You know what’s nice? My in-box and Twitter feed are no longer filled with noise about Donald Trump. I have no interest in watching the current impeachment proceedings, which will be full of posturing airheads and bad lawyers making arguments in bad faith. I get a brief distillation of all stupid chatter in the morning, and then I ignore it the rest of the day. It feels good!

So the impeachment trial began yesterday. It went badly for the ol’ orange asshole, with the senate deciding that sure, they could go ahead and impeach him. That’s about it. Now the question is whether they’ll actually do it.

The Democrats are decisive (there’s a phrase I never thought I’d write): yes, they will.

The Republicans are in a dither. What they do is not going to depend on their conscience, or an objective assessment of the evidence, but entirely on the basis of the polling, because they’re all amoral conniving cowards. A substantial number of Republican voters are still in the Cult of Trump, so they’re afraid that voting to impeach will trigger an angry backlash against them…but at the same time, they’re concerned that the ongoing prosecution is going to make such a strong public case that they’ll get a backlash if they don’t vote to impeach. Squirm, you creeps, squirm. I hope they’re all sweating profusely right now.

As for Trump himself, the reports are mixed. The New York Times says he’s furious.

On a scale of one to 10, with 10 being the angriest, Mr. Trump “was an eight,” one person familiar with his reaction said.
And while he was heartened that his other lawyer, Mr. Schoen, gave a more spirited performance, Mr. Trump ended the day frustrated and irate, the people familiar with his reaction said.

I’m a terrible person who likes to hear that the ex-president is suffering, but it is the NYT, and I do not trust the NYT. The Washington Post says something different: he’s sanguine.

But Trump’s seeming quietude, said one confidant who recently spoke with the former president, is less the result of newfound discipline and more a consequence of Twitter’s decision to ban Trump, who no longer has an instant public forum to blast out his latest grievances.

Both papers conclude, unfortunately, that the impeachment is not likely to succeed, so maybe he’s got good reason to relax. About the trial, at least. His financial empire is crumbling around him and he’s got a future of lawsuits to shred his declining years.

That’s a wrap. Now I have to think about genetics all day long.

Can someone explain this to me, because I don’t get it.

It’s from a right-wing Christian site, which explains how they don’t understand the words patriotism, socialism, and racism, but why is there a woman in a bikini pointing out the big stupid sign? And do they really think their critics confuse racism and patriotism?

There’s a guy I follow on Facebook — regrettably, he’s an old, old friend, but he’s gone off the cliff edge with conservative BS — who was recently outraged that the government spends $40 million a year on the retirement pensions for politicians. I don’t know where he got that number, but it’s not scary at all, since there are probably a few thousand retired politicians who had contracts for a retirement package. Numbers add up!

But here’s what he isn’t complaining about, the conservative estimate of the cost of Trump’s lies.

Those are only the expenses since he lost the election and started vomiting up lies to throw the nation into chaos — he had 4 years before that where he bled us dry with nonsense, and we still have to deal with the legacy of all the garbage he littered on our government.

So yeah, $40 million in retirement expenses sounds cheap to me. I wouldn’t squeak if we were coughing up $400 million in legit retirement costs. I wonder if my poor deluded old friend has retired, and whether he thinks he is entitled to social security and a pension or a 401K, and how he’d feel if we declared him old and useless so we can take that money away?

Donald Trump has been kicked out of the Screen Actors Guild! Boo-hoo. You can tell it burns him, though, since he felt compelled to write back with a “you can’t fire me, I quit!” letter. It’s so pathetic and petty, just like Donald himself.

I write to you today regarding the so-called Disciplinary Committee hearing aimed at revoking my
union membership. Who cares! [You do, Donald, you do]
While I’m not familiar with your work, I’m very proud of my work on movies such as Home Alone 2,
Zoolander and Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps; and television shows including The Fresh Prince of
Bel-Air, Saturday Night Live, and of course, one of the most successful shows in television history,
The Apprentice – to name just a few! [He just has to pat himself on the back. His little cameos were’t that impressive]
I’ve also greatly helped the cable news television business (said to be a dying platform with not much
time left until I got involved in politics), and created thousands of jobs at networks such as MSDNC
and Fake News CNN, among many others. [He thinks that because he was such an asshole that news agencies had to report on all of his lies, he deserves credit for their work]
Which brings me to your blatant attempt at free media attention to distract from your dismal record as
a union. Your organization has done little for its members, and nothing for me – besides collecting
dues and promoting dangerous un-American policies and ideas – as evident by your massive
unemployment rates and lawsuits from celebrated actors, who even recorded a video asking, “Why
isn’t the union fighting for me?”
These, however, are policy failures. Your disciplinary failures are even more egregious.
I no longer wish to be associated with your union.
As such, this letter is to inform you of my immediate resignation from SAG-AFTRA. You have done
nothing for me.

Poor baby. Even better, though, is SAG-AFTRA’s reply, which is short and sweet.

“Thank you.”

It’s so nice to see every little cut delivered as Trump falls.

It’s not all good news, though.

The House of Representatives has voted to strip Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of her committee assignments, following uproar over her past incendiary comments and apparent support of violence against Democrats.

Thursday’s vote was 230-199, with 11 Republicans joining with all Democrats to back the resolution.

Almost 200 Republicans refused to condemn her remarks, and thought it was just fine to have a treasonous conspiracy theorist serving their agenda. This was just a vote to kick her off the budget and education committees, not to repudiate her and kick her out of congress, as she deserves.

I’d like to see Cruz and Hawley booted off their committees, but I predict nothing will be done there.

The Republican party really must be destroyed.

Every Fall, as I travel around, I’m mystified by all the freshly harvested fields, black with exposed soil, and I wonder…isn’t that a bad idea? Isn’t that nice rich dirt going to wash away when the snow melts and the spring rains arrive? But what do I know? I’m not a farmer. I never studied agriculture, so I’m just going to trust the experts whose livelihood depends on their land.

Of course, my confidence tends to be eroded by all the Trump signs on those fields.

But good news! For once, the giant food corporations are trying to do something for the environment. They’re giving farmers incentives to practice something called regenerative agriculture.

Still, the companies’ moves have the potential to expand the use of unconventional farming practices known as regenerative agriculture. The movement represents a fundamental change to the way mainstream farmers manage their fields.

Regenerative principles call for reducing or even eliminating such mainstays of farming as tilling the soil before sowing seeds. Other regenerative techniques include planting cover crops, so soil is never bare; expanding plant diversity; adding livestock to an operation; and reducing or eliminating the use of chemicals.

The system has benefits such as storing more climate-altering carbon in the soil, improving water quality by preventing runoff, and reducing the need for pesticides by increasing insect biodiversity. Research shows it can also make farms more profitable by reducing the cost of chemicals and fertilizer and spreading price risk among many crops instead of just corn and soybeans.

“It’s not just about carbon. It’s not just a water benefit,” Sirolli said. “You get all of these different benefits that you stack together that benefit the community, that benefit the planet, while at the same time making sense for the farmer.”

See? I am learning something about farming. Although to be fair, if I’d been asked, I would have made suggestions along those same lines, although having to be admittedly vague about how to implement them.

I was probably thinking selfishly, though. Fewer pesticides → more plant and insect diversity → MORE SPIDERS. Also all those agricultural pollutants are just bad for us.

Overall, the Minnesota River is unhealthy. Sediment clouds the water, phosphorus causes algae, nitrogen poses risks to humans and fish, and bacteria make the water unsafe for swimming.

You know, I’m sitting here in a pandemic unvaccinated because the need exceeds the supply, and I’m willing to defer to the priorities of the society I live in and will wait until my opportunity rolls around. I am confident, because I know how vaccines and the immune system work, that vaccination is the solution that will end the restrictions on travel and personal interactions. I also know, because I’ve read the empirical studies, that masks are a good stopgap to slow the spread of the virus. I also know and trust the authorities, like Tara C. Smith and Anthony Fauci, who have made a career of studying infectious disease.

These are reasonable, informed attitudes to take toward our situation. I suspect that the majority of readers here share my ideas. These ideas are not up for debate; the question of whether the germ theory of disease was valid was resolved long ago, there’s confirmed scientific evidence behind them, and if you want to question them, you’d better be a verified expert who has gathered an immense amount of observation and experiment to back up your challenge.

And then there are the goddamned idiots who get everything they know from circle jerks on Facebook. They translated their ignorance into a mob action at Dodger Stadium, actively preventing other people from getting vaccinated.

My rage is boundless. It’s bad enough that these assholes want to run around spewing viruses on everyone, that they defy the need to take basic precautions to limit the spread, and that they are upset because those precautions interfere with the need to get their precious Fifi to the dog-groomers, but now they’re forcing everyone else to not take the best preventive action we can do? Don’t they realize that the only effective way to end the lockdown that has limited movement and social events, and to get rid of the masks that annoy them, is for a majority of the populace to get that quick little shot?

No, they don’t. Because they get all their information from their equally ignorant friends and family on Facebook.

The anti-vaccine protest that temporarily cut off access to a mass vaccination site at Dodger Stadium was organized on Facebook through a page that promotes debunked claims about the coronavirus pandemic, masks and immunization.

The Facebook page, “Shop Mask Free Los Angeles,” issued a call last week to gather Saturday at the baseball park. Health authorities have been administering shots to as many as 8,000 people a day at the site, one of the largest vaccination centers in the country. Such venues form a critical component of the effort to corral the pandemic, which has lashed Los Angeles County so brutally in recent weeks that oxygen for patients has been in short supply.

The online activity illustrates the extent to which Facebook remains a critical organizing tool of the anti-vaccine movement, despite the company’s repeated vows to curb coronavirus misinformation. It also shows how social networking services could foster more confrontational tactics by those committed to false ideas about the dangers of immunization as the mass vaccination effort ramps up.

Jesus, but I hate Facebook. I’m still on it myself, because it remains the one way I can maintain contact with far-flung friends and family, but let’s face reality: Facebook is a giant information-harvesting operation that sells all the information it gathers to other big corporations and political organizations. That it allows me to contact an aunt I haven’t seen in 20 years, or see pictures of my nieces and nephews new babies, isn’t their business model. They’re there to monitor my personal information to sell to the highest bidder. I’ve signed up for alternatives like MeWe or Mastodon (I did not sign up for Parler or Gab, for obvious reasons), but they don’t have the critical mass, and there’s no point unless all the others I want to follow sign up as well.

Facebook does not care about misinformation or privacy or propaganda. All of the assholes got their marching orders from a Facebook page that spread to other Facebook pages that have been continuously spreading lies throughout the pandemic.

The page itself has only about 3,000 followers, but the notice about what it termed a “PROTEST/MARCH” at the mass vaccination site was shared extensively in Facebook groups and on pages fixated on false ideas about masks, such as that they restrict breathing and that the Constitution forbids mandating their use. Names of the online forums include “Anti-Mask REVOLUTION!” and “Unmask California.”

The technology giant committed at the end of last year to enhancing its policies against coronavirus-related misinformation. That included a pledge to remove misinformation about the safety, efficacy, ingredients and side effects of coronavirus vaccines.

In a sign of gaps in the company’s enforcement, however, the “About” section of the anti-mask page promoting the Saturday protest included a link to a website devoted to the baseless “Plandemic” narrative accusing shadowy elites of enriching themselves by engineering the coronavirus and a vaccine for it.

Yeah, sure, Facebook is “committed” to ending the spread of misinformation, just like Twitter was so committed to ending political dishonesty that they waited until the last week of his presidency to cancel Trump’s account. There is no investment in truth and accuracy anywhere in the Facebook/Twitter/Instagram business model. They’re all about drawing in users by feeding them what they want, and if they want poison, so be it. Poison is profit for Facebook, so trusting them to do the right thing is folly.

If social media are things the public finds useful, then what needs to be done is to regulate the fuck out of Facebook, put in punishments with teeth in them for spreading misinformation, and make the company executives directly accountable for the harm they do.

Not that that will ever happen. We’re just going to wallow in the shit the goddamn idiots make.