Monday, May 31, 2021

 

The Week That Shook Big Oil

 
The energy industry was shaken by a trio of events this week that could help shape the future of oil and gas. Here, the sun sets behind two under-construction offshore oil platform rigs in Port Fourchon, Louisiana, in 2010. (photo: Saul Loeb/Getty)

By Camila Domonoske, NPR

31 May 21

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his week's news was nothing short of astonishing.

A court in the Netherlands issued a landmark ruling against Royal Dutch Shell — an oil company already pledging to cut its carbon emissions to net zero by 2050 — ordering it to act faster.

At Chevron's shareholder meeting, investors voted to demand that the company reduce its contribution to climate change. The demand was short on specifics, but investors made it clear that it was not enough to use renewable energy to power oil and gas operations: Real action on climate change means selling less oil.

And a much bigger shareholder revolt took place at Exxon Mobil. Activist investors took on the giant and won, delivering a stinging rebuke to the company's management.

The hedge fund Engine No. 1 placed two new directors on the board of what was once the world's most influential oil company — to prepare it for a world that might stop burning oil and gas.

These events shook the oil industry to its core, upending assumptions about the future of the fuel that powers the global economy.

But this moment has been a long time coming. The scientific consensus that burning oil and gas is driving climate change has been firmly established for decades. For just as long, activists have wielded this scientific evidence in a fight against the world's massive oil and gas giants. They have sued in courts around the world. They have picketed. They have held die-ins.

And they've used the tools of business, arguing that oil and gas is a bad long-term investment.

In a world where governments are determined to tackle climate change, a lot of oil and gas investments might never pay off — they'd become "stranded assets," and companies would lose money.

Activists have presented this financial logic to corporate leaders. They have submitted shareholder proposals. Sometimes they've even won incremental victories.

But they've never had a week like this.

So what changed?

"What's different about this moment is that now we have technologies that are cheaper, cleaner and better, and so the market is recognizing that oil and gas are no longer indispensable," argues Fred Krupp of the Environmental Defense Fund. "The argument that used to be somewhat theoretical about stranded assets is now very tangible and real."

The cost of building new wind and solar power has fallen dramatically. Electric appliances and heat pumps could conceivably replace natural gas in homes. And after Tesla proved that battery-powered vehicles didn't have to be glorified golf carts, the entire auto industry is racing to pivot toward electric vehicles.

Meanwhile, governments around the world — particularly in Europe and China — have been promoting green technology through increasingly aggressive incentives and penalties. Outright climate denial, while still prevalent in countries like the United States, is no longer in the political mainstream.

And more and more investors, including giant, influential money managers like BlackRock, are focusing on climate change. Some groups cite moral reasons, while others focus on the bottom line.

"The biggest risk for us as investors is assuming the status quo and not seeing those risks or those technology disruptions that are around the corner," says Aeisha Mastagni of CalSTRS, the retirement fund for teachers in California. The group was a high-profile backer of the shareholder revolution at Exxon.

"I don't know what the price of oil is going to be tomorrow. I don't know exactly when the world's going to transition," she says. "But I do know that change is coming and Exxon Mobil needs to change with it."

This sense of impending change has reached some oil CEOs and boards of directors.

"Certainly in Europe, there has been a real awakening on the part of a growing number of directors," says Karina Litvack, who serves on the board of directors for the Italian energy company Eni and co-founded the World Economic Forum's Climate Governance Initiative.

"We're certainly not there with everybody, but ... directors are aware of the urgency and the complexity and the scale of the climate challenge," she adds.

Increasingly aggressive carbon targets in Europe put pressure on American companies to follow suit; meanwhile, as the Dutch court decision against Shell shows, the bar continues to be raised in Europe.

All these forces have converged to create a remarkable moment of reckoning for oil and gas giants.

This week's dramatic news does not suggest that the fight over climate change is over.

In the sometimes-perverse lexicon of corporate America, the idea that the world will wage a successful battle against climate change is a "risk." Specifically, it's called "transition risk."

If the world decides to tackle climate change and transitions away from oil and gas, then a wide array of companies will need to adapt or go under. It may or may not happen, but if it happens, it will carry costs. So from a corporation's point of view, it's a risk.

Exxon Mobil has repeatedly argued that the odds of this happening were so low that it didn't merit planning for it.

Based on the investor revolt this week, Wall Street clearly thinks that a substantial shift away from oil and gas is possible.

Proxy advisory firms, companies that issue recommendations on how investors should vote on shareholder proposals, even used the word "inevitable." And since beliefs about what's possible can shape what's politically viable, this is no small development.

But there's no consensus on when this change would happen.

The oil industry points out that cutting production too early — before the world's demand for oil has actually decreased — would cause price spikes and shortages that would fall somewhere between disruptive and disastrous.

And for demand to drop quickly enough to ward off the worst effects of climate change would require massive investments in renewable power, widespread adoption of electric vehicles, lifestyle changes to cut energy demand, the political will to make disruptive policy changes and international cooperation among rivals and outright enemies.

The world is not currently on track for that kind of transformation.

In short, the fate of the climate is profoundly uncertain. But this week's boardroom and courtroom decisions point to an expanding sense of what's possible.

A massive shift away from fossil fuels is a prospect that Big Oil can no longer rule out.

Are these folks looking for more oil, or are they just pretending the air they breathe is not becoming increasingly fouled by our dependence on fossil fuels?

Cicadas Are Terrible at Living in the World They're Emerging Into. Just Like Us.

 
Periodical cicadas sit on leaves in Rock Creek Park in Washington, D.C. (photo: Astrid Riecken/WP)

By Joshua Keating, The Washington Post

30 May 21

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here’s always a surprising wildness to the all-too-brief spring in the D.C. area, that weeks-long lull when the heat is turned off but the air conditioning is not yet on. For a spell, the boundary between the human world and nature feels more porous. The air, thick with moisture and pollen, wafts into our homes through screen windows, clinging to skin and inflaming sinuses. Ducklings putter about in pools on the Mall, and the overgrown trails of Rock Creek Park beckon.

This year, the spring feels wilder than normal thanks to Brood X, its emergence offering a pervasive spectacle of cicada sex and death that has overtaken our environment. The sidewalks themselves seem to be wriggling with tiny bodies and crunchy brown exoskeletons. An eerie high-pitched drone plays counterpoint to the more familiar sounds of crickets and birds. After dark each night, the latest waves scuttle up tree trunks, pulling their pale white abdomens out of their old carapaces.

But as remarkable as it is to watch them crawl out of the ground, the most striking thing about the insects is how bad they are at being alive. After 17 years underground, the cicadas of Brood X really don’t seem ready for the surface at all. They tend to cluster in exposed areas where they’re easy marks for birds and small mammals, or likely to be crunched underfoot by human pedestrians. Haplessly schlepping their half-shed shells across the blazing-hot concrete in the path of an oncoming schnauzer, they seem, as a species, to be somehow unfinished, as if evolution cut a few corners and clocked off early.

When they inevitably end up on their backs — perhaps having fallen from the tree branches to which they haplessly cling — they are unable to right themselves, like turtles, except that turtle shells actually have some value as protection. They’re capable of flight but don’t seem to have learned how to do it properly. Instead, they careen slowly and drunkenly off surfaces, held aloft by fragile, translucent wings that seem too small for their bodies. Birds perch atop lampposts, their beaks hanging wide, as if they were, quite reasonably, expecting their befuddled prey to pilot straight into their open maws.

So the cicadas are all too easy to mock, but every time the impulse strikes me, I realize that their travails aren’t so different from our own. Like the cicadas, we humans are also emerging into the light this spring for the first time after a period nestled in the dark; not 17 years, admittedly, but still much longer than we’re used to. And like the cicadas, we seem remarkably ill-prepared for the world we’ve emerged into.

The excited talk of a “hot vax summer” or a “new Roaring Twenties” is all well and good, but first we’re going to have to relearn how to interact with one another. I know, from talking to friends, that I’m not the only one who seems to have entirely forgotten how to make small talk. When your neighbor greets you with a cordial “Hello,” are you supposed to respond, “Good morning!” or “Fine, thanks, and you?” At least we’ve progressed from the “Hanging in there, I guess” to the “Things are starting to open up a bit!” phase of recovery repartee. But when we do talk, we’ve mostly struggled to talk about anything other than the pandemic, our single topic drowning out all else, not unlike the cicadas’ nightly hum.

Once-routine activities like ordering at a restaurant or taking public transportation seem novel and strange. Ongoing covid concerns and safety protocols don’t help: How wide a berth are we still keeping on the sidewalk? Are handshakes and hugs back? Can we hang out inside yet? If anything, the increasingly bitter debate over masking policy is evidence that we really don’t trust one another, if only because we still fear the lurking pathogens. Here, too, the cicadas — imperiled by a contagious psychedelic fungus that can cause their butts to fall off — may be more like us than we want to believe.

But maybe that’s where the cicadas also have a lesson for us. As a cohort, they’re pulling off an incredible feat of natural choreography, one worthy of awe. They don’t get much time under the sun, and they may not seem particularly well-suited to it, but they make the most of it. Their incompetence isn’t their strength, exactly, but their persistence is evidence that they are, collectively, stronger than they seem. Yes, they are bad at being themselves, but that doesn’t stop them from going for it anyway. As the Tao Te Ching puts it, “Great skill seems awkward; great eloquence seems tongue-tied.”

Emerging into the post-quarantine sunlight, we hopefully have more to look forward to than two weeks to molt, mate and die. (A hot vax summer, indeed.) Seeing old friends, making small talk with acquaintances, eating in public, even working in an office are all going to be more intense and novel than they used to be, and a little tentative ungainliness at first isn’t the worst reaction. But however much the cicadas may remind us of ourselves now, they also show us the truth about our awkward predicament: Ultimately, the only way out is through.

If nothing else, at least they’ve given us something other than the pandemic to talk about.

Trump lickspittles have taken over Republican Party, but a handful of rebels play long game

Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse, a leader in the shrinking anti-Trump faction of the Republican Party.

kos

Daily Kos Staff

Friday May 28, 2021 · 1:00 PM MDT

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All Republicans are awful. They are greedy, selfish, death-worshipping assholes. Let’s just stipulate that because it’s objectively true—it’s no accident that while they were happy to toss aside their supposed fealty to “family values” and “national security” during the Trump years, the one thing they got accomplished was tax cuts for the über-wealthy. Their priorities have always been clear. 

That said, we can divide Republicans into two camps, one of them full of morons beyond belief, and the other not so dumb. The first has surrendered itself completely to the felon-in-waiting Donald Trump, who cost them the House, the Senate, and the White House—only the third president to lose reelection in the last hundred years. He isn’t just the nation’s biggest loser, but a living reminder of the GOP’s lack of any actual ideological core beyond tax cuts for the rich. Remember, Republicans didn’t even bother writing a party platform during their presidential convention! Why bother writing anything down when all that matters is what Trump thinks in the moment, subject to his changing irrational whims? 

The Trump lickspittles have won the battle for control of their party. But there is a smaller faction—those Republicans who, while ideologically odious, at least remain loyal to the Constitution and the principles of American democracy. It’s a low bar to meet and a distressingly small number of Republicans meet it, but they exist. 

Yet while this small minority of Republicans might be on the outs today, they’re playing the long game, and it’s a smarter game to play. They may not be the future of the party, but they have more of a chance to do so than any of the Lickspittle caucus ever will. 

Six Republicans voted for the Jan. 6 commission: 

  Bill Cassidy, Louisiana
  Susan Collins, Maine
  Lisa Murkowski, Alaska
  Rob Portman, Ohio
  Mitt Romney, Utah
  Ben Sasse, Nebraska

This nearly mirrors the list of Republicans who voted to convict during Trump’s second impeachment trial. The only differences are that Pennsylvania’s Pat Toomey is missing (he didn’t bother to stick around) and Portman was added to this list. 

Of those, Portman is retiring, Collins represents a blue state, and Murkowski is protected by the strange politics of her state (including the brand new “top-four” jungle primary that protects her from being ousted in a traditional Republican-only primary). 

Cassidy, Romney, and Sasse, however, represent solid red states (even if Utah isn’t particularly Trump-loving), and Sasse, in particular, has presidential ambitions. (Maybe Romney too.) 

Over in the House, 35 Republicans voted for the commission—a stunningly large number of defectors—led by Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, who was recently cancelled from the House leadership. That is a significant increase from the 10 who voted for Trump’s second impeachment. And if you look at that list, it’s not a list of “liberal Republicans,” or even moderates. No liberal Republicans are left, and precious few moderates, as well. Most were solid conservatives standing up for the Constitution. 

It would be hard to point to any elected official and not think that they have higher-office aspirations. So these Republicans, in all future campaigns, will have this vote hung around their necks during their primaries. It’s the reason so many Republicans took the coward’s way out and stood by Trump. They were afraid to face their base voters having stood up to Trump. There are the loyalists, like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who are far gone in Q-conspiracy land and worship their idol Trump. But aside from those, there are the opportunists—the Sens. Josh Hawleys and Ted Cruzes, Republicans working feverishly to capture that Trump electoral magic in a bottle and releasing it for their own benefit in their inevitable future presidential bids. George P. Bush is the latest of that crowd to humiliate themselves in a bid to win Trump’s approval. 

What the Liz Cheneys and Ben Sasses know, because it’s obvious, is that Trump will never anoint any of that crowd—not the loyalists, and not the opportunists—for anything in which he or his spawn have their eye on. He is loyal to himself first, and Ivanka Trump second. Then, to a lesser degree, his sons. And after that, the spouses and partners. That’s it! 

There isn’t a chance in hell that a Trump doesn’t run for president in 2024. It might not be Donald Trump himself—he might be too indicted, too convicted, too in jail, or too dead from all those disgusting Big Macs he eats. But if it isn’t the Liar in Chief himself, it will be one of his children. The loyalists might not care, pathetically worshipping at the altar of Trump. But the opportunists are making a bet that will never pay off. They will never inherit the Trump movement, because Trump doesn’t give a rat’s ass about anyone but himself and his clan. They have thrown in with an odious, morally obscene man who will never give them the approbation they so desperately want from him. 

Cheney and Sasse are ambitious politicians. They know what they face inside their party, and they’re making a calculated bet that someday sanity will return to their party, and their brand of competent conservatism will once again have value. These are smart politicians, and they know the pitfalls and dangers they face ahead. They may lose their next primary bids. They may be further ostracized and marginalized. They may simply fail to stem the tide of a Republican Party falling deeper into conspiracy territory. 

But if the Republican Party ever breaks out of this current fever, they’ll be there to pick up the pieces and lead it onward. 

The chance that happens is slim. What, 5% or 10%? Let’s not pretend odds are good. But it’s not out of the realm of impossibility. And even 10% is a higher chance of success than the big 0% the lickspittles have of ever becoming president, becoming leaders of their party, or even winning any seats coveted by the Trump clan.

The Donald gives Moscow Mitch his marching orders - in to uncertain terms.  Talk about lickspittles! 

Cowardly Republicans continue to humiliate themselves in worship of The Donald

What happens if Dear Leader gets lost in tall grass and Republicanism has to soldier on without him? Does everybody just curl up and die?

Hunter

Daily Kos Staff

Thursday May 27, 2021 · 12:24 PM MDT

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Part of the problem we outsiders have in trying to explain Republican elected officials' behavior is that it continues to be bizarrely incompatible with what they claim to be their party's driving beliefs. Not from a policy standpoint, mind you. From a "basic human being living their life" standpoint. In premise, Republicanism is all about being tough and bigly: bein' proudly hypermasculine, an "alpha male" not taking any guff.

But the behavior actually demanded of Republican officials, if they want to keep their positions in the party, is gutless, spineless cowardice. Donald Trump, a perpetual whiner who is terrified of strong women and needs a golf cart to get from one end of a green to the other, is allowed to be the "alpha male." Every other Republican is expected to be so beta as to barely exist.

George P. Bush, ambitious if loutish offspring of Jeb! Bush, is the extended Bush clan's only plausible current inheritor of the family political dynasty. He will be challenging Texas attorney general Ken Paxton, who is indicted for f'cks sake, in upcoming Republican primaries. George P. is expected to run a campaign based broadly around "the name Bush is on my driver's license" and "the other guy is indicted, for f'cks sake!" But Donald Trump absolutely loathes the Bush family, and has been very loud in saying so, because the Bush family is one of the few nests of Republicans left willing to point out that Donald Trump is a grifting, incompetent helium balloon of a man who has screwed up everything he's ever touched. This requires George P. Bush to make a decision. Defend his family? Or cozy up to Coughed-Up Hairball?

We're kidding, of course. Like Sen. Ted Cruz and every other Republican before him, George P.'s response to Donald Trump mocking his would-be presidential dad as "low energy" and claiming his family "has to like Mexican Illegals" because George's mother was born in Mexico is ... to suck up to him.

Politico has the brief rundown of where things stand after the most gutless of all Bushes tweeted himself bending the knee to Donald via phone call. The short version is that George has been courting Trump for a long time now, and that it has everything to do with politics. Donald Trump, incompetent death-dealing blowhard, is more popular among the Texas Republican base than father Jeb! or uncle President Guy, so family is out and Typhoid Hitler is in. A man's got to get elected, after all. George P. Bush is not the sort of person who would settle for simply not being in politics.

Again, though: This is expected behavior for all Republican elected officials. It is required. You are expected to project an aura of utter spinelessness, and you will be met with furious primary challenges if you, as a Republican lawmaker, do not thoroughly humiliate yourself to the world's most clearly dysfunctional reality television star. Want George P. to attack Rep. Liz Cheney for standing up to Trump's support for a seditious act? You got it, boss. He'll get his phone out and do it on the spot.

Republicans appear to genuinely hate Trump, mind you. There are no illusions there as to what Trump is or how destructive he is. In another of the day's stories we learn that Republican lawmakers and aides are dreading Trump's eventual return to politics. "This guy is a disaster," goes one anonymous quote. "If we win the majority back," it's "going to be in spite of Trump."

After securing a last round of tax cuts, former House Speaker Paul Ryan flew out of Washington, D.C., with such speed that it broke windows all through the Beltway. He's been quiet as a mouse ever since, even as Trump turned his party into a policy-mocking clown show. He's popping up at the Reagan Library this evening to issue a decidedly milquetoast request that his party move on from Trumpism—with language that, at least in his "expected remarks," never criticizes Trump by name and doesn't have much bad to say about the toxic faux-populism that his party is now using in place of policy stances.

Should we believe Ryan? Absolutely not. Not even a little bit. Paul Ryan used his Washington power to land a gig on the Fox News board of directors. He has kept that perch throughout the network's lurch to white nationalist content, pandemic denialism, and other hoax promotion; Tucker Carlson's white nationalist show exists because Paul Ryan and the rest of the board want it to exist. The man is the very essence of spinelessness.

In his remarks, Paul Ryan is also expected to call President Joe Biden a "leftist" and bemoan our "woke" society. Paul Ryan's objections to Trumpism don't include any actual objections to the content of Trumpism, or any criticism of Trump to begin with. It is once again an exercise in public humiliation, to the extent that news outlets like CNN consider it worth its own story if a Republican speaker pipes up with even one line that could sort of, barely, maybe be construed as asking the party to ease up on the Trump worship.

For a party that ties itself so tightly to premises of toxic masculinity, the actual behavior of its supposed leaders is confusing at best. Lindsey Graham humiliates himself almost daily on Trump's behalf. House Republicans compete viciously with one another to be the most visibly obsequious, to do Trump's bidding and protect Trump's buffoonery and shovel praise in his direction no matter how clownish his actions. Any Republican showing actual spine or independent thought, like Rep. Liz Cheney, results in shrieking panic.

And the base? The base is expected to be absolutely terrified, all the time, about everything. If a food service worker hands you your hamburger wrong, you're supposed to treat it as communist encroachment. If you have to hear a Black American talk about racism, it must be because Red China wants that to happen. You must be terrified of yoga. You must panic at the thought of having to wear a mask to keep your own relatives from dying. You must wet your pants in fear at the thought of refugee children standing at the southern border—you must be in an absolute froth at the danger posed by a Guatemalan tween—or you are out of Club Bravedude.

And Trump, the alpha male who is considered the Dear Leader everyone else must bow to no matter how many insults he hurls at their families or allies? The man is a wilting flower about everything. There's never been a more paranoid person in the Oval Office, and that is saying something. The guy thought a worldwide disease outbreak was a plot to make him, personally, look bad. The guy spent four obsessive years both believing that everyone in government was out to get him and tasking his advisers with firing them all before they could. A tame eagle flapped its wings at him and he bolted like he was under sniper fire.

This isn't a movement of masculine manly-men reclaiming their toughness. This is a collection of all the biggest cowards in America, all watching each other to make sure everyone else is as gutless as they are, with continual shrieks from the Fox News crowd whenever some new cultural spider is found that the movement has to stampede over themselves to run from.

What is even going on here? How the hell are we supposed to make sense of a movement that demands maximal cowardice from every official? Hey George P. Bush, can you make any sense of this for us? Because all we see from the outside is a party of spineless and amoral weasels ingratiating themselves to other spineless weasels for the sake of ... what? Getting to do it again?

All bow down to the Almighty Trump, killer of over 400,000 Americans by doing less than nothing to address Covid-19.

Rick Wilson: Marjorie Taylor Greene is 'the heart and soul of the Republican Party'

  

The Republican Party is in the throes of self destruction.  Let's just hope it doesn't take our country down with it.

Aldous J Pennyfarthing

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Wednesday May 26, 2021 · 6:38 PM MDT

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The devolution of the Republican Party has been a sight to behold—but it’s been a particularly fraught experience for ex-Republicans.

I know if the Democrats had nominated Charlie Sheen for president in 2016 and then proceeded to abandon all their previously held goals and principles in exchange for a chance to appear on teevee in a “Tiger Blood” T-shirt, I might have been a little disillusioned, too.

But that didn’t happen. Donald Trump happened, and plenty of old-guard Republicans are sick at heart about it. After all, that’s not their kind of evil. The genteel George H.W. Bush in professorial garb—now that’s their kind of evil. A shambling mound of lipids and lard-steeped curly fries in a blue suit and preposterously overlong tie? Not so much.

But that guy sent frissons of elation and electricity throughout the dimmest bulbs on the marquee, and so he’s now got his party by the shortest of short hairs.

Who’s aware of this? Everyone who’s been watching. That’s why when a member of the party’s House delegation says the most absurdly shocking and offensive things imaginable about Jewish people and the Holocaust, the House minority leader can only hope to issue a phlegmatic legume fart of a response that satisfies exactly no one.

You probably already heard about Marjorie Taylor Greene’s latest adventure in trolling, wherein she equated mask requirements during the middle of a deadly pandemic with the systematic oppression of Jews during the Holocaust.

That should earn her a strong rebuke from her party, if not an ejection from Congress. But House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s tardy statement hardly met the moment:

“Marjorie is wrong, and her intentional decision to compare the horrors of the Holocaust with wearing masks is appalling. The Holocaust is the greatest atrocity committed in history. The fact that this needs to be stated today is deeply troubling.

“At a time when the Jewish people face increased violence and threats, anti-Semitism is on the rise in the Democrat Party and is completely ignored by Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

“Americans must stand together to defeat anti-Semitism and any attempt to diminish the history of the Holocaust.

“Let me be clear: the House Republican Conference condemns this language.”

Well, at least he managed to call MTG’s statement “appalling” … before quickly turning his attacks on Democrats, none of whom has ever, as far as I know, compared mask requirements to concentration camps and ghettos. But I really don’t think this is a both-sides issue. And maybe he should condemn Marjorie herself instead of her “decision” and her “language.”

Former Republican and current Lincoln Project honcho Rick Wilson appeared today on LPTV to dunk on not just MTG but McCarthy as well.

Take a look:

WILSON: “This woman is not an outlier. She is the core of the Republican Party. She is the heart and soul of the Republican Party. She is more important in the Republican Party ecosystem than Kevin McCarthy. He issued a pusillanimous, limp-dicked statement today about her finally after getting beat up for hours and hours on end, and I gotta tell you something: He does that because he wants to stay [minority leader]. And he knows that she is the future of the GOP. She is the core, the heart, the soul of what the Republican Party now stands for. It is idiotic, it is violently stupid. It hates experts, it hates authority, it hates science, it hates culture. It hates everything except their reflexive trolling of the rest of the country. She is a monstrous person. She is a person who I would not piss on her if she was on fire. She is a person who deserves all the public ... shame you could possibly imagine. But here’s the thing: Kevin McCarthy will not take a single step to expel her from Congress. She is the heart and soul of the Republican Party today. She is exactly the center of it, she is what they have become, and everybody in the Republican Party who goes, ‘Oh, no, that’s not me,’ they only do it quietly. They won’t go out in her face and say, ‘Shut the hell up.’ They won’t go in her face and say, ‘You are a crude, anti-Semite clown.’ They won't do that because they understand she is their future. She is the party as it is written today, she is the party as it is comprised today. I find her so repulsive and so disgusting that it is all I can do not to get myself thrown off social media by saying what I really feel about her. But that is a woman who has officially fucked around and will find out.”

Are most Republicans as loony as Marjorie Taylor Greene? Well, that would be impossible. But, importantly, the vast majority of them are nevertheless all aboard the Wacky Wagon. So, from a practical standpoint anyway, there’s really not that much daylight between them and her.

Wilson is right. This is what the Republican Party is now. The only question is, can it adapt and survive in its new skin, or will evolutionary pressures finally cull it from the herd?

We’ll see. But they’ve hitched their carriage to these horses now, and they better hope the view of those hateful beasts’ backsides is something they want to enjoy for the duration of their political careers.

Workers Matter and Government Works: Eight Lessons From the Covid Pandemic

The only thing working during the Trump administration: the red button in the oval office that delivered a Diet Coke to President Bubba. Once President Biden was inaugurated, the wheels of government began turning again.

Former Clinton labor secretary Robert Reich. (photo: Steve Russell/Toronto Star)

By Robert Reich, Guardian UK

25 May 21

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We have also learned that healthcare is a right, billionaires are often wrong –and conspiracy theories can often prove deadly

aybe it’s wishful thinking to declare the pandemic over in the US, and presumptuous to conclude what lessons we’ve learned. So consider this a first draft.

1. Workers are always essential

We couldn’t have survived without millions of warehouse, delivery, grocery and hospital workers literally risking their lives. Yet most of these workers are paid squat. Amazon touts its $15 minimum wage but it totals only about $30,000 a year. Most essential workers don’t have health insurance or paid leave. Many of their employers (including Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, to take but two examples) didn’t give them the personal protective equipment they needed.

Lesson: Essential workers deserve far better.

2. Healthcare is a basic right

You know how you got your vaccine without paying a dime? That’s how all healthcare could be. Yet too many Americans who contracted Covid-19 got walloped with humongous hospital bills. By mid-2020, about 3.3 million people had lost employer-sponsored coverage and the number of uninsured had increased by 1.9 million. Research by the Urban Institute found that people with chronic disease, Black Americans and low-income children were most likely to have delayed or foregone care during the pandemic.

Lesson: America must insure everyone.

3. Conspiracy theories can be deadly

Last June, about one in four Americans believed the pandemic was “definitely” or “probably” created intentionally, according to the Pew Research Center. Other conspiracy theories have caused some people to avoid wearing masks or getting vaccinated, resulting in unnecessary illness or death.

Lesson: An informed public is essential. Some of the responsibility falls on all of us. Some of it on Facebook, Twitter and other platforms that allowed misinformation to flourish.

4. The stock market isn’t the economy

The stock market rose throughout the pandemic, lifting the wealth of the richest 1% who own half of all stock owned by Americans. Meanwhile, from March 2020 to February 2021 80 million in the US lost their jobs. Between June and November 2020, nearly 8 million fell into poverty. Black and Latino adults were more than twice as likely as white adults to report not having enough to eat: 16% each for Black and Latino adults, compared to 6% of white adults.

Lesson: Stop using the stock market as a measure of economic wellbeing. Look instead at the percentage of Americans who are working, and their median pay.

5. Wages are too low to get by on

Most Americans live paycheck to paycheck. So once the pandemic hit, many didn’t have any savings to fall back on. Conservative lawmakers complain that the extra $300 a week unemployment benefit Congress enacted in March discourages people from working. What’s really discouraging them is lack of childcare and lousy wages.

Lesson: Raise the minimum wage, strengthen labor unions and push companies to share profits with their workers.

6. Remote work is now baked into the economy

The percentage of workers punching in from home hit a high of 70% in April 2020. A majority still work remotely. Some 40% want to continue working from home.

Two lessons: Companies will have to adjust. And much commercial real estate will remain vacant. Why not convert it into affordable housing?

7. Billionaires aren’t the answer

The combined wealth of America’s 657 billionaires grew by $1.3tn – or 44.6% – during the pandemic. Jeff Bezos, with $183.9bn, became the richest man in the world. Larry Page, a co-founder of Google, added $11.8bn to his $94.3bn fortune. Sergey Brin, Google’s other co-founder, added $11.4bn. Yet billionaires’ taxes are lower than ever. Wealthy Americans today pay one-sixth the rate of taxes their counterparts paid in 1953.

Lesson: To afford everything the nation needs, raise taxes at the top.

8. Government can be the solution

Ronald Reagan’s famous quip – “Government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem” – can now officially be retired. Trump’s “Operation Warp Speed” succeeded in readying vaccines faster than most experts thought possible. Biden got them into more arms more quickly than any vaccination program in history.

Furthermore, the $900bn in aid Congress passed in late December prevented millions from losing unemployment benefits and helped sustain the recovery when it was faltering. The $1.9tn Democrats pushed through in March will help the US achieve something it failed to achieve after the 2008-09 recession: a robust recovery.

Lesson: The federal government did not just help beat the pandemic. It also did more to keep the nation afloat than in any previous recession. It must be prepared to do so again.

Not the least of Biden's early accomplishments: the beginning of the end of covid-19.

Proud Boys leader to former guy: 'F*ck you Trump. You left us on the battlefield bloody and alone'

 

Ethan Nordean and his buddies yuck it up on Jan. 6, just before The Donald betrayed them.

Aldous J Pennyfarthing for Community Contributors Team

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Tuesday May 25, 2021 · 4:45 PM MDT

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Pat yourself on the back if you sized Donald Trump up in two minutes, like a normal person. You could have instead been Ethan Nordean, who wasted years of his life and squandered his precious freedom for a guy who’d likely feed him to alligators—or a marginally more reptilian creature such as Roger Stone—if he ever showed up at one of his golf courses.

Nordean is a “sergeant-at-arms” (FYI: All of these military titles are pretend) of the Proud Boys Seattle chapter, and he’s had it with his supreme golden clod. Nordean has been charged with conspiracy, obstruction of an official proceeding, and aiding and abetting in connection with his alleged assault on the Capitol on Jan. 6, and he’s none too happy with his Amazing Disappearing Messiah.

Take a look, and try not to laugh too hard:

For the nontweeters:

“Alright I’m gonna say it. FUCK TRUMP! Fuck him more than Biden. I’ve followed this guy for 4 years and given everything and lost it all. Yes he woke us up, but he led us to believe some great justice was upon us...and it never happened, now I’ve got some of my good friends and myself facing jail time cuz we followed this guys [sic] lead and never questioned it. We are now and always have been on our own. So glad he was able to pardon a bunch of degenerates as his last move and shit on us on the way out. Fuck you trump you left us on [t]he battle field bloody and alone.”

Ouch.

But wait! I thought Trump was going to join the insurrectionists at the Capitol building on Jan. 6. That’s what he said, anyway. And as every true Proud Boy knows, Donald Trump is always true to his word.

Of course, as Nordean suggests, Trump could have pardoned Nordean and his confederates, and he probably would have if there had been anything in it for him—like if Nordean had a relative who worked at KFC and could slip him a few bonus pieces of Extra Crispy in his buckets. But, alas. This is just some fool who sacrificed everything important in his life for what he saw as a righteous cause. Trump hates suckers like that.

From USA Today:

Prosecutors say Nordean, along with other Proud Boys members, planned to push through police barricades and force themselves inside the building that day.

[...]

In a court filing Thursday, prosecutors detailed communications sent through the instant messaging app Telegram that they say show additional evidence that Nordean and other Proud Boys members conspired to breach the Capitol. Prosecutors included the anti-Trump diatribe in which Nordean seemed to acknowledged he and others are facing criminal charges because they followed Trump's lead.

Okay, get this through your cartilaginous skulls, Trumpers: Donald Trump doesn’t care about you. He never did. Do you still check your bank account every 30 minutes to see if the Nigerian prince has deposited your money? It’s over, y’all. You’ve been scammed, and that’s all there is to it.

This does give me some hope, though. Trump lost the 2020 election by 7 million votes, and it doesn’t look like he’s picked up a single voter since then. On the other hand, people like Nordean are slowly waking up.

Let’s hope they’re all out of their comas by the 2022 midterms, at least.

One of The Donald's friendly supporters does his best "Heil Hitler" in front of one of the gilded Trump hotels.

 

A modest proposal for saving the republic

 

By Garrison Keillor

I am a simple man leading a simple life, thanks to my wife who reads the pandemic news and the dark dreadful visions of pessimistic epidemiologists and instills caution in me, otherwise I’d be hanging out in saloons singing sea shanties with unmasked ne’er-do-wells, passing a bottle of whiskey around and sharing bacteria. Instead, she and I lead a monastic life, staying home, reading books, eating salads, playing Scrabble.

A year of quarantine with your spouse is something we didn’t anticipate when we said our vows. I promised to have and to hold, in sickness and in health, but by “sickness,” I was thinking of a bad cold, maybe a sprained ankle, not a year of incarceration. But by God, quarantine is an excellent test of a marriage, and either you go to a hotel and call your lawyer or you discover that you married the exact right person, which, as I contemplate it day after day, seems to me to be the greatest good luck, right up there with being an all-star third baseman or winning the Nobel Peace Prize.

I had twenty aunts and uncles, all of them married, and I witnessed no yelling, no door-slamming, no sobbing in locked rooms, so I figured the odds were in my favor. But I walked into a couple of troubled marriages before luck struck, and now I think that quarantine should be a prerequisite for marriage. Six months locked in a one-bedroom apartment before the license can be issued. You will quickly find out whether you have anything to say to each other or not. You’ll find out about housekeeping habits, personal hygiene, sense of humor (if any), dietary preferences. I am a liberal and know what is good for people and premarital quarantine is right at the top of the list.

She loves foreign TV shows with subtitles and long brisk walks and Zoom chats with friends. I love to sit and write notes with a pen on paper and put them in envelopes with a U.S. postage stamp. She walks by me and puts a hand on my shoulder and I touch her hand and every night, sometimes more often, we say, “I love you.”

If we wished, we could dive headfirst into the internet and find a turgid churn of people who see the vaccines as a “deep state” conspiracy to inject woke thought-control chemicals, or born-again anti-vaxxers who accept COVID as God’s Will and as the doorway to heaven; I worry about those people.

What with right-wing resistance to immunization, I worry that a big new wave of COVID could wipe out the Republican Party and suddenly we’d find ourselves in a nation of public-radio listeners, old folkies, organic sustainable people who are spiritual but not religious, and all the cranky uncles and crackpot cousins will disappear, and Terry Gross will be elected president. She does a show, “Fresh Air,” on which she interviews only people she admires because they agree with her. This is the problem with public radio. They can’t bear dissent. They are about unity and communal goodness, and their illusions is what led to the birth of Fox News.

I am an old liberal Democrat but I grew up among Republicans. My uncles were (their wives were undercover liberals), many of my teachers, my first employers. I do not want to live in a woke America with no street-corner preachers, no angry callers to call-in shows, no malefactors of great wealth who in their twilight years seek to redeem themselves through philanthropy to ballet companies and orchestras, no crazed individualists.

We cannot afford to lose the right wing through their self-imposed ignorance of communicable disease and that is why the National Guard needs to round them up and take them in trucks to internment camps for a month to get their shots. The Supreme Court may try to interfere with this and so they may need to be taken into custody too. The Jim Jordans and Lindsey Grahams and Ted Cruzes have a role to play in our country and we need to protect them from themselves. Lock them up and jab them and who knows, some of them may fall in love with the vaccinators and find true happiness. For their own good, we need to be the totalitarians they already believe we are. I don’t want to live in an entire nation of Vermonters. We need Texas and Mississippi too. Even Oklahoma.

Leningrad Lindsey: "I don't give a damn what I said yesterday."