Small privatized government at its finest.
They are just letting houses burn. No water,...Houston, tx. pic.twitter.com/fGXW6QmU5g
— ♥Kathy♥Lucky Charms 🇺🇸🇵🇷🇩🇪🇮🇪❤❤❤ (@LuckieKathy) February 18, 2021
Feb 18, 2021
Today's Tweet
Small privatized government at its finest.
On Government Follies & Press Poodles
(try to ignore the obvious attempts to Both Sides it)
The power outages in Texas are the latest in a series of disasters that will be harder to fix — or prevent from happening again — because Americans are retreating to partisan and cultural corners instead of trying to solve problems.
(and there it is)
The big picture: From COVID to the election fallout to the utter collapse of Texas' electric grid, America is no longer showing the rest of the world how to conquer its biggest challenges. Instead, there's always another uncivil war to be fought — even when democracy, global health and now climate change are on the line.
Between extreme weather events, a pandemic and an attack on democracy itself, America has been pummeled with the kinds of existential disasters that usually come along once every 100 years — and are testing whether we still have the ability to overcome them.
Texas has never been prepared for extreme winter — or, really, any winter — but now the consequences of its decisions, especially its independent power grid, have become inescapable.
So what were the first instincts of the partisan warriors as millions of Texans, freezing in dark houses and single-degree temperatures, waited for someone to give them their power and heat back?
For all of our current failures, there are some reasons for optimism:
The power outages in Texas are the latest in a series of disasters that will be harder to fix — or prevent from happening again — because Americans are retreating to partisan and cultural corners instead of trying to solve problems.
(and there it is)
The big picture: From COVID to the election fallout to the utter collapse of Texas' electric grid, America is no longer showing the rest of the world how to conquer its biggest challenges. Instead, there's always another uncivil war to be fought — even when democracy, global health and now climate change are on the line.
Between extreme weather events, a pandemic and an attack on democracy itself, America has been pummeled with the kinds of existential disasters that usually come along once every 100 years — and are testing whether we still have the ability to overcome them.
Texas has never been prepared for extreme winter — or, really, any winter — but now the consequences of its decisions, especially its independent power grid, have become inescapable.
So what were the first instincts of the partisan warriors as millions of Texans, freezing in dark houses and single-degree temperatures, waited for someone to give them their power and heat back?
- Gov. Greg Abbott singled out the loss of wind and solar power and turned it into a lesson about how "the Green New Deal would be a deadly deal for the United States of America" — even though breakdowns in thermal sources of energy, especially natural gas, were a far bigger factor, per the Texas Tribune.
- Democrats like Julián Castro and Beto O'Rourke piled on Abbott and blamed him for the mess, while others used the crisis as an opportunity to declare victory for the blue states.
- Meanwhile, Rick Perry — the former energy secretary under Donald Trump and Abbott's predecessor as Texas governor — said Texans are willing to sacrifice and endure blackouts to keep the feds from taking over the energy grid.
- And the mayor of Colorado City, Texas resigned after declaring on Facebook that "No one owes you [or] your family anything,” and “I’m sick and tired of people looking for a damn handout!”
- We let COVID spread far more quickly than it needed to — not because all Americans ignored the danger, but because masks somehow became a cultural dividing line, with millions of Americans refusing to wear them despite all of the evidence that they save lives.
- A presidential election that should have been over in a few days dragged on for weeks. That was not just because Donald Trump fought the result every way he could find, as he'd signaled he would, but because so many Republicans, egged on by right-wing news organizations and social media, refused to acknowledge the clear outcome.
- The avalanche of lies about a stolen election set us on the road to the Capitol attack — led by gullible insurrectionists who overpowered a Capitol police force that should have had plenty of backup, given all the signs that a violent attack was on the way.
For all of our current failures, there are some reasons for optimism:
- People are finally getting vaccinated, and there are lots more doses on the way.
- Coronavirus cases, hospitalizations and deaths are all going down in the U.S.
- The Capitol attack is going to be investigated by a 9/11-style commission, people who participated in it are being arrested, and for now, at least, the "stolen election" rhetoric is dying down.
- One element of politics has been removed from disaster response: President Biden declared an emergency in Texas quickly, in contrast to Trump's refusal to declare an emergency during California's wildfires last year.
- And the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which manages the state's independent power grid, will be shamed in public hearings in the legislature. But it will be a while before we know whether there will be any fundamental changes, even if it's just to provide basic winter-proofing to power plants.
There is no reason (in my own personal mind) to lay any of this off on the Dems or the Blue People. I think about this, and every fuck up mentioned in this piece is directly attributable to GOP policies, while every criticism of what's been going wrong is warranted, because THE REPUBLICANS ARE FUCKING IT ALL UP.
And when they get around to it, the AXIOS guys mention that one of the bright spots is the fact that Biden - A DEMOCRAT - is acting in good faith by moving quickly to send help, and not trying to lord that federal help over the dumb fuckin' Republicans who're still busily fucking everything up in Texas.
COVID-19 Update
World
USA
Vaccination Scorecard
U.S. life expectancy plunged in 2020, with Black Americans acutely affected.
Life expectancy in the United States fell by a full year in the first six months of 2020, the federal government reported on Thursday, the largest drop since World War II and a grim measure of the deadly consequences of the coronavirus pandemic.
Life expectancy — the average number of years that a newborn is expected to live — is the most basic measure of the health of a population, and the stark decline over such a short period is highly unusual and a signal of deep distress. The drop comes after a series of troubling smaller declines driven largely by a surge in drug overdose deaths. A fragile recovery over the past two years has now been wiped out.
Thursday’s figures give the first full picture of the pandemic’s effect on American life spans, which dropped to 77.8 years from 78.8 years in 2019. It also showed a deepening of racial and ethnic disparities: Life expectancy of the Black population declined by 2.7 years in the first half of 2020, after 20 years of gains. The gap between Black and white Americans, which had been narrowing, is now at six years, the widest since 1998.
“I knew it was going to be large, but when I saw those numbers, I was like, ‘Oh my God,’” Elizabeth Arias, the federal researcher who produced the report, said of the racial disparity. Of the drop for the full population, she said, “We haven’t seen a decline of that magnitude in decades.”
Still, unlike the drop caused by the extended, complex problem of drug overdoses, this one, driven largely by Covid-19, is not likely to last as long because virus deaths are easing and people are being vaccinated. In 1918, when hundreds of thousands of Americans died in the flu pandemic, life expectancy declined 11.8 years from the previous year, Dr. Arias said, down to 39. Numbers fully rebounded the following year.
Even if such a rebound occurs this time, the social and economic effects of Covid-19 will linger, researchers noted, as will disproportionate effects on people of color. Some researchers said that drug deaths, which began surging again in 2019 and 2020, may continue to lower life expectancy.
Dr. Mary T. Bassett, a former New York City health commissioner who is now a professor of health and human rights at Harvard, said that unless the country better addressed inequality, “We may see U.S. life expectancy stagnate or decline for some time to come.”
She noted that life expectancy here began to lag behind other developed countries in the 1980s. One theory is that growing economic disparities affected health. Life conditions that have exacerbated Covid-19 rates, like overcrowded housing and inadequate protections for low-wage workers, will only add to that trend, she said.
In Thursday’s figures, Black and Hispanic Americans were hit harder and the fatalities in these groups skewed younger. Over all, the death rate for Black Americans with Covid-19 was almost twice that for white Americans as of late January, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; the death rate for Hispanics was 2.3 times higher than for white non-Hispanic Americans.
The 2.7-year drop in life expectancy for African-Americans from January through June of last year was the largest decline, followed by a 1.9-year drop for Hispanic Americans and a 0.8-year drop for white Americans.
Dr. Bassett said she expected life expectancy for Hispanic people to decline further over the second half of 2020, when Covid-19 death rates for that demographic continued to rise even as they dropped for white and Black Americans.
New Cases: 392,401 (⬆︎ .36%)
New Deaths: 11,412 (⬆︎ .47%)
USA
New Cases: 63,398 (⬆︎ .25%)
New Deaths: 2,537 (⬆︎ .51%)
Vaccination Scorecard
Total Vaccinations: 41.4 million
Total Priority Population: 34.0%
Total Population: 12.5%
But we did away with all that racism stuff when Obama got elected, right?
Life expectancy in the United States fell by a full year in the first six months of 2020, the federal government reported on Thursday, the largest drop since World War II and a grim measure of the deadly consequences of the coronavirus pandemic.
Life expectancy — the average number of years that a newborn is expected to live — is the most basic measure of the health of a population, and the stark decline over such a short period is highly unusual and a signal of deep distress. The drop comes after a series of troubling smaller declines driven largely by a surge in drug overdose deaths. A fragile recovery over the past two years has now been wiped out.
Thursday’s figures give the first full picture of the pandemic’s effect on American life spans, which dropped to 77.8 years from 78.8 years in 2019. It also showed a deepening of racial and ethnic disparities: Life expectancy of the Black population declined by 2.7 years in the first half of 2020, after 20 years of gains. The gap between Black and white Americans, which had been narrowing, is now at six years, the widest since 1998.
“I knew it was going to be large, but when I saw those numbers, I was like, ‘Oh my God,’” Elizabeth Arias, the federal researcher who produced the report, said of the racial disparity. Of the drop for the full population, she said, “We haven’t seen a decline of that magnitude in decades.”
Still, unlike the drop caused by the extended, complex problem of drug overdoses, this one, driven largely by Covid-19, is not likely to last as long because virus deaths are easing and people are being vaccinated. In 1918, when hundreds of thousands of Americans died in the flu pandemic, life expectancy declined 11.8 years from the previous year, Dr. Arias said, down to 39. Numbers fully rebounded the following year.
Even if such a rebound occurs this time, the social and economic effects of Covid-19 will linger, researchers noted, as will disproportionate effects on people of color. Some researchers said that drug deaths, which began surging again in 2019 and 2020, may continue to lower life expectancy.
Dr. Mary T. Bassett, a former New York City health commissioner who is now a professor of health and human rights at Harvard, said that unless the country better addressed inequality, “We may see U.S. life expectancy stagnate or decline for some time to come.”
She noted that life expectancy here began to lag behind other developed countries in the 1980s. One theory is that growing economic disparities affected health. Life conditions that have exacerbated Covid-19 rates, like overcrowded housing and inadequate protections for low-wage workers, will only add to that trend, she said.
In Thursday’s figures, Black and Hispanic Americans were hit harder and the fatalities in these groups skewed younger. Over all, the death rate for Black Americans with Covid-19 was almost twice that for white Americans as of late January, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; the death rate for Hispanics was 2.3 times higher than for white non-Hispanic Americans.
The 2.7-year drop in life expectancy for African-Americans from January through June of last year was the largest decline, followed by a 1.9-year drop for Hispanic Americans and a 0.8-year drop for white Americans.
Dr. Bassett said she expected life expectancy for Hispanic people to decline further over the second half of 2020, when Covid-19 death rates for that demographic continued to rise even as they dropped for white and Black Americans.
Jan6 Update
It continues to amaze me just how delusional some of these Q Cucks Clan boneheads have become.
From Proud Boys panicked about the revelation that their leader was a snitch to the racist America First crowd, old pals are now enemies.
As federal authorities crack down on the far right after the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, the movement’s leaders have found new sources of suspicion: each other.
In the Trumpist “America First” movement and the far-right paramilitary group the Proud Boys, alliances are fracturing as extremists brand each other as potential informants. Now racist live-streamers are accusing their former comrades of attempting to turn over followers to law enforcement, while Proud Boys chapters are splintering from the national organization over similar fears.
Until the FBI started closing in, white nationalists Nick Fuentes and Patrick Casey were the two most prominent figures in the racist “America First” movement.
The pair built up shared audiences on live-streaming platforms, and cheered as their fans, nicknamed “groypers” after an obese version of the cartoon Pepe the Frog, heckled more moderate Trump allies at conservative events.
But the federal heat is on after Fuentes received roughly $250,000 in a much-scrutinized bitcoin transfer, then appeared outside the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6 riot. The FBI is reportedly investigating the bitcoin transfer, though Fuentes has not faced charges over the money or the riot.
On Thursday, Casey distanced himself from Fuentes and America First in a live-streamed video, slamming Fuentes’ decision to gather his followers in Orlando later this month for a conference right as other America First supporters face charges over the riot.
“Some people who were at the Capitol are going to flip,” Casey said in his video.
Declaring the aftermath of the Capitol riot “a million times worse” for the far right than the crackdown that followed the fatal white supremacist rally in Charlottesville in 2017, Casey claimed, without offering evidence, that Fuentes’ bank accounts have been frozen by federal authorities. He also accused Fuentes of planning to drive cross-country, rather than fly, to the Florida conference because he suspected he was on the federal no-fly list, then concealing that possibility from his followers.
Worst of all, Casey argued, Fuentes planned to gather all of his supporters in Orlando, where they could be easily recorded by federal investigators or informants. He went on to suggest America First’s members would see the conference for what he thinks it could be: an FBI trap.
“He wants you to give him your real name, to show up to his event where your face will be visible, where your cellphone data will be in close proximity to his,” Casey said.
Fuentes didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Accusations that one-time allies have become federal informants aren’t uncommon in the extreme right, which has built up an entire lexicon of terms to describe the varieties of real or suspected federal infiltrators. But that paranoia has been ratcheted up in the aftermath of the riot, with the Proud Boys—a group that has seen a slew of members indicted—splintering under accusations that leaders have become informants or otherwise been compromised by the FBI.
Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio was arrested in Washington, D.C., two days before the riot, and now faces felony charges over the possession of illicit firearm magazines. But a Reuters report on Tarrio’s history as a federal informant cast members’ suspicions on their own leader, even as Proud Boys who allegedly participated in the riot face federal conspiracy charges.
Proud Boys chapters in three U.S. states—including four local chapters in Indiana—now claim to have broken with the national organization over Tarrio’s work as a federal informant. (Tarrio did not return a request for comment.)
“We reject and disavow the proven federal informant, Enrique Tarrio, and any and all chapters that choose to associate with him,” read a statement shared by the Indiana group’s state-level Telegram channel and on the Alabama group’s website, previously reported by USA Today. “We do not recognize the assumed authority of any national Proud Boy leadership including the Chairman, the Elders, or any subsequent governing body that is formed to replace them until such a time we may choose to consent to join those bodies of government.”
Proud Boys in Oklahoma also broke from Tarrio’s leadership, issuing a statement on messaging app Telegram in which they accused him and other national “elders” of “failure to take disciplinary measures [which] have jeopardized our brothers safety and the integrity of our brotherhood.”
Tarrio responded to the Oklahoma chapter’s departure with a series of memes accusing Oklahomans of being rednecks, or having sex with relatives. Anti-Tarrio Proud Boys responded with their own memes accusing their former leader of ratting out members of the group, photoshopping his face on rapper and government witness Tekashi69. Another meme played on the menacing Proud Boys motto “Fuck Around and Find Out,” claiming that Tarrio would instead “Snitch Around and Rat Out.”
But don’t expect Proud Boy splinter groups to morph into peaceful book clubs. The Indiana Proud Boys, for example, are led by Brien James, a longtime member of white supremacist groups with a history of violent brawls. Other white supremacists have previously slammed James as a law enforcement risk (someone “you want to keep away from you because you know he’s going to do something to bring the cops over,” one previously noted). Nevertheless, James took to Telegram this week to blame Tarrio and Ethan “Rufio Panman” Nordean, a prominent Proud Boy who was arrested on Feb. 3 over his own alleged role in the riot, of being untrustworthy.
“Now we have another ‘war boy’ and elder who is trying to snitch on the president? For something he knows damn well the president didn’t do? You made your own choices Rufio,” James wrote, adding that “if you are a Proud Boy I would recommend having your chapter declare full autonomy from the national structure at the very least.” (A public defender listed as representing Nordean did not respond to a request for comment.)
The Capitol riots have been followed by still more rifts internationally.
Anti-fascist activists in Manitoba, Canada, also claim their province’s Proud Boys chapter has dissolved. The CBC reported that, while the chapter had been largely inactive for the past year, the group was confirmed dead this month, when the Canadian government designated Proud Boys as a terrorist organization.
Meanwhile, Jason Lee Van Dyke, who registered the group’s trademark and briefly led the Proud Boys in 2018, filed this week to surrender the trademark to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, legal documents show. Van Dyke previously told The Daily Beast he revoked Tarrio’s license to use the name after a Black church in Washington, D.C., sued the Proud Boys for allegedly burning their flag in a rally weeks before the Capitol attack.
“I don’t want any recourse or anyone thinking I have any control over this group, that I have anything to do with this group, or that I am going to have anything to do with this group in the future,” Van Dyke said in a separate interview this week. He claimed he’d tried to transfer the trademark to another Proud Boy, who got spooked after Canada slapped the group with a terrorist label.
“There was one individual… who contacted me about having the trademark transferred to him,” Van Dyke told The Daily Beast. “After the Canadian government made a determination of the Proud Boys as a terrorist group for whatever reason they did that, that individual told me he was out and he would not be taking over the trademark. My response to that individual and those who had been working with him on acquiring the trademark was that they had seven days to get back to me regarding who was going to take it over, or I was going to surrender it.
“I did not hear back from anybody and the trademark is surrendered.”
As for the America First movement, Casey’s criticism of Fuentes has riled the “groypers,” who have been forced to choose between their two leaders. Fuentes appeared to respond to Casey on Thursday night by tweeting a video of Donald Trump talking about disloyalty.
But Fuentes’ supporters and allies have good reason to believe federal law enforcement is focusing on their group. Anthime Gionet, a Fuentes ally who goes by the alias “Baked Alaska,” was arrested in January after filming himself entering the Capitol. Riot suspect Riley June Williams, who wore an “I’m With Groyper” shirt to the Capitol, allegedly stole a laptop computer from Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA).
Casey urged his followers to consider how they would react to Fuentes’ conference if any other far-right leader had been behind it.
“You would be like, ‘Wow, federal honeypot, federal honeypot event,’” Casey said. “You would probably accuse the guy of being a fed.”
That one lady (Elizabeth from Knoxville) made the news whining about been maced.
And, of course, we have some beautiful talented souls on YouTube to make sure she's exposed to the ridicule she deserves.
"We were stormin' the capitol - it's a revolution".
Like, why would they do that to me - I'm white and middle class, and the president told us to do this - why are they being mean to us?
It's becoming clear that these idiots have had their brains scrambled to the point where reality just doesn't even peek thru once in a while. They're stuck in Wonderland.
But the FBI is fast teaching some of them that reality is a thing after all, and they'll have to face up to it eventually.
And the kicker is that they're beginning to see how the paranoia they've been nurtured with - and manipulated by - can turn around and work against them.
As federal authorities crack down on the far right after the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, the movement’s leaders have found new sources of suspicion: each other.
In the Trumpist “America First” movement and the far-right paramilitary group the Proud Boys, alliances are fracturing as extremists brand each other as potential informants. Now racist live-streamers are accusing their former comrades of attempting to turn over followers to law enforcement, while Proud Boys chapters are splintering from the national organization over similar fears.
Until the FBI started closing in, white nationalists Nick Fuentes and Patrick Casey were the two most prominent figures in the racist “America First” movement.
The pair built up shared audiences on live-streaming platforms, and cheered as their fans, nicknamed “groypers” after an obese version of the cartoon Pepe the Frog, heckled more moderate Trump allies at conservative events.
But the federal heat is on after Fuentes received roughly $250,000 in a much-scrutinized bitcoin transfer, then appeared outside the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6 riot. The FBI is reportedly investigating the bitcoin transfer, though Fuentes has not faced charges over the money or the riot.
On Thursday, Casey distanced himself from Fuentes and America First in a live-streamed video, slamming Fuentes’ decision to gather his followers in Orlando later this month for a conference right as other America First supporters face charges over the riot.
“Some people who were at the Capitol are going to flip,” Casey said in his video.
Declaring the aftermath of the Capitol riot “a million times worse” for the far right than the crackdown that followed the fatal white supremacist rally in Charlottesville in 2017, Casey claimed, without offering evidence, that Fuentes’ bank accounts have been frozen by federal authorities. He also accused Fuentes of planning to drive cross-country, rather than fly, to the Florida conference because he suspected he was on the federal no-fly list, then concealing that possibility from his followers.
Worst of all, Casey argued, Fuentes planned to gather all of his supporters in Orlando, where they could be easily recorded by federal investigators or informants. He went on to suggest America First’s members would see the conference for what he thinks it could be: an FBI trap.
“He wants you to give him your real name, to show up to his event where your face will be visible, where your cellphone data will be in close proximity to his,” Casey said.
Fuentes didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Accusations that one-time allies have become federal informants aren’t uncommon in the extreme right, which has built up an entire lexicon of terms to describe the varieties of real or suspected federal infiltrators. But that paranoia has been ratcheted up in the aftermath of the riot, with the Proud Boys—a group that has seen a slew of members indicted—splintering under accusations that leaders have become informants or otherwise been compromised by the FBI.
Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio was arrested in Washington, D.C., two days before the riot, and now faces felony charges over the possession of illicit firearm magazines. But a Reuters report on Tarrio’s history as a federal informant cast members’ suspicions on their own leader, even as Proud Boys who allegedly participated in the riot face federal conspiracy charges.
Proud Boys chapters in three U.S. states—including four local chapters in Indiana—now claim to have broken with the national organization over Tarrio’s work as a federal informant. (Tarrio did not return a request for comment.)
“We reject and disavow the proven federal informant, Enrique Tarrio, and any and all chapters that choose to associate with him,” read a statement shared by the Indiana group’s state-level Telegram channel and on the Alabama group’s website, previously reported by USA Today. “We do not recognize the assumed authority of any national Proud Boy leadership including the Chairman, the Elders, or any subsequent governing body that is formed to replace them until such a time we may choose to consent to join those bodies of government.”
Proud Boys in Oklahoma also broke from Tarrio’s leadership, issuing a statement on messaging app Telegram in which they accused him and other national “elders” of “failure to take disciplinary measures [which] have jeopardized our brothers safety and the integrity of our brotherhood.”
Tarrio responded to the Oklahoma chapter’s departure with a series of memes accusing Oklahomans of being rednecks, or having sex with relatives. Anti-Tarrio Proud Boys responded with their own memes accusing their former leader of ratting out members of the group, photoshopping his face on rapper and government witness Tekashi69. Another meme played on the menacing Proud Boys motto “Fuck Around and Find Out,” claiming that Tarrio would instead “Snitch Around and Rat Out.”
But don’t expect Proud Boy splinter groups to morph into peaceful book clubs. The Indiana Proud Boys, for example, are led by Brien James, a longtime member of white supremacist groups with a history of violent brawls. Other white supremacists have previously slammed James as a law enforcement risk (someone “you want to keep away from you because you know he’s going to do something to bring the cops over,” one previously noted). Nevertheless, James took to Telegram this week to blame Tarrio and Ethan “Rufio Panman” Nordean, a prominent Proud Boy who was arrested on Feb. 3 over his own alleged role in the riot, of being untrustworthy.
“Now we have another ‘war boy’ and elder who is trying to snitch on the president? For something he knows damn well the president didn’t do? You made your own choices Rufio,” James wrote, adding that “if you are a Proud Boy I would recommend having your chapter declare full autonomy from the national structure at the very least.” (A public defender listed as representing Nordean did not respond to a request for comment.)
The Capitol riots have been followed by still more rifts internationally.
Anti-fascist activists in Manitoba, Canada, also claim their province’s Proud Boys chapter has dissolved. The CBC reported that, while the chapter had been largely inactive for the past year, the group was confirmed dead this month, when the Canadian government designated Proud Boys as a terrorist organization.
Meanwhile, Jason Lee Van Dyke, who registered the group’s trademark and briefly led the Proud Boys in 2018, filed this week to surrender the trademark to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, legal documents show. Van Dyke previously told The Daily Beast he revoked Tarrio’s license to use the name after a Black church in Washington, D.C., sued the Proud Boys for allegedly burning their flag in a rally weeks before the Capitol attack.
“I don’t want any recourse or anyone thinking I have any control over this group, that I have anything to do with this group, or that I am going to have anything to do with this group in the future,” Van Dyke said in a separate interview this week. He claimed he’d tried to transfer the trademark to another Proud Boy, who got spooked after Canada slapped the group with a terrorist label.
“There was one individual… who contacted me about having the trademark transferred to him,” Van Dyke told The Daily Beast. “After the Canadian government made a determination of the Proud Boys as a terrorist group for whatever reason they did that, that individual told me he was out and he would not be taking over the trademark. My response to that individual and those who had been working with him on acquiring the trademark was that they had seven days to get back to me regarding who was going to take it over, or I was going to surrender it.
“I did not hear back from anybody and the trademark is surrendered.”
As for the America First movement, Casey’s criticism of Fuentes has riled the “groypers,” who have been forced to choose between their two leaders. Fuentes appeared to respond to Casey on Thursday night by tweeting a video of Donald Trump talking about disloyalty.
But Fuentes’ supporters and allies have good reason to believe federal law enforcement is focusing on their group. Anthime Gionet, a Fuentes ally who goes by the alias “Baked Alaska,” was arrested in January after filming himself entering the Capitol. Riot suspect Riley June Williams, who wore an “I’m With Groyper” shirt to the Capitol, allegedly stole a laptop computer from Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA).
Casey urged his followers to consider how they would react to Fuentes’ conference if any other far-right leader had been behind it.
“You would be like, ‘Wow, federal honeypot, federal honeypot event,’” Casey said. “You would probably accuse the guy of being a fed.”
Happens every time. "Everybody in the world is fucked up except you and me, and I'm beginning to wonder about you."
Feb 17, 2021
Today's Quote
 |
| Archibald McLeish |
It is at its worst when it deludes us into thinking we have all the answers for everybody else.
Isn't It Amazing
And just like that - "conservative evangelicals" stopped telling us we should all pray for the president.
Today's Video
Every February through the 90s, I spent a weekend at either Trump Plaza or Trump Taj Mahal.
That's where the New Jersey chapter of ACEP (ER Docs) held their annual conference, and I was obliged (also happy) to attend - not because it was Trump or Atlantic City, but because setting up my little booth to showcase my wares in the exhibit hall was part of what I did to earn my filthy lucre.
It was not a happy place though. Whenever the point of the exercise is pretty much exclusively to separate people from their money, the enterprise always attracts some not very wholesome characters. Not that everybody who worked there was a money-grubbing asshole, but I'm hard pressed to remember anyone who didn't have that kind of glassy predatory look about them. It's just something that happens to people in that kind of environment.
It's little wonder a guy like Trump believed he could thrive there. And in spite of his apparent failures (how the fuck do you go broke in the casino business?), he did just fine for himself - prob'ly (IMO) because his end was just to put up a front for the money laundering operations run by his Russian mob "partners".
Anyway, the Metaphors Department has been working overtime lately, and - well - this:
Paraphrasing David Corn: Monuments to racist assholes are being torn down all over the place.
Trump's legacy will be in keeping with that of every Conqueror-Wanna-Be - ego-centric, delusional, narcissistic, abusive and ultimately self-destructive.
The demolition has begun.
COVID-19 Update
World
USA
Vaccination Scorecard
The classic experiment in Psychology Lab is observing the changes in behavior as you add more and more mice to the maze.
We’ve been cooped up with our families for almost a year. This is the result.
What the data says about forced togetherness amid a pandemic
At the height of the pandemic, most working Americans spent at least a few weekdays at home. Some were laid off, some were working remotely, but most had one thing in common: They were suddenly spending long hours inside a single house or apartment with the same few family members.
It will stand as one of the fastest, most sweeping shifts of human behavior in modern history.
At one point, almost half the population spent more than 18 hours a day in their homes, according to the location-data provider Safegraph. The people we usually see most during waking hours — our co-workers — were replaced by our spouses and children. The places we see most — workplaces, bars, grocery stores — were replaced by extended hours in our homes.
We’re still sifting through the economic and psychological fallout. The data shows Americans gained far more free time and used it to care for children while exercising and working more. But they also devoted a massive amount of time to watching more television. At the same time, many relationships are facing strain from the stress of concurrent economic and public-health disasters. And the pandemic appears to have been particularly tough on the happiness of singles, especially women, research suggests.
As lockdowns peaked in March and April, the daily 7 a.m. flow out of the house dried up. At any given point in the day, most people were inside their homes or yards.
They usually had company. Of almost 90 million American adults whom the Labor Department classified as being forced home by the coronavirus pandemic for at least some of May:
Every year, the government solicits thousands of time diaries from a representative sample of Americans. People record what they’re doing, from bowling to budgeting. They also note who they’re with and where they are.
The pandemic has interrupted and likely delayed distribution of 2020 data, but when we look at pre-pandemic time use data, we see our four most common activities outside the home on weekdays — working, commuting, visiting restaurants and bars, and socializing -- were actions that would be drastically altered by the novel coronavirus.
Some of those activities, such as eating, have been replaced with an at-home equivalent. But others, such as commuting, represent new blocks of free time. Those don’t arise often, especially at this scale, and we can learn quite a bit from how folks chose to spend it.
Economist José María Barrero of the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México and his collaborators asked almost 5,000 Americans how they used the time they saved by not commuting. Almost half (44 percent) of those time gains have been devoted to additional work, but folks also watched more television, took care of their kids, did chores and even exercised. Parents are more likely to spend their saved time on child care; non-parents are more likely to spend it on more work and television.
The nonwork categories that gained the most — child care, television and eating — are also the ones on which working-age (25-54), married Americans spent most of their pre-pandemic together time, Labor Department data shows. Television took up more than half of a typical couple’s together time, and almost a fifth of the time parents spend with their children.
“Even before the pandemic, Americans — especially older Americans — watched a lot of TV,” said American University economist and time-use researcher Gray Kimbrough. “We probably watch significantly more now, but it was already really high. I feel like people think a lot about eating at restaurants and socializing outside of the home, but I'm pretty sure that these were dwarfed by sitting on the couch watching TV.”
Even before we know precisely how much together time American couples gained during the pandemic, we can guess the shift dwarfs any other in memory. When asked, economists struggled to name a previous time when our daily patterns shifted so suddenly. One suggested the Black Death that swept through Europe, the Middle East and North Africa in the 1340s and 1350s. Others mentioned the industrial revolution, the 1918 pandemic or World War II.
The Post’s analysis of historical time use data dating back to 1965, the earliest date for which comparable figures are available, showed the share of the workday we spend with our spouses has changed little over that time. But the pandemic shredded previous patterns by removing or shortening commutes, forcing millions out of work, and increasing child-care burdens. Experts say we can only guess at the potential short- and long-term effects of a cataclysm with so little precedent.
In normal times, spending more hours around our spouses each week would make us happier. Barnard College economist Daniel Hamermesh, author of Spending Time, has found that happiness rises as couples spend additional time together. A study of time use in the Netherlands calculated couples were willing to sacrifice about a tenth of their hourly earnings to synchronize their schedule with that of their partners — though the burden fell unevenly.
“Women are most likely to restrict the timing of their paid work and their flexibility in the labor market in order to realign their schedule with their husbands,” said Alexandros Theloudis, an economist at the Luxembourg Institute for Socio-Economic Research and one of the authors of the analysis.
Although we don’t have nationally representative data, economists Tatyana Deryugina of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Olga Shurchkov of Wellesley College and Jenna Stearns of the University of California at Davis recently analyzed time-use information from almost 20,000 academics worldwide.
Even before the pandemic, they found, women in academia spent about 50 minutes more each day caring for children and doing other household tasks, but nonetheless worked almost as much as men. The pandemic decreased the research work these women did by about an hour, and increased their child-care and housework burden by more than two hours. Men in academia saw a smaller increase in child care and housework time (about 90 minutes).
“Gender gaps among academics, both in terms of status and productivity, have been large even before the onset of covid-19,” Shurchkov said. “The loss of research time due to the unequal sharing of parental responsibilities could mean that women fall even farther behind.”
“In the long run,” she said, “the implication could be that women with young children may be disproportionately less likely to be promoted in rank and perhaps even more likely to drop out of academia altogether.”
A Washington Post analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics monthly data on marriages, separations and divorces shows few substantial changes thus far, though many signs point to a post-pandemic rise in separations and divorces. But it’s hard to attribute any increase in divorces to an increase in togetherness. Couples are going through astonishing levels of stress right now. They’re losing jobs and income, and coping with the deaths of more than 475,000 friends and relatives.
“If you see those two people fighting with one another, I’m not sure you could blame additional togetherness for that, because all sorts of other things are happening at the same time,” Theloudis said.
But although it’s likely the quantity of togetherness has changed, it’s likely the quality of our hours together has decreased, Hamermesh said.
“We’re doing much more streaming of television now than we used to,” Hamermesh said of himself and his retired spouse. “But to me that’s simply a substitute for the commuting time, the shopping time — also to some extent going to the theater, to movies to the opera, which is togetherness, also. The streaming is a poor substitute.”
The steepest consequences, Hamermesh said, will fall on the folks who are stuck at home alone. Singles start with lower life satisfaction than married couples do, and it falls significantly as they spend more time alone.
Isolation, such as that enforced by pandemic shutdowns, has been shown to take a particularly high toll on single women. Hamermesh’s work shows the decrease in single women’s happiness will have been compounded by their increased likelihood of losing work and income during the pandemic lockdowns — especially if they are the only caregiver for a few young children.
“They’re isolated and they have the kids at home,” Hamermesh said. “This, I think, is the real disaster.”
We've already begun to see a kind of COVID-related PTSD. Tack that onto the end of the multi-surge pandemic that we're in the middle of, with its recurring themes of disruption and stress - particularly the combination of economic anxiety and the equivalent of overcrowding - and we'll probably be in this cycle of fucked-up-edness for quite a while.
New Cases: 346,753 (⬆︎ 32%)
New Deaths: 9,799 (⬆︎ .40%)
USA
New Cases: 63,398 (⬆︎ .22%)
New Deaths: 1,787 (⬆︎ .36%)
Vaccination Scorecard
Total Vaccinations: 39.9 million
Total Priority Population: 32.8%
Total Population: 12.0%
A lone mouse will chug around on his own and he'll either figure it out and keep on truckin' or he'll go into a prolonged funk if he can't.
A few more mice, and the competitive drive kicks in, along with aspects of cooperation and collaboration.
But when there are too many mice in a confined space, the whole thing will eventually degenerate into a bloody mess.
Entropy is a thing, and it comes into play in a big way in closed systems.
WaPo:
Entropy is a thing, and it comes into play in a big way in closed systems.
WaPo:
We’ve been cooped up with our families for almost a year. This is the result.
What the data says about forced togetherness amid a pandemic
At the height of the pandemic, most working Americans spent at least a few weekdays at home. Some were laid off, some were working remotely, but most had one thing in common: They were suddenly spending long hours inside a single house or apartment with the same few family members.
It will stand as one of the fastest, most sweeping shifts of human behavior in modern history.
At one point, almost half the population spent more than 18 hours a day in their homes, according to the location-data provider Safegraph. The people we usually see most during waking hours — our co-workers — were replaced by our spouses and children. The places we see most — workplaces, bars, grocery stores — were replaced by extended hours in our homes.
We’re still sifting through the economic and psychological fallout. The data shows Americans gained far more free time and used it to care for children while exercising and working more. But they also devoted a massive amount of time to watching more television. At the same time, many relationships are facing strain from the stress of concurrent economic and public-health disasters. And the pandemic appears to have been particularly tough on the happiness of singles, especially women, research suggests.
As lockdowns peaked in March and April, the daily 7 a.m. flow out of the house dried up. At any given point in the day, most people were inside their homes or yards.
They usually had company. Of almost 90 million American adults whom the Labor Department classified as being forced home by the coronavirus pandemic for at least some of May:
- About one in eight were home alone.
- Almost two in five were home with kids.
- Almost half were in a household with another adult who was also suddenly sent home.
- More than two-thirds were home with another adult, such as a stay-at-home spouse or retiree.
Every year, the government solicits thousands of time diaries from a representative sample of Americans. People record what they’re doing, from bowling to budgeting. They also note who they’re with and where they are.
The pandemic has interrupted and likely delayed distribution of 2020 data, but when we look at pre-pandemic time use data, we see our four most common activities outside the home on weekdays — working, commuting, visiting restaurants and bars, and socializing -- were actions that would be drastically altered by the novel coronavirus.
Some of those activities, such as eating, have been replaced with an at-home equivalent. But others, such as commuting, represent new blocks of free time. Those don’t arise often, especially at this scale, and we can learn quite a bit from how folks chose to spend it.
Economist José María Barrero of the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México and his collaborators asked almost 5,000 Americans how they used the time they saved by not commuting. Almost half (44 percent) of those time gains have been devoted to additional work, but folks also watched more television, took care of their kids, did chores and even exercised. Parents are more likely to spend their saved time on child care; non-parents are more likely to spend it on more work and television.
The nonwork categories that gained the most — child care, television and eating — are also the ones on which working-age (25-54), married Americans spent most of their pre-pandemic together time, Labor Department data shows. Television took up more than half of a typical couple’s together time, and almost a fifth of the time parents spend with their children.
“Even before the pandemic, Americans — especially older Americans — watched a lot of TV,” said American University economist and time-use researcher Gray Kimbrough. “We probably watch significantly more now, but it was already really high. I feel like people think a lot about eating at restaurants and socializing outside of the home, but I'm pretty sure that these were dwarfed by sitting on the couch watching TV.”
Even before we know precisely how much together time American couples gained during the pandemic, we can guess the shift dwarfs any other in memory. When asked, economists struggled to name a previous time when our daily patterns shifted so suddenly. One suggested the Black Death that swept through Europe, the Middle East and North Africa in the 1340s and 1350s. Others mentioned the industrial revolution, the 1918 pandemic or World War II.
The Post’s analysis of historical time use data dating back to 1965, the earliest date for which comparable figures are available, showed the share of the workday we spend with our spouses has changed little over that time. But the pandemic shredded previous patterns by removing or shortening commutes, forcing millions out of work, and increasing child-care burdens. Experts say we can only guess at the potential short- and long-term effects of a cataclysm with so little precedent.
In normal times, spending more hours around our spouses each week would make us happier. Barnard College economist Daniel Hamermesh, author of Spending Time, has found that happiness rises as couples spend additional time together. A study of time use in the Netherlands calculated couples were willing to sacrifice about a tenth of their hourly earnings to synchronize their schedule with that of their partners — though the burden fell unevenly.
“Women are most likely to restrict the timing of their paid work and their flexibility in the labor market in order to realign their schedule with their husbands,” said Alexandros Theloudis, an economist at the Luxembourg Institute for Socio-Economic Research and one of the authors of the analysis.
Although we don’t have nationally representative data, economists Tatyana Deryugina of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Olga Shurchkov of Wellesley College and Jenna Stearns of the University of California at Davis recently analyzed time-use information from almost 20,000 academics worldwide.
Even before the pandemic, they found, women in academia spent about 50 minutes more each day caring for children and doing other household tasks, but nonetheless worked almost as much as men. The pandemic decreased the research work these women did by about an hour, and increased their child-care and housework burden by more than two hours. Men in academia saw a smaller increase in child care and housework time (about 90 minutes).
“Gender gaps among academics, both in terms of status and productivity, have been large even before the onset of covid-19,” Shurchkov said. “The loss of research time due to the unequal sharing of parental responsibilities could mean that women fall even farther behind.”
“In the long run,” she said, “the implication could be that women with young children may be disproportionately less likely to be promoted in rank and perhaps even more likely to drop out of academia altogether.”
A Washington Post analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics monthly data on marriages, separations and divorces shows few substantial changes thus far, though many signs point to a post-pandemic rise in separations and divorces. But it’s hard to attribute any increase in divorces to an increase in togetherness. Couples are going through astonishing levels of stress right now. They’re losing jobs and income, and coping with the deaths of more than 475,000 friends and relatives.
“If you see those two people fighting with one another, I’m not sure you could blame additional togetherness for that, because all sorts of other things are happening at the same time,” Theloudis said.
But although it’s likely the quantity of togetherness has changed, it’s likely the quality of our hours together has decreased, Hamermesh said.
“We’re doing much more streaming of television now than we used to,” Hamermesh said of himself and his retired spouse. “But to me that’s simply a substitute for the commuting time, the shopping time — also to some extent going to the theater, to movies to the opera, which is togetherness, also. The streaming is a poor substitute.”
The steepest consequences, Hamermesh said, will fall on the folks who are stuck at home alone. Singles start with lower life satisfaction than married couples do, and it falls significantly as they spend more time alone.
Isolation, such as that enforced by pandemic shutdowns, has been shown to take a particularly high toll on single women. Hamermesh’s work shows the decrease in single women’s happiness will have been compounded by their increased likelihood of losing work and income during the pandemic lockdowns — especially if they are the only caregiver for a few young children.
“They’re isolated and they have the kids at home,” Hamermesh said. “This, I think, is the real disaster.”
We've already begun to see a kind of COVID-related PTSD. Tack that onto the end of the multi-surge pandemic that we're in the middle of, with its recurring themes of disruption and stress - particularly the combination of economic anxiety and the equivalent of overcrowding - and we'll probably be in this cycle of fucked-up-edness for quite a while.
Today's Tweet
And a graceful exit.
Can’t stop laughing🤣😭🤣 pic.twitter.com/e4IkfvVJZZ
— Rex Chapman🏇🏼 (@RexChapman) February 15, 2021
Feb 16, 2021
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