While Republicans call for “uncancelling" America, Democrats continue to “cancel” each other out

 

The theme of the ongoing Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) meeting is “Uncancel America.” What this means is the “freedom” to express anti-science views and climate change denial, pandemic denial, QAnon conspiracies, false election fraud claims, white nationalism, xenophobia  etc. and ad nauseam. All of these and more were embraced full-throatedly by Donald Trump, who has replaced Ronald Reagan as the “idol” of the right. The “upbeat” message of “Morning in America” has been replaced by the “Make America Great Again” shibboleth that has had the opposite effect at home and abroad, its “message” one of ignorance and hatred.

But while The New York Times has ignored what should be an important story—Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ deliberate efforts to disguise the true extent of pandemic in his state, and the arrest of a health data analyst, Rebekah Jones, for “illegally” trying to expose the truth—it is off on another “cancel culture” quest that Democrats and “liberals” in general do when they get the urge to eat their own. Gov. Andrew Cuomo—already under fire for claims that he “mishandled” the pandemic response despite previously being lauded for it—is now facing claims of sexual harassment.

The Times published what in some people’s minds may seem to be a pretty lame accusation by a former executive assistant named Charlotte Bennett, and exploded it into a “scandal.” Bennett claimed that on June 5 of last year, Cuomo asked her about her “sex life.” This is how you interpret someone asking you if you are currently in a relationship if you want it sound as if you are being “victimized.” Bennett asserted that Cuomo told her that he was “open” to “dating women in their 20s,” which only sounded "weird" in the context of their age difference, and only seemed to be an inquiry into her level of "interest," and apparently never went beyond that. Bennett claimed that she spoke to two other individuals about this “incident,” as if this was supposed to “confirm” its grievance nature. Bennett stated that she was transferred to a position of health policy advisor, but also admitted that she enjoyed her time in that position and didn’t see it as “punishment.”

Cuomo claimed he never made any “advances” on Bennett or went beyond the suggestion that he was “open” to a relationship, but the Times seems intent on creating another sex scandal out of what most people would see as a man’s “responsibility” to make the first “move,” and if the woman says “no,” then that is the end of it, and that is clearly what happened here. Where’s the story? We are told that Bennett’s claims was treated with all due “sensitivity”  by those on Cuomo’s staff, which is just another way of saying that even the most "innocent" of interactions are subject to the highest level of scrutiny to find an infraction.

There are those who say that men should “know all the rules” in their interactions with women, but  what we may also be talking about is making the mistake of interacting with women who are more “sensitive” than others, and who like to get their names and faces in newspapers and on television. To be honest, men in positions of authority (especially in politics) should never make any kind of “advance” on a woman who works for them; they are just playing with fire and asking for trouble if it isn’t the woman who makes the “first move” or doesn’t immediately reciprocate the invitation.

But if Bennett’s claim simply does not rise to the level of “sexual harassment,” then the accusations of Linda Boylan is a bit more problematic for Cuomo. Boylan, who worked in Cuomo’s office for three years, claims that he kissed her on the lips after a meeting, and had suggested on a plane trip that they play “strip poker”—clearly a “joke” since there were others sitting near them.  These charges and more were published in Boylan’s post in the Medium, which frankly has a low bar for truthful news and commentary, and will print anything socially radical or salacious; Boylan probably felt safe to embellish some things that might not stand up in a court of law on that website. Boylan’s claims of sexual harassment and bullying seems to refer mainly to herself and another person who confided in her (probably Bennett), and the “bullying” not by the men in her office, but by women who thought she was just an overly “sensitive” troublemaker.

Nevertheless, if what Boylan claims in her post are substantially true, then it is clear that Cuomo has been weaned on too many teen sex movies in his youth, and hasn’t put away childish things yet. Why would Cuomo--who has not been accused of sexual assault but of unwanted touching and “attention”—see someone like Boylan as being “interested” in him if she claims that she gave off vibes that the opposite was true? In her post, Boylan never actually claims she said “no” to him at any time, but insists that she went out of her way to avoid him. This “attention” never advanced to the point where it crossed the line into “forcing” himself sexually on her, and the reason for that may be that Boylan was married with children, and Cuomo certainly knew that; if Cuomo was still allegedly “interested” despite that, then what exactly was going on here is of further interest.

For his part, Cuomo is apparently taking a chance that these accusations will be perceived to be overblown or even not “true,” and has called for the state attorney general to conduct an “independent” inquiry into the matter. With the Covid-19 controversy and some off-color remarks to local lawmakers, the sharks were certainly circling around Cuomo, and efforts of the “left-wing” media to “cancel” him out is in full force. In fact a lot of the most "damning" commentary about this is coming from people who seem to have a personal grudge against Cuomo, and seem especially gleeful about the situation he is in. Are those commentators to be trusted with providing fair testimony? 

This of course is in stark contrast to the Republican attitude when one of their own is accused. While bad publicity affects local office holders to a greater degree, since they have to face people on the street everyday who point fingers and whisper, the higher up the food chain one goes, the less willing partisan constituents are willing to eat them alive. Accusations just seem to be vindictive and cheap efforts to “cancel” those on the wrong side of the political dividing line, and there seems to be a lack of  "fairness" in the current cultural climate, one that gives the accuser “power” over the accused without necessarily providing proof of wrongdoing. Brett Kavanaugh, for example, was practically accused of sexual assault to “cancel” him out, but it didn’t work because Republican senators were more interested in the “future” than in something that may or may not have happened in the past.

Republican lawmakers from Trump on down have been playing by rules quite different than the ones Democrats are playing by in this “cancel culture” world. They just deny accusations and call accusers flat-out liars when it really “matters,” like in getting a reliable, youthful right-winger on the Supreme Court for a long time. Trump has a record of sexual misconduct a mile long and it just doesn’t seem to matter to his supporters. This works most of the time, because in this day and age Trumpist-types not only either don’t believe the accusations, or don’t care if they are true, because they see them as part of the left-wing “hate syndrome” plot  to deprive them of their chosen leaders.

“Cancelling” only works—as we have seen time and time again—when liberals target and eat their own. This isn’t even a matter of Democrats claiming that they are not “hypocrites” like Republicans on ethical and moral issues; in many cases this is simply women or others who view themselves as victims of society who revel in having the “power” to be “somebody” and destroy someone’s career or life no matter how committed to progressive policies—deservedly, or not. If Cuomo was a Republican, this would be seen by the right as eye-rolling leftist propaganda only worthy of snide remarks from Tucker Carlson and a barrage of attacks on the accusers’ credibility.

Once the local go-to playground for cool electronics toys, Fry's Electronics finally puts an end to its customers' misery

 

Yesterday I discovered some bad news: that Fry’s Electronics had shut its doors everywhere on Wednesday, including its Renton location. It was once the go-to one-stop place for electronics, computers, peripherals, software, games and videos, as well as selling useful knickknacks and curiosities on the side. It had been in business for 36 years, when personal computers became a little less expensive and more practical. For a while I did most of my computer-related shopping there, and video purchases after Tower Records closed its doors in 2006.  But after I quit my airport job, so went my free bus fare, and then I only went to Fry’s when I actually needed to, mainly for peripherals and to look at the latest laptop models and processors.

But trouble was on the way, no thanks to Donald Trump. The last time I was at Fry’s was 2 years ago to buy a new laptop, and the place looked a lot emptier than usual, not just of customers but of product. I expressed interest in three models on display, but none of them were in stock for sale, and I ended up purchasing a model from a brand I didn’t trust and within a year that distrust was born out. In doing research on the demise of Fry’s, in 2019 there was a lot of online chatter about stock issues. Aisles that used to be stuffed with every item related to electronics you could possibly imagine that you might want were suddenly bereft of product.

Yes, online retailers like Amazon were taking their toll, but you could no longer depend on Fry’s to have what you were looking for. Particularly for PCs, many people prefer to make their purchases in-store instead of trusting Amazon to ship a computer without damaging it in transit. But when Fry’s didn’t even have the display model in stock at the store, you had to look at alternatives, like Best Buy, which is where I purchased an 11^th Gen. Intel laptop after waiting two years for the company to get its act together with its 10nm process.

No doubt the demise of retailers like Fry’s came about by more than one cause, and Amazon stealing business was just one of them. Trump’s 10 to 25 percent tariffs on computer parts made in China beginning in 2018 caused price hikes and supply chain issues, causing delays in stock of finished product. But even after some of these tariffs were eased later in 2019, issues created by the tariffs were only exacerbated by the pandemic. 

While Trump's "America First" trade policies had the opposite effect intended, Fry’s survived 2020 using the federal Payment Protection Program, but when funding ran out, the writing was on the wall; one person I talked to accused Fry’s of essentially swindling the government to stay in business while winding down its operation, laying off workers and selling off remaining inventory, until it released the following statement on its website on February 24:

After nearly 36 years in business as the one-stop-shop and online resource for high-tech professionals across nine states and 31 stores, Fry’s Electronics, Inc has made the difficult decision to shut down its operations and close its business permanently as a result of changes in the retail industry and the challenges posed by the Covid-19 pandemic.

It is sad end to a place that used to be a virtual playground of cool product to ogle at and wish you had enough money left to buy.  Where there had once been long lines at checkout aisles with a dozen counters serving one customer after another at all hours of the day, it had become a place that you couldn’t trust to have what you were looking for. Best Buy is the only store left around here that sells computer-related product in sufficient models and quantities in-store these days, particularly if you suspect Amazon employees of mishandling and misshipping “big-ticket” items.

Three Connecticut high school girls claim that allowing transgender athletes to compete against them is unfair "cheating" and depriving them of "their" right to fair competition

 

A couple of weeks ago, three female track athletes filed a federal lawsuit to prevent transgender athletes to compete with the girls in Connecticut high schools, representing three different schools. According to the Associated Press, they argue that “allowing athletes with male anatomy to compete has deprived them of track titles and scholarship opportunities.” One girl, Alanna Smith, said “Mentally and physically, we know the outcome before the race even starts. That biological unfairness doesn’t go away because of what someone believes about gender identity. All girls deserve a chance to compete on a level playing field.”

The girls’ attorney, Christiana Holcomb, claimed that allowing transgender athletes to compete with girls forces them to become “spectators in their own sports” which is “completely at odds with Title IX. Connecticut’s policy violates that law and reverses nearly 50 years of advances for women.” Title IX should be called what it is—a sacred cow affirmative action program for mostly white females, but here they have a point, in a fashion.

Ok, now let’s take a step back here and examine what is being talked about here, which seems fairly straightforward on its face. Recently I mentioned how this past December former actress Ellen Page deciding to start wearing ties and taking the name of “Elliot.” I mean, a lot of women dress like men these days and still view themselves as women, but in the case of Page it just seemed to be a rather hypocritical “gimmick” to provide “normality” to what had been previously identified as her lesbian partnership. But this “transgender” isn’t on the same “Page” as what the female athletes are alleging, since “he” isn’t “competing” with the boys on the field or playing them in movies, so what his point is beyond a political show only “he” can explain.

For historical reference, “transgender” is a relatively new term. Back in the day, people who felt psychologically that they were not of the gender type they were born into and wanted to present themselves to the world in the way nature had actually “intended,” they were said to dress in “drag,” and males who dressed as women were known as “drag queens.” The actor whose stage name was Divine and appeared in a couple of John Waters films was just one of the better known. Before even that, however, there was Ed Woods’ 1953 “cult classic” Glen or Glenda, when switching gender identity was coyly referred to as “cross dressing.”

During the 1970s the term “transsexual” came into vogue, which referred mainly to males who underwent surgical procedures and/or hormonal therapy to literally transform themselves physically into the body they felt they had been wrongly not placed in at birth. The best known case of this was physician and tennis pro Richard Raskin, who after a sex change operation emerged as Renee Richards, which caused a bit of stir when she was “outed” by a local California news anchor named Richard Carlson, who happened to be the father of someone we all know as “Tucker.” 

The U.S. Tennis Association and others responded by requiring a special “test” to determine gender, which was later overturned in court. At the time Richards was already in her mid-40s, but she played competitively against the top women players, although she never won a tournament. Of course the other “famous” case is that of Bruce/Caitlyn Jenner, who also underwent cosmetic and hormonal “sex reassignment.”

However, the term “transgender” came into usage because it is an “inclusive” term, meaning that it includes both those who underwent sex change procedures, and the vast majority who have not, who have simply changed clothes and given themselves a different name, and who are the people that the above complainants are talking about. Now, I have read that one rationalization for why these girls should accept this situation is because it is a “teaching moment,” meaning that it “teaches” them to be tolerant and accepting of the “choices” some people make. But in their minds they are being asked to show “tolerance” for cheating, and that is not exactly kosher by the “rules.”

The usual suspects in the gender politics wars claim it doesn’t matter if a “girl” or “woman” has all the physical characteristics of a male; if they say they are female then that is your tough luck if you have to compete head-to-head with them in sports. At a meeting debating the Connecticut law allowing transgender athletes to compete with girls, a mother of one those in the lawsuit was shouted down when she and others tried to speak by LGBTQ hecklers. In an op-ed piece in USA Today, she insisted that

Women’s sports were created to give girls a fair chance at competition. That includes fair victories and fair defeats. Girls deserve the same opportunity as boys to excel, to advance to the next level of competition, to win, and to stand on that podium. But allowing boys to compete in girls’ sports shatters girls’ dreams and denies our daughters equal opportunities.

There is a counter-argument, of course, and that is that the number of transgender athletes are not widespread enough to create havoc on female sports, and just a few jurisdictions are actually “threatened.” Of course we know about how back in the day Soviet block Olympic female athletes were drugged-up with testosterone and other chemicals, and it was a bit of a joke how some of them looked like Arnold Schwarzenegger. But there are now drug tests to weed out the “cheats,” and it will take just a few cases where a transgender athlete wipes out a field of biological females for this to become something more than a social oddity, but a political campaign ad.

What is an unemployed hatemonger like Stephen Miller to do with his free time? Take his Julius Streicher act on the road

 

Politico reported yesterday that freshman Republican Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar “got into a lively exchange over immigration with former Trump aide Stephen Miller” in a meeting conducted by the so-called Republican Study Committee, which represents three-quarters of House Republicans. A few members refused to attend the meeting because of Miller’s toxic presence, but the fact that the committee also invited the former acting head of ICE, Tom Homan, to offer his “ideas” said enough about where their heads were at. Outside the far-right, neo-Nazi fringe and Fox News, Homan has been labeled a sadist, who often spoke of his desire to beat his critics senseless (he was a police officer in another life),  and directed his Gestapo agents to invade schools and hospitals, and feels no self-consciousness in describing Hispanic immigrants (or Hispanics in general) as untermensch.

We are told that Miller responded to the Cuban-American Salazar’s confusion about why he was advocating for policies designed to alienate Hispanic voters (she apparently was not aware of the extent of Miller’s hatemongering until she heard it direct from the horse’s ass), and Miller “calmly” justified his racism, and the two had a private conversation afterwards. That Miller was “calm” should be taken for what it means: that he is the most dangerous kind of racist—rather than being an “emotional” response, it is a cold and calculated thought process. He means exactly what he says.

But the fact that this committee would actually invite unapologetic racists like Miller and Homan to discuss immigration policy demonstrates that Republicans continue to see immigration as their principle wedge issue, because, after all, racial grievance underlies almost every issue for their base—and beating on Hispanic immigrants has the additional benefit of being something that every racial and ethnic group can join in on.

Of course what makes the issue so “urgent” for Republicans at the present time is that Joe Biden has already reversed the most egregious of Donald Trump’s immigration-related executive orders, and his new immigration reform bill proposes an 8-year path to citizenship for undocumented workers, and a faster path to citizenship for DACA recipients. These proposals couldn’t be more anathema to the likes of Miller, who has made it no secret he wants to ban all nonwhite immigration, and to Homan, who saw his “job” at ICE to be little more than a huge vacuum pump to “clean-up” all those who Tucker Carlson called “dirty” immigrants—which is highly ironic, since it is the heavy resource-consuming and well-off like Carlson who are actually making the planet “dirtier.” 

Biden’s “kinder” approach to children in the border encampments—more emphasis on treating them like human beings rather than animals in cages—has predictably led to issues of where to put them, and being forced to reopen a few of the Trump/Miller concentration camps, but this time there is greater effort in expediting refugee children placement in the homes of families and foster homes. Miller, who was the principle architect in carrying out the “zero tolerance” policy which created the disturbing scenes of children in cages that Jewish people in this country took offense to (because they were likened to Nazi camps), apparently feels no contrition for his handiwork, and seems surprised and offended that his Frankenstein monster creation could be so easily dismantled.

Sen. Bob Menendez and Rep. Linda Sanchez have released an immigration bill based on Biden’s policy goals. Menendez criticized Republican opposition to the bill, stating that “Time and time again, we have compromised too much and capitulated too quickly to fringe voices who refuse to accept the humanity and contributions of immigrants to this country.” Miller was quick to make another appearance of Fox News, calling it “the most radical immigration bill ever written…in the history of this country.” The “irony,” of course, is that Miller’s idea of an immigration policy in this country of immigrants is far, far more radical than what this country has ever seen. He would stop all non-white immigration if it was in his power regardless of the economic impact to the country, and for his own purely racist reasons.

At it cannot be forgotten that Miller is Jewish, joining gentiles Lou Dobbs, Laura Ingraham and Carlson is perpetuating the same kind of cultural, social and economic fears and scapegoating that anti-Semites have employed over to justify murder and pogroms. I am heartily sick of those who call such comparisons “overheated,” because they derive from the same racist and white nationalist impulses, and of course most Jews are white. On the Jewish women’s website Alma, Molly Safar states that the “Jewish community has some reckoning do” because many supported Miller’s racist agenda, and how can Jews justify their own sense of victimization when an “extreme minority” chooses to support Trump and his racist policies, and even joined in the Jan. 6 insurrection, “publicly engaging in violence on the same side as the anti-Semites, neo-Nazis and white supremacists.” These are people who, like Miller, see the world through a racial, not religious, prism.

Miller—whose great grandfather was denied naturalization due to “ignorance”—was “mentored” first by former “lefty” David Horowitz, another Jewish individual who fails to see the incongruity of promoting white nationalism, racism, anti-immigrant nativism and Islamophobia while still claiming to be a victim of anti-Semitism. Miller’s next “mentor” was white nationalist Richard Spencer, and his de facto “Torah” is the lurid novel The Camp of the Saints by a Frenchman named Jean Raspail. The theme of this  monstrous anti-immigrant tome is France and the rest of “virtuous” Europe invaded by swarm of impoverished Indians bringing their “alien” third world culture, exterminating the first world culture of laws and industriousness, are lazy, useless mouths demanding to be fed, and murder white people who dare to question the new state of affairs. Naturally, it is unpatriotic “lefties” and anarchists who support this cultural and demographic change, and eventually all Europe is consumed by non-white races.

No doubt the “thesis” of this “novel” appeals to paranoid white nationalists, but the insanity of the book should be obvious when it makes such bizarre suggestions that the mayor of New York is forced to share the mayor’s mansion with three black families, and it is demanded of Queen Elizabeth to order her heir to marry a Pakistani woman. One French scholar called the book so unbalanced in its racism that it gives its white protagonists only two choices—“destroy or die.” The fact that Miller in his communications with far-right news sites like Breitbart quoted passages from this book reveals the extent to which he is well beyond the point of redemption. He is what he is. Trump thrilled to the sight of insurrection; Miller reportedly “thrilled” to the sight of children packed in cages

In fact, Miller is so far gone that he can’t turn back now without looking like a fool; he would need to “disappear” for a few years to “contemplate” before anyone would believe he had a change of heart. At present, it’s difficult to believe any politicians would want him to work on their staff, because regardless of political stance, Miller is just too extreme, and his extremism will only bring unwanted attention. Will Fox News hire him? They just fired Dobbs, and it won’t just be the potential of endless Miller scandals that cause sponsors to flee that would be problematic for Fox (or for any “mainstream” news outlet), but his fascist support of authoritarian-style government (remember he claimed that Trump’s power “will not be questioned”) could leave the network open to charges of incitement.

So what is a Jewish fascist like Miller to do? Frankly, I’m surprised he isn’t on Trump’s payroll, but for now he seems to be living off his wife’s income (in case you are wondering, Katie Miller is also a Jewish racist and anti-immigrant fanatic), and staying “relevant” means making the rounds to whoever still has the stomach for his Julius Streicher impression. Streicher’s racism was so virulent that he was persona non grata even among fellow Nazis—but his “boss” remained his most fervent supporter and protector.

The only "lesson" Republicans learned from past events is how to be "led" by the leash by Trump and his gang of voters

 

Except for a handful of Republicans in Congress, it doesn’t appear that many learned any lessons from recent events, or at least not the “right” lessons. There are those still “trumpeting” the party line that the election was “stolen” from Donald Trump; remember that just 20 minutes after the Pacific coast polls closed, Trump announced that all voting should stop right then because he had won the election—no need to count any more. This was a simply outrageous statement to make, but it was predictable given Trump’s fear of failure, and we know with certainty that he would have been of an entirely different mind if he had been behind in battleground states at that point. Trump was ahead in the countless smaller, rural Republican districts whose votes were tabulated faster, but massively behind in the larger urban districts whose votes were slower to come in. That’s just common sense, but “logic” and “common sense” are things that we just don’t associate with the majority of Republicans these days.

Save perhaps for the ten who voted to impeach Trump, Republicans in the House of Representatives are a lost cause, voted in by people who think that Bill Gates must have created the “fake snow” that pummeled Texas, engaging in demonstrations that allegedly show snow balls “burning” while being lit by BIC lighters; what they claimed was “evidence” of burning “snow” was actually carbon ash from the butane fuel. That is just how stupid not just how some Republican voters talk, but worse, how they think. Of course the less said about the presence of QAnon nutjobs like Marjorie Taylor Greene and paranoid gun fanatic Lauren Boebert the better, but it gives pause to wonder who should be allowed to vote in the first place.

Most Republicans in the  allegedly more “mature” and “deliberate” U.S. Senate are not that much better, as evidence by Ron Johnson, who stomped upon the remnants of whatever claim to sanity he has when in yesterday’s committee hearings on the security breakdown during the January 6 insurrection, quoted some absurd claims from  a known far-right commentator named J. Michael Waller, who “questioned” the “true identities” of the Capitol rioters, asserting than no “conservative” or Trump supporter would engage in violence or show contempt for law enforcement. That flew in the face of video evidence of people who were clearly Trump supporters showing something considerably less than respect in their interactions with police, ignoring their commands and bull rushing through them into the building, and deliberately injuring officers who tried to do their “job” to protect legislators and the grounds.

Johnson’s ridiculous assertions were quickly shot down by the law enforcement officials testifying at the hearing; the attitude toward “peace” and law enforcement as expressed by “Angry Hippie Mother” and fanatical Trumpist Suzanne Kaye was more typical of those present at the riot: “You think I’m going to let you come talk to me? I’m an American. I know my rights. My First Amendment right to free speech, my Second Amendment right to carry a gun to shoot your fucking ass if you come to my house.”

It should also be pointed out that groups like far-right domestic terrorists like the “boogaloo boys” specifically targeted and murdered security and law enforcement officers in California last year, while the “freedom-loving” right-wing militias in the Oregon wildlife refuge standoff, and neo-Nazi groups like The Order were openly at “war” with government law enforcement officers; The Order’s leader, Robert Mathews, died in a massive one-man shootout against federal agents in his “safe house” on Whidbey Island, Washington in 1984. Mathews was finally “neutralized” after firing off 1,000 rounds before flares ignited boxes of hand grenades and his still massive stash of ammunition. The reality is that right-wing support of law enforcement is contingent on the expectation that they will operate as a shield against the “others”—i.e. minorities—and if they in anyway appear to be “protecting” institutions that white nationalist types see as a “threat” to their hegemony, then law enforcement becomes a “legitimate” target as well. That is what we saw on January 6.

While Johnson was spinning conspiratorial nonsense, Josh Hawley was “outraged” that anyone would dare accuse him of any complicity in inciting the riots, instead chose to hypocritically attack those very people he had given a fist pump to just before they invade the Capitol building, an action they rightly took as a sign that he supported whatever action they were about to take. Hawley may claim that he had no clue what they were about to do, but his refusal to protect the institutions of government by doubling-down and declaring the election was “stolen” only showed that he had not learned any lessons about violent words leading to violent action. His behavior and claims that it did not amount to “complicity” that the three principles responsible for Capitol security ignored FBI warnings of an imminent violent attack was, as his home state newspaper The Kansas City Star declared, “an indirect way to defend his own actions leading up to Jan. 6.”

As one would expect, everyone responsible is blaming everybody else, and the DC police apparently had no standard operating procedure on how to handle a riot of this nature, or pretended not to have one. Indeed there was incompetence and lack of foresight from everyone, the Capitol Police, the DC Police, the National Guard, and the Department of Defense. But let us recall where this all began, and Trump’s first response to the insurrection: “These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly & unfairly treated for so long. Go home with love & in peace. Remember this day forever!” There can be a no clearer statement of support for the insurrection, the “reasons” that it "had" to happen, and Trump’s estimation of the rioters. It only adds to the hypocrisy of the claims by the likes of Ted Cruz, Hawley and Johnson, twisting and turning in bizarre, unrecognizable shapes defending not just themselves but Trump.

This is not to say that the Republicans in the U.S. Senate cannot find their “way” again as a “united” party. They are already doing that in refusing to support Biden’s Covid-19 stimulus package—or any of his proposals simply because the game is to make the other party look as bad as possible. This is why Democrats have to take advantage of the next two years when they are assured control of Senate. It is useful not to have “great expectations” in times of governmental shift, because the partisan dynamics stay the same.

The last time there was a major shift in party balance was during the Great Depression, when Republicans were severely punished across the country for their failure to address the misery of the people, and they fell from 270 House seats in the 1928 election, to only 88 seats in the 1936 election.  We are not quite at that point, but Republicans will go as far into the abyss as their most psychologically unbalanced voters will take them, come hell or high water. This isn’t “leadership,” this is being “led” to parts no one can predict. To quote a Bruce Springsteen song, “Like a river that don’t know where it’s flowing, I took a wrong turn and I just kept going.” That’s how the Republican Party will continue to function as long as it lives in that insane fantasy that is Trumpworld.  

Sometimes it is just better to remain in "ignorance" than to know the awful truth

 

The insanity of politics aside, the mundane vagaries of real life for real people continues as always. There are times when you wish you knew less than you do, because sometimes the more you know the more disturbed you get about life in general. Sure, if you have an expectation that something is supposed to happen and it doesn’t, you would like to know the reason why. You don’t want to be left in limbo, because you can imagine all kinds of conspiracies to explain the little diversions in expectations which might have little relation to reality, but which could have a perfectly “rational” explanation. You just want to know what it is, because the alternative is believing that someone just doesn’t give a damn that he or she creating a disruption in your life, that  you are just an anonymous nobody not worth even one thought about.

I work the “swing shift,” which isn’t always conducive for public transport, but I get off work just in time to catch the last bus out home. I manage to get to the bus stop in plenty of time, with the usual three other riders still waiting for the same bus, so I know that I didn’t miss it. This time, we wait, and we wait, and we wait some more. The general consensus is “Where the hell is that bus?”  It is a perfectly reasonable inquiry, since if it doesn’t show up, we are shit out of luck for another three hours, when the next day’s routes begin, and that is three hours of lost sleep. We’re tired, and we want to go home. What is going on here? Twenty minutes after the bus was supposed to pick us up, I decided to do some investigation on the matter. The “layover” location for the buses was a couple blocks up the street, but around a corner so they couldn’t be seen.

So I amble over to see if our bus is actually over there, and if it is, why isn’t it moving yet. It is there alright. The driver is sitting in the cockpit, and I wave at him. What’s up? He opens the door and tells me that he can’t move yet because there is a woman that he picked up on his regular route in Renton that he can’t get off the bus. I see in the middle seats what appears to be a human form laying underneath what appears to be a blanket. The driver mentioned that he believed the woman injured her head, and has called the police. I suggested that given how late he already is that  he should call his supervisor and see if another bus could be dispatched, since it didn’t appear that the police or anyone was arriving any time soon.

I started walking back to the bus stop, but suddenly it occurred to me that maybe someone should give the “first responders” a little nudge and move this thing along, given how increasingly late it was becoming. I called 911 and told the dispatcher about the situation. I provided all the information I could, returning to bus location for additional details. The driver didn’t seem particularly interested himself in providing any information or any particular “urgency” in the matter, but I communicated to the dispatcher that there was a certain amount of “urgency” not just for this person who was driven 20 miles from Renton to this location without any serious attention from the driver beyond being an annoyance, and for the people waiting for this last bus for the night to get us home.

Eventually a couple of transit police and a medical vehicle showed up, by which time the bus was now 30 minutes late. Feeling the problem was in hand and the bus would start moving as soon as the woman was taken off the bus, I returned to the bus stop, apprised those still waiting there of the situation, and assumed everything was in hand, and within 10 minutes or so we would be on our way home.

And we waited, and waited, and waited some more. Presently both the medical vehicle and the transit police left the scene. It was now an hour that passed since the bus was supposed to have picked us up and we were no closer to moving along than before. I decided to investigate again. The bus was still there, but the lights had been turned off. The driver was there, but so too were two Metro vehicles and two female Metro employees who had driven them. I asked the driver what was going on now. He informed me that someone had seen what appeared to be blood on the seat where the woman lain, and apparently it was Metro policy that this put the bus out of commission. Flabbergasted, I asked him what about us? This was the last bus out after all. The driver muttered something about another bus coming, but he didn’t sound like he was sure of that. I asked the Metro people who had arrived on the scene if that was true, and they just acted as if I was nonentity that they didn’t have to respond to.

I returned to the bus stop and apprised my fellow would-be riders of the “update” of the situation.  Another five minutes passed when I observed the Metro vehicles vacate the premises. They didn’t bother telling the people still waiting for the bus of what to expect. After another 10 minutes and no bus in sight, the other people just decided to go back to where they had come from. The first morning bus would not arrive for another 2 hours. I decided one more time to see if the driver was there waiting for a supervisor to bring another bus. He wasn’t there anymore; he apparently left with the Metro people. As far as I was concerned, he had badly mishandled this situation from the start, bringing his problem from Renton to Seattle and making it our problem, and leaving us high and dry. And nobody seemed to give a damn.

Around that time I noticed a bus driving very fast down the road a few blocks away. I thought it curious but maybe it was just some driver heading back to the depot to call it a night. It occurred to me that some of the riders at the other stops might not know what the hell was going on, and I thought maybe I’d mosey on down to them and see where their heads were at. I went to two stops where I knew there should be people waiting for the bus, but saw no one. Either they just gave up and decided on another course of action—or that bus I had seen before was the “replacement” bus and taken a short cut, bypassing the first stops on the route because he or she felt unfairly put out of their way by it, and in a hurry to get it over with.

I returned to the first stop and observed that 30 minutes before the first morning bus was to arrive that someone had finally picked up the bus that had been sitting in the layover location. I “gestured” toward the driver as he sped past, to let him know what me and the other riders there thought about this whole thing.

Now let’s step back and examine this as a “what-if.” What if I had not decided to find out what was going on with bus? I could have just waited and waited and waited like the other people and decided that the bus was just not going to show instead of “expecting” the problem to be eventually resolved. We could imagine that the bus had broken down, or the driver had left “early,” or had taken the “wrong” route. There was any number of scenarios that one could imagine that didn’t involve a false hope.  Would riders still have reason to be angry? Hell yeah, but because they didn’t know for certain the reason for it, it was just one of those screw-ups that occasionally happens.

But what did happen here in fact was not at the top of anyone’s list of what they imagined could have happened. The fact was that it was not handled correctly from the start by the driver when he was still in Renton, because if it was a serious medical emergency then it should have been tended to right there, and alternative transportation should have been dispatched so as not to inconvenience people for whom this was their last transportation opportunity. Nobody at Metro apparently considered that this was a “problem” they needed to concern themselves overmuch with. The driver didn’t care, he was going home anyways. The Metro employees didn’t care; complaints about their behavior are rarely taken seriously by Metro. Talk about lousy “service,” especially since these people depend on riders for their jobs.

Knowing the true facts of the matter just lights a smoldering fire inside, making a bad situation even worse. Was it worth even knowing the “truth” to get angry about? This was one of those situations where it was better to remain in deep ignorance, because knowable facts can be more disturbing than even what one can concoct in their most paranoid fantasies.  

Defending her putting stance is the only way for Michelle Wie to stay “relevant” after a career of failed expectations

 

The following is the closest that Michelle Wie gets to “relevance” these days, courtesy CNN:

The golfing world has rallied around Michelle Wie West following comments made by Donald Trump's former lawyer Rudy Giuliani "objectifying" the five-time LPGA Tour winner. The former New York mayor appeared last Thursday on the “War Room” podcast hosted by Trump's ex-adviser Steve Bannon and was remembering a round of golf he played with Wie West and the late talk show host Rush Limbaugh at a charity event in 2014.

As he recalls it, Limbaugh was complaining about the "paparazzi" and blamed Giuliani, only for the former New York mayor to point out photographers were for the then Wie -- she married Jonnie West, director of basketball operations for the Golden State Warriors in 2019. On the green is Michelle Wie and she is getting ready to putt," Rudy Giuliani said on the podcast on Thursday. "Now Michelle Wie is gorgeous. She's six feet. And she has a strange putting stance. She bends all the way over. And her panties show. And the press was going crazy."

Giuliani went on to finish his story asking, "Is that OK to tell that joke, I'm not sure?" To which Bannon replied, "We already told it, so I don't know."

Wie West called Giuliani's story "highly inappropriate" and "unsettling."

"What this person should have remembered from that day was the fact that I shot 64 and beat every male golfer in the field leading our team to victory. I shudder thinking that he was smiling to my face and complimenting me on my game while objectifying me and referencing my 'panties' behind my back all day," said Wie West in a twitter post.

"What should be discussed is the elite skill level that women play at, not what we wear or look like. My putting stance six years ago was designed to improve my putting stats (I ended up winning the US Open that year), NOT as an invitation to look up my skirt! Nike makes skirts with SHORTS built in underneath for this exact reason ... so that women can feel CONFIDENT and COMFORTABLE playing a game that we love.

Whatever. Aside from the inappropriateness of Giuliani’s observations in this day and age, Wie is the last person who should be talking about having “elite” skill, or bragging about her 64, since the tee boxes for female players like herself were—like in all LPGA courses—placed 50 to 60 yards closer to the hole than for male players. An Oregon publication called The Bulletin complained that public golf courses are “brutally unfair” to female golfers. Why? “For the average female golfer, golf is ALWAYS unfair — at least at golf courses lacking proper forward tee boxes”; this means golf courses without the “cheats” designed to prevent female golfers from being too “self-conscious” about their level of play compared to male golfers.

I guess you can tell I don’t think too much of Michelle Wie, and there are very good reasons for that, and I am not the only commentator to think that Wie is little more than a joke. I’ve commented on Wie’s career a couple of times in the distant past, when she was still “relevant” as a news item, although not necessarily in a good way. Wie was a teen golfing “phenom” who towered over the other girls and even the boys, and could hit a golf ball to kingdom come, if you listened to the rave reviews. At 16 she could play with the “big boys” on the PGA tour, and she received several exemptions to play with them. She was too good for the LPGA, and it was expected that she would dominate the mere mortals on that tour, and she would soon have Tiger Woods looking over his shoulders at that marvel of nature taking away all his thunder. 60 Minutes had not one, but two segments showcasing her as the “next big thing” in the sports world.

You think I’m kidding? That sure is the way the media was promoting Wie, and to listen to her, she was all in with the hype. At 16, there was a book out there entitled Michelle Wie: The Making of a Champion; the next year, there was a 160-page primer on her “power swing technique.” Wie certainly demonstrated potential at a young age. She qualified for the “any age” U.S. Amateur Public Links Championship at the age of 10; this is not to be confused, of course, with the U.S. Amateur Championship. She won a couple of local Hawaii tournaments, and at 12 she qualified for one of the minor LPGA tournaments; at 13 she made the cut at an LPGA event. The next year she was given a sponsor’s exemption to play the Sony Open on the PGA tour, and she actually only missed the cut by one stroke. At 16 she played the Sony Open again, missing the cut despite shooting one round of 68. Nike jumped on her bandwagon, and Wie already commanded a $10 million endorsement deal—before she won even one professional tournament.

These were all admittedly remarkable achievements for someone her age—but mainly for just “being there.” Tiger Woods won the U.S. Amateur Championship at the age of 18, and his first PGA title at 20, and his first major championship at 21. Surely Wie could at the very least equal those achievements. But it was not to be. Five exemptions allowed her to play in obscure PGA events where only one or two of the top-50 players appeared in to make an easy buck, missing the cut each time. She played in three European and Japanese men’s tour event, again missing the cuts. She did make the cut in a rain-shortened South Korean event, although she was tied for last place when it was over. And we haven't even started talking about her "dominance" on the LPGA tour.

But it was all one big publicity “stunt.” Wie turned out to be one of the biggest frauds in sports history. Something had gone horribly wrong with this supposedly well-oiled machine, a rusted hulk at the bottom of the ocean. Upon turning professional, Wie’s first claim to fame was not all the tournaments she was winning, but the negative publicity she was generating for being disqualified for signing a wrong scorecard, or being caught cheating in ball placement. As the years and tournaments not won kept piling up, Wie complained of unexplained broken wrists and running through caddies to blame like water out of a faucet. She played some tournaments as a freelancer for a few years, taking her college school work with her, but bowed to reality and became a full-time LPGA tour member in 2009, the year she won her first event playing with the “big girls.” From 2012 to 2013 she played in 49 LPGA events and missed the cut 18 times, and had only five top-10 finishes.

In 2014 Wie “rebounded” for her only modestly successful season, winning two tournaments, including her first (and only) major title at the U.S. Women’s Open. But the numbers don’t lie: in 268 LPGA tour events before she announced her taking time off for family reasons in 2019, she made the cut in 204 events, and won five events in total—earning less money actually playing golf than she did in that first endorsement deal. Wie never finished higher than sixth in the rankings on the LPGA tour, and only twice in the top-10 in scoring average and on the money list.

At the time, Annika Sorenstam accused Wie of not having the “mental toughness” to be successful: "You would think that being on the scene for many years now that she would have succeeded a lot more. It just goes to show that it’s a lot more than a golf swing that matters and the mental aspect is a really important part of the game." Wie even admitted—or rather, whined about—as much in a Golf.com interview: “I might be burned out. I'm not a person who 24 hours a day can only think, live, eat and breathe golf. I'm not that kind of a person. If I did that, I might be fed up with it.”

After the 2006 John Deere Classic on the PGA tour, my observation about Wie’s performance somehow made it into the letters section of The Seattle Times sports page:

The scene of Michelle Wie being carted off on a stretcher for heat exhaustion after withdrawing from the John Deere Classic was merely the final embarrassment in a considerably less than awe-inspiring performance. Commentators had been hyperventilating over Wie's chances against the lower-tier and has-beens on the PGA tour, but once again she only proved that she doesn't have the ability, endurance or the will to successfully compete against the best players on the PGA tour. She has repeatedly demonstrated a tendency to wilt under pressure. It is difficult to believe that she can ever hope to seriously compete on the PGA tour. If making the cut is her only realistic goal, she will remain what she is now: a publicity stunt and gimmick.

By 2019, Wie was barely surviving on the fumes of her endorsement deals, and other than the “hiccup” in 2014, she turned out not to be the female incarnation of Tiger Woods, but the poster child of failed expectations, if not the laughingstock of the sports world—which is her true legacy, not what some idiot like Rudy Giuliani says about her putting stance.

Using terms like "harassing" and "suspicious" can be an excuse for discrimination and prejudice

 

Once a week I go the same underground kiosk to reload my “smart card” for use on the public transit system here. This is located right above the Metro tunnel rail line, and used to be available to buses to bypass surface travel in downtown Seattle. The tunnel was originally built to accommodate light rail trains, mainly to provide convenient transportation to and from the airport, which has been considerably curtailed during the pandemic. Bus service in the tunnel ended when the city decided to approve a needless extension of the Convention Center at the far end of the tunnel. Today, nearly three years on, it is only 30 percent completed and the project is already nearly broke. It always had the potential of being a white elephant even before the pandemic. Bus service is back on the surface streets, for the inconvenience of all.

But that isn’t what I want to talk about here. The tunnel is virtually empty these days, particularly since downtown office buildings have few tenants working inside, while restaurants and most retail stores have even less consumer traffic. It is not that there is no one making any money; with an unemployment rate of 7.2, while “high” is still low enough to suggest that there are people working “remotely,” which explains why one tenant can afford to spend money on 100 new laptop computers even when there doesn’t seem to be anyone around to use them.

So here I am standing by this kiosk to reload my smart card with a payment by debit card. Here I am all alone, maybe a half-dozen people down below waiting for the next trains, and expecting to hear that message over the tunnel’s public address system I always hear within minutes of when I arrive here, with those surveillance cameras everywhere being monitored by people who are just your average off-the-street Joes who wear a “tougher” looking uniforms than their colleagues who sit in empty warehouses or parking lots—and are just as paranoid. Here they come, one right after the other: King County Metro does not condone harassment, and that riders are to report any “suspicious” behavior. It never fails. To me, this is not only “harassment” of me, but it is also constitutes “discrimination” since it makes assumptions based on the way I “look.”  

The Washington state law in regard to “unlawful” behavior on public transport only uses the term “harass” in this sentence: Unreasonably disturbs others by engaging in loud, raucous, unruly, harmful, or harassing behavior. Believe me, Metro or its drivers do not take this kind of “harassment” with any seriousness even when it does happen, which usually involves having phones on speakerphone instead of the required headphones, loud, vulgar talk, or commonly these days, refusing to wear a face mask; it is in the case of the latter that you often encounter belligerent or physically threatening behavior; “ironically, it is this type who feel they are being “harassed.”

But “harassment” is more often meant to imply a “gendered” meaning in this day and age. Just because certain people have “concerns” about harassment in certain environments doesn’t mean it is actually happening; in fact when “harassment” is reported, it is more likely the complainer is engaging in retaliation over complaints about their own behavior, usually of the “rude” or failure to abide by rules variety. Metro’s “report it to stop it” sexual misconduct campaign is clearly gender politics, because it just isn’t the “epidemic” that gender politicians want you to think it is. I’ve been riding Metro buses five days a week for at least 25 years and I just can’t think of even one incident that qualifies. There might be on occasion some “sexualized” or other vulgar talk in the back of the bus, but if so the women who sit back there are just as guilty of it. It really is just more a “political” than reality-based “problem.” Those who have been victims of it may disagree, but in context it is just another bludgeon to beat on males with.

I have read more than my share of company anti-harassment policies, and while “discrimination” is worth just a line or two, three-quarters of their content deals with “sexual harassment,” with the usual dozen bullet points that makes sure every tiny detail is covered that a female could possibly imagine taking offense to and interpreting as having a “gendered” intent. But for those who feel the sting of prejudicial or discriminatory behavior every day they walk out the door and keeps piling up, all this just seems like self-serving “whataboutism.” “Discrimination” or even prejudice is typically not “defined”; you are just supposed to know what the words “mean,” and there is wide latitude to “define” them by what they “don’t” mean. This is where the term "rational discrimination" comes in.

I don’t think a day has passed when I haven’t been observed by someone sitting inside somewhere and feel the need to “beep” their car. I cut down on “shopping” as much as possible because it just burns me up to be followed around. I’m supposed to have drugs sell, I might be a child rapist, or I’m “stealing” someone’s job. Whatever I’m doing, it can’t be anything a “normal” person does. If you work in one of those “easy to hire, easy to fire” jobs, all it takes is for someone who doesn’t like “your kind,” or against whom “red flags” of paranoia arise, are that person has to do is make up some reason why you make them “uncomfortable,” and you are out of a job, because your employer doesn’t want any “trouble.” What about your “rights”? What “rights”?

But discriminatory behavior should be obvious even when intent is not “clear.” I was on a bus when a driver who I believe was South Asian refused to allow an elderly black man on the bus because he supposedly wasn’t allowed to bring a “shopping cart” on the bus. Are we talking about one of those grocery carts? No, it was what “normal” people would call a shopping “basket” with a relatively small, foot-square footprint, and I made my opinion on the matter known. I have seen presumably homeless people haul all their personal belongings on a sledge inside the bus that was rather considerably more inconvenient to other riders than that. This is probably the only driver this man will ever encounter in his lifetime who would call his little shopping basket a “cart” and refuse him service. This was clearly unreasonable and deliberate discrimination, and I filed a complaint about it as such to Metro.

I’ve experienced many “small” incidents that was clearly motivated by the driver’s prejudice against certain “ethnic” groups—in fact I have frequently complained about I saw as a “culture” of discrimination against Hispanics at Metro, practiced by white, black and Asian drivers. In my personal experience, this could be relatively “small” but deliberately prejudicial behavior such as not stopping at the designated stop location and showing preferential treatment to other groups (white or black) who didn’t even bother to stand in line—or being expressed in ways that go beyond the pale of the merely “rude.” Most buses that begin their routes in downtown Seattle do so in tunnel-like overpass that runs through one section of the original Convention Center building. The bus I take makes its stops on Fourth Ave. before it turns on Pike Street where it travels east until it makes it final stop on the route on the street side of the Center just before it makes the turn into the tunnel for a rest stop.

But this driver (a black male) had a different idea of his job. I had observed him belittling a few passengers out of personal enjoyment rather than for committing actual infractions, but as yet he hadn’t targeted me. As the bus was making the turn on Pike he suddenly demanded to know why I was still on the bus. I told him I always get off at the last stop at the Convention Center. He told me he didn’t go up that way. Confused, I told him that this bus always “goes up that way,” and he told me that he wasn’t “all” drivers, and he had his own “rules.” I informed him that he was mistaken, but he was intent on insisting on his “power” he had as the driver, and before he went another block he told me get off the bus; the driver then made a turn a Sixth Avenue (three blocks away from the Center tunnel) which I had never seen any bus do before, but apparently to “prove” to me that he wasn’t going “that way.”

I had to walk another six blocks up to take care of some personal business, and on my way back I discovered that this very same bus (I had taken down the bus ID number to report the incident) was parked in the overpass tunnel—meaning that the driver had made a turn back on Fourth to go back up Pike again to complete his assigned route; all of this just so that he could get away with bulling and discriminating against a rider just because he “could.” I waved at the driver to let him I saw what he did. While I generally suspect that Metro doesn’t take any complaints against driver behavior seriously, I think in this case the driver was “transferred” to another route, because I haven’t seen him since.

Amazon looking to control its Frankenstein monster AMZL system by putting cameras in delivery vans

 

According to a recent story from CNBC, “Amazon drivers at some U.S. facilities will soon have an extra set of eyes watching them when they hit the road to make their daily deliveries. The company recently began testing AI-equipped cameras in vehicles to monitor contracted delivery drivers while they’re on the job, with the aim of improving safety.” Amazon is using the cameras in “Amazon-branded cargo vans” which are deployed for “last-mile deliveries.” For those who have had to deal with Amazon Logistics (AMZL), this means items are “picked” at fulfillment centers, then sent to distribution centers—either directly if a local delivery, or by plane or ground truck and then to a distribution center, where they are loaded onto those dark gray “Prime” vans to be eventually delivered (emphasis on “eventually”).

The contract drivers themselves are expressing concern over these “extra eyes” on top of the GPS tracking they are required to provide to consumers online. Drivers are calling these “Big Brother” devices “unnerving” and a “punishment system” that puts “further pressure” on them. Drivers fear that video will be used against them for safety violations or unacceptable performance. I have to agree with them, because those are problems, but more for customers than for the drivers themselves.

I’ve always had trust issues with the AMZL delivery system, because of its unpredictable and unreliable service. Remember when you ordered something and they gave you a “guaranteed” delivery date? Since they began using their own logistics method for most deliveries, they have been forced to drop the “guaranteed” part because, well, they can no longer make such promises, even if you pay for "Prime." I’ve had orders to be delivered the next day leave an Amazon facility in Texas and then not show up until over 24 hours later in Portland, meaning it was put on a truck instead of a plane directly to Seattle. I had another package leaving Texas for a next day delivery that did leave on a plane—except that it showed up the next day not in Seattle, but in Ohio.  I had another next-day AMZL delivery disappear for two days until the next tracking scan was in Philadelphia. I had more than a few packages leave the Kent Fulfillment Center to take the 20 minute drive to the Seattle distribution center, and not “arrive” there for another 16 hours and wind up being delivered a day late.

Just as frustrating is what happens when packages are finally put on a delivery vehicle. Now, AMZL deliveries used to be carried out by people who were hired to make deliveries using their own POVs, like the Uber people-delivery service. Whether or not this was “good” depended upon if your packages were loaded on the driver’s first run—or the next, or the next. Then Amazon started using its own “Prime” vans, but using contract drivers. AMZL drivers are not actual Amazon employees; as opposed to USPS delivery drivers, who operate on set schedules where you can make an educated guess what time they make their deliveries, with AMZL drivers it’s impossible to make any such assumptions. It can be anywhere from 1 hour after they leave on their runs, or 10 hours—or not at all.

What makes it worse is that drivers are supposed to provide GPS tracking, and one of most frequent headaches is that it is impossible even with this to get a handle on the “approximate” time a delivery will be made, because you can't make any assumptions about how long it take the driver to go from, say, stops 5 to 4. Instead of the expected progression of stops, you encounter the “the driver has to make a few more stops to your location” message between each “stop.” Thus two or even three hours can pass between each “stop.”

On one delivery, the GPS indicated that the driver was right on top of the delivery location, but spent an inordinate amount of time there before leaving without indicating a delivery had been made. When I arrived at the delivery location, the package was in fact not delivered. Shortly thereafter the driver was back at the Seattle distribution center, claiming that it had to make “a few more stops to your location,” and kept claiming that until after 10 PM, when I received the “apology” from Amazon for not delivering the package on time. It appeared that the driver had been looking for the package, couldn’t find it, went back to the distribution center because it hadn’t actually been loaded on the van, and since it couldn’t be found right away, it was decided to “deal” with it the next day.

This past Thursday I had three packages out for delivery, in a fashion. The first GPS tracking began around 11 AM and it indicated “7 more stops.” I work at night, so I have this “expectation” that I can pick up my packages before I get there.  It didn’t quite work out the way I thought it should. During the next five hours there the tracking was all over the map, and “a few more stops” between every stop. Finally it said “You are the next stop” at 3:30 PM, which I didn’t quite trust because the van’s location was about two blocks away from the delivery location. At 4 PM the GPS showed that it hadn’t moved from that spot.

I was already frustrated by the snail pace of this delivery, so I decided enough was enough, I was going to find out what was going on. When I arrived at the location the GPS indicated, there were in fact two Amazon vans sitting there:

Both of them were driverless. It wasn’t until 4:30 when one of the drivers appeared and drove away, and the other left 5 minutes later. I wasn’t sure which one was supposed to be the “you are the next stop” deliverer, so I waited to check the GPS. I couldn’t have been the first driver who left, because she turned the next corner away from the direction of the “next stop” to make another delivery.

So it must be the other driver? This person actually did make a turn in the “right” direction—except that it continued driving past the delivery location. So that person couldn’t be the “next stop” driver. I assumed that given past history of incompetence and unreliability that it was the first person who was supposed to make “next stop,” and predictably when I looked at the tracking it was back to “a few more stops.” But there was something still not quite right: the GPS location indicated that it was the second driver who had the packages, and was now parked about five blocks away. I decided enough was enough (again) and I was going to take an image of the license plate of the van and report this to Amazon logistics. Not that I actually thought they would do anything about it; Amazon customer service is the most useless in the world—they know nothing and can do nothing, unless your package is too lost for them to think of any more excuses.

Anyways, I took a stroll down the street and it was still there, and then it drove off another two blocks, made a turn, made another turn, and I finally was able to take a photo of that damn license. Since it was on the “right” road to take it to the delivery location, I started walking back in that direction, expecting that it would pass me at some point, but it never did. But as I was walking up to the delivery location at what was now 5 PM—90 minutes since the packages were the “next stop”—I saw the first van sitting there. Confused, I looked at the GPS tracking again, and it still showed that it was on the second van still far down the street. Checking my mail, the packages had to have been delivered by the first van.

So what had happened here? Were the packages put on the incorrect van? Probably, but that doesn’t “explain” away the actions of the driver who according the GPS tracking was allegedly responsible for the delivery, nor does it explain what the drivers were doing inside the location for at least an hour where I first found them at. The tracking indicated the one had only left on the route shortly before 11 AM, before taking a “break” at that location. Maybe it was their “lunch break,” except that it lasted a little longer than it was supposed to be, but since these people are not being monitored properly, Amazon cannot "control" what they do.

My “investigation” of this particular delivery uncovered the following: GPS tracking is unreliable, the drivers are unreliable, and the whole AMZL delivery system in unreliable. Yes, you may say, at least it was delivered and be satisfied with that. But Amazon shouldn’t be excused for creating a Frankenstein monster that it can’t control, which likely explains the “drastic” action of putting cameras into vans which lazy drivers are expressing fear over. With UPS and Fedex you get your packages on the day they say you will get them, and not earlier even if they have to sit next door for two days—but also not later. With USPS, you may actually receive your packages earlier than scheduled just to get them out of the way. But with AMZL, Amazon threw out that “guarantee” promise, and for good reason.

Limbaugh didn't "enhance" freedom in this country; he used and abused it to enrich himself while advocating for the far-right and white supremacists

 

When I relocated for a couple of years to Sacramento after college, Rush Limbaugh was quite the local celebrity, having honed his “craft” in the city for four years before going national in New York City the year before. Back then he was described as an “entertainer” and a “political vaudevillian.” The latter was an accurate description, since Limbaugh’s satirizing politics of the day was often worth a chuckle or two, as were the occasional song parodies; I remember the parody of Dion’s “The Wanderer”—which poked fun at Ted Kennedy and his supposed womanizing—as being a riot. But over the years the satirizing and parodying of politics—which although aimed at “liberals” could still be taken as a dose of healthy “ribbing”—disappeared, and turned nasty, and often blatantly racist.

The Reagan administration ended the “Fairness Doctrine,” a rule that required public media, such as the radio, to air alternative viewpoints to ones that had been aired previously. This meant that if a “conservative” commentator had his or her viewpoint heard, then the station that aired it must provide a “liberal” commentator equal time. We have seen the result of the abandonment of this rule in that right-wing talk shows on the radio have proliferated to the point where it is almost impossible to find “left-wing” talk radio, even in cities like Seattle. It could be argued that right-wing talk was more “popular” and generated more ad revenue, but it was also just as likely that conservative owners of communications companies preferred to have only the viewpoints they favored aired. In this environment, Limbaugh thrived.

It has been a long time since I actually heard a Limbaugh radio show, and have only been exposed to it by the occasional clip that was “newsworthy” because of its outrageous content. Yesterday left-wing YouTube commentator Jesse Dollemore unleashed his righteous fury at Limbaugh’s expense, and since I didn’t care to “mine” any Limbaugh “nuggets,” I want to speak to some that Dollemore dug up himself.

First there was Limbaugh "philosophizing" on the use of the term “nigga.” Whenever a white person discusses whether or not he is allowed to use such words, it is always with the “other” word that they might prefer to use in mind. It becomes a political and social issue because they want to create an issue. It really depends on how you say the word and if it is meant in the spirit of “camaraderie.” When racially insensitive people use it, it is clearly meant to be derogatory; Limbaugh was frequently tone-deaf in this regard.

A little history lesson for you. If any race of man should not have guilt about slavery, it is Caucasians. The white race has probably had fewer slaves and for a briefer period of time than any other in the history of the world. No other race has fought a war for the purpose of ending slavery which we did with nearly 600,000 people killed in a civil war. It’s preposterous that Caucasians are blamed for slavery when they’ve done more to end it than any other race.

The message here is that you shouldn’t get your history lessons from Limbaugh. Slavery lasted as long as “Caucasians” practiced it. Ancient civilizations all employed slave labor—including “Caucasians” like the Greeks and Romans. One may recall the Spartacus slave uprising (there was a four-year, mostly fictional Starz series about it), which was brutally suppressed to continue slavery in the Roman Empire for another 500 years. What followed during the 1,000 years of the Middle Ages was feudal serfdom, which continued slavery in a fashion, with serfs having no rights to leave the land assigned to them unless they received permission from the lord of the manor, who they were required to serve both in supplying food and as soldiers. Serfdom in Russia was de facto slavery, and continued into the mid-19^th century.

Although slavery was not “obvious” in Great Britain, in fact it was not officially abolished until 1833, when the government “bought” all existing slaves from their owners.  Thus at the time of the original colonization, British settlers were just importing an already existing practice. The Civil War was never actually intended to end slavery, but to maintain the Union; Abraham Lincoln himself stated that if he could end the war without abolishing slavery, he would do it. Ending slavery did not become a war aim until 1863, when it was used as a threat to force the Confederacy into immediate re-unification, and failing that, as eventual national policy.

The NFL all too often looks like a game between the Bloods and the Crips without any weapons. What kind of “class” is that?

Limbaugh always seemed to have issues with blacks, particularly in the “cultural” sense as seen above. Limbaugh saw the promotion of black quarterbacks as “affirmative action” that elevated black players who were not “smart enough” to play the position. More of Limbaugh’s “fascination” with race:

Yes I smoke a little negro dialect there. I can do that when I, uh, I want to.

You put your kids on a school bus, you expect safety, but in Obama’s America the white kids get beat up with black kids cheering. “Yeah, right on, right on.”

It is these wackos from Bill Ayers to Jeremiah Wright to other anti-American, Afro-centric, black liberation theologists working with ACORN, and Barack Obama smack dab in the middle of it. They have been training young black kids to hate, hate, hate this country, and they trained their parents before that to hate, hate, hate this country.

Obama is the first president in history to want his nation to fail.

Of course blacks were not the only target of Limbaugh’s nonsensical racism, and he had some frankly white nationalist, nativist and xenophobic views that are simply beyond the pale:

Let me add my (immigration proposal) to the mix. If you immigrate to this country, you have to speak the native language, you have to be a professional or an investor. No unskilled workers allowed (racist code, of course, for keeping Hispanics out). There will be no special bilingual programs in the schools, no special ballots for elections, no foreigners will have the right to vote or hold political office. You cannot be a burden to tax payers, you are not entitled to welfare or food stamps or other goodies. You can come here if you invest the amount equivalent to 40,000 times the minimum wage. But if you want to buy land it’ll be restricted. No waterfront for instance, and you have to relinquish individual rights to the property.

You have no right to bad mouth the president or his policies; you’re a foreigner, so shut your mouth or get out.

He even blamed Native Americans for being “responsible” for the "genocidal" death of millions of “real” Americans by “forcing” tobacco smoking on them:

How many Native Americans were killed by the arrival of the white man through disease and war? How many people have died since the white man arrived here, thanks to the Indian-invented custom of smoking tobacco?

No one should particularly mourn Limbaugh’s passing. He helped shape far-right, white supremacist dialogue in this country. Trump gave him the so-called “Medal of Freedom”; the truth is that Limbaugh didn’t enhance “freedom” in this country, he used and abused it to enrich himself while creating a “clear and present danger” to this country, the kind that fueled the January 6 insurrection.

Giving racist white women "cute" nicknames doesn't really help

 

Does anyone wonder why the media applies “cute” nicknames to certain despicable people? Take for instance “Permit Patty,” “BBQ Becky,” “San Francisco Karen” and “Central Park Karen.” These were among the many white women caught on viral videos committing what the Michigan Journal of Race and Law called “white caller crime” and “racialized police communication,” which seems to be committed by women significantly more often than men. This may be less a function of actual numbers, but in the fact these “nicknames” serve as defensive strategies to “distance” oneself from being “complicit” with these people; they are just oddball “outliers,” like mass shooters must be stereotyped in some way (the “crazed loner”) so that we don’t have to examine the atmosphere of hate from which these people spring.

In some cases, like that of actress Hilary Duff—who accused an older black man taking photographs in a park of being a “pervert” and being part of some “human trafficking” scheme—have their tone-deaf defenders. However, it is worth pointing out that Duff’s “take down” of a conspiracy theory a few days ago claiming that she tried to use her own son as “bait” for traffickers is somewhat ironic, given that it was Duff herself who started her own personal “conspiracy” theory when she falsely accused the black man of being a “child snatcher.”

In the case of “Permit Patty,” she called police to report an 8-year-old black girl selling water without a “permit.” “BBQ Becky” called police on a group that was having a barbecue in a park. Other incidents simply seem to be a case of just being beat on for being there, ignoring perfectly “natural” explanations for behavior that would be seen as perfectly normal for white folks. We’ve seen recent incidents where a Mississippi woman threatened a black couple with a gun for having a picnic at a campground, and an Arkansas woman holding four black high school students on a door-to-door fundraising expedition for the school football program at gunpoint in her yard. Such bullying behavior often seems to be motivated by  a desire to impose “rules” that prevent a person from being “annoyed” by the presence of an unwanted person or group, and calling the police, or threatening to do so, will make the alleged criminals “disappear.”  The Michigan law journal wrote that

Like the innocuous behaviors triggering these reports to law enforcement, the consequences of these calls vary widely. Some conclude constructively, such as one made by a Starbucks employee and which ended in implicit bias training for the company’s employees nationwide, or another call a few years earlier, reporting a Black man entering his own home—which ended in neighborhood programing. Other reports end fatally, as the dyadic deaths of Tamir Rice and Johnathan Crawford III—both killed as the result of calls to the police—demonstrate. What remains constant, however, is that those who make such reports rarely, if ever, face legal consequences for their actions.  And, despite the increasing urgency and awareness of such reports, they have received little attention in legal scholarship.

While some of these people are actually charged with a crime, it doesn’t appear that they actually end-up doing any “time,” let alone paying a fine for public disturbance or detainment. Take for instance “Central Park Karen”—actual name Amy Cooper. A black man named Christian Cooper—who was doing bird watching last spring in an area of the park that was set aside for migratory birds, and dogs were required to be on a leash when traversing the area—told Cooper she needed to leash her dog. 

Cooper became immediately belligerent, and the man started to video her with his phone. She demanded he turn off his phone, and the man asked her not to come close to him. “If you take pictures of me I’m calling the police.” He said “please call the cops.” She called 911, telling the dispatcher that “an African-American man is threatening my life. He is recording me and threatening me and my dog (the dog is still not on a leash, and she appears to be choking the dog by holding it by its collar). Please send the cops immediately.”

Amy Cooper was charged with a misdemeanor count of falsely reporting a crime. The case created international condemnation and Cooper was fired from her job. But yesterday, after things had “cooled off,” the New York Times reported that prosecutors asked the judge to drop the charge against her, claiming that she had satisfactorily completed a “therapeutic education program” about racial bias. This the judge did with unseemly haste. The Times recorded that the prosecutor, Joan Illuzzi, claimed that Cooper’s therapist characterized their sessions as “a moving experience” and Cooper “learned a lot.” This is called “restorative justice,” an “alternative” to “traditional prosecution,” says the Times.

Cooper didn’t even a receive a wrist slap for potentially endangering a life at the hands of a police officer with an itchy trigger finger by falsely accusing Christian Cooper of threatening her life. There is nothing now in her record—a white woman treated differently in a city with an already lousy record of civil rights. Was she even “sorry” about what she did? Her lawyer only made it worse by tweeting “After a thorough and honest inquiry, the New York DA’s office dismissed all charges today against Amy Cooper. We thank them for their integrity and concur with the outcome. Others rushed to the wrong conclusion based on inadequate investigation and they may yet face legal consequences.” Umm…did this guy even watch the video of the incident? Was he threatening the victim?

Black people are not the only ones who have had to endure a hyper-racist white woman: In California in 2018, a Hispanic man and his mother were subjected to racist insults by an unnamed woman while doing yard work. When Esteban Guzman tells the woman that he is an “honest citizen,” she “corrects” him: "Yeah, rapists, animals, drug dealers ... even the president of the United States says so." Need we ask what “president” she is referring to? Guzman later appeared on a news program, stating that he “stood up for everybody that is scared to speak up. I stood up for the little people, for the people that don't have a voice in this country.” Like, say, Hispanics.

There are other ways of “standing up” to people who think you should have no voice and just beat on you for being here—and with no guns or other weapons. On his Unfiltered show, Roland Martin and guests had some fun with a couple of “crazy white people—this is so delicious.” A phone video shows a white couple jumping out of their car to confront a Hispanic couple in a case of road rage. “The white couple was hyped…Cut them off…They stopped their Cadillac SUV…Got out…They were about to whup some ass…But they didn’t realize that they went up against #team whip dead ass…I don’t think that ended up quite how they expected”: