Month: April 2020

“Who’s Laughing Now, Assholes?” A Letter from Henry David Thoreau to Literature Faculties at Cushy Liberal Arts Schools

On By peanutgallerynhIn Media and Culture,Leave a comment

Before the coronavirus, you were busy with this and that and the other, plus faculty meetings. Back in 1840s Concord, it was the same shit, but worse. Imagine that instead of that prissy early modernist who just lateraled over from Colgate, your local competition was Ralph Waldo Emerson, Louisa May Alcott, and Nate Hawthorne. Jesus, the pressure was unbearable.

…So you assign it and then open up class with that one time Bernie got arrested at a civil rights protest back in ’63. Here’s the thing, though: you yourself would no sooner spend a night in jail than spend a summer hoeing beans. (And you were secretly for Warren.)

…Worried about getting sick? I died of consumption, aggravated by a cold that I got from that douchebag Bronson Alcott — who, I shit you not, caught it at a teacher’s conference. Worried about falling behind on your work? I kept Homer’s Iliad on my table for an entire summer, but I barely had time to read two pages, what with all the bean-hoeing. Worried what you’ll do if your tenure app is denied? My Plan B was making pencils.

“Who’s Laughing Now, Assholes?” A Letter from Henry David Thoreau to Literature Faculties at Cushy Liberal Arts Schools – McSweeney’s Internet Tendency

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Beloit College Mindset List: 1918 – McSweeney’s Internet Tendency

On By peanutgallerynhIn Media and Culture,Leave a comment

The millions of young gentlemen, and handful of young ladies, who will be freshman students at the great universities of our Republic came into this world in the year of our Lord 1900. Consider the following:

Beloit College Mindset List: 1918 – McSweeney’s Internet Tendency

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How Trump Wasted the Best Tool He Had to Fight Coronavirus

On By peanutgallerynhIn Domestic Affairs,, Media and Culture,, Money, Class, and Poverty,Leave a comment

Bush didn’t want to hear that there was a major al Qaeda attack coming to the U.S., even though he was told specifically that. Didn’t want to hear it. Rather than saying, “Tell me more, go find out about it, tell me what more we can do,” he reacted by saying, “Well, you’ve covered your ass now by telling me that.” That’s a very different kind of approach than Obama or Clinton, who were always looking for the thing that was going to bite them in the ass.

…None has been more derelict than [the Trump] administration’s failure to provide front-line healthcare workers with the medical and protective equipment they need.

What’s most exasperating is that there was a system in place to provide that equipment: the U.S. Strategic National Stockpile, an integrated collection of secret, federally-controlled warehouses with billions of dollars worth of precisely the kind of critical supplies that were needed in this crisis, such as masks and ventilators.

…The president’s son-in-law Jared Kushner has said the stockpile was for the federal government, not the states. In fact, it was built precisely for states and localities to use in the case of an emergency. 

…The president secured money from Congress to put into the Public Health Service and the CDC to create a stockpile. A lot of it was grant money that went down to the state and county level, so they could have labs that would be able to detect and test. They set up a system so that when people came to emergency rooms and reported illnesses, that information would go into a national monitoring system. We realized that if a big event happened in any city, the city would be overwhelmed. So we set up a national stockpile of emergency medical gear that included medicines, hospital beds, ventilators, and put it in warehouses around the country.

We had a plan that when the equipment reached near its expiration date, it would be rotated, either through the Defense Department or Veterans medical systems, so that the equipment would be used before their expiration dates.

…The federal government doesn’t even have first responders. The stockpile is there for community hospitals around the country.

How Trump Wasted the Best Tool He Had to Fight Coronavirus | Washington Monthly

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Noted Philosophers Reconsider Their Key Insights After a Month of Social Distancing

On By peanutgallerynhIn Domestic Affairs,, Media and Culture,Leave a comment

Nietzsche

1883: In the absence of God and conventional morality, the übermensch creates his own moral code.

April 2020: Oh my God, people, if I’ve said it once I’ve said it a thousand times: 5/8ths of a college degree and a plane ticket to a warm beach town do not make you the übermensch. Just follow the CDC guidelines, for Christ’s sake — that’s our new secular morality. And yeah, I said “oh my God” and “for Christ’s sake.” Deal with it.

 

Kierkegaard

1844: Angst, the constant anxiety that is a defining feature of the human condition, stems from our consciousness of the unfettered freedom to choose.

April 2020: Great point, former me! Turns out when you have no choices, all your anxiety just melts away like snow in spring, or like glaciers in any season. That’s why this past month has been so existentially carefree!

Noted Philosophers Reconsider Their Key Insights After a Month of Social Distancing – McSweeney’s Internet Tendency

bahahahahah!

With the world distracted, China pursues its nefarious ambitions

On By peanutgallerynhIn East Asia,Leave a comment

With the coronavirus dominating the attention of governments around the world, China has taken advantage. It established new research stations on illegal artificial islands in the Paracel and Spratly Islands. It purposely rammed and sank a Vietnamese fishing vessel, began operating various military aircraft from Fiery Cross Reef and increased provocative fighter aircraft patrols around Taiwan. Currently, China is operating one of its government survey ships along with China Coast Guard escorts in the mineral-rich and disputed territorial waters some 200 nautical miles off the coast of East Malaysia in order to harass and bully Malaysian drilling exploration activities.

Additionally, as indicated in a recent U.S. Department of State report, there are signs that Beijing has been preparing to conduct – and has likely already conducted – underground nuclear tests in clear violation of the zero-yield standard that China and the United States signed as part of the 1996 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT).

With the world distracted, China pursues its nefarious ambitions | TheHill

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Covid-19 has blown apart the myth of Silicon Valley innovation | MIT Technology Review

On By peanutgallerynhIn Domestic Affairs,, Media and Culture,, Money, Class, and Poverty,1 Comment

The pandemic has made clear this festering problem: the US is no longer very good at coming up with new ideas and technologies relevant to our most basic needs. We’re great at devising shiny, mainly software-driven bling that makes our lives more convenient in many ways. But we’re far less accomplished at reinventing health care, rethinking education, making food production and distribution more efficient, and, in general, turning our technical know-how loose on the largest sectors of the economy.

Economists like to measure technological innovation as productivity growth—the impact of new stuff and new ideas on expanding the economy and making us richer. Over the last two decades, those numbers for the US have been dismal. Even as Silicon Valley and the high-tech industries boomed, productivity growth slowed.

…There’s plenty of debate over the reasons behind sluggish productivity growth—but, Van Reenen says, there’s also ample evidence that a lack of business- and government-funded R&D is a big factor.

Covid-19 has blown apart the myth of Silicon Valley innovation | MIT Technology Review

Conservative activist family behind ‘grassroots’ anti-quarantine Facebook events

On By peanutgallerynhIn Domestic Affairs,, Media and Culture,, Money, Class, and Poverty,Leave a comment

A family-run network of pro-gun groups is behind five of the largest Facebook groups dedicated to protesting the shelter-in-place restrictions.

…The groups were set up by four brothers — Chris, Ben, Aaron and Matthew Dorr — and have amassed more than 200,000 members collectively, including in states where they don’t reside.

…The Dorr brothers are known in conservative circles for running pro-gun and anti-abortion rights Facebook groups that bring in hundreds of thousands of dollars annually by antagonizing establishment conservative leaders and activists.

Their usual method is to attack established conservative groups from the right, including the National Rifle Association, and then make money by selling memberships in their groups or selling mailing lists of those who sign up.

…The Facebook groups started by the Dorrs each promote state-specific websites, which were registered with the same private registrar, and use similar language in their descriptions.

…The websites, such as ReOpenPA.com and ReOpenMN.com, were initially shared by the same network of pro-gun and anti-vaccination sites, [some of which were not in the same] region.

…The groups repeatedly warn users not to use off-site petition platforms like Change.org [which would not feed data back to the groups’ originators.]

…Their groups drive users to petitions on Dorr-registered websites, which collect users’ email and home addresses.

…This sort of Facebook activity is common, DiResta said, and it allows for a small group with money and media manipulation skills to simulate the appearance of a much larger movement. It also allows the group to harvest email addresses for future political campaigns, which can be bought and sold.

…DiResta said the tactics are often used to capitalize on legitimate political activism.

…”It provides an opportunity for someone who wants to piggyback on that outrage for, in this case, it seems like, outreach for future campaigns.”

Conservative activist family behind ‘grassroots’ anti-quarantine Facebook events

A sliver of what’s out there.

Indutex USA says FEMA seized N95 respirators for national stockpile

On By peanutgallerynhIn Domestic Affairs,, Money, Class, and Poverty,1 Comment

NPR reported last week that Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker said his state’s order of millions of N95 masks was confiscated at a port in New York.

…George Gianforcaro, owner of the small, Newark, Delaware-based Indutex USA, said the Federal Emergency Management Agency did not pay him when it took possession of two imported shipments of masks bound for customers across the United States.

Those customers included Delaware nursing facilities, the state of Michigan and boat captains who steer foreign ships through U.S. bays.

…”Let’s not forget I paid $4 million for this product on March 18,” Gianforcaro said, referring to the million-mask order. “This is getting very, very expensive. I don’t have any money and I don’t have any product and there’s people that are asking for it.”

…While FEMA says it targets exporters, Gianforcaro’s customers for the N95 masks are domestic companies or governments, according to a list of purchase orders Gianforcaro shared with The Delaware News Journal, part of the USA TODAY Network.

…Gianforcaro shared a written order that he says FEMA sent to his company. The document directed Indutex to sell to the federal government “all filtering facepiece respirators, including the N95 respirators contained within shipment number 8994645378 that arrived at JFK Airport” on April 6.

…That early April shipment of 100,000 N95 masks was followed by the arrival April 19 of 300,000 additional ones, which also were seized, Gianforcaro said.

Citing Defense Production Act authority, the FEMA document further ordered Indutex to “set aside” all N95 or surgical masks it may come to possess during the federal emergency for a potential sale to FEMA.

[FEMA Administrator Peter] Gaynor’s signature is written along the bottom of the document.

…In the order to Gianforcaro, [FEMA] said the shipment of masks would be sent to the Strategic National Stockpile.

…Last month, Delaware requested 10 million masks and more than 100 million gloves for what it expected to be a months-long fight against the coronavirus. Days later, the federal government asked the state to pare back the request and submit what it would need for a two-week surge.

As of early April, Delaware had been granted less than 1% of what it initially requested, according to leaked federal documents.

…In discussions with FEMA officials, [Gianforcaro] said he proposed a solution in which he could deliver masks to health facilities in the United States as directed by FEMA, rather than federal officials carrying out the logistics themselves. FEMA did not appear to [to be interested in] the proposal, he said.

Indutex USA says FEMA seized N95 respirators for national stockpile

atlantic cover crying uncle sam

The White House tried to move a reporter to the back of the press room, but she refused. Then Trump walked out.

On By peanutgallerynhIn Domestic Affairs,, Media and Culture,Leave a comment

On Friday, just before the start of the president’s briefing, Collins was ordered to swap seats with Chris Johnson, a reporter for the Washington Blade. Johnson was in the sixth row of the seven-row seating area; Collins was in the front row.

…Johnson, who was acting as the pool reporter for the day, described his involvement in one of his pool dispatches: “Earlier today before the briefing, a White House official instructed the print pooler [Johnson] to take CNN’s seat in the briefing room because the seating would be swapped for the briefing. Given the seating assignment is under the jurisdiction of the White House Correspondents’ Association, not the White House, pooler refused to move.”

…The briefing then went ahead as planned, though Trump declined to take any questions from reporters, and walked off after only 22 minutes, making it the shortest briefing since regular sessions began last month.

…[An] official then suggested the matter would be resolved by the Secret Service,  though no action was taken, according to several people involved in the episode. [Well, duh! Secret Service is the most professional arm of the government. they may have played hard but at work they don’t play. …And they certainly don’t play politics.]

…Over the WHCA’s objections and in violation of social distancing measures, the president earlier this month gave preferential access to a reporter from the One America News Network. The small cable network has a history of favoring Trump in its reporting.

…CNN has long been a target of Trump’s reprisals. In late 2018, Trump banned Jim Acosta, its chief White House correspondent, but a federal court, acting on a CNN lawsuit, said the president’s action was unconstitutional and ordered Acosta reinstated. Trump has also taken action against Collins, banning her from an open press event in 2018 after objecting to questions she asked earlier in the day.

…Acosta called the White House’s tactics on the seating issue “Soviet-style [and] totalitarian-like.” He said it took “almost an act of civil disobedience [by Collins and Johnson] to foil the White House’s plans.”

The White House tried to move a reporter to the back of the press room, but she refused. Then Trump walked out. – The Washington Post

Insane Clown Posse: Models of Pandemic-Era Leadership

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Insane Clown Posse, the vulgar Detroit duo whose super-devoted fans call themselves “Juggalos,” had already been in the news last week for canceling its legendary annual Gathering of the Juggalos (scheduled for August) because of COVID-19. Quickly, internet commentators crowed that the band that once rapped “I’m a circus ninja southwest voodoo wizard” was, as The Independent’s headline put it, “being more responsible about coronavirus than Trump.” It’s just the latest example that the portrayals of the president as a clown only end up insulting actual clowns, who probably don’t deserve the abuse. It’s also a sign that Insane Clown Posse is among the few cultural leaders who know that the pandemic-era role they should play is, simply, to tend to the community they’ve built.

Insane Clown Posse: Models of Pandemic-Era Leadership – The Atlantic

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Race for the White House: What Democrats can learn from Roosevelt vs. Taft

On By peanutgallerynhIn Domestic Affairs,, Media and Culture,Leave a comment

If you want to understand why Sanders [was] still running for the Democratic nomination, [after he had already lost] look at the presidential election of 1912, when a war between former President Theodore Roosevelt and President William Howard Taft tore the Republican Party apart and put a Democrat — Woodrow Wilson — in the White House.
“Third parties have a very difficult time in American political history. Third parties sting and then they die.”

…Roosevelt introduced the concept of direct presidential campaigning that year and racked up a series of wins. Until then, candidates had relied on surrogates to get their messages out to the public and at political conventions.

“He [was] promoting the cult of celebrity into politics in a way that has ramifications throughout the 20th century,” said presidential historian Douglas Brinkley.

The parties are both too small to give Americans many options and too big to allow anything in between.
If you don’t believe in abortion rights but you do believe climate change is irreparably changing the world, there’s no specific place for you at the national level on Election Day.
If you believe there should be new gun control measures but you don’t want to offer a pathway to citizenship to undocumented immigrants, you’re out of luck.

[The Peanut Gallery must interrupt to point out the ridiculous fiction these three paragraphs are predicated upon.

Within a two-party system, a political party is not a monolith. (To drill it down a bit further for all you multi-party parliamentary system advocates out there, its members viewpoints, although varied, almost certainly align more than the view points of many a coalition government.)

One does not belong to or vote for the party which exactly mirrors each political viewpoint one might hold. One votes for the party that is more closely aligned with one’s views. To claim the former is to ignore the representative nature of democracy as a system of government.

Democratically elected representative legislative body enact laws through compromise and only through compromise. There is no winner take all.

We pledge allegiance to the Republic for which it stands, the petulant fantasy of a country of people each of them having their own way all the time.

As you were.

Say a third-party candidate actually managed to split the electoral vote in a presidential election. According to the Constitution, the House of Representatives, which is controlled by one or the other of the two dominant political parties, would choose the next president. The [two-] party system has backstops.

OK…. One more pause to vent and throw peanuts.

For the love of Lincoln and FDR, a two-party system functioning in a way which reinforces the dominance of  two parties is not a design flaw. Two parties are kind of the point…

Does anyone pretend to know anything about civics these days, or are we all just pretending governmental systems are something akin to children’s make-believe. they are what ever our whims and preferences say they are?

Echo-chamber of idiots running around, missing the forest for the trees because they’ve convinced themselves they should be in a field.

The parties themselves are ever-evolving, but it seems pretty clear at the moment that there can only be two and whichever one can cram the most ideas into its tent can make a claim at power until people want to leave the tent.

By jove! Is that reality seeping in?

Add to that the massive diversity — geographic, racial, economic and otherwise — of a country of 350 million people. It’s both not reasonable to think two parties can sufficiently represent the viewpoints of Americans and not possible to imagine where a third party would fit.

Nope. At least not for very long. Dipshit, it is both reasonable to assume even a group as massive and diverse as the voting citizenry of the United States can be grouped into one of two group which loosely represent opposing ends of the ideological spectrum and for those parties to change and grow and assimilate new planks to platform to accommodate changing norms in society. Grow up and vote for the group who repsents you best instead of expecting a party to perfect represent one own point of view, Zach.

 

Race for the White House: What Democrats can learn from Roosevelt vs. Taft – CNNPolitics

Mmm,no actually. Interesting anecdotes about Roosevelt though.

 

Global famines of ‘biblical proportions’ will be caused by coronavirus pandemic, UN warns

On By peanutgallerynhIn International Affairs,, Money, Class, and Poverty,Leave a comment

The world is facing multiple famines of “biblical proportions.” The UN has said, warning that the coronavirus pandemic will push an additional 130 million people to the brink of starvation.

Famines could take hold in “about three dozen countries” in a worst-case scenario. …Ten of those countries already have more than 1 million people on the verge of starvation.

…”There is also a real danger that more people could potentially die from the economic impact of Covid-19 than from the virus itself.”

The WFP had already warned that 2020 would be a devastating year for numerous countries ravaged by poverty or war, with 135 million people facing crisis levels of hunger or worse. Their updated projections nearly double that number.

…That scenario would push more than 1 billion people into dire situations.

…”Lockdowns and economic recession are expected to lead to a major loss of income among the working poor,” Beasley said. Overseas remittances will also drop sharply, affecting countries such as Haiti, Nepal, and Somalia, for example.

…Even before the outbreak of the coronavirus, food supplies in some of the most vulnerable regions in the world were being directly affected by impacts such as crop failures and locust swarms. [Yep, locusts. Cue the end of the world comments.]

Exceptional drought followed by extremely heavy rainfall markedly decreased the seasonal crop yield in the Horn of Africa during 2019. These irregular weather and climate patterns also contributed to the worst desert locust invasion in 25 years, which further threatened the crop supply in the region.

Global famines of ‘biblical proportions’ will be caused by coronavirus pandemic, UN warns – CNN

Seriously…. In the middle of all of this… Locusts??! those poor people.