Much Ado About the Ongoing Doo-doo

Thoughts of a Beckoning Spring on a Gray Day

Appetizers

Links to the tweets of the cited authors:

1. @TalbertSwan doesn’t like the former US Representative Ron Paul who has a record of expressing racist commentary. I share his deep dislike of the man because of his overtly expressed racism.

2. @ReverendWarnock remembers Ahmaud Arbery, a young man studying to be an electrician who checked out a house under construction while out jogging. Three men are under indictment for allegedly striking him with a motor vehicle and murdering him with a firearm, a year ago.

3. @atrupar writes @voxdotcom about the false assertions being floated by US Senator Ron Johnson (WI) today during a Senate hearing about the January 6th Capitol Building riot that included insurrectionist efforts.

4. @Cleavon_MD - an ER Doctor and Iraq War veteran - reports on the arrest of a retired cop on charges that he attacked US Capitol cops with an iron pipe, and also was gouging out their eyes. I cut off part of the graphic Dr. Cleavon posted to encourage you to read the thread that follows his tweet for all the information, graphics and video. Dr. Cleavon has been reporting on the arrests of the Jan 6 US Capitol riot participants since January 8th and is possibly the most comprehensive online chronicler of the arrested. It’s gotta be an exhausting effort, as it’s hard to absorb if you read it all. And depressing to consider how much inhumanity occurs when Americans assault Americans.

More highlights from Tuesday’s Senate hearings are summarized by CNN.

---

Entrees (mostly at unaffordable prices today)

There’s not a lot of joy afoot in Mudville on February 23rd. Yesterday, the US fatality toll due to Covid-19 passed half a million people. That’s more than 10,000 per state on average. Florida became the fourth state to reach 30,000 dead fellow Americans.

More than 28 million Americans have been recorded as infected though some estimate the actual infected may be more than 4 times higher.

More than 43 million Americans have had their first vaccination (13%+), an incredible rate that will soon accelerate further.

Globally, more than 128 million people have been infected and sometime tomorrow, more than 2.5 million deaths will become officially recorded though epidemiologists are certain far more have occurred.

Currently, Covid’s been most active in South Carolina, New Jersey and New York, but the steep national decline in cases for 46 days has us back to October levels. A most worrisome sign indicates we still have to double down in our individual efforts if we want to reach an end to this national security and public safety threat.

Bulwark editor Jonathan V. Last, who’s demonstrated a realistic outlook of the pandemic threat throughout, sounds a note of cautious optimism that reminds me of spotting a robin as a sign that Spring nears.

_________________________

Legendary poet, publisher and bookseller Lawrence Ferlinghetti has died at 101. And he wore far more hats than that, as Politico reports.

>> “Am I the consciousness of a generation or just some old fool sounding off and trying to escape the dominant materialist avaricious consciousness of America?” he asked in “Little Boy,” a stream of consciousness novel published around the time of his 100th birthday

He made history. Through the City Lights publishing arm, books by Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs and many others came out and the release of Allen Ginsberg’s landmark poem “Howl” led to a 1957 obscenity case that broke new ground for freedom of expression. <<

Much respect from Streams of Crunchiness to the stream of consciousness icon.

_________________________

Sad to see once reliable news source Al-Jazeera has decided to include yet another media outpost for extremist right wing voices promoting Greed & Bleed views.

_________________________

We now have a very capable Cabinet level UN Ambassador with the 78-20 Senate confirmation vote for Linda Thomas-Greenfield.

And Merrick Garland seems certain to be approved as the new US Attorney General and now has the support of Mitch McConnell.

Meanwhile, Greg Sargent at the Washington Post makes the valid point that the coming vote for or against Neera Tanden as the director of the Office of Management and Budget will have no impact on bipartisan cooperation ahead. In fact, her critiques utilized hard-edged language common in today’s social media and far less divisive than the ex-President and many of his supporters use. She’s drawing flack from both left wing voters and hard right Senators but the real goal of the latter is to impede President Biden’s domestic policy agenda.

Per Sargent:

>> Nor will any decision by Biden and Democrats to water down their agenda to win bipartisan cooperation be in any way influenced by what happens here. You can see Biden and Democrats exercising bipartisan civility by, say, soliciting GOP input on various bills. But the question of whether that will result in actual bipartisan cooperation won’t be even slightly influenced by Tanden’s fate.

The idea seems to be that sacrificing Tanden now might demonstrate good will from Democrats toward Republicans, and that this will somehow bank good will among Republicans toward them. But the incentives just don’t work this way. And every senator making this argument against Tanden — along with every journalist covering this debate — knows it. <<

In other words, the Church Lady tut-tutters aren’t even fooling the kids in their Sunday School classes.

_________________________

But Mudville can remain hopeful now that Major League Baseball Spring Training’s begun. And in the absence of my usual penchant for satire amid the gloom, I can only offer some sweets from the Silly Playlist.

---

Desserts

May the Solar Force be with you.

Sharing is good. A free subscription’s better, providing at least one newsletter per week direct to you. A paid subscription provides at least four per week: $6/mo or the better bargain of $60/yr.