Original art by Jenny Belin, whose older brother Max and I are very close friends (I don’t know Jenny well - she lives on the other side of the country whereas Max and I shared a flat for a couple of years). Much of her portfolio, including her series of feminists, can be found at jennybelin.com. RBG herself owned a copy of this.
My own feelings, now that I’ve stopped crying:
This is probably the whole ball game. If Trump manages to get another justice on the court our slip into Fascism will be complete. RBG was the keystone holding back the court from issuing stomach-churning positions on everything on gay rights to abortion to everything that the State of New York is trying to put Trump on trial for.
Given some of the insane news that has broken even in just the past week, from COVID-19 lies to James-Bond-villain-heat-rays to Sedition charges against protesters (or holding them on $1 Million Bond) 7 million voters disenfranchised in Florida to the “antifa arson” hoax to Sterilizing women in ICE custody.. the list seems endless.
Four things have to happen for The United States to not become a complete Fascist State
McConnell fails to hold his caucus together for 46 days
Trump loses
Democrats take the Senate
McConnell fails to get a new justice approved in the lame duck
Every year for the past decade an organization called Social Progress Imperative compiles data and statistics on a large number of factors to create an index of all the countries in the world, and their standard of living. It's an immense pool of data and I've spent a couple of weeks pouring through it.
Let's start with the conclusion - ranking countries. Here is the top 25:
1Norway
2Denmark
3Finland
4New Zealand
5Sweden
6Switzerland
7Canada
8Australia
9Iceland
10Netherlands
11Germany
12Ireland
13Japan
14Luxembourg
15Austria
16Belgium
17Korea, Republic of (South Korea)
18France
19Spain
20United Kingdom
21Portugal
22Slovenia
23Italy
24Estonia
25Czechnia
Notice anything missing? The good old US of A. Continuing:
26Cyprus
27Greece
28United States
29Singapore
30Malta
See that? Number 28. And I want to emphasize that the 2020 survey is BEFORE COVID-19
The US is going to fall much further down that list. We're currently listed as 29th in Health care.Belarus come out ahead of us.
When it comes to basic education, we're 43rd. Latvia, Croatia, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Russia, Mongolia and CUBA are all ahead of us.
When it comes to inclusiveness, we're ranked 34th. There are 78 countries that have lower homicide rates than ours, and some of them are in the middle of wars. We are 39th in life expectancy,
We do rank 2nd in Carbon Dioxide production. Only China produces more pollution than us.
Cory Wong releases his 6th & 7th albums this year, plus new music from Marilyn Manson, the King of Cabrini himself (Hugh Lee), Todd Rundgren, Masatodon (sort of), Stray Cats (again, sort of), some spiffy jazz from Atremis, and so much more! Enjoy!
I do new streams every week, so come check them out!
2.2 Million Acres on Fire. There are 104.8 Million Acres in the whole state (according to a quick Google search). That means that 2.1% of the state is burning.
3,438 square miles.
All of Rhode Island and most of Delaware.
So far.
This is what it looked like outside my window at noon today:
That tree-line is Golden Gate Park. That brighter spot where the trees meet my window frame? That's the OCEAN.
Tuesday, September 8, 2020
Update:
On average, 45,744 people per day were diagnosed with COVID-19 in the US in July. 1,418,078 people total, in August.
30,003 people died. 1 out of every 55 Americans has caught this as of the end of August. In July it was 1 in 72.
Original post from Early August 2019:
On average, 61,136 people per day were diagnosed with COVID-19 in the US in July. That's 1 out of every 176 people. 1,895,207 people total, in July. 40% of all cases, just in the past month.
25,000 people died. 1 out of every 72 Americans has caught this. 1 month ago it was 1 in 176.
Anyone... anyone who thinks things have improved deserves a kick in the fucking teeth. Anyone who SAYS that things are improving deserves prison. I'm not fucking kidding. Anyone who thinks that things are going well after being presented with the facts is lying, has an agenda that doesn't involve things getting better for the country (and most likely has no interest in governing but instead enriching themselves), and deserves to be voted the fuck out of office. That means the White House and nearly every Republican in Congress, almost every Republican Governor, and their state houses.
In a civilized country the Democratic Party of our country would be the right wing, a new Progressive party would be the Left, and the Republican Party would be relegated to the same place as the Federalists and the Whigs.
I firmly believe that the absolute NEGLIGENCE of the US government is criminal. As in lengthy prison sentences for all of them. While I do believe that every administration deserves a chance to move on from what happened before, we've never had an experience like this. We've never had an openly racist, misogynistic, authoritarian, LYING administration like this one. We can't just let this go. The truth MUST WILL OUT.
Recovering from this will take a massive effort, unlike anything seen in generations. We need to invest in medicine, science, education, and rebuild relationships with a world that for the most part either pities us or feels sorry for us. In less than 4 years our reputation in the world has been destroyed, our economy is in tatters, and we've become the only nation on Earth where someone's opinion matters as much as FACTS. It will cost TRILLIONS. But the returns will be so much more.
We must change. We must acknowledge the mistakes, and hold the wrong-doers accountable. We must do it QUICKLY.
Have an hour of new music featuring Vulfpeck using vocal harmonies, Grent-Lee Philips, Throwing Muses, The Pineapple Thief, Katy Perry sounding just like Katy Perry even though she's all growed up, Annie Taylor, and the return to form of Blue Oyster Cult! Enjoy!
New streams every week, so come check them out and subscribe!
So I've been restructuring my social media presence over the past couple of weeks, and one of the side effects of this is that I've changed where I get my news from. Oh, I still go to the same websites as before, but because of changes I've made to my social media what gets spoon fed to me by the various sites out there has changed dramatically. It put me in the absolutely thrilling position of telling Newt Gingrich to go fuck himself - directly. I'm also getting a lot less conspiracy garbage thrown at me, and that allows me to look more closely at reality itself.
So while you've all been hearing from the news media and the political bloggers how a woman getting her hair done has the same weight as allowing 200,000 people die, allow me to tell you what the government of the United States of America has been doing in just this past week, the first week of September 2020.
Department of Defense: This week the Pentagon ordered the cessation of publication both in print and on line of Stars and Stripes, the independent and superb newspaper of the U.S. Military. They have been independently operated and published since 1861, and that will stop at the end of this month. Because Trump is frightened of some of the stories they run, including one that says he is critical of those who have made the choice to serve, especially if they die during that service. Update: As I was finishing writing this essay news broke that the Trump Administration had backed down from shutting down Stars & Stripes. I certainly hope so. They've lied about this sort of thing before.
Department of Education: This week the Education Department has decided to reinstate Standardized Testing, which they suspended due to the COVID-19 Pandemic. This has drawn sharp criticism from Governors of both major parties, as we're, you know, in the middle of a fucking pandemic! Oh, and testing isn't to be done remotely, but in person.
Department of the Treasury: Has been claiming all week that there will be a deal next week on a new stimulus package for dealing with some aspects of the fallout due to the pandemic. That would be a neat trick, considering that the Senate is only scheduled to be in session 2 days next week. Ever look at the track record of the current Treasury Secretary of actually doing the things he says he's doing? It's pretty abysmal. How the hell was this guy a successful movie producer?
Department of State: Has this week been quietly (and not so quietly) floating the idea of the U.S. leaving NATO. They also placed sanctions of two investigators from The International Court at The Hague, because it is their job to look into the possibility of war crimes in our never-ending conflict in Afghanistan. Not on the court, but on people who work for the court.
Department of Justice: The man who runs the Justice Department, who is a lawyer (a requirement to hold the post), did not know that it is a Felony to vote twice in an election, or to encourage others to do so. In other words, he didn't know that Trump broke the law when he told people to vote twice in North Carolina this week.And oh yes, he dismissed yet another Chief Prosecutor of a District Court, and believes that racism isn't a thing anymore.
Department of the Interior: Did you notice this this week was the big week? The first lots to become available for drilling in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge came out this week. Bidding has begun on who gets to destroy millions of acres of pristine habitat!
Department of Agriculture: A leading scientist named Lewis Ziska has resigned after the government buried a paper he had written, subsidized by government study, that shows that due to the rise in Carbon Dioxide in our atmosphere the nutritional value of rice has fallen to critical levels. Rice is the staple diet of a very large portion of the world, and our current government wants to to ignore this.
Department of Commerce: Still going after TikTok. They don't seem to be doing anything else.
Department of Labor: Doled out $20 Million for relief for those struggling to recover from Hurricane Laura. The actual need in economic costs (non property and non insured losses) being about $8 Billion. So about 0.25% of the need. It would have been as much as 0.75% of the need, another $40 Million, but Trump moved that money, possibly illegally, to the Department of Homeland Security to help pay to send unmarked and unregulated troops to beat people up in Portland, Chicago, Minneapolis, Los Angeles, and other places.
Department of Health and Human Services: started telling people to stop getting tested, in the middle of a Pandemic that as of today's writing is sickening over 45,000 people per day and killing over 1,000.
Department of Housing and Urban Development: the ban on evictions for people under hardships because they might be one of the 50 Million people who have lost their jobs due to the pandemic has been lifted. Mass evictions began this week.
Department of Transportation: The department is continuing their now month-long trend of allowing airlines to stop servicing specific routes for United Airlines, Spirit Airlines, Hawaiian Airlines, and many more. Did you want to fly there? Well, that route has now been cancelled.
Department of Energy: This week sunk $29 Million into a total of 14 studies on technology that presently doesn't exist and that many physicist believe is impossible: Cold Fusion.
Department of Veteran Affairs: Dismissed a high level employee and a veteran herself from an important position because she has a podcast - about the Mueller investigation.
Department of Homeland Security: Suspended intelligence briefings to Congress and Presidential Candidate Joe Biden about Russian interference in the 2020 election, despite the fact that they are both entitled to these briefings, by law.
And these are just some of the big ticket items I found in just a few minutes of searching. There is lots more. Lots more.
How many of these stories did you know? A few, I'm sure, but all of them? I know about all of them because I dropped Facebook. That's the only thing I did, and so much disinformation and filtering disappeared from my news gathering sources. I learned some weeks back that the algorithms that Facebook uses to filter your content are also used by many other media sites, including news sites, who tracks through cookies your history on Facebook and uses that data as their own filtration sources.
Facebook controls what you see on about 70% of the entire internet, in terms of how that data gets filtered. That's just unacceptable. I'm perfectly fine with Facebook controlling what you see on their platforms. It's their site, let them run it as they see fit. But a lot of Facebook's money comes from selling the same filtration data for focused advertising to other companies, and they've been soaking it up. And we've been letting it happen.
I don't want Facebook to decide what I can see. I want to determine this myself. It can't be done as long as you have an active Facebook account.
This was a difficult step for me to take. I have remained in contact with many of my friends through Facebook alone, and I will lose some of them. That isn't pleasant. I'm a cranky man and it's difficult to be my friend and as such those people who are my friends a place great value on. I have discovered wonderful things thanks to Facebook. And even though I find Facebook to be a creative black hole - in that it makes the creative process harder because of the sheer overflow of garbage - I never was able to fully leave the site.
But this was a step too far for me. For all that I lose I honestly believe I will gain more. The ability to be better informed. That is my very lifeblood.
I am still here, still on twitter, still on tumblr, and will be reviving my Patreon page in the upcoming months. And because I love you, have some new Vulfpeck:
Hey! It's a new week for new music and this week we featured some old fashioned R&B/Soul, long proggy metal, Blues, a couple of bands with sophomore efforts, Some standards, a bit of jazz, and so much new good stuff that I ran an extra day putting it together.
I do new playlists every week, mostly of new music, so feel free to subscribe!
A very liberal social media friend of mine, who I must admit has seen more of the world than I have, has publicly declared that they will not vote for Biden. In his worldview there isn't much difference between the two men - and his worldview is mostly about wars and corporate control of this country. Biden won't change very much about either of these things. He's voted for war, and he makes Bill Clinton look like a bleeding-heart.
So today he posted on his own stream the following: "Biden voters: what, if anything, could prompt you to not vote for Joe, and vote Green or abstain? Or is this just blind faith?"
My response? "Nothing."
In an ideal world it would be nice to have more than these two options, and no Biden isn't the best we could have even gotten from the Democrats. But someone needs to get MORE votes than Trump, and his method, while principled and perfectly acceptable, isn't going to get it done.
The biggest problem with the whole third party option is that no one keeps pushing for it in the off years. You can't build a base by pushing for it every 4 years - it must be constant and loud, and no one has really done that.
Biden is no Liberal. No argument there. He's a corporatist in the mold of Clinton. And yes, some of the awful things Trump has done aren't going to stop. This is America, after all. That country you want (and that I want as well) doesn't exist. It got stabbed in the back by Reagan and has been in decline ever since.
But for THIS election, and this election only, it's not about the goals and ideals. It's about getting rid of Trump, and by extension the people working for him and appointed by him. At the very least, Biden is interested in having a functioning government whereas Trump certainly isn't.
It's about kicking the asses of the worst government every living human being in this country has experienced, and that's why I will be voting for Biden.
All that said, my friend raises a valid point although he didn't say it explicitly - why is it that at least in our own lifetimes the choices have to be the lesser of two evils? Granted, this time the gap is larger than ever, but why is it that no new parties have ever gained any ground in the past century? It's not like we haven't had other political parties in charge during this country's long history.
Our very first President wasn't a member of a political party. Our second was our one and only Federalist. Four of our Presidents were members of the now extinct Whig Party (and bonus points to you if you can name all four). President Andrew Johnson tried to re-brand the Republican Party as the National Union Party but that didn't take hold. If Teddy Roosevelt had won the final time he ran, we would have had a Bull-Moose President.
Unlike most of the civilized world, we elect a leader by choosing a person. In England, Japan, Australia, Ireland, Canada, France, Spain, Germany, Finland, Denmark, New Zealand, and so on, and so on, the leader of their country is decided upon what party can gain the most votes. Then it's the leader of that party who becomes the leader of the country. While this system can have problems, like the fact that Italy has had over 50 governments since World War II, or like in Israel is a coalition can't be put together sometimes the government collapses, it is one of the few systems that doesn't fall to just two party rule. Yes, in many cases there are only two parties for a majority of seats but in many cases this is not so.
The problems with our system on the other hand, are legion and lend themselves into two party factionalism. The first is the absolute stability of our election day is built into the Constitution. When no one abuses it this is a great idea, but it also ingrains a complacency in the American public at large - in that we only need to think about politics at certain times. Go to any of the other countries I've mentioned and you will find a largely informed general public, because they need to consider it more just as part of their daily citizenship.
That complacency leads to a second problem, money. The Republican and Democratic Parties are ingrained into the fabric of our political thinking, both having been around for more than 150 years and monopolizing the political landscape. They have the same advantage that whites have over minority populations, especially blacks, in that it's systemic - and it's backed up by the money. The only two even moderately successful third party candidates in the last century had lots and lots of money - Ross Perot because he was rich and Teddy Roosevelt due to name recognition. And they both lost.
It's impossible to raise the kinds of funds necessary to create public awareness and support against a system where over 99% of all the money already goes to the parties of the entrenched.I promise you, if Jeff Bezos decided tomorrow to donate even 15% of his money to a third party that it would be all over everywhere.
This entrenchment has led to another problem, wanting power for the sake of having it, which has gotten worse over the past 40 years. There is no incentive for people in public office to just do the public good if they never have to leave. The obvious solution to this is term limits, but there is a problem with that as well - we would wind up lobbyists as the most experienced people in government, which would just mean that whomever has the most money gets to write the rules. This should be unacceptable.
And then there is the Electoral College. Because of the thresholds involved in getting a place in the Electoral College and to get your vote to count there, it is impossible to get counted there without an out and out win of a state. As in more than 50% of the vote in that state. Because of the winner take all format of the EC it just can't be done with a plurality. And because of all of the other problems this simply isn't going to happen.
So how do we fix it?
Well, short of Jeff Bezos donating his entire fortune to a new political party the only thing possible is a Constitutional Convention, which is provided for in the existing Constitution. Per Article V a convention can be called if 2/3 of all the states agree to it. As of this moment, that is 34 states. It can be as simple as the Governor wanting to do it or as difficult as getting the same margin to agree to it in the various legislatures, depending on the state. This is going to take some time to accomplish but it can be done.
Eliminate the Electoral College and replace it with one person, one vote.
Solve the entrenchment problem, and I'm including the lobbying problem here as well.
Take money out of politics - make federal elections be federally funded and each candidate funded equally - let the best ideas win.
Make it possible for Congress to call a new election. Don't make it easy, but don't make it impossible either.
And probably lots of other ideas too...
We need to get started on this campaign now. Because we liberals/progressives are behind. The conservative/religious right/nut job factory/Republican parts of our political process started work on this 40 years ago. They've had to cheat their way there, with gerrymandering, rigged elections, voter fraud, but they're made it over 30 states more than once in the last 40 years. Just look at their fight to control state legislatures and Governor's offices. They've spent more money on that than on Presidential Elections.
We haven't done it at all.
The past four years has taught us (and everyone else in the world) that our experiment in near-democracy is very fragile. It is in decline. We have to want to preserve it and I'm not convinced that enough of us understand this now.
Or we need to shake it up and replace it with something stronger, with a better warranty. That's the American way, isn't it?
And because I love you, I thought you should know how to make a proper lemonade.
If I may note a couple of things for our Republican Colleagues:
1) Shut the fuck up. You weren't going to like ANYONE that Biden picked. You were going to say that anyone he picked would be a mistake. Your concern is trolling.
2) Shut the Fuck up. She was born in California. She's an American. End of story.
3) Shut the fuck up. Stop making statements about how "black" Kamala Harris is. That worked so well for you idiots the last time around, after all.
4) Shut the fuck up. Who on Earth thought it would be a good idea to refer to Ms. Harris as "Marge Simpson"? The American people adore Marge Simpson.
5) Shut the fuck up. Stop giving me your excuses about trying to "save" the Postal Service. You're not. In fact, doing anything whatsoever to slow the postal service is a felony. As in "go to Leavenworth" felony.
6) Shut the fuck up. No one takes Kanye West's candidacy seriously. We know you're behind it. But at least we've now got a reason to send Jared Kushner to prison - he can't be working on both campaigns.
7) Shut the fuck up. Ending the Payroll tax is an horrific idea. It kills Social Security and Medicare in one fell swoop.
8) Shut the fuck up. Do you honestly think Ronald Reagan would have accepted Marjorie Greene? So do I. And that shows how deep your problem really is.
9) Shut the fuck up. "Nasty" hasn't been an effective way to demean a woman since Janet Jackson sang about it. Why do bullies always insist upon nicknames?
10) Shut the fuck up. Tucker Carlson is a racist. Stop defending him. He just is.
11) Shut the FUCK UP. The United State's response to COVID-19 has been embarrassingly terrible. I mean, the kind of terrible we usually use to refer to North Korea, of The Sudan. We're not leading. We're not following. We are the subject of PITY.
12) Shut the fuck up. Yes, this is the worst job any administration has done with the economy/.Not best; worst.
13) Shut the fuck up. If you find yourself starting to talk about stuff like this, maybe consider stopping.
14) Shut the fuck up. Puerto Rico and D.C. both get to decide if they want to become states. Afraid you'll never win the Senate again? What does that tell you about your message? Need a hint?
15) Shut the fuck up. We do not need to reopen our schools until we have solved for COVID-19. We do not need to re-open the economy until we have solved for COVID-19.
16) Shut the fuck up and put a mask on.
17) Shut the fuck up. If you are in politics loyalty is to the Country first. Always the Country First. And that means the Constitution - you remember your first day in office? They makes you swears, precious. You swears!
18) Shut the fuck up, whomever is using Herman Cain's twitter account. The man died. Allow him some semblance of dignity. Or at least respect. You at least respected him, right? See item #10.
19) Shut the fuck up. ANTIFA are NOT fascists. You keep on using that word as if it were interchangeable with other words. It is not. I AM ANTIFA.
20) Your ideas don't work. They belong on history's scrap heap, with Nazis, Fascists, Racists, and a whole bunch of other words you keep using wrong. Just shut the fuck up.
Don't feel sorry for me at all. I missed getting screwed by this by a whopping $0.67.
There were four "executive orders" signed by Trump over the weekend. Well, actually three were only memos and the one that actually is an executive order doesn't put money in anyone's pocket (and in fact makes it worse).
Actually, there were FIVE orders, but one of them only became public today. I'll get to that in a moment.
The one everyone is talking about is of course the addition of $400 to the unemployment benefits everyone gets, provided that the states pay for it up front, congress agrees to reimburse the states, and the money comes from FEMA just as Hurricane Season starts up. That one was a memo, by the way.
The other one everyone is talking about is the temporary stoppage of the payroll tax - for which I make $0.67 per week too much to qualify for. That's okay by me. The tax is only deferred - it's still going to be due by April 15, 2021. The difference is that I'm still (maybe) going to get a refund. Everyone still working who makes less than I do probably won't. Oh, and if it becomes permanent,. as Trump suggested, Social Security ends almost immediately, because that's how it's funded. This one was also a memo.
He ordered Student Loan Payments suspended until January. That's all fine and dandy, but the money is still owed. Oh, and you also have to apply for it, and show hardship. This one is ALSO a memo.
The executive order: You should read it. He spends the entire first paragraph bashing the Chinese. It states that it shall be the U.S. policy to try to prevent evictions. To consider halting them on a case-by-case basis. No evictions have as of yet been halted. And on those case by case basis the first consideration is to CONSIDER financial aid, not halt evictions. While it is an executive order, it doesn't actually DO anything.
And I held this one off until last, the 5th "order" was to tell states that they are to resume "normal" operations regarding SNAP (what we used to call food stamps). A general waiver/expansion was granted to give states flexibility on who qualifies for SNAP, and as a result the number of people in the country who use the program increased 17%. 6 Million People who now had access to food they had lost due to the pandemic. The states have been ordered to go back to a pre-COVID-19 footing by September 1, 2020.
So what is the end result of Trump's orders? The removal of tax relief in 2021, evictions, an increase in Student Debt, a racist screed against China, and soon to follow, BREAD LINES. It's been 100 years since we've really seen those on a massive scale. We're about to again, unless Congress acts - which they probably won't.
Allow me to amend that: The Senate probably won't. The House passed their part of the bill back in April.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
On another front.
I have no room in my life for mean people. Angry, sure. Committed, certainly. Opposed to my own ideas, of course. But not mean. This is just mean.
If you still can find yourself supporting this administration, kindly fuck off. You've killed this country, and I want no part of you.
When I was a child we were proud try at least claim to be the greatest nation on Earth. We're not anymore. We don't even break the top 50. And it's their fucking fault. We are an empire in decline, and our current Nero will be remembered as the capstone that brought it to an end. Our 40 year decline is nearly complete.
I don't know how to teach any of you not to be a dick. I've tried, and have changed not a single thing. The dicks are still dicks, and the good people are still good. I have not one person in my life who is middle ground, regardless of political affiliation. I have Republican friends, believe it or not.
But at this point we are no longer trying to prevent the destruction of the American way of life; that's already come and gone. Everyone says that they would stand up and prevent this country becoming Fascist. Instead, we all just watched and it slid into our pockets.
We need to make a decision on what AMERICA will be NEXT.
Because if this continues, I want no part of that either. There are plenty of better places to live.
