Thursday, December 10, 2020

Reading archive 2020-12-10

The president and his party have gone to war against America - "When we look back on this dreadful era in our politics, I believe we’ll put this episode alongside Trump’s impeachment, because they share this sequence of events: A corrupt, narcissistic president engages in appalling misdeeds, then demands that his party defend those misdeeds, which they do."

Texas AG Asks the Supreme Court for a Coup: Ken Paxton and Donald Trump have a bizarre view of justice. [ed. note: author is a professor of law at Harvard University and was a clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice David Souter]

GOP Superlawyer Predicts Texas Election Suit Will Fail, Says Party 'Corroded' Under Trump

Hunter Biden confirms he is under federal investigation

Spies with Russia’s foreign intelligence service believed to have hacked a top American cybersecurity firm and stolen its sensitive tools

Wednesday, December 9, 2020

Reading archive 2020-12-09

‘God be with us’: Covid-19 becomes personal in a South Dakota town as neighbors die and the town debates a mask mandate

Who’s going to tell the GOP base that they’re being scammed? - "As long as those millions of suckers keep sending in their contributions and tuning in to their favorite shows, the people perpetrating the con will keep winding them up to greater heights of outrage. But what happens when President-elect Joe Biden actually takes office? Will they finally realize they got scammed? That their leaders knew all along that Trump lost but kept milking them for money anyway?

"Don’t bet on it. The GOP base’s eagerness to fall for every new iteration of this con is limitless, and nobody knows that better than the party’s leaders."

Biden to face wary allies after four years of Trump’s ‘America First’ rhetoric

Tamron Hall is betting on herself — and winning

TV’s gay Christmas movies are as benign, charming and cliche as we always hoped they’d be

The world’s rich need to cut their carbon footprint by a factor of 30 to slow climate change, U.N. warns: Despite sharp drop in greenhouse gas emissions during the pandemic, the world remains on pace for catastrophic warming in coming decades

Tuesday, December 8, 2020

Reading archive 2020-12-08

The Fascist We Deserve: The Authoritarian Ideology of Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy

Prominent evangelicals are directing Trump’s sinking ship. That feeds doubts about religion. - "When prominent Christians affirm absurd political lies with religious fervor, nonbelievers have every reason to think: 'Maybe Christians are prone to swallowing absurd religious lies as well. Maybe they are simply credulous about everything.' If we should encounter someone who believes — honestly and adamantly believes — in both the existence of the Easter Bunny and in the resurrection of Christ, it would naturally raise questions about the quality of his or her believing faculties. It would call into question the standard of evidence being applied and muddy the meaning of faith itself."

A decade of wringing money and power out of conservative victimhood nears its apex: A tweet from the Arizona Republican Party encapsulates the moment

The Social Life of Forests: Trees appear to communicate and cooperate through subterranean networks of fungi. What are they sharing with one another? - "The razing of an old-growth forest is not just the destruction of magnificent individual trees — it’s the collapse of an ancient republic whose interspecies covenant of reciprocation and compromise is essential for the survival of Earth as we’ve known it."

Thursday, December 3, 2020

Reading archive 2020-12-03

Kayleigh McEnany and the Trump team are running out of voter fraud tricks

No, Joe Biden Did Not Only Improve in Four Major Swing-State Cities - "Is it true that Joe Biden underperformed Hillary Clinton in 32 out of 36, and overperformed in Milwaukee, Detroit, Atlanta, and Philadelphia? No, it is not. It is emphatically false:" [ed. note: National Review]

Trump escalates baseless attacks on election with 46-minute video rant - "The president’s latest salvo came a day after his attorney general, William P. Barr, said the Justice Department had found no evidence of voting fraud that could have changed the outcome of the election."

Their View: Bedford County's 'no shutdown' crowd gives aid to the enemy

Dr. Marvin James Farr - "Dr. Marvin James Farr, 81, of Scott City, Kan., passed away Dec. 1, 2020, in isolation at Park Lane Nursing Home. He was preceded in death by more than 260,000 Americans infected with COVID-19. He died in a room not his own, being cared for by people dressed in confusing and frightening ways. He died with COVID-19, and his final days were harder, scarier and lonelier than necessary. He was not surrounded by friends and family.

"Marvin was born May 23, 1939 to Jim and Dorothy Farr of Modoc, Kan. He was born into an America recovering from the Great Depression and about to face World War 2, times of loss and sacrifice difficult for most of us to imagine. Americans would be asked to ration essential supplies and send their children around the world to fight and die in wars of unfathomable destruction. He died in a world where many of his fellow Americans refuse to wear a piece of cloth on their face to protect one another."

Parler's got a porn problem: Adult businesses target pro-Trump social network

‘When the Bombs Go Off, the Blood Is on Mike Flynn’s Hands’: Retired Officers Blast His Calls for Martial Law: The pardoned Army three-star promoted a call to suspend the Constitution for an election do-over. “Grant and Lincoln are rolling over in their graves,” said one retired general.

Trump campaign’s star witness in Michigan was deemed ‘not credible.’ Then, her loud testimony went viral.

Project Veritas’s James O’Keefe crashed a private CNN teleconference. CNN says he may have broken the law.

Man, 41, had no teeth and could barely speak after his mother locked him in their suburban apartment for 28 years, say reports [ed. note: Stockholm, Sweden]

The most petulant 46 minutes in American history

Rural Virginia county officials pass resolution rejecting ‘tyranny’ of governor’s coronavirus restrictions

Inside The Great British Baking Show’s Pandemic Production Bubble: The producers of television’s most soothing program tell V.F. how they went full Mission: Impossible to (safely!) film a new season mid-pandemic, and deliver it to a crisis-plagued audience.

Farah resigns as White House communications director in tacit nod to Trump’s loss

Army museums have tens of thousands of artifacts. They’re looking to downsize.: With 47 museums across the country, Germany and South Korea, and duplicates of nearly everything, a massive culling is underway.

1-year-old Carmelo Duncan is the latest victim of gun violence in D.C. as homicides hit a 15-year high - "Houseal blames the violence on disruptions caused by the coronavirus — people home, out of work, out of money and out of options. 'These are survival crimes associated with people who are traumatized,' she said. 'There are lot of people who are struggling and they need support. … Lately, a lot of people have been acting out of desperation.'" [ed. note: shooting into a car is not a "survival crime"]

Legendary Afghan pilot in hiding after U.S. reverses decision to help him flee Taliban