Culture Break: Tummel: This Ship Is Sinking

This song popped into my head recently. It's from the album Payback Time. If the title strikes you as somewhat ominous, well, you're probably right.

At any rate, this is from a recording session, and if nothing else, these guys are having fun:

Another Empty Threat

Ladies and Gentlemen, the President of the United States:

President Donald Trump indicated he wouldn’t allow federal aid for states facing budget deficits from the coronavirus outbreak unless they take action against “sanctuary cities” — municipalities that prevent their police from cooperating with immigration authorities.

“We would want certain things” as part of a deal with House Democrats to aid states, he said at a White House event on Tuesday, “including sanctuary city adjustments, because we have so many people in sanctuary cities.”

“What’s happening is people are being protected that shouldn’t be protected and a lot of bad things are happening with sanctuary cities,” he added. Trump has long complained about the cities and has previously sought to cut off their federal funding unless they end the policies.

He's really good at making threats. Unfortunately for him, they generally amount to nothing -- but that's not the point: he assumes that those on the receiving end with fold. Unfortunately for him, as commenter ColoMtnWoman points out, this issue has been litigated, and he lost. (Actually, a quick google search shows that the Trump administration has lost cases on this issue in the Ninth, Seventh, and First Circuits, and won a case in the Second Circuit. It appears that the Supreme Court has yet to rule on this issue.)

There's also the fact that Congress has the authority to allocate funds, not the Executive: if Trump wants to withhold grants to states, he has to get Nancy Pelosi's permission. Good luck with that.

None of which alters the fact that our President is a mean-spirited, racist, petty, vengeful blowhard.

Giggle du Jour: Math Is Hard

I really shouldn't laugh at the educationally challenged, but . . . .



With thanks to commenter Max_1 at Joe.My.God.

We're Now Officially A Global Pariah

Thanks, Trump. It only took three years:

Global leaders have pledged to accelerate cooperation on a coronavirus vaccine and to share research, treatment and medicines across the globe. But the United States did not take part in the World Health Organization initiative, in a sign of Donald Trump’s increasing isolation on the global stage.

The cooperation pledge, made at a virtual meeting, was designed to show that wealthy countries will not keep the results of research from developing countries.

The meeting also represented a symbolic endorsement of the United Nations body in the face of Trump’s decision to suspend US payments and condemn its leaders as subordinates of the Chinese Communist party. China and the US have accused each other of bullying and disinformation over the coronavirus outbreak, damaging efforts to secure cooperation at the G20, the natural international institution to handle global health outside the UN.

Read the whole thing -- it's not very long, but it points up the fact that we've got a problem.

Via Digby, who coments:

This is what it’s come to. We are not only no longer leading the world (which is fine…) we aren’t even participants in efforts to save people in a global pandemic. We are now officially a pariah state.

Not that I blame other countries for moving on without us. Why would you want miscreants like Pompeo and Trump interfering in important decisions?

Review: Bill Willingham, et al.: Fables: Arabian Nights (and Days)

Yet again, from the late and sorely missed Epinions.

Volume 7 of the collected issues of Bill Willingham's Fables, Arabian Nights (and Days), introduces the Arabian Fables, in the person of Sinbad, who heads a delegation from Baghdad -- but it's the Baghdad of the Homelands, not of this world. The Adversary hasn't penetrated that far yet, and the Arabian Fables are taking care to insure that their flight is not the helter-skelter thing that the Western Fables were forced to suffer. There are negotiations to be undertaken, a task for which Prince Charming, the Mayor, is not particularly well suited; he's forced to call on King Cole, the former Mayor, to take over as chief diplomat. However, there's perfidy afoot that may bring the whole thing to ruin -- but you've got to be really sneaky to get past Frau Totenkinder.

While the dialogue and personalities in this one have most of the sparkle of the earlier volumes, there's a lot of this segment that's plainly expository -- we learn about djinni, for example, from two different sources. And some of the characters -- particularly Sinbad's vizier, Yusuf -- seem to occupy a ground somewhere between stereotype and caricature. The most refreshing parts of the action take place at the Farm -- Boy Blue's sentence for making off with magical artifacts has been commuted to two years' hard labor -- but again, there's a lot of exposition.

There are a couple of subplots that are fairly entertaining, but one is left with the inescapable conclusion that the story's a little thin.

There is, in fact, a side story involving two of Gepetto's wooden puppets, Rodney and June, who fall in love and beg Gepetto to give them real flesh. He agrees, but there's a price to be paid.

The drawing style in the main story is fully consistent with the rest of the series -- no surprise, it's still being penciled by Mark Buckingham. The story of Rodney and June, penciled by Jim Fern, shows a noticeable shift -- it's somewhat more abstract, but still very clean and clear.

All told, I can't really summon up a great deal of enthusiasm for this one; what there is is mostly on the strength of the subplots. The main story just doesn't have that much going for it.

(Vertigo, 2006) Collects Fables #42-47.

What's New at Green Man Review

Yep, it's Sunday again, and we've got neat stuff:

Live Cornish Music, Ancient Egypt (or not), X-Men Again, Hamlets, Baroque Plus, a belated Easter Bunny, and more

Scoot on over and enjoy.

Today's Awww! Moment

With thanks to commenter Desert_Joe at Joe.My.God.:

Today's Must-Read: Bad Publicity Helps

I'm sure you're aware that the small-business loan fund under the CARES Act ran out of money very quickly. Why? Because too much of it was going to companies that in no way could be considered "small busnesses".

The Treasury Department issued new guidance on Thursday encouraging publicly-traded companies to return their coronavirus stimulus loans by May 7 as Shake Shack and other public companies have faced backlash for receiving funds meant for small businesses.

While small business owners struggled to secure loans under the Paycheck Protection Program in the two weeks before the $350 billion fund ran dry, dozens of publicly traded companies secured hundreds of millions of dollars in funds, drawing criticism from watchdog groups and lawmakers.

How could these loans have gone to publicly traded companies to begin with? Well, for starters, Trump fired the inspector general who was supposed to be overseeing these programs -- probably to be sure his own companies (which are not publicly traded) could get their hands in the pot.

And then there's this:

Designed for businesses with 500 employees or less, the initiative also included exceptions for big restaurant and hotel chains, along with franchises, with less than 500 employees per location.

That opening allowed some publicly-traded restaurant and hospitality companies to seek and secure millions of low-interest loans from the government.

(Emphasis added.)

Gee, I wonder who wrote that into the bill? Hint: It wasn't Nancy Pelosi.

Via Joe.My.God. The comments on Joe's post are worth reading, particularly this article from NYT, courtesy of commenter corram nobis.

Welcome to the Nineteenth Century

Courtesy of the FDA:

After recovering from the novel coronavirus, Andy Cohen signed up for a program to donate his antibody-rich blood plasma to help those still fighting COVID-19. But Cohen says he was ultimately turned away, due to the FDA’s “antiquated and discriminatory” restrctions on gay and bisexual men donating blood.

Although the FDA recently relaxed the policy, gay and bi men are still barred from donating blood — and plasma — unless they abstain from sex for three months. But Cohen notes that no such restriction applies to heterosexual people.

Here's his full commentary:

It would be nice to have a Food and Drug Administration that believed in science.

Culture Break: Linkin Park: Lost in the Echo

Another group that I happened on somehow, and became wildly enthusiastic. The did some tough stuff.

Giggle du Jour

I don't think I need to comment:

Love the Evangelicals out there preaching that they are not going to have something invisible control their lives.

Give it a sec.

— YS (@NYinLA2121) April 21, 2020

With thanks to commenter jixter at Joe.My.God.

Right-Wing "Values"

Today's lesson comes from Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick:

Claiming that he was “vindicated” by businesses being shut down by states’ stay-at-home orders, Patrick said on Monday night during a Fox News interview that the new plan to reopen Texas businesses was “long overdue.”

The Texas leader then doubled down on his grim argument for allowing people to be put at risk of death from COVID-19 to help the economy recover from the damage brought on by the outbreak – a proposal that was immediately met with a flood of criticism.

“What I said when I was with you that night is there are more important things than living,” Patrick told Fox News host Tucker Carlson, referring to when he first made the suggestion last month. “And that’s saving this country for my children and my grandchildren and saving this country for all of us.”

The next question, which these wise leaders never seem to ask, is "What kind of country are you saving for your children and granchildren?"

This sort of made me think:

“And I don’t want to die, nobody wants to die,” he added. “But man we’ve got to take some risks and get back in the game and get this country back up and running.”

These people -- and by that I mean "Republicans" and maybe some Democrats -- seem to think that things in this country are just the way they've always been. There really is something of a 1930s flavor to a comment like that -- maybe we need a good world war to get things back on track. Except these days, no one knows what the track is. We don't even have a unified vision of what our country is or should be. Yes, we've had ideological differences in the past, but we used to be able to find a middle ground. That doesn't seem possible any more. It takes a major disaster -- like a pandemic -- to get our representatives to work together. And it has to be really major -- nothing piddly like a hurricane.

And of course, coming from a Republican, you just know that Patrick is not talking about himself or his family -- he's talking about you and your family.

Vie Joe.My.God.

Critter Chronicles --Addendum

I forgot to mention seeing a large group of robins in one small area of the park, all busily scurrying a few steps then stopping to listen, the way robins do. I'm not used to seeing such large groups -- over a dozen -- in a relatively small area. Come to think of it, I'm seeing a lot of robins, period, in the park and around home.

At any rate, one did find a worm -- pulled it out of the dirt, banged it on the ground a couple of times, then swallowed it in one long gulp.

We also had a mutant robin in the neighborhood, but I haven't seen it in a while. Large patches of white on its back and breast -- in fact, the breast was almost all white. It was much more timid than the other robins -- maybe it knows it sticks out.

Critter Chronicles

This may become a department here, with no specific time or day for posting. Inspired by my friend Terry, who replied to an e-mail largely concerned with what I had seen in the park that day with "You're so newsy!"

So here's some news that's not about the Plague, or the incompetent in the White House, or any of the other disasters, major and minor, that are considered "news".

To bring this up to date, here's just a few comments from recent wanderings. (Yes, I try to stay in as much as I can, but I really can't deal with spending days at a time at home. So I put on my armor -- mask and gloves -- and venture out to the park, which is theoretically closed, but try to keep Chicagoans out of their parks. Closing the parks doesn't really make much sense to me -- people are being careful about maintaining distance from each other, and especially along the lakefront, which has some of the highest population density in the country, the park is the main place that people go to walk, or run, or ride their bikes, or give their dogs a walk.)

Down at the Zoo, which, like every other public attraction, is closed, the black-crowned night herons are back and are starting to refurbish their nests. I remember a few years ago, when they first started nesting in the Children's Zoo, there were maybe eight or ten pairs. Now, I've lost count, and the nests have spread from the north edge of the red wolf habitat to almost the entire Children's Zoo. (There's a story here: the herons apparently first started nesting on the island at the south end of South Pond, which is administered by Lincoln Park Zoo. The Zoo staff, being very conservation minded -- the herons are listed as "endangered" in Illinois -- set the island up as a nature reserve, with signage on the boardwalk opposite the island. The birds decided they liked the Children's Zoo better.) The herons seem to prefer rather spindly trees, like birches, which is odd -- they're quite awkward when clambering around the branches. They're rather bulky birds for their size, with huge feet much better suited to wading in muddy ponds than perching on a skinny branch.

Speaking of herons, I saw a great blue flying around North Pond. Don't know if it was planning on taking up residence are just passing through. It's a bit early in the season, I think, for there to be many fish coming out of winter quarters -- although on sunny days there are turtles basking on some of the larger branches that have fallen into the pond. It's just a few, so far, but I remember one time I counted sixty-four out basking, and another two or three swimming, while walking along one side of the pond.

There are no large flocks of geese grazing on the lawns like there will be later this summer -- they've all paired off and are concentrating on getting ready for goslings. You see them in pairs now, and ditto ducks -- I saw a couple of pairs of wood ducks at North Pond, in addition to the omnipresent mallards.

And of course, there are squirrels. At certain times of day, they seem to be everywhere, busily foraging and trying to remember where they had buried goodies, just in case. For some reason I find squirrels particularly entertaining. I remember one summer, in a former residence, I was sitting the back yard when I heard a scrabbling behind me. I turned just in time to see a squirrel diving behind a slab of limestone that was leaning against the neighbor's garage; I looked up and there was a very disgruntled hawk -- not sure if it was a peregrine or Cooper's hawk -- just alighting on a branch. A near miss. At any rate, I had a confrontation with a Lincoln Park squirrel the other day. The squirrels of Lincoln Park are legendary -- shameless beggars, they used to come up and practically demand to be fed. Not so much any more, but this one was a classic. Sadly, I had neglected to put my usual store of cashews in my bag. The squirrel was not pleased.

And I should mention the flowers. At this point, there are still scillas -- great swathes of blue under the trees in parts of the park -- and daffodils are coming into full bloom. And there are still hellebores in flower. There are still magnolias blooming, and grape hyacinths are starting to blossom. And the trees, finally, are starting to leaf out -- there are faint washes of green, like watercolors, on some of the branches.

So that's the news of the critters in the park so far this spring. We'll see what they're up to as the season progresses.

Review: Bill Willingham, et al.: Fables: Homelands

I reviewed most of this series at Epinions. Now you get to read the reviews here.

Bill Willingham's Fables: Homelands gives us the adventures of two of Fabletown's denizens who have gone missing: Jack, who is suspected (with good reason -- as Beast points out, Bigby Wolf told him "Always suspect Jack first.") of having made off with the contents of one of the late Bluebeard's treasure rooms; and Boy Blue, who seems to have made off with several of the town's magical artifacts, specifically the Witching Cloak and the Vorpal Sword.

We start off with another of Jack's schemes to make his fortune -- except this time he's starting off with a fortune. He heads to Hollywood to make -- well, with Jack, it's never quite sure what his goals are, since he can't go public -- but he's going to make a splash. He sets himself up as a production company, with layers of front men to keep himself out of the public eye, and begins work on a fantasy trilogy -- the story of Jack. (No one ever said he was short on ego.) He's brought Jill with him on this jaunt. She just wanted to get out and see the world, but winds up living in Jack office in a series of antique dollhouses (she's rather diminutive). She's not real happy about that.

If this is Willingham's take on Hollywood and its workings, it's a little heavy handed. Jack has set himself up to be the biggest shark in an ocean full of them, and pretty well succeeds: we get a picture of Jack's character in this one, and it's not pretty. He's forgotten, though, that there's always payback -- this scheme works out just like the others have.

Boy Blue's goals are somewhat different: he's busily carving his way through the Homelands to get to the Adversary. He wants the Adversary to be history, and he wants Red Riding Hood, the real one, the one he fell in love with. There are a few surprises, but Blue is up to them -- he's a lot sneakier than we thought. And he's working for someone even sneakier than he is.

We also get to meet Mowgli, of Jungle Book fame, who's one of the "Travelers," Fabletown's spies in the mundy world. The new mayor, Prince Charming, has a special job for him.

This one is a lot of fun, from the swashbuckling adventures of Boy Blue in the Homelands to the machinations of the Adversary (and we finally find out who that is) and Prince Charming.

The art is up to the usual standard, and there are even distinct shifts in style when the characters are telling their histories that set off the narrative into a real "once-upon-a-time" mode. There's one thing I haven't mentioned before, and that's the borders around a lot of the pages. They give the feel of an old story book and add a lot to the fairy tale feel of the books.

This volume takes us back to the main narrative, and although the Jack story tends to go on a little too long -- I mean, we know Jack's a creep, right? We don't really need the repetition of just what a piece of work he is -- the Boy Blue story line more than makes up for it. I'm calling it a solid 4.

(Vertigo, 2006) Collects Fables #34-41.

What's New at Green Man Review

As tends to happen regularly, it's Sunday again, and that means more reviews at Green Man Review:

Ailette De Bodard’s Xuya Universe, Mutants, A Fairport Boxset, A Trip Up the Thames, Dinosaurs, of a sort, and other neat stuff

ANd it's all there waiting for you.

Another WTF? Moment

The right, and especially the members of the Trump regime, are expert at turning reality on its head:

The largely white protesters who oppose social distancing measures to protect the public from COVID-19 are like Rosa Parks, who waged a historic battle for racial equality, right-wing economic commentator and White House adviser Stephen Moore repeatedly insisted Friday.

“I call these people modern-day Rosa Parks. They are protesting against injustice and a loss of liberties,” Moore told The Washington Post, in one of at least three instances of this astonishing comparison.

He also told CBS News: “It’s interesting to me that the right has become more the Rosa Parks of the world than the left is.” He said in a YouTube video quoted by The New York Times: “We need to be the Rosa Parks here, and protest against these government injustices.”

So, let me see if I've got this right: the government doing its job and trying to save people's lives is "government injustice". I would have thought it came under the heading of providing for the common welfare.

And lawless vigilantes (who, incidentally, showed up at the Michigan state capitol armed to the teeth with their AR-15 penis substitutes) are freedom fighters.

As for Moore -- well, this seems to be representative of his take on things:

He once quipped that Trump’s first act as president would be to kick a Black family (the Obamas) out of public housing (the White House), according to The Atlantic.

Only the best and the brightest.

Via Joe.My.God.

Political Ad of the Month

I don't usually post political ads -- mostly because, since I don't watch TV, I never see them.

This one, I think, should be aired repeatedly on every Fox affiliate in flyover country:

This is the most devastating political ad I’ve seen in years. It reveals the truth about Trump and China, and that truth is ugly. pic.twitter.com/52cNf9Ay9u

— Joe Scarborough (@JoeNBC) April 18, 2020

It's in response to this.

Read It and Weep

Pew has done another survey. This one should give you pause:

Today, about half of Americans (49%) say the Bible should have at least “some” influence on U.S. laws, including nearly a quarter (23%) who say it should have “a great deal” of influence, according to a recent Pew Research Center survey. Among U.S. Christians, two-thirds (68%) want the Bible to influence U.S. laws at least some, and among white evangelical Protestants, this figure rises to about nine-in-ten (89%).

Here's the breakdown:

It gets worse:

All survey respondents who said the Bible should have at least “some” influence on U.S. laws were asked a follow-up question: When the Bible and the will of the people conflict, which should have more influence on U.S. laws?

The more common answer to this question is that the Bible should take priority over the will of the people. This view is expressed by more than a quarter of all Americans (28%). About one-in-five (19%) say the Bible should have at least some influence but that the will of the people should prevail.

Two religious groups stand out for being especially supportive of biblical influence in legislation, even if that means going against the will of the American people: Two-thirds of white evangelical Protestants (68%) say the Bible should take precedence over the people, and half of black Protestants say the same. Among Catholics (25%) and white Protestants who do not identify as born-again or evangelical (27%), only about a quarter share this perspective.

I've been saying for a while that evangelical Christians simply don't believe in democracy -- their whole religious philosophy is founded on authoritarianism.

However, all is not lost:

At the other end of the spectrum, there’s broad opposition to biblical influence on U.S. laws among religiously unaffiliated Americans, also known as religious “nones,” who identify as atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular.” Roughly three-quarters in this group (78%) say the Bible should hold little to no sway, including 86% of self-described atheists who say the Bible should not influence U.S. legislation at all. Two-thirds of U.S. Jews, as well, think the Bible should have not much or should have no influence on laws.

One thing that tends to get glossed over, if mentioned at all, in reporting on the doings of the "religious" right, is that they're a minority. Unfortunately, over the past couple of generations, the Republicans have managed to put too many of them into positions of influence.

Time to clean house.

Via Dispatches from the Culture Wars.

Thought for the Day

With thanks to commenter Boreal at Joe.My.God.