It’s a California thing that sounds like a California thing: Valley fever. Just not particularly the San Fernando Valley.

There is a new blog post entitled, “Racism as inevitable.”

I’m still finding everything that went wrong with the migration of The Irregular Bullshit. Yes, I know, images are missing. Yes, I know, the posts weren’t getting publicized on Twitter and Facebook. I think I’ve fixed the latter, now. We’ll see.

I managed to figure out how to find Dreamhost’s migration plugin for Not Housebroken, so that went a lot better. Take a hint folks: The WordPress export and import tools suck because it’s really too much data to move in a single file. If it happens you’re migrating to Dreamhost, use their damn plugin.

Climate crisis

Having lived in California for over fifty years, including in the Central Valley, I had, of course, heard of valley fever. I had not known that the climate crisis would exacerbate it. But it turns out that hot, dry conditions are just this particular fungus’ ticket.^[1]

Dani Anguiano, “‘It took everything’: the disease that can be contracted by breathing California’s air,” Guardian, August 29, 2022, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/aug/29/california-valley-fever-disease-climate-crisis

Gilead

Competitive authoritarian regime project

“What we’re seeing now is either the beginning or the death knell of an extreme MAGA philosophy,” [Joe] Biden said, referring to [Donald] Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan. “It’s not just Trump, it’s the entire philosophy that underpins the — I’m going to say something — it’s like semi-fascism.”^[2]

But what have the Democrats actually done about it? Nothing. Even when it would keep them in the electoral game.^[3]

It will take actual action, not mere performance, to make my 2024 forecast^[4] wrong,^[5] but what we keep seeing is that the Democrats do not actually stand in opposition to white Christian nationalism or to the longstanding Republican project to establish a competitive authoritarian regime. They enable white Christian nationalism and they enable the competitive authoritarian regime.

Such action, rather, comes from the Republicans themselves, overreaching in their support for Donald Trump, overreaching in their opposition to abortion rights.^[6] It’s all the Democrats ever ask for: That you vote against the Republicans. And the infuriating part is that it just might be working.^[7]

Ishaan Tharoor, “The debate over American fascism gets louder,” Washington Post, August 30, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com//world/2022/08/30/fascism-biden-trump-american-history/

Donald Trump

Coup attempt

Mariana Alfaro and Eugene Scott, “Judge’s openness to special master for Mar-a-Lago documents raises new questions in criminal probe,” Washington Post, August 29, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/08/29/special-master-trump-biden-pennsylvania/

Devlin Barrett, “Trump’s Mar-a-Lago documents already examined by FBI, Justice Dept. tells judge,” Washington Post, August 29, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/08/29/trumpspecial-master-documents/