Month: May 2019

Nothing new here: Donald Trump is an idiot

benfell

Updates

  1. Originally published, May 11, 9:47 pm.
  2. May 12, 8:40 am:
    • Jim Dennis (@AnswrGuy) responded to the below on Donald Trump. His point is largely correct but I explore it and I think the exploration is important.
  3. May 12, 9:05 am:

The less-awful news is that Lyft didn’t require a background check for moving to Pennsylvania. There were some pesky details, but as of yesterday, I’m driving for Lyft in the Pittsburgh area.

I’m noticing the earnings are not as high as in California, probably mostly because so few of the trips involve freeway miles. Other factors that might be involved are that I’m driving earlier and quitting earlier here than I did in California, it is a different area and I haven’t adjusted to the cultural patterns here yet, I’m presently driving for Lyft rather than Uber (Uber hasn’t completed my background check yet and even in California, I made more with Uber than I did with Lyft), and, of course, Lyft might (and I would expect probably does) pay a little less here than in Marin County, California, where I focused when I was there.

On the other hand, I’m driving fewer miles, at least so far. When I’m ready to go to work, I just go up to my car, go on line, and sit for a few minutes. An order, so far, has always arrived within a few minutes.

In the category of are you fucking kidding me?

But I stopped at home for lunch and a neighbor had a BB gun out with his kids. (Last I saw, the kids had gotten bored and wandered off.) It looks enough like a real gun that maybe—only maybe—the idiot will manage to get himself shot by the police. This is less likely since he and his kids are all white. In the meantime, I’m hoping he doesn’t manage to shoot one of my windows.IMG_20190511_162311No marksmanship here: At left is his target. But he’s so cool, lying prone, shooting a BB gun.

Donald Trump

Those inclined to view Donald Trump as the mastermind of some sort of diabolical threat would do well to read Anna Phillips’ article. The Trump administration is in such a hurry to roll back environmental (and other) regulation that it’s not following the required procedures for doing so. Which invites successful court challenges, notably from California.[1] Which just ain’t terribly bright.

Stupider, my guess is that the Trump administration is counting on being able to appeal these losses to the Supreme Court. My second guess is that the Supreme Court will, at some point, just stop accepting these cases, letting lower court rulings stand.

In a way, that’s bad news: Supreme Court rulings slapping the Trump administration down will have greater impact. But this is really basic shit. We’re talking Regulation 101 level stuff.

Update:

(Re-reading this after the Twitter post, I should have put scare quotes around ‘reformed’ in the above. As I was composing this, I was actually thinking of Traditionalist Conservatives, who in ‘reforming’ (still in scare quotes), have moved towards leaving racism, but not misogyny, behind.)

Anna M. Phillips, “In Trump vs. California, the state is winning nearly all its environmental cases,” Los Angeles Times, May 7, 2019, https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-california-trump-environmental-lawsuits-20190507-story.html

Uber

The Uber initial public offering (IPO) is a flop. I suggest reading the article by Faiz Siddiqui and Greg Bensinger anyway. We’re seeing the differences between venture capital, as enamored with anything high tech, and Wall Street, as somewhat less enamored with indefinite losses.[2] But also read the article by Dan Primack: There were other factors involved as well.[3]

Faiz Siddiqui and Greg Bensinger, “Uber’s first day of trading ended deep in the red over gig-economy fears,” Washington Post, May 10, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/05/10/uber-ipo/

Dan Primack, “Uber’s IPO got caught in a perfect storm,” Axios, May 11, 2019, https://www.axios.com/ubers-ipo-perfect-storm-2a75a55a-adec-496b-bc23-02d99d02920f.html

  1. [1]Anna M. Phillips, “In Trump vs. California, the state is winning nearly all its environmental cases,” Los Angeles Times, May 7, 2019, https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-california-trump-environmental-lawsuits-20190507-story.html↩
  2. [2]Faiz Siddiqui and Greg Bensinger, “Uber’s first day of trading ended deep in the red over gig-economy fears,” Washington Post, May 10, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/05/10/uber-ipo/↩
  3. [3]Dan Primack, “Uber’s IPO got caught in a perfect storm,” Axios, May 11, 2019, https://www.axios.com/ubers-ipo-perfect-storm-2a75a55a-adec-496b-bc23-02d99d02920f.html↩

Donald Trump defiant

benfell

Donald Trump

I apologize if I have mangled the order of some of these tweets. I’m not seeing a clear way beyond context to figure out what happened in what order here. That approach has some rather severe limitations. By the way, according to his profile, Adam Gentleson is Harry Reid’s former deputy chief of staff:

I was referring to this tweet:

To resume the thread:

Rachael Bade, “White House asserts executive privilege over Mueller report in latest confrontation with Congress,” Washington Post, May 7, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/barr-to-trump-invoke-executive-privileged-over-redacted-mueller-materials/2019/05/07/51c52600-713e-11e9-b5ca-3d72a9fa8ff1_story.html

Rachael Bade, Carol D. Leonnig, and Matt Zapotosky, “House panel votes to hold Barr in contempt; Trump asserts executive privilege over Mueller report,” Washington Post, May 8, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/barr-to-trump-invoke-executive-privileged-over-redacted-mueller-materials/2019/05/07/51c52600-713e-11e9-b5ca-3d72a9fa8ff1_story.html

Russell Berman, “The Rarely Used Congressional Power That Could Force William Barr’s Hand,” Atlantic, May 8, 2019, https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/05/house-democrats-could-arrest-william-barr-contempt/588976/

Walter Shapiro, “The Worst Businessman in America,” New Republic, May 8, 2019, https://newrepublic.com/article/153855/trump-tax-returns-worst-businessman-america

Duquesne finally sees the light (but for how long?)

benfell

So, I received a phone call from a very meek lady (probably afraid I’d chew her out) at Duquesne Light. But the electric service is finally in my name. The fourth attempt at sending my drivers license, accompanied by a note refusing responsibility for their vision problems, another note through their complaint page explaining to them that I knew they were lying to me (I have crystal clear fax verification copies and the crystal clear images I sent via email), and finally, an informal complaint to the Pennsylvania Public Utilities Commission finally got the message through to them that they need to stop fucking with me.

After eighteen years of being absolutely refused gainful employment, my patience with neoliberal or neoliberal-style bullshit is blown not merely sky high but to somewhere in a galaxy far, far away. I’m simply not putting up with it.

I’ve mentioned previously that the Whole Foods Markets in this area are dismal, lacking much of the selection I’m accustomed to in California. This morning, in despair, I found Fresh Thyme Farmer’s Market. Despite the name, it’s a supermarket. It fills probably enough, not all, but probably enough, of the gaps. And it’s a lot closer than Whole Foods, which I’ll still have to go to for some things.

I was seriously wondering how I was going to eat. It is simply astonishing to walk into a Whole Foods and not find fresh juice or a bunch of vegan products I’m used to being able to find. Seriously, the Whole Foods people need to take a serious look at what’s going on here; there is simply no excuse for this discrepancy nowadays.

One thing I’ve wondered about as I moved from California, where it mostly isn’t a problem, first and abortively to western Massachusetts, now to the Pittsburgh area is rust. Salt is good for melting ice on roads, which is a problem in winter around here. It isn’t very good for the environment: That salt has to go somewhere and salination of soil and freshwater is a problem. It also isn’t very good for cars. Ionized sodium chloride, in water (remember, we’re melting ice here), produces acids that corrode automobile bodies.

I hadn’t seen a lot of rust damage until I moved in here to Baldwin. But some, not all, cars here suffer from it severely.

I have found a car wash place with a monthly plan for exterior washes. I can use this daily. It’s nowhere near as good as what I had with Matt and Jeff’s in Novato, where I was on a monthly plan that included interior vacuuming and a wipe-down of the exterior.

Here, I pay $15 extra each time I want them to vacuum and spray stuff on the interior—as an Uber/Lyft driver, this will amount to considerably more than I was paying at Matt and Jeff’s. And they don’t do headlights or hand waxes. But I’m hoping it will be sufficient to avoid rust damage.

My mother snuck in some kitchen implements—I think she bought them new—before I left that I didn’t know about. They’re coming in handy about now. Thanks, Mom!

There is a new blog post, entitled, “About Brexit.”

Marijuana

Carol Ryan, “Wall Street Chokes on Cannabis Bank Bill,” Wall Street Journal, May 7, 2019, https://www.wsj.com/articles/wall-street-chokes-on-cannabis-bank-bill-11557218712

Ridesharing

Julie Jargon, “Uber Says No Kids—These Other Car Services Say Yes,” Wall Street Journal, May 7, 2019, https://www.wsj.com/articles/uber-says-no-kidsthese-other-car-services-say-yes-11557221402

Donald Trump hints at refusing to give up presidency

benfell

Updates

  1. Originally published, May 6, 7:02 pm.
  2. May 6, 8:11 pm:
    • The Washington Post has a story confirming details I wrote below on Donald Trump hinting at refusing to give up the presidency should he lose the election in 2020. The story also consults legal experts.[1]
  3. May 6, 10:52 pm:
    • Elizabeth de la Vega has an interesting take on the problem I and many others have pointed to about impeaching Donald Trump. I’ve added her tweet under Donald Trump.

I’m feeling strain every time I go anywhere, even to a fucking Whole Foods Market (the nearest is in Upper Saint Clair, out past Mt. Lebanon). I sorta kinda knew my way around Dormont and Mt. Lebanon once upon a time, but I’m living in Baldwin which is just far enough away that there’s really very little in common. There’s nothing like a grid system here. You take a wrong turn and there’s a strong possibility you’re going for a ride.

And, as I’ve previously noted, here and here, a lot of these intersections are confusing or obscured as you approach them. I have no choice but to rely on Google Maps for even short trips. The concentration required is wearying.

And I’m going to need to do this for Uber and Lyft because the job hunt here looks every bit as ridiculous as the one I left behind.

But the weather is nice today, after being cold (requiring I close the windows) and rainy yesterday. Scattered showers are due back tomorrow.

Uber

It is awfully curious how the Wall Street Journal headline claims that it is the drivers who are “harder to please” when it is in fact Uber and Lyft that have been cutting our pay.[2] That sounds like Uber and Lyft getting “harder to please,” not the drivers.

Christopher Mims, “In a Tight Labor Market, Gig Workers Get Harder to Please,” Wall Street Journal, May 4, 2019, https://www.wsj.com/articles/in-a-tight-labor-market-gig-workers-get-harder-to-please-11556942404

Donald Trump

Donald Trump is doing nothing to set minds at ease about Will Bunch’s fears.[3] He apparently retweeted this:[4]

And wrote this:[5]

Laurence Tribe is alarmed:

Chris Cillizza joins the fray, pointing out all the times Trump has complained that elections are “rigged,” not against states like California and New York which suffer from electoral college arithmetic, but against Republicans.[6] And there’s many more.[7]

So some people, including no less than Nancy Pelosi, whose concern Cillizza specifically defends, are worried now. Some people take the threat seriously. But the very reason the threat needs to be taken seriously, specifically that Donald Trump flouts anything remotely resembling political convention,[8] is the very reason it is impossible to know how this actually plays out.

There would, of course, be pushback. There would, of course, be lawsuits. But I have no idea how it all actually would play out in the end—and because of the number of variables involved, I’m inclined to say that anyone who claims to know is full of shit. Some stuff you just can’t game out.

As to impeachment, Elizabeth de la Vega has a suggestion:

Which is certainly interesting.

Chris Cillizza, “What happens if Donald Trump refuses to admit he lost in 2020?” CNN, May 6, 2019, https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2019/05/06/politics/donald-trump-2020-election/index.html

Damian Paletta, “Mnuchin rejects Democrats’ demand to hand over Trump’s tax returns, all but ensuring legal battle,” Washington Post, May 6, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/mnuchin-rejects-democrats-demand-to-hand-over-trumps-tax-returns-all-but-ensuring-legal-battle/2019/05/06/5483f8ac-7022-11e9-9eb4-0828f5389013_story.html

Isaac Stanley-Becker, “Claiming two years of his presidency were ‘stolen,’ Trump suggests he’s owed overtime,” Washington Post, May 6, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/05/06/claiming-two-years-his-presidency-were-stolen-trump-suggests-hes-owed-overtime/

Matt Zapotosky, “Trump would have been charged with obstruction were he not president, hundreds of former federal prosecutors assert,” Washington Post, May 6, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/trump-would-have-been-charged-with-obstruction-were-he-not-president-hundreds-of-former-federal-prosecutors-assert/2019/05/06/e4946a1a-7006-11e9-9f06-5fc2ee80027a_story.html

Brexit

Sam Coates and Kate Devlin, “Don’t cave in to Labour on Brexit, Tories tell Theresa May,” Times, May 6, 2019, https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/dont-cave-in-to-labour-on-brexit-tories-tell-theresa-may-0t6rqstxt

Democrats. Absolutely stupid fucking worthless goddamn Democrats.

Elaine Godfrey, “The Democratic Party Just Ticked Off Its Youngest Organizers,” Atlantic, May 6, 2019, https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/05/college-democrats-protest-new-dccc-vendor-policy/588715/

Venezuela

I’ve held my tongue on Venezuela. I don’t know who is right in the contest between Juan Guaidó, who has been refusing to recognize an allegedly rigged election result, and Nicolás Maduro, who claimed victory in that allegedly rigged election and currently holds the presidency.

My problem, frankly, is the same one I have in North Korea: Frankly, I’ve seen way too much demonization of Maduro, as I did of his predecessor Hugo Chávez, and I can’t help but suspect that the demonization comes at least partly from an ideological source. We demonized the Soviets and we continue to demonize Iranians this way, too.

On the other side, it’s previously been clear to me that some on the Left have simply adopted a view that since the United States is evil, which it is, then anyone who opposes the U.S. must be a saint. I’ve seen this with Iran and the Russian intervention in Ukraine. For such people, it is inconceivable that evil people might oppose each other.

So I don’t know. And I’ve been extremely uncomfortable adopting a position opposing the Venezuelan government (any more than I oppose all powerful people on anarchist general principle) on events in Venezuela since Chávez embarrassed the George W. Bush administration by subsidizing heating oil for the poor in the U.S. northeast. I thought Chávez deserved a lot of credit for doing that and I have also noticed an increase in his demonization since about that time. But heating oil for the poor in the U.S. says nothing about the situation in Venezuela, and certainly it says even less now, so I’m just keeping my mouth shut.

What I will say is that any U.S. intervention on any side in this is likely to be unwelcome to many in Venezuela. And Twitter is being awfully arrogant if the company thinks it understands the situation in Venezuela any better than I do.

Ellery Roberts Biddle, “Private: Why is Twitter blocking state accounts in Venezuela?” Global Voices, May 3, 2019, https://globalvoices.org/2019/05/03/why-is-twitter-blocking-state-accounts-in-venezuela/

  1. [1]Isaac Stanley-Becker, “Claiming two years of his presidency were ‘stolen,’ Trump suggests he’s owed overtime,” Washington Post, May 6, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/05/06/claiming-two-years-his-presidency-were-stolen-trump-suggests-hes-owed-overtime/↩
  2. [2]Christopher Mims, “In a Tight Labor Market, Gig Workers Get Harder to Please,” Wall Street Journal, May 4, 2019, https://www.wsj.com/articles/in-a-tight-labor-market-gig-workers-get-harder-to-please-11556942404↩
  3. [3]Will Bunch, “Trump’s diabolical plan to blow up democracy, get reelected and avoid jail just might work,” Philadelphia Inquirer, May 5, 2019, https://www.philly.com/opinion/commentary/trump-wants-impeachment-2020-reelection-strategy-blame-democrats-ignore-subpoenas-20190505.html↩
  4. [4]Isaac Stanley-Becker, “Claiming two years of his presidency were ‘stolen,’ Trump suggests he’s owed overtime,” Washington Post, May 6, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/05/06/claiming-two-years-his-presidency-were-stolen-trump-suggests-hes-owed-overtime/↩
  5. [5]Isaac Stanley-Becker, “Claiming two years of his presidency were ‘stolen,’ Trump suggests he’s owed overtime,” Washington Post, May 6, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/05/06/claiming-two-years-his-presidency-were-stolen-trump-suggests-hes-owed-overtime/↩
  6. [6]Chris Cillizza, “What happens if Donald Trump refuses to admit he lost in 2020?” CNN, May 6, 2019, https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2019/05/06/politics/donald-trump-2020-election/index.html↩
  7. [7]Isaac Stanley-Becker, “Claiming two years of his presidency were ‘stolen,’ Trump suggests he’s owed overtime,” Washington Post, May 6, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/05/06/claiming-two-years-his-presidency-were-stolen-trump-suggests-hes-owed-overtime/↩
  8. [8]Will Bunch, “Trump’s diabolical plan to blow up democracy, get reelected and avoid jail just might work,” Philadelphia Inquirer, May 5, 2019, https://www.philly.com/opinion/commentary/trump-wants-impeachment-2020-reelection-strategy-blame-democrats-ignore-subpoenas-20190505.html; Chris Cillizza, “What happens if Donald Trump refuses to admit he lost in 2020?” CNN, May 6, 2019, https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2019/05/06/politics/donald-trump-2020-election/index.html; Isaac Stanley-Becker, “Claiming two years of his presidency were ‘stolen,’ Trump suggests he’s owed overtime,” Washington Post, May 6, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/05/06/claiming-two-years-his-presidency-were-stolen-trump-suggests-hes-owed-overtime/↩

Arctic blast

benfell

Updates

  1. Originally published, May 5, 11:24 am.
  2. May 5, 5:56 pm:
    • Eleven years ago today, I traveled to a vegan deli in Oakland, California, and tried a sandwich. I concluded that “fake” meat would be sufficient and since that evening, I have tried as much as possible to live a plant-based lifestyle.
    • Laurence Tribe has expressed support for impeachment. However, he also points to an “opposing” view.[1] Well, not quite. Will Bunch richly acknowledges all the arguments against impeachment, but essentially argues that it is the moral, even if futile, thing to do.[2] Which is really pretty much the same argument as Tribe’s. My problem is I don’t think empty actions count. And an empty action in defense of a system that gave us a choice between two utterly despicable candidates, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, and enabled the latter to become president just doesn’t seem like a path forward to me.
    • Um, oops. Really big oops. It seems Boeing knew about problems with the 737 MAX cockpit alert system and didn’t tell anybody. And even when it did start admitting to the problem, it did so selectively and incompletely, to some airlines and pilots sooner than others if at all, and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) accepted that the problem was, as Boeing claimed, not a threat to safety. Apparently, it remains unclear if fixing this would have prevented two notorious crashes that have led to grounding of the entire fleet.[3]
  3. May 5, 10:00 pm:
    • I don’t want to say that Mehdi Hasan is right about the possibility Donald Trump might refuse to leave office if impeached or defeated.[4] I also can’t tell you he’s wrong.

At eight o’clock on a Sunday morning, church bells are ringing. I forgot to mention about church bells yesterday.

They ring church bells here. It doesn’t last long but they do ring them. This doesn’t happen much in California. And I suspect, in California, if somebody did this, somebody’d call the police: There’d better be an actual fucking emergency if you’re going to wake me up at that hour.

As it happens, though, I was already awake. I have not yet returned to my normal sleeping patterns.

It’s been raining, gently, all night. It was delicious to leave the windows open until, this morning, after I was already up, it turned cold. I put a couple waffles in the microwave and was mostly cured.

One—only one—of the features that keeps us guessing about Pittsburgh weather is that there really isn’t that much, except distance, between us and the Arctic. The terrain here, and to the north, is mostly rolling hills and valleys, enough to give the land texture, nowhere near enough to block the occasional arctic blast.

I am still furious about Duquesne Light. And apart from the fact that lying to me takes me from zero to furious in nothing flat, it is also an obstruction.

I know that whatever the problem actually is, it isn’t what they claim it is. Which means I can’t, even if I have the capability, address the actual problem because I don’t know what it even is.

And in the meantime, I have shared what the Census Bureau calls “personally identifiable information,” the stuff that’s supposed to be protected at all costs on pain of a felony (if memory serves, five years prison, $15,000 fine) there, with an operation that lies to me.

It is just this sort of callous disregard that gives bureaucracy a bad name. But an important note: This isn’t government bureaucracy. It’s private enterprise, the allegedly superior and more efficient corporate, bureaucracy.

Duquesne Light has a horrendous reputation, apparently dating back decades—my mother said, “Oh, Duquesne Light.” I could hear the tone of painful recognition in her voice. I don’t know if they were this bad when she was a kid, or if they were this bad when we lived here when I was a kid, or if they were this bad when she came back here briefly while moving back from Washington, D.C., to the San Francisco Bay Area. In any case, it’s been decades.

I spoke to the leasing office folks about the situation because 1) they need to be kept apprised of the account number, and 2) I needed them to fax (for free) the application, lease, and my drivers license, yet again (the second attempt with this). They rolled their eyes: “Duquesne is the worst.” The lady there I’ve worked with most said that, in her experience, the blurred documents excuse is their “go-to” when they don’t know what went wrong.

Neoliberalism may not be the cause of Duquesne’s problems. But my experience here demonstrates that the neoliberal mantra that anything corporate is better than anything government is clearly and flatly wrong. There is absolutely no logic or evidence offered in support of that mantra and those who espouse it deserve to put to work digging their own mass grave, preferably with their bare hands in dry, rocky soil, then crucified, shallowly drawn and quartered, and then shot, but this last only when they’re still conscious but already so close to death that they aren’t feeling the pain. I want them to feel the despair of impending death, die slowly, excruciatingly, and fall into the grave, not out of it. Nobody should deal with them, or their corpses, ever again.

Or maybe we can find wasps to lay their eggs in neoliberals and let the larvae eat them alive. (How many wasps would that take, per neoliberal?)

At least with PennDOT, my recent experience with government bureaucracy, there’s a step-by-step process. Their website is misleading, I had to excruciatingly and painfully feel my way through to find the correct process, but I’ve now accomplished nearly everything I set out to. I’m pretty sure (possibly overconfident) I’ve got everything lined up so I can complete that this Thursday. (I’m running out of money; it’d be nice to start earning it again.)

With Duquesne, there isn’t even that. I got an account number from them with one of their missives, but what they’re telling me to is clearly wrong, based on lies. Whether they’re institutional lies, produced by computers and relayed by unwitting humans, or individual lies, meant by workers to cover their own individual asses, doesn’t matter to me. They’re lies. And apparently, they lie a lot.

My kitchen is finally starting to look like a kitchen. Only starting. I’ve had new dishes, silverware, glasses, and knives still in their original wrapping—I needed them right away—sitting on the bigger-than-some-but-still-small kitchen counter. And they needed washing, hence the need for dishwashing stuff, and putting away, hence the need for shelf lining. All that stuff finally arrived yesterday, from Amazon, which apparently recognizes that yes, some folks do still wash dishes.

Brexit

Brexit still looks to be either coming down hard or not at all. They keep spinning their wheels but the damnable outcome remains the same. I think the “herding cats” metaphor might not be adequate here.

Toby Helm and Michael Savage, “Brexit: anger grows at May-Corbyn bid to stitch up deal,” Guardian, May 5, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/may/04/anger-grows-may-corbyn-bid-stitch-up-brexit-deal

Donald Trump

It appears I misunderstood the context of a comment by Jamie Raskin, who said, “If they want to impeach the president, they should go ahead and introduce the articles.”[5] On May 3rd, I wrote:

I still agree with Nancy Pelosi on impeachment. As Jamie Raskin put it, “If they want to impeach the president so badly they should introduce the articles today, and I bet you a lot of Democrats are ready to join them.”[6] Raskin has a point: For all the calls for impeachment, no one has actually introduced articles of impeachment and, surely, everyone understands what happens when impeachment reaches the Senate. Which suggests rather strongly that all this talk is mere grandstanding.[7]

Jamie Raskin was very likely referring to Republicans seeking to goad Democrats into impeachment rather than already-goaded Democrats.[8] I have inserted a correction into that issue of the Irregular Bullshit.

Since then, the argument has gotten interesting. Laurence Tribe has weighed in, in support of impeachment, saying:

Will Bunch, “Trump’s diabolical plan to blow up democracy, get reelected and avoid jail just might work,” Philadelphia Inquirer, May 5, 2019, https://www.philly.com/opinion/commentary/trump-wants-impeachment-2020-reelection-strategy-blame-democrats-ignore-subpoenas-20190505.html

Mike Lillis and Cristina Marcos, “Dems see GOP effort to drive them to impeach Trump,” Hill, May 5, 2019, https://thehill.com/homenews/house/442115-dems-see-gop-effort-to-drive-them-to-impeach-trump

Mehdi Hasan, “Yes, Let’s Defeat or Impeach Donald Trump. But What If He Refuses to Leave the White House?” Intercept, March 6, 2019, https://theintercept.com/2019/03/06/donald-trump-impeachment-2020/

Gaza Strip

Apparently about a year before the U.S. Declaration of Independence, Samuel Johnson declared that “patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.” I believe he was in error, but perhaps only because Twitter and Instagram didn’t exist yet: Dead baby pictures are the last resort of a scoundrel. And both Israelis and Gazans are posting them.

Judah Ari Gross, “Gearing up for days of fighting, IDF sends tank reinforcements to Gaza border,” Times of Israel, May 5, 2019, https://www.timesofisrael.com/gearing-up-for-days-of-fighting-idf-sends-tank-reinforcements-to-gaza-border/

Boeing

I’m just going to go out on a limb here and predict that Boeing’s stock will take a nosedive tomorrow.

Andy Pasztor, Andrew Tangel, and Alison Sider, “Boeing Knew About Safety-Alert Problem for a Year Before Telling FAA, Airlines,” Wall Street Journal, May 5, 2019, https://www.wsj.com/articles/boeing-knew-about-safety-alert-problem-for-a-year-before-telling-faa-airlines-11557087129

 

  1. [1]Laurence Tribe, [microblog post], May 5, 2019, https://twitter.com/tribelaw/status/1125110933490163712↩
  2. [2]Will Bunch, “Trump’s diabolical plan to blow up democracy, get reelected and avoid jail just might work,” Philadelphia Inquirer, May 5, 2019, https://www.philly.com/opinion/commentary/trump-wants-impeachment-2020-reelection-strategy-blame-democrats-ignore-subpoenas-20190505.html↩
  3. [3]Andy Pasztor, Andrew Tangel, and Alison Sider, “Boeing Knew About Safety-Alert Problem for a Year Before Telling FAA, Airlines,” Wall Street Journal, May 5, 2019, https://www.wsj.com/articles/boeing-knew-about-safety-alert-problem-for-a-year-before-telling-faa-airlines-11557087129↩
  4. [4]Mehdi Hasan, “Yes, Let’s Defeat or Impeach Donald Trump. But What If He Refuses to Leave the White House?” Intercept, March 6, 2019, https://theintercept.com/2019/03/06/donald-trump-impeachment-2020/↩
  5. [5]Jamie Raskin, quoted in Mike Lillis and Cristina Marcos, “Dems see GOP effort to drive them to impeach Trump,” Hill, May 5, 2019, https://thehill.com/homenews/house/442115-dems-see-gop-effort-to-drive-them-to-impeach-trump↩
  6. [6]Jamie B. Raskin, quoted in Mike DeBonis and Rachael Bade, “Pelosi escalates attacks on Trump, compares him to Nixon, as Barr’s defiance angers Democrats,” Washington Post, May 2, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/pelosi-escalates-attacks-on-trump-compares-him-to-nixon-as-barrs-defiance-angers-democrats/2019/05/02/e4580542-6cf1-11e9-8f44-e8d8bb1df986_story.html↩
  7. [7]David Benfell, “Grandstanding on impeachment,” Irregular Bullshit, May 3, 2019, https://disunitedstates.com/2019/05/03/grandstanding-on-impeachment/↩
  8. [8]Mike Lillis and Cristina Marcos, “Dems see GOP effort to drive them to impeach Trump,” Hill, May 5, 2019, https://thehill.com/homenews/house/442115-dems-see-gop-effort-to-drive-them-to-impeach-trump↩

Socioculturally different

benfell

A correction has been added, in line, to this post.

Updates

  1. Originally published, May 4, 2019, 3:29 pm.
  2. May 4, 7:45 pm:
    • I am seeing numerous reports on Twitter that Israel is bombing Gaza again. After all, it’s been so enormously successful when they’ve done it before. None of my news sources have picked this up.
    • I haven’t even finished dealing with the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT) and another very ugly bureaucracy, Duquesne Light, is rearing its head. I have now made four attempts to satisfy their documentation requests. They keep insisting that my drivers license is blurry. But you see, I can look at the verification copies from the fax machine. I can look at the images I’ve sent them via email. These images are all, each and every one of them, crystal clear. Duquesne Light is lying. And lying for no good reason. I am not okay with this. Really not okay.
  3. May 4, 8:57 pm:
    • I have filed an informal complaint with the Pennsylvania Public Utilities Commission about Duquesne Light. This is a first step. The next step would be a formal complaint.
    • There may be, and have been, funkiness with times associated with the Irregular Bullshit. I only just discovered I needed to change the timezone since coming east.
  4. May 4, 11:37 pm:
    • Tweeted about the Gaza Strip attacks. The text now leads this issue (see above).

I’ve been noticing the churches here in Pittsburgh.

In California, and I think generally out west, grand structures are rare. Some evangelical Protestant churches can be found in old movie theaters, other storefronts, and sometimes even people’s houses. Relative to Pittsburgh, the churches are generally much smaller.

The Pittsburgh area features streets, such as Bethel Church and Lebanon Church. The churches here, relative to California, carry the appearance of a competition to see who could build the most glorious structure. They look like what one might expect to find in Europe.

Part of this is the timing. European-origin settlement of California didn’t really get started until the Gold Rush in 1849. Here, it is common for municipalities to post the years they were established—the examples I’ve seen have been from the late 18th century.

But I suspect there’s more to it than the timing. The Gold Rush was its own phenomenon. I think, in a sense, it paved the way for Silicon Valley. In this frame, California emerges as a “get rich quick” kind of place where extreme social inequality is the rule.

Pittsburgh began as Fort Pitt (which—thanks Mom for the correction added May 6, 11:09 am—had previously been Fort Duquesne under the French), at the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers (forming the Ohio River). I don’t know much of the history here but settlement here in this area was part of what the revolution that separated the U.S. from Britain was about—the U.K. parliament had passed the Quebec Act, reserving this territory for American Indians, and the colonists hated that.[1] This was territory that had been contested by the British, the French, the newly founded U.S., and, all too often forgotten, American Indians.

The psychological and sociological history of this place is different. How, precisely, that translates to grand churches is a question I have not yet sorted out. But seeing this, I now understand what I didn’t before about Colin Woodard and his sociocultural regions.[2]

Having lived in California nearly all my life (over fifty years), I had seen that once you get outside the Bay Area “bubble,” politics often orient in a much more conservative direction. The Central Valley, for example, is California’s Bible Belt. As Democrats have established one-party control of the state government, effectively disenfranchised conservatives (at least some authoritarian populists) in both far northern California and in southern California have attempted secession movements, trying and failing to break California up.

But I had never experienced such a different sense of place. Pittsburgh is different. And not just because of the weather. Even if I think Woodard may have lacked nuance in developing his archetypes for eleven different sociocultural regions and drew sharp borders instead of frontiers, this area is socioculturally different, supporting his notion of distinct regions.

Job Hunting

Ryan Nunn, Jana Parsons, and Jay Shambaugh, “How difficult is it to find a job?” Brookings, May 2, 2019, https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2019/05/02/how-difficult-is-it-to-find-a-job/

Aristocracy

George Monbiot, “Landlocked,” May 3, 2019, https://www.monbiot.com/2019/05/03/landlocked/

Joe Biden

Shia Kapos, “Chicago mayor-elect: Biden still has to answer for Anita Hill,” Politico, May 4, 2019, https://www.politico.com/story/2019/05/04/joe-biden-anita-hill-2020-1301449

Brexit

British voters are fed up.[3] But I think the real problem lies someplace other than with the politicians.

Yes, the politicians are idiots. Yes, they are, to borrow a negative connotation, “strivers” more interested in personal advancement than in the jobs they were elected to do. Of course they are. But how, really, can you expect anything better? This is the result of so-called “representative democracy.”

On the U.S. side of the pond, James Madison called it a republic, a term which would not strictly apply in Britain, but with the same failing: Madison trusted the rich with power on the ludicrous notion that they would best be able to set aside their own interests in favor of the country.[4] A republic, or a representative democracy, generally requires resources that only the wealthy can muster to run for office.

So you get a bunch of shitheads who have absolutely no clue what life is really like on the other side of the social barriers they erect to separate themselves from the rest of the population. And you shouldn’t even remotely be surprised when this happens.

This is a systemic problem. Brexit is just one example.

Heather Stewart and Patrick Wintour, “Tories lose over 1,300 seats in local elections as major parties suffer,” Guardian, May 3, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/may/03/tories-lose-over-1200-seats-in-local-elections-as-major-parties-suffer

Uber

“We’re not going to have predictable profitability,” Mr. [Dara] Khosrowshahi said at a talk at Stanford University’s business school in November. “We’ll say it to our shareholders and the shareholders can choose.”

“If they want a predictably profitable company–go buy a bank,” he added with a shrug. “Really the long-term is what we’re after.”[5]

Eliot Brown, “Uber Wants to Be the Uber of Everything—But Can It Make a Profit?” Wall Street Journal, May 4, 2019, https://www.wsj.com/articles/uber-wants-to-be-the-uber-of-everything-11556909866

  1. [1]Lawrence James, The Rise and Fall of the British Empire (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1994).↩
  2. [2]Colin Woodard, American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America (New York: Penguin, 2011).↩
  3. [3]Heather Stewart and Patrick Wintour, “Tories lose over 1,300 seats in local elections as major parties suffer,” Guardian, May 3, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/may/03/tories-lose-over-1200-seats-in-local-elections-as-major-parties-suffer↩
  4. [4]James Madison, “Federalist No. 10,” in The Federalist Papers, ed. Garry Wills (1982; repr., New York: Bantam, 2003), 50-58.↩
  5. [5]Eliot Brown, “Uber Wants to Be the Uber of Everything—But Can It Make a Profit?” Wall Street Journal, May 4, 2019, https://www.wsj.com/articles/uber-wants-to-be-the-uber-of-everything-11556909866↩

Grandstanding on impeachment

benfell

Note: There is a correction, in line, in this issue, under Donald Trump.

I have finally managed to get enough stuff put away that I can offer the first photographs of my new place:

The Pennsylvania drivers license arrived today but Allstate offered a discount if I delayed the policy start date a week. So I’m still not ready to transfer the title here, still not ready to drive for Uber and Lyft.

The new policy takes effect on the 9th.

Horse race

Max Greenwood, “Warren shows signs of momentum after slow start,” Hill, May 3, 2019, https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/441902-warren-shows-signs-of-momentum-after-slow-start

Donald Trump

“We are in a very, very, very challenging place, because we have a Republican Party that is complicit in the special-interest agenda . . . so they are not going to say anything,” [Nancy Pelosi] said at the news conference. “Impeachment is the easy way out for some of these people because they know it will end at the Senate’s edge.”[1]

That said,

“Ignoring subpoenas of Congress, not honoring subpoenas of Congress — that was Article 3 of the Nixon impeachment,” [Pelosi] said [at an earlier closed-door meeting of Congress members], according to notes taken by a person present for the remarks. “This person has not only ignored subpoenas, he has said he’s not going to honor any subpoenas. What more do we want?”[2]

I still agree with Nancy Pelosi on impeachment. As Jamie Raskin put it, “If they want to impeach the president so badly they should introduce the articles today, and I bet you a lot of Democrats are ready to join them.”[3] Raskin has a point: For all the calls for impeachment, no one has actually introduced articles of impeachment and, surely, everyone understands what happens when impeachment reaches the Senate. Which suggests rather strongly that all this talk is mere grandstanding. (Update, May 5, 8:46 am: It appears I misunderstood the pronoun, “they.” Raskin appears to have been referring to Republicans who are seeking to goad Democrats into impeachment.[4] I thought he was referring to Democrats pushing for impeachment.)

Flatly, impeachment isn’t going to work. We do need to get rid of Donald Trump, Michael Pence and this entire administration. But I’m not seeing a viable plan for accomplishing this. (And no, I don’t trust the U.S. electorate to not re-elect him. I’ve seen too many of his predecessors get re-elected.)

Mike DeBonis and Rachael Bade, “Pelosi escalates attacks on Trump, compares him to Nixon, as Barr’s defiance angers Democrats,” Washington Post, May 2, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/pelosi-escalates-attacks-on-trump-compares-him-to-nixon-as-barrs-defiance-angers-democrats/2019/05/02/e4580542-6cf1-11e9-8f44-e8d8bb1df986_story.html

  1. [1]Mike DeBonis and Rachael Bade, “Pelosi escalates attacks on Trump, compares him to Nixon, as Barr’s defiance angers Democrats,” Washington Post, May 2, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/pelosi-escalates-attacks-on-trump-compares-him-to-nixon-as-barrs-defiance-angers-democrats/2019/05/02/e4580542-6cf1-11e9-8f44-e8d8bb1df986_story.html↩
  2. [2]Mike DeBonis and Rachael Bade, “Pelosi escalates attacks on Trump, compares him to Nixon, as Barr’s defiance angers Democrats,” Washington Post, May 2, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/pelosi-escalates-attacks-on-trump-compares-him-to-nixon-as-barrs-defiance-angers-democrats/2019/05/02/e4580542-6cf1-11e9-8f44-e8d8bb1df986_story.html↩
  3. [3]Jamie B. Raskin, quoted in Mike DeBonis and Rachael Bade, “Pelosi escalates attacks on Trump, compares him to Nixon, as Barr’s defiance angers Democrats,” Washington Post, May 2, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/pelosi-escalates-attacks-on-trump-compares-him-to-nixon-as-barrs-defiance-angers-democrats/2019/05/02/e4580542-6cf1-11e9-8f44-e8d8bb1df986_story.html↩
  4. [4]Mike Lillis and Cristina Marcos, “Dems see GOP effort to drive them to impeach Trump,” Hill, May 5, 2019, https://thehill.com/homenews/house/442115-dems-see-gop-effort-to-drive-them-to-impeach-trump↩

Not washing dishes

benfell

Apparently, people in the Pittsburgh area do not wash dishes.

I have gone to multiple places now, in search of 1) a dish rack, 2) various sorts of scrubbing sponges, 3) a silverware tray, and 4) shelf liners. I even broke down and went into Walmart. As near as I can tell, these items are flatly not available in the Pittsburgh area.

In general, shopping here sucks even more—my mother will be shocked—than in California. The Whole Foods Markets are pathetic. Bed Bath and Beyond is missing about half the stuff that their California counterparts carry. Target, likewise.

Meanwhile, The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT) puts California’s Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) utterly and absolutely to shame.

California’s DMV has recently been in the news for long wait times. The DMV there has always been bad—I remember long waits when I was getting my first learner’s permit, oh, somewhere around 44 years ago—and it is an art, rather than a science, to find offices with reasonable wait times. I guess it’d gotten worse.

But at least you can go into a DMV office in California with a reasonable assurance that you can accomplish your business. At least until REAL ID came along.

Remember that I drive for Uber and Lyft. I need this shit straightened out. But PennDOT always wants one more thing.

Their website claims you have twenty days to register your car and sixty days to transfer your drivers license. Further, it says, there is nothing stopping you from registering your car while you sort out your drivers license.

The clerks have another story. Even for a non-REAL ID license, they want your physical Social Security card. Social Security numbers can be verified online and indeed when it comes to replacing a lost card, the Social Security Administration thinks you don’t actually need a physical copy.

And you have to have the Pennsylvania drivers license and Pennsylvania automobile insurance (thanks, AAA for not insuring Uber and Lyft drivers—now I get to pay twice as much for insurance) before you can register the car.

But you have to wait for the REAL ID drivers license in the mail.

Further, you will likely have to go to multiple offices in order to accomplish all this. Because some locations sort out the drivers license paperwork, but don’t take the pictures—they issue what’s called a “camera card,” which you may have to take to yet another location to get your picture taken. And then there are offices that deal with vehicle registration. Some of these overlap, with locations serving more than one function, and PennDOT’s website offers a search function where you can specify all that you need to do: There wasn’t an office that does everything I needed to do, at least anywhere near Pittsburgh.

It might be even more complicated than this—I hope not—because this is only my first experience with PennDOT. I’d just about bet that there are more wrinkles yet in store.

Pittsburgh has moved from early to mid-Spring now. Leaves have come in on the trees and the weather has shifted to alternates of hot and muggy with subsequent refreshing rain. Tonight, there is lightning and even a bit of thunder.

Cuba

Deutsche Welle, “EU says will respond to controversial US move on Cuba,” May 2, 2019, https://www.dw.com/en/eu-says-will-respond-to-controversial-us-move-on-cuba/a-48569649

Facebook

Suhauna Hussain, “Facebook bans Alex Jones and other controversial figures for hate speech,” Los Angeles Times, May 2, 2019, https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-facebook-ban-alex-jones-milo-yiannopoulos-20190502-story.html

Hannah Arendt

Totalitarian states make people into cogs in an administrative machine, [Hannah] Arendt argued, “dehumanizing them.” Worse, she said, this might even be a feature of all modern bureaucracies.[1]

Paul Mason, “Reading Arendt Is Not Enough,” New York Review of Books, May 2, 2019, https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2019/05/02/reading-arendt-is-not-enough/

Uber

Farhad Manjoo, “The Uber I.P.O. Is a Moral Stain on Silicon Valley,” New York Times, May 1, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/01/opinion/uber-ipo.html

Moral Panics

The story of a school newspaper being rebuffed by the school principal and the district superintendent in reporting on a student working in the pornography business[2] would seem to have a happy ending.[3]

The earlier story[4] was confusing about the location of the school in question. Lodi is (or, at least, was) a small town south of Sacramento and north of Stockton in California’s Central Valley. Bear Creek High School is apparently located in the northern outskirts of Stockton but part of the Lodi district.[5]

Sawsan Morrar, “School newspaper gets Lodi district’s OK to publish story about student who works in porn,” Sacramento Bee, May 2,2019, https://www.sacbee.com/news/local/education/article229945129.html

Disaster Relief

The San Francisco Chronicle story of course highlights the California angle, but more fundamentally, this is a story about Donald Trump’s vindictiveness toward Puerto Rico getting in the way of disaster relief funding not only toward Puerto Rico, but for everybody else as well.[6]

Tal Kopan, “Billions in California wildfire relief await breakthrough in Congress,” San Francisco Chronicle, April 30, 2019, https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/Billions-in-California-wildfire-relief-await-13807211.php

James Comey

Benjamin Wittes and I are unlikely to ever agree on much. He operates within a paradigm of law that I view as a paradigm of wealthy white male power (overwhelmingly, it is they who pass the laws). But within that paradigm, his analysis is first rate; it is therefore useful even to me.

Not in my memory has a sitting attorney general more diminished the credibility of his department on any subject. It is a kind of trope of political opposition in every administration that the attorney general—whoever he or she is—is politicizing the Justice Department and acting as a defense lawyer for the president. In this case it is true.[7]

Like Jennifer Levinson, he does not see William Barr as having committed perjury.[8] But a difference I have with Sissela Bok is that I condemn deception, that is, the withholding of relevant facts, with the same force she condemns lying, that is, the intentional utterance of falsehoods.[9] I would argue that both have the same effect of effectively denying the hearer of relevant and correct information, thus denying that hearer the ability to make a properly informed decision, thus impinging on that same hearer’s personal autonomy. This is her argument against lying; it undercuts her ethical distinction on deception.[10]

Wittes demonstrates this, blisteringly, in analyzing Barr’s deceptions. I honestly could not ask for a better example. So read Wittes first. Then Richard Wolffe. Wittes provides the legal backbone that actually makes Wolffe’s points all the more compelling.

Greg Miller, “With Mueller silent, Barr interprets the special counsel’s report — to the advantage of Trump,” Washington Post, May 1, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/with-mueller-silent-barr-interprets-the-special-counsels-report–to-the-advantage-of-trump/2019/05/01/54b5f3e0-6c3d-11e9-a66d-a82d3f3d96d5_story.html

Rachael Bade, Mike DeBonis, and John Wagner, “Barr’s no-show triggers contempt threats, Nixon comparison and more impeachment talk,” Washington Post, May 2, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/barr-is-a-no-show-at-house-hearing-on-mueller-report-as-democrats-warn-of-threat-to-democracy/2019/05/02/005c0ab2-6cda-11e9-a66d-a82d3f3d96d5_story.html

Benjamin Wittes, “The Catastrophic Performance of Bill Barr,” Atlantic, May 2, 2019, https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/05/bill-barrs-performance-was-catastrophic/588574/

Richard Wolffe, “It’s painfully clear: today’s Congress wouldn’t have impeached Richard Nixon,” Guardian, May 2, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/may/02/congress-trump-impeach-richard-nixon

Conspiracy Theories

Anna Merlan, “Why we are addicted to conspiracy theories,” Guardian, May 2, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/may/02/why-we-are-addicted-to-conspiracy-theories

Donald Trump

Aaron Blake, “Trump’s Stephen Moore and Herman Cain debacle,” Washington Post, May 2, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/05/02/trumps-stephen-moore-herman-cain-debacle/

  1. [1]Paul Mason, “Reading Arendt Is Not Enough,” New York Review of Books, May 2, 2019, https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2019/05/02/reading-arendt-is-not-enough/↩
  2. [2]Isaac Stanley-Becker, “‘Free speech isn’t free, is it?’: A story on a teen porn worker could cost a high school journalism teacher her job,” Washington Post, April 25, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/04/25/free-speech-isnt-free-is-it-sensitive-story-could-cost-high-school-journalism-teacher-her-job/↩
  3. [3]Sawsan Morrar, “School newspaper gets Lodi district’s OK to publish story about student who works in porn,” Sacramento Bee, May 2,2019, https://www.sacbee.com/news/local/education/article229945129.html↩
  4. [4]Isaac Stanley-Becker, “‘Free speech isn’t free, is it?’: A story on a teen porn worker could cost a high school journalism teacher her job,” Washington Post, April 25, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/04/25/free-speech-isnt-free-is-it-sensitive-story-could-cost-high-school-journalism-teacher-her-job/↩
  5. [5]California Department of Education, “California School Directory: Bear Creek High,” n.d., https://www.cde.ca.gov/SchoolDirectory/details?cdscode=39685853930237↩
  6. [6]Tal Kopan, “Billions in California wildfire relief await breakthrough in Congress,” San Francisco Chronicle, April 30, 2019, https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/Billions-in-California-wildfire-relief-await-13807211.php↩
  7. [7]Benjamin Wittes, “The Catastrophic Performance of Bill Barr,” Atlantic, May 2, 2019, https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/05/bill-barrs-performance-was-catastrophic/588574/↩
  8. [8]Jennifer Levinson was quoted in Isaac Stanley-Becker, “‘I don’t know’: Barr’s professed ignorance prompts calls for his resignation after Mueller letter,” Washington Post, May 1, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/05/01/i-dont-know-barrs-professed-ignorance-prompts-democrats-seek-his-resignation-after-mueller-letter/↩
  9. [9]Sissela Bok, Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life (New York: Vintage, 1999).↩
  10. [10]Sissela Bok, Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life (New York: Vintage, 1999).↩

EU says will respond to controversial US move on Cuba

benfell

Deutsche Welle, “EU says will respond to controversial US move on Cuba,” May 2, 2019, https://www.dw.com/en/eu-says-will-respond-to-controversial-us-move-on-cuba/a-48569649

Democracy Now! “‘We Just Want the Basics’: Rare Protests in Cuba Amid Deep Economic Crisis, Ongoing U.S. Blockade,” July 14, 2021, https://www.democracynow.org/2021/7/14/cuba_protests_covid19_us_blockade

Manolo De Los Santos and Vijay Prashad, “If You Grew Up With the U.S. Blockade as a Cuban, You Might Understand the Recent Protests Differently,” Toward Freedom, July 21, 2021, https://towardfreedom.org/story/archives/americas/if-you-grew-up-with-the-u-s-blockade-as-a-cuban-you-might-understand-the-recent-protests-differently/

Home at last

benfell

The Verizon guy was right on time. The bed delivery folks were late. Not as late as the folks delivering my furniture yesterday, but still, significantly late.

I now have a home. The next question is how long I can manage to hang on to it.

Capitalism

Richard V. Reeves, “Capitalism is failing. People want a job with a decent wage – why is that so hard?” Brookings, April 29, 2019, https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/capitalism-is-failing-people-want-a-job-with-a-decent-wage-why-is-that-so-hard/

George Monbiot, “The Problem is Capitalism,” April 30, 2019, https://www.monbiot.com/2019/04/30/the-problem-is-capitalism/

James Comey

“He’s tiptoeing, dancing and threading the needle all at once around perjury, but I don’t think he ever actually steps into the land of perjury,” [Jennifer] Levinson said. “We’re talking about a very skilled attorney who purposely used vague enough language.”[1]

Isaac Stanley-Becker, “‘I don’t know’: Barr’s professed ignorance prompts calls for his resignation after Mueller letter,” Washington Post, May 1, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/05/01/i-dont-know-barrs-professed-ignorance-prompts-democrats-seek-his-resignation-after-mueller-letter/

 

  1. [1]Isaac Stanley-Becker, “‘I don’t know’: Barr’s professed ignorance prompts calls for his resignation after Mueller letter,” Washington Post, May 1, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/05/01/i-dont-know-barrs-professed-ignorance-prompts-democrats-seek-his-resignation-after-mueller-letter/↩