In 1935, about 100 cane toads were imported into Australia to control the cane beetle, a pest which was destroying crops. By 2011, there were an estimated 200 million: they eat bugs that native species used to eat, edging them out; they poison anything that eats them, from native species to family pets; and, to add insult to injury, Wikipedia says that “there is no evidence that they have affected the number of cane beetles which they were introduced to prey upon.” And that’s how cane toads became the poster child for the law of unintended consequences.
Once upon a time we thought eating butter was bad for you, so we invented margarine, which we made out of trans fat, which (it turns out) is way worse for you than butter. And remember how our government had this briliant idea to cure public drunkenness and alcoholism by inventing a little thing called “Prohibition”? Turns out what they actually invented was organized crime. Well, in the grand tradition of all those brilliant ideas, today (literally the day I’m posting this), our government brings you yet another one: they’re banning TikTok. Can’t imagine there’ll be any unintended consequences from that.
Oh, wait: there already are. See, TikTok creators, in anticipation of the looming shutdown, have started flocking to RedNote, an app much more closely tied to the Communist Party, and whose terms and conditions are entirely in Mandarin. Reporting on what you’re actually agreeing to when you click on that varie
Since this is (ostensibly) a short post week, I’ll keep the remainder of my comments on the cesspool of the week’s news to quick takes:
- The Republicans are quite outraged at the mismanagement of the wildfires in Southern California, and they’re claiming that they’re going to condition aid on policy changes. I mostly agree with Jonathan Harris over at Some More News, who says this is probably all performative, but they’re really hammering on the bits about Gavin Newsome taking all our water because of smelt (which is complete bullshit), and Karen Bass (who is obviously a DEI hire because she is neither white nor a man) cutting the budget of the LA fire department. They probably have a reasonable point on that last one at least, but it’s also instructive to listen to Heather Lofthouse, who pointed out on this week’s Coffeee Klatch:
But I mean, it’s “Karen Bass cut the budgets: how dare she” is ... kind of the headline, as we give Elon Musk an office in the White House and his mandate is to cut the budgets for vulnerable people and for the things that matter. I mean the hypocrisy around that and “I’m not going to spend it, I’m not going to spend it, I’m not going to spend, but that person cut budgets in the wrong way” is wild to watch, too.
- But the thing that most irks me about the wildfires is the utter refusal to understand how climate change is such a huge factor. Instead we have Joe Rogan trotting out his “whiny liberal” voice and mocking people saying “it’s climate change!” and then following up with “no, it’s arson, stupid.” Which, even if it were arso
n— which there is currently no evidence to support, at least for the largest of the fire s— but even if that were true, is arson making the winds blow 60 – 100MPH and spread the fires over miles in seconds, and also whip up the fires to truly horrific peaks? (Or, as Jon Stewart put it on The Daily Show this week, it’s like fire fucked a tornado.) Arson didn’t cause the flooding last year, nor the drought this year, the combination of which resulted in a massive quantity of new growth which is now bone dry and just waiting to catch fire at the slightest provocation. I honestly thought that once climate change started costing all the rich assholes a lot of money, they’d finally do something about it, but it turns out that the response to insurance companies losing billions in natural disasters like this is that they just stop insuring people. Whew! problem solved.
- Biden and Trump have been fighting over who deserves credit for the cease-fire agreement in Gaza. How about we wait to see if it actually happens before we quibble over who gets the kudos?
- Biden gave us a farewell address in which he warned us about the dangers of oligarchy. Many this week lamented “where was that message during the CAMPAIGN??” Which is fair. Of course, Biden essentially has senioritis (in multiple meanings of the word, I suppose) and has entered his “I don’t give a fuck” phase. But note how neatly this lines up with my thoughts (such as I outlined last week) that what the Dems really need to do is start talking about how evil the billionaires are. (Also it amuses me that Biden, 82, is finally catching up to Bernie Sanders, 83, and Robert Reich, 78.)
- People are also whining this week about how the lack of reporting on Jack Smith’s report on Trump’s insurrection indictment is a failure of the traditional media. Well, duh: the traditional media is now all owned by the same billionaires who are funneling all their money to Trump. The meme that people are stupid from getting all their news from the Internet is dead: the implication was always that you might not be able to trust what you hear from some rando on Reddit or Facebook. Now, sadly, you might be able to trust what you’re reading in the Washington Post or the New York Times even less.
- On this week’s The Weekly Show, Jon Stewart interviewed historian Jon Meacham. As expected, he trotted out one of his favorite talking points: that democracy is, increasingly, an analog system in a digital world:
And the chasm that that creates between the emotional catastrophizing of its people versus the kind of glacial pace of change— I do think democracy itself has to find a way for government to be more agile and responsive.
To which Meacham pointed out that this was the same argument Anne Morrow Lindbergh used to justify her “America First” position in 1940 that the US needed to become more like Germany and Italy and Russia: obviously totalitarianism was the solution to the sluggish response time of democracy. Not saying I’m favoring Meacham over Stewart here, but it is food for thought.
- Speaking of The Weekly Show, every episode ends with Jon talking to some of his producers. At first, this was Lauren Walker and Brittany Mehmedovic, but within a few episodes they were joined by Gillian Spear, who, in addition to being an associate producer, is also their fact checcker. I really enjoy these post-show chats, and especially appreciate the fact that Spear often drops little truth bombs. So here’s your Gillian Spear fact-of-the-week:
... the Democrats haven’t won the white vote since 1964. And what happened after 1964? The Civil Rights Act ...
- If you recall how this whole series started, you’ll remember my talking about the phone conversation I had with my friend. I mentioned in passing that I’d pointed out to him that Project 202
5— and, by extension, Trum p— wish to erase trans people. I did not, however, mention his reaction: he scoffed at me. In this day and age, I don’t experience a lot of scoffing. But I can’t think of any other word to describe it. This was, to judge from his reaction, an utterly ridiculous prospect. Except that, of course, here we are 10 weeks later, Trump hasn’t even taken office yet, and already utter psychopath Nancy Mace has introduced a rule to ban transgender people from using public bathrooms that don’t match their “biological sex”— a rule that would impact a single person, by the way (incoming representative Sarah McBride)— and the Republicans in the House have voted to ban transgender athletes. So, I dunno ... maybe not so crazy after all.
- On this week’s Election Profit Makers, we are somehow still talking about Biden’s pardon of his son Hunter. Apparently a listener wrote a long email about how disappointed he was in Biden for doing it, and then another listener wrote back challenging that opinion, and so forth. My opinion is simple: I care not one whit that he pardoned his so
n— it was a thing any father should be willing to do for his child, especially one that was being harassed by bullies. I was a bit disappointed in him saying he wasn’t going to pardon him ahead of time. It’s the same situation with Bush (Sr) ... remember how that guy said “read my lips: no. new. taxes.”? and then he went and raised taxes? Same deal: the sin was not in the doing, but rather in the foolish promise prior to it. A stupid promise that was nearly impossible to keep ... one would think politicians would learn not to do that by now. Apparently not.
- It’s also occurred to me that Trump has so flooded the zone with shit (as I discussed last week) that he’s managed to completely eclipse the news coverage of the New Orleans terrorist attack. Of course, part of that is probably because the MAGA nutjobs got so excited over the fact that the terrorist drove his truck across the Mexican border that they wet themselves, and then it turned out that the guy was an America
n— not a naturalized immigrant, but someone born in the U S— and then all of a sudden they found other interesting things to talk about. And it saddens me that we, as a nation, didn’t even talk about it very much. I’ve been to New Orleans 3 times in my life, and I’ve walked down Bourbon Street in those packed crowds, and it hurts my heart to think that 14 people died and we never even made the Repubs babble on about how everything was to blame except for the AR-10 rifle and the Glock wielded by the domestic terrorist. It’s like it’s now so commonplace that we can’t even be bothered to go through the motions any more.
- And, while I continue to be skeptical of Brian Tyler Cohen’s repeated screeds about how the entire problem is that mainstream media is overlooking important stories (although also see first point), I do wonder how no one is reporting nationally on the Republicans in North Carolina literally stealing an election from an NC supreme court judge. Democrat Allison Riggs, one of only two Democrats on the court, won her election by a mere 734 votes. A slim margin to be sure, and her opponent demanded a recount, as well he should. Riggs won that recount by the exact same number of votes. So her opponent demanded a second recount, which seemed a bit over the top, but, sure: that’s his right. Riggs won that one too, by, say it with me now: 734 votes. So then the crazy Repub demanded that the board of elections throw out 60,000 votes. Yes, that’s correct: sixty thousand votes. But only for the supreme court justice race, of course: the votes would still count towards Trump’s victory in NC. The NC board of elections (obviously) rejected this insane request. But the schmuck appealed it ... to the NC supreme court. The elections board tried appealing up to a federal level, but they kicked it back. So now we’re waiting for 4 Republicans and 1 Democrat (Riggs recused herself, obviously) to decide whether they will unilaterally just pick their fellow Republican over the will of their own electorate. And I think we’d better be cognizant that, if it works there, it’ll become the new pattern of how to rig elections in the future, everywhere. So it may not be hyperbole to say that the entire fate of respecting election results depends on whether at least 2 Republicans on the North Carolina supreme court have any scruples or not. I’m not hopeful.
- Finally, I’ve been much amused over the past few weeks as Brian Tyler Cohen and other pundits claim that the only “good” thing about the Republicans having control over all 3 branches of government is that they no have no one else to blame: whatever mistakes there are going forward, they own them. To which I can only reply: oh, my sweet summer child. If you think the Repubs can’t blame the Democrats when the Dems have nothing to do with anything, you just haven’t been paying attention. Remember when it took 15 tries to elect Kevin McCarthy Speaker of the House and they blamed the Democrats? Remember all the whiny Trump moments from his first presidency? It’s the Democrats, it’s the Deep State, the system is rigged, my enemies are everywhere: I’m the most powerful man in the world, and anything that gets accomplished is absolutely my doing and also anything that didn’t happen is someone else’s fault. Blame shifting is the most powerful weapon in the Republican arsenal. Expect to see it on full display, starting ... well, tomorrow.
Well, this “short” post ballooned into something out of control. So I’ll leave it there for now and wait for ... week 0? week 1? I haven’t quite decided if this should be like going from 1 BC to 1 AD or if it should be more mathematical than that. I guess we’ll find out next week.
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