Don’t let the Republicans escape the Trump taint!

We’ve been watching the death throes of a banana republic for the last month. We have a president who wasn’t fit for the job in the first place thrashing about in a panic to deny the election results, and we have a couple of embarrassingly stupid “lawyers”, Sydney Powell and Rudy Giuliani, making a spectacle of themselves with a string of barely literate lawsuits, all failing. I am not a lawyer, and even I can see the ineptitude on display. It’s not just incompetence — these wackaloons are demanding that Trump throw out the election results by fiat, cancel Biden’s inauguration, and basically rule as a dictator.

None of that is going to happen. The dangerous part is that there are tens of millions of deluded citizens who think it should happen.

The interesting part is that right now, there are some cunning Republicans who enabled this whole catastrophic mess who are skulking away, trying to distance themselves from the consequences of their actions, thinking they can come back in 2024 and pick up the pieces. One of the most delusional is Mike Pence, a rat who is at least aware that he’s on a sinking ship. He’s been trying to crawl out from under the baggage of being Trump’s servant, hoping to avoid being slimed with the garbage the president is throwing around right now.

Vice President Mike Pence has been a go-to fundraising draw for the president’s campaign, and since October, no more than a day passed without his name emblazoning a fundraising email for the Trump reelect.

But that changed late last month. Since Nov. 25, not a single fundraising email from the Trump campaign or its Republican National Committee fundraising account has featured Pence’s name in the “from” field. And this week, that Republican National Committee joint fundraising committee, the Trump Make America Great Again Committee, made another subtle change: a handful of its emails swapped out the official Trump-Pence campaign logo for one featuring just the president’s name.

He’s got to be looking at the example of William Barr, though, who said that there was no evidence of significant fraud in the election, and now has Trump pissed off, considering firing him. Worse, I saw a bit of the Lin-Powell rally in Georgia, and the mob now hates Barr, and was raging about locking him up. Pence doesn’t want that. He’s daydreaming about a comeback, taming that mob to support him in a run for the presidency. So he’s walking a tightrope right now.

There’s no way a man who served as the vice president of a corrupt, treacherous regime could ever resuscitate their political career after this, is there?

Alexander Hamilton Stephens (February 11, 1812 – March 4, 1883) was an American politician who served as the vice president of the Confederate States from 1861 to 1865, and later as the 50th governor of Georgia from 1882 until his death in 1883. A member of the Democratic Party, he represented the state of Georgia in the United States House of Representatives before becoming governor.

Goddamnit, America.

Minnesota is #1!

I wish we weren’t.

This state has been moderately robust in its response to COVID-19 — not great, but at least we’re mostly not in denial — but I blame our high ranking on the fact that we’re surrounded by dumbass states, like Wisconsin and both Dakotas, that don’t even do that much. We ought to just close our borders, shut down the schools and churches, and get this damn thing under control.

Birds are cowards

I was out for a walk, and what did I see? Flocks of birds running away (OK, flying away, to be precise) from our little winter.

OK, I’m being a little unfair, #notallbirds. There are these little black-capped chickadees that hang around my house, and they’ll be here all winter. Those are #bravebirds. But geese? Big bullying cowards that hang around the parks pooping all over the place, and fleeing south at the first little cold snap.

Irony triumphs!

It’s a common trope — the anti-gay fanatic defending Christian values who is caught snorting coke off the backside of a gay hooker (I shouldn’t have to say this, but it’s not the last part that’s objectionable, it’s the hypocrisy in the name of hatred). Now we’ve got the crème de la crème of these kinds of incidents, at least until someone tops it, which they will.

A member of the European Parliament representing Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s Fidesz party has resigned from his position in Brussels after he was caught leaving what reports described as a 25-man orgy on Friday.

Jozsef Szajer resigned on Sunday after he admitted to breaching Belgium’s strict lockdown rules to attend a sex party, Politico reported on Tuesday. The police found 25 naked men at the gathering, including Szajer and some diplomats, the Belgian newspaper La Dernière Heure reported. The newspaper quoted a local police source as saying, “We interrupted a gang bang.”

One last pitch-perfect note:

Szajer, a right-wing politician and ally of Orban, climbed out a first-floor window and was spotted “fleeing along the gutter,” the public prosecutor’s office said.

If that’s your thing, and everyone is consenting, go ahead and leap naked into a 25-man gay orgy. It just sounds exhausting to me, but hey, seize the day. However, you’re going to get called out for this:

Orban’s Hungarian government has curtailed LGBTQ rights since he was elected prime minister in 2010. Szajer, who fronted Fidesz in the European Parliament, helped rewrite Hungary’s constitution to “protect the institution of marriage as the union of a man and a woman,” The Times of London reported.

At least he didn’t marry the other 24 men. That would be bad.

Don’t worry, Jozsef Szajer has apologized.

“I deeply regret violating the Covid restrictions, it was irresponsible on my part. I am ready to stand for the fine that occurs.”

That’s a good point. With all the mucus and fluids flying around, that was probably a super-spreader event.

Sean Bean did it

Those catastrophic hijinks atop the telescope, and the explosions, couldn’t have been good for the structure.

Seriously, and sadly, the Arecibo radio telescope has collapsed. It’s done.

A huge radio telescope in Puerto Rico that has played a key role in astronomical discoveries for more than half a century collapsed on Tuesday, officials said.

The telescope’s 900-ton receiver platform fell onto the reflector dish more than 400 feet below.

The US National Science Foundation had earlier announced that the Arecibo Observatory would be closed. An auxiliary cable snapped in August, causing a 100ft gash on the 1,000ft-wide (305m) reflector dish and damaged the receiver platform that hung above it. Then a main cable broke in early November.

Rather than blaming Sean Bean, though, I should note that this is another example of the decay of our scientific infrastructure on Donald Trump’s watch. You don’t he really cares about a radio telescope, or Puerto Rico, do you?

Wow. Kevin Sorbo is an idiot

I used to watch Hercules with my kids all the time, but then he made God’s Not Dead and demonstrated that he’s a world-class twit. Now you can read this interview with Sorbo and see for yourself. It’s a well-done interview: Marlow Stern just asks him question, and lets Sorbo hang himself with the answers. Normally I detest journalistic stenography, but they are very good questions. He also keeps pointing out where Sorbo is wrong, until Sorbo himself realizes he sounds like an idiot (while not admitting error) and ends it all whining about how it’s going to be a hit piece. Sure thing. Because of what he said, willingly.

It’s all the right-wing’s greatest hits. Venezuela! Bernie is a Stalinist! Hitler was a socialist! That woman who accused him of harassment was just trying to get rich (because accusing someone famous harassment always leads to fame and fortune)! Trump didn’t lose the election! Doctors are faking coronavirus deaths, and masks are no good! Yuck.

A Martian Odyssey, part 1 (fiction)

As we’ve mentioned a few times, we’re having another casual fundraiser this month, and as part of that, we’re doing another fictional story chain. Last time, I got stuck with the chore of providing the concluding chapter of A Dark Web, which involved wrapping up a complicated storyline with gory violent murder and hybrid human-spiders. This time around, I get revenge by starting the thread with a complicated science fiction story about transhumans living on a partially terraformed Mars, and now I get to watch everyone else try to steer the story in unexpected directions (next up: Iris, followed by Abe) and William Brinkman gets to bat clean-up. We’ll have to try a different order in future story threads.

Jump below the fold and get started! Don’t worry, there are far fewer spiders in this one, so far.


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