A skeptical leftist's, or post-capitalist's, or eco-socialist's blog, including skepticism about leftism (and related things under other labels), but even more about other issues of politics. Free of duopoly and minor party ties. Also, a skeptical look at Gnu Atheism, religion, social sciences, more.
Note: Labels can help describe people but should never be used to pin them to an anthill.
As seen at Washington Babylon and other fine establishments
Mark Charles is, first of all, of Navajo and Dutch Anglo parentage. I've never met him personally, but as he, like I, grew up in the Gallup, New Mexico, famed in song and story, I know his background.
That background includes attending a private Christian school.
(Took me several minutes of teh Google to find his age. He's seven years younger than me, and since I left Gallup after my sophomore year in high school, and I went to the hospital run by the Christian Reformed more than once before that, it's possible I saw him sometime in my childhood life, but at a minimum, again, I have a feeling for his background.)
So, let's look more at the 2020 independent presidential candidate.
Charles is smooth, and slick enough to be releasing a policy piece a week at his campaign website, but, other than to be an independent candidate and, I believe, the first American Indian to run for prez, not veep, I see nothing, other than a point here and there specifically on American Indian rights and issues, that differentiates him from any Green. He's certainly not further left that that. And, as a former pastor in the Christian Reformed Church, and who still has ties to a conservative Calvinist seminary of that officially anti-gay church, I have other concerns. One is that the CRC is still officially anti-gay.
To put it another way? The CRC is the denominational home of the DeVos family, as in Betsy DeVos, Trump's Secretary of Education, daughter in law of Dick DeVos of Amway founding fame and married to his namesake son.
The denomination, while not quite wingnut, is conservative. Besides being anti-gay, per Wiki's link opposing being "actively homosexual," detailed here, it also:
Believes in an infallible bible;
Is anti-abortion;
Is "interesting" on labor unions;
Is anti-Masonic.
I tweeted Charles, asking his personal stance on gay rights issues given his CRC connections. No response.That said, his position paper on "gender equality" on his website has among the fullest abbreviation salad I've yet seen of gender groups (So, in THAT case, why does the CRC let him maintain the connections he does? He is violating church doctrine.)
I tweeted him again a week later, having seen Texas Green Party co-chair Laura Palmer retweet (presumably favorably, related to basic income) a tweet of his. Raised the CRC angle. No response. As for Palmer, nothing new here. She bromanced Yang, then Tulsi, during Dem primaries.
Plenty of stuff regionally, statewide and nationally to write about, from Austin actually kind of defunding its police, through Seth Rich conspiracy theorist Ed Butowsky and his bullshit legal beagle Ty Clevenger facing new legal hot water, to conspiracy thinking on political websites.
So, let's dig in!
Austin
Kudos to the Austin City Council for being possibly the first big city in the US to take a BIG whack to its police budget, along with other actual reforms. Grits has more.
Dallas
Jim Schutze notes that a small bit of "reparations" are tucked into a major Dallas ISD bond issue, as well as discussion over whether that word should be used or not.
DosCentavos took the week off, but he does point us all to a piece by Latino Decisions , reporting that Latino voters are quite content with the Kamala Harris pick for VP.
Reform Austin warns of the bad effects of a Census undercount.
Dan Solomon brings us the twenty most iconic local TV and billboard legends, and continues his string of teh sux by omitting both Burton Gilliam and Brian Loncar. (I put the "no follow" tag in that so, just in case you the reader don't have Ghostery installed, TM doesn't get clicks from this. This is the same Solomon about whom I devoted a full article for writing "poor me in the oil patch," then called out on Twitter for first fellating HEB in a brief, then recycling that into a full story. Seriously, Texas Monthly is pretty sucky at times, and Kuff is so much a ConservaDem that in his Roundup links, I don't think I've ever seen one from the Texas Observer.
So, I'll supply what Dunghill Dan doesn't. Burton Gilliam:
And Loncar, the "Strong Arm" of the law. Picked this one because of a guy talking about being T-boned ... ironic given Loncar getting T-boned himself after failure to yield to a fire truck. Otherwise, just the cheese nuts of all that's wrong with ambulance chasers advertising on teevee:
The further irony? Loncar's own attorney in his suit against the city of Dallas? Clay Jenkins, now Dallas County Judge. Maybe John Wiley Price should have thought twice about the idea that Jenkins would be his puppet. Jenkins bought Loncar's firm after he died.
Dems have gotten Green Charles Waterbury booted off the state Supreme Court ballot. I'm of several minds. One is hating the mix of pettiness and fear Democrats, especially organizations, show toward Greens. Witness in Wisconsin, a petition against Hawkins/Walker just because she moved to another address within Charleston during their Wisconsin ballot access drive. Pure pettiness. On the other hand, that's the way politics is played at times. On the third hand, specific to this case? Waterbury voted in the Dem primary this spring. A no-no that he, as a repeat candidate, should know. Second issue is one that Kuff (where I saw the link) didn't mention: The onerous ballot access fees of HB 2504, which he has basically discussed not at all. Yeah, I'm sub-blogging, as in a riff on sub-tweeting, Kuff a lot this week.
Matt Angle documents the top ten ways that Texas Republicans have conspired to suppress the vote and undermine fair elections.
Grits discusses the Texas Legislature Black Caucus' George Floyd Act. He doesn't call it a nothingburger, but does, in essence call it weak tea of collected floor scrapings that the Lege refused to pass before. He wonders if the attitude in the Lege will have changed enough for this to pass. That said, he doesn't note that by it being this weak to start with, a la Barack Obama, Senfronia Thompson, Royce West, et al have compromised away the compromise in advance.
National
Ed Butowsky was facing legal sanctions over willfully telling lies in his lawsuit against David Folkenflik and NPR. One problem with NPR's filing, IMO. If there were any way of looping him into it, they should have asked for sanctions against Ed's legal beagle, Ty Clevenger. You know, the sack o shite Ty Clevenger who has a boatload of unpaid legal sanctions and other black marks. Unfortunately, there's not a way to make that happen under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 37, the basis of this particular filing. However? Ty as well as Ed DOES face a sanctioning claim under Rule 11, in a sanctions claim from the same case. Rulings are expected in 2-4 weeks. Meanwhile, as yet more stories come out, in the middle of, and wake of, the RNC, Ed, Ty et al look worse than ever.
Fox News, Ed Butowsky & Ty Clevenger look more DISGUSTING by the day on #SethRich#ConspiracyTheory As do Elizabeth Lea Vos, Jared Beck, Suzi3D, Kim Dotcom & MANY OTHERS, incl alleged outside-the-box stenos of Blumenthal, Ames, Maté, Taibbi if "believers" https://t.co/RcvbvZ8d4p
— I come to Bari Weiss, not to praise her 🚩🌻 (@AFCC_Esq) August 26, 2020
A lot of Democrats tout New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan
Grisham as a rising star. The truth is that in Congress she was a
neoliberal New Dem, and as governor, she's refused to implement a court order to improve education for Hispanic and American Indian students.
Independent Political Report, which I thought was better and smarter than this, had William Saturn post RFK Jr. popping up on Ron Paul's show. I can accept that. I can accept that Bobby Jr. is going to go full antivaxxer, and expand that to coronavirus conspiracy theories. Having read his book of lies about his dad and uncle, I can also accept he'll lie about that, too. I CANNOT, and will not, accept Saturn calling this "truthbombs."
“Truthbombs”? Pack o lies.
1. Jack (and Bobby) ordered Operation Mongoose for the CIA to topple Castro.
2. Jack knew about the Diem coup and signed off on it. His tears over Diem’s death were purely crocodile tears. He was also NOT “just about to get out of Vietnam.”
3. There IS NO link between thimerosal based mercury in vaccines and autism.
4. COVID ain’t done killing. Most knowledgeable health authorities believe the US current death count is at least 50K low.
Shock me that an antivaxxer so nutbar that his own family wants him to shut up is also a coronavirus conspiracy theorist.
C'mon.
Therese Odell goes off on the Trump sabotage of the postal service. I explain why Dem tribalists like Therese Odell aren't totally correct on the short term and totally ignore Dems' part in the neoliberal decision 50 years ago to ditch the old U.S. Post Office.
In what is best described as an act of Kabuki theater, the Cooke County Commissioners Court considered voting Aug. 17 for pretending to put the future of a Confederate statue and memorial on its courthouse lawn in the hands of voters.
Finding a loophole in Texas law, County Judge Jason Brinkley called a special meeting of the court to vote on a nonbinding referendum on the matter. Texas law allows counties of under 40,000 to do so.
Matthew McGee got to the point of the referendum, among speakers in public forum.
“I would like to remind people the referendum is non-binding. It’s still 100 percent up to the commissioners to act,” he said, making a reference to a “poll on racism.”
“It’s still the only county doing such a poll. It’s going to be national news and it’s going to be embarrassing,” he said.
Turns out Cooke County won't make the teevee screens. The Commissioners Court's four commissioners ignored Brinkley and voted 4-1 to reject the referendum idea and do nothing.
Surprised? No. Disheartened? Yes. No so disheartened as to hope that protestors are serious and stay out there.
As for the speakers?
Most supporters of keeping the statue ignored that Texas seceded over slavery.
Rachel Moore talked about a historic 1913 gathering of CSA and US
troops at Gettysburg as healing. She either was unaware, or chose to
ignore, that black US troops were excluded.
And, of course, people like this call youth protestors "socialists" as a pejorative, ignoring the meeting of that word, while accusing the protestors of rewriting history, when history was being rewritten even before Rutherford Hayes agreed to end Reconstruction.
Ignorance was not confined to past history, nor to speakers.
“I question Black Lives Matter. Is it exclusive by definition? Has Black Lives Matter produced any results?” Precinct 1 Commissioner Gary Hollowell asked.
The truth is that, just a week ago, the city of Austin voted to cut one-third of the bloat from its police budget and that it also made police actions reviewable by moving "internal affairs division" outside the department. BLM protests led a heretofore relatively conservative Austin City Council to take this bold step forward. (More from Grits here on how George Floyd and a local shooting by cop were the fuse for long-standing ideas to cross the finish line.)
Precinct 4 Commissioner Leon Klement seemed to indicate, in lines with Hollowell, that the "problem" was only one one side.
“If that rock causes you to hate somebody, that’s on you,” he said. As with Hollowell, it seemed the comment was directed only toward anti-statue protestors.
Precinct 3 Commissioner John Klement reference slavery having a global history, and slaves in the North, but didn't mention the race-based history of slavery in the U.S. He, like cousin Leon, noted his family had come from Germany after the Civil War but the statue was part of their history.
Yes? And yours truly wrote a column noting that Bismarck's Kulturkampf against German Catholics was part of your history, too, and suggesting you analogize from that. And you did not.
Precinct 2 Commissioner Jason Snuggs added that some people told him they could see the statue being moved, but not under this pressure.
So no, Bob Smith, Vince Rippy and other members of the self-styled Cooke County Activists for Truth in Society, the commissioners court did NOT display "exceptional courage." If not craven cowardice, they were closer to that than what you claim. The "Exceptional courage" was displayed a month ago by Gainesville Mayor Jim Goldsworthy and the rest of the Gainesville City Council when it voted to move the city's statue in the face of opposition from people like you.
Also of note? Mr. Young Republicans PR Tucker Craft (see here on earlier meetings and background) was not at this meeting.
I think part of what's lying behind less reactionary members of the county court, and others, is something that I've seen on Twitter, the idea that social changes happen by magic, without protest. I of course cited Martin Luther King back to the first few people who pulled that. I think a minority of people sincerely believe that, but for the majority, it's just another "talk to the back of the hand" stance.
Otherwise, it's clear that entrenched beliefs don't change, even when presented with plenty of evidence to create cognitive dissonance. Despite protestors repeatedly saying in commissioners court meetings that they're from Gainesville, opponents continue to claim they're all agitators from Denton. If people don't have the "exceptional courage" to critically examine their own belief systems, they're going to be poor judges of who else displays "exceptional courage." But, it's also easier to pretend that issues aren't real when you pretend that people in your own back yard aren't the ones raising the issue.
This all reminds me of Max Planck cracking wise about how what was really needed for a new scientific theory to become accepted was to have enough old scientists die off.
This will be just a short post this week, but I thought that, with some Texas schools having started this past week, and more, with slight delays from their original calendars, starting either this week or next, it needed to be pulled out again.
First, are social media doing enough to crack down on disinformation? Probably not. Hucksterman has a "false news" flag, but, the "punishment"? Putting a screen over someone's post that says it's been determined to be partially, if not fully, false. It's almost never pulled down. Twitter will make people pull stuff down, but doesn't have "fake news" as a reporting category.
Related to that?
From his secondary blog, which primarily focuses on philosophy, culture and other events, SocraticGadfly looked at the ethical and other fallout of Anthony Fauci’s Platonic noble lie this spring, when he told people masks didn’t work.
Nationally, per Worldometers, the curve on daily cases has started going back down again. The daily deaths curve? It has maybe flattened out, but it has not started dropping again, and the rolling average on daily deaths still remains well above where it was in late May. The same is true of Texas, which is at the 10,000 death mark now, though the state curve has not dropped as much as the national curve has on daily cases.
Texas has the worst positive rate on coronavirus tests in the nation. More disconcerting, IMO, is that it — like several other states — has a declining test rate. Government officials — elected and apolitical, medical ones — claim part of the reason fewer people are getting tested is either a belief that, or claimed reality that, COVID is on the decline. But, other people say the frustration of waiting weeks to get tested, then weeks more for results, is a big factor.
For this reason, Abbott is taking both political and nonpolitical heat, even as his Democratic counterpart, Cal gov Gavin Newsom, is taking the same heat the other direction. Read here on both.
Whether schools should reopen or not is a fraught enough decision when looked at purely in terms of public health and public policy. Trump's pushing reopening for political-related economic reasons makes it more fraught, and only adds to the distrust of him. (And, in political terms, it could well backfire in many swing state suburban areas.) So, California wingnuts attacking Newsom on schools? Blame your
Leader.
On the wingnut side of Texas wingnuttery, Luke Macias salutes wingnut of wingnuts state Sen. Bob Hall for attacking the Texas Medical Board for doing its job on Texas doctors prescribing the harmful HCQ off-label for COVID patients.
Sean Pendergast makes the case for not postponing the fall college football season. And, as with another Kuff-submitted link, on the second half of this week's roundup, he's wrong.
And, yes, you, as a resident and citizen of your region, your state or province, the United States or other country, and of this planet, need to be thinking 2021 or beyond. That's the lower half of this piece.
Assuming there is no coronavirus vaccine before the end of this year, and that there's definitely no relatively safe AND relatively effective one (that is totally my assumption on the second [sit down Putin] and pretty much on the first) Nature magazine details, globally, what we'll be facing in 2021. It likely isn't pretty in general, and especially for the US, with its large percentage of anti-maskers and general resistors of social distancing.
Going beyond Nature, it also won't be pretty, given no national health care and Merika's general lack of a safety net, whichever duopoly party candidate is elected president Nov. 3. Democratic Veep nominee Kamala Harris says she favors some sort of basic income during the coronavirus, but for how long? And, to the degree Dick Cheney is incorrect about the importance of deficits, where does the money come from? And, what about national health care? In any case, she's the Veep nominee, and if elected, her newly elected boss opposes both.
Speaking of Putin? Orac, natch, has the truth on the alleged Russian coronavirus vaccine. That said, the piece is also further words to the wise about how fast a more serious vaccine is likely, or not likely to be developed. The truth? Adenovirus-based vaccines are simple and quick to create. Russian scientists have shown that. But Orac notes NONE have been proven to be both safe and effective in humans for general use.
Skeptical Raptor has more about US vaccine development, in a link off a piece of his that Orac, above, linked. Per Raptor, first of all, just like from Russia, you should trash Putin's propaganda, you should reject any PR from any US or other Western company working on a vaccine, if it's a commercially traded company. Their PR is for stock-goosing. More seriously, per him? A vaccine both safe AND effective — in other words, one we can use — probably won't be here for a full 12 months if not longer, even if Trump's "Operation Warp Speed" blathering can be taken seriously. (Which it can't and shouldn't be, Raptor says; 4-5 YEARS is his timeframe.) Both Raptor and Orac, in another piece, explain why we shouldn't bend any of the current regulatory hoops. We don't need to give either antivaxxers OR antiregulatory libertarians more food.
Medical researcher Eric Topol discusses vaccine research, including possible side effects from a vaccine (they likely would exist, and contra Tony Fauci's noble lie, I would prefer scientists, as here, be honest about them upfront, even at the risk of giving antivaxxers ammo), whether we're looking at the right angle on vaccines right now, and whether use of interferons and steroids, while not preventing the disease, might reduce long-term symptoms.
So put your fucking mask on. And don't buy grocery store PR any more than Big Pharma PR.
This is all, this breathless American wait for a vaccine that is surely just around the corner, yet another example of what I have called salvific technologism. Americans are expecting that the tech / engineering / applied science cavalry is just around the corner.
