Politics Plus

I was very lacking in energy yesterday, and didn’t get much done. But now that I don’t have any impending doom (in the form of communication outage or inability to get to my vccinaton) hanging over my head, that’s OK. I can go slowly. There are a lot of “things” (you know, “stuff”)  accumulated in my work space, many of which got migrated to extremely inconvenient places while I was attempting to deal with my internet outage, and all of those will have to either be returned to where they live or relocated somewhere else. But I don’t need to hurry, or to stress. I don’t think the lack of energy is a reaction to the shot (it might be a reaction to the stress lifting, but I kind of doubt even that.) In any case, I’m here, with news and later with videos.

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Short Takes –

The Hill – Missouri becomes ground zero for COVID-19 battle
Quote – Missouri Gov. Mike Parson (R) this week slammed the White House over its door-to-door vaccination campaign in underserved communities, which is part of the administration’s efforts to deal with outbreaks in hot spot areas…. Parson pushed back on the Biden administration’s door-to-door coronavirus vaccination strategy, arguing that it was not a “welcome strategy.”
Click through for the story. I’m not trying to throw shade. But I want Nameless to be well and stay well.

Law & Crime – Capitol Siege Defendant Who Allegedly Wanted to Hang Nancy Pelosi Claimed to Be in Court ‘By Special Divine Appearance’
Quote – “Bring them out,” Bauer allegedly said when recorded by body cam footage from the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department. “We want them out here…You bring them out or we’re coming in. Bring them out now. They’re criminals. They need to hang. Bring her out. Bring Nancy Pelosi out here now. We want to hang that fucking bitch. Bring her out. We’re coming in if you don’t bring her out. What are you trying to protect a fucking Nazi. Is that what you’re protecting?”
Click through for bizarre details. Aother example of why self-representing is a bad idea.

Reuters – Billionaire Branson soars to space aboard Virgin Galactic flight
Quote – Reaching its high-altitude launch point at about 46,000 feet, the VSS Unity passenger rocket plane was released from the mothership and fell away as the crew ignited its rocket, sending it streaking straight upward at supersonic speed to the blackness of space some 53 miles (86 km) high. The spaceplane’s contrail was clearly visible from the ground as it soared through the upper atmosphere, to the cheers of the crowd below. At the apex of the climb with the rocket shut down, the crew then experienced a few minutes of microgravity, before the spaceplane shifted into re-entry mode, and began a gliding descent to a runway back at the spaceport. The entire flight lasted about an hour.
Click through for story. Science has more or less arbitrarily decided that the 50-mile mark is where being up in the sky officially becomes “space.” One could argue, but I’m pretty sure that 50 miles is substantially farther than any measurable atmosphere extends. In any cas, that was Sir Richard’s mark, and he slightly exceeded it, and was the first to do so. Hey, better him than Jeff Bezos (though I grant Bezos was gracious about it.)

Food for Thought

So, yesterday I woke up and had both phone and internet. (I woke up on the late side, but technically still morning.) That meant I could reassure everyone I am OK, but left too little time before y vaccination appointment to do much else, and I was stuck in “email jail” too. I did get the vaccination, I feel fine (if I do react, I won’t know till some time today, I am that delayed a reactor.) I did manage to get a late video thread up – if you missed it because it was so late, it’s still there, and contains two Glenn Kirschners and a Keith Olbermann.

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Short Takes –

The New Yorker – Biden’s Invisible Ideology
Quote – Biden, by contrast [with Trump**], insisted that the way to win was not to play. In the face of the new politics of spectacle, he kept true to old-school coalition politics. He understood that the Black Church mattered more in Democratic primaries than any amount of Twitter snark, and, by keeping a low profile on social media, showed that social-media politics was a mirage. Throughout the dark, dystopian post-election months of Trump’s tantrum—which led to the insurrection on January 6th—many Democrats deplored Biden’s seeming passivity, his reluctance to call a coup a coup and a would-be dictator a would-be dictator. Instead, he and his team were remarkably (to many, it seemed, exasperatingly) focussed on counting the votes, trusting the process, and staffing the government.
Click through for full analysis. I think Gopnik is absolutely right. It’s not easy to do, and not everyone could do it, but I think that, aalongside the Justice System, it’s the most likely way to lasting success.

Non-competes, banks and farms: Five key elements of Biden’s executive order
They are: 1. Boosts leverage for workers
2. Tackles concentrated corporate power
3. Aims to lower the prices of drugs
4. Looks out for consumers
5. Bringing back net neutrality
Click through for details on each. This is complex, so I’m not even considering tring to summarize it.

Food for Thought

OK, no tech, so no phone. At least it’s quiet this way. I have a new repair ticket but no date.  they will contact me the day before  How, I asked?  Well, email, if that’s all that’s available. (At least no one has tried to text to my landline yet tht I know of.)

Cartoon – Something I didn’t know … and not exactly as one would expect.

Short Takes –

Eight Takeaways From ProPublica’s Investigation of How Sports Owners Use Their Teams to Avoid Taxes
1. Billionaire team owners often pay lower federal income tax rates than their millionaire players — and sometimes even lower rates than low-paid stadium workers.
2. The tax rates for team owners are so low, in part, because the tax code allows them to write off almost the entire purchase price of their teams, a system experts say is detached from economic reality. This is called “amortization.”
3. Owners across the NFL, NBA, NHL and MLB reported incomes for their teams that are millions below their real-world earnings, according to ProPublica’s review of tax information, previously leaked team financial records and interviews with experts.
4. These amortization benefits allow team owners to transform real-world profits into losses for tax purposes, allowing them to avoid taxes not just on their team profits, but also on income from other ventures.
5. The losses team owners get to report because of their stakes in pro sports teams allow them to dramatically reduce their personal tax bills.
6. Even the team owner who pioneered the depreciation of player contracts in the mid-20th century called the maneuver a “gimmick.”
7. The tax code has evolved to allow team owners to write off a wide variety of assets beyond just player contracts.
8. Advocates for team owners point out that when owners sell their teams, they have to pay back the taxes they avoided by using amortization. The reality is more complicated.
Click through for explanations if you’re up to it. I love the expression in #7 “The tax code has evolved.” That, I think, is on Congress.

The Hill – Trump-allied GOP [state] chairs turn on fellow Republicans
Quote – For most of modern political history, a state party chair’s role has been confined to raising money and building an organization that can contact voters and elect candidates. Their job is much more often to promote those who win primaries than to wade in on behalf of a specific contender during those primaries. But in the age of Trump, some party leaders are as eager to talk about the perceived turncoats within their own ranks as they are to go after the opposition party.
Click through for detailed examples. It’s hard to say where this is going to go. My prayer would be that it takes us to a point where there is not enough gerrymandering in the world for Republicans tt take the House and Senate in 2022. But that’s just a hope. We have work in front of us.

Political Discrimination as Civil-Rights Struggle
Quote – This reveals the predilection among many young elite Americans for progressive authoritarianism, a belief system that justifies infringing rights to equal treatment or free speech in the name of the emotional “safety” of historically marginalized race, gender, and sexuality groups. In this left-modernist worldview, conservatives’ resistance to racial, gender, and sexual progressivism mark them as moral deviants. As Millennials take power, this generational earthquake is set to shake the foundations of the cultural elite to its core, leading to pervasive discrimination against, and censorship of, conservative views.
Click through for the rest if your stomach is strong, or, I would personally suggest, here for Wonkette’s take

Food for Thought