GOP: The party that can’t count straight

The US House of Representatives is structured so as to give the speaker, who is selected by the majority party, almost total control over what legislation comes to the floor for a vote. This means that you are almost guaranteed that when the speaker put a bill before the house, it is because they are confident that they have the votes to pass it. When Nancy Pelosi was the speaker, she was an accurate vote counter and never lost a vote.

But yesterday, the GOP lost a vote. This was not over a trivial issue but a vote to impeach homeland security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. A major goal of the GOP is to impeach someone, anyone, as revenge for the two impeachments of serial sex abuser Donald Trump (SSAT) but their efforts to do so against Joe Biden are floundering because they cannot find any grounds for dong so. They decided on Mayorkas because he deals with border security and accusing him of failing to protect the country advances that agenda too. Not everyone in the GOP was happy with the idea of frivolously using the impeachment process this way and three of the GOP members said that they planned to vote vote against the measure but the speaker went ahead with the planned vote anyway.
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Using outrageous statements to make a nice living

There are a large number of right wing people that one hears about who have a penchant for saying the most outrageous things. right wing media and use that as a route to financial success.

Take, for example, Candace Owens who is employed by the website The Daily Wire as a columnist. She started out as a political activist by criticizing the Republican party and serial sex abuser Donald Trump (SSAT) but then suddenly in 2017 she became a conservative and started attacking the usual targets of the extreme right wing. She is now a pro-Trump conspiracy-spouting election denier who seems to be a popular figure in right wing circles despite not saying anything worthwhile. She is not alone. The last decade has produced a regular stream of such people.
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What kind of immigrants should the US admit?

The issue of the border and migration is a politically charged issue. Republicans have seized upon it as one of the few concrete issues that they think can help them win elections, since their other issues involve culture wars that do not seem to have gained much traction. So desperate are they to keep this issue alive that the speaker of the House of Representatives Mike Johnson, urged on by serial sex abuser Donald Trump (SSAT), has promised to torpedo a bipartisan plan negotiated by Republicans and Democrats in the Senate to deal with the border issue, so that it will not be resolved before the election, even though the plan seems to give hard-line Republicans almost every thing that they had demanded.

Opponents to any attempt to deal with the border issues have exploited the xenophobia that is always lurking in the minds of people to view anything other that harsh exclusionary treatment of those seeking asylum as constituting an ‘open borders’ policy that will destroy the US. This xenophobia is laced with racism since the immigrants they are concerned about stopping are people of color, while SSAT has bemoaned that they are not people from Europe who would no doubt be welcomed into the country.
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The ‘average’ child

As someone who has spent almost his entire life in academic institutions, I know how easy it is to put labels on students depending upon one’s perception of their academic potential. When faculty talk about students, they will frequently characterize them by such labels. It is a destructive habit since it seems to suggest to students that they are limited in what they can do. I tried to fight against that tendency in my own speech and encouraged fellow faculty to take a less rigid view but was not always successful, so encompassing is that mindset in academia.

It can affect more harmfully those who are thought to be ‘average’ or below since it can reduce their ambitions, as this poem by Mike Buscemi serves to remind us.

THE AVERAGE CHILD

I don’t cause teachers trouble;
My grades have been okay.
I listen in my classes.
I’m in school every day.

My teachers think I’m average;
My parents think so too.
I wish I didn’t know that, though;
There’s lots I’d like to do.

I’d like to build a rocket;
I read a book on how.
Or start a stamp collection…
But no use trying now.

Cause, since I found I’m average,
I’m smart enough you see
To know there’s nothing special
I should expect of me.

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Wind, rain, and power outages

California has been hit with heavy rain and gusty winds the last few days. In my area, yesterday was the worst, with wind gusts up to 60 mph and heavy rain, with short periods of bright sunshine in between. I lost power the whole of Sunday which is why there were no posts. Since I did not have to go anywhere, I stayed at home and watched the weather changes through my window, with the winds causing the trees to sway to and fro. I have not seen this kind of weather since I moved here over four years ago.

Since sunset is about 5:30 pm at this time of year, it was interesting to sit inside and slowly watch everything becoming totally dark, since there were no lights anywhere in the area and the heavy cloud cover shut off any light from the moon and stars.

Today the winds and rain have eased up here but the news says that it is still hitting the southern part of the state hard, with further flooding expected.

(Almost) everyone is having fun with the Taylor Swift conspiracy theories

The ridiculous conspiracy theories that are circling around the singer and the Super Bowl are a source of great amusement to me and to a lot of others. I had thought that Swift had become a big star just in the last couple of years but it turns out that that was because I had not been paying attention. She has been performing for 17 years and selling out stadiums for a long time. But while that level of success made her a household name among those who follow popular music, her relationship with an NFL football player has thrust her in front of a much wider audience, people like me who had only been dimly aware of her.

The wild idea that she is a part of a ‘psyop’ operation by the Pentagon has clearly created amusement in that austere institution.

The claims by Fox News and far-right influencers that pop star Taylor Swift is part of a Pentagon “psychological operation” to get President Joe Biden reelected, and somehow rig the Super Bowl to benefit Kansas City Chiefs tight end (and Swift’s boyfriend) Travis Kelce, has been met with forehead slaps in the national security world.

“The absurdity of it all boggles the mind,” said one senior administration official, granted anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly on the matter. “It feels like one of those ‘tell me you are a MAGA conspiracy theorist, without telling me you are a MAGA conspiracy theorist’ memes.”
…

Faced with an onslaught of journalist questions about the theory, spokesperson Sabrina Singh was ready for it.

In the name of being honest, Singh vehemently denied Swift is part of a DOD operation.

“We know all too well the dangers of conspiracy theories, so to set the record straight — Taylor Swift is not part of a DOD psychological operation. Period,” Singh told POLITICO.

Of course, that is what people behind such an operation would say, no? Don’t be fooled, sheeple!

(Jack Ohman)
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Film review: Rustin (2023)

Bayard Rustin played a major role in the civil rights struggle in the US but his name is not nearly as well known as it should be. This film, streamed on Netflix, tries to correct that deficiency. It is not a full biopic since it focuses almost entirely on the eight weeks in which Rustin organized the August 28, 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on the National Mall that culminated with Martin Luther King’s famous ‘I have a dream’ speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. That drew about 250,000 people from all over the country and was instrumental in pressuring president Kennedy and the Congress to pass the Civil Rights Act that had been stalled.

Rustin was multi-talented, a charismatic speaker and an indefatigable and inspiring organizer whom young people rallied to. His idea for the march met with resistance from the old guard Black establishment in the NAACP that wanted a more go-slow, less confrontational approach in dealing with Congress and Kennedy. Rustin allied himself with veteran labor leader A. Philip Randolph to argue that they could pull off a massive march in such a short time. Both sides vied to get King on board with their side. Rustin was an old friend of King and his family and once he got King’s agreement to speak, he went full throttle to get the event organized in just two months. It remains one of the landmark events in the fight for civil rights in the US.
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Taylor Swift drives the MAGA world bonkers

The singer has become such a massive pop culture phenomenon that her every action now receives scrutiny even from the mainstream media, where once it would have been just the preserve of the tabloids and the paparazzi. She has had such an impact that even I, someone who is totally out of touch with popular culture and have never heard a single song of hers, know something about her and have now mentioned her in posts on two consecutive days.

As far as I can tell, Swift is not a political activist. She does not use social media to talk about politics or Biden or serial sex abuser Donald Trump (SSAT) nor does she do political fundraisers. She did endorse Joe Biden in 2020 and posed with a plate of Biden-Harris cookies. She has also supported a voter registration drive last year but that is a politically neutral activity, though for Republicans increasing voter turnout is seen as a nefarious act. That is about it. But even those fairly innocuous acts seem to have driven members of the MAGA cult round the bend. They seem to think that Swift is some kind of Democratic deep-state operative and that the whole media focus around Swift and her relationship with a football player is part of a sinister plan to … well, it is not exactly clear what the plan seeks to achieve and how.
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