Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

In my day, never was longer.

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

Take your GOP plan out of the witness protection program.

“I never thought they’d lock HIM up,” sobbed a distraught member of the Lock Her Up Party.

Conservatism: there are some people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

They love authoritarianism, but only when they get to be the authoritarians.

American History and Black History Cannot Be Separated

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

“What are Republicans afraid of?” Everything.

You cannot shame the shameless.

Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

He really is that stupid.

Let there be snark.

“Squeaker” McCarthy

“woke” is the new caravan.

White supremacy is terrorism.

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Free Markets Solve Everything

Quickie Muskrat Gigging.

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Musk is, of course, the gift that keeps on giving. Today’s Twitter outage is a case study in why most tech companies don’t fire most of their engineers in one go.

But there was another story that caught my eye, as an illustration of how little Musk-ish MoTUs grasp normal human emotion–despite what I’m sure some in the Muskverse see as further evidence of his business genius.

Quickie Muskrat Gigging.

That is: if you happen to want a Tesla Model S or X, you’re in luck: it’s a noticeably cheaper today than it was yesterday, and much less expensive than it was in at the turn of the year:

In 2022, a dual-motor all-wheel-drive Tesla Model S went for $104,990. In January, Tesla chopped about 10 percent off the price, dropping it to $94,990. Today, it’s another $5,000 cheaper at $89,990.

For those who want to go really fast, the Model S Plaid, which uses three motors for a sub-2-second 0–60 mph time and a 200 mph top speed, is now $109,990, $5,000 less than last week and $26,000 less than you’d have paid in 2022.

The Model X SUV sees even bigger discounts. After heavy price drops in January, Tesla has now cut an extra $10,000 from Model X prices. That means the all-wheel-drive dual-motor version now starts at $99,990, with the triple-motor Plaid Model X starting at $109,990.

All good, right? Unless you’re one of the (relatively few) poor suckers who took delivery in the last few weeks, not to say last year.

Which means, I guess, buy now. Or not. Or wait. Or not:

How long those prices will stay is anyone’s guess. Within less than a month of enacting its January price cuts, Tesla had already increased the prices of the Model Y crossover again.

Here’s the thing: I don’t know about you all–but I hate to feel dumb.  I hate to feel like I made a bad deal.  It’s one of the reason I (and everyone I know) hates car shopping, used, or new or whatever. It’s just so damn hard to know how badly I’m being schrod at any moment.

One of Tesla’s selling points is that you never had to wonder. It was direct to buyer, no dealer bullshit, fixed price–what you see is what you get.  That may not have been the decisive advantage for the new car maker, but it helped.

Now–not so much.

Tesla does make cars lots of people want, and they’re not terrible.  Hell, at current price-and-gov’t-incentives the Model 3 is actually kind of a bargain, almost an eveeryone’s electric vehicle.  Tesla also has the production capacity to deliver them to many more people than any of the legacy or start up car makers that have entered the EV market. I’ve bashed Tesla (and Musk) a lot, and will do so some more, but despite what many on these comment threads have said, their cars are not all even mostly farce.

But, but, but….brands and brand reputations accumulate over years. They can crumble much more quickly.  There’s nothing really special about Tesla offerings now. Rather, a growing number of choices are out there that do as well and often much better at meeting people’s transportation and coolness desires.  Every miss matters–and if you think buying a Tesla will make you feel like you’ve been cheated a year or a month from now, that’s not good business.

Or so it seems to me. But what do I know?

I drive a 2o13 plugn-in Priuus, AKA the most boring car known to humankind.

Open this thread!

Image: Advertisement, 1908

 

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The Worst People In The World, Utterly Toxic Capitalism Division

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I threw up in my mouth reading this:

Elsie Saunders told a reporter that her husband, “a World War II and Korean War veteran,” who died of COVID-19 in August, wanted to perform one more act of service, donating his body to “help advance medical science.”

The Worst People In The World, Utterly Toxic Capitalism Division 2

That’s not what happened:

David Saunders’ body ended up in a Marriott Hotel ballroom in Portland, Oregon, where DeathScience.org held an “Oddities and Curiosities Expo.” At the October 17 event, members of the public sat ringside from 9 am to 4 pm—with a break for lunch—to watch David Saunders’ body be carefully dissected. Tickets for the dissection sold for up to $500 per person.

What is DeathScience? It appears to be a fairly thin-on-the-ground attempt to make a few quick bucks “disrupting” curiosity about death.  On its website you can buy death “merch,” prepay for courses promised for 2022 to learn “death investigation” and the like. (I’m not sure I’d trust an education provider that offers a one paragraph pitch that ends “The information is taught with professionals…in the field that science.” Maybe I’m an old fart, but how hard is it to proofread less than 100 words?)

Also: soon, they promise, you could sign up for more events like the one in Portland where David Saunders was turned into entertainment.

There’s a hideous tech-bro vibe to the whole enterprise, and every individual involved in this grotesque mockery should suffer as much shame and opprobrium as we all can muster. IANAL and I have no idea if there’s anything actionable here, but I hope there is, and that Mrs. Saunders turns them all into paupers.

I guess I’m a little perturbed by this.

But for all that, the ghastly excuses for people directly involved in treating Mr. Saunders as an oddity are symptoms, not the problem itself.

Late stage capitalism is a social phenomenon. In a place and time when not only everything can be financialized, but it is seen by many as a moral imperative to do so, this is what you get. It seems particularly horrific because of how easy it is to see ourselves in David Saunders: lives we’ve led reduced to a few hours’ bread-and-circus in some chain hotel with a good formaldehyde supplier nearby.

But this is just an indicator of how much we’ve already lost to the idea that all of experience can (and, to many, should!) be financialized, that those who can, should dip their beaks into every shift and turn of daily life, including its end, siphoning off the money to be made by turning each such moment into a transaction.

This wasn’t an explicitly political act by the techbro ghouls. But it is a reflection of our politics, where one party uses all its considerable power to make the world safe for death tourists and every other financial engineer. Not the world I want to live in.

Other than that, how was the play, Mrs. Lincoln.

Open thread, and, as an apology–a cat picture or two…

  1. Tikka shares my opinion of the miscreants in the story above:


The Worst People In The World, Utterly Toxic Capitalism Division

2:  Champ simply allows us to bask in her pure awesomeness:

The Worst People In The World, Utterly Toxic Capitalism Division 1

Image: detail from Jacopo Tintoretto, St. Rocco in the hospital, 1549

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You Done Put Me In A Trick Bag

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The national & international news has been a LOT the past week and I doubt this week will change that. I just want to draw your attention to a hyper local election that happened over a month ago and what it might mean for the CA recall and other races going forward.

Definitely not picking any sides on the recall

August 27th I had the “honor” of attending a rally outside the Sacramento Capital building. It’s not abnormal for me to attend a rally, I’m often there to document things. This was a first, though. How in the heck was I there to cover a labor event that seemed to also be an anti-mask, anti-vax, Larry Elder fan meet-up? I did a little digging and, hey, it’s kind of a funny story.

A while back, SEIU Local 1000 had an election and the outcome was quite curious. Long time president, Yvonne Walker lost her bid for a 14th term to a newcomer, Richard L. Brown, who’d never held office before. The turnout was ridiculously low – less than 8k votes out of a possible 55k eligible voting pool of the 96k membership. Not everyone who benefits from union membership actually decides to be a dues paying member but unions seem to forget that not every dues paying member is pro labor. They’re pro themselves. It seems that Freedom Foundation dipped their grubby anti-union paws into the SEIU Local 1000 election. In fact, they gloated about it. Full disclosure, while many members suspect that Freedom provided campaign funds, there’s no proof. Also, even if there was, I didn’t see anything in the bylaws that said outside orgs couldn’t fund candidates.

This week, our outreach efforts paid off in a big way when it was announced that long-time president Yvonne Walker was unseated by a self-proclaimed “outsider.”

You heard right. Walker’s 13-year reign of terror over the largest state employee union in California is officially over, and it is a direct reflection of Freedom Foundation’s success in the Golden State.

Walker is now the third SEIU local president, after David Rolf (SEIU 775) and Kim Cook (SEIU 925), to either leave or lose their job after we conducted sustained outreach efforts to their members.

Freedom Foundation blog – Rachel Wiegel, June 2, 2021

So, that’s how a progressive union wound up holding an apolitical rally about not being able to negotiate a vaccination or testing mandate for their workers that also seemed to feature a lot of pro-recall signage, anti-vax signage (loved the one comparing it to rape) and speakers that wouldn’t wear masks including one that felt that things were gestapo like. And it still didn’t beat the new president telling the mostly Lassen county crowd that the Susanville Correctional facility wouldn’t be closing if they were Black people. Yes, he’s saying that this red county was being punished for supporting Trump & being 2nd amendment, God-fearing white people. Does he have proof? No. Does he need proof? Also, no. They ate it up. In fact, they’re delighted by him. He’s got a rock star quality in their eyes. For once, the union is being represented by the kind of conservative that’s normally fighting the unions. He won with 33% of the vote. I have to admit, when I read that in my research, all I could think of was Kung Fu Monkey’s 27% Crazification Factor. If the vote wasn’t split between a bunch of more progressive people, it’s doubtful R. L. Brown would be president. But, let’s be honest, this isn’t the first time we’ve seen the idea of winning with a committed 30% of the vote. It’s just the first time it’s been successful.

SEIU Local 1000 is, or rather, was a very politically active chapter of of SEIU and my personal feeling is that this was a very well timed loss that put a pretty active, organized group out of commission just in time for a recall. Odd coincidence that both the recall and this hyperlocal election seems to have been affected by outside money. We’ll see how the loss of their manpower affects things.

Local 1000’s social media pages are fairly contentious nowadays. The union president having a chummy video chat with a libertarian anti-union activist certainly seemed to raise eyebrows. However, I think most of the membership is just trundling along, blithely unaware of whom is at the helm and will continue to be, until something goes very wrong.

This is the 3rd SEIU union leader ousted by Freedom Foundation and all they had to do was target the conservative members who would hang together as a group way more than everyone else, who will be derailed by future leaders feeling it’s their time, older leaders still clinging to power and the way folks on the middle and left who tend to fall into fanhoods. What’s worse is that there’s no real way to prevent this. This is internal. Any member can run for office. Anyone. If conservative dark money groups can undermine union organizing and political power, cut off the flow of not just political donation money, but union workers putting time in for getting out the vote – we on the left will not just be hamstrung, but gutted. Many other writers are pointing out the astroturfing going on right now with attacks on school boards, but I hope international union heads are paying attention to this. Every election matters. Just ask Local 1000 members astonished that the union filed a cease & desist to insist on a meet & confer over mandating vaccines. Whether he won with less than 3k votes or with 30k votes, Brown is president. You either voted for someone else, for him or you allowed him to be president by not voting at all. Complacency & apathy are dangerous. I hope workers are paying attention. Gonna be interesting to see how this plays out. Happy Labor Day.

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Reason ∞ Why I Hate Republicans, Dixie Fire edition

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What can we count on the GOP to deliver?

Here’s a couple of things:

Inaction in the face of climate change.

Refusal to regulate vital industries.

I haven’t got confirmation from the ground yet, but the latest fire maps leave little room for doubt. The Dixie Fire exploded yesterday, burning through the mountain town of Greenville, surrounding the next place up the road, Chester, and pushing north into the Warner Valley and the southeast corner of Lassen Volcanic National Park.

So, be warned: all this may be of interest to no one but myself. If that’s the story for you, just read on by…

My family owns two little cabins in the Warner Valley, our plot bordering on two sides on the park itself.  They’re nothing special–one is a 20×24 ft. single room (plus bathroom) with a murphy bed in the corner.  That was the one my mum built as her personal shelter; the other, larger, was the family cabin of my childhood. Built in 1964, it too was basically a single room: the three bunkrooms and the room my parents used were separated by partitions, not floor-to-ceiling and noise proof walls.

No, I still don’t know what mom and dad were thinking.

Now they are almost certainly gone.  The latest fire maps show the leading edge of hot burn well up the valley from our cabins. That means all our neighbors places are gone too.

This wasn’t a zillionaires’ retreat, btw. The Warner Valley is a strictly seasonal destination.  No one ploughs the road, and there are a half dozen or so little clusters of cabins in the area that no one can get to from roughly November to May. It’s hella remote–5 hours or so from the Bay Area, with minor roads for the last bit of the journey.   It’s the kind of place folks in Chico build what folks in Maine call a camp to escape the summer heat at lower altitudes. It is, or was, just a gorgeous stretch of mountain country that extended-locals and a few of us lucky outlanders got to enjoy.

Reason ∞ Why I Hate Republicans, Dixie Fire edition
Lassen from the Warner Valley-Juniper trail; our cabin is down slope (heading left-of-frame) from where this shot was taken.

I spent every summer there growing up, and every year since I was about 30 I, and soon my own family, would spend a week or so there. Totally off grid: cell phone service didn’t reach our corner of the valley; there was no town electricity, and for the last few years we gave up on our generator; no internet, of course. Paradise in other words.

And now it’s gone. I suppose I can still hope for one of those fire miracles, but realistically, the structures are tucked up against the base of a really steep slope (Mt. Harkness, at whose summit fire lookout tower Edward Abbey completed Desert Solitaire) and are surrounded by large and bone dry trees.  The immediate ground around the two buildings is bare and clear…but it won’t take many embers to do the job. Dammit.

The Dixie Fire is the product of two American political tendencies. The first has been to ignore climate change, an core plank of Republican posturing for two decades.  That part of the world is in the second year of one of the deepest droughts on record. There is essentially no residual moisture in the soil, plants or air. Temperatures have been high, humidity during the fire has often dropped into single digits, which combined with the wind patterns has produced what are called “red flag” fire conditions several times in the three weeks and counting the Dixie Fire has burned, including yesterday and today, when the blaze burst past the containment plans that aimed to hold it off the north side of Lake Almanor, Chester, and the national park. That red flag status will hold until at least tonight.

Reason ∞ Why I Hate Republicans, Dixie Fire edition 1

[That’s Lake Almanor in the distance, photographed from the trail from the Visitor Center to King’s Creek Campground. Crumbaugh Lake is in the foreground]

 

On the parochial level, the one that has me torn up right now, there really was nothing to do once the fire did jump that line: there’s only one small road into Warner Valley, so fire crews couldn’t safely get ahead of its front edge. It will keep on going until it hits the next plausible defensive position or the weather and winds change dramatically.

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Repub Stupidity Open Thread: The Fragile Snowflakes of the Federalist Society

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This week’s #WATB Award goes to the Federalist Society, for attempting to salve its wounded fee-fees by cancelling an irreverent law student, because free speech only applies to the Right kind of speech.

Repub Stupidity Open Thread: The Fragile Snowflakes of the Federalist Society
Repub Stupidity Open Thread: The Fragile Snowflakes of the Federalist Society 1

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They’re Criming Right Out in the Open

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To add to Mistermix, it was not hard to predict what would happen with this. There are rules for you and me, and there are rules for everyone else:

They're Criming Right Out in the Open

And that’s precisely what they did. When Robinhood and others froze trades on Gamestop, what they did was lock EVERYONE who had purchased through them into their trade, and not allow them to make any action. So if you are a trader bought at certain price and wanted to sell at a certain price, you’re just fucked. You own that stock and Say you bought at 180, and wanted to sell at 100. Tough shit. You eat the loss as it rides to zero as the big money boys manipulate the price down. ** APPARENTLY THIS IS WRONG AND I AM UNINFORMED BOOB WHO HATES HEDGE FUNDS AND WALL STREET SO MUCH HE IS SOMETIMES HASTY, NEITHER OF WHICH SHOULD SURPRISE LONGTIME READERS.***

It’s class warfare Calvinball, and you know what? They’ll fucking get away with it. Because as George Carlin noted, it’s a big fucking club, and you ain’t in it. Robinhood is legit now stealing from the poor to give to the rich.

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I Only Play for Money, Honey

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Hey, if you’re a Republican PAC and you sent money to one of the traitors who voted not to certify the election, the list of companies that won’t give you a fucking dime is getting longer every minute.  Different companies are taking different approaches — some are just suspending all donations for a while, while others are targeting PACs that gave to traitors.  MasterCard, which isn’t on the list in the piece linked here, won’t be giving any money to those PACs either (Jud Leglum has an internal memo to that effect.)

To be clear, both American Express and MasterCard have stopped giving money, but they’re still processing payments.  It would be very damn interesting if they stopped processing transactions for WinRed, the Republican equivalent of ActBlue, until WinRed said they wouldn’t support these traitors.  I’m gonna guess that’s not coming, but who knows?

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