Good news from Michigan

Abdul El-Sayed has won the Michigan primary!

Abdul El-Sayed has won the Democratic nomination in the US Senate seat in Michigan, beating Haley Stevens in a bitter competition that became a referendum on the changing face of the Democratic party.

El-Sayed won the race by a single point, fewer than 15,000 votes, according to the Associated Press. He will now face Republican nominee Mike Rogers – who ran unopposed – for a key battleground seat that is vital for Democrats to retain in order to achieve their lofty goal of reclaiming the majority in the upper chamber of Congress.

It was close, but I’m glad that Stevens is out (she was a weird shrill Zionist), and seeing a progressive candidate emerge in the Democratic party suggests that maybe the party will eventually shift.

Also, the late Ed Brayton, co-founder of Freethoughtblogs and Michigander, would no doubt be pleased by this outcome.

Farm politics? Not something I ever thought I’d get into

I live in a rural farm community, although I’m not really part of it. I don’t want to farm, I couldn’t do the work, but I respect it. Last night, we attended a meeting about farming anyway, because there are plans afoot that could dramatically affect everyone‘s way of life, and it has to do with water and massive amounts of cow manure. Riverview Dairy, already the largest dairy operation in the state (and busily expanding into the Dakotas), wants to massively increase the number of cows they raise, and they want to create the single largest dairy farm in the whole damn state, right here in little ol’ Stevens County, population 10,000.

Riverview’s proposed expansion would add 15,400 animal units, require 250 million gallons of liquid manure storage, and consume 319 million gallons of water every single year. The scale of this project — if it goes forward, it will be the largest concentrated animal feeding operation in the state — is exactly why Stevens County must not rubber-stamp this permit. We need to pack the room and show local officials that we do not want this mega-operation in Minnesota.

So pack the room we did last night. Unfortunately, Riverview also packed the room with their employees and advocates, and the Stevens County Planning Commission didn’t know how to do their job. This was a session where residents were invited to express their opinion, which meant we had a long line of people coming up to microphones to say what they think, and at the end, the commissioners were visibly befuddled and had no plan for what they would do, and were sitting up at the front of the room asking each other what to do next. It was kind of a fiasco.

The issue at hand was that Riverview wants to do a huge expansion of their business, and somehow managed to convince the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency to not require an environmental impact statement. The side I was on was primarily arguing for caution, that we need to address potential impacts, while the other side was mainly a horde of dairy workers urging Riverview to go full steam ahead right now. The community fell into two camps with some interesting conflicts.

One side would just say jobs, jobs, jobs, and growth, growth, growth. Riverview Dairy is a great company that contributes so much to the community, and this expansion will help so many businesses. One unexpected twist on a traditional Republican position is that a lot of the speakers on this side had Hispanic accents, and told stories of how they migrated to the USA to take advantage of what Riverview offered, and had become American citizens. Fascinating stories: we don’t often hear about the benefits of immigration on the news. I only heard one person say that they wanted jobs for real American citizens, not Mexicans, and I don’t want that person on my side. One argument I heard was that having this mega-dairy will help grow church congregations, which I didn’t consider a positive effect.

The other side was concerned that draining several hundred million gallons of water per year from our aquifers could lead to long term consequences. Spraying a few hundred million gallons of cow poop into large fields could pollute an already polluted region, and wreak havoc on our rivers. There were concerns about the ongoing consolidation of small farms into this one mega-farm. The question on my mind was “who benefits?” and why do we need to produce so much milk; one person did ask what the need for all this output was. The debate wasn’t on whether Riverview was a good company that would benefit the community, but why we’re foregoing investigating deeply into what the long-term consequences were.

In the end, a small group of old white men, the planning commission, will retreat into a meeting room and make the decision, and I predict that they will decide that Riverview doesn’t need any more studies of their environmental impact. The county has a total population of 10,000, and this one dairy operation will be pumping out waste equivalent to the output of a city of 750,00 people, but we’ll just let them do their thing and then find out the consequences. Short-sightedness will win again.

Do I blame our incompetent state department, or do I blame AI?

How about both?

At an AIDS conference in Rio, the representatives of the United States put up this map:

That’s a slap in the face of every attendee at that meeting. It’s a declaration that the USA does not care enough to get basic geography right. I apologize. Our only excuse is that we have elected idiots and assholes to run our country, which is, of course, no excuse at all.

In case you are wondering, here’s a rather more accurate map of the continent.

Africa Political Map

You realize how trivially easy it is to get a map of Africa off the internet, right? They couldn’t even do that.

Political discrimination against beer!

I’ve never been much of an alcohol drinker — the example of my alcoholic grandfather kept me wary of the stuff — but I’ve gotten even more extreme over the course of the last few years and am a teetotaler now. I just figure I don’t need to add to the problems of aging with something that’s stacking on other difficulties.

But there is one event that might make me temporarily end my abstinence. When Donald Trump dies, I’m going to have a margarita. Just one. I might even be moved to dance.

If the conservative powers-that-be have their way, such behavior would be illegal.

A popular brewery that promised free beer to its patrons upon the death of President Donald Trump is having its alcohol permit revoked.

The Wisconsin Department of Revenue is planning to shut down the Minocqua Brewing Company by August 4, according to a newsletter published Sunday by brewery owner Kirk Bangstad, who described the business as “the state’s most progressive brewery.”

Please let it be known to MAGA that conservatives want to prohibit the sale of beer.

Kangaroo court is in session

“COVID “”Cures”””

Anthony Fauci was hauled up in a senate hearing where ignorant, ideologically-poisoned buffoons like Rand Paul harangued him with absurd accusations. He rightly responded by taking the fifth — there is no point in arguing with delusional idiots. At one point, Paul had Fauci’s lawyer thrown out of the hearing.

Dr Anthony Fauci, who served as a key adviser to Donald Trump and Joe Biden during the Covid-19 pandemic, has refused to answer questions at a high-profile congressional hearing, accusing a Republican senator of having an “unhinged obsession” with him.

Fauci, the veteran former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (Niaid), invoked his constitutional right against self-incrimination when appearing before a Senate committee on Wednesday.

Fauci said Republican Kentucky senator Rand Paul had, who called the hearing, led a years-long investigation into himself and the origins of the pandemic aimed at “embarrassing and intimidating me”, and ultimately landing him “behind bars”.

This is the way. Paul’s harassment was ultimately fruitless, except that the current political regime gave him the opportunity to try and browbeat an 85 year old scientist who had espoused a rational, evidence-based approach to the COVID pandemic. Fauci’s approach reflected the scientific consensus.

A 2024 survey of virologists from the Global Catastrophic Risk Institute found that most believed the pandemic began as a so-called spillover event, or a virus jumping from an infected animal to a human. Similarly, a group of virologists argued in the Journal of Virology that the “preponderance” of evidence points to a natural origin, even as the “lab leak” theory received outsized attention. Gain-0f-function research, meanwhile, has split the scientific community for years.

There is no good evidence for the lab leak hypothesis. It’s just a xenophobic contrivance made up to place the blame on China. It’s a political distortion of the evidence.

What was most bizarre is that Rand Paul exposed Fauci’s diary, in which he stated his opinions about certain political figures (and some journalists) without any diplomatic hesitations.

The scheduled hearing comes just days after Paul released what he described as Fauci’s “diary”, a more than 1,100-page document characterized as revealing Fauci’s inner conflicts about the lab leak theory. Scientists have said this is a normal part of scientific debate.

The diary also contained entries about Trump, who he advised closely during the early days of the pandemic. He described the president as “rambling”, “crazy”, “desperate”, “bumbling”, “incompetent”, “an idiot”, “a true embarrassment”, “totally nuts” and “truly an obnoxious adolescent”.

Hey, that was also just an echo of the scientific consensus! Trump is a bumbling incompetent. Some of us have been unabashedly saying that in public for many years. I would just rebuke Fauci for hiding his feelings away in his private notes. Let it all hang out, Anthony! It’s not as if being reserved about your true feelings has spared you any suffering at the hands of morons like Paul.

The true purpose of the hearing was obvious — the goal was to intimidate scientists from speaking out about biomedical approaches to disease, and to pander to all the frauds and influencers who profit off medical misinformation.

Gary Peters, a Democratic senator of Michigan, described the hearing as damaging to science and ignoring ongoing public health threats, such as the outbreak of the food-borne parasite cyclospora and measles, both at record highs.

“It’s attempting to turn one person into a scapegoat for a crisis that that hundreds of officials across the Biden and Trump administrations’ were responsible for handling,” said Peters, who did not ask Fauci any questions. “This is only going to deter other scientific experts from public service.”

While the politicians are scapegoating Fauci, they’re giving a free pass to the MAHA goons who have enabled a cyclospora outbreak, watered down food safety regulations, and fueled criminal anti-vax mythologies that are allowing a measles comeback. The USA is at risk of losing our measles elimination status, thanks to people like RFK jr.

These people ought to be more self-aware. If they can drag the guy who successfully led the fight against the pandemic, I’m hoping we have the opportunity someday to turn the tables and confront the disease enablers with the butcher’s bill. There’s a better case to be made that they caused millions of deaths.

Oh no, science to get the Trump “gold” treatment

This is not good news. The Trump administration wants to radically change how science is done in this country.

On Tuesday, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) released a report entitled “Science: A New Golden Age,” in which it lays out how it has viewed science, found it lacking, and believes the Trump administration is in the perfect position to fix things. It’s a bit unexpected coming from an administration that has been proposing crippling funding cuts to research and trying to enable political appointees to terminate grants awarded based on scientific merit.

The report presents itself as the spiritual successor of “Science, the Endless Frontier,” a policy document that laid out the case for government-funded science in the wake of World War II. The New Golden Age (SNGA) says that, while the concepts promoted by the original remain vital, the circumstances have changed such that we need major revisions to how the government is implementing things.

The result is an odd mix. It completely ignores or glosses over many things that the administration is doing to harm scientific progress. In some cases, it identifies issues that have already been discussed as problems within the scientific community. Elsewhere, it’s a mixture of political grievances, ideas without a solid intellectual foundation, and an injection of Silicon Valley’s perspective on innovation (Michael Kratsios, the director of the OSTP, formerly worked with Peter Thiel). As a result, it’s unlikely to have anything like the impact of “Science, the Endless Frontier.”

“Gold standard”? So he wants to buy some cheap crap from Home Depot, spray paint it gold, and call it science?

Jesus, but he made the oval office kitschy and cheap, and now he’s going to give science the same treatment.

I’m sorry, Canada

The personal apology of a powerless person in the United States doesn’t matter much, but I sincerely am sorry for what our country is doing to you. Actually, we should be apologizing to the whole world, but Canada is our neighbor and our “silly old deranged grandpa president” is lashing out at them again.

Donald Trump is imposing 50% tariffs on most Canadian goods in response to the country retaliating against previous US tariffs, the White House announced Monday, declaring Canada has unfairly discriminated against American cars, alcohol and dairy products.

Sorry.

Sometimes senile old people get institutionalized, and they are cranky and resentful, and they kick and pinch and slap at the people who are hired to help them, and the relatives (unless they are terribly entitled) feel horrible about it. At least, though, their deranged elder loved one is being confined for their own safety, and is typically too old and feeble to do serious harm. Unfortunately, our foul-tempered nasty old geezer is running free, and has the vast power of the USA at his fingertips, and all the hired help seem to be more interested in enabling him than in being responsible guardians.

Jamelle Bouie knows what he’s talking about.

The responsible thing to do here would be to take all his dangerous toys away from him and put him in a luxurious retirement home with lots of gold geegaws glued to the walls and let him rot away. Unfortunately, too many other people are profiting off their proximity to the demented old fart.

A beautiful response by Talarico

The Texas GOP must have a “T problem”

Talarico takes the right tone in responding to accusations by Texas Republicans.

“He says you’re not manly enough to actually — this guy says you’re not manly enough to represent the people of Texas,” Scarborough said. “And he’s concerned about your Low T levels! Your manliness. Oh, yeah. Is this, is this a parody?”

As all three laughed, Scarborough asked his guest if he understood “their obsession with low-T.”

“I had to look it up,” the smiling Texas Democrat replied.

He then got his own dig in, adding, “Guys my age aren’t really worried about that kind of thing.”

Talarico then spoke seriously.

“People are really tired of this kind of professional wrestling in our politics,” he said. “These old guys who are lathered up in their fake tans, throwing these corny nicknames at each other. People are wanting serious leaders who are going to get this economy back on track, who are going to start to lower costs, who are going to start to raise pay. And people are catching on to the fact that these corny nicknames don’t lower the cost of groceries, don’t lower the cost of of prescription drugs, don’t lower the price of gas.”

I have to add that guys my (69) age don’t really worry about “T-levels,” unless a doctor recommends supplements in response to specific symptoms.

This is reminding me of a certain politician who keeps taking and reminding us all of his ability to take cognitive tests. We old people don’t generally worry about taking these tests, and we definitely don’t brag about passing these minimal evaluations of basic functions. We’re similarly not going to race in to our doctors to ask for extra testosterone, unless we’re experiencing difficulties. Are Ken Paxton and Lt. Governor Dan Patrick confessing to something?

I do believe in foreign interference in our elections

Donald Trump gave a speech last night in which he he claimed that he only lost the 2020 election because foreigners interfered. He is obsessed with that ignominious defeat, because his ego is so huge that he can’t tolerate any contradiction of his self-regard.

Donald Trump accused China of interfering with the 2020 election in a primetime televised address that laid bare his continuing obsession with his defeat to Joe Biden, but which opponents warned was a smokescreen for him to meddle in the forthcoming congressional midterms.

In a 25-minute speech on Thursday that had been hyped by Trump himself, the US president cast extraordinary doubts on the integrity of the US electoral process, saying it was “catastrophically” short of standards of fairness and trust, and vulnerable to trespassing by foreign powers.

I don’t believe China had anything to do with it — that country is happy to sell us crap, and no doubt is savoring our ongoing collapse, but they don’t have to do anything to trigger our self-destruction. Republicans are pleased to do that to ourselves, because they are busy pursuing an illusory and contradictory fantasy of American greatness that is centered on racial purity and coddling of capitalists. There is no evidence of election fraud anywhere. Every time those accusations are tracked down they find at best a handful of fraudulent votes, never enough to have any kind of significant effect, but every time a Republican loses an election they start shrieking about Democrats cheating.

They are overlooking the insidious and entirely legal interference that has been going on for decades: the lies and propaganda of Fox News, masterminded by Rupert Murdoch, and how it has corrupted the brains of an entire generation of Americans. This is the seed that has grown into the idiocy that fuels our descent, which is now self-perpetuating. Barking at the Chinese is futile and irrelevant. Look into our systemic failures to regulate our own media.