Year: 2020

Pope Frank has a Future in Standup

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Upon greeting a class of priests, Pope Francis was presented with a bottle of Scotch whiskey, and he joked, “Scotch whiskey was the real holy wate.” 

I am amused:

Scotch whisky fans didn’t need any spiritual confirmation that their drink of choice is divine indeed.

However, it doesn’t hurt that Pope Francis has actually declared Scotch whisky to be ‘the real holy water’. It’s important to note that he did say it as a light-hearted joke to the Scottish student priests who offered him a bottle as a gift at a reception in the Vatican.

Though the moment was captured on video last year, the story gained attention recently, as the piece of footage censored by the Vatican was for a soon-to-be-released BBC documentary about seminarians at the Pontifical Scots College in Rome. In a Daily Record article, documentary director Tony Kearney described the scene:

“He was really down to earth with them all [the student priests] and when they handed him the bottle, instead of just handing it to his assistant as he normally would with a gift, he held it up and said ‘Questa e la vera acqua santa’, which means ‘This is the real holy water.’”

As for the specific whisky he was commenting on, it was a bottle of Oban, from the west coast of Scotland (both the 14 and the 21 year old are superb whiskies, by the way).

Somehow, I don’t think that we’d ever here such humor from Southern Baptist.

5.2 Million New Jobless Claims

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Scary as Hell

The latest initial unemployment claims are out, and it’s 5.2 million claims over the past week, which is almost certainly an under-reporting, as overburdened offices are almost certainly falling behind.

In any case, it’s about 22 million claims in the past 4 weeks, and an unemployment rate of at least 15%:

More than 22 million workers have sought unemployment benefits during a month of coronavirus-related shutdowns, a record-shattering total that reflects a broad shock for the U.S. labor market.

Another 5.2 million Americans filed for unemployment benefits last week, the Labor Department said on Thursday, adding to three prior weeks in which millions of people filed for jobless claims. Since mid-March, about 13% of the labor force has sought jobless assistance, far outpacing any prior four-week stretch on record. Last week’s total decreased from figures that approached 7 million in the prior two weeks, suggesting the wave of workers filing for benefits has passed its peak.

“Claims are now falling, having peaked…two weeks ago,” said Ian Shepherdson, economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics. “But the weekly level is still almost unfathomably high.” He said Google search data for “file for unemployment” suggests claims will fall again this week.

Jobless claims are applications by laid-off workers for unemployment-insurance payments—not all of which are approved. Each claim is made by an individual person and that person can’t file another claim until their previous request was either rejected or their benefits expire.

Before the pandemic, the largest number of Americans to ask for unemployment benefits in a four-week stretch was 2.7 million, or 2.4% of the labor force, in the fall of 1982.

The glass half empty folks note that there are simply fewer people who are employed to make claims.

This is grim.

They Really Are Contemptible

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I can get why some people would want to primary Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

I disagree, but I understand why.

Still selecting a recently Republican wing nut who called Social Security a Ponzi scheme is an indication of just how detached from reality they are.

My guess is that they decided that no one would notice if one Hispanic woman was replaced with another when they chose Michelle Caruso-Cabrera as their “Great White Hope.”

Some advice for AOC:  Unless you become Joseph Crowley and sell out completely, they are going to continue coming after you, so go ahead and endorse primary challengers to corporatist DINOs:

Wall Street titans are financing a direct challenge to firebrand progressive lawmaker Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in the New York primary on June 23.

Disclosures show that at least two dozen finance industry professionals, including several prominent private equity executives and investment bankers, made early donations to Michelle Caruso-Cabrera, a former CNBC contributor who is challenging Ocasio-Cortez. Caruso-Cabrera was a registered Republican until a few years ago and authored a 2010 book advocating for several conservative positions, including an end to Medicare and Social Security, which she called “pyramid schemes.”

The donors include Glenn Hutchins, the billionaire co-founder of Silver Lake Partners; James Passin of Firebird Capital; Bruce Schnitzer of Wand Partners; Jeffrey Rosen of Lazard; and Bradley Seaman, managing partner of Parallel49 Equity.

………

But the candidate’s beliefs are explained in detail in a book she authored in 2010 titled, “You Know I’m Right: More Prosperity, Less Government,” which included a forward by Larry Kudlow, who now serves as President Donald Trump’s director of the National Economic Council.

In the book, Caruso-Cabrera calls Medicare and Social Security “the country’s biggest pyramid schemes,” and wrote that she would end both programs in favor of a privatized voucher system. Medicare, Caruso-Cabrera wrote, “is another pay-as-you-go Ponzi scheme” that should be replaced with a health savings account that gives “seniors $1,000 or $2,000 a year to start.” Social Security, she notes, should be replaced with a private account system, in which Americans are incentivized to invest in the stock market.

In her book, she stated that tax evasion as essential to freedom, “Freedom and democracy are best secured when banking secrecy and tax havens exist.”

Making nice to these people will not get you more power in Congress, nor will it do anything to secure your position as the representative in New York’s 14th district.

In fact, given that Andrew Cuomo is governor and he hates progressives, you should be prepared for your district to be sliced and diced like Masaharu Morimoto making sushi by 2022.

Linkage

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Seriously, if you are concerned about Covid-19, wait 3 days, or use some damn hand sanitizer:

Apparently someone thought it was a good idea to disinfect $5,000 Canadian dollars using a microwave. Plot twist- Canada uses plastic money. pic.twitter.com/bOkalVxbE8

— Greg (เกร็ก) (@BkkGreg) April 13, 2020

Five Down, 45 States to Go

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Virginia Governor Ralph Northam just signed a law making election day a holiday and creating an easy path to vote by mail.

Needless to say, making voting easier and more convenient is something that Republicans hate with a passion, they have been practicing aggressive voter suppression since before Reagan was President, but this is a good thing:

Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam announced Sunday that he signed a series of new measures into law aimed at expanding access to voting in the commonwealth.

The new legislation will establish Election Day as a holiday, remove the requirement that voters show a photo ID prior to casting a ballot and, expand early voting to be allowed 45 days before an election without a stated reason.

“Voting is a fundamental right, and these new laws strengthen our democracy by making it easier to cast a ballot, not harder,” Northam said in a statement. “No matter who you are or where you live in Virginia, your voice deserves to be heard. I’m proud to sign these bills into law.”

Several states and cities have already made Election Day a civic holiday, including Delaware, Hawaii, Kentucky and New York. State offices typically close, though it depends on the state whether employees are entitled to paid time off to vote.

Proponents say making Election Day a holiday could improve voter turnout. But Election Day may not become a federal holiday anytime soon — it’s drawn deep division along party lines.

………

The new legislation also repeals the current Lee-Jackson day holiday which honored Robert E. Lee and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson as “defenders of causes.” Both men owned slaves and fought to preserve slavery in the US.

Making voting easier AND offering a big f%$# you to the folks who want to lionize Civil War traitors.

Two snaps up.

She’s Got Michelle Bachmann Eyes*

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Republican Crazy Eyes

It looks like another right wing politician worshiping at the altar of Trump is now discovering that that whole Golden Calf thing was a warning, not an instruction.

So now South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem has one of the largest Covid-19 clusters, and a significant proportion of the United States pork production has been taken off line, and her state is in a world of hurt.

And yes, she has some seriously CRAZY eyes:

As governors across the country fell into line in recent weeks, South Dakota’s top elected leader stood firm: There would be no statewide order to stay home.

Such edicts to combat the spread of the novel coronavirus, Gov. Kristi L. Noem said disparagingly, reflected a “herd mentality.” It was up to individuals — not government — to decide whether “to exercise their right to work, to worship and to play. Or to even stay at home.”

And besides, the first-term Republican told reporters at a briefing this month, “South Dakota is not New York City.”

But now South Dakota is home to one of the largest single coronavirus clusters anywhere in the United States, with more than 300 workers at a giant ­pork-processing plant falling ill. With the case numbers continuing to spike, the company was forced to announce the indefinite closure of the facility Sunday, threatening the U.S. food supply.

“A shelter-in-place order is needed now. It is needed today,” said Sioux Falls Mayor Paul TenHaken, whose city is at the center of South Dakota’s outbreak and who has had to improvise with voluntary recommendations in the absence of statewide action.

You know, if your only goal is to drown the government in a bath tub, it’s a tough to sell in the middle of a pandemic.

*Apologies to Kim Carnes.

Always Look on the Bright Side of Life

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A red light camera company is facing bankruptcy because of reduced driving, and reduced fines, during the lock-down.

I am amused:


Things change. And the stuff that used to work just doesn’t anymore. We’ve covered a lot of this over the years, mainly focusing on how the rise of the internet was greeted with rent-seeking and protectionist policies meant to extend the upper hand that incumbent industries had enjoyed for years.

………

We are again being asked to shed a tear for a law enforcement-adjacent industry. Social distancing and sheltering-in-place in response to the coronavirus has led to a downturn in driving. And if there’s fewer drivers on the road, proxy cops are seeing their revenue streams dry up.

Redflex, an Australian company that operates “traffic safety programs” in roughly 100 US and Canadian cities, warned that less traffic and suspended construction amid the pandemic will be a stress on its balance sheet.

“Approximately 15% of group revenue is dependent on volume-based contracts,” the company said in a regulatory filing Monday first spotted by The Wall Street Journal, hinting at its business line that includes enforcement cameras. “We anticipate our revenue from these contracts will be impacted broadly in line with the reduction in traffic volumes as well as the duration of the disruption.”

Yeah, that’s a real shame. It’s too bad a company that engaged in bribery to grab market share won’t be able to weather this unexpected downturn in questionably-obtained income. There are several competitors in the crowded “worst traffic cam ever” field, but Redflex did everything it could to stay ahead of the pack. This behavior resulted in other unexpected downturns, like refunding millions of dollars of tickets in multiple locations due to the tech’s inability to do the little things… like accurately judge vehicle speed.

Here’s hoping that these folks end up in the poor house.

Some Observation on the NY Times Article About Joe Biden Sexual Assault Allegations

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It is significant that the New York Times is finally publishing something about the Biden allegations, if just because it means that the story is now officially not beyond the pale.

While the Times article is marginally less dismissive than the ones found in WaPo or Salon, I would note that it has information that confirms Ms Reade’s account of events.
Of course, they wait to paragraph 25 to note the claim that:

The staff declined to take action, Ms. Reade said, after which she filed a written complaint with a Senate personnel office. She said office staff took away most of her duties, including supervising the interns; assigned her a windowless office; and made the work environment uncomfortable for her.

And then a few paragraphs later (paragraph 38) they note:

At the time of the alleged assault, Ms. Reade said she was responsible for coordinating the interns in the office. Two former interns who worked with her said they never heard her describe any inappropriate conduct by Mr. Biden or saw her directly interact with him in any capacity but recalled that she abruptly stopped supervising them in April, before the end of their internship. Others who worked in the office at the time said they remembered Ms. Reade but not any inappropriate behavior.

(emphasis mine)

I’m not sure that this information should have been in the first paragraph, but it should have been in the first 5 paragraphs, and the statement by the interns about her abrupt removal should have been noted immediately following.

Talk about burying the lede.

Also, note that Fox News, of all people, pointed out a stealth edit of the article: (Deletion in red)

No other allegation about sexual assault surfaced in the course of reporting, nor did any former Biden staff members corroborate any details of Ms. Reade’s allegation. The Times found no pattern of sexual misconduct by Mr. Biden, beyond the hugs, kisses and touching that women previously said made them uncomfortable.

All the news that’s fit to print, huh?

Some Garbage Airline ———

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You know, I don’t wanna name an actual airline so let’s just make one up; let’s call it, “Delta Airlines,” just instructed its employees not to tell other employees if they test positive for Covid-19, because allowing employees to take precautions might interfere with the cash flow.

Can we find a way to throw these motherf%$#ers in jail?

Delta Air Lines has directed flight attendants who test positive for the coronavirus to “refrain from notifying” fellow crew members or posting about their health on social media, according to an email HuffPost reviewed.

The email, sent Thursday afternoon to more than 25,000 flight attendants, stated that Delta management will “follow an established process” to alert co-workers who recently came in contact with flight attendants who “are symptomatic or diagnosed with COVID-19,” the respiratory illness caused by the coronavirus.

“Please refrain from notifying other crew members on your own,” read the email, which was sent at 2:20 p.m. Eastern time. “Once you have completed the reporting procedures listed above, leaders will follow the established process to notify any impacted flight attendants.”

Son of a Bitch

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In a good way.

Despite the best efforts of Wisconsin Republicans to suppress the vote, Jill Karofsky defeated right wing hack Daniel Kelly in the race for Wisconsin State Supreme Court judge:

Dane County Circuit Judge Jill Karofsky won the race for Wisconsin Supreme Court, narrowing the conservative majority after a tumultuous election conducted in the midst of a global pandemic, according to unofficial results released Monday.

 Karofsky’s victory marked the first time in a dozen years that a Supreme Court challenger beat an incumbent — and just the second time in more than half a century. Her win over Justice Daniel Kelly will shift conservative control of the court from 5-2 to 4-3.

 Appearing by video conference from her home with her son and daughter behind her, Karofsky thanked her family and supporters and decried the decision to hold the election during the coronavirus outbreak.

………

The pandemic triggered a record surge of absentee balloting as voters looked for a way to stay at home to prevent themselves and others from getting ill. Many voters have complained they never received their absentee ballots, forcing them to choose between giving up the ability to vote and braving the polls on election day.

………

Republicans were so worried about Kelly’s chances that they considered moving the election so it didn’t fall on the same day as Wisconsin’s presidential primary, when Democratic turnout was expected to be high. They abandoned the plan to move the election amid public opposition.

By the time election day rolled around, the Democratic presidential primary had largely fizzled and the world was in the grip of the pandemic. The Supreme Court candidates abandoned their in-person campaigning and both sides urged people to vote by mail instead of going to the polls.

The voters were pissed off, big time, by the machinations of the Republican Party to suppress the vote.

If Democrats don’t see this as a political winner now, they are even more clueless than I had thought.

Never Let a Crisis go Unexploited

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It now appears that the Trump administration is looking to use the Covid-19 pandemic as an excuse to lower agricultural wages.

It is contemptible, but using an emergency as an excuse to shaft the most vulnerable in society is Republican Party 101:

New White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows is working with Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue to see how to reduce wage rates for foreign guest workers on American farms, in order to help U.S. farmers struggling during the coronavirus, according to U.S. officials and sources familiar with the plans.

………

The measure is the latest effort being pushed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to help U.S farmers who say they are struggling amid disruptions in the agricultural supply chain compounded by the outbreak; the industry was already hurting because of President Trump’s tariff war with China.

………

The nation’s roughly 2.5 million agricultural laborers have been officially declared “essential workers” as the administration seeks to ensure that Americans have food to eat and that U.S. grocery stores remain stocked. Workers on the H-2A seasonal guest-worker program are about 10% of all farmworkers.

………

The most recent push to lower wage rates for workers on H-2A visas has drawn pushback from some strange bedfellows: immigrant-rights advocates and immigration hard-liners usually aligned with Trump.

………

It’s unclear how the reforms would be made, including whether they would be taken through executive action or through the federal regulatory process. But Perdue has pushed for adjusting what is known as the adverse effect wage rate, which prevents farmers using the H-2A program from paying all workers — U.S. and guest workers — wages below the prevailing rates in the surrounding area.

Earlier this year, Perdue said the adverse wage rate has set almost a $15 minimum wage for agriculture, noting “no other business in the country has that,” according to the agriculture trade journal DTN.

The “adverse effect wage rates” are based on a USDA survey of what agricultural workers are paid in each state. It’s $11.71 in Florida, $12.67 in North Carolina and $14.77 in California.

Evil is as evil does, I guess.

Signs of the Apocalypse

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Dana Milbank, the quintessential Washington, DC insider know nothing, just got something right when he noted that the Covid-19 response was a direct result of the movement Republican belief that the government should be drowned in a bathtub.

Well a stopped clock, is right once a day, and Dana Milbank is right (maybe) once a year:

I had been expecting this for 21 years.

“It’s not a matter of ‘if,’ but ‘when,’” the legendary epidemiologist D.A. Henderson told me in 1999 when we discussed the likelihood of a biological event causing mass destruction.

In 2001, I wrote about experts urging a “medical Manhattan Project” for new vaccines, antibiotics and antivirals.

………

I repeat these things not to pretend I was prescient but to show that the nation’s top scientists and public health experts were shouting these warnings from the rooftops — deafeningly, unanimously and consistently. In the years after the 2001 terrorist attacks, the Bush and Obama administrations seemed to be listening.

But then came the tea party, the anti-government conservatism that infected the Republican Party in 2010 and triumphed with President Trump’s election. Perhaps the best articulation of its ideology came from the anti-tax activist Grover Norquist, who once said: “I don’t want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.”

They got their wish. What you see today is your government, drowning — a government that couldn’t produce a rudimentary test for coronavirus, that couldn’t contain the pandemic as other countries have done, that couldn’t produce enough ventilators for the sick or even enough face masks and gowns for health-care workers.

The fact that this font of conventional wisdom (the conventional wisdom is always wrong) recognizes that this is a direct result of an ideology is significant.

The pundit class, disdains the discussion of ideology, so the fact that one of their most prominent avatars is assigning the blame to a right-wing ideology constituents a statement against interest, which increases the credibility of the assewrtion.

The GOP is Rolling Out the Brute Squad

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Specifically, they are looking to put retired police and military in voting locations to intimidate voters.

I guess this explains why they are so opposed to postal voting, you cannot send the Brute Squad to everyone’s mailbox:

On Election Day in November, some polling places could be patrolled by off-duty police officers and veterans, according to a plan hatched by Republican operatives.

The idea is a reprisal of once-illegal Election Day “ballot security” intimidation tactics, intended to challenge voter registration and remove voters from the rolls. At a strategy session in February attended by conservative donors and activists, several people expressed a specific need for Republican poll watchers in “inner city” and predominantly Native American precincts, according to audio recordings of the event obtained by The Intercept and Documented.

“You get some [Navy] Seals in those polls and they’re going to say, ‘No, no, this is what it says. This is how we’re going to play this show,’” said Catherine Engelbrecht, founder of True the Vote, a group that lobbies for voting restrictions and organizes volunteers to go into precincts and aggressively challenge voters who they believe are improperly registered. “That’s what we need. We need people who are unafraid to call it like they see it.”

The Republican Party is not the opposition, it is the enemy.

No, Just No

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This is a bad idea. A really bad one, on multiple levels – for starters, it threatens the integrity of Dem voter data & puts Nov prospects in hands of a shady firm w/ a failed track record.

Plenty of orgs bid for contracts. I hope there is enough good sense to reject this one. https://t.co/8kRIog03YM

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) April 10, 2020

As a part of Michael Bloomberg’s efforts to purchase the Democratic Party establishment (There is no Democratic Party establishment), his campaign organization is making a below cost bid to take over the campaign infrastructure of the Biden campaign, as well as various leadership PACs, and Eric (Place) Holder’s political organization.

If you don’t find this chilling, you are not paying attention.

Also, it should be noted that this is a classic part of the Bloomberg handbook:  Using his money to forestall any meaningful criticism of his actions so that he can secure power.

As an aside, the Sanders campaign should NEVER turn over its data to the DNC for just this reason:

The Bloomberg-owned firm Hawkfish, which ran the presidential campaign of Mike Bloomberg, is in serious talks to serve the presidential campaign of Joe Biden, according to sources with knowledge of the ongoing negotiations. Along with Biden’s campaign, the firm is courting a wide swath of other progressive and Democratic organizations, opening up the possibility of Bloomberg gaining significant control over the party’s technology and data infrastructure.

………

But instead it comes with other enticements to clients. Democratic operatives who’ve been pitched by Hawkfish say that the firm is able to offer extraordinarily low prices by operating at a loss subsidized by Bloomberg, whose wealth dangles as an added benefit that could come with signing the firm. A Hawkfish insider, who spoke on the condition of anonymity so as not to jeopardize employment, confirmed that the company is willing to operate at a loss in order to grab control of the party infrastructure, explaining that the firm hopes to offer a fee that would be small enough to entice the Biden campaign while passing muster with federal regulators. (If a firm offers services for less than fair market value, the discount is considered under campaign finance laws to be an in-kind contribution, and thus subject to legal limits depending on the entity collecting the contribution. A presidential campaign can’t accept more than $2,800 from a single individual per election, or any contributions at all from a company.)

The FEC won’t rule on the in-kind contribution until after the election, if it even could take action, since it still lacks a quorum to operate.


“When the objective isn’t money but control, $18 million is incredibly cheap to become the center of gravity for all Democratic political information, which we would be if both Biden and [House Democrats] have to come through us,” the source said, referring to the amount of money the Bloomberg campaign transferred to the Democratic Party last month, in a reversal of his earlier pledge to create a Super PAC in support of the party’s nominee. “And in the current environment, the public sees this as generosity.”

………

Waleed Shahid, spokesperson for Justice Democrats, which recruits progressive challengers to incumbents, said that Bloomberg’s firm running the party’s data operation would send the wrong signal and could have long-term, damaging repercussions. “The idea of the Democratic nominee potentially rewarding Bloomberg’s firm with this contract is disturbing,” he said. “We shouldn’t be the party of helping billionaires amass huge amounts of mega-data on voters that allow them to keep accruing obscene amounts of power in our democracy.”

In the annals of bad ideas for the Democratic Party, this one is definitely in the top three.