Elections results were even better than I thought

While the top line election results on Tuesday were good for Democrats, the picture looks even better when you look further down at other races.

Right wing bigots have targeted school boards in their push to narrow down what is taught and the books that are read. Virginia governor Glenn Youngkin pushed the so-called ‘parental rights’ issue to win his election to the governorship in 2022. He and other Republicans thought that they had found the magic formula for winning elections and sought to use that same message to win control of both house of legislature and school boards. Youngkin was also being promoted to be the party savior by the anti-Trump establishment as Ron DeSantis’s campaign seemed to be flaming out. But both houses gained Democratic majorities and he lost even school board races, tarnishing his credentials considerably.

Loudoun county, Virginia, attracted national headlines in 2021, when parents outraged over the alleged instruction of critical race theory and policies regarding transgender students shouted down officials at school board meetings.

Republican Glenn Youngkin made the issue a central focus of his gubernatorial campaign in the months after, accusing Democrats of politicizing education to the detriment of students’ learning and blaming them for pandemic-related school closures. And he had hoped it would continue to work in Tuesday’s general election.

“No more are we going to make parents stand outside of the room,” Youngkin told a crowd in Leesburg, part of Loudon county, on Monday. “We are going to put them at the head of the table in charge of our children’s lives.”

But that message failed on Tuesday, as Democratic-endorsed candidates won a majority on the Loudoun county school board.

The elections, in which every school board seat was up for grabs on Tuesday, had been framed as a test of the resiliency of parents’ rights as a campaign issue. Republicans had hoped to replicate Youngkin’s success in Loudoun county, which serves more than 80,000 students in a wealthy area located about an hour outside Washington. Instead, Loudoun county voters delivered a six-seat majority for Democratic-backed candidates on the nine-seat school board.
…

As Democrats took a victory lap on Tuesday, some of them pointed to the results in Loudoun county as evidence that Youngkin’s message of parents’ rights no longer resonates with Virginia voters.

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I also browse social media

This is often a terrible mistake.

OK, I’ll play along. Ten year old people don’t have the experience to make an informed decision, parents have an obligation to protect their children from the depradations of rich old creeps, it doesn’t matter whether I’m male or female, and Richard Hanania is a gross scumbag who ought to be watched carefully.

Isn’t it nice that he bought a blue checkmark from that other creepy fuck, Elon Musk?

The predictable aftermath of the Israeli response in Gaza

The steady killing by Israel of the entire population of Gaza continues with their total blockade of the territory that prevents anyone from entering and leaving while denying them the basic essentials of life such as water, food, medicines, and fuel. At the same time, we see the Israel lobby in the US spring into action to try and control the narrative here to limit any criticism of the actions of the Israel government and. military. Norman Solomon writes that right from the beginning, Israeli spokespersons have laid the groundwork for creating a massive death toll among the Gazans.

When Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations spoke outside the Security Council on Sunday, he said: “This is Israel’s 9/11. This is Israel’s 9/11.” Meanwhile, in a PBS NewsHour interview, Israel’s ambassador to the United States said: “This is, as someone said, our 9/11.”

While the phrase might seem logical, “Israel’s 9/11” is already being used as a huge propaganda weapon by Israel’s government — now engaged in massive war crimes against civilians in Gaza, after mass murder of Israelis by Hamas last weekend.

On the surface, an analogy between the atrocities just suffered by Israelis and what happened on Sept. 11, 2001 might seem to justify calls for unequivocal solidarity with Israel. But horrific actions are in process from an Israeli government that has long maintained a system of apartheid while crushing basic human rights of Palestinian people.

What is very sinister about trumpeting “Israel’s 9/11” is what happened after America’s 9/11. Wearing the shroud of victim, the United States proceeded to use the horrible tragedy suffered inside its own borders as a license to kill vast numbers of people in the name of retaliation, righteousness and, of course, the “war on terror.”

It’s a playbook that the government of Benjamin Netanyahu is currently adapting and implementing with a vengeance. Now underway, Israel’s collective punishment of 2.3 million people in Gaza is an intensification of what Israel has been doing to Palestinians for decades. But Israel’s extremism, more than ever touting itself as a matter of self-defense, is at new racist depths of willingness to treat human beings as suitable for extermination.

On Monday, Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant described Palestinians as “beastly people” and said: “We are fighting animals and are acting accordingly.”

Imagine the reaction if anyone had used that language about Israelis.
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Clow UFO Base survives Taylor Swift concert (Fiction)

By Reporter X

Despite logistical problems, literal earthshaking numbers, a protest, and threats, Taylor Swift successfully pulled off her first performance at a UFO Base. Swift’s concert shattered Clow’s previous concert attendance records, as well as the record for most watched interstellar holographic concert in the Milky Way. 

When she took the stage, Swift asked the audience, “Are there any Swifties in the galaxy tonight?” The audience’s enthusiastic reaction triggered the first of many minor earthquakes that night.

“We thought we were prepared,” said an anonymous official at the Department of Interstellar Affairs. “We rented several trucks and drove them around the village. That way, people would assume the trucks passing by caused the shaking. We didn’t expect so many earthquake tonight. So the truck cover story was pushing the limits of plausibility.”

After Swift performed the third song on her set list, protesters from Alpha Centauri. They unfurled a banner that read, “Free Palestine! Protect Israel! Support the Quantum State Solution!” The Men in Blue peacefully escorted the protesters off the stage. Clow officials would only say that the protesters are still alive.

Once the protesters left the stage, Swift address the audience. “There are Swifties on both sides of this terrible conflict. I don’t know about you, but I think Swifties should love each other as much as they love the music.”

Following the protest, Bolingbrook Mayor Mary Alexander-Basta reached out to the Israeli Space Defense Force. Anonymous sources confirmed part of what she said: “As a woman of global excellence, I strongly urge you not to attack Clow…You can’t be serious! Think of all the residents you’d harm…Really? Well, for your information, the residents of Bolingbrook are civilians. Even (name of local politician redacted). So if the ISDF is serious about avoiding civilian casualties, don’t even think about dropping an anti-matter bomb on Bolingbrook!”

The concert continued without incident. After her final encore, Swift thanked the audience. “Tonight was worth all the breakups I had to go through to write my songs!”

Lokblak, a resident of Tabby’s Star, was one of many satisfied Swift fans. “Her songs are so universal. Somehow, she knows how great it feels to shake off a bad layer of skin.”

Kolog, a resident of Triton, had a different reason for attending the concert. “I wanted to see Taylor Swift before humanity’s extinction. If only humans admired their planet as much as they admire Ms. Swift.”

Also in the Babbler:

Europa Bears? Europa entered the bidding for next the Bears’ new stadium
Former Twitter employees stage sit-in at Clow UFO Base
Record number of aliens to trick or treat in Bolingbrook
God will not smite Bolingbrook this week

Note: This is a work of fiction. All opinions expressed are my own. They do not reflect the views of any organization I work for or of my employer. 

Want to support my creative work? Check out my Urban Fantasy series, the Bolingbrook Babbler Stories.  You can also buy me a coffee.

Do you want a creationist for Speaker of the House?

After chewing up 3 nominees in the last few weeks, the Republicans have thrown up a fourth ugly slug: Mike Johnson, a far right goober from Louisiana. Nothing good comes out of Louisiana politics, but I also know something else about him. He’s a creationist. He writes for Answers in Genesis. Several years ago, he wrote a hilarious letter to the Lexington Herald-Leader, complaining about Dan Phelps, friend of the blog.

It’s always ironic when a self-professed man of science allows his emotions and ideology to cloud his reason. But that’s exactly what Daniel Phelps has done in his most recent rant against the Ark Encounter theme park.

You know what’s really ironic? When a theocrat and openly anti-science loon tells a professional scientist that his mind is clouded by emotions and ideology.

Phelps’ Aug. 17 column made a number of unfounded allegations against the Ark Encounter, its investors, and even supportive state officials. Phelps’ diatribe reveals quite clearly his own political agenda and his utter contempt for religion and people of faith.

That’s not Phelps’ political agenda at all. On the other hand, you can see Johnson’s agenda on display in his organization’s Model Bylaws for Christian Churches. He’s a Christian Nationalist. I think it’s safe to say he has utter contempt for secularism.

Unlike Ark Encounter proponents, Phelps shows no tolerance for points of view different than his own, and rabid hostility towards those who disagree.

Oh yeah? Doesn’t the Ark Encounter require a “Statement of Faith” as well as a “Salvation Testimony” and a “Creation Statement Belief?” They sure do. Who has a rabid hostility to different points of view?

He is willing to sacrifice hundreds of millions of dollars in new economic development and thousands of jobs for Kentucky. If his proposition were followed, the commonwealth would be legally liable for blatantly unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination. Phelps’ preference — that religious groups should be denied equal access to tax incentive programs and also forced to hire people who openly disagree with their main beliefs — is not only unfair, it is clearly unlawful.

Hundreds of millions of dollars and thousands of jobs? I didn’t know conservative Christians could indulge in mind-altering substance, because no, the numbers show that Ken Ham and AiG lied about the potential economic benefits, and their promises remain unfulfilled.

His discriminatory ideas have been repeatedly invalidated by the Supreme Court, lower courts and federal and state statutes. Phelps may be a trained geologist, but a constitutional law expert he is not.

Mike Johnson claims to be a constitutional law expert, so that burn doesn’t even sting.

Johnson might end up getting the votes he needs. He’s anti-abortion, anti-LGBT, anti-Ukraine, and a good buddy of Donald Trump. The people who will vote for him probably think the creationism is a bonus.

I would hope no Democrats to vote for this creepy authoritarian, but the media, as usual, think that supporting a repulsive idiot is the answer. I approve of Roy Edroso’s response to that bullshit.

The Republicans finally got their act together enough to elect this asshole.

It’s OK to be indifferent to the lives of Palestinian civilians

I heard that people were walking out on Dave Chappelle’s comedy shows, and I was not surprised — he has a history of being offensive and expressing contempt for gay and trans people. But then I learned why they were walking out.

During his show at TD Garden on Thursday, Dave Chappelle spoke out about the Israel-Gaza conflict, which spurred a walkout by some of his audience members. According to The Wall Street Journal, the comedian first condemned Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel before slamming Israel’s bombing of Gaza and the United States of “aiding the slaughter of innocent civilians.”

Chappelle’s comments were made after he said that he didn’t think students should lose job offers for being pro-Palestine. An audience member then demanded Chappelle to “shut up,” which elicited an emotional response from the comedian. Chappelle proceeded to bash the Israeli government for cutting off water and other essentials to Gaza and accused it of killing innocent people, according to those in attendance at the Boston show.

A few members of the crowd cheered and shouted “Free Palestine” in support of Chappelle, while others yelled, “What about Hamas,” the attendees said. Some individuals got up and left the show. At the end of his routine, Chappelle reportedly added that “two wrongs don’t make a right,” when speaking about Israeli policies and the Hamas attacks.

But wait, I marveled, I agree with Chappelle in this one case. I think that’s the only humane position to take, to both condemn Hamas and their terror attacks, and to condemn the state of Israel for their hateful history. This does not excuse his other views by any means, but he is not approving of Hamas’ cruelty; he is simply also not approving of Israel’s cruel policies.

Fortunately, I am not a comedian, so I’m safe from ‘cancellation’ (not that Chappelle is cancelled — members of an audience have always had the right to disagree with a comic.) And then I read that a prominent academic has lost his editor position for expecting sympathy for the Palestinian people.

Michael Eisen, editor-in-chief of the prominent open access journal eLife and a longtime critic of traditional journals, says he is losing that job for publicly endorsing a satirical article that criticized people dying in Gaza for not condemning the recent attacks on Israel by the Palestinian group Hamas.

“I have been informed that I am being replaced as the Editor in Chief of @eLife for retweeting a @TheOnion piece that calls out indifference to the lives of Palestinian civilians,” Eisen tweeted today.

The furor began on 13 October when Eisen, a geneticist at the University of California, Berkeley, praised one of The Onion’s fake news stories on X, formerly Twitter. The story bore the headline “Dying Gazans Criticized For Not Using Last Words To Condemn Hamas.” Eisen said “The Onion speaks with more courage, insight and moral clarity than the leaders of every academic institution put together. I wish there were a @TheOnion university.”

Here’s the tweet that got him fired.

And the “offensive” tweet from The Onion.

And here’s a sampling of the responses.

I agree with Hector Rivera; they’re proving his point. Eisen was not approving of beheading babies, there was absolutely nothing heartless and callous said by Eisen. He was not expressing moral ambiguity, but moral clarity, by expecting that we’d have the same respect for all human life. I guess his big mistake was expecting that people would have some sympathy for all the civilians currently targeted for death by the Israeli military.

Hamas and Israel mark each day of war with new numbers measuring the accumulation of death and destruction. The Gaza Health Ministry said more than 5,000 Gaza residents have been killed so far, including 436 in the past 24 hours, primarily in the enclave’s south, where Israel has told more than 1 million Gazans to seek shelter from air raids in the north. The ministry’s figures, which could not be independently confirmed, are not broken down between civilians and militants.

Palestinian babies don’t count, I presume. I made a quick search of a few sites where the anti-“cancel culture” fanatics hang out, Bari Weiss, Heterodox “University”, Jerry Coyne, FIRE, etc. — ouch, that was painful, I normally avoid that crowd, with good reason — and surprise, surprise: they’re not raising a hullabaloo about the Eisen dismissal. They’re all about hating the right people, so I shouldn’t be surprised at all — hating Palestinians is a fine thing to do now, since, don’t you know, they’re all Hamas.

Look, see all the Hamas terrorists fleeing the righteous wrath of the holy IDF?

If you don’t agree they should all be shot or bombed, you should be ashamed and be fired.

The surprising resistance to Jim Jordan for speaker

[UPDATE: Jordan has said that he is ‘suspending’ his bid for the speakership (not withdrawing) and supports giving the interim speaker more powers until January 15 so that the house can conduct some business, not the least of which is the budget that is due on November 17. This means that he has figured out that he does not have the votes right now but is clearly hoping that by January, the anti-Jordan sentiment may have diminished enough for him to be elected.]

The second round of voting for the speaker of the House of Representatives that was called for by Jim Jordan saw him actually getting fewer votes than in the first round. The final tally was 212 for Democrat Hakeem Jeffries and 199 for Jordan with 22 Republicans voting for various people. Two people who voted against Jordan in the first round voted in favor of him this time but four switched the other way so that he lost ground.

I was actually surprised by this. The GOP is now a party whose dynamics are like those of a children’s playground, where one has the bullies and their allies and the bullied. In those situations, the bullied almost always cave to the pressure because they have nowhere to turn. Jordan clearly thought that having the support of serial sex abuser Donald Trump (SSAT) would enable him to bully enough members to put him over the top. I too thought that these holdouts would fold but was wrong.

The Republican party has abandoned all semblance of having any principles and in discussing what is going on, we should ignore any talk of ‘moderates’ and ‘extremists’.

You’ve likely seen a lot of the holdouts described as “moderates.” An overwhelming majority of them are nothing of the sort and their ideological views are almost identical. Where they differ is their temperament and tactics. The old way of business – which is still very much alive in the Democratic Caucus and across the Capitol in the Senate – is that you move up the ranks by making allies and getting stuff done. Consistency is key and it pays off through promotions, plum committee assignments, and hopefully, at the ballot box.

In his warparth to the speakership, Jordan has been destroying the traditional system (a common theme in today’s Republican party). Jordan has been in Congress since 2007. Not once during the past 16 years has any of the legislation he’s sponsored become law. Just three of his bills have passed the full House: this year’s establishment of a subcommittee on the “weaponization” of the federal government, a call for the attorney general to appoint a special counsel nine years ago during the Obama administration, and in his first term, an resolution expressing sympathy for Ohio flood victims (the resolution did not authorize any additional funds for the flood victims—it just expressed sympathy).

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Where has techno-optimism gotten us?

Back in the 2000s, I used to write for Seed, the glossy, artsy, fabulously interesting magazine that tried to do for science what Wired did for technology in the 90s. I liked the magazine, but it tried too hard and went belly-up in 2012, leaving behind a diaspora of science writers who’d been briefly nourished at its teats.

That was too bad, but maybe it was for the best: it could have encouraged a generation of obnoxious twits who thought they understood science, but really just liked fancy fonts, odd layouts, and money. You know, like Wired spawned. Imagine a world where naive pseudo-scientists announce that we just need to science more shit and all our problems would be solved, and we just need to tweak a few genes and mix up some new pharmaceuticals and…oh, wait. We live in that world. Never mind.

Anyway, what brought this to mind is that Marc Andreessen, the very rich guy who turned an early investment in Netscape into billions of dollars, and who has been rewarded with regular columns in the Washington Post, has scribbled up something he calls the Techno-Optimist Manifesto, which I haven’t read. I don’t want to read it, because I’ve read a few of his WaPo columns, and he’s just another spoiled conservative wanker who actively repels me with his narrow, selfish perspective. But Dave Karpf read it! He didn’t like it.

In the manifesto (which, let’s be honest, reads more like an extended twitter thread), Andreessen positions himself as a brave, bold truth-teller: We are being lied to he declares. We are told to be angry, bitter, and resentful about technology… Technology is the glory of human ambition and achievement, the spearhead of progress, and the realization of our potential… For hundreds of years, we properly glorified this – until recently… It is time, once again, to raise the technology flag. It is time to be Techno-Optimists.

This is a familiar diatribe. Louis Rossetto used to say exactly the same thing back in WIRED’s startup days. Rossetto insisted that the media and the government were clinging to power by trying to scare people away from the liberatory power of the internet. The only thing that could stop inevitable technological progress was a culture of pessimism and fear. As recently as 2018, Rossetto was calling for a return to “militant optimism,” insisting that the sole barrier to our bright, abundant future is a pessimistic mood. Kevin Kelly, Stewart Brand, and Peter Schwartz all hit similar themes throughout the 90s. Their “Californian Ideology” was a mix of libertarianism and technological optimism, declaring that all of the world’s problems could be solved if we would just sit back and let the engineers of techno-capitalism do their work.

I asked the same question Karpf does: who is lying to us?

Who is lying to us, Marc? You serve on the boards of trillion-dollar companies. A few of your peers own media companies. A few others have chosen to bankrupt media companies that write mean things about them. You have been celebrated for thirty years as the genius-inventors-of-the-future. If the public is turning against you, who ought to be held responsible for such a change in the public mood?

Isn’t it funny how the richest people in the country, the ones who have profited exorbitantly off the current system, are so upset at any criticism of the system. It’s as if a mysterious entity is threatening to take some of their yachts away, when in reality, the sheep are too busy trying to forage for grass rather than look up and plot to overthrow the minority that are gnawing on rack of lamb. Maybe the rich are worried we’ll notice, so they give us these semi-religious artifacts of techno-idolatry as a distraction. And it’s been working!

What makes Andreessen’s 90’s retread so odd is the way he frames it as a challenge to the status quo. Technological optimism has been the dominant paradigm throughout my adult life. We have spent decades clapping for Andreessen and his buddies. We have put them on magazine covers. We stopped regulating tech monopolies. We cut taxes for the wealthy. We trusted that they had some keen insight into what the oncoming future would look like. We assumed that the tech barons ultimately had our best interests at heart.

Even amidst the techlash years, public criticism of the tech platforms ultimately amounted to very little. The ranks of the tech billionaires grew. The largest companies that we associate with digital technology reached trillion-dollar valuations. Their every announcement of a bold new technological future was treated with extraordinary credulity. (remember the metaverse? Remember Web3?)

I have a special place in my heart for this little passage, though.

Our enemy is the ivory tower, the know-it-all credentialed expert worldview, indulging in abstract theories, luxury beliefs, social engineering, disconnected from the real world, delusional, unelected, and unaccountable – playing God with everyone else’s lives, with total insulation from the consequences.

That’s ripped straight from the book, Jurassic Park — the section where the protagonist rails against modern science, handing all-powerful tools to students who don’t know what they’re reading. I read it as a grad student, and I could tell you it was straight-up bullshit. But I’ll let Kieran Healy dismantle that claim:

Yeah. Exactly. Andreessen is a guy with a bachelor’s degree, nothing more, who got lucky. If I were playing God, and one of my students got $1.7 billion, I’d at least insist on a small percentage. All we can really do is guide students to interesting stuff and hope they can use it in their lives. I don’t even have a single billion of dollars, and I’m mainly worrying about how I’m going to pay for health care when I retire — I don’t have the leisure to do any social engineering.

But I do have time to look up and notice who has all the money and power and desire to play god with everyone else’s lives. One of them is this bullet-headed fuck:

World-class sarcasm

Have you seen Piers Morgan’s interview of the Egyptian comedian, Bassem Youssef? I know, you hear “Piers” and you are immediately repelled, but it’s worth it — Morgan is so effectively punctured, without even realizing it, that he’s left floundering about like an empty balloon. Youssef totally dominates and leaves Morgan whimpering about ‘language,’ and also manages to skewer Ben Shapiro, all while making Israel look like a lying bully. And he does it with the most precise use of sarcasm I have ever witnessed.

Absolutely brilliant.

There’s a really good question in there, too. What is a “disproportionate response”? Has a “disproportionate response” ever worked? Hasn’t Israel been engaging in an ongoing “disproportionate response” for decades, and has it brought peace to the region? Maybe they ought to try something different.

Steve, we hardly knew ye

It appears that winning the majority of votes for speaker within the Republican conference by a margin of 113-99 and then being endorsed by his rival Jim Jordan was not enough for Steve Scalise to get 217 votes (from the total of 221 Republicans) to enable him to become speaker. There were enough hard ‘no’s to force him to withdraw his name from further consideration. The House adjourned last evening and it is not clear when it will meet again to try and get this essential piece of business done.

Here are some of the people who are opposed to Scalise.


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