will. Joan McCarter of Daily Kos discussed the filibuster, including Adam Jentleson’s new book Kill Switch: The Rise of the Modern Senate and the Crippling of American Democracy. Jentleson had been chief of staff for former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, so he saw how the filibuster was wielded against his boss. The filibuster was very much not what the founding fathers intended. There had been the requirement of supermajorities in the Articles of Confederation. Those were abandoned when the Constitution was written. Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton wrote against requiring a supermajority. The filibuster came from the South demanding a way to veto any legislation that might lead to overturning slavery. Jentleson wrote:

Southerners inflated the minority’s right to unlimited debate with soaring oratory backed by intimidation from their monopoly of the Senate’s all-powerful committees which controlled the prospects for legislation as well as senators' careers.

In the Jim Crow era it killed civil rights bills, and only those bills. It’s use expanded significantly in the modern era as a way for Republicans to prevent Democrats from getting anything done. It is time to get rid of this racist legacy. BorderingOrder tweeted:

Democrats have feared eliminating the filibuster because Republicans could turn the table on them. News Alert: Republicans turn the table anyway. You either have a plan for the future or you don't. Fulfill your promises. Take charge of the Senate and move us forward.

Alexandra Erin added:

If Democrats refuse to use power out of fear that Republicans will take it away from them, they've already thrown it away of their own free will. That's not "keeping your powder dry". It's surrendering without firing a shot.

Senator Chuck Grassley from Iowa tweeted:

Pres Biden is preaching unity & healing while Dem leadership is focused on impeachment of a former president. Does Pres Biden not hv control of congressional Democrats as leader of party??? This move will surely slow up Biden cabinet confirmations/agenda + increase division

Sarah Kendzior replied:

Why don't you unify against enablers of the mob who threatened to kill your colleagues, including the vice-president? This is not complicated. Unifying against people who encouraged a mob to kill your coworkers and destroy our Capitol should be the easiest decision of your life.

A response to that was an image of Lucy holding the football for Charlie Brown (reply if you don’t get the reference) with Lucy saying:

If you don’t impeach, we will unify with you and work with Biden for the good of the country.

Alexander McCoy, a veteran involved in progressive veteran organizations, tweeted:

Just an observation about the media: We’ve gotten dozens of request from political reporters asking to be connected with veterans who became right-wing extremists. But we’ve gotten zero interest in the perspective of POC troops who had to cope with extremists in their units. Right-wing white nationalists do not always have to be the Main Character!

On the morning of inauguration and the news of the pardons the nasty guy issued on the way out the door day Kendzior linked to a thread from a year ago about presidential pardons. That prompted C. Stucker to tweet:

So if a person received a pardon from Trump now, does that mean that person can commit another crime in the future and not pay any consequence? Please tell me that isn't the case.

Wally Sierk replied:

No, but it sets up a system of incentives that encourage breaking the law to win the presidency. You can do anything you want as long as you have the presidential pardon power.

Kendzior designed a new postcard to send to lawmakers that says ‘There will be no unity without accountability, and there will be no accountability without the truth.” You can contact Indivisible St. Louis to get some (though they may send them out in packets of 100, or share an image file). Related to that Kendzior tweeted:

Trump admin crimes that need rigorous investigation and prosecution: 1) Handling of covid and profiteering off death 2) Attack on Capitol 3) Trump admin ties to Kremlin and organized crime 4) Abuse of migrants at the border Way more where that came from. This is only to start.

Replies quickly added: Kids taken from parents. Russian bounties on American troops. Whatever the prince has been doing. Rose Lerner tweeted:

so my friend and i were out for a walk and he spotted this gravestone and wanted to read the music. it's some quarter-notes and then four rests, and underneath it says "only resting" ME: what's the tune? HIM: i'm not sure...it's D-E-A-D ME: ....WHAT

See the tweet for a picture. Read the rest of the thread for more sly details. As a composer I noticed some notation difficulties, but I won’t let that spoil the fun. Alix Harrow tweeted:

having been told that it's rude to call dinner "gross," our 4yo is finding increasingly creative ways to express himself "this tastes.......unlucky to me" "this sends my mouth into outer space. (that's bad)" "cauliflower is"--[pinches fingers together]--"this much delicious"

Unity for me but not for thee

Joan McCarter of Daily Kos reported Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer announced Speaker Nancy Pelosi will deliver the article of impeachment to the Senate on Monday. That means the nasty guy’s second trial begins Monday (or maybe Tuesday). The House impeachment managers plan to play videos of the Capitol assault to emphasize that this was a mob intent on killing – and on killing the people who now sit in this room. Several GOP senators have changed their tune from what they said the day of the insurrection. For example, Lindsay Graham is now saying, “There’s no way to be a successful Republican Party without having President Trump working with all of us and all of us working with him.” Sure. Since the Senate still hasn’t passed its organizing resolution (because Moscow Mitch is blocking it) committee chairs are still in GOP hands even though Democrats should be. McCarter reported that while that is sorted out with the filibuster in the balance Democrats are working on the COVID relief package. They can bring the package to the Senate floor and avoid the filibuster if they can present the whole thing as a budget bill with each committee declaring how much of a budget increase they want to handle Biden’s request. But they can’t officially do that while committees are still in GOP hands. There are some issues of passing the relief package that way. It is difficult to declare a raise in the minimum wage as a budget item. And the GOP will call that one out. On the GOP side Moscow Mitch’s leadership position is being threatened. McCarter reported the threat is coming from nasty guy loyalists who consider Mitch to be insufficiently loyal. Their evidence is Mitch declaring the insurrection was because of the nasty guy’s lies. So some of us are delighted that Mitch is in a squeeze between some of his members and businesses (and their donations) that want nothing to do with the nasty guy and fellow seditionists. Kos of Kos analyzed the news that the nasty guy wants to start his own political party – the Patriot Party. Kos very much doubts it will ever happen because the nasty guy only does things for the nasty guy (and maybe Ivanka). So unless he can get it to line his pocket, it ain’t gonna happen. In addition, there is no party platform (he and the GOP didn’t have one this year). So all a new party would do is pull votes from the GOP, cementing a bigger Dem majority. The other way to go is for the GOP to excise the nasty guy cancer and take a couple presidential cycles to rebrand and rebuild. They they could be a national party again. It seems this is where Moscow Mitch is headed. It is where the donors are headed. Kos wrote:

For Republicans, it’s an existential question: Do they cut the Trump cancer out, wander in the wilderness for a few cycles, then rebuild in the image of today’s America (more diverse, more educated, more secular), or do they keep going down the same path that cost them the House, the Senate, the White House, and the critical support of key growth demographics (not to mention, Arizona, Georgia, and soon, Texas), while at the same time remaining beholden to the whims of an egotistical madman?

Hunter of Kos discussed that President Joe Biden has been in power for less than 2½ days and already some Republicans are complaining that for a guy who wants unity he’s being terribly divisive. Hunter wrote:

They would like us to know that Joe Biden's speech was divisive, because it called out white supremacists and racists and liars and whoa, talk about rude. They would like us to know that Joe Biden firing the incompetent toadies who have failed catastrophically in responding to the deadly pandemic, the nation's economic crisis, or anything else is divisive, because if this nation is ever going to heal from its current traumas the new administration should clearly keep all of Trump's malevolent and sometimes-criminal conservative D-listers in their current posts rather than divisively have the new president choose new appointees. And it's all very insincere and nonsensical and is most aggressively being shouted by traitors and allies of traitors, so they can all go pound sand, the end. … The purpose of these "unity" demands are to evade consequences, every single one, so that the most prolific enablers of anti-democratic attacks can continue to mount those same attacks without repercussion. But nobody should want "unity" with seditionists. Or with liars. Or with racists. Or with white nationalists. All of those people should face widespread public scorn, everywhere they go, forever. The American fascist version of "unity" demands purges of immigrants, the isolation of LGBT Americans, the widespread curbing of American civil rights, and the nullification of political opposition through fraud or by force. It is a "unity" that demands the nation abide by all their own bigotries, and harm all those Americans who they believe need harming. It will not happen. And "unity" now demands consequences for those who would go so far as to endanger democracy itself, either through fraud or by force, in their attempts to pursue those things.

Bill in Portland, Maine quotes a bit from Molly Ivens every Thursday. Here’s a bit of what he quoted this week from a column she wrote in 2006 (alas, only a few words would need to change to apply to today).

What kind of courage does it take, for mercy's sake? The majority of the American people (55 percent) think the war in Iraq is a mistake and that we should get out. The majority (65 percent) of the American people want single-payer health care and are willing to pay more taxes to get it. The majority (86 percent) of the American people favor raising the minimum wage. The majority of the American people (60 percent) favor repealing Bush's tax cuts, or at least those that go only to the rich. The majority (66 percent) wants to reduce the deficit not by cutting domestic spending, but by reducing Pentagon spending or raising taxes. The majority (77 percent) thinks we should do "whatever it takes" to protect the environment. The majority (87 percent) thinks big oil companies are gouging consumers and would support a windfall profits tax. That is the center, you fools. WHO ARE YOU AFRAID OF?

We know who they’re afraid of – their corporate overlords who fund their campaigns. But it isn’t all fear. A great many believe as their overlords do that to make their own lives look better they must make the lower classes suffer. Bill in Portland, Maine also offered up a few opinions from late night commentary.

The Trump presidency officially ended today as Joe Biden was inaugurated as the 46th President of the United States. And, uh…wow. So that's what it feels like when you're not grinding your teeth. I'd forgotten. And I can see colors again. —Seth Meyers Unsurprisingly, Republicans are 'furious' that Joe Biden chose to divide America by becoming president. And if that weren't divisive enough, he's openly plotting to 'do stuff.' Nice try, Joe, but according to Republicans a real unifier would have handed the office back to Trump, given him a McRib, and happily walked off to prison. —Samantha Bee