News for the garbage dump

 

What more is there to say about this country we live in? The more it “changes,” the more it stays the same. Another poll tells us that one-in-three Americans believe that Biden could only have won the election by “fraud.” There is no accounting for national insanity, so why fight it? I have my movie collection to keep me company, and it is my intention going forward to review some films I don’t think hardly anyone has seen, but I think have something “important” to say.

But here are some parting shots at the “real” world gone unreal, and there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot that can be done about, especial when power and who has it uppermost in some people’s minds. You would think, for starters, that people would at least pretend that they want to “get along” with people who look different than they are, instead assuming that they are of a different “species.” But since that is unlikely to ever happen, we can start reducing the power of those insular of mind by passing an amendment to abolish the Electoral College, which would go a long way to reducing the “confusion” about what a majority of the country doesn’t want.

Why the Electoral College was instituted in the first place is hard to fathom. It seems to be based on the same theory of how the U.S. Senate is composed, where a state of 1 million that elects a fascist governor (South Dakota) has the same “say” as a state with 40 million (California). The framers of the Constitution had to come up with some idea of where the College vote would come from so that it would be “fair” to small states, so in lieu of any better idea they just decided to add the number of both the Senate and House of Representatives together.  Perhaps “reforming” the College can be done by removing the 100 votes accounted for by the U.S. Senate, which would subtract 2 votes from each state, supposedly leaving just the House which is supposedly based on population.

But that still wouldn’t work because the winner-take-all method would still disenfranchise the huge numbers of Democratic voters in states like Texas and Florida. The Brookings Institute calls the Electoral College a “ticking time bomb,” and for good reason; because they refuse to adapt to changing demographics in this country, Republican-controlled states are seeking ways to suppress votes just enough to maintain control of their electoral votes. The ways this is done is not always in plain sight. Take for instance the “patricians” maintaining control over the “plebes” by feeding into their various paranoid and mostly false fears of the “others,” which is behind Tennessee billionaire Willis Johnson's efforts to find a Trumpist governor, Kristi Noem of South Dakota, who was willing to accept funds to pay for 50 National Guard troops from her state to the border, because it is a “national emergency.” Noem never thought the pandemic or people in her state dying was an emergency, but if she can prove her Trumpist “cred” by not having to explain why she would otherwise be using state funds to send troops who probably have no desire at all to go to the border to run after children, then so be it.

Of course, for Republicans the real “national emergency” is losing power, because some of these children could become voters in the future; we’ve heard the story since Barack Obama was elected in 2008 that the Republican Party is "dead," but that was dependent on the capricious white vote, which tends to devolve depending how one happens to be feeling on a certain day. Today and in the future, the “enemy” is the non-white voters, and the current gravest “threat” is presented by Latino voters that threaten to flip Texas at some point in the future. Of course, if these border crossers were Europeans and not children who are being sent to live with relatives, this country would not only look the other way, but be more amenable to immigration “reform.” We saw this back in 1929, when millions of mostly Italians illegally entered the country after the 1924 immigration law, and Congress passed an “amnesty law” for European illegals that remained in effect for 20 years. In a way we are already there, with so-called Russian “birth tourism” in the “Little Russias” around the country, especially in Florida, receiving no media or ICE attention.

Meanwhile, Republicans continue to embarrass themselves with the Arizona recount, which is utilizing conspiracy-promoting incompetents from the ridiculously-named Cyber Ninjas, who were picked because they “promised” to find “fraud”—and because they made no pretense of being “nonpartisan,” the “Ninjas” will only find themselves accused of “fraud” regardless of what they report.  What brought this nonsense about was Trump and his fellow fanatics believing that the only way they could have lost the election with 74 million votes was because of “fraud,’ but naturally they don’t want to admit that their inflated vote count derived from the same pandemic rules that Democratic voters benefited from. Marjorie Taylor Greene is accusing attempts to preserve the right to vote a “communist plot,” but she need not get too bug-eyed over votes: it will likely be decades before we see the vote count as high as we did in 2020, and by then we may see a level of Republican election cheating so egregious that abolishing the Electoral College may become something more than what is merely talked about.

Today, the state of Washington lifted nearly all COVID-19 restrictions, although allowing businesses that choose to require masks indoors. Nevertheless, the CDC is reporting that as of June 19, some central states like Colorado and Nebraska already have seen almost 50 percent of their current virus cases being the new, and more dangerous, Delta strain, and will likely find a “home” in southern states soon. The strain was imported from India, and likely there because of that country’s belief that by allowing the original strains to run rampant, killing many unreported millions, would lead to “herd immunity.” But instead of the virus simply “going away” because most people were “immune,” it simply continued on its way to thrive and “improve” its survivability through mutation.

The CDC is warning people that the Delta variant could result in significant spikes in cases where vaccination rates are low, and where people pretend that the everything is back to “normal”; a walk along the pier yesterday tells me that the “tourists” think it is, since I only saw about a dozen people wearing masks. If we refuse to take warning from what happened in India, then what is happening in Russia should give one pause; the independent Moscow Times is reporting that in regard to the Delta variant, “what we did before just isn’t working.” Just this past Saturday in Moscow alone, over 9,000 new cases were reported over a 24-hour period, and total deaths in Russia have surpassed the UK for the most in a European country. Incredibly, only 13 percent of the people in Russia have been vaccinated. Moscow’s mayor admits that it is the same story again all over again, but this time the “explosive” growth in new cases will have “severe consequences.”

The Moscow Times reports that a leading physician dealing with the COVID-19, Denis Protsenko,  claims that new patients with the Delta variant “are not responding to previously effective treatments.” Meanwhile in the UK, many blame the major uptick in cases on the Boris Johnson government’s delay in restricting travel from India for “diplomatic” reasons. Despite 20,000 new cases a day in recent weeks, Johnson still intends to lift all restrictions on July 19, and many countries are now banning travel from the UK because of this lax attitude to the new, more infectious variant that current vaccines offer less protection from. And in Brazil, its neo-fascist president continues to preside over a pandemic response that threatens to surpass the U.S. in the “official” death count by country, although India is clearly the “unofficial” leader for that dubious “honor.”

What else? Hypocrisy, what else? We are learning that Texas and other Republican-dominated states are interfering with California’s assault weapons restrictions, with the intention of urging the U.S. Supreme Court to ban such restrictions. This is just another example of the high hypocrisy of the right. These so-called “state’s rights” advocates who claim that the federal government should not interfere in how a state is governed, especially in voting and gun rights, are denying a “state’s right” to make its own laws.  But shouldn’t the federal government have a “right” to insure that voting to federal offices is free and fair, and just because a state swings to the left ideologically doesn’t mean it has fewer rights to determine its laws than some far-right fascist regime in another state?

Last week, Joe Biden won a “victory” of sorts when 10 Republican Senators agreed to a compromise infrastructure plan that is considerably less than his initial proposal but more than the nothing burger that Mitch McConnell was “proposing.” Naturally there is the snag about how it will be paid for; Republicans insist that the 40 percent cut in corporate taxes that hasn’t been used for job creation or raising hourly wages will not be touched.  Hilariously, the plan will push the IRS to “force” the rich to pay what they owe (uh-huh), and will redirect “unused” state and local pandemic relief funds—again assuming that we don’t see another “surge” in cases due to the Delta variant.

It’s a total joke, and Biden didn’t do himself any favors by nearly throwing that half-glass away with the help of Nancy Pelosi, both of them asserting that they will not back the plan unless another, much more expensive spending bill is passed. This didn’t sit well with Republicans who “in good faith” negotiated the infrastructure plan. You would think that having won one “victory” with some Republican support, Biden and Pelosi would understand what it takes to work with “moderate” Republicans who are trying to step outside the control of Trump, and such “baby steps” may be what it takes. Of course the Democrats could still pass their bills with budget reconciliation, depending on how Sen. Joe Manchin is feeling, but there is no point in looking too greedy when you don’t have to be.

Even if pandemic restrictions are winding down, that doesn’t mean that its effects are over. The U.S. Supreme Court temporarily extended the CDC’s moratorium on evictions on rental housing units until the end of July. With the unemployment rate still at 5.8 percent and millions of people behind in their rent payments, everywhere in the country they are talking about a “tsunami” of evictions, 82,000 in the Seattle metropolitan area alone. Naturally there are many states—naturally of the Republican variety—that can’t wait to kick all these people out on the street, having already made it extremely difficult to obtain state and federal rental assistance. One must remember that back rent hasn’t been “forgiven”—once the moratorium ends, renters must pay their back rent, and that is certainly an impossibility for many, especially those who were out of work for a long time. There will likely be some blue state governments that may step in with money to keep the homeless problem from getting any more a public headache than it already is.

I might as well throw in something about the Aaron Rodgers situation. Conor Orr of Sports Illustrated “speculated” about how many Super Bowls Tom Brady and Rodgers would have won had they switched teams. That is a fool’s errand. You can have all the “natural” talent in the world, but it doesn’t matter if you are a head case who doesn’t have the motivation or the will to be the kind of leader for whom winning is the only thing that matters. How many times have we seen Brady stomp around the sidelines trying to motivate teammates to do better, while Rodgers just sulks by himself on the bench?

It amazes me how Rodgers’ apologists keep trying to spin his offseason shenanigans so that it looks like he is in a “win-win” situation, which he clearly is not. If he decides to “opt-out” on July 2, no team is going to want him in a trade that Packers will agree to because he won’t be able to play at all this year. Sure, he keeps his money, but he will also likely be persona-non-grata with fans. All these people saying the Packers need to do this and that to make him “happy”—no they don’t; why should they want to make a player “happy” if he supposedly doesn’t want to play for them anymore? The decision has to be made by Rodgers concerning what he wants to do, since all we know is what other people are claiming he wants—he has yet to come out and say he wants a trade. Why has he not said that yet? He is clearly manipulating both teammates and fans, and why should such a person be regarded as anything but insincere and untrustworthy?

The truth is I never saw Rodgers as an “elite” quarterback. To be honest, I never thought of Brett Favre as an “elite” quarterback; an “elite” quarterback is some guy on another team. Favre played every game, put up good numbers every year, and had that country boy personality. But after Mike Holmgren left, there was no one to keep his worst impulses under control. I never went into a season believing the Packers were going to win the Super Bowl; if they did threaten to make it that far, it was because the team just got “lucky” that Favre didn’t make too many bad decisions in a game, or the other team’s quarterback made more. In regard to Rodgers, while he seemed more “efficient” and threw fewer interceptions, that didn’t translate into more Super Bowl appearances; the Packers’ top-five defense is what got them to the Super Bowl in 2010. It was the national sports media that called him “elite,” but all that meant was that the Packers were on the national radar. That’s all Rodgers ever did for the Packers.

I’ll end this on a “personal” note. All over Seattle you see Black Lives Matter and LGBTQ paraphernalia; they even put up a large banner of the latter in the lobby of the office building I work in. But for some of us, that doesn’t have much meaning, because it is like “yeah, but why do you hate us?” Even so-called “progressives” have to hate on some group—and it isn’t white “conservatives.” In Seattle that is generally Hispanics, and in particular Hispanic males; Hispanic women seem to “fit in” easier here, because they benefit from gender politics and the sexual stereotypes that are applied  to Hispanic males with negative, even criminal, connotations, but which “Anglo” men find “appealing” in the women—and some of these women prove the point by hanging on to their Anglo “catches” like pathetic, shameless wet rags. As an aside, when I was in college a white male student confessed to me that Hispanic women are "cute" when they are young, but then they get "fat."

Of course some of us have to be the soldier so that such can play the “strumpet” to obtain false “status.”  I don’t feel any qualms about saying that about self-involved divas, since these women are “built up” by “confirming” racist stereotypes that allow the men to be beaten on by those who are given a "pass" to not feel any “guilt” about doing it.

Now I’m going to watch some movies.