Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

rich, arrogant assholes who equate luck with genius

Let the trolls come, and then ignore them. that’s the worst thing you can do to a troll.

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.

This isn’t Democrats spending madly. This is government catching up.

Democracy cannot function without a free press.

Republicans do not pay their debts.

The fight for our country is always worth it. ~Kamala Harris

We can’t confuse what’s necessary to win elections with the policies that we want to implement when we do.

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

The media handbook says “controversial” is the most negative description that can be used for a Republican.

They want us to be overwhelmed and exhausted. Focus. Resist. Oppose.

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

There is no compromise when it comes to body autonomy. You either have it or you do not.

The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

Donald Trump found guilty as fuck – May 30, 2024!

The desire to stay informed is directly at odds with the need to not be constantly enraged.

If you still can’t see these things even now, maybe politics isn’t your forte and you should stop writing about it.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / I Cannot Keep Up

I Cannot Keep Up

by | 85 Comments

This post is in: 

I’ve been working on a post about how the intelligence community has handled informing the public about Russian interference in this year’s election. I think I’ve got a worthwhile frame and some suggestions for some future presidency that includes responsible adults. I was going to work on it today, but then the Woodward stuff dropped, and, worse for my writing, a whistleblower has reported that DHS mucked with intelligence assessments to downplay Russia’s actions and emphasize the barely existent antifa. Here’s the Washington Post summary.

I think I can maintain the same frame I started with, but basically the post has to be rewritten.

I like to do thinkpieces that arrange facts a little differently than the media do, but they take time. The way news has been breaking lately, it’s very hard to keep up. This is not the first time my writing has been overtaken by events or revelations.

And, of course, everything is disturbing, from the lurch toward Naziism apparently beloved by 27% or more of the population to the burning of the West Coast. I’ve got relatives out there. I’m sure you’ve seen the pics of orange San Francisco. We had a bit of that last year with local forest fires. I now hate the sight of orange sunsets.

It’s not just California.

Oh, and Belarusians are still demonstrating. Russia is intervening in their news sector.

I have many thoughts. It bugs me that I can’t get them down to keep up with events. I’ve dropped a few quick posts. Maybe I should just stick with that for a while.

Open thread!

 

Reader Interactions

85Comments

  1. 1.

    cain

    Yeah, it’s like mars or something – and I’m in the middle of that as is Kent and some of the others PNW folks in this area.

    The air quality is bad, my house is filled with the smell of msoke, and there is soot everywhere that I’m going to have to clean up.

    The fact that Trump is working to support Russia is really damning in my opinion.

    ETA:

    You might also consider that evangelicals probably support the Russians because of the relative same stance towards LBGTQ+ – and of course the Russians are happy to supply them with money and women.

  2. 2.

    Mary G

    I am totally overwhelmed. Thinking about going back to bed and pulling the covers over my head as I assume the fetal position, it’s just all so much.

  3. 3.

    cain

    @Mary G:

    I look forward in 4 years for the Harris/Auntie Entity ticket to clean up the rest of this crap that we’ve been saddled with. Blackwomen 2024

  5. 5.

    Ken

    It bugs me that I can’t get them down to keep up with events.

    The Gish Gallop used to be restricted to debates, not the 24-hour news cycle.

  6. 6.

    NotMax

    The difference between a deep dive essay (writing for the ages) and a here today, below the screen tomorrow post at B-J (writing for the aged).

    :)

  7. 7.

    MattF

    I’m down to mostly following events on Twitter. The alternative seems to be repeating things I said weeks (or is it months) ago.

  8. 8.

    Suzanne

    I feel like “I Cannot Keep Up” should be a rotating tag. Or the catchphrase for the year. Truer words have not been spoken this year.

  10. 10.

    Wyatt Salamanca

    Cheryl,

    I can’t keep up with the rapid flow of events either.

    Maybe once Trump is finally defeated, there will be a small window of time during which we can catch our collective breath.

  11. 11.

    Jeffro

    Cheryl if it helps, there are people already looking at the down side of a Biden 400+ EV landslide.

    Yes, really.

    Ok wait, I actually read the article and it’s the headline that sucks…the kid’s basically bragging about his statistical model and noting that while there’s a 20% chance trumpov could win at present, there’s also a 10% chance of a historic Biden landslide.

  12. 12.

    Patricia Kayden

    Wait, which America was Trump in when he sat on info about the pandemic? Was he in Biden's America of the future or back in February in Trump's America?— Ragnarok Lobster (@eclecticbrotha) September 9, 2020

  13. 13.

    MattF

    @Jeffro: I noticed that. We should create a neural net that reads both headlines and articles, and then raises a CLICKBAIT alert when they are uncorrelated.

  15. 15.

    Martin

    So, I’m trying to keep tabs on fires near relatives (normally not hard, today damn near impossible). For CA peeps – CalFire (my usual go-to) doesn’t cover every fire. The now-named North Complex Fire near Oroville is not one of their fires. It was the Bear fire and Claremont fire, now merged. CalFire still reports them at 30K acres combined last night, but it’s clearly over 250K acres per satellite data. There is no perimeter map of the fire as best as I can find. I don’t think they have people on the ground able to do ground reports.

    Finding similar gaps in information up in Oregon as well. Need to be a bit more persistent in finding accurate information than usual. Thankfully the santa anas down here in SoCal were weaker than forecast, though winds expected to die down tonight which will cause the smoke layer to move toward the ground.

  16. 16.

    West of the Rockies

    My daughter turned 19 a week ago.  She said that this is not what she expected young adult life to be.

    Christ,  I hope we get Joe and Kamala into office and begin to take climate change seriously.  I LOATHE Republicans and the damn white patriarchy.

  17. 17.

    CaseyL

    Someone posted a still from Blade Runner II and compared it to the California sky right this moment.  They looked the same.  Dystopia, we can haz it.

    Here in Seattle, haze and smoke are everywhere.  Health officials advocate keeping our doors and windows closed – which would be doable, if I had air conditioning.  But I don’t, so it isn’t.

    A blighted burning Hellscape, with piles of two hundred thousand dead, braying jackasses flying the Confederate Flag, and sociopaths supporting a Russian gangster as President, is not how I envisioned spending my Golden Years.

  18. 18.

    Baud

    @West of the Rockies: 

    When Trump’s lost the CFTC…

    The far-reaching consequences of climate change have the ability to create chaos in the financial system and disrupt the American economy, according to a federal report released Wednesday.

    The report, the first of its kind by a US government entity, calls for Congress to swiftly impose a price on carbon and urges financial regulators to “more urgently and decisively” work to understand and blunt the looming economic damage from climate change.

  20. 20.

    Calouste

    So 4,000 firefighters. What happened to the idea of calling in the military to help out with natural disasters? If inmates can do it, so can soldiers.

  21. 21.

    Scout211

    I agree.  It’s too much right now.  I can’t get excited about national politics when the California, Oregon and Washington are burning.

    Left this downstairs, but this thread is more relevant:

    We’ve all been on edge here in California for weeks, our important papers ready and our plans in place when and if we get the word to evacuate.  Fire season will not be over for months.

    We are watching the news from Oregon with shock and despair.  Mr. Scout211 grew up in Oregon and we spent each summer visiting his family there in the beautiful McKenzie River area.  Now the raging Holiday Farm fire is heading that way, just on the edge of the town where he grew up.  0% containment and currently 105,000  acres.

    And that is just one of the huge mega fires burning out of control in Oregon.  They don’t have enough firefighters or enough resources right now.

  22. 22.

    West of the Rockies

    @Martin:

    I’m in Butte County (Chico).  Oroville is under an evacuation warning.  Ditto one zone in Paradise.

    BUT… The winds have dropped to single digits and changed direction back onto the fire.  The result is a scary red sky, but somewhat more optimistic prognosis.

  26. 26.

    Wyatt Salamanca

    If you are unable to simultaneously hold in your head the ideas that Trump is a vile, racist fascist with blood on his hands and that Bob Woodward is a vile, greedy pandemic profiteer who failed to meet the most basic standards of journalism, please see yourself out of my feed

    john r stanton @dcbigjohn

    https://twitter.com/dcbigjohn

  30. 30.

    debbie

    It really is impossible to keep up and, even worse, keep everything straight. There is no org chart big enough for this world at this time.

  36. 36.

    Flanders Other Neighbor

    My teen daughter came into my office this morning and said she was about to start yelling at us for making so much noise as to wake her up at 3:00am, but she realized it was 9:00am and was confused.  About the same time my coworker’s K or 1st grade son found he had a zoom class at 1:00 and asked if it would be daytime by then.  Berkeley.

  37. 37.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    I went to the market yesterday evening, lots of candy for Halloween on sale, got home and got a news alert that LA County was banning trick-or-treating.  I was thinking that’ll make those retailers real happy.  I just got another news alert, the county backed off to saying it was “not recommended”.

  38. 38.

    HumboldtBlue

    @Flanders Other Neighbor:

    That confusion hit me this morning as well. When I finally got up to look outside thinking it was a normal if orangey 630 am I checked the phone and it read 830 am and I thought it needed a reboot.

    Clock confirmed my confusion.

  41. 41.

    Martin

    @HumboldtBlue: Yeah, Inciweb is doing a better job with their maps, but if you click on the fire information – it’s also wildly out of date, lacks containment, acreage way off so it’s hard to tell how quickly it’s growing and where, etc.

  43. 43.

    Martin

    @Calouste: I know they started training of Cal National Guard maybe 2-3 week ago. Not sure how many they’ve been able to train under the circumstances.

  46. 46.

    ColoradoGuy

    Visit the purpleair map at https://www.purpleair.com/map to get updates at 10-minute intervals. Here in Colorado, things looked like a horror movie on Saturday and Sunday, with 100F temps and a blood-red sun (AQI between 150 and 200). Yesterday, it rained and partly snowed, and the air is clear again. I’m horrified to see the beautiful little college town of Eugene, Oregon has an air quality of 550 to 600 right now … even an N95 mask is hard pressed to filter that out.

  47. 47.

    Chyron HR

    @Calouste:

    What happened to the idea of calling in the military to help out with natural disasters? If inmates can do it, so can soldiers.

    What about our precious boys in blue?  If they’re going to claim the privilege to murder anyone they want as compensation for “keeping us safe”, they should keep us safe.

  48. 48.

    geg6

    I just can’t any more, too, Cheryl.  It’s all too much.  So I’ve decided that as of today, I am choosing one thing to be outraged about that day.  Just focus on that one thing and direct all my rage at it.  Today, it’s Bob Woodward.  He is complicit in the negligence that caused the deaths of 190,000+ souls.  He is disgusting.  He is a monster.  He is why villago delenda est.

  49. 49.

    trollhattan

    @Martin:

    InciWeb is agnostic as to whether a fire is state or federal, and the response is quicker than CalFire at times like this, when the traffic can bog it down.

    ALL national forests are shut down in California and IIUC in Oregon, too. A change from yesterday, when just central and southern California nat forests were closed.

  51. 51.

    trollhattan

    @Calouste:

    National Guard are in the fight. IDK about DOD service members, whether they can be brought in or not.

    FWIW military training and firefighting are different skill sets and you can’t just hand an artillery guy a pulaski and tell him to get on the line. Ferrying gear, supplies and people with helis, and such would seem plausible, though.

  52. 52.

    trollhattan

    @ColoradoGuy:

    Yesterday I remembered the “recirc” button on my car’s ventilation system. Never used it before, but nice for fending off smoke. Also the automatic headlights came on a two o’clock.

  55. 55.

    japa21

    Since it is an Open Thread, two items of some interest, one fire related.

    Back when the fires started up in California and we several posts asking for California BJers to check in (which now seems like a lifetime ago) I mentioned that my nephew and his wife had to evacuate from their home and that they had been informed it was a complete loss.  They had bought this place 3 years ago, finally got it into living in shape 18 months later and were close to finishing it off soon.

    Well, they heard a couple days ago that it survived. It seems a neighbor with a back hoe had made a fire break that saved 3-4 homes, theirs included. Also, the horses they had to leave behind were saved.

    Neighbors like that are hard to find.

     

    Second item is pandemic related. I have mentioned before that my younger son teaches American History at a Catholic college prep HS in Chicago. They reopened with one day of all online for all and two days in person for students, fresh and soph T-W and junior and senior Th-F.  Enrollment is 1400.  As of last week 200 students were in quarantine. Doesn’t mean 200 sick but the set-up is that 4-6 students are placed in quarantine for every student who is positive.  The administration has no intention of going totally remote unless Governor Pritzker forces them to.  This particular school is not associated with the Archdiocese.  Teachers are not informed of the actual number of students who have tested positive nor their names.  Nor do teachers enter quarantine unless they test positive because they are more than 6 feet away from the students.

    My son, as well as several other teachers, are looking to leave after this year.

  57. 57.

    Mary G

    And Politico gets hold of emails sent to Dr. Fauci by political appointee at HHS trying to get him to lie about COVID19:

    Some unproven theories that HHS adviser Paul Alexander pressed to include in Dr. Fauci’s talking points:
    – There is “zero” risk for kids to get Covid
    – Kids shouldn’t wear masks
    – Testing asymptomatic people “makes no logical sense.”
    https://t.co/83qdJV5lZ8

    — Sarah Owermohle (@owermohle) September 9, 2020

    Some sent as recently as last week! All the facepalm/headdesk in the world today.

  59. 59.

    Patricia Kayden

    Woodward: NSA and CIA have classified evidence Russia placed malware in election registration systems of two Florida counties, St. Lucie and Washington. It could erase voters in specific districts. The systems vendor used by Florida was also used in states across the country.— Robert J. DeNault (@robertjdenault) September 9, 2020

  60. 60.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    My fellow photographer Hami wanted to go photograph two abandoned B-52’s out near Edwards AFB.  I had thought of this about 6 months ago, they’re on Edwards.  I explained to him that you just couldn’t drive on to an US Air Force Base without getting permission.

  61. 61.

    RaflW

    This tidbit emerged today, under the deluge of news:

    Trump + RNC raised $210 million in August per Fox News. Biden + DNC raised $364.5 million.

    Ouch / Yay.

  63. 63.

    Calouste

    @trollhattan: 
    The military has firefighters, certainly airfields have them like any civilian airfield. And the engineering corps has a lot of heavy equipment that can be used to clear roads and create fire trenches.

  66. 66.

    Miss Bianca

    @ColoradoGuy: I went riding between 10 and 11:30 am on Labor Day, by noon the smoke had billowed in to the point where I couldn’t see the mountains. Then yesterday we got a foot of snow. Mountains still shrouded, but with clouds, not smoke.

    Thankful for us, but still deeply horrified about the West Coast.

  67. 67.

    Mary G

    @Mary G: ETA To clarify, emails were sent to Fauci’s office:

    And on Tuesday, Alexander told Fauci’s press team that the scientist should not promote mask-wearing by children during an MSNBC interview.
    “Can you ensure Dr. Fauci indicates masks are for the teachers in schools. Not for children,” Alexander wrote. “There is no data, none, zero, across the entire world, that shows children especially young children, spread this virus to other children, or to adults or to their teachers. None. And if it did occur, the risk is essentially zero,” he continued — adding without evidence that children take influenza home, but not the coronavirus.
    In a statement attributed to Caputo, HHS said that Fauci is an important voice during the pandemic and that Alexander specializes in analyzing the work of other scientists.
    “Dr. Alexander advises me on pandemic policy and he has been encouraged to share his opinions with other scientists,” Caputo said. “Like all scientists, his advice is heard and taken or rejected by his peers. I hired Dr. Alexander for his expertise and not to simply resonate others’ opinions.”
    Neither Alexander nor NIH spokespeople responded to requests for comment.
    Fauci, an infectious disease expert whohas led NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for nearly four decades, told POLITICO that he had not seen the emails and his staff had not instructed him to minimize the risk coronavirus poses to children or the need for kids to wear masks.
    “No one tells me what I can say and cannot say,” Fauci said. “I speak on scientific evidence.”

    Another of Kay’s low-quality hires. I bet Dr. Alexander’s prior experience was climate change denial and assuring the public that cigarette smoking is perfectly harmless.

  68. 68.

    Wolvesvalley

    Here is a Fire and Smoke map link sent by my brother-in-law. The URL is set to focus on the Eugene, Oregon, area because some family members are near there. But you can zoom in or out to see more detail, other areas, or the whole west coast. It shows actual fires, hot spots detected by satellite that might or might not be fires, smoke plumes, and air quality readings. You can click on the symbols for details.

  69. 69.

    Miss Bianca

    @Geminid: Yep. We try to be that sort of neighbors. Pal D has a skid steer, a backhoe, and plans to use both in the event of a neighborhood fire.

  70. 70.

    LongHairedWeirdo

    It’s been crazy; but I am kinda-interested in how one question I had played out.

    I was pondering: was Trump listening to Limbaugh insist it was nothing to worry about, to Fox downplay everything, and become an imbecile by listening to, and trusting them? Or, are they running cover for *him*, trying not to make him look bad?

    And the answer seems to be, Trump was the driver of imbecility. And wow, scary. I mean, it’d be humiliating if I was as factually wrong as Fox, Limbaugh, and the rest of the right-wing “it’s a hoax” gallery.

    But if I had chosen to run cover for TRUMP, with the capability of realizing just how that’s like trying to open a stuck lid on nitroglycerin by giving the lid a good whack with a sledgehammer… I mean, it’s not just amazingly *evil*, it’s colossally stupid. The virus isn’t like supporting the invasion of Iraq, where everyone who is dying is far away, and can be ignored after a few patriotic puff-pieces where needed. People would die, right here in the US, and people tend to remember people who died, like, *right here*, a lot more than a bunch of foreigners (and a fair number of US troops&support) dying elsewhere.

    I’m not sure what’s scarier… that they were stupid enough  not to think of the possible repercussions, or that they knew that they’d all circle the wagons and weather the storm.

  71. 71.

    jonas

    I’m still just sitting here chuckling to myself as I imagine what would be happening now if a whistleblower had come forward during the Obama administration to claim that DHS political flacks were telling career analysts to back off their assessments of threats from radical Islamists so as not to “offend” the President. The country would be in flames. Fox News hosts would suffer on-air aneurysms. NYT typesetters would be suffering nervous breakdowns trying to fit all the hysterical headlines on the front page…

    But today, revelations of borderline-treasonous behavior by the administration? Just another day ending in -y.

  73. 73.

    trollhattan

    @?BillinGlendaleCA:

    “Mumble-mumble something Area 51, man! I need to know the truth!”

    You friend would get an extended visit…somewhere.

    Had bidnez on Mather and McClellan when both were still active. Young people clad in camo toting M-16s welcomed us each time.

  74. 74.

    RaflW

    @Wyatt Salamanca: I’m not quite as angry as that, but I feel strongly that what Woodward illustrates is that people make decisions that have moral components. And we can and do look at them and say, “yes that was a bad choice.”

    Tough shit for Woodward’s feelings. He sat on explosive info that could potentially have shifted the course of the pandemic in this country. Yes, the sycophants and liars would have kept lying. And yes, Bob would likely have burned the sources and been unwelcome to interview conservatives for future books.

    But if even 10% of the dead could have been saved, did he make an honorable choice? In the face of the worst epidemic in literally 101 years.

  75. 75.

    namekarB

    @Wyatt Salamanca:

    @Patricia Kayden:

    I just do not understand someone who sits on his hands with the recordings of Trump and allows all those people to get sick and to die because of some “ethics” dilemma about not revealing the damning truth. What a moral monster. And the media just ho-hums the fact that one of their own so called heroes of journalism did nothing for all that time because he could not ethically reveal his sources in order to save thousands of lives when really it was so he could make money off a book

  76. 76.

    trollhattan

    @MattF:

    Huh. Well, good I suppose. Doesn’t change my opinion of Krystol given he’d be happy as a clam with a fifth term GW Bush, but at least he acknowledges the rot has been there a long damn time.

  81. 81.

    debbie

    On a happier note, I counted 34 Biden signs on my walk just now (that doesn’t count two Dump Trump signs). My new favorite: “Man Woman Person Camera Biden/Harris.”

  82. 82.

    HumboldtBlue

    I hate to sound like a big whinging tit but sweet mother of asthma the smoke layer is fucking absurd.

  83. 83.

    Ruckus

    @Suzanne:

    I think you may have left off a bit of information.

    I believe you meant – “I Cannot Keep Up With The Shit Show.”

    And it doesn’t matter if you are talking about fire, politics, or public health.

  84. 84.

    tokyokie

    My nephew’s in-laws live in a national forest northeast of Medford. The fires were moving through the outskirts of Medford yesterday, and although the area in which they live is under an evacuation order, the road at the base of their mountain (which leads to Crater Lake) is blocked by fires to both the east and west, and even if they were to make it west to the nearest major highway, that road is blocked by fires north and south. We were out that way a few years back for the wedding, and we spent quite a bit of time at the in-laws’ house, and I was thinking, “Damn, what a view, but what will they do if there’s a fire?” I guess they’re about to find out.

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