Category: Dickitude

Saturday Soother – December 18, 2021

The Daily Escape:

Capitola, CA – December 2021 photo by Matt Hoffman Photography

Some good news this week from the NYT:

“A federal judge on Thursday evening unraveled a painstakingly negotiated settlement between Purdue Pharma and thousands of state, local and tribal governments that had sued the maker of the prescription painkiller OxyContin for the company’s role in the opioid epidemic, saying that the plan was flawed in one critical area.”

The judge, Colleen McMahon of the US District Court for the Southern District of NY, said that the settlement, which was part of a bankruptcy restructuring plan for Purdue that was approved in September by US bankruptcy judge, Robert Drain, shouldn’t go forward because it released the company’s owners, the billionaire Sackler family, from any personal liability in civil opioid-related cases:

“This Court concludes that the Bankruptcy Code does not authorize such non-consensual non-debtor releases: not in its express text…not in its silence…and not in any section or sections of the Bankruptcy Code that, read singly or together, purport to confer generalized or “residual” powers on a court sitting in bankruptcy. For that reason, the Confirmation Order (and the Advance Order that flows from it) must be vacated.”

According to the US Department of Health and Human Services:

“More than 760,000 people have died since 1999 from a drug overdose.”

Connecticut’s Attorney General, William Tong was against the Purdue/Sackler settlement from the start. He had this to say after the new decision:

“This is a seismic victory for justice and accountability that will re-open the deeply flawed Purdue bankruptcy and force the Sackler family to confront the pain and devastation they have caused….this fight was never about the money. It was about holding Purdue and the Sacklers accountable for the lives stolen and destroyed by their relentless greed. That is why Connecticut helped lead the charge against the plan, and why we will continue to push for true justice and accountability…”

Morally, the deal as originally approved was outrageous. OTOH, this is America! Generally, morality isn’t a necessary part of what we do. It’s very hard to be optimistic about wealthy Americans actually seeing justice in our court system, but overturning the decision gives us a sliver of hope that they’ll have to pay a real price. Clearly, the Sacklers and Perdue Pharma will appeal, and it’s anybody’s guess whether this ruling will hold up.

We know that many of the little people are serving long sentences for dealing Oxycontin, Purdue’s drug. We know that hundreds of thousands of men and women have died from using Oxycontin. But nobody is talking about criminal charges against the Sacklers.

In a just world, they’d be serving life sentences. But we certainly don’t live in a just world.

We don’t even live in a just country.

Enough of the world for this week, it’s time to focus on what’s really a cause for concern in America: Christmas gifts. More accurately, the lack of Christmas gifts. Some people get this chore done in November, while others procrastinate.

Here at the Mansion of Wrong, we’ve finally put up our seasonal decorations, although many fewer than in prior years. We have a smaller tree, and no outside lights. Wrongo isn’t clear why we’re not going all-out this year, maybe it’s the never-ending, ever-evolving virus. It’s difficult to say.

But before you fire up the laptop for another round of internet shopping, take a short break for our Saturday Soother.

Pour a hot steaming cup of Ethiopia Limu Burka Gudina – Natural ($17.25/12 oz.) from Trumbull, CT’s Shearwater Coffee Roasters, said to taste of pineapple, blackberry and lemon.

Now, grab a chair by a window and survey the great outdoors. Here in CT, you’re looking at snow on the ground. Put on your wireless headphones and listen to “”The Fellowship” by Howard Shore, from the soundtrack to The Lord of the Rings Trilogy. Here it is played by The City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra:

This beautiful score should remind us that not all great classical music was written in the 1700s-1800s.

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Sunday Cartoon Blogging – November 21, 2021

The Rittenhouse verdict is in. The jury has spoken, and in our system, regardless of who agrees or disagrees with it, it’s decided, and we move on.

Whether justice was done by a “not guilty on all counts” verdict is a question that can will never be fully answered, but he WAS found innocent, and there’s no appeal. That says more about us than it says about him. The problem isn’t our laws, either about gun ownership, or self-defense, although Wisconsin’s self-defense law could be better. Not so long ago, we had exactly the same laws and we lived in a (mostly) decent society that wasn’t armed to the teeth.

But we no longer live in that society now. We now live in an angry society where vigilantes are praised. The Republican Party has turned this little son of a bitch into a murderer and then, into their little pet hero.

Rittenhouse is a hero to the entire American Right Wing, which is represented politically by the Republican Party. Doubt that? Consider this tweet from Rep. Anthony Sabatini, Republican representing Florida’s 7th Congressional district:

On to cartoons. The Rittenhouse trial checked all  the boxes:

Wrongo heard a pundit on NPR say the Rittenhouse verdict was a win for Constitutional rights. Wrong! It had nothing to do with the Constitution:

Rep. Gosar’s murder tweet didn’t even register with the elephant:

The difference between the Parties:

Bannon plans to make his taking of the 5th Amendment a long slimy road:

2021’s Thanksgiving seating plan:

 

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Monday Wake Up Call – November 1, 2021

The Daily Escape:

Ricketts Glen State Park, PA – 2014 photo by Zev Steinhardt

We don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow on Election Day. There are a few close races that grab the headlines, like the governor’s race in Virginia. There’s also a gubernatorial election in New Jersey. In addition, two of six special elections to the House of Representatives will also take place on Tuesday.

On Tuesday night, America’s pundits will start making far too much of whatever happens at the polls.

But today, let’s talk about the anti-Biden chant,  “Let’s Go Brandon” that is sweeping Red America. The NY Post explains it. And The Post amps up the propaganda, as the article is titled: “4 versions of scathing anti-Biden rap ‘Let’s Go Brandon’ now in iTunes Top 10“.

That makes it sound like America has turned on Biden so badly that he shouldn’t even come back to the country after his Glasgow trip. Throughout the Right Wing press, conservatives are doing their best to ramp up their publicity machine, including all of their bloviators on social media pushing the ‘Brandon’ message, but it doesn’t mean much. From Bob Lefsetz: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“Go to Spotify, ‘Let’s Go Brandon’ is not in the Top 50, as a matter of fact it has almost no impact at all. As of this writing the track has a grand total of 565,434 streams on Spotify….’Freaks’ by Surf Curse, has 364,314 streams A DAY! As of this writing ‘Freaks’ has 287,974,290 streams on Spotify. In other words, the right wing tried to own the libs, and nobody noticed, it had no impact, other than in the echo chamber they reside in.”

Americans could debate whether Biden is doing a good job. But, as Lefsetz says, there is no longer real political debate in America. We have silos on the left and the right, which talk over each other. And the truth doesn’t even matter, so why debate?

If the Republicans are using high tech methods to try and show us that they have a winning political narrative, we need to look beyond the headlines to the actual facts. Lefsetz reminds us:

“BTS fans signed up for tickets to Trump’s Oklahoma rally and changed the outcome, the Trump team thought there was huge demand, they even erected a secondary stage outside, but this wasn’t the case, most of the ticket requests were fake”.

That October 2020 rally’s attendance was poor, and it made Trump look bad. That was our first indication of the power of social media to swing opinion, but that isn’t what happened with the anti-Biden track on iTunes. Lefsetz:

“If someone in the music business starts quoting iTunes numbers, laugh. They’re really stretching for a metric to make their case….there’s always a number to support your case, which means savvy people investigate and dig for the truth.”

What’s going on is a tug of war between people who want facts to stand and those who want to manipulate the facts to say something else. And if you’re a casual news consumer, you might get a completely inaccurate picture of what is going on, especially in an environment where it’s extremely difficult to get people’s attention without deceptive, sensational headlines.

We all thought the internet would propagate truth, but the opposite has happened.

And yet they’re succeeding with the deception tactics. They’re creating a frenzy over Critical Race Theory and trans athletes, two of America’s most over-hyped issues, and yet Greg Youngkin, the Republican gubernatorial candidate in Virginia may ride this made-up crisis to victory.

With the “Let’s Go Brandon” meme, we see again that the anti-Biden’s are avoiding truth (and hard numbers) to try and win. Their game is confusion. Government being good or bad is irrelevant to the Republicans. Their calculation is that if they block and insult and channel it all through their propaganda networks, they’ll win back power again.

Burn it all down to the ground. It’s politics as an ash heap.

Time to wake up America! We don’t want to live in the same nation with idiots who believe “Let’s go Brandon” means “Fuck Joe Biden”. We should be weary of their perpetual mendacity and stupidity.

To help you wake up, listen to Santana and Chris Stapleton do a tune that they wrote jointly, “Joy”. It’s from Santana’s new album, “Blessings & Miracles”. This is a musical collaboration that Wrongo didn’t know he needed:

Sample Lyric:

Joy, rolling like the thunder rumbles
Time to let the teardrops tumble
Listen to the hatred crumble
Now that I have joy, flying on the wings of angels
Rattling the chains untangled
I see me from a different angle
Now I have joy

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Monday Wake Up Call – October 11, 2021

The Daily Escape:

Dusk, Mayflower Beach, Cape Cod, MA – October 9, 2021, photo by Andrei Anca

From Newsday: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“School boards have become the latest political battleground in America, with passions running so high that this week Attorney General Merrick Garland sent a memo to the FBI, US attorneys and state attorneys general asking them to discuss strategies to combat threats of violence against school workers and school board members.”

These school board battles are about Covid-related vaccination and masking policies, and about teaching anti-racism, racial equity, and cultural diversity. Both turn out to be culture-war battles that set groups of parents against each other. Margaret Talbot in the New Yorker:

“…it’s easy to find in YouTube videos, and local news reports by the score—protesters fairly vibrating with January 6th energy as they disrupt school-board meetings, raging against mask mandates and other COVID precautions, or that favorite spectral horror, critical race theory.”

This is not what people had in mind when they said more people would get involved with their local school boards. Adam Laats, professor of education at Binghamton University SUNY, wrote in the WaPo:

“Conservative pundits have talked up these confrontations as part of a larger political strategy….The Heritage Foundation declared July “National Attend Your School Board Meeting Month” and celebrated the “Great Parent Revolt of 2021,” which includes the founding of hundreds of new parent activist groups that might thwart ‘the radical tide of educators, nonprofits and federal education bureaucrats’.”

This is a specific Republican election strategy. CNN reported that Senate Republican minority leader Mitch McConnell told Attorney General Merrick Garland that parents “absolutely should be telling” local schools what to teach during debates over mask and vaccine mandates, the role of racial equity education and transgender rights in schools. Here’s Mitch:

“Parents absolutely should be telling their local schools what to teach. This is the very basis of representative government….They do this both in elections and — as protected by the First Amendment of the Constitution — while petitioning their government for redress of grievance. Telling elected officials they’re wrong is democracy, not intimidation.”

It’s a big issue in 2021’s Virginia gubernatorial election. Republican nominee Glenn Youngkin quickly used comments by Democratic opponent Terry McAuliffe into an attack ad aimed at invigorating base GOP voters and parents ahead of this November’s election.

McAuliffe’s comment was: “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.” Count on a Clinton ally to give Republicans another “deplorable” quote for Republicans to rally around.

This trollification of local politics began in 2009 with the Tea Party taking over politician’s town meetings. In 1970, Tom Wolfe famously referred to the confrontations between militants and hapless bureaucrats as Mau-Mauing the flak catchers. Back then, the militants were Black people who hinted at a Mau Mau uprising in the US, and the hapless bureaucrats who were paid to take their flak.

Now it’s White militants who are “mau-mauing” their school bureaucrats and the elected school board volunteers who we charge with managing our kids’ education.

We think that social media is where this kind of venom is spewed. But since the Tea Party, people are too ready to boo and jeer others in public spaces who express opinions different from theirs. Some militants even accuse school board members of being part of child-trafficking conspiracies.

America has walked away from its social and political norms.

Trump was among the first national politicians who was willing to say the quiet parts aloud. Those who are resentful in the face of societal change, e.g., having their hate speech corrected, found a voice in Trump. And he’s happily encouraged them. He refused to control his racist, sexist speech and behavior, and they respect him because he never did anything he didn’t want to do.

Don’t want to pay your taxes? Trump’s flouted the tax system for decades.

Tired of dealing with women on the job? Just listen to what Trump does to women.

Don’t like the way the last election turned out? Well, here’s what to do while we’re working on the coup.

And there will always be enough grifters and demagogues to throw gas on this dumpster fire. These Trumpy Americans have such a big emotional investment in their false reality, they don’t really care what’s true.

Time to wake up America. There are reasons for societal norms. They stop us from only focusing on the “I” and allow us to remember the “We.” The We protects us from the worst in ourselves.

To help you wake up, listen to Eddie Vedder’s (Pearl Jam) new single “Long Way” from his upcoming solo album, “Earthling”:

You can hear Tom Petty’s influence in Vetter’s tune.

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Monday Wake Up Call – September 20, 2021

The Daily (no) Escape:

More than 660,000 white flags have been put on display at the National Mall in Washington DC in memory of Covid victims. The display is called “In America: Remember”, organized by artist Suzanne Brennan Firstenberg.

“Reality is that which, when you stop believing it, doesn’t go away”  ̶  Philip K. Dick

And a corollary: Delusion requires passionate and unyielding belief to keep pesky facts from intruding. This is why for some people, cults are a viable form of social organization.

The Covid vaccines save lives. America has an abundant supply. The shot is free. But many Americans remain unvaccinated. Some don’t have access, but it appears the vast majority of the unvaccinated are making a decision that appears to be driven in part, by their politics.

The WaPo reports that:

“Since May of this year, more than half of the deaths from the coronavirus have been in states that voted for Donald Trump. There have been 239 deaths per million among red-state residents, compared with 150 per million in blue states.”

And for vaccinations, states that voted for Trump in 2020 have lower vaccination rates. Here’s a chart:

Are Republicans following a political strategy with vaccines? Brian Beutler thinks so:

“To grasp that Republicans encouraged COVID spread to harm Biden, you don’t have to believe, in a conspiracy-addled way, that they convened in secret and built a playbook for maximizing infections. You simply need to observe that a critical mass of conservative elites view undercutting Biden and Democrats as a political lodestar, and make immensely consequential governing and broadcast decisions on that basis alone.”

According to the NYT, that thinking has led to 16,200 preventable deaths since July 1 nationwide. And it’s important to realize that most deaths occurring now are preventable in a way that was absolutely not the case at the start of the pandemic.

Following on Phillip Dick’s quote above, a reality is that Covid is now a preventable disease.

Ignoring reality, Red State governors are actively discouraging vaccination and masking. They are actively encouraging a preventable but deadly illness to spread. They are putting the entire nation at risk of a vaccine resistant variant. They’re threats to our national security.

Polls show that Biden’s approval rate has slipped, in part due to the Covid surge. Covid may be hurting Biden politically, but it’s hurting Red State Republican constituents literally (and seriously). The Red State Covid fatality rate isn’t high enough to really hurt their vote totals except in marginal districts. The Republican bet is that the intensity/turnout advantage they get from anti-Vaxx deniers will pay off in the 2022 mid-terms.

They seem to have internalized that a pandemic combined with pandemic denialism helps them. In 2020, the Republican ground game benefited from the fact that Covid denialists were more willing to go out in public. They used the fact that their voters were more likely to vote in person to push Trump’s Big Lie election-fraud theories.

But here we are. They’re living in a world where the virus is fake, and thousands of people are dying from taking the vaccine. They’re taking Ivermectin and anti-malarial drugs because the fake virus is a little threatening, but not bad enough to take the vaccine. It can be deadly, but “it isn’t for me” because it’s a liberal conspiracy.

But the “reality” is that excess deaths from all causes since February, 2020 according to the CDC is 830,400. Last year, the age-adjusted all-cause mortality rate in the USA rose by 15.9%. This is by far the biggest one-year rise in that rate in the 120 years that official records have been kept for this basic measure of overall public health.

Time to wake up Red Staters! Many of the GOP higher ups (and their media lackeys) think that you’re not masking or taking the vaccine, will hurt Biden and the Democrats. Maybe you should be thinking about the greater harm that following their lead may bring to you and your family.

To help you wake up on this last Monday of summer, listen to the Foo Fighters, who are going through a “disco discovery” stage wherein they call themselves the Dee Gees, cover the Bee Gees’ “You Should Be Dancing”:

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Back-to-School Brings Increased Covid Threat to Kids

The Daily Escape:

Sunset and sunflowers, central UT – August 2021 photo by Jon Hafen

Schools are back in session and once again, it’s in person, after a confusing on-or-off, virtual or physical experience last year. Almost 5 million children have been diagnosed with COVID-19 since the pandemic began.

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) reports that about 204,000 kids tested positive for Covid last week. And for the week ending August 26, children accounted for 22.4% of reported weekly cases. Covid cases are rising nearly everywhere in America, and our schools aren’t exempt. From USA Today:

“At least 1,000 schools across 35 states have closed for in-person learning because of COVID-19 since the beginning of the school year, according to Burbio, a New York-based data service that is tracking K-12 school reopening trends.”

This increasing number of school closures comes amid a battle over mask mandates in schools and the surge in pediatric Covid cases. Did it occur to you that the people bitching about mask mandates and refusing to get the vaccine are THE SAME ONES who are up to a million about exiting Afghanistan?

Republicans are saying that Biden has botched the Covid response. But we know that many Republican governors are actively pursuing policies that are increasing infections. Some of them are preventing schools from adopting mask policies. Dr. Eric Feigl Ding, an epidemiologist, tweeted this:

Moreover, the CDC says that hospitalization rates were 10 times higher among unvaccinated than among fully vaccinated adolescents, and increased 4 times as fast in August in states with low vs. high vaccination rates:

Would Republican politicians willingly sabotage their state’s Covid vaccine program for political gain? Before you say, “that’s ridiculous”, look at this note sent to people in Manatee County FL:

This was put out by a local MAGA group, whose leaders have been trained by national organizers on how to disrupt school board meetings.

Wrongo thinks that masks are a convenient target of opportunity for America’s angry and outraged. Being an angry, outraged White person pays big political dividends. Chances are that if you’re an angry American, you’re White and middle class. You are backed by an enormous right-wing media ecosystem that’s egging you on. You are part of a political party ready to overturn our current system of government on your behalf.

Many in law enforcement will police you selectively. You can disrupt school board meetings, scream at children in masks, and probably not even get your ass thrown out of the meeting. The maskholes are ascendant.

And so, America’s war with ourselves continues.

The CDC’s masking recommendation for vaccinated adults changes with local transmission rates. If high, all people should mask indoors. If low, there’s no need. But the CDC hasn’t set similar metrics for children and masks in schools.

So, should kids under 12 stay masked until they have an approved vaccine? What if that takes years? What if it’s approved soon, but only 35% of them get vaccinated, just like among the 12–15-year-olds who have had access to vaccines for months?

It’s possible that even by the end of the school year, most children will still be unvaccinated. Should the masks come off then, or remain in place indefinitely? Any school board that sets a mask mandate should also be setting in place a mask off plan. Otherwise, their angry and distrustful citizens will gain even more power.

Consider that in the UK, the government doesn’t require masks for children in schools. It isn’t clear whether they will advise that kids should get vaccinated. Britain has experts just like we do, and they’re looking at the same scientific data. They care about children’s health the same way we do, and yet, they have come to different policy decisions.

Should we, as the UK does, accept that there will be more cases in children, recognizing that disease severity for the vast majority of kids is low? Should we accept that there will be a not-insignificant number of Covid-related deaths among our kids, along with some who have long-term health compromises, and move our focus to vaccinating, not masking our kids?

At this point, the people who are anti-vaccine, anti-mask and/or who deny the deadly seriousness of Covid have demonstrated that they cannot be reasoned with. They love that they can be ignorant assholes, while still having plenty of political muscle.

Time and energy are as limited as ICU beds. Time and energy should be reserved for people who have at least some common sense and common decency, not wasted on the angry and outraged.

OK, but what about the kids?

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The Supreme Court is Becoming Illegitimate

The Daily Escape:

Sunset, Death Valley, CA – photo by Hasanur Khan

From Paul Campos:

“For a long time, the standard right wing judicial nominee dodge regarding Roe v. Wade was that the nominee considered it “settled law.”

What’s that supposed to mean? It’s a reference to what lawyers call stare decisis, which is Latin for “to stand by things decided”. It’s the doctrine of following legal precedent. The idea is that the Court should follow the existing rulings that it has announced, unless there’s a really good reason not to.

Then the question becomes: How really good does the reason have to be? There’s no formulaic answer to that. The criminal guilt standard of “beyond a reasonable doubt” is similar.

We’re here today because on Wednesday, in an unsigned, 5–4 decision, the Supreme Court effectively overturned Roe v. Wade. The five most conservative Republican-appointed justices refused to block Texas’s abortion ban, which allows anyone to sue any individual who “aids or abets” an abortion after six weeks. Remember, that law contains no penalty for making a false claim or filing a suit in bad faith. The purpose of that part of the law is simply harassment, and it’s up to the accused to prove that she wasn’t six weeks pregnant at the time the vigilante made the claim.

This decision renders almost all abortions in Texas illegal for the first time since 1973.

Although the majority didn’t exactly say these words, the upshot of Wednesday’s decision is that the Supreme Court has abandoned the Constitutional right to abortion. Roe is no longer settled law, even though the five justices who voted not to take the case had all testified in Congress that it was settled law.

Others will write detailed, technical analysis about the Court’s non-decision, and the impact on the Roe v. Wade test case coming to the Supreme Court in September. Wrongo prefers to point out that the subversion of American institutions is happening at a rapid pace, and that includes the Supreme Court.

There was an interesting article in The Prospect about how the US is becoming ungovernable in the basic sense of ‘nothing works‘ and ‘nothing can be done simply‘. It is difficult to argue with that, and although it’s coming at us from many different angles, one of the effects is that every decision today is powerfully affected not only by ‘how will it work’, but by ‘what will the opposition be like?’.

The battlefield is increasingly one where results are determined by unconstrained courts, and the country is becoming unmanageable. This is magnified in the Senate, where two Democrats have reacted to the partisan divide by refusing to act so long as the partisan divide exists.

From Justice Kagan’s dissent: (Emphasis by Wrongo)

“Without full briefing or argument, and after less than 72 hours’ thought, this Court greenlights the operation of Texas’s patently unconstitutional law banning most abortions. The Court thus rewards Texas’s scheme to insulate its law from judicial review by deputizing private parties to carry out unconstitutional restrictions on the State’s behalf. As of last night, and because of this Court’s ruling, Texas law prohibits abortions for the vast majority of women who seek them—in clear, and indeed undisputed, conflict with Roe and Casey.

Today’s ruling illustrates just how far the Court’s “shadow-docket” decisions may depart from the usual principles of appellate process. That ruling, as everyone must agree, is of great consequence. Yet the majority has acted without any guidance from the Court of Appeals—which is right now considering the same issues. It has reviewed only the most cursory party submissions, and then only hastily. And it barely bothers to explain its conclusion—that a challenge to an obviously unconstitutional abortion regulation backed by a wholly unprecedented enforcement scheme is unlikely to prevail.

In all these ways, the majority’s decision is emblematic of too much of this Court’s shadow-
docket decision making—which every day becomes more unreasoned, inconsistent, and impossible to defend.”

Roe and Casey were at least in theory, settled law. Now, they are no longer.

The Court’s majority decided this madness, not just for Texas, but for the entire country. These earth-shattering decisions used to come only after full briefing and argument. No longer. Now, the shadow docket greases the skids for decisions upholding the Conservative Right’s views on personal rights.

One question that needs to be answered: How will the Texas Taliban-empowered Menstruation Vigilantes know when a pregnancy is older than six weeks?

Conservatives say they are all about personal choice and freedom, except when they’re not.

These are very perilous times, and they call for very big corrections. We’re pretty much at the point in game theory which dictates that the only remaining options are to either stop playing the game, or in this case, for the Democrats to destroy the political influence of Republicans.

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Saturday Soother – August 28, 2021

The Daily Escape:

Sunset, Acadia NP – 2021 photo by Rick Berk Fine Art Photography

America will dissect its failed adventure in Afghanistan for decades. From Heather Cox Richardson:

“In the past, when American troops were targeted by terrorists, Americans came together to condemn those attackers. Apparently, no longer. While world leaders—including even those of the Taliban—condemned the attacks on US troops, Republican leaders instead attacked President Biden.”

What’s ahead of us now is seeing how the Biden administration manages defeat. There will be serious political fallout after Biden’s end game in Afghanistan is finished.

The Republicans are going to try to mix fact with fiction, scoring points to take advantage of what they perceive as a Biden weakness.

Democrats may be ambivalent enough about what they think Biden should have done with the Kabul end game that they won’t respond forcefully enough.

The media will play their “I Told You So” and “Biden is Damaged” narratives. They will continue giving airtime to the same retired military hacks who brought us Afghanistan in the first place.

The WaPo’s Eugene Robinson asks the relevant question:

“How, exactly, did the Biden administration’s critics think US military involvement in Afghanistan was ever going to end? “Certainly not like this” is not a valid answer…

Please be specific. Did you envision a formal ceremony at the US Embassy with the American flag being lowered and the Taliban flag raised? Did you see the Taliban waiting patiently while the US-trained Afghan army escorted US citizens, other NATO nationals and our Afghan collaborators to the airport for evacuation? Did you imagine that the country’s branch of the Islamic State would watch peacefully from the sidelines, or that regional warlords would renounce any hope of regaining their power, or that a nation with a centuries-old tradition of rejecting central authority would suddenly embrace it?

If there is a graceful, orderly way to abandon involvement in a brutal, unresolved civil war on the other side of the world, please cite historical precedents.”

That’s the problem, zero precedents.

There’s press and political criticism about Biden working with the Taliban. It’s at least ironic that we’re cooperating with them after 20 years of fighting them, but this is just both players being practical in an end game. In Biden’s press conference on Thursday, he rejected critics who said we shouldn’t be cooperating with the Taliban to defend the airport perimeter:

“No one trusts them…It’s a matter of mutual self-interest. They’re not good guys, the Taliban. But they have keen interests,”

That’s realpolitik pragmatism at work, something we rarely see. But Republicans are neither pragmatic nor calm. Some Republicans said Biden should resign, while most focused on demanding that the withdrawal timeline, set for Tuesday, be lifted to allow a forceful counterattack against the Islamic State. Saner Republicans in Congress cited the attack as another indication of the president’s poorly executed withdrawal strategy.

The most vocal Democratic criticism came from Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ), who questioned whether Taliban guards had failed by letting the ISIS bombers get so close to the Kabul airport.

“We can’t trust the Taliban with Americans’ security,”

Thank you Captain Obvious. The silliest response came from Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN):

“It’s time for accountability, starting with those whose failed planning allowed these attacks to occur. Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Antony Blinken, Lloyd Austin, and Mark Milley should all resign or face impeachment and removal from office,”

Under Blackburn’s scenario, Nancy Pelosi would become president! It’s doubtful that she thought that through.

Democrats didn’t demand GW Bush II’s resignation after 9/11. Nobody clamored for St. Ronnie’s head the day after 241 Marines were killed in Lebanon. There was fierce criticism of Reagan, but no one tried to invoke the 25th Amendment. The Bay of Pigs was an epic disaster, but Republicans did not immediately demand JFK’s resignation.

It’s time to move on. We need to end the evacuation on time. There is no question that we will leave some worthy immigrants behind. They will be a bargaining chip when the Talibs want US foreign aid or recognition.

Take a moment and try if you can, to settle into our Saturday Soother. Hard to believe it’s already the final weekend in August. It’s also hard to believe that Senator Robert F. Kennedy’s assassin, Sirhan Sirhan was granted parole on Friday after two of RFK’s sons spoke in favor of his release.

In the Northeast, we’ve ended a hot spell, but since we had plenty of rain from hurricane Henri, everything on the fields of Wrong is green and growing.

If you can, shed the noise of the world and take a few moments to clear your head. Then, grab a seat outside and listen to Michael Franti & Spearhead’s new tune, “Good Day For A Good Day“.

The band says the inspiration for the new song – waking up every day and wondering what terrible thing is coming: hate, pandemic, pollution, or disaster, and how we could replace that with a little bit of love, good vibes, and joy:

Like most Franti tunes, this is upbeat and fun.

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Sunday Cartoon Blogging – August 8, 2021

The Commonwealth Fund’s August 4 report says that the US health care system ranked dead last among 11 wealthy countries, despite spending the highest percentage of GDP (17%) on health care.

The report considered 71 performance measures in five categories: access to care, the care process, administrative efficiency, health care equity and health care outcomes. The countries analyzed in the report include Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the US.

America ranked last on access to care, administrative efficiency, equity, and health care outcomes. We performed well in rates of mammography screening and influenza vaccination for older Americans, as well as the percentage of adults who talked with their physician about nutrition, smoking and alcohol use. But we had the highest infant mortality rate and lowest life expectancy at age 60, compared with all the other countries.

Eric Schneider, the lead author and senior vice president for policy and research at the Commonwealth Fund:

“The US has two health care systems. For Americans with the means and insurance to have a regular doctor…reported experiences with their day-to-day care are relatively good, but for those who lack access, the consequences are stark.”

Our poor performance is nothing new. The US has been in last place in all seven of these studies that the Commonwealth Fund has released since 2004. This is another failure of our political system. Our politicians talk but never act.

On to cartoons. There were lots of Cuomo cartoons, little on Covid, the Olympics or infrastructure this week.

Someone should tell Cuomo the “I Grope Everybody” defense is a terrible defense. A good rule in life is not to touch people you’re not supposed to be touching. Keep your hands to yourself:

Gov. DeSantis explains Florida man’s definition of how to end Covid hesitancy:

The GOP also predicted Sharia law in America, the end of Christmas and death panels:

Remember when Obama wore a tan suit and Republicans went nuts? This week, Biden wore a tan suit to announce the big jobs increase. It was also Obama’s birthday week. It’s an obvious attempt to troll conservatives:

The summer of our discontent:

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Saturday Soother – July 31, 2021

The Daily Escape:

Rain on the way, Factory Butte, UT – May 2021 photo by armitage2112

It was a big week for political news, but the most explosive story of the week concerned Covid and the delta variant. On Friday, the WaPo reported that a scientific analysis of a Covid outbreak in Provincetown on Cape Cod, MA, showed that 74% of the people who became infected had been fully vaccinated.

Also, the infected but vaccinated people had received all the approved vaccines: Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson.

Worse, the study found that vaccinated individuals carried as much virus in their noses as unvaccinated individuals, and that vaccinated people could spread the virus to each other. As of Thursday, 882 people were tied to the Provincetown outbreak. Among those living in Massachusetts, 74% of them were fully immunized. Officials said the vast majority also reported symptoms. But just seven people were hospitalized.

Also, officials tested specimens from 133 people and found the delta variant in 90% of them.

On Thursday, another WaPo story about a CDC internal document estimated that 35,000 vaccinated people a week in the US are having symptomatic breakthrough infections. This is out of a vaccinated population of more than 162 million Americans. That internal CDC document also reported that the delta variant is as transmissible as chickenpox.

So, it looks like it’s time once again to recalibrate our thinking about Covid.

The CDC report says that there’s evidence that vaccinated people can also spread the more transmissible delta variant, right along with the unvaccinated. That both groups can spread the virus is likely the key factor in the current summer surge of infections.

There’s a whole lot of finger pointing going on over this. The right is blaming the CDC for being inconsistent, and the Republicans in Congress are trying to make the possible instituting of a vaccine mandate along with re-instituting a mask mandate, into another political issue.

What House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) fails (purposely) to understand is that since the virus is changing, our response needs to also change. This variant is much more contagious than the original variants. We should all be working to defeat the virus, not trying to score political points on each other. And McCarthy is vaccinated, although 65 GOP members of the House are not.

Republican Congressman Roger Marshall (KS) is an MD. He said on PBS yesterday that masks do absolutely nothing to prevent the spread of disease. And he’s a Republican OBGYN, so he should know, right?

Nobody in the world, much less in the CDC, knew exactly how virulent these Covid variants would be. Epidemiologists hoped that people would get quickly vaccinated and help end the unchecked spread of the virus. That didn’t happen, in large part because right-wing media has actively stoked the culture wars, while GOP politicians run alongside, hoping to take control of the House in the 2022 mid-terms.

Once again, this means we’re dealing with a bad faith crowd that will scream about any contradictions. You’re not allowed to change your mind. You’re not allowed to admit you were wrong. You’re not allowed to accommodate new evidence.

Borrowing from driving your car, your mask is your seat belt. Your vaccination is your airbag.

On to the weekend and our Saturday Soother. We’re seeing an invasion of Japanese beetles on the fields of Wrong. Ms. Right went to the Agway and bought one of those old-fashioned beetle traps, a long green plastic bag topped by a lure with the scent of roses. It has captured a very satisfying number of beetles, but it’s difficult to say what percentage have not fallen victim to Ms. Right’s lures.

Friday marked the return of the summer session of the BBC Proms in London, after an 18+ month absence due to Covid. Friday night led off with Ralph Vaughan Williams’s “Serenade to Music”. It premiered at the Royal Albert Hall in 1938. Williams also wrote the piece for 16 vocal soloists and orchestra in 1938. He adapted the text from a discussion about music in Act V, Scene 1 of Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice”.

Vaughan Williams later arranged the piece into versions for chorus and orchestra and for solo violin and orchestra. Since Wrongo doesn’t appreciate the operatic singing of Shakespeare, this is the orchestral version, played by the Northern Sinfonia of England, conducted by Richard Hickox. The violinist is Bradley Creswick:

The video includes wonderfully atmospheric paintings by the Victorian era artist John Atkinson Grimshaw.

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