I’m catching up on some Highlands Bunker this weekend. I’m about halfway through Kathy v Kathy, but I’ll come back to apply my trademarked 1-5 buckets rating when I’m done.   (1 = a bucket of grease trap grease from Long John Silvers, 5 = Five buckets of this summer’s finest garden fresh tomatoes.)

Listen Up everyone. Seriously. Settle down.

As you know, the most important thing in this office is CONFIDENTIALITY. Also, LOYALTY. They are both number one.  They are co-equal for me doing my best auditing. Right?  because when I win, we all win, right?   Only metaphorically speaking, because…you know…you get to continue working here, and that is winning.  

Anyway…Also, PUBLIC RELATIONS! It is very very important.  Also number 1 in importance. Edith, please stop looking at me like that.  We can too have three number ones. Just like the Romans.  Jeez…learn some history.  

Anyway, before I was so rudely interrupted by Miss Bitchface, I was going to say that during these trying times we must project a calm image of normalcy.  So when I say PUBLIC, You say RELAY-SHUNS.  Let me hear you.  PUBLIC! …..

*crickets chirp in the distance*

Well, we don’t really have time for that, but we’re all on the same page, right?  Ok. Good.

Now I’m taking my daughter..uh, I mean my assistant to lunch. Where did I put that office credit card?

..and scene.

He fired at least 33 times in a subway car. No one died but the attack left at least 29 injured. 

In a news conference on Tuesday night, Chief of Detectives James Essig told reporters Frank R. James is a person of interest in connection to the shooting.

WASHINGTON — An attorney for a man who took a coat rack and a bottle of liquor during the U.S. Capitol attack argued to a jury Tuesday that former President Donald Trump “authorized” the assault on the building on Jan. 6, 2021, by convincing “vulnerable” people like his client that the election had been stolen.

After Norway, Finland and Ukraine join NATO, maybe Russia?

My tabulation of “left” and “right” may grossly oversimplify where these party’s line up. But it looks like the “left” has more voters in the aggregate.

Emmanuel Macron LREM (LEFT)		27.8%	9,784,985
Marine Le Pen RN (RIGHT)		23.1%	8,135,456
Jean-Luc Mélenchon LFI (LEFT)		22%	7,714,574
Éric Zemmour Reconquête (RIGHT)		7.1%	2,485,757
Valérie Pécresse LR (RIGHT)		4.8%	1,679,359
Yannick Jadot EELV (LEFT)		4.6%	1,628,249
Jean Lassalle Résistons (RIGHT)		3.1%	1,101,643

Regarding Le Pen’s chances, our man in Paris says:

We’ll see. But I don’t think she will. Was surprised that Hidalgo (Socialist Party) endorsed him; Mèlenchon didn’t say “vote for Macron,” but he did say “don’t vote for Le Pen.” The only way Macron loses is if too many people stay home, a la Hillary, and they tend not to stay home if it looks like Le Pen will win.

The right-wing threat appears to have been overhyped by English-speaking media.

Note: This isn’t an open thread so much as an open letter to Steve Newton. He is (was?) a libertarian and in the early days of blogging I was very dismissive of Libertarianism in general and him in particular. I’m still dismissive of libertarianism, but I’ve learned that Steve is a thoughtful historian and social scientist who cares about ideas and about America. That sounds awfully corny, but there you have it.

How will historians decide when one of Americans two major party’s lost its fucking mind?  With Republicans attempting to one-up each other in mean-spirited craziness on a daily basis, I suppose it is easy for us to blame Trump for the GOP going ka-plooey.   He was the President who truly gave up on trying to govern as a President of the entire country and he clearly turned the party’s racial hatred up to 11. But even if Trump hadn’t stepped into the spotlight when he did, we would still have had Ted Cruz.  We’d still have Mitch McConnell and Ginny Thomas.

So pulling the lens back a bit, and asking “what changed?” historians will perhaps point the finger of blame at Rupert Murdoch.  The Australian sociopath gave Karl Rove and Roger Ailes free reign to poison the minds of a generation of Americans.  But I think they will view “conservative media” as symptoms, not the disease.  A generation of conservatives brains were softened and ripe for poisoning.

I suspect real core reason history will note that GOP went ka-plooey around the turn of the century was due to a compete breakdown in the ethical systems that guided conservative thinking for generations.

If we view “Virtue Ethics”  as an ethical model, or a way of thinking about ethics which emphasizes an individual’s moral character, and contrast that with and ethical approach that emphasizes duties or rules, it is easy to see that, for the most part, liberalism is rooted in virtue ethics and conservatism more closely associated with rules.  If you have ever worked alongside a conservative you know how edgy and upset ambiguity makes them.  And you only need to look at the conservative love of showy religiously, authoritarianism and hierarchy to see that see that “rules based” describes conservative “thinking” such as it is.

Consider every hateful anti-trans argument that conservatives have come up with over the past few years.  They are all rooted in the idea that transgender is a) not real because it is breaking God’s rules governing gender, and b) attempts by some to gain some advantage in athletics, or use a bathroom that they shouldn’t.  All evil is explained in terms of rule breaking.  Judicial Originalism, the idea that the constitutional text ought to be given the original public meaning that it would have had at the time that it became law, fits neatly into this worldview.  This translates down to the GOP rank and file as loud appeals to THE CONSTITUTION. So even when the average Trump rally goer does’t understand the document, they can be comforted by the fact that they know it is a document that holds some sort of authority.

But to have a rules based system of ethics means that ultimately you are influenced by rewards and punishments.  Following rules is “the right thing to do” because it results in rewards.  (Whereas a person guided by virtue ethics views “doing the right thing” as an end in itself.)   So how does that explain the gross rule breaking going on now among Republicans?  Well, rules (like elections) only make sense to conservatives when the the rules result in putting them on top or giving them some advantage.  If those results don’t flow from the rules, the rules must be broken, debased or fraudulent.  If man’s rules leave them feeling uneasy, they appeal to a higher set of rules.  Lying, therefor isn’t “wrong” for conservatives because there is nothing inherently valuable about truthfulness or integrity.

Watching “The Gilded Age” on HBO I was struck by how many rules New York “society” imposed on the wealthy around 1870.  For all their wealth, they were corseted up with esoteric rules of manners and discourse that guided their behavior. All those rules were, or course,  completely made up, but they were real to the Astors and Vanderbilts. Their character and honor hung on how well they followed the rules.  The Astors and Vanderbilts were obviously terrible, but the rules required them to be cognizant of the public’s perception of their character, honor and integrity.

That’s all gone.  For conservatives, there is no punishment for having low character.  There are only rewards for crashing through old-timey norms like the Hawaiian Punch mascot crashing through masonry walls.

This guy wants to put “criminals, rioters & looters in jail.”   He wants to “restore freedom and law & order.”

I wonder if he is talking about white “rioters and looters?”   Of course he isn’t.  So many GOP primaries will come down to who has the money to be the most racist on TV for the longest.

It is funny to think that after the Dems get blown out in the midterms Hunter Biden and James Biden (who?) will be in jail and the Trump crime family will be walking around free as birds.

Just getting a picture with these ladies and the indicted State Auditor.

Photo Via Orange is the New Black’s FB page.

Yup. We’re fucked.   The Earth is basically done, so is anyone still having kids?  I’m seriously asking.

Do any readers with adult “kids” plan on being grandparents?  I don’t.

Are any grandparents reading this expecting their grandchildren to reproduce?

It seems to me that (in addition to the climate going ka-plooey), a drastically shrinking young Euro/American bourgeoisie carrying the torch of middle class stability will be a big change.

Here is something that happened in April 1978:

A concrete cooling tower under construction at a power station at Willow Island, West Virginia, collapses. All of the 51 construction workers on the scaffolding fell to their deaths. OSHA and the contractor agreed to settle the case for $85,500 (or about $1,700 per dead worker); no criminal charges were ever filed. The final OSHA rule on concrete and masonry construction was not issued for another 10 years and improved scaffolding rules, not until 1990.

I suppose some other more recent stuff happened too.

We’ve had a good 30 years to do something and now it is too late. Oh well. Being moderate and sensible, making friends with intractable loons on the right and carrying water for the energy sector was much too important.

Sounds bad, but just look at my stock portfolio! Smashing!

Sometime soon Chris Coons will be all over TV to crow over triumph of bipartisanship that was Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s confirmation to the Supreme Court.  Coons is the go-to quote-miester  about how bipartisanship is America at its best and two Republican votes have warmed his heart and made his little Coonsie rock hard.  And I will say, “Ew, Dude. Gross.”  And also “Who the fuck cares?”

Honestly, who gives a fuck that the vote was “bipartisan”? Does it mean the clock has been set back to 1980 and comity and collegiality will once again rule the Senate?  Fuck, no.

Does it mean the “fever has broken” and Republicans will now go back to acting like human beings? Give me a fucking break.

It means nothing.

Someone mentioned DeSantis maybe being the next GOP nominee.  I checked it out on Predictit.org.   Looks like a two man race with Trump contracts trading at .40, DeSantis at .30, everyone else is in penny stock territory.  While it is hard to imagine the GOP nominating such a vile blobfish, such a morally deformed star-nosed mole, but hey…they nominated Trump so anything is possible.

I read that Macron was running on a very un-popular platform plank called “making everyone work two or three more years to qualify for a pension.” Smart. He must be working with Terry McAuliffe campaign geniuses. Anyway…

France is Having an Election

French voters will go to the polls for the first round of a presidential election on Sunday. If no candidate receives a majority — and none is likely to — a two-person runoff will take place two weeks later on April 24.

The favorite is the incumbent, Emmanuel Macron. But his lead in the polls is not huge, and the war in Ukraine seems to be hurting him. Inflation was already fairly high in Europe, as it is in much of the world, because of the pandemic. The war has caused prices to rise even further, mostly because of sanctions on Russian oil.

While Macron has focused on trying to find a diplomatic solution in Ukraine — and is failing, so far — his leading opponent has instead focused on the French economy, my colleague Roger Cohen explains in a preview of the election. That opponent is Marine Le Pen, a hard-right candidate.

As Roger writes, “Her patient focus on cost-of-living issues has resonated with the millions of French people struggling to make ends meet after an increase of more than 53 percent in gas prices over the past year.”

Le Pen has a long history of friendliness to Putin. Her party has taken loans from a Russian bank, and she met with him in 2017 in an attempt to strengthen her political image, Elisabeth Zerofsky writes in a Times Magazine story about the French far right. Until the invasion, Le Pen largely supported Putin’s policies. Even now, she largely opposes hard-line policies toward Putin.

Le Pen trails in the polls by roughly six percentage points — a small enough margin for an upset to be conceivable. If she wins, the autocracy-friendly caucus within Europe’s democracies would become far larger than it already is.

“A victory by her,” Roger writes, “would threaten European unity, alarm French allies from Washington to Warsaw, and confront the European Union with its biggest crisis since Brexit.”

Why does Delaware want to protect only the bad cops?

That’s a great questions posed in the Delaware Call by RAE KRANTZ.    By wrapping the bad cops in LEOBOR cotton, it’s as if certain Delaware State Senators couldn’t give a fuck about the good cops.

I mean, imagine if 95% of anesthesiologists were good and 5% were a collection of incompetent boobs, apathetic loafers and murderous psychos.  Do you think the 95% would appreciate your dogged efforts to protect the 5% at all costs?   I kinda doubt it.

Pretending that faithless Democrat’s (Coons, Manchin, Sinema, etc) are “sober centrists” is simply wrong.  

The Coonsian Corporate Wing of the Democratic Party is Murdering Joe Biden’s Presidency

David Weil was one of Biden’s best appointees. The author of the classic book The Fissured Workplace, Weil is an expert on all the ways that corporations cheat workers out of earnings.

Biden reappointed him to the job he had under Obama, as head of the Labor Department’s Wage and Hour Division. In the intervening years, Weil has been my colleague as the dean of Brandeis University’s Heller School, where he has become an even more astute critic of labor abuses such as wage theft, misclassification of gig work, and the government’s underutilized powers to defeat them.

Word of this evidently reached corporate boardrooms. Weil’s confirmation was blocked by Republicans in committee for months. Democrats finally forced a Senate floor vote. But on Wednesday, three Democratic senators—Joe Manchin, Kyrsten Sinema, and a novel faithless Democrat, Mark Kelly of Arizona, refused to support cloture and Weil went down, 47-53.

Politico described the trio as three of the caucus’s moderates. They are nothing of the sort. They are corporate.

Of the three, only Kelly is up for re-election, and in a swing state. But think about it. Is Kelly going to gain support because he voted against protecting workers from wage theft? Do swing voters even pay attention to confirmation of subcabinet appointees?

No, this is all about sucking up to corporate money and doing the bidding of America’s elites. Democrats failing to deliver for working families for decades brought us Trump. The more that corporate fakes like Kelly continue this shabby tradition, the more they prevent Biden from restoring a credible Democratic Party.

Why is an industry allowed to continue to pretend that climate change isn’t real, and why are they allowed to buy congress to promote that fantasy?