As is my tradition every December 1st, I remember…
Kent Kelly
Ken Cohen
Steve Golden
Dennis Shelpman
Jim Hagen
Chuck Krahe
Marty Kamner
Michael Nelson
Jim Nye
Kevin Ohm
Rick King
Ron Aiazzi
Grant Neilsen
Ric Hathaway
David Koston
Kim Holstein
Russ Alvarez
Ben Walzer
Ken Borg
Harold Gates
Jim Girard
Keith Roseberry
Tom Farrel
Peter Whitman
Chuck Mayer
Richard Gulliver
Scott Woods
Bobby Farina
Brian Lea
Fred Sibinic
Steve McCollom
John Trapp
Philip Ruckdeschel
Jerry Straughn
Certain dates stand out in our minds. December 1st is one of mine, and for the most ridiculous reason: it was the day my class made a field trip to the Phoenix Zoo. What grade? Second? Third? No idea. All I remember was the date. And the giraffe strutting around with an enormous erection.
The European Union has warned Elon Musk that it will ban or fine Twitter unless it follows its laws about content moderation that are set to go into effect in 2023.
Thierry Breton, the EU’s commissioner in charge of implementing the union’s digital rules, made the warning during a video meeting with Musk on Wednesday. The checklist of rules includes aggressively removing disinformation, getting rid of Musk’s “arbitrary” approach to reinstating banned users, and more.
Musk has reportedly been told to give clear criteria on which users are at risk of a Twitter ban. Breton also called on Musk to apply strict rules around advertising, such as a ban on targeting kids or using sensitive information to target users with ads, such as religious and political beliefs.
The EU also wants Twitter to agree to an audit by the summer of 2023 and hand over information that includes the number of active users and banned accounts.
And now the man-baby is threatening to take down Apple because they’re cutting back their advertising on the platform and threatening to pull the Twitter app from their App Store.
I’m so embarrassed to have to say this, but my generation let this happen. And now our chance is here to stop the Republican onslaught once and for all.
The article is a great read. If you don’t have time, here is a summary:
Hartmann argues that Reagan’s deregulatory, uber-free market, pro-corporate, anti-labor, anti-higher education, and/or low taxation for the rich policies ultimately contributed to:
Greater generational income inequality.“Boomers in their 30s [in 1990] owned 21.3 [%] of the nation’s wealth,” whereas “Millennials in their 30s today own 4.6% of the nation’s wealth.”
Wage stagnation. This occurred because of “right to work” anti-union laws enacted in Republican controlled states. Of the 27 states that have passed these laws, 23 are below the mean U.S. household income, 8 are in the poorest national quintile (state rankings of 41-50), 6 are in the second poorest national quintile (state rankings of 31-40), and 9 are in the third poorest national quintile (state rankings of 21-30).
Increased student loan debt and inability to wipe out debt via bankruptcy. Reagan led the way as governor of California in cutting aid to public higher education and in putting an end to “free tuition” at the University of California. “As president, [Reagan] began the methodical process of eliminating federal and state support for [college] tuition.” Furthermore, in a massive GOP “gift” to banking, people can no longer “discharge student loans through bankruptcy.”
Price gouging (which contributes to inflation). “In 1983, President Reagan ordered the federal government to stop enforcing the anti-trust laws,” resulting in “merger mania,” which allowed for the growth of huge monopolies that “crushed” small businesses, including startups, and allowed for price gouging with impunity.
Increased individual medical debt (and bankruptcies), increased spending on healthcare, and lower life expectancy in the U.S. compared with other developed nations. This all occurred because the “Reagan Revolution” encouraged the end of state “nonprofit requirements” for “health insurance companies and hospitals,” to be replaced by “free market principles.”
Excessive pharmaceutical prices. Because of the “Reagan Revolution,” drug companies were allowed to become “monopolistic monoliths” that could charge whatever they wanted for drugs.
Excessive housing costs. The GOP Congress under New Gingrich “’deregulated’ the financial industry.” That’s why today “trillion-dollar hedge funds and investment groups are purchasing as many as half…of the available-for-sale housing, so they can turn them into rentals and then, when they’ve cornered the market, jack up the prices.”
A large “transfer of real wealth” to the “top 1%.” “Reagan dropped the top income tax rate on the morbidly rich from 74% down to 27%, and cut corporate tax rates from 50% to functionally nothing […] This 42-year-long process, with Reagan’s original massive tax cuts amplified by trillions more in tax cuts for the morbidly rich from the George W. Bush and Donald Trump administrations, has produced a $50 trillion transfer of real wealth from the middle class to the top 1%.”
Hartmann also describes other ways that Republicans since Reagan have continued to destroy our nation (and in terms of climate change, potentially the planet):
Climate change denial.“Republicans, right across-the-board, continue to deny [climate change], in deference to the fossil fuel industry and its billionaires that funds their elections. They’ve put money and power above the fate and future of your and your children’s planet.”
Politicians for sale. Through the “Citizens United” decision, the Republican appointed conservative Supreme Court justices have allowed “billionaires and corporations” to virtually buy politicians–making it hard for anyone in Congress (especially Democrats) to pass any laws not approved by the oligarchs who “own” members of Congress [mostly Republican but some Democrats too].
Promoting autocracy, trying to overturn legal elections, and trying to rig future elections. Trump and his Republican cronies “tried to end our 240-year experiment in democratic self governance, and are now actively embracing neofascist autocracy, openly trying to emulate the rightwing strongman governments that have taken over Russia and Hungary.” Republicans are also attempting “to rig our elections by purging millions of minority, Boomer, and Millennial voters from the rolls.”
Limiting reproductive rights. [Republicans, through the appointment of conservative Supreme Court justices have] “succeeded in overturning the right to abortion.” [Some Republicans, including Justice Thomas, are also threatening to go after birth control.]
“Openly embracing homophobia and misogyny.” [Hartmann didn’t elaborate on this but some ”Don’t Say Gay” laws and anti-trans laws have passed or are being considered in red states. Some in the GOP want to overturn Obergefell and Lawrence so they can do away with same sex marriage and can re-criminalize homosexual behavior. Not only are the challenges to reproductive rights misogynistic but many of the educational gag order bills/guidelines in red states prevent the discussion of sexism in public education.]
Gun culture run amok. [Thanks to the efforts of the gun lobby and the conservative Supreme CourtHeller and Bruen decisions, pandora’s box has been opened and we are stuck with the] “400 million guns drenching our country [in] blood, and… Republicans [being] unified across-the-board to prevent any further action to stop gun violence in America.”
White supremacy, racism, and a “whitewashed” American history. “And now, these Republicans are trying to marinate your children in their white supremacy and racism by forcing teachers to push a false narrative about American history.”
Still, Hartmann tried to end this depressing narrative of the “Reagan Revolution” legacy on a positive note:
The good news, however, is that, increasingly, [Boomers and Millennials] are working together to throw Republicans out of office and elect progressive Democrats who understand these issues and know how to do something about it.
From the 80-year-old Senator Bernie Sanders to 19-year-old progressive candidate for the Ohio House Sam Lawrence… progressives are growing in political power at the same time America is waking up from the fog of bullshit Republicans have been crop-dusting over us since 1981.
There was a story out a couple weeks back that exemplifies why Republicans are having trouble reaching anyone besides the rich, the racists, and the religious right. The gist of it was that while Marjorie Taylor Green was taking questions during a local call-in show, inferred that if a woman was no longer having children, she was no longer entitled to an opinion on abortion. (Unless, I presume, she was against it.)
The caller confronted MTG, saying “My body is my body and I don’t want the government telling me what to do with my body.” (In other words, the conservative argument against vaccinations.)
“I don’t think you’re having children anytime soon,” she said, apparently based on the sound of the caller’s voice. “So I appreciate your interest in women’s rights, but killing an unborn baby is not a woman’s right, and that’s not health care.”
She went on to say that we “need to focus on the future of America, and that’s our children… and the unborn, they’re our future also… So let’s focus on protecting their lives instead of being focused on the lie that abortion is women’s health care because that’s not health care.”
Green, who if her eyes were any closer together, could use a microscope as reading glasses, dropped off the line as soon as the host went to a commercial break.
The article went on to point out that by these new standards, no man may have a valid point either, nor would MTG herself, so she may not have thought this through. Color me surprised. [Massive eye roll]
There’s a lot to unpack here, and as usual, I’ll start with the obvious point that people calling a grape-sized conglomeration of cells a “baby” is as misleading as it is wrong. But that’s the ploy; to get people thinking about a chubby, cooling little baby and not a tiny organism without a fully-formed heart or brain.
Whether it’s a “person” yet is a highly debatable and moral question without a consensus answer. Having one group of people use their personal religion to claim the answer one way and force everyone else to act accordingly, non-believers and otherwise is selfish, aggressive, and incredibly self-important. And it totally lacks anything close to empathy, other than to the non-sentient clump of cells. I’ll come back to this point in a minute.
When she mentions “the lie that abortion is women’s health care because that’s not health care,” all I can say is tell that to the woman with an ectopic pregnancy, or the girl who’s bleeding inside and has to wait for her doctor to confer with a team of lawyers to figure out if he’s allowed to go in and stop the bleeding to save her life. Or the woman who has any number of health issues that make having a baby dangerous to life. OR the woman who is carrying a baby who will be born with debilitating medical conditions that bode for a short and painful life. OR the woman who just doesn’t want to endure the physical changes a pregnancy will inflict on her body, just to appease some far-off group of people who have literally nothing to do with the people in question. It is absolutely health care, and no religious moralizing will change that.
The real root of the problem, as I see it, is a massively inflated sense of self-worth in conjunction with a complete lack of empathy. They can’t put themselves in the shoes of someone whose life experiences don’t align with their own and are so supremely self-important that they can’t fathom that their own take on the matter isn’t definitive.
“I believe it so YOU have to act accordingly.” That’s what it comes down to.
When you look at it, selfishness and a lack of empathy IS the Republican platform. Name one of their principles that aren’t dripping with it. Wait, maybe we better make that “policy” points… I don’t think they have any true principles left that they won’t violate if a Democrat wants to exercise one. They say they favor States’ rights until a state wants to enact some kind of gun control. They say they’re in favor of bodily autonomy in the right not to get vaccinated, but neglect a woman’s bodily autonomy in forcing them to reproduce against their will. They were in favor of insurance mandates up until Obama proposed one.
This was from the 2016 election but is no less true now.
But back to my previous point, every GOP position could be defined as selfishness and lack of empathy:
Abortion: You need to have that baby because I think you should for my own religious reasons. What YOU want must defer to what I believe.
Birth control: Same language as above.
Same-sex marriage: YOU two can’t get married because it offends ME.
Immigration: If YOU enter this country there will be too many people, too many foreign-speaking brown people, to continue to function as things are.
Assistance to the poor: Why should YOU get help that I didn’t get? Yes, I know I want the minimum wage to stay at $7.25 but if we raise it, you might get a job making what I make. Better for you to work three jobs.
Student loan forgiveness: I paid my loan off (or didn’t get one in the first place), so you should have to, regardless that the terms now are much more predatory than they were years ago.
Taxes: Taxes should always be rock-bottom and loopholes should be vast. Let the middle class pick up the burden. (So sayeth the top 1% who then convince the non-rich Republicans that it’s somehow better for everyone if the rich avoid taxes, via the media outlets they own.)
Health care: Why should I be mandated to get insurance just to bring the cost of everyone’s insurance down?
Guns: I want to be able to buy any gun I want whenever I want, which is always immediately. I don’t care how many other men, women, and children get killed, I want a big gun that goes BOOM BOOM BOOM. No background check, no required training, no safety measures, just ammo and firepower. If someone else gets shot, they should have gotten their own guns.
War in Ukraine: Why should WE finance their defense against marauding invaders? They’re not invading US… We could use the money to help people here. It’s beside the point that we Republicans never support domestic spending that doesn’t first get skimmed by the rich.
Electric cars: I want a car that goes VROOM VROOM. I don’t care what happens to the planet. Climate change is a hoax anyway. Like I care if Florida and the Carolina coasts get wiped off the map. It’s just a natural cycle. I know this because that’s what they say on Fox “News.”
Any halfway house, rehab center, mass transit stop, or affordable housing complex: Not in MY backyard.
Sadly, that last response is not limited to Republicans, it may as well be the national motto.
Not that humanity will even be around to witness this, but these images show what things may look like as the inevitable collision and merger of the Andromeda and Milky Way galaxies takes place.
The last two images are a bit optimistic because the Earth will have long since been consumed by the sun as it enters its red giant phase in around 5 billion years.
I don’t think we need to worry about robot overlords just yet, but I may have to revise that assessment in a decade or so.
I uploaded this photo of Myrtle Snow (played by the fabulous Frances Conroy) from AHS: Coven into the DALL・E 2 AI System website and asked it to generate variations.
These are what it came up with:
And here’s my default wallpaper image:
And the variations DALL・E 2 came up with:
You can also type in descriptions of what you’d like to see and it will generate an image.
A photo of a blue fish riding a yellow bicycle against an orange background digital art:
A stegosaurus crossing the Atlantic:
It’s fun. It requires registration, but it’s totally free to use.
…how the plane of our solar system is oriented to the plane of the Milky Way.
Because I have.
But then, I’m an astronomy geek. Have been since I was a wee young thing. But I’d always wondered how the solar system was oriented in regard to the galaxy itself, since it seemed improbable that everything was oriented in the same direction.
