SocraticGadfly

January 21, 2025

Dear Keen boots: Your recycling effort is undercut by your hypercapitalism

I bought one pair of Keen boots, listed as running narrower than other boots of theirs, a little over a year ago after seeing my sis rock a pair of their running shoes.

They're on the lighter side on weight, and probably on durability, but they work pretty well for lighter hiking. And, Keen touts its commitment to recycled materials.

Then, after a December sales push this last December, I bought a pair of decent, higher durability boots from them.

And?

I opened the doors of capitalist hell in return.

Every other day, at least, it seems that I get bombarded with another email saying this, that or the other shoe or boot is on sale.

A week ago, I made a mistake clicking one of the email links. It apparently had a tracking cookie that got past Ghostery and Firefox, because, just a few hours later, I got a new email about determining sizing. (I had clicked on the button for my size after looking at that particular boot.)

ENOUGH!

I've already been thinking that, should I need a boot again in the next five years, I'll visit one of the European companies that's cut narrower, and uses Continental tire rubber instead of Vibram for the soles.

Hey, Keen? As long as you're recycling, why not replace Vibram with recycled tires?

January 20, 2025

Top 10 reasons Kamala lost

I had said some time ago I'd offer a more complete roundup after some earlier posts. This will have to do, so we have something for today to warm the hearts of #BlueAnon even as they pull their pussy hats out of storage for four years.

Some of these will apply to the 2024 election in general, not just Biden.

1? Joe Biden himself, the big picture, mainly the Dementia Joe. Breaking his one-term promise (maybe he forgot he made that) then, until the last week of his term, being Irish Alzheimer's stubborn enough (or maybe just actual Alzheimer's stubborn enough) to insist he would have won had he stayed in the race. By not dropping out MUCH sooner, he (in part) prevented an actual primary cycle.

2? Joe Biden being full of shit up to the very end and Kamala as a Zionist Cop not rejecting that, nor Democratic national leaders in general.

3? Linked in that No. 2, Biden going Cold War 2.0. That said, he wasn't alone; behind the hawks of Tony Blinken and others on the inside, plenty of Democrat Congresscritters signed off on the Ukraine War and on Warmonger Joe stonewalling Putin day and night from the beginning.

4? White House, and Dem Congresscritter, enablers. Some of that's at the link above. More here at the Guardian:

In public, Phillips was ridiculed. In private, others shared his concerns. Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, recalled receiving a call from a Democratic senator in late January or early February 2024.
“I said, ‘Is there any particular reason why you called me? I’d like to know.’ He said, ‘You do realise, off the record, that Joe Biden is not going to be our nominee?’ I was stunned. I said, ‘What, how, why?’ He said, ‘I just was at a meeting with him with several other senators and he couldn’t even function. We can’t run him.’”
Sabato added that the senator in question tried to raise the issue, which angered the White House. “He was punished, as several of them were. They gave him the cold shoulder for a while. The point is that a lot of people had figured it out but they didn’t care. I’m stunned that they got away with it and have produced term two for Trump and it’s going to be the longest four years of our life.”

More weirdly yet, James Clyburn continues to be as much of a true believer in-non Dementia Joe as is Biden himself, as detailed at that link.

5? Media enablers. Here, I'm talking about MSM that many rank and file #BlueAnon thought were picking on Biden early-to-mid 2024, but even more, MSM-like opining sites. Some of these are smaller, but some are big enough they had not only heard the rumors about Biden's competence; whether being gatekeepered by the people in No. 4, or else having personal interactions, they knew the score with Biden. And kept silent. Per that Guardian piece, some of the insiders at these sites were picking up on at least bits of this a year ago themselves. And for "access" reasons like those above, taking a pass. That's detailed:

The administration continued to play down concerns about Biden’s age and gave short shrift to any journalist who dared raise it.

There you are.

That even more includes intra-Democrat opinion media. Like the full-of-shit Akilah Hughes.

6? Dem Party potential primary candidate enablers. Eugene McCarthy, consequences be damned, challenged LBJ while chickenhawk Bobby Kennedy sat on the sidelines. RFK Jr had jumped ship long before this, but wasn't popular anyway. Ditto for Marianne Williamson. But, where was a Gretchen Whitmer, or Cal's Gov. Pothole, Gavin Nuisance, now among 2028 nomination touts? Hell, where was Bernie Sanders? So, you lose a third time as Dear Leader finds a replacement for the late Harry Reid to shiv you. Instead, you stayed silent, too. That said, contra Krystal Ball and Kyle Kulinski, no, you wouldn't have won. But, you didn't even run. You didn't even talk about running.

In other words, even if Biden was stubborn, nobody but backbencher Dean Phillips would challenge him, setting aside Brainworm Bobby and Ms. New Age, until it was too late to do anything but shove Harris forward.

7? Related. Democrat tribalism, infighting and self-preservation that became ever more visible after Election Day started well before.

8? Beyond Biden, the Democrat Party's general national stance on Israel-Gaza. Even the touted, vaunted, full of crap herself AOC couldn't bring herself to vote against much, because her goal is climbing the Dem organizational ladder.

9? Misreading the midterms. This applies a bit in general, but primarily to Biden. Dems' success in Congressional races numbed them to Biden perhaps not connecting to the general public, discussed at that Guardian link by old Clintonista Paul Begala. Democrats as a party misread the 2022 midterms room for 2024 on Dobbs, above all. The fact that red states, even, in more than one state, extended abortion protections while voting Trump at least as solidly as 2022 shows that. OTOH, Dems made up five seats, with vacancies, in the House while holding Republicans to no gains, and lost only two Senate seats. So, here, the misreading was primarily Harris' — and Biden's before that.

10? Kamala Harris is a bad campaigner. It ain't hard getting elected to statewide office in California. You just have to win the Dem primary. But, her 2020 presidential campaign showed she wasn't ready for the big stage, and other than the post-DNC surge last year, nothing in 2024 showed otherwise. Sure, she had the difficulty of Team Biden staff second-guessing her, as did some Obama alums, but her campaigning in places like Pennsylvania was horrible all on its own.

January 17, 2025

The latest Counterpunch misstep

Will Solomon, writing at Counterpunch, was apparently impressed by Glenn Greenwald more recently than I was, and by Sam Harris far more recently than I was. I say "apparently" because it's paywalled, as that site continues to slouch toward Gomorrah. (The title is about how "tech billionaires have bought the loudest voices on left and right.) 

I would pay to read THAT?  Some Captain Obvious shit that may imply that, in years past at least, Glennwald was a leftist, too?

Beyond the likely nature of this piece, it's not the first one that's a semi-Captain Obvious one that St. Clair and Cockburn have paywalled in the last three months or so as part of getting more aggressive in general with paywalls.

Seriously, I need to get that updated blogroll done and my old one hauled down.

January 16, 2025

Joe Biden, full of shit one last time

In his "farewell address," Genocide Joe / Warmonger Joe / Wallbuilder Joe, etc. warned about a number of issues. I roasted him with some flash snark on Shitter, but wanted to go more in depth about the full reality of his outright mendaciousness.

This was the first warning of his:

“Today, an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedoms, and a fair shot for everyone to get ahead,” Biden said.

Really? 

Yes, your Democraps have been out-oligarchied by Rethuglicans, perhaps, but not for want of trying.

Your Veep blew through billions on her presidential campaign, went massively in debt, and will stiff every non-oligarch she can.

You yourself cut back, or rather, gutted COVID aid (just like your old boss, Dear Leader, not spending enough on the Great Recession because Rahm Emanuel said so) and other issues.

You've done nothing for national healthcare.

But, you DID have your Department of Justice pile on, with the person angry to violence about healthcare and the oligarchs who run it, Luigi Mangione, and file a federal case in addition to state charges.

Fuck off right there.

On to the rest:

The president outlined some of his most pressing concerns, including what he described as a “crumbling” free press, the outsized influence of the military-industrial complex, rising disinformation, and the need to remove dark money from politics.

Oh, you're getting your ass kicked.

"Crumbling" free press? Coming from the guy who wants to ban TikTok because he's afraid of ChiNazis, tried to get social media to self-censor and other things?

Update: Throwing Sam Husseini out of a presser with Tony Blinken is sure as hell crumbling the free press.

"Criminal! Why aren't you in The Hague," shouted Sam Husseini, an independent journalist and longtime critic of Washington's approach to the world. The Hague is where the International Criminal Court is located.
The unusually confrontational scene in the State Department briefing room only ended when security personnel forcibly picked up Husseini and carried him out of the room as he continued to heckle Blinken.

Max Blumenthal was escorted out, but without force:

"Why did you keep the bombs flowing when we had a deal in May?" Max Blumenthal, editor of the Grayzone, an outlet that strongly criticizes many aspects of U.S. foreign policy, called out to Blinken, before he was escorted out.

Yeah, self-crumbling the free press. Here's Husseini writing about it himself. And, video:

Here's Max's video.

This is, per The Nation's Jeet Heer, "ultra-hawk" Tony Blinken, surely one of the Team Biden insideres who has long known about his dementia and who ran foreign policy as an independent fiefdom like Henry Kissinger. As for Biden himself? Heer notes his fawning over Scoop Jackson:

In a 1983 eulogy on the Senate floor, Biden said that “Jackson changed a major part of my political life” by teaching him the importance of Israel to American foreign policy.

Blech. That said, the farthest left Jeet can go for people criticizing Biden's military Keynesianism is Adam Tooze.

Outsized influence of the military-industrial complex? This is Genocide Joe, the man who never met a bomb for Israel he didn't like.

Rising disinformation? 

Like when Anthony Fauci told people NOT to wear masks at the start of COVID (and went on from there)? When he claimed Peter Daszak was NOT doing gain of function research? When he himself claimed that a "red line" with Bibi Netanyahu was a red line? When he said four years ago he'd only run for one term?

Dark money in politics? Neither you nor Dear Leader tried to do any repairs to McCain-Feingold, for starters.

There is no reason for many people to die in wildfires

The Paradise Fire (Camp Fire by name, Paradise being the town) was and is a tragic exception, but let's note that — it was tragic, and it was and is an exception to what I mention in the header.

I decided to pull information I had written about the earliest reported deaths from the Palisades and Eaton fires from the roasting I had given Joshua Frank of Counterpunch to reference them separately.

On the 11 deaths recorded through Saturday afternoon? And on why they died? I'll take them in order of presentation in the story.

First, pets are not people. I know that, Robert Putnam "bowling alone" cliches aside, for more and more people living alone, they've become quasi-people. But? They're not people. And, while not talking about LA wildfires, but rather, the ice storm in his Atlanta area, Ed Buckner agrees that pets aren't people.

Second, if an amputee father told his out-of-state daughter he was going to evacuate, wouldn't that have originally included his cerebral palsy son living with him, so what changed his mind? Something happened. But, it didn't need to. He should have evacuated with his son.

Third, it wasn't in god's hands, because, per Muhammad, there is no god and I am his prophet, and unlike nutters in Tex-ass with tornadoes, nobody prayed away the fire. To be really blunt, and switch from theology to secularism? People who have a fatalistic version of "god's will" and get their asses killed in natural disasters are Darwin Award candidates. 

Fourth, in the reverse of social media rumors, don't try to fight fires like this if you're not a firefighter. Sixth is No. 4 in spades — definitely don't try to be a professional firefighter if you have cerebral palsy. Seventh, don't try to be a professional firefighter.

Fifth, why was the person talking to his family on his cellphone not self-evacuated long before? (Story doesn't explain why he stayed.)  

Someone who did not die, but was it worth the risk? It is craptacular for 90-year-olds to have their insurance cancelled, but is it worth it for a 60-ish child to risk dying, especially since you don't know that you can keep their house from burning or not? And, on this whole issue, I'm not meaning to excuse property insurers, but, per Abrahm Lustgarten, maybe insurance against both fire and hurricane needs to be less state-socialized; Lustgarten specifically noted in his book that making people feel enough pain on this aspect of climate change might actually spur action. The story linked at the top of the piece notes that Cal state regulators have allowed a bunch of insurance hikes; socialist Florida and Tex-ass refuse to do that with hurricanes. The piece also notes that the state's former insurance commissioner forced all state-operating property insurers to look at their investments in fossil fuels; unfortunately, no divestments were required.

Side note: SCOTUS is allowing state-based climate change lawsuits to proceed. Team Biden wanted this, but Team Biden has also refused to file amicus briefs let alone its own lawsuits.

Four and seven remind me of Florida hurricane nutters. This paragraph may sound callous, but, as with Florida hurricane nutters, none of these people had to die. They didn't, period and end of story.

==

The Beeb has a Jan. 13 update. In addition to the above, you have a person saying "the fire would pass over" (equivalent of act of god and/or hurricane nutters), a "fires didn't get here before" (hurricane nutters), and at least one other amateur firefighter.

==

What are best practices to prevent wildfire spread? Stephen Eisenman offers some at Counterpunch, while claiming others, such as prescribed burns, will make things worse. OK, that's good reason to have fewer rebuilds. As for "house-hardening"? That's going to push California housing costs even higher. As for, per Naked Capitalism, the slow pace of rebuilding in the Santa Monica Mountains after a 2020 fire being a harbinger for LA? Maybe most that rebuilding shouldn't happen. Move to Cleveland or St. Louis, where the water is and the wildfires are not. Counterpunch's Jeff St. Clair linked to that, and is drawing the same wrong conclusions as Joshua Frank.

January 15, 2025

Burrows as Texas House Speaker? No, not "surprised"; and is this a mess of pottage for House Dems?

Dustin Burrows was elected Texas Speaker of the House 85-55 in the second round. The Trib reports nine "present" after Ana Maria Ramos fell out after the first round. That's still one short of 150; why Yvonne Davis wasn't there, I don't know. BUT, contra the Trib, the stormtrooper followers of Christofascist Tim Dunn are NOT "insurgents." Shock me that Justin Barragán and Jasper Scherer have the bylines; they probably wrote the fucking header, too.

That said, contra Kuff, I'm not "a little surprised." (At least he had the "a little" qualifier.) Both Burrows and Cook were playing their cards close to the vest ever since the House GOP Caucus meeting last month. In the last 48 hours before the voting, both had one or two announcements of people on the wagon, but that was it. Otherwise, Burrows was of course aggressive in his claim of 76 supporters right after the caucus, even if that initially blew up in his face.

Now, the mess of pottage issue? 

Per the "blew up" link, Burrows had already said no Democrat committee chairs. He had already said he would let any vouchers bill reach the House floor. And, he was already known for 2023's "Death Star" bill sponsorship. So, unless there were some private deals we don't yet know about, what did Dems gain by not letting David Cook have the job? I already talked about that, as well as whether or not the state GOP will really censure any Burrows voters, including the new of 2024 state resolution to include a primary election ban, late last year.

Anyway, summarizing a shitload of snark I posted on Twitter yesterday? I loved the Texas exceptionalism blather coming from nomination speechifiers, including from presumed ConservaDem Toni Rose in seconding Burrows' nomination. I also loved Ana-Maria Ramos doing her best Castilian-lite Spanish in imitation of Maria Hinojosa of Latino USA.

Missed by me from the Trib? Lone Star Left says Ramos voted for Cook not Burrows in round two. Butt-hurt? I also loved Ramos seconding her own nomination. Add egotistical to butt-hurt. No wonder Dems still can't win more in the not-so-great, not-blessed-by-a-nonexistent-critter Pointy Abandoned Object State™.

Flip side? She may be right on not wanting to buy a mess of pottage that will probably be of limited benefit.

==

Update: In a folo piece by the Trib's same Bobbsey Twins, House Dems leader Gene Wu says there's a clear difference between Burrows and Wu, and even still holds out hope that Dems will, despite Burrows' previous hinted personal opposition, get to head some committees. (Burrows is now on record as saying he'll let the full House vote on the issue, but I doubt that most the Rethugs who voted for him will risk getting primaried over this.)

As for the idea he'll not shut Dems out of the House bill-making process? Yes, that's a win.

As far as the idea this keeps the House independent from Dan Patrick? Yes, that's a win.

Otherwise? Nothing new and move along.