Health care workers stayed at work for you, stay home for them.
Staying at work, staying at home
Pervert Justice
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Health care workers stayed at work for you, stay home for them.
Indianz.com has an important story up about a victory against DAPL.
NOTE: The TL;DR is that the expedited process for issuing permits for the project was illegal, DAPL might be shut down (at least temporarily), and the uncertainty created by the illegitimate permits might further delay fully connecting DAPL to the Albertan tar sands oil projects.
The Army Corps of Engineers (ACoE) has a long history of neglecting not only treaty rights but also duties imposed by the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). That act requires certain steps to be taken BEFORE concrete actions like issuing permits can be legally undertaken. There are good reasons – have been good reasons – to believe that they did not meet the legal prerequisites for issuing the DAPL permits and today a federal judge agreed.
PZ has brought attention to congressional corruption (in the form of insider trading) and corporate corruption (in the form of stock buy-backs) earlier today. But hark! Fear not that they have lost out on opportunities to engage in mutual corruption. 119 members of congress, including Dems and Reps both, are now calling to use anti-coronavirus legislation to boost purchases of F-35 fighters.
Now one or both of you may actually be confused. While there’s legitimate concern for the economy and stimulus is warranted, the concern isn’t that defense contractors don’t have enough work, but rather that people who are unable to work for fear of transmitting the virus will stop spending money, either because they completely run out or because of fear their savings might not last. Economic stimulus always functions best when given to the poorest, and this case is no exception. Indeed, production speed wouldn’t be increased, so calling for more fighters simply means that production activities due to end a decade from now will instead come to a close 3 or 5 years later than that. While defense contractors like the legislation I’m sure, it does fuck all to help the economy now.
But if neither the virus is vulnerable to air-to-air missiles nor its economic effects offset by distant future delays in closing fighter jet assembly lines, we can at least take heart that the military-industrial-congressional complex have been brought together in hard times to work in unison for mutually beneficial corruption.
So, while on the webchat with PZ et. al. earlier, a comic on The Nib came up. It’s titled “I Exist” and it’s by Breena Nuñez. In it she writes about her Blackness as an Afrosalvi (someone from African descent who grows up in El Salvador). The whole thing is quite interesting, and I enjoyed her self-portraits and her insights equally.
Please do go read it and tell me what you think.
Well, SatW did a comic about getting this song stuck in their head during discussions of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, so I decided to do up a full redo of the lyrics from scratch. For your listening pleasure(?):
Ooh, my little bitty one, from Wuhan
When you gonna give me some (time, Corona!)
Ooh, you make my nares run, my nares run
Got grit coming off of my (eyes, Corona!)
Never gonna stop, love queuing up, such a dirty line
Always reachin’ up, touching faces of the younger kind
My, my, my, ay, ay, woah!
M-m-m-my Corona!
My Corona!Come a little closer, huh, ah, will ya, huh
Close enough to get in my eyes, Corona!
Novel viral mystery, you get to me
Hopping borders on air lines, CoronaNever gonna stop, love queuing up, such a dirty line
Always reachin’ up, touching faces of the younger kind
My, my, my, ay, ay, woah!
M-m-m-my Corona!
M-m-m-my Corona!Na, na, na, na, na-na
My Corona!
When you gonna get to me? get to me?
Is it just a matter of (time, Corona)?
It is just a matter of (time, Corona)…
It is!
Is almost literally what happened earlier today, March 9th, 2020. The National Association of Immigration Judges recommended that immigration courts display disease prevention posters in english and several other languages to protect court employees, lawyers, and attendees.
But as odd as it seems for a court to be part of the executive branch, in the case of immigration courts, they are organized under Article II powers (executive powers, thus accountable to the president) rather than article III (judicial powers, thus accountable to the Supreme Court generally on some matters, or the Chief Justice specifically on remaining matters) because the constitution gives authority over immigration and naturalization to the executive, subject to duly passed laws.
As a result, the President has the authority to interfere with immigration courts to the extent not prohibited by law passed by Congress and signed by the President (or passed with veto-override). Apparently the President or his delegates were none too pleased that immigration judges wanted to prevent death and disease and ordered immigration courts to take the posters down:
EOIR has ordered immigration court staff to remove CDC posters designed to slow spread of coronavirus.
No, this is not a parody account.
— Immigration Judges (NAIJ) (@Imm_Judges_NAIJ) March 9, 2020
It’s hard to explain just how heinous and shortsighted this is, but mostly because it is so obviously heinous and shortsighted. To the Trumpists who actually need this explained, I doubt comprehension will ever come.
ZOMG, there’s a youtube video titled “PragerU Dismantled by an Evolutionary Psychologist”. Key claim? Around 1 minute in, the author of the book “Alpha God” asserts: “Evolutionary psychology explains the biblical god better than Prager does.”
I’m too scared to watch. Someone tell me when it’s over so I can uncover my eyes:
Go. Read the whole thing. But if you are thinking that maybe you don’t really want to travel all the way over there, uphill, in the snow, read this much here:
imagine if the antisocial friends we have online decided to stop being antisocial. What if, and I mean this very seriously, the Chapo boys decided to put on their Little Lord Fauntleroy breeches, and discover their inner Eddie Haskells, and began to check themselves for “politeness” before they addressed a Warren person — or a Bidener, or a Klobucharerer, or a Mayor Pete fan (name people in their movement have been really gross about Mayor Pete) — and began asking themselves, “DOES THIS HELP MY MOVEMENT? COULD I PERSUADE SOME SQUARES WITH SEXY NICENESS?”
Because for all you sneer that “oh mean words matter more than people dying from lack of healthcare?” well, what matters more to you: Getting to say mean words, or people dying from lack of healthcare?
You don’t even have to mean it. You can secretly wish that we all die or get raped or whatever (I hope you don’t wish that, but some of y’all seem to), but out loud, you police yourself and your brothers and sisters: Does. this. help. our movement?
Anyway, that is my idea, and I mean it, and I hope you guys decide to be heroes for your guy, and sacrifice a little of the bile it feels so wonderful to vent. I understand about bile! I promise!
You could give it a stupid name, like the one I came up with already: Grander for Sanders. Find a Warren supporter. Grab her by the arm and help her across the street, metaphorically. I don’t know, offer to wash her lawn or mow her cat.
Because the nihilism is keeping you at a 30 percent ceiling. Chasing off new people is keeping you at a 30 percent ceiling. Coming in hot like Lt. Calley is keeping you at a 30 percent ceiling. Sheeit, shitting on fellow travelers like the fucking democratic socialists at Wonkette is keeping you at a 30 percent ceiling. I know lots of one-time Berners considering a Biden vote, because Biden’s people aren’t emotional terrorists.
And once you start faking niceness, you might find you like it.
It’s a choice! You could make it!
PZ has a new post up about a group Atheists for Liberty which proudly announces its embrace of Enlightenment values. Turns out it is a creature of Peter Boghossian, someone whose work I’ve criticized harshly in the past right here on this blog and whose ethics, clearly, are lacking.
Let’s be clear. “Enlightenment values” suck. Sure, Enlightenment philosophers actually move epistemology forward quite a bit. They also provided hugely important arguments for more widespread literacy and education on diverse topics. They developed a contractarianism sufficiently complete to found a country from Hobbes’ proto-contractarianism where “consent of the governed” had more Machiavellian meanings almost entirely limiting it to the practical advice to rulers not to encourage the masses to take up torches and pitchforks because those torches and pitchforks, in addition to being official notice of revocation of consent, were also a bit dangerous to the ruling class.
You may or may not know, but giving women substandard medical care is kind of a thing. Giving Black women even worse medical care is kind of a thing also, too. So imagine my surprise when I learned that a the person who was treated for a gunshot wound at a Florida hospital using just a bandaid and a scrip for prophylactic antibiotics was a Black woman, Shakena Jefferson, who was married to another woman.
But I’m sure that turned out well, since the news never reports anything bad right? Right?