Oh, I am an idiot. Those of you with some high technology skills will either be annoyed or amused.
From what I can see on the Dreamhost panel, it appears that it has been 18 days since I migrated to their hosting. I forgot to deal with the MX settings. Completely forgot. So I haven’t been receiving email on either disunitedstates.org or disunitedstates.com from non-Gmail users.
Because Google thought it had the domain for MX, it continued to relay mail correctly, or at least as I would expect, from Gmail users.
I own several domains. My email is scattered across them for reasons I don’t even remember anymore. So I was continuing to receive some email. Enough that I wasn’t suspicious. Though I should have been.
I didn’t even have a clue until one of my credit card companies sent me a letter complaining. I was baffled. I figured Google had had an outage. SMTP, which is how email gets relayed across the Internet, after all, is a protocol that’s older than some of the kids who manage SMTP servers. It creaks along, but shit happens.
No, this was my fault. Entirely my fault.
This likely explains why I haven’t been hearing from Puck News lately.
It was only when Ukraine started seriously hitting my radar that I realized I hadn’t heard from Puck News in a while, because the brilliant Julia Ioffe is at Puck News, and I rely upon her for analysis of what’s happening in Ukraine and Russia.
It should all be fixed now, and there’s a whole bunch of email suddenly waiting for me, but it may still need time for the corrections to propagate.
Sigh. I’m hitting publish for now.
Gilead
Donald Trump
Coup attempt
Fig. 1. Original: The White House. Derivative work: J. J. Messerly, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
Jennifer Rubin, for one, seems satisfied that the Department of Justice will indeed press charges against Donald Trump.[1] But her logic seems to accept that the Department must wait until it has completed all the investigations into all the allegations against Trump before it can press any charges at all—this seems to me absurd and my trust in the dithering[2] Merrick Garland is so low at this point that I will not believe it until, frankly, I see Trump in an orange jumpsuit.
Devlin Barrett and Perry Stein, “Justice Dept. says it would accept Trump’s candidate for special master,” Washington Post, September 12, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/09/12/trump-classified-special-master/
Greg Sargent, “Trump faces a new threat: Scrutiny of ‘stop the steal’ money scam,” Washington Post, September 13, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/13/trump-doj-subpoenas-jan-6-save-america-pac/
Jennifer Rubin, “Trump’s legal problems multiply as his excuses disappear,” Washington Post, September 14, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/14/trump-unsealed-affidavit-doj-brief/
Religious ‘freedom’
Do you remember that article about how religious privilege is for conservative Christians only?[3] I was sure thinking about that when I saw the Reuters headline.[4]
But it appears the Supreme Court ruling really directs the case back to the same state courts that have so far declined to allow Yeshiva University to discriminate against the Yeshiva University Pride Alliance. The university can return to the Court once it has exhausted that path.[5]
“Conservative Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett dissented,” likely, judging from Alito’s dissent, because they would have allowed the university to discriminate.[6]
Andrew Chung, “U.S. Supreme Court requires Yeshiva University to allow LGBT student club,” Reuters, September 14, 2022, https://www.reuters.com/legal/us-supreme-court-requires-yeshiva-university-allow-lgbt-student-club-2022-09-14/
Pittsburgh
Infrastructure
Fig. 1. Post-collapse scene at the Fern Hollow Bridge, photograph by National Transportation Safety Board, January 29, 2022, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.
In pool video from the scene [of the Fern Hollow Bridge collapse], [Joe] Biden could be heard commenting on the number of bridges in Pittsburgh. He also said: “We are going to fix all of them. That’s not a joke.”[7]
There are 43,000 deficient bridges in the US/29 in the City. The final 5 year budget we did included $$$ for- 28th, 30th, W. Carson, Swindell, Negley, Larimer, Charles Anderson, Swinburne, Davis – no city can solve this on their own-we need an annual federal infrastructure bill
— Daniel Gilman (@danielgilman) September 14, 2022
The “average” formula to repair/replace a bridge is 70% Federal, 20% State & 10% Local in PA. Even with last years Infrastructure Bill, we are not close to addressing the need of deficient bridges. Congress must dedicate annual funds & states must match – like we did in the past. https://t.co/6rYflmPqWy
— bill peduto (@billpeduto) September 15, 2022
I’m sorry, I just can’t believe it anymore:
Too many projects *never* *ever* get done. They're working on them and working on them and working on them. Are they really to accomplish anything or are they to keep contractors in the lucre and workers employed?
— David Benfell, Ph.D. (Public) (@BenfellPhD) September 15, 2022
As I observe the interminable road work around Pittsburgh, in which it seems many projects are never, ever actually completed, I am more and more inclined to accept the sentiment of my passengers that contractors are “milking” these projects and that they are “make work” projects more to preserve employment than they are to actually accomplish anything.
I’m certainly willing to accept that more money is needed for infrastructure work in Pittsburgh. But I think there also needs to be an end to what must be rampant corruption as well.[8]
Daniel Gilman, “There are 43,000 deficient bridges in the US/29 in the City. . . .,” Twitter, September 14, 2022, https://twitter.com/danielgilman/status/1570151445776957441
Bill Peduto, “The ‘average’ formula to repair/replace a bridge is . . .,” Twitter, September 15, 2022, https://twitter.com/billpeduto/status/1570230022044258304
- [1]Jennifer Rubin, “Trump’s legal problems multiply as his excuses disappear,” Washington Post, September 14, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/14/trump-unsealed-affidavit-doj-brief/↩
- [2]Sadie Gurman and Aruna Viswanatha, “Merrick Garland Weighed Search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago for Weeks,” Wall Street Journal, August 15, 2022, https://www.wsj.com/articles/merrick-garland-weighed-search-of-trumps-mar-a-lago-for-weeks-11660601292↩
- [3]Katherine Stewart and Caroline Fredrickson, “Bill Barr Thinks America Is Going to Hell,” New York Times, December 29, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/29/opinion/william-barr-trump.html↩
- [4]Andrew Chung, “U.S. Supreme Court requires Yeshiva University to allow LGBT student club,” Reuters, September 14, 2022, https://www.reuters.com/legal/us-supreme-court-requires-yeshiva-university-allow-lgbt-student-club-2022-09-14/↩
- [5]Andrew Chung, “U.S. Supreme Court requires Yeshiva University to allow LGBT student club,” Reuters, September 14, 2022, https://www.reuters.com/legal/us-supreme-court-requires-yeshiva-university-allow-lgbt-student-club-2022-09-14/↩
- [6]Andrew Chung, “U.S. Supreme Court requires Yeshiva University to allow LGBT student club,” Reuters, September 14, 2022, https://www.reuters.com/legal/us-supreme-court-requires-yeshiva-university-allow-lgbt-student-club-2022-09-14/↩
- [7]Margaret J. Krauss et al., “Bridge collapses in Frick Park, hours before Biden arrives in Pittsburgh to discuss infrastructure,” WESA, January 29, 2022, https://www.wesa.fm/2022-01-28/bridge-collapses-in-frick-park↩
- [8]David Benfell, “It is what it is,” Not Housebroken, December 31, 2022, https://disunitedstates.org/2021/12/31/it-is-what-it-is/↩