Odds and Ends — 4 January 2023
Cryptocurrency, Investing, Money, Economy, Business, and Debt:
Cryptosat launches second ‘cryptographically-equipped’ satellite using SpaceX rocket
A few years ago, Stan Larimer (Dan’s dad) posted a bunch on the old chain about plans to launch a bunch of crypto satellites. Did anything ever happen with that?
Sam Bankman-Fried Pleads ‘Not Guilty’ to Fraud, Conspiracy Charges
Coronavirus News, Analysis, and Opinion:
COVID drug Paxlovid was hailed as a game-changer. What happened?
Insufficient investment and fears about rebound and side effects are driving down use of a lifesaving antiviral.
‘A hell of a variant’: Ultra fast-spreading strain could shake Israel’s COVID calm
Politics:
White House Humored by McCarthy Meltdown
Staff throughout the West Wing wouldn’t cop to watching live coverage of Rep. Kevin McCarthy failing to get enough votes to become speaker of the House.
But make no mistake: this administration is about as distraught over all this as a flock of vultures happening upon a freshly killed gazelle. For whatever headaches a Republican-controlled House will create for President Joe Biden through investigations and its ability to control the floor, the disorder and rancor likely to characterize the new GOP majority, administration aides believe, will benefit the president politically.
Rep. Gaetz says Rep. McCarthy is improperly occupying Speaker's quarters. pic.twitter.com/Bw5bn7FIdq
— Sharyl Attkisson 🕵️♂️💼🥋 (@SharylAttkisson) January 4, 2023
A Con Man Is Succeeding Me in Congress Today
Kevin McCarthy Didn’t Understand His Own Conference
For years Kevin McCarthy, a blow-dried, donor-class Republican, has tried to maintain a hold on his increasingly bedraggled, QAnon-class conference by prostrating himself before Donald Trump—in increasingly ostentatious ways, so as to prove to his flock that he was an authentic convert to the One True Church of MAGA.
McCarthy calculated that this public self-abasement would be worth it because he would be rewarded in the end with the gavel and bust he had long coveted.
This afternoon he was rewarded instead with the type of humiliation we have not seen on the House floor in a century: Being forced to smirk through repeated public beatings at the hands of his own members.
An unexpected glimpse of disillusionment in Russia’s trenches
America’s True Divide: Pluralists vs. Zealots
Civic pluralists understand that ideas move the world more than power does, which is why pluralists value debate and persuasion. We believe America is great because it is good, and America is good because the country is committed to human dignity, even for those with whom we disagree. A continental nation of 330 million souls couldn’t possibly agree on everything, but we can hash out our disagreements in the communities where we live and the institutions we build. The small but important role of government, for the civic pluralist, is a framework for ordered liberty. Government doesn’t give us rights, or meaning, or purpose or permission. It exists to protect us from the whims of mobs and majorities.
Political zealots reject this, holding that society starts and ends with power. Government in their view isn’t to protect from the powerful or the popular. More than anything else, zealots—on the right and the left—seek total victory in the public square. They believe that the center of life is government power. They preach jeremiads of victimhood and decline. On the left, they want a powerful bureaucracy. On the right, they want a strongman. But they agree on a central tenet: Americans are too weak to solve problems with persuasion. They need the state to do it.
The GOP’s Empty Threat on Disclosing Tax Returns
Trump Has Truly Lost His Juice
One of the cruel ironies of all this is that McCarthy, who went to extraordinary lengths to placate Trump, is being stymied by card-carrying members of his MAGA movement. And where is Trump in McCarthy’s hour of need?
Actually, I’m told from sources close to him that he’s been burning up the phone for McCarthy, but his pleas don’t seem to be making any impact. Even Trump loyalist Matt Gaetz hasn’t been moved. Instead, I’m told, the recipients of Trump’s calls have rebutted his request to support Kevin with relentless flirtation and flattery, Trump’s ultimate love language, such as suggesting that he should be speaker. Naturally, this deactivated and neutralized the ‘24 presidential candidate.
FDA finalizes rule change allowing mail-order abortion pills
The Humiliation of Kevin McCarthy
McCarthy’s failure here is personal. He has spent more than two years kowtowing to Trump and bending over backward to appease MAGA extremists like Marjorie Taylor Greene, and all he got for it (at least so far) was Tuesday’s once-in-a-century public degradation.
But it’s also an indication that the GOP is badly broken. As they’ve become more and more divorced from reality, Republicans have lost interest not just in compromise, but in policy and governing. Members are focused on personal grudges and on posturing as True Conservatives. They don’t really care if the House passes anything, ever. When humiliating whomever is in charge is the only policy goal, it becomes very difficult for any GOP speaker to lead such a narrow, fickle, and extremist majority.
Serendipity:
She was a popular yoga guru. Then she embraced QAnon conspiracy theories
QAnon — the baseless conspiracy theory that claims that a cabal of Satan-worshipping, blood-drinking elites control politics and media — is closely identified in political circles with some supporters of former President Donald Trump. But it also has a toehold in yoga and wellness circles.
Themes like everything is connected, nothing happens without a purpose, and nothing is what it seems are central to both yoga philosophy and conspiratorial thinking.
Massive measles outbreak threatens India’s goal to eliminate disease by 2023
I love it when something makes me laugh.