Happy New Year!

 

Life During Wartime

So what's it like living in Georgia a week before the most important Senate election in this nation's history?  Mainly, it's about being an email recipient.  Just scan through my Inbox:

8:32 a.m. - First political email of the day, this one from the Democratic Party of Georgia (DPG), reminding me to turn in my absentee ballot (I already did back on December 2).

10:01 a.m. - Letter from Rev. Raphael Warnock, submitted through the Sanford Bishop for Congress PAC, asking for campaign contributions.

10:31 a.m. - Letter from Patrick Stevenson, Chief Mobilization Officer for the Democratic National Committee (DNC), asking for campaign contributions.

11:45 a.m. - Message from the Turnout Georgia PAC, asking for campaign contributions.

12:32 p.m. - Letter from Mike Siegel, Texas Democrat for Congress, asking for any remaining campaign contributions I'd like to make in addition to what I've given to the Georgia races.

1:15 p.m. - Another message from the DNC, again asking for campaign contributions.

1:33 p.m. - Message from the Flip The Senate PAC, asking for campaign contributions.

3:16 p.m. - Another message from the DPG, this time asking for campaign contributions.

3:20 p.m. - Message from The Progressive List PAC, asking for campaign contributions.

3:24 p.m. - Another message from the Flip The Senate PAC, again asking for campaign contributions. 

3:41 p.m. - Another message from the DNC, telling me about the Flip The Senate Fund and suggesting I make a contribution.

4:00 p.m. - Message from the Southern Poverty Law Center, asking for a contribution.

5:33 p.m. - Another letter from Rev. Raphael Warnock sent by the DPG, asking for campaign contributions.

6:35 p.m. - Message from Jon Ossoff sent by the DNC, asking for campaign contributions.

I can't help but get the distinct feeling that folks want campaign contributions from me.

Here in Georgia, incumbent Republican Senators David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler supported the meager $600 covid-relief payment to millions of Americans. They released a joint statement Sunday night thanking the president for finally approving the stimulus funds, avoiding the fact that Mr. Trump plunged the fate of the bill into turmoil last week by calling it “a disgrace” and demanding that direct payments be increased to $2,000.

By Tuesday, caught in a tenuous position with Mr. Trump’s demand and facing direct pressure from Democratic candidates Jon Ossoff and the Rev. Raphael Warnock, the two Republican candidates flip-flopped and announced that they now support larger checks.

“I’m delighted to support the president in this $2,000,” Mr. Perdue said on Fox News on Tuesday morning.  “Help is on the way,” Senator Kelly Loeffler tweeted Monday morning, applauding the stimulus package with its billions of dollars for vaccine distribution, schools and other beneficiaries.

For many Americans, this is the financial reality they're facing:

The Boycott

For once, I find myself in agreement with the political right, at least the portion of which that is advocating for Republicans to boycott the Georgia run-off election for the U.S. Senate.  They're saying that Republicans should write in Donald Trump's name in lieu of Awful Loeffler or the Coward David Perdue, and write in the name of the so-called ex-"president," Donald Jemima Trump.

Never mind that it's physically impossible to write in a name on a run-off ballot - the whole point of a run-off is to break a virtual tie between two candidates in a general election, and there's no place on the ballot to write in a name of someone, anyone, who's not one of the two competing candidates, even if is for Donald Junglefever Trump.  So, as the best option, Republicans should just stay home - don't vote, ride this one out, and let the Democrats disgrace themselves by participating in the sham election.  

Trump "lawyer" Lin Wood explained the rationale behind the boycott.  With absolutely no evidence, Wood maintains that Dominion voting machines have a built-in algorithm that illegally changes a certain percentage of Republican votes to Democrat votes, and also generates a certain number of additional fake Democratic votes. So, Wood maintains, if a small enough number of Republicans vote, the Dominion algorithm will produce a negative number of Republican votes and prove once and for all that the election was rigged and allow the courts to overturn the November election results.

I'll have some of what he's smoking.  Please, no one explain to Lin that a company clever enough and sufficiently motivated to sneak an algorithm into the computer code to switch votes would also be clever enough to add another line of code to not let the total fall below zero (a simple "If:Then" macro to keep the number from going negative would suffice).  Please, no one tell Lin that there's no physical way to record a vote for a write-in candidate in a run-off election.  Please, no one tell Lin that he's bat-shit crazy and embarrassing himself and his party on a national stage.  Just go ahead and boycott this election.  It's the patriotic thing to let only Democrats vote.

Dereliction of Duty

 

1:1,000

I'm seeing, with increased frequency, misleading statistics on the internet, usually in Comments sections on news feeds, that America is overreacting to the coronavirus pandemic, and that 99.9% of people who contract the virus survive, so what's the big deal?

Well, for starters, the number isn't quite right.  To date, some 18.8 million Americans have tested positive for the virus, and of those, 330,832 have died.  In other words, 1.76% of the people who've become infected went on and died, or the inverse., 98.2% of them have survived, not 99.9. 

Still, 98.2% survival sounds pretty good, right?  What's the big deal?

To the non-specialist, 98.2% sounds pretty darn close to 100%. but toxicologists and epidemiologists don't discuss death rates in terms of percentages.  There are far too many corpses in the number-roundings.  But let's compare that survival rate to other causes of death.  For decades now, the globally "acceptable" level of additional cancer deaths has been set at 1 in a million.  If a chemical or consumer product or drug or other substance causes less than 1 additional cancer death out of every one million persons exposed, it's considered safe.  After all, you can't completely eliminate cancer, and some drugs, chemicals, and other consumer products have benefits that outweigh the one in a million cancer death.  

But if the rate is greater than one in a million (expressed as 1:1,000,000), then the substance is banned.  Otherwise promising drugs, potentially game-changing pesticides, and useful household products have been taken off the shelves and banned from any future use when their carcinogenicity has been shown to exceed 1:1,000,000.  

Even then, there's some wiggle room.  If something is very useful and could otherwise save more lives than are lost due to cancer, exceptions are made.  Some substances are still sold with cancer rates greater than 1 in a million.  Some cancer rates that have been accepted are as high as 10 in a million (10:1,000,000, or 1:100,000) or more rarely, 20 in a million.  But 100 in a million is far beyond anything any government or civilized society would tolerate, and the substance becomes a dreaded Class A Known Human Carcinogen.

Okay, back to Covid-19.  As noted above, to date 330,832 Americans have died from virus-related causes.  Fact.  There are 330 million people in America.  Fact.  The math is easy - one out of every 1,000 Americans is now dead from the virus, or 1,000 out of every one million.  I don't know if a carcinogen that deadly is even known to exist - plutonium-241, maybe?  But the death rate of covid-19 is well beyond 1:1,000,000, even beyond 100:1,000,000. It is 1 out of a thousand, or 1,000:1,000,000.  That's staggeringly deadly.    

Even worse, that's the covid death rate of all Americans, including those who've never been exposed to the virus.  If 330,832 Americans have died out of 18.8 million who've been exposed (as opposed to 330 million total Americans), then the death rate leaps to a jaw-dropping 17,600 out of a million

Why are people willing to except a morbidity rate 1,000 to 10,000 times higher than the chemicals we regulate and the drugs that we test?  DDT and asbestos are only fatal to less than 99.9% of the people exposed (but far greater than 1 in a million), but I propose that few readers would be willing to handle DDT in an asbestos-laden environment.  Why then are they comfortable, even insistent, on mingling maskless in enclosed places?  It doesn't make sense. It isn't, as Mr. Spock would have said, logical.

The War On Christmas Goes Tactical

Christmas morning in Nashville, 2020.   Miraculously, it appears that no one was killed, although at least three were injured.

Back in 2018, we vowed to post a different version of The Residents' song Santa Dog every Christmas.  There are at least three versions, so here for the virus-begotten Year of the Plague 2020, is this year's Santa Dog:

The Night Before Christmas

The Covids

Georgia hits a grim new record in covid infections, and what does Governor Brian Kemp do? He travels to the White House with his daughter to attend a maskless Christmas party thrown by the man who called him “incompetent” and “horrible.” 

 

All The Rats

I don't know what newspaper ran this Sunday Opinion piece, but I'm in complete agreement.  They're all rats, every last one of them.

Today is the Winter Solstice, the shortest day of what feels like the longest year. Light and dark the most out of balance. Meanwhile, in the long evening night tonight, the Great Conjunction of the planets Jupiter and Saturn occurs, the closest the two planets have been in the night sky in nearly 800 years.  I'm sure someone somewhere thinks that this must portend something. 

Today's POS - Goofball Doug Collins

Goofball Georgia Representative Doug Collins, a Republican who supported Texas' lawsuit to disenfranchise Georgia voters and who placed third behind Kelly Loeffler in the initial round of Georgia's special Senate election, has since endorsed Awful Loeffler in the runoff election.  Meanwhile, Loeffler, a known Catholic, has taken to attacking sermons made by her new rival, the Rev. Raphael Warnock, using out-of-context quotes against him in her attack ads.  Some of those ads have bordered on, if not crossed, the boundary between attacks on Rev. Warnock's own personnel beliefs and attacks on black theology in general.  Collins, in turn, has ben rebuked over comments he made reiterating that line of attack against Warnock.

"There is no such thing as a pro-choice pastor," Mr. Collins said. "What you have is a lie from the bed of hell. It is time to send it back to Ebenezer Baptist Church."

Jim Galloway, the dean of Georgia’s political press and a longtime columnist at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, argued in a recent column that such statements went beyond attacking a political opponent to "trashing the fragile relationship that Georgia Republicans have maintained with Ebenezer and, by extension, the King family."

Following the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Collins memorably tweeted, "RIP to the more than 30 million innocent babies that have been murdered during the decades that Ruth Bader Ginsburg defended pro-abortion laws,"  showing no empathy, sorrow, or remorse over the passing of the noted jurist.

One More Post About Cyberpunk

Look, I'm sorry if this is becoming repetitious, but just today I read yet another article, this time in the New York Times, that would have you believe the new video game Cyberpunk 2077 is a buggy and unplayable mess.  Look - they quote someone saying "it's a buggy and unplayable mess."  Gotta be true, right?

Except that it isn't.  I don't know about the Xbox or PlayStation experience because I'm playing on PC, and I won't deny the occasional glitch or aberrant visual, but the game plays fine for me.  I'm now some 93 hours into the game, and have found it an exceptionally immersive and satisfying experience.  One of my best gaming experiences in years.  And even as I write this, I'm downloading a major patch by the developers to fix a lot of the reported problems.

I think the trouble is that after nearly a decade of development, expectations for this game were unrealistically high.  And I suspect that a lot of people complaining about their experience on "latest model" Xbox and PlayStations are actually playing on older versions of the consoles and don't want to admit it.  And I also imagine that a large part of the problem is that many gamers are adolescents, and a lot of the online complaining is the result of hormone-addled teenagers over-reacting to something not perfectly matching their expectations.  Everybody is jumping on the consensus "this game sucks" bandwagon, even as they're spending scores of hours playing it.  It's a problem in the business model for video games that the user experience is largely narrated by 15-year-olds. 

As further evidence of the game's unplayability, the Times points out that Sony has removed it from their on-line store, and the developer CD Projekt Red is offering refunds for unsatisfied buyers. The developer's stock value has plummeted following reaction to the game, and insiders talk about a lot of understandable tension among management.  But all of those things are reactions to the on-line hysteria, the internet feedback loop that the game is broken, not prima facie evidence of its problems.   

Take a deep breath.  The patch was needed and is now available and nothing in life is ever as good as the best that our imaginations can cook up, but the game is still highly functional, highly enjoyable, and highly rewarding.  Don't believe the hype otherwise.

Louder Than Milk

This blog has dedicated itself to publicizing the many shortcomings and failures of the 126 Republican congressmen who expressed support of Texas' ill-conceived lawsuit to disenfranchise Georgia voters, with the intent of seeing all of them eventually removed from office.  Shockingly, some of the Congressmen were from right here in Georgia and included Barry Loudermilk (R-GA), who once likened the impeachment of Trump to the crucifixion of Jesus.

Tuesday, Loudermilk announced that he had tested positive for the covids, becoming the fourth Republican representative from Georgia to contract the virus. Republican Reps. Austin Scott, Rick Allen, and Drew Ferguson have previously tested positive for the virus.

If these clowns can't even keep themselves, their families, and their loved one safe from the pandemic, why in the world should I listen to anything they have to say about health care, pandemic response, and general hygiene?  Sure if one got sick, shit happens and it can happen to any one of us.  But four of the 14 congressmen?  Do you think they even wash their hands?  Even after using the toilet?

No need to worry about Loudermilk's health and well-being - as a Congressman, he has access to the best health care coverage this nation can provide, and for free.  You, well you may not be so lucky. Loudermilk actively worked to repeal the Affordable Care Act, aka, Obamacare, stating “Obamacare has been an open wound for Americans, and we have to stop it before it gets any worse. Today, House Republicans took the first step in the healing process of our American healthcare system. This resolution does not repeal Obamacare, but it gives Congress the legislative tools to dismantle this harmful law and avoid continued filibustering by Democrats. We are excited to repeal it once and for all, helping all Americans have more choices, lower health service costs, and better care."

What an asswipe!

Night City Revisited

 

After many delays and much anticipation, the game Cyberpunk 2077 finally dropped on December 10.  I had already downloaded it the night before, and started playing the next day.

It's been a week now and it's fair to say that playing Cyberpunk has been my primary activity ever since.  I have 71½ hours logged on Steam, or something slightly over 10 hours a day.  

I'm getting near the end - I know this because I got an in-game warning that initiating the next main story-line quest was a "Point of No Return" and if started, I wouldn't be able to complete any outstanding side quests or missions.  I haven't crossed that Point of No Return yet, taking my time to explore the game's Night City a little more and completing said side quests and missions.  But I'll probably wrap it up tonight and complete the game, and then after a suitable rest, replay the game again as a different character (you can choose among three separate characters and pick a gender for any one for a total of six different avatars).

Much has been said and written about how the game is deeply flawed - buggy and error-ridden and borderline unplayable.  I honestly feel sorry for those who've had that experience, but overall it plays fine for me.  To be honest, I bought my new gaming PC a few months ago with this very game in mind, and picked the specs in order to best match Cyberpunk's demands, so there's that.  Most of the problems have been reported by those trying to play the game on Xbox or a PlayStation.  I have come across occasional glitches - a gun that remains hovering in mid-air after the character pointing it had walked away, two NPCs trying to occupy the same spot so that different arms and faces would emerge (sometimes at the same time), and a few times, my character simply couldn't unholster his gun (I'm playing through as a male character on this run).  But overall, these glitches were more humorous than annoying, except the gun thing, because my unarmed character would then got shot dead (although the gun then worked during his next incarnation). But I think the voices of the complainers have drowned out the voices of the satisfied players, and I maintain the game is nowhere near as problematic as the press would have you believe.

Okay, back into virtual game mode.  I've got some scores to finish.

Texas Revisited

As a reminder, this blog is now officially dedicated to, if not impeaching, at least deeply embarrassing the 126 U.S. Congressmen who signed onto Texas' ill-advised, unconstitutional, and downright traitorous lawsuit to throw out the votes of tens of thousands of voters here in Georgia and in three other states.  But no one makes that task easier for us than Lone Star State rodeo clown, Dan "Deadeye" Crenshaw.

Yesterday, Crenshaw, under no apparent threat of blackmail or debilitating mental illness, posted a ludicrously over-the-top video of himself parachuting into Georgia to disenfranchise more voters here. Hilarious stuff, and now today hundreds of veterans have signed a letter calling on him to resign after a government watchdog report linked him to attempts by Veterans Affairs officials to discredit a woman who reported sexual assault at a VA hospital.

The veterans slammed Crenshaw for not “mustering the courage” to cooperate with the inspector general of the Department of Veterans Affairs. “His abuse of power as an elected member of Congress to smear a fellow veteran who works as a staffer in the same halls is disgraceful and unethical,” said the letter, which was signed by 494 veterans as of Wednesday morning. “As an elected member of the U.S. House of Representatives, Dan Crenshaw has failed to act in a manner that reflects credibly on the House and has broken the public trust necessary to represent his constituents and fellow veterans.”

I'd say we should impeach this motherfucker, but I think gravity and a lack of understanding of parachute mechanics will take care of America's Dan Crenshaw problem for us first.

Georgia Reloaded

OMG.  I just watched the "ad" by Texas Representative Deadeye Dan Crenshaw to support the re-election bids of Georgia Senators Kelly "Awful" Loeffler and David "Chickenshit" Purdue.  Please recall that Crenshaw's name is on our list of 126 representatives we want out of office for their seditious support of the Texas lawsuit to end the American democracy.  

First, the "ad" is some sort of Mission Impossible/Gears of War fantasy featuring Crenshaw in nearly every frame.  Shouldn't a political ad for a candidate at least show more than a nominal millisecond of the actual candidate, not some Texan's masturbatory fantasy of his military prowess?  Although to be fair, there's not a whole lot to show in support of the two Georgia candidates - 90% of their own ads are merely attacks on their opposition, with nary a word in favor of their own virtues.  

Most of Purdue's ads (featured in the Crenshaw video) show Chuck Schumer and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez cackling and gleefully rubbing their hands together in anticipation of a Democratic majority in the Senate.  Loeffler's ads can be reduced to "I'm not the black guy running." Remember the Reverend Jeremiah Wright controversy from 2008 and his "God-Damn America!" speech?  Loeffler's ads are replaying that quote now, apparently assuming that what one black pastor once said must hold true for every black pastor, forever.  By that logic, we should air clips of Ann Coulter's most offensive quotes, with the assumption that what one vacuous blond white woman once said is the opinion of every vacuous blond white woman.

Anyway, back to Rep. Deadeye in Texas.  I refuse to post his video here - don't want to give it more exposure than it deserves - but Google "Georgia Reloaded" and you'll find it on YouTube.  You'll be excused for thinking it's a fake parody at first - it's that over the top.  But here's my point - after the failed lawsuit by Texas to overturn our state's vote, Georgia has pretty much had it with Texas trying to meddle in our elections.  Back off, Texas - you lost at the Alamo, you lost the Civil War, your precious Donald Loudmouth Trump lost his re-election race, and you'll probably continue to lose Cotton Bowls in the future or any football game against a team not from your dirtbag state.  Texas, get your own house in order and stay the fuck out of Georgia!

The Hateful 126

Last week, 126 House Republicans signed their names to an antidemocratic attempt to toss out the votes of 20 million Americans in four states that gave Joe Biden the victory over Donald Jumbotron Trump, including members of the so-called GOP "leadership" ("so-called" and in quotations because they're not really leaders at all but just scared little beta sheep following their leader). Michael Steele, the former chair of the Republican National Committee, called this act "an offense to the Constitution and it leaves an indelible stain that will be hard for these 126 members to wipe off their political skin for a long time to come."  

The Supreme Court ultimately decided the case had no merit and that the plaintiffs had no standing and declined to even hear the case, but even though the attempted soft coup failed, our elected officials still tried to overturn the will of the people.  According to the U.S. Constitution, government derives its just powers from the consent of the governed, and in this case, the people's supposed representatives decided to put their own goals and interests ahead of that expressed by the American people.

In the closing scene of Quentin Tarantino's Inglorious Basterds, Brad Pitt's character uses a bowie knife to carve a swastika into the forehead of a German general before he defected to make sure that everyone in the future would know that he once was a Nazi.  Beyond an "indelible stain," I wish there was some way that we would never forget who the treasonous, seditious congressmen who supported this unconstitutional coup were.  Short of carving big letter T's into their foreheads, this blog will follow these traitors to the Constitution and delight in their eventual downfall.

Probably the worst of the worst were the congressmen from the four states the lawsuit sought to overturn.  In effect, these people wanted to go to the Supreme Court to overturn the will of the very people who elected them to office.  Here in Georgia, they were  

1. Rick Allen (not the drummer from the rock band Def Leppard but an Augusta congressman who once quoted Bible verses and told his fellow Republicans they were “going to hell” if they voted for the a vital spending bill because of an attached amendment that would protect LGBT workers.).
2. Buddy Carter (a supposedly grown adult who still calls himself "Buddy." Need I say more?)  
3. Doug Collins (the ass-clown Trump enabler who last month lost in his Senate bid to Kelly Loeffler, and said some truly awful, hateful things following the death of Ruth Bader Ginsberg.)  
4. A. Drew Ferguson (who once had a biography of Robert E. Lee displayed under glass in his office, opened to a page highlighting the Confederate general’s racist ideology: “The blacks are immeasurably better off here than in Africa, morally, socially, and physically," etc.)
5. Jody Hice (a pastor and radio show host who claims that Islam is not a religion but a geo-political structure and therefore is not deserving of First Amendment protection, and that there is a Muslim Brotherhood plot to take over the United States.)
6. Barry Loudermilk  (who likened the impeachment of Trump to the crucifixion of Jesus, stating on the Congressional record, "When Jesus was falsely accused of treason, Pontius Pilate gave Jesus the opportunity to face his accusers." Experts on religion say that Jesus did not in fact have the right to face his accusers while Trump, on the other hand, did have an opportunity to present a defense.)
7. Austin Scott (staunchly opposed to health-care reform, he lead an effort in 2010 to pressure the Georgia Attorney General to file a lawsuit against the federal government over the Affordable Care Act, and then ironically tested positive for covid-19 ten years later.)

Do not, under any circumstance, ever vote for any of these seven.  Doug Collins stands alone in this list as the only one who lost in the 2020 election (didn't his own concession to Awful Loeffler acknowledge the legitimacy of the very election he is now contesting?). Hopefully, he is now consigned to the trash heaps of history, but we need to keep an eye out for any attempted return, as well as for the political downfall of the other six.

In addition to Georgia, the lawsuit also sought to overturn votes in Pennsylvania,  Michigan, and Wisconsin.  Representatives of those states who signed onto the suit include to effectively disenfranchise their own constituencies are:

• Rep. Jack Bergman (R-Mich.)
• Rep. Bill Huizenga (R-Mich.)
• Rep. John Joyce (R-Pa.)
• Rep. Fred Keller (R-Pa.)
• Rep. Mike Kelly (R-Pa.)
• Rep. Dan Meuser (R-Pa.)
• Rep. John Moolenaar (R-Mich.)
• Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.)
• Rep. Guy Reschenthaler (R-Pa.)
• Rep. Glenn “GT” Thompson (R-Pa.)
• Rep. Tom Tiffany (R-Wisc.)
• Rep. Tim Walberg (R-Mich.)

Don't vote for any of them either. 

 Here's the list of the remaining cowards and traitors.  Don't vote for any of these either (unless it's a vote for impeachment):

Alabama

• Robert B. Aderholt
• Mo Brooks
• Bradley Byrne
• Gary Palmer
• Mike D. Rogers

Arizona

• Andy Biggs
• Debbie Lesko

Arkansas

• Rick Crawford

California

• Ken Calvert
• Doug LaMalfa
• Kevin McCarthy (of course)
• Tom McClintock

Colorado

• Ken Buck
• Doug Lamborn

Florida

• Gus Bilirakis
• Mario Diaz-Balart
• Neal Dunn
• Matt "Frat-Boy" Gaetz
• Bill Posey
• John Rutherford
• Ross Spano
• Greg Steube
• Michael Waltz
• Daniel Webster (Republicans like to complain about "dead people voting," but I thought Webster died in 1852)
• Ted Yoho

Idaho

• Russ Fulcher
• Mike Simpson

Illinois

• Mike Bost
• Darin M. LaHood

Indiana

• James Baird
• Jim Banks
• Trey Hollingsworth
• Greg Pence
• Jackie Walorski

Iowa

• Known racist Steve King (who lost his re-election)

Kansas

• Ron Estes
• Roger Marshall

Louisiana

• Ralph Abraham
• Clay Higgins
• Mike Johnson
• Steve Scalise

Maryland

• Andy Harris
• Minnesota
• Tom Emmer
• Jim Hagedorn
• Pete Stauber

Mississippi

• Michael Guest
• Trent Kelly
• Steven Palazzo

Missouri

• Sam Graves
• Vicky Hartzler
• Billy Long
• Blaine Luetkemeyer
• Jason Smith
• Ann Wagner

Montana

• Greg Gianforte

Nebraska

• Jeff Fortenberry
• Adrian Smith

New Jersey

• Jefferson Van Drew

New York

• Elise Stefanik
• Lee Zeldin

North Carolina

• Dan Bishop
• Ted Budd
• Virginia Foxx
• Richard Hudson
• Greg Murphy
• David Rouzer
• Mark Walker

Ohio

• Bob Gibbs
• Bill Johnson
• Jim "Shirt-sleeves" Jordan
• Robert E. Latta
• Brad Wenstrup

Oklahoma

• Kevin Hern
• Markwayne Mullin

South Carolina

• Jeffrey Duncan
• Ralph Norman
• Tom Rice
• William Timmons
• Joe "You Lie!" Wilson

Tennessee

• Tim Burchett
• Scott DesJarlais
• Chuck Fleischmann
• Mike Green
• David Kustoff
• John Rose

Texas (which filed the lawsuit in the first place)

• Jodey Arrington
• Brian Babin
• Kevin Brady
• Michael C. Burgess
• Michael Cloud
• K. Michael Conaway
• Dead-Eye Dan Crenshaw
• Bill Flores
• Louie Gohmert (the one man who can make Steve Scalise look smart by comparison)
• Lance Gooden
• Kenny Marchant
• Randy Weber
• Roger Williams
• Ron Wright

Virginia

• Ben Cline
• Morgan Griffith
• Robert J. Wittman

Washington

• Cathy McMorris Rodgers
• Dan Newhouse

West Virginia

• Carol Miller
• Alex Mooney

Ted Gets Owned

Walmart Wolverine Ted Cruz continues to display his lack of knowledge on the very issues he was supposedly elected to promote.  Not only was he among the Republicans who signed on in support of Texas' ill-conceived lawsuit to overturn votes in Georgia, Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, he actually wanted to plead the case to overthrow democracy in the Supreme Court.  A shameful excuse for a Senator, much less a human being.  Raphael ("Ted") Cruz - the latest in a long line of Texan embarrassments.

For the record and to clear away the fog of disinformation, the federal government had made Project Warp Speed deals totaling more than $9 billion with multiple private companies, but the deals varied in scope.  The deal with Pfizer was for purchase of the company’s vaccine if it was authorized by the FDA. Although agreements with other companies, like Moderna, included funding for their vaccines’ research and development, the agreement with Pfizer did not.  Operation Warp Speed, the American government, and most certainly Donald Jambalaya Trump deserve no credit for development of the Pfizer vaccine. Experts say that it likely will be several months before vaccines are available for the vast majority of Americans.

Cyberpunk, Redux

I deliberately cleared my schedule yesterday so that I could play the new video game Cyberpunk 2077 all day.  I wound up playing pretty much all day today, too. The game was only released just yesterday, and I've already logged some 22.8 hours of game time.

I'm sure nothing newsworthy occurred while I was immersed in my virtual retreat. 

• "Supreme Court Rejects Texas Lawsuit To Overturn Georgia Election Results."  Fuck you, Texas,  You always were a headache and you always were a bore. And your football teams still suck.


• "FDA Approves Pfizer Vaccine for Emergency Use."  Yesterday, 2,923 Americans died from covid-19.  Let's no hurt our arms patting ourselves on the back for too little covid response too late.


• "Senate Overwhelmingly Approves Defense Bill Renaming Confederate Bases, Overriding Trump's Chances To Veto."  Hah, hah, "good people on both sides," indeed.


• "55% in New Fox News Poll Say US Is Worse Off That It Was 4 Years Ago." Somehow, as the Fox hosts will spin it, it's all Obama and Biden's fault.


• "Trump Is Desperate To Avoid Rape Accuser E. Jean Carroll in Court."


• "QAnon Supporting GOP Candidate From Louisiana Arrested for Child Pornography."  They always seemed obsessed with kiddie porn.

The world is an ugly, dystopian place.  I'm going back to my games.

Cyberpunk

So as you've probably already heard by now, a much-anticipated new video game, Cyberpunk 2077, dropped today.  My darling daughter bought me a copy as an early-season Christmas present (thank you, Britney!), and I cleared my schedule to spend the whole day today with the brand-new game.

For the uninitiated, modern video games can be played on high-end gaming PCs or on consoles, like the Sony PlayStation or the Microsoft Xbox.  The design is somewhat different for each platform, and depending on the game designer, some run great on PlayStation, but not so well on PC or Xbox,. and others on the Xbox, but not so much on the other two platforms.  I've been running Cyberpunk all day today on my PC, and it's running fine - no bugs, terrific graphics, and good frame rates.  I've seen people complain about the game on line, but they all seem to be PlayStation or Xbox users, so it appears that Cyberpunk is a game designed for PC but not so much for consoles.

I won't reveal any spoilers here or say anything specific about the game content, but I will say that so far it seems to be very richly detailed, with lots and lots of activities and side quests and random encounters.  The mind reels thinking of the thousands of man-hours that must have gone into the design.  I just finished the "braindance" sequence (those who've played early parts of the game will know what I'm talking about), and I have to say that it's obvious that a LOT of imagination went into that one scene alone.  There was like a 15-minute tutorial sequence just to prep you for the 30-minute scene.  That bodes well for the rest of the game.

I started playing around 9:30 this morning, took a break for lunch and a few phone calls (I've finally got someone under contract to repair my house!), and then resumed playing until 7:30, when I broke to post this review.  I'll probably be up late tonight playing away.

Cyberpunk 2077 was produced by the studio CD Project Red, who previously produced The Witcher 3, a game that many (myself included) consider to be among the best video games ever. The expectations for this new game were sky-high, and then after literally years of development, CRPR delayed release of the game on multiple occasions, saying that wanted to tweak one feature or another.  Ever the ethical and responsible game developer (a rarity these days), they didn't want to rush out a game that still had bugs or other issues, regardless of how highly the game was anticipated.  The delays, however, only served to heighted the suspense and the anticipation, which only made them want all the more to make sure it was perfect, and on the cycle went all through this virus-begotten year of the plague.  But it finally was released today, and the wait was worth it.

Sleep log:  I didn't go to bed until 12:30 a.m, last night, mostly because I nodded off at around 11:00, and then slept until 3:00.  I got right back to sleep but woke up again at 5:00 a.m., and after a while was able to fall asleep once more until my 7:00 a.m. alarm.  With the interruptions, I'd say I got about 5½ to 6 hours of sleep, which is still pretty darn good for me as of late.

New Wave Dreams

For those of you keeping score at home, I got 6¾ hours of sleep last night.  I purposely stayed up a little late to make sure that I fell fully asleep once I did go to bed, even if I did start nodding out as early as 10:00 p.m.  I woke up once at around 3:00 a.m. but was able to get right back to sleep again, and then woke a second time at 6:45, a mere 15 minutes before my 7:00 a.m. alarm.  6¾ isn't eight hours of sleep, but it's still pretty good for me as of late and I'll take it.

Yesterday, I noticed that HBO Max includes access to Turner Classic Movies, and that TCM includes several vintage French nouvelle-vague films. Yesterday, I watched Jean-Luc Godard's 1967 Weekend, and today I watched 1962's My Life To Live (Vivre sa vie).  I think I've fallen in love with Anna Karina all over again.  I still have Masculin Feminin, 2 Or 3 Things I Know About Her, and of course Breathless in the queue.  They've got Truffaut, too (The 400 Blows, Jules and Jim, Shoot The Piano Player), and even Luis Bunuel's Belle de Jour.  Some great retro entertainment to satisfy the cinema nerd in me.

 

I Got 8 Hours of Sleep Last Night!

 

A virtual friend on Facebook wrote that recently she's been feeling like it's 10 or 11 at night when it's only 6 or 7. Lately, I've been feeling the same way too.

Call it the coronavirus lockdown.  Call it retirement.  Call it a combination of coronavirus lockdown and retirement, but my circadean rhythms are completely out of whack. 

Just last month, I found it impossible to go to sleep before 1 a.m., and some nights found me up until 3 or 4 a.m.  Lately, I can't stay awake past 9:00 p.m., and have fallen asleep in front of the television or at my PC regardless of how compelling the entertainment has been.

And then I wake up after only two or three hours and can't go back to sleep at all.  I've tried to make the best of it and have gotten some quality reading time in between the hours of 4:00 and 7:00 a.m.  Lately, those have been my most lucid hours. But for most of the daylight-time day, I've been a groggy mess, running on only three of four hours of sleep, napping three or four times a day but never getting any real rest. For the past few weeks, my average waking time has been around 5:30 a.m., but as recently as last October, it was closer to 10:00.

Insomnia: you're never fully asleep and you're never fully awake.

I've tried to make the best of it and just go with the flow.  What difference does it make at what hours I sleep and at what hours I'm awake, as long as I'm getting enough hours of sleep somewhere in there?  I can be a night owl one month and a morning lark the next.  But in practice, my body gets confused, and wants to stay awake when I'm trying to sleep and tries to go to sleep when I intend to be awake.

So last night, when I found myself nodding out at 10:00 p.m., I went to bed and was fast asleep by 11:00.  Although I fully expected to awaken again after only a couple of hours, I was delighted that the next thing I heard was the radio alarm going off at 7:00 a.m.  Eight hours of uninterrupted sleep!  I felt like a new man all day.

Is this the start of a new sleep cycle?  Can I repeat last night's results this evening?  Or will my well-rested brain wake itself up in the middle of the night and refuse to quiet down again?  Oh sweet mysteries of Morpheus.  When will you next take me into your embrace, and when will you next cast me asunder?

This Just In

The test results came back today, and my house is 100% asbestos free!

I Voted!

Anarcho-Socialist Agenda, Part 666 - Submitted my mail-in ballots for Georgia's Senate run-off election today.  My hand is still cramped from signing dozens of fraudulent ballots for dead people, cats and dogs, and out-of-state illegal aliens.  But now our evil plan has come to fruition, and soon we'll all have higher taxes, no police, Antifa everywhere, mandatory abortion, the gay-rights agenda, and (shudder) political correctness.

LOL.  Lol, lol,  If you listen to the Republican campaign ads and believe what you hear, you probably think that sounds about right.

In all seriousness, I mailed in my absentee ballot today.  Just one.  To no one's surprise, I voted for the two fine Democratic candidates for Senate, Jon Ossoff and the Rev. Raphael Warnock.  Took all of five minutes, including a brief detour to the post office while I was out and about on my Sunday afternoon grocery-shopping mission.  The vote is secure - my ballot went into an anonymous envelope, and then that envelope went onto a bar-coded mailing envelope.  I signed an affidavit on the outside of the envelope certifying that the vote was mine, put a stamp on it, and took it directly to the Post Office (no sketchy drop or mail boxes).

If enough others vote like me, we can complete the flip of Georgia for at least this one election cycle and deliver a Democratic Senate to President-Elect Joseph Biden and Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris (I like how the sounds).  We can unseat Moscow Mitch McConnell and finally get some meaningful legislation passed.  We can get financial relief to those impacted by the covids, we can implement a coherent nationwide strategy to combat the virus, we can restore our dignity and America to international leadership once again, and we can finally address climate change.  All by dropping an envelope in the mail.

Picture above is about the third or fourth postcard I've received from out of state urging me, as a registered Georgia voter, to elect Ossoff and Warnock.  Today, I did my patriotic duty for my country.

Raised By Wolves

So, while I've been waiting between contractors to repair my home, I've been passing my time between reading (Orfeo by Richard Powers), gaming (Red Dead Redemption 2), and binging on Ridley Scott's Raised By Wolves, arguably the best science fiction since Dune.  So far, I've watched 7 of the 10 episodes of the latter, and expect to watch the last three tonight.

I recommend the book, the game, and the series to everyone and anyone interested in such things.  Don't recommend the home-repair experience, though.

House Update

I'm finally getting some traction on the repairs following the massive tree that fell on my house back in October.  I spent Tuesday through today interviewing and showing the damage to three separate contractors, and have finally selected a team for the job - Thompson Restoration and Up Top Roofing.  Preliminary work (asbestos testing) starts Monday. Soon this will all be a memory.

 

NY Times: 2,596 Trades in One Term: Inside Senator Perdue’s Stock Portfolio

According to a front-page article in today's NY Times, an analysis shows that Georgia Senator David Perdue's stock trades have far outpaced those of his Senate colleagues and have included a range of companies within his Senate committees’ oversight.

"Along with Senator Kelly Loeffler, a fellow Georgia Republican, Mr. Perdue faces an unusual runoff election in January. With control of the Senate at stake, and amid renewed concern about the potential for conflicts of interest in stock trading by members of Congress, Mr. Perdue’s investment activity — and especially his numerous well-timed trades — has increasingly come into the public glare.

Last week, The New York Times reported that the Justice Department had investigated the senator for possible insider trading in his sale of more than $1 million worth of stock in a financial-analysis firm, Cardlytics. Ultimately, prosecutors declined to bring charges. Other media outlets have revealed several trades in companies whose business dealings fall under the jurisdiction of Mr. Perdue’s committees."

Awful Loeffler

A new Kelly Loeffler television ad claims the multimillionaire candidate knows what "it feels like waiting on that paycheck."  The richest member of Congress, Loeffler is worth between $800 million and $1 billion, according to Forbes. And while the ad plays to economic anxieties brought about by the coronavirus pandemic, Loeffler has not supported another round of stimulus checks.

We're calling "bullshit" on that claim.

#ossoff #warnock

I Got Something Done Today!

The third try was the charm -  a new water heater and a new toilet were installed in the unsellable condo in Vinings today!  

I didn't retire because I wanted places to be at 9:00 am in the next county over, but you gotta do what you gotta do, and in this case perseverance paid off.  

Probably the lowest priority item in my "To Do" list, but at least it's something.  Next up - new roof on the house.  

Meanwhile, In the Wild West . . .

I knew I was in for a bit of a challenge when I retired.  I retired early, just as soon as my Medicare and Social Security benefits became available,  and I wouldn't have a lot of money to spend on lavish travel plans or consumer goods.  I also live alone, and since I'm an introvert by nature, I was concerned about becoming isolated and eccentric (as if I weren't already).

As if living a new post-career life wasn't enough of a challenge, then the coronavirus pandemic came along with all of its the social distancing, hygiene requirements, and anxieties.  And then after eight months of that, a tree falls on my house, destroys my roof, and I can't get contractors to come by to so much as even give me a quote.

My refuge in all of this has been meditation  drinking masturbation video games.  I finished playing Detroit: Become Human (highly recommended) and started on the oddly titled Disco Elysium, which I didn't enjoy (too much text reading and long, pointless conversations).  I quit Disco before finishing the game as playing felt more like a chore than a diversion, and this Thanksgiving weekend, I've started playing Red Dead Redemption 2.  It's a good game, at least so far, and one thing I really like is the very satisfying sense of escapism derived from just mounting a horse and riding across the Wild West open-world environment.  Don't even need a task or a mission, although there are plenty of both in the game,  just ride around and enjoy the scenery.  The game is a very good horse-riding simulator.

Now that the long Thanksgiving weekend is finally coming to a close, I should have better luck with contractors next week.  Hopefully, I can get something done before Christmas.  If not, I can just keep riding my favorite mare (I've named her "Twitchy") through the Rockies.  

Meanwhile, In Washington . . .

 

 

Sadly, now a full month later, I’m starting to get used to the view.

Happy Thanksgiving

 R. Crumb for The New Yorker (2004)

I'm Annoyed

And I don't want to explain why.  Not that I don't want you to know, dear reader, but I know that if I retell the whole story of why I'm annoyed right now, it will just annoy me further.  Suffice it to say it involves the cumulative frustration  of trying to get a quote on my roof repairs from unresponsive contractors while simultaneously trying to get what should have been some relatively simple and straight-forward plumbing work done on the condo. Suffice it to say that despite my efforts all of this week, I'm no further along on either front than I was at the end of last week, and now the holidays are here. Oh, that and it's raining today, hard, for the first time since the tree fell on my house back in October.

All I want for Christmas is a new roof over my head, and a new water heater and toilet at the condo.

Darwin Day

Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species was published on this day in 1859.  The crowning achievement of the Enlightenment, it revolutionized biology and natural history.  In addition to solstices and equinoxes, perhaps we should celebrate these great events in intellectual history and instead of Thanksgiving, celebrate every November 24 as Darwin Day.. 

On this day in 2020, I purchased a tankful of gasoline for my car for the first time since July 9, and only the third time this whole year.  I have to admit, the unique combination of retirement and coronavirus isolation has kept the mileage on the car pretty damn low.

Pic Unrelated

Woman commenting on Facebook: "99.8% of people who come down with Covid-19 survive!"

I'm not sure what her point was.  I'm sure that 99.8% of people who run red lights survive - sometimes there's not even a collision, and other times, both parties can walk away from the collision.  Should we do away with traffic signals, or at least enforcement of traffic laws?

Also, she's wrong.  To date, a distressing 12,400,000 Americans and counting have contracted the covids.  Computer modelling by the University of Washington indicates there may be a total of 20 million cases by the time Joe Biden takes office in late January.  As of this evening, 257,117 of the infected have died.  

Quick math - 257,117 divided by 12,400,000 equals 0.0207, or 2.1%.  

2.1% of Americans who've contracted the covids have died.  97.1%, not 99.8%, survived.

Still, 97.1% doesn't sound too bad.  But consider this, those survivors continue to shed the virus and infect other people, so the total number of infections will increase, as will the total number of deaths.  Many survivors have reported lingering respiratory issues even after they test negative for the virus, and since it's still so new, a "novel" coronavirus, we still don't know all of the long-term effects.  And finally, over a quarter million dead Americans from the disease is something to be taken more seriously than a rounding error in some actuarial calculation.

But the worst part is it's largely preventable.  We know how to limit it's spread - social isolation, strict quarantine and contact tracing for positive cases, wearing face masks in public, washing hands, etc.  Pleases where this was done (e.g., New Zealand, several American states before they gave up on the effort) saw complete to partial abatement of the virus.  No one has to suffer, no one had to die. You just need to act like an adult and wear a face mask and try to avoid sharing air with other people until the vaccine arrives.

Meanwhile, In Florida

 

Over 12 million cases in the U.S. to date, and nearing 200,000 new cases a day.  Over a quarter million deaths to date, and nearing 2,000 deaths per day.  3,700 people out of 100,000 (3.7%, or roughly one for every 27 citizens) have been infected so far in the United States.

And these maskless idiots decide Friday was a good night to pack a Fort Lauderdale sports bar.

Karma: the direct consequence of our actions.  We deserve the sickness we get.

Cats

For about a decade now, I've been observing my two pet cats.

The problem with observing our pets, especially for those of us without training in behavioral biology, is that we tend to anthropomorphize them and to assume that we humans are the center of their feline universe.  To be sure, we're an important component of it, but their world is not necessarily anthropocentric.

A lot of big words.  What I've observed is that although they do recognize their names - as well as the name of the other cat - their minds work in a language-free manner so that although when one hears the word "Eliot," while he knows that it's a reference to him, he does not think "That's me."  He just knows that I've made a sound particular to him and not the other cat or, for that matter, the toaster, the sofa, or the sound of rainfall in the evening.

Imagine what it's like to think without words, without mental symbols to represent things and actions.  Cats are very attuned to sounds - they have truly remarkable hearing - and they've learned that the sound of the pantry door opening around, oh, 7:00 pm means that dinner is about to be served.  They've also learned that when I make the noise that goes "eat," it means that I'm probably going to go to the pantry to get their food.  But they don't assign that particular "eat" sound to the specific action of them consuming their dinner, or to my mental intention of preparing their meal.   It's just a sound they tend to hear before dinner and they've come to associate with part of the mealtime ritual.  Think of it this way - we don't think of the sound of a car engine starting up as an articulated intention of driving somewhere - it's merely the sound of an internal combustion engine.  Same with that "eat" sound that I make or the squeak of the pantry door. They're both just sounds that they've come to associate with the early onset of the evening meal.

So to go a little deeper, since they don't have language or any other mental symbols for the things in the world or of specific actions, they don't have a way to re-telling themselves stories of past events.  There was that night the scary sounds of thunder were outside, and that very scary night the tree came crashing down on my roof, but they have no means of re-creating those events in their minds.  They haven't forgotten it, necessarily, but it isn't a memory that can be recalled and studied in their minds.

So without language, without a way of separating the universe into discretely identifiable objects, and without stories or any kind of personal history, they really don't have a sense of "self."  Chicken-or-the-egg: do they not have a sense of self because they don't have a personal historical narrative, or do they not have a personal historical narrative because there's no "self" to have that experience?  To apply the question to ourselves, what are we apart from the stories we tell ourselves?

Cats are like human infants before self-awareness and ego consciousness develop.  They can learn by repetition and with enough time they realize that certain sounds, including my words, tend to precede certain actions, like feeding or petting, but they don't have a sense of personal history, a narrative that goes, "I was once a feral cat sleeping on random porches until a kind human let me into his house."  Or even, "two nights ago, there were a lot of scary sounds, but it seems calmer tonight."  

They do experience hunger and fear, they enjoy affection, a meal, and a sunny spot in the afternoon, and they even experience an occasional sense of jealousy or unfairness "The other cat is getting a treat but I am not," although of course it is not articulated like that in their minds.      

It's hard for me to even imagine what the feline experience must be like, to feel, to emote, and even to dream (I've heard them vocalizing in their sleep and seen them moving their legs while unconscious, so I know they dream) without words, without mental models, without a personal history, and without ego awareness.  

The lesson here is that for us humans, our sense of self-identity, the ego, our very so-called "soul," is but a mental construct that arises from a language-enabled mind that recalls experiences and sensations and melds them into a personal history, a narrative, and then identifies the constant presence in that narrative as "I."   Language, as William S. Burroughs famously noted, is a virus from outer space.