Technicalities in service to a different outcome

Mitch McConnell is all a-flutter that them Yankees would dare to besmirch his honor because he is defending the filibuster. The latest controversy is about some of the Democrats saying that the filibuster was created by racists.

Technically this isn’t true. According to historians:

McConnell pointed to the rule’s origin as not being rooted in race-based laws. Historians have said the rule wasn’t created to protect discriminatory legislation, but that it was associated with segregationists for over a century.

“These talking points are an effort to use the terrible history of racism to justify a partisan power grab in the present,” McConnell said in his speech. McConnell, noting the times it has been used by Democrats, asked in his speech if it “magically became an offensive relic the instant Democrats came to have a majority?”

Oh lawdy, if there’s one person in the whole wide world who should never throw accusations of gratuitous power grabs around, it would have to be Mitch McConnell.

But I see his point. I was never under the impression that the filibuster was created to further the cause of racism. But the fact that it was actually used by segregationists to obstruct legislation makes that a distinction without a difference. Is that the right phrase? Must look it up.

I think we can all see that at work. Well, anyway, within my lifetime I’ve seen it at work. And it’s usually very pernicious. You don’t even realize a filibuster is going on most of the time. It’s done silently. So as to preserve the dignity of the initiator? So, bills die a quiet death in the Senate. It’s sort of like the hospice of legislation.

The last person I can recall who used the filibuster as intended was Bernie Sanders when he protested a tax cut bill I think. It was called the filibernie and you could buy copies of it as gifts for people who enjoy listening to Bernie making some fine arguments- for nine hours straight.

But I digress.

All I can say is this is 2021 and for some f{#*ed up reason beyond my personal comprehension, this nation’s laws are clearly, CLEARLY, shaped by a history of segregation. Oh yes they are. There is no legitimate, rational, fair or just reason why do little legislation has been passed in the last 40 years that positively influences so many people of black and brown skin. Come on, people, it’s a couple base pair differences in a gene for melanin generation in the skin. Are we really denying people justice, fairness and opportunity over a couple of genetic variations that don’t amount to a whole Hill of beans? Or are black people just surrogates for keeping working class people always struggling and permanently aggrieved? Is it really used to enforce an unacknowledged form of segregation or is it used to create a permanent underclass in general? Golly, who would benefit from that?

Is that what they mean by a distinction without a difference?

Racism, segregationism, sure seems to be popular among those who use the filibuster. It’s like they stomped around mad after the Civil War until one of them remembered they could hold everything up by using the filibuster. And to make it even more efficient, all they had to do was waft an eau de toilette of a filibuster around to shut down debate and euthanize legislation they did not like.

Isn’t that what Mitch intends to do with the filibuster and the voting rights bill that got passed by the house that would make harder for white guys to stand in the way of black people to vote in a quick, efficient and non threatened manner?

I think that is what Mitch intends.

Bless his heart.

Rate Limiting Steps

I was listening to Morning Joe on the way to my doctor’s appointment this am (don’t judge me), when Eugene Robinson started questioning a senior Biden admin official about migrant children at the border.

If I recall correctly, the Biden admin made tackling Covid its main priority. That doesn’t mean these other things aren’t also very important but it does mean that the scope of the Covid problem is so large that it might require a lot more attention – from everyone. It affects all aspects of government right now. Still, it’s possible to delegate. Presumably, you need to get your nominees approved by the senate. This takes time. I think Xavier Becerra, secretary of HHS, which has a lot of oversight and responsibility for migrant children at the border, was just approved last week and I’m betting that a lot of his time is wrapped up with Covid policies.

I worry about kids at the border too. I don’t like the fact that they might be sleeping in Mylar blankets in a less than comfortable shelter and that they have been there longer than they should have been. That’s disturbing. And I’m not going to say that there’s nothing Biden’s Homeland Security or CBP or HHS could have done to mitigate this problem.

BUT I’m not hearing “journalists” asking the right question. They come off as bored badgerers. They ask “how come they’re still there after 72 hours” and “why haven’t you done something by now?!” and “I thought you were going to be more humane but you haven’t fixed this problem right this minute”, all with a note of disappointment because naturally, every problem is THE MOST IMPORTANT PROBLEM THAT HAS EVER FACED THE NATION.

I never get anything out of these exchanges. The hapless advisor is left saying “the situation is not ideal but we are doing the best we can in the time we have had”, which is very non-informative. It just devolves from there.

What journalists should be asking is:

1. What is the process you inherited?
2. What is the process you are trying to create to achieve your goal of humane treatment of child immigrants?
3. What are your rate limiting steps?
4. What do you need to do to remove those impediments?

I never went to journalism school and I don’t think I was born into the right class to get into one now. But if I were a journalist and I wanted to stop annoying my audience so she doesn’t shut the damn program off in frustration, I’d be trying some other strategy than the one that seems to be typical of journalism today.

Maybe everyone forgot how to do this because Trump news just wrote itself. Ok, well, those days are behind us.

Please do better.

Guns

I was watching NCAA tournament basketball today. I did not watch any news, and read nothing. Until I hit the wrong button, and a headline popped up, about a man with a gun who apparently killed ten people at a supermarket in Boulder, Colorado. One of the fatalities is a police officer, the rest were likely shoppers in the market..Propetius lives in Boulder, and I assume that he is all right.

No motive is yet known, blah, blah. There is no coherent motive that has any meaning, except insanity combined with guns to act upon it. Did we ever find out the motive of the person who killed dozens of people in Nevada a few years ago? Does it matter? The human mind searches for order and for reasons, but it is not going to help us to find out what this man’s particular madness was. Race? Religion? People had not been nice to him in his life? What matters is that he had a gun, we will find out which kind. He probably had a lot of guns, and other weapons, too. They usually do.

Guns are the problem. There have always been twisted people, or people who have been treated badly by parents, or maybe no one did anything to them, but they had grievances. The thing is, that now they can easily get one or many guns, and then kill many people at the same time. “People kill people,” is the stupid slogan the NRA tried to pound away with, but people who have no access to guns kill a lot less people. And you can’t fix the mental states of millions of people, but you an try to keep them from having assault weapons when they do pass their own breaking point, or when they think that they are doing something great by shooting as many people as they can.

Thoughts and prayers to the people and the families will not do it. All the tears and eulogies will not bring these people back. The only thing which we as a nation can do, is to try to prevent these mass killings, by enacting gun control legislation. When the assault weapons ban was passed under President Clinton, the number of gun killings dropped in a significant way. Then President George W. Bush let the legislation lapse, and the numbers rose again. Now each year is a new record level.

It does not take more than the barest degree of intelligence to figure out that we have a growing epidemic of sick and perverted people who for whatever reasons their mind gives them, want to make a major statement, and kill as many people as they can. And it is so very easy for them to get the weaponry to do it. But those politicians and their paid-for media people who are figuratively or literally owned by the gun lobby, would do anything to avoid gun control. They would take a thousand of these shootings, and make a bunch of utterly meaningless statements, to avoid anyone passing a ban on assault weapons, or more background checks, so that they can retain the one right which they value above all,, the right to buy and possess as many weapons as one wants.

It is so tempting to see gun legislation as a version of castration for them, because they will fight against it with just as much fervor. It did not use to be this awful, even fifty years ago, but somehow guns are now their religion and their salvation and the only way in which they can hold on to their fragmenting personalities, and the sense of chaos which envelops them.

Somehow this has to stop, but will it? Maybe with Democrats having at least nominal control of three branches of government, something can be passed, unless the Republicans, filibuster it. We cannot live in a country where this mayhem becomes an ever more frequent occurrence.

I wonder if the Republicans will somehow try to politically profit from this, it would not be beyond them. They try to profit from anything,, even horrible tragedies. They will blame Biden, or immigrants, or liberals. What they most want is for this to dissipate, and then they can go back to talking about Potato Head and Dr. Seuss. We must stand up as a country, because if we do not, it will get worse and worse. I wish I could say more, but it has all been said before, and it will all be said again and again, if no changes are made. I am sorry for even feeling compelled to write this, but we cannot just hope it goes away by itself, or just try to live as best we can in a shooting gallery.

On Books

The other day, I wrote that it would be nice if more people read novels and saw plays; because in addition to the important entertainment value, one can learn from and be enriched by them.

I grew up with books. I loved to play with balls, and to swim, but my favorite childhood hours were spent stretched out on the rug, reading books. My parents had great taste in childhood books. I learned to read at a young age, and devoured Uncle Wiggily stories, and the Thornton W. Burgess animal stories, and Winnie-The-Pooh. And my father read “Treasure Island” to me at bedtime, and then “Kidnapped,” and “The Jungle Book,” and “Robinson Crusoe,” and sometimes my mother came in to listen.

“Treasure Island” may still be my favorite book of all time, even though the author, Robert Louis Stevenson, intended it for young adults. I would say, “boys.” but female readers have loved the book, too. What an amazing adventure, with a treasure map, a sea voyage, pirates, a treasure in gold doubloons and pieces of eight, battles, drama and excitement throughout! I don’t know that I could say that this book changed my life, but every time I went to the beach with my parents, I brought my pail and shovel, and I was not digging to get to China, but in the hope of finding buried treasure. I actually buried some pennies in my back yard, just so I could dig them up years later, but somehow I could not find them, maybe they are still there?

I was thinking about the concept of “Books that changed one’s life.” And although that phrase is used, I don’t know that one book can do that, although it can certainly have a powerful effect, and stay with one forever. Not so much in “telling you how to live your life,” but in a greater perception of things, an understanding of humanity, and an emotional catharsis.

It is interesting that at one period in our cultural history, many people might have listed Somerset Maugham’s “The Razor’s Edge’ as a book which impelled them to abandon the rat race, and search for inner fulfillment. I read it, but I did not like it too much; and apparently the various movie versions of it were also rather tedious. And of course there was “Catcher in the Rye,” which had a great effect on a generation of young adult readers, though it doesn’t seem to be read as much much today.

I was thinking of some books (besides “Treasure Island”!) which have stayed with me. And maybe you will think of those books which meant a great deal to you. One of those, is actually a play, but I read a lot of plays, which is actually very rewarding, though not as good as actually seeing them, which of course I have always tried to do. There was a whole series of volumes edited by John Gassner, which each contained, fully reprinted, his choice of the best American plays of a certain era; as early as about 1908-1920 or so, and then going on to a least the 1970’s. It was fascinating to see how popular taste in drama changed over the years, and to be introduced to plays which I had never seen nor read.

The play which is my favorite American drama, is Eugene O’Neill’s “The Iceman Cometh.” Men inhabit a bar in New York City in 1912. They have variously given up on life or cannot cope with it, so spend their days getting drunk and sleeping it off, while they talk about an enhanced past or an imagined future of greatness. The proprietor, Harry Hope, is kind enough to put them up and give them some food, but he also depends on them for some kind of meaning, and he is also afraid to leave the bar and go back into the real world, where he once was a ward heeler and knew people, but had lost his job, perhaps for drinking or a scandal.

So these people talk and tell their stories, over and over. They are excitedly waiting for Hickey, a jovial salesman who always comes in on his birthday for a week-long bender, where they all celebrate and drink. The Iceman of the title initially refers to an old joke which he loves to tell, which I will not repeat here, but one could look it up. The other meaning of the title “The Iceman Cometh,” implied by the older formal phrasing, is a play on the joke, and also a symbol of death.

I would love to tell the whole story of the play, but it seems that O’Neill is saying that one can either try to escape life, and imagine oneself as being heroic in it, or actually go out there in the world, and get crushed. It may not be as hopeless as that, because O’Neill had a romantic aspect, and gave a poetry to most of his characters, no matter how downtrodden or doomed they might have been. If you ever want to see this, and it is rarely done on stage, although Kevin Spacey was supposedly very good in a Broadway version of about 15 years ago, see the AFI film staged version. There was also a live TV version done in 1960, with the supreme O’Neill actor Jason Robards playing Hickey. I don’t know why he did not do the AFI version, but Lee Marvin did pretty well in the role. And Robert Ryan at his very best as Larry, and a very young Jeff Bridges, absolutely amazing as Don Parritt, are unforgettable.

Now, as to novels which have stayed with me since I first read them, there is “The Great Gatsby,” which is short, perfectly written, and open to so much worthwhile analysis, about the the nature of people, and what critics love to refer to as “The American Dream.” Then there is “The Sound and the Fury” by William Faulkner,who should be read much more. That novel I carried around in my head for days after reading it, It is complex and emotionally wrenching. “Wuthering Heights” by Emily Bronte, full of passion and intensity, and a haunted quality.

“Lolita” by Nabokov, which some have misunderstood, and which is a dazzling tour de force of wordplay, commentary on America of the 1950’s, and a strange love story despite its apparent theme. “The Brothers Karamazov,” by Doestoevsky, which I was pleased to hear was Hillary Clinton’s favorite novel. “The Heart of the Matter,” by Graham Greene. “Riddley Walker,” by Russell Hoban. “American Pastoral” by Philip “Roth one of the few more recent novels which I have thought was great. It “explains” the political nature of the ’60’s, at least from his very intelligent perspective.

The mystery novels of Ross Macdonald, which indelibly capture Los Angeles in the ‘period of the ’50’s to the ’70’s, and are immensely entertaining stories of a variety of human characters. Thinking of mysteries, so many of the Agatha Christie novels, very rewarding for their plots and incisive psychological analysis. And of course as a young adult, all of the Sherlock Holmes stories. I have always loved his theory, as explained to Dr. Watson, that, “If you list all the possibilities, and eliminate all of those which are impossible, the one which remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”

Many of the novels of Philip K. Dick, whom I finally started treading about 10-15 years ago. So much of what the world is today, he sensed; but his books are not at all just worthwhile as prophecies or even cautionary tales, but as existential problems for his characters to deal with as best they can. And Shakespeare’s plays, it should go without saying.

There are others, of course, but these stand out as I write this. Fiction which made me think and consider the human condition. Nothing that called out to me, “You must do this!”, or “Live or don’t live this way!” But stories which were enhancing, and which I can remember so well, because I always remember the emotional content of things, even conversations or events from fourth grade.

I wonder how many people read novels today. Obviously some sell in great numbers, but how many actually great books and plays are there now? When I would recently go to bookstores before the pandemic, I would rarely find a novel that I wanted to pick up and buy. Earlier, there were a great pair of independent bookstores here, Dutton’s Books, owned by each of two brothers. The store in Brentwood was very nicely ordered, and the employees all read a great deal, and had many suggestions for me, some of which were great. The other Dutton’s, in North Hollywood, was wonderfully cluttered, with books piled up everywhere and little in the way of employees, though the owner was very affable and obviously loved literature, like his brother. Both of these stores closed, apparently because of rents charged by the people who owned the mall in the one case, and the street property in the other. As you know, there are very few independent bookstores now, and that is a great loss, for literacy, the communal sharing of books, and a general cultural aspect.

Other people will of course have different tastes, and different favorite books. But as one reads more, hopefully starting at a young age, one gains something from almost every book or play, even the ones we don’t like as much, because that can tell us something about what is missing, or necessary in great fiction, and what touches and stimulates us more than something else. I do worry that as literacy declines; as more people choose to read junk (there is room for junk fiction, but not as a constant diet!), or political propaganda designed to cement the reader in his or her already formed opinions, much is lost. And I am not as sure as Tennyson’s “Ulysses” how much still abides.

Pfirst Pfizer

I got my pfirst Pfizer vaccine today. Went with my aunt, who for a variety of reasons, only wanted to get the Pfizer vaccine. As far as effectiveness, well, any one of them will do but she did her research (good for her! Everyone should do that) and felt most comfortable with Pfizer. Fortunately for us, there has been a sudden increase in vaccines available in our region so with a little online hunting, we saw that we weren’t limited to just one vaccine. We had a choice, depending on the mass vax venue and date.

Unfortunately for me, I wasn’t old enough to get one through Allegheny county this week but Butler county was accepting pre-existing condition recipients 16-64 so I got us both vaccines there.

It’s about 45 minutes to Butler and back from where I live in Pittsburgh. The company I work for is giving employees two hours off to go to their vaccine appointments. But since there were two of us and we needed to sit for 15 minutes afterwards, I took a vacation day and we had a nice lunch afterwards

The only thing I could ding Butler Memorial Hospital for was the signage. As in, there was none for the vaccine clinic. But once we got into the visitor parking lot, we just followed the other confused people to the door and some helpful hospital staff directed traffic.

If you go, make sure to take a hard copy of your insurance card. The vaccine is free to people who don’t have insurance but for everyone else, your insurance company will get billed. I only had ecopies of my insurance card. Allegheny county’s site let me upload a digital copy but Butler was still using a copier to print off a hard copy for their records and it wouldn’t copy from my iPhone. So, now I have to call the billing department and figure out how to send them a copy of my card. It would be nice to figure out a more uniform registration system. Still not too late, Andy Slavitt. I can write you the user stories, acceptance criteria and UI prototype. 🤙

Anyway, Butler is fond of hard copies. So we registered in paper and the vaccine helpers checked our paper work, waved us to the next room and told us where to stand. We were taken almost immediately.

Swab, steady, pinch, swab, bandaid, back to the waiting area. Set timer for 15 minutes, then we were done!

We were so excited. On the way out, we realized that we had scheduled our appointments at just the right time. There was a line waaaay out the door. No waiting for us. But anyone who scheduled after 12:30 was going to have to wait.

So, that’s the story, people. We both go back on April 9 for our pfollowup Pfizer vaccine.

Go ahead, do it. All your friends are doing it. And it feels like a huge weight off your shoulders when you’re done.

Thanks Pfizer, scientists, manufacturing techs, FDA, CDC, Butler Memorial Hospital, healthcare workers, volunteer staff and Joe Biden!

The Dark Side

Yesterday, Riverdaughter wrote about how the ignorance of and disdain for science among what we can call the Right Wing, derives from the dichotomy which they are either taught, or prefer; that there are two sides: them and their “friends,” and their enemies. Thus they believe that the scientists are their enemies, along with liberals in general, intellectuals, social scientists, rationalists, and everyone else who says things that they don’t like or don’t want to believe. And then she wrote, “The question is, what do you do about it?”

It is an unsettling and perilous situation. There are millions of people out there who simply refuse to follow good science, or use logic, or try to gain knowledge about things. This certainly doesn’t mean that everyone has to agree on this or that; but that we would want to think that most people will listen to facts, and seek to learn about the things they don’t know. How can anyone be persuaded, if they won’t admit the existence of virtually irrefutable facts? Or if they have chosen a belief system which conveniently rejects anything they don’t want to hear? You can’t get through to them, obviously; it is as if they are putting their fingers over their ears, and yelling loudly to drown you out.

Obviously, books should be written about this, and RD has recommended one by Jason Stanley. The bitter irony, of course, is that the people we are looking at, have no interest whatsoever in reading such a book, and have little self-knowledge. They are what they are, and that’s all that they are, to paraphrase Popeye the Sailor. They have made a virtue out of ignorance.

What some analysts call “tribalism” has grown in America, and undoubtedly around the world. The phrase “My country, right or wrong,” was always bemusing to consider. Now we have people who just make up their own reality, and are proud of it. There is no doubt that they were helped along by Donald Trump, who is not only completely intellectually incurious, but is also a consummate con man. And con men need to convince their marks that they should ignore all outside evidence, and listen only to them. Totalitarians also do this, and there is surely an overlap between the characteristics of those two types of people.

There is no way that Trump caused all of this, this was already in existence. I remember that in 2012, I think, the early leading Republican presidential primary candidate in polls was Herman Cain, which astounded me. Clearly there was a large group of Republicans who gravitated to nonsense, simplistic arguments devoid of knowledge or facts. Barry Goldwater back in his 1964 campaign, complained about a certain group of what we might call Evangelical Republicans, who were so rigid and fervent in their beliefs, that he couldn’t even talk to them. And Goldwater was on the Far Right then, but even he could not deal with those people.

So how indeed can we change this? I suppose we could try for a situation where we have 55% of the voters, and just give up on the other 45%. But that is risky, as we saw in 2016, when just enough of “our people” were brainwashed by social media, or simply reveled in their own doctrinaire philosophies or personal biases, so that they would not vote for Hillary Clinton, who is the exemplification of intelligence, rationality and humanity.

55% does not give much room for error, not when a Biden popular vote win of seven million only yields a 42,000 vote margin to swing the electoral college. And the thing about the 45% or so, is that they are rigid. 65% of Republicans say that they believe that the last election was stolen by Biden. This is absurd on so many levels, including that every credible person who studies elections has said that the last election was the most free and fair in history here. But no, they wanted Trump to win, and he did not; and he said that he was cheated, so they believe it. They came very near to dismantling the entire government because of their belief that it was stolen from him and them. So they are very dangerous, not just people to study and analyze.

Education might be an answer, but it is extremely optimistic to think that “we” can fix the declining state of textbooks in the red states, and the teachers who don’t know much, and all those people who violently reject hearing anything which doesn’t suit them. And of course the pandemic has damaged the state of schools even further.

One used to think that decent newspeople like Murrow and Cronkite would convey the truth to the populace, but the classic half-hour of national news has been supplanted by 24 hours of propaganda from Fox, OANN and Newsmax, and then this inane “both sidesing” of every single story, as if we have Alabama fans on one side, and LSU fans on the other side, and never the twain shall meet; and what fun it is to have them battle. Someone recently wrote that the media doesn’t know how to handle the massive efforts to suppress voting rights being conducted by the totalitarian Right, and that they simply fall back to their default, which is to “both sides” it, which is completely inappropriate in this crisis situation. But the right-wing networks want to propagandize you, and the other ones just want you to watch for the drama of it.

We can reflect on the period in modern civilization known as the Dark Ages. The ancient Greeks had done wondrous things in the sciences, mathematics, philosophy. The world of the Dark Ages in Europe bore no resemblance to that; it was a time where the Church controlled most thought, where superstition and illiteracy reigned. How humanity crawled out of that, towards the Renaissance, and then the Age of Reason, and the Age of Enlightenment, is a a thrilling story, a testament to the power of human curiosity and quest for learning and knowledge. Not that those eras were close to perfect, of course, but a belief in evidence grew, leading to scientific knowledge, medicine, a rational legal system; and the capacity of people to discuss things based on known facts, or logical argument. Human progress has depended on that. But now it very much looks as if the pendulum has swung backward. The poet Yeats believed in a cyclic theory of history; and that underlies his unforgettable poem. “The Second Coming.”

We’ve got to hope that there are still enough people who will put aside instantaneous reflexive reactions to every story which the broadcast and social media purveys, and try to wait for verifiable facts, and also try to reason things out. Social media has this dangerous collective power, where people of like mind gravitate to each other and reinforce each other’s instantaneous reaction to events. I wish that more people would read books; that is a more solitary pursuit, and requires more patience and self-reflection than the communal fervor of the social media. Theatre is good, too, but of course we have had none of that recently. In Cromwell’s Puritan England of the 1650’s, the theatres were all closed down.

If only the mainstream media did not feel so compelled to seek out and interview the know-nothings. But they do it every day, it is virtually laughable, but of course is deadly serious. Say things which are devoid of actual facts or logic, and you will surely get air time. And as the movie “Network” prophesied, everyone wants air time of one sort or another.

So obviously there is no comforting answer to any of this, except that humans should try to do the right thing, and that each person trying to add intelligence and facts to the discussion, at least has some influence, and perhaps can build a larger effect. I don’t think that we will get to many of the members of this willing cult of ignorance, anti-science, and anti-logic, but maybe a few. And maybe general decency will get through to some of them. Of course, it is not that “the Left” isn’t susceptible to some of the same dangers of rigid thought, personal spite, and lack of historical and political perspective. It is a never-ending battle, but what is the other choice? Not “tune in, turn on, drop out.” We have to keep trying.

The Anti-Sciencers

Why are certain members of the Far Right media so committed to trying to convince people not to get vaccinated? Tucker Carlson, from clips I have seen, is constantly casting doubt on the president and the scientists who keep urging people to get the vaccine shots. I don’t think that Carlson actually says, “Don’t take it.” He is too slippery for that, and he has lawyers. So he says, ‘There is a lot about the vaccines that we don’t know,’ and “We know that Biden wants everybody to get the vaccines,” as he looks up as if to say, “What is behind that?” Sean Hannity says that he is really not sure if he will get the vaccines, he just doesn’t know, there is so much conflicting information.

Now, are they that stupid? Well, in general, yes, but probably not on this issue. Trump got vaccinated, and hid that fact. Why is that? What is the goal here? If I had to guess, I would say that Carlson and Hannity have both gotten vaccinated, just like all the Radical Right Republicans in Congress. But they don’t want their followers to know that.

The Republican Party has become an anti-science party. They want their followers to reject any scientific theories or findings. Maybe this started with evolutionary theory, which most of them rejected at the outset, as was evidenced in the Scopes Trial in 1925. They essentially lost that battle, but never gave up. They saw evolution as a theory which rejected their interpretation of the Bible; and as something which a bunch of pointy-headed Northern liberals were trying to jam down their throats. They have fought back to the extent that some schools are now required to teach religious belief in the same books that discuss evolution, as equally valid explanations of natural history. This encroachment continues in several states, where a textbook, when setting out a scientific theory, is required to juxtapose it with a religious explanation.

It was the precursor of this “both sides” nonsense. Some people believe the earth is round, but some believe it is flat. The scientists believe that smoking is very dangerous, but the tobacco people say that it is not all that bad. Every credible medical professional in the country says that people must wear masks, and get vaccinated, but the hosts on Fox and OANN say that this just their opinion; and many Republican governors say that people should do what they like regarding masks, there will be no mandate, that would be a limitation on their freedom. Whatever you say, they say the opposite. Sometimes I think it is just for spite, part of this “owning the libs” battle cry.

And some of this is just disdain for everyone who knows more than they do. They won’t let any scientists or professors or doctors tell them how to live their lives. They have been fearful for decades about government telling them what to do, although the irony is that their side is trying to create a fascist state which has permanent control, and makes it impossible for there to be free elections. But they don’t see that, because their idea of freedom is that it means that no one can tell them anything about what to do, but they can tell everyone else.

So it’s a combination of things. Fear that science is going to take away that old-time religion. Fear that medical science, which they don’t understand, and don’t care to, is made up of people who are going to mandate that they wear masks, or get vaccinated, or wear seat belts, or not smoke. General hatred for everyone who acts like they know more than they themselves do, who talk in big words, and use graphs and charts. And then a psychological need to stand out, by not being part of the general majority. If they get vaccinated, then somehow it means that their side lost, that they are giving in. So they are proud to not wear masks, and carry their signs around, and get on TV, as if they are the Sons of Liberty standing up against the monarchy. It makes them feel special.

And the Republican leaders, and the propaganda machines which they use, need a voting bloc which is proudly uneducated and unknowledgeable. Trump obviously never wanted people to know that he got vaccinated, because they would see it as a betrayal of “their side.” And they need “their side,’ a group, or you could call it, a large cult, which stands together, will never relent, never cede an iota of ground on anything, no matter what the facts or consequences. They hide the science, they misrepresent it, they search for a few renegade scientists like Scott Atlas to propound ridiculous theories to combat 99% of the scientists, and they put them in positions where they can fight the tide of information.

And as they risk becoming an electoral minority, they need to hold the line, and pander to the illiterates, or those who love to act out, or gain a sense of power from being contrary. Because they know that if those people believe that they are being abandoned, they will furiously, and maybe even violently, turn against them, too. So they are “all-in,” as the poker term goes, they are “pot-committed.” They have already pushed their chips in, and they are locked into a general position which they cannot possibly move away from, either strategically, or intellectually.

Is Biden Already a Better President Than Obama? I Think So

I do not derive any great pleasure in criticizing Barack Obama, even though I am still upset at the Democratic campaign of 2008, which Obama should have stayed out of, maybe gotten the VP slot under Hillary, or looked to 2016 to follow her. That campaign almost upsets me as much as 2016. But I would think, on the limited evidence I have, that Obama is a good person, who cares; and he certainly loves his impressive wife and daughters. That is very commendable, but unfortunately is not enough, though we wish it were.

Seeing a bit of President Biden yesterday, as he went to Pennsylvania to answer questions from the citizens about the Covid Relief Bill, caused me to make an immediate comparison between him and Obama as President, as early as it is in his tenure. Of course the times are different; and the situations are comparable in some ways, but not in others; and of course Biden and all of us had to have learned from what happened in 2009-2017. Even so, the difference is striking. And I wonder how much it now appears that Obama failed to do many of the most important things required during his presidency.

I have psychologically blocked some of it all out, I think, and it is too dreary to research at this point. So please correct me or add, if I missed something, or misstated it. But we can start with the fact that Obama came into office for a populace which was very much tired of the GW Bush tenure, and very much wanting the government to deal with the massive economic and housing crisis caused by letting laissez-faire economics run wild. Obama had won the election handily at the end, due primarily to the housing market collapse coming two months before the election; and he came in with a strong majority in the House, and 55 senators, which we have never come close to since then.

But Obama came in apparently seeing himself as someone who transcended party politics, He kept talking about how there were no red states and no blue states. I know that some of his most fervent supporters seemed to see him as a combination of Jesus, Martin Luther King, Abraham Lincoln, and John F. Kennedy. Maybe he did, too, or at least some of them. He started this early in the primary campaign, saying that it was the Republican Party which had most of the good (or maybe he just said, “big”) ideas of the last thirty years. Later in his tenure, he kept trying to work on a “grand bargain,” which would cut Social Security and Medicare to some extent, in exchange for Republicans raising the corporate tax rates.

We needed a stimulus package, and we got one, but many smart economists thought it was too small. Obama of course met resistance from Republicans, so seemed eager enough to settle for the lesser package, which slowed the recovery, and helped to cause the electoral debacle of 2010.

Then he focused all of his attention not on a group of items, including immigration reform, climate change legislation, gun control legislation, but solely on healthcare reform. Riverdaughter understands all of this issue much better than I do, so I won’t dwell on it, other than that Obama’s plan had no public option, and was always inferior to Hillary’s plan. It also seemed that he made too many accommodations to the health insurance industry. What he ended up with was better than what we had, but was not as good as it should have been. And then it was rolled out poorly, people could not easily sign up, and there was a lot of negative publicity for a year or two.

All of this resulted in the rise of the Tea Party, and what he termed “a shellacking” in the 2010 elections. It must also be pointed out that as far as I knew, Obama managed to have the campaign donations primarily sent to him. and not to the DSCC or DCCC. And many of our congressional candidates did not even want him to campaign with them, because he was not popular in their states.

The result of losing about 68 House seats was that the Republicans controlled the House. We also lost Senate seats, and had a slim majority. We lost a bunch of governorships, and state legislatures, which really ushered in the Far Right takeover of states, with the resultant gerrymandering. All of this was not Obama’s fault, but much of it was. An important part of being President is that you are also the head of your party, and your voters count on you to keep them in power. But he could not.

And of course, not getting as much legislation through as possible during those first 20 months, meant that it was then going to be futile to get anything significant through, and he did not for the rest of his six years in office. The rest of his tenure involved foreign relations, which are important, plus judicial appointments, a few executive orders, and then some touching and heartfelt speeches which he made after dreadful gun violence. But he could not get any bills through to deal with that, or the climate crisis.

And then we had the “game of chicken” which got played between him and the House Republicans, where they would threaten to not raise the debt ceiling, and he would eventually have to cut some kind of a deal with them. One time, he said something about being held hostage.

Then after winning the presidency again in 2012, he could not keep the Senate, and McConnell took over, making sure that no Democratic legislation would ever get to the floor; and blocking hundreds of lower court judicial appointments, which he managed to keep open until a Republican was supposedly elected in 2016. I didn’t see President Obama doing anything about that, such as redlining appropriations to certain red states. McConnell had even as Minority Leader managed to block many judicial appointments via the filibuster, which finally Majority Leader Reid had to get rid of, with regard to lower court judicial appointments, to at least get some judges approved, though I do not remember Obama saying much about any of this.

And then we got to 2016. And the immensely crucial swing seat on the Supreme Court needed to be filled. Obama chose Merrick Garland, highly qualified, maybe somewhat moderate, but Obama was said to believe that this is what the country needed. But McConnell simply refused to bring the nomination to the floor, because he knew that Garland would be approved. And what did Obama do about this? Nothing. What could he have done; well I will leave that to hypothesis, but he was still the President, still had a good favorability rating, and also had the power to cut off much demanded funding projects pushed by McConnell and other Republican senators who might be up for election. He could have made a monumental issue of this obstruction, which I think was unconstitutional, but he did not. I suppose he thought that Hillary would win, but that is not sufficient excuse. This was almost all or nothing, and he essentially let McConnell have his way.

Then, finally, the Russian interference. about which he was being briefed by his intelligence agencies. This was a grave danger to the election, and our democracy. The story which came out, from some pretty responsible sources, was that President Obama wanted to make a joint statement about this with the Republican leaders, and McConnnell not only refused, but told him that if he did, he would contend that Obama was trying to interfere with the election. So he said nothing at all publicly, and the election interference was massive and insidious, and Trump was handed the election, with all of the consequences of that.

I think that Obama did about the minimum possible with an eight-year tenure, and that he wasted immense and crucial opportunities, because of his non-political nature, and his protection of his own image. Yet historians still rank him highly at least they did a few years ago. Higher than Bill Clinton who I think was absolutely a better president. Not as high a rating as Ronald Reagan got, though, which might show the biases of that poll.

So here we are in 2021, and President Biden is acting as if he has to run a full-speed race to get as much done as possible, before Republicans might gain three House seats. and/or one Senate seat, and thus lose majority control, which would surely lead to them obstructing absolutely everything, which is appalling but it’s what they do. He has gotten the Covid Relief Bill passed, with the help of Pelosi and Schumer. HR1 got through the House, and he must somehow figure out a way to get rid of the filibuster, even if two Democratic senators foolishly want to hold on to it He will try to get an infrastructure bill passed. and to somehow try to combat global warming. He also has spoken about no red states. no blue states, which I don’t agree with, but he has redefined bipartisanship as meaning popularity among the electorate , not the members of Congress He is trying to do something important every day, and he seems to have appointed a very admirable group of cabinet members and other officials not that Obama and of course Clinton did not have some of those, too.

I am sure that Biden will do some things that will disappoint or upset me. But right now, he is doing a very impressive job, and this gives me more hope, despite the many dangers and Republican plots out there, than I may have had during the entire Obama Administration.

The Pennsylvania minimum wage is disgraceful

Watch this and your blood will boil:

https://twitter.com/semperdiced/status/1371896565971906561?s=21

Whoo-Hoo!! I get my first Moderna vaccine tomorrow!

Update the sequel: I got a new appointment for Friday. It’s in a different county about an hour from here. Looks like it’s Pfizer, which is fine by me.

Unless they cancel me. Crossing fingers.

Update: I’ve been CANCELED! What?? Apparently, they aren’t taking anyone my age even with pre-existing conditions. 😩

I’m back in the search game.

{{screaming into pillow}}

Luck of the Irish.

I’m going to the Peterson Center on the University of Pittsburgh’s campus for my shot. It’s right next door to the Salk Institute. That makes it extra special.

School children in Pittsburgh get the first Salk polio vaccine.
“I have dreams, and I have nightmares. I overcame the nightmares because of my dreams.” – Jonas Salk

All you vaccine skeptics out there (and you know who you are and *I* know who you are) think about it this way: if there were a polio epidemic raging this year, would you refuse the Salk vaccine? You know, not only children get polio. Adults can be permanently disabled by it. Think Franklin Roosevelt who got polio as an adult. Or NYCB ballerina Tanaquil LeClercq whose career was ended by it.

If you get Covid, sure, you might be one of the lucky ones and not get very sick. But you’re going to be serving as a lab experiment for some very frisky viruses who will be reproducing in your body and possibly making mistakes in their genetic sequences when they do it. So, not getting the vaccine means you might become patient zero of a brand new variant that makes the vaccine less effective for everyone else.

Then all your indignation at how people are out of work because the restaurants and bars are closed and how children are out of school and you still have to wear a f{}%ing mask (thereby depriving you of your freedom 🙄) and you can’t visit family members or new family members, will fall on deaf ears because YOU will be partially responsible for extending the lockdowns indefinitely.

Just sayin’.

For those of you in the Pittsburgh area, the Allegheny Health Department is busily setting up mass vaccination sites. Here’s the link to get on the list:

https://www.alleghenycounty.us/Health-Department/Resources/COVID-19/COVID-19-Vaccine-Information.aspx